I'll Make You Believe
While the whole "asking a ghost how they died is the worst taboo ever, so don't do it or you'll be in a world of hurt" headcanon is always fun to implement to either create temporary conflict or simply move the story along, I think it'd work just as well on both ends if it was only a minor offense.
Like if you were to ask a once living ecto being how they died the most negative response you'd get would either be some variation of "None of your business puny mortal" or an explanation using the most vividly graphic, stomach turning details as an act of petty revenge as well as insurance you never ask again.
So what could possibly be a way more serious, far more dangerous no-no when it comes to ghosts instead? Well, how about stating ghosts don't exist/there's no such things as ghosts? The reason why being you're invalidating the trauma they've experienced in their last moments.
Makes no difference whether you were aware of this or not. If they find out or worse, it's said to their face? You better hope they'll settle for beating you black-and-blue. Because the alternative is becoming a ghost yourself by the time they're done with you.
Now in dpxyj fics when Danny interacts with Wally and the whole "ghost are/aren't real" argument between them comes into play it's usually depicted as a trivial disagreement. But what if you were to make it more angsty by inserting this take on lack of ghostly etiquette?
Let's say after getting to know his teammates better Danny starts talking about his origins (in vague detail) and exploits, only to eventually be interrupted by Kid Flash declaring that he can't possibly be a ghost as they don't exist. And Robin, Aqualad, Miss Martian, and Superboy all become quite alarmed watching Danny go from easygoing to looking ready to beat Kid Flash to a pulp, as he's now fighting back his ghostly nature. To avoid giving in to the urge he abruptly leaves with a dismissive attitude, much to KF's confusion.
From there it spirals. KF, not realizing he's poking a hornets nest continuing to voice his skepticism whenever the opportunity comes up and each time Danny barely manages to keep it together. Until one day Danny in an explosive rage snatches up KF and in a tone colder than ice tells him he knows what he is, what he went through to reach that state, and that he has no need to justify any of it to him.
Then he leaves once more before he really loses it. Before going after him Miss Martian informs KF of how Danny opened his mind to her and that for his sake she hopes he never shares those memories of what he went through with him. Feeling bad now, KF tries to apologize once Danny returns. Which results in failure again and again since Danny keeps giving him the cold shoulder.
After having yet another apology disregarded KF, in mounting frustration blurts out that he wishes he understood what has Danny so convinced he's a ghost, unaware a certain wish twisting genie he was warned about had been invisibly lurking in the vicinity the instant Danny was elsewhere. Along with the rest of the regulars, as soon as KF's denials had spread to the Ghost Zone Desiree was on the warpath, intent on showing just how real ghosts truly were. By sheer spite and determination she beat everyone else to him, just in time to hear him say the forbidden word, presenting her with the perfect means of retribution.
With a "So you have wished it so shall it be" KF is magically transported to an underwater submarine, occupied by Black Manta. Unable to run as freely without potentially damaging the sub and causing it to flood, the fight upon his unexpected arrival is drawn out to the point KF starts to feel his hyper metabolism weakening him. It's when he's close to dying of starvation that one of the more incompetent goons sends him crashing into the stash of ectoplasm Manta had smuggled with the intent of using it to pollute the waters of Aquaman's Kingdom. The last thing KF sees before blacking out is Desiree looming over him with a smirk of satisfaction.
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An Early Start - Chapter 13 - Danny Phantom
Ao3: Here | Masterpost: Here
Ao3 Description: The accident that turns Danny half-ghost happens when he is four years old and leaves him trapped in the Ghost Zone. Clockwork finds him and takes him in to raise. But what happens when Clockwork sends Danny back to the human-world ten years later when a permanent portal appears?
Chapter 13:
Danny was certain Tucker and Sam were angry with him by the time detention rolled around. Once he’d returned to school and went back to class, his friends barely looked at him the rest of the day, and he caught them on more than one occasion whispering to each other while staring at him. If Danny lost his friends, he honestly didn’t know if he could continue going to school. They were the only things that made the crowded, tight quarters of this place bearable.
Mr. Lancer supervised them as they cleaned. He had his arms crossed and tapped his foot as he watched. Occasionally, he’d say something like, “Mr. Foley, you missed a spot.” But besides that, he too was silent.
Danny needed to get ahold of himself. He could feel ice creeping down the handle of the mop he held. He only lost control of his ice powers like this during times of extreme distress. He closed his eyes and repeated Frostbite’s mantra he’s had in his head all these years. ‘It doesn’t control you. You control it.’
“Mr. Fenton,” Mr. Lancer said. “Is there a reason why you have stopped mopping?”
Danny opened his eyes and saw all three of them looking at him. He looked down at the mop handle. The ice was gone but he could tell it was still freezing. Danny shook his head and went back to mopping.
-
Danny was all too ready to go home, which was a first, once they finished. He rushed past his friends and to his locker, ready to lock himself in his room and be done for the day. He’d deal with this tomorrow. Quickly shoving textbooks, notebooks, and the now empty thermos into his backpack, Danny zipped it shut and closed his locker.
Waiting on the other side were Sam and Tucker. “Hey, man.” Tucker greeted.
Wait... what?
“Wanna go to the house?” Sam asked.
Weren’t… they mad at him? Danny looked down at his bag then back up at them. He could feel his palms coat with ice. He swallowed a deep breath and held it back, and nodded.
As the three of them walked, Danny rifled through his bag to pull out the cellphone his parents gave him and sent them a text saying he was hanging out with his friends, before throwing the phone back in. To save time, they ended up taking the bus to the edge of town and walking the last few blocks. The entire time there was a surprisingly comfortable silence between the three of them. Maybe Danny was wrong, maybe he couldn’t read humans as well as he thought, or maybe he just couldn’t read Tucker and Sam.
They arrived at the abandoned house and the first thing they did was make sure it was empty. Like always, it was, and as they made their way to the pantry, Sam pondered if maybe the other graffiti was from way long ago, and perhaps they really were the only ones who visited this house now. The three of them got chips and sodas, and spread out in the living room.
Once they were settled, and Dumpty Humpty played quietly over the radio, the odd atmosphere between Sam and Tucker returned. Danny quickly began to regret agreeing to hang out. Between the two of them, they seemed to be having some kind of silent conversation with their eyes, and it went on for a minute before they both turned to look at him.
“So…” Tucker trailed, glancing to the side. Moments later it became clear that he let the sentence die so Sam took over.
“So, Danny,” Sam said with more confidence than Tucker. “About earlier…”
“I’m sorry,” Danny interrupted after setting his soda in his lap. “About getting you guys in trouble.” Sam and Tucker exchanged yet another glance, and Danny wished they’d stop doing that. But their glance was different this time; rather than unreadable, it was clearly baffled.
“No, we weren’t even thinking about that.” Tucker said, and Danny faltered. Okay, now he was confused. Tucker grew flustered as he began to explain. “So, it’s like this, you see. After you started the food fight in the cafeteria, you just kinda ran off. So naturally, Sam and I followed.” Danny paled. “We saw you run into the kitchen and we followed you inside.”
What’s the one thing Clockwork told Danny not to do? Don’t let anyone know he’s half ghost. It hasn’t even been a month.
“We saw that ghost,” said Sam carefully. “Then we saw you… become a ghost.”
“And, like, talk. I think?” Tucker added.
Danny could feel as his whole world came crashing down on him... again. He hated that this became a familiar feeling. They weren’t supposed to know. No one was supposed to know. Not even a month in and he let Clockwork down. The soda back in his hand completely froze over. He’d only taken a sip of it so it began to overflow from pressure. He stood up and dropped it in surprise.
“Wow, Danny, it’s okay.” Sam placated, standing up too.
Danny looked frantically up at his friends… and realized they looked concerned. Tucker was standing up now, too.
“Hey man, it’s okay.” Tucker said. “It’s obviously a secret. We won’t tell anyone. Promise.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “We’re your friends.”
A heartbeat was another thing Danny wasn’t quite used to yet and right now, it was beating faster than it ever has before. He looked down at the frozen soda fizzing on the floor and felt like it was a good representation of how he felt right now. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, he couldn’t look at them for what he was about to say. So, he kept them closed as he raised his hands to speak. “I’m half ghost,” he explained. But, despite his fear, he had to open his eyes anyway when he heard no response. His friends stared at him, but they saw him go ghost earlier so he didn’t know why they looked so surprised now.
“Is that even possible?” Tucker asked, and Danny tilted his head.
Sam elaborated. “Tucker and I thought, well… we thought you were like, a full ghost who disguised yourself as a human.”
Despite the crushing, nauseating anxiety in his chest, Danny found himself smiling at that. “I’m half ghost, half human. So, half alive I guess.”
A beat of silence and Tucker said, “…Huh, well, how about that?”
Danny felt his insecurity return. “No one was supposed to find out. Not even my family knows.”
“Is… that where you’ve been the past ten years?” Sam asked.
Danny pondered the question. After considering it a moment, he gestured for them to follow him. So they did, and Sam and Tucker followed Danny upstairs to the room with their graffiti. Danny’s painting was still exactly how he left it and he pointed to it then said, “Home.”
Tucker blanched. “That’s your home?”
“Clockwork’s tower,” Sam whispered, then spoke up. “Clockwork. Who is he?”
Danny turned to the painting and placed a hand on it, taking a moment to himself. He missed it so much. He turned back to his friends and said, “He’s a ghost.”
“A half ghost like you?” Tucker asked.
Danny shook his head. “No. No one is like me. He’s an ancient ghost that's in charge of time. He took me in when I appeared in the G-H-O-S-T Z-O-N-E and raised me.”
“Ghost Zone?” Sam asked.
Danny sighed. This would take a lot of explaining, but he felt an uncertain knot in his chest. “How do I know I can trust you?” He asked despite himself, momentarily letting his fear win out. Honestly he truly trusted them, he really did, but he just had to make sure.
In response, Tucker held out his PDA. It showed a photo of Danny in his ghost form. Tucker hit a button and suddenly it was deleted. “Sam and I could’ve told the whole school by now. But we won’t, and we don’t want to.” Next to him, Sam agreed, looking just as serious as Tucker.
Danny swallowed down that lump and nodded. “Okay.”
The three of them sat on the floor of that old nursery and Danny told them his story, all the way from the beginning. From the accident, to Clockwork finding him, raising him. He talked about the Ghost Zone, what it was like, Clockwork’s lessons, gaining each new power, and how long it took him to make a friend. He told them everything. In a way, it was cathartic. It felt like some weight he hadn’t known about, one heavy on his shoulders, was now lifted. It felt like he could share the burden.
The first question Tucker asked when Danny finished his story was why he couldn’t talk. So, Danny explained Ghost Speak, and how he mistakenly thought he’d never leave the Ghost Zone, so he’d never need his human voice. He told Tucker that was the language he’d heard when Danny spoke to the Lunch Lady. “Ghost Speak doesn’t require vocal cords.”
“Is that why you hate small spaces?” Sam asked next. Danny stiffened but Sam rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Anyone can see it from a mile away.”
She had Danny there. He nodded. “The Ghost Zone is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. It’s all wide open space made up of ectoplasm.”
“It’s no wonder why there are weirdly specific things you don’t know about.” Tucker suddenly realized. “You didn't get to experience them in the human world, and they probably don’t have it in the Ghost Zone.” Indeed Danny displayed some of these behaviors to Sam and Tucker, too. Like the time Tucker was trying to show Danny how to play Doomed, but Danny simply did not know how to work the computer. It turned into an entire lecture on the ins and outs of computer etiquette.
Danny smiled sheepishly and nodded, then regarded them for a moment. “You guys are… strangely relaxed about all this.”
Apparently the thought hadn't even crossed their minds because Sam shrugged and said, “I mean, we were surprised at first, and yeah, our friend being a ghost is definitely the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to us, but like, you’re our friend. You’re still Danny, so it’s cool.”
Danny smiled. Ironically, his friends finding out he was a ghost made him feel more human.
-
Things became easier after that, in some aspects. Soon after it wasn’t only the Lunch Lady who became more daring around him. Skulker and Technus decided to try their hand as well. As each new ghost appeared, Danny told his friends who they were.
“So, that guy wants your pelt?!” Tucker asked bewildered. “That is nasty, man.”
“Tell me about it,” Danny replied. “But I’m stronger than him so I’m not worried.”
“What was it that he called you?” Sam asked.
“H-A-L-F-A? It’s what all the ghosts in the Ghost Zone call me.” Danny explained. “There isn’t much to do in the Ghost Zone so gossip gets around quick, but I prefer to go by P-H-A-N-T-O-M.”
“Hm,” Sam hummed. “Danny Phantom. It has a nice ring to it.”
In response, Danny ducked his head with a sheepish smile and replied, “Thanks.” Some days in the human world were easier than others, but Sam and Tucker were making more and more of them bearable.
~~~~~~~~~~
Ao3 Notes: Whenever Danny talks like T-H-I-S it is because he is fingerspelling the word out. This should typically only happen once before a sign is assigned to the word/name/etc... So if you see him saying the same word in the future but he is no longer fingerspelling it, just know it is because he has assigned a specific sign for it that the others in the know understand.
Thank you so much for reading and have a lovely day/night! <3
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Noticed But Hoping For The Best Part 2
Tucker is the second person to notice something was 'off'. Not quite 'wrong', they weren't at that level yet, but things certainly weren't the same. Things had been surprisingly quiet recently- not that anyone mentioned it, they always jinxed it if they did so- so the classic trio of friends could spend time together! They were even trying normal hobbies, at the insistence of Jazz. Well, hah, he knew coding and that was normal!- But apparently it was too connected to 'work' so he had to split his time between that and a 'normal' hobbie.
Sam was planning on showing them sewing- it was a lot harder to get clothes in her style than either him or Danny realized- but apparently there was some social event she was being forced to attend, so the plans were put on pause. That led to Tucker ending up at the Fenton household to spend time with Danny, teaching him at least a bit of coding before Jazz forced them to do something different.
This was when he first noticed something was 'off' with Danny. They used to play online games together, and he knew his best friend to have quick reaction times and almost never fat finger the keys, but apparently things had changed in the- what, month or so?- since he became Phantom. Randomly pressing the spacebar, forgetting to hold shift or tapping shift or caps lock at the wrong times, pressing multiple keys at the same time or accidentally pressing a key around the intended target. The two laughed at it, joking that he was more suited for fighting instead of typing now, though Tucker didn't fail to noticed that something was on Danny's mind afterwards.
The true realization came when they were playing video games. Things were going well, they were joking, but Danny kept dying in odd ways. He occasionally pressed random buttons, his triggers would randomly be moved and send his character off-course, or once again it was a button next to the one that was targeted being pressed.
After they reached a gameover screen, Tucker nudged his friend, trying to make a joke of it. "The golden boy of gaming has fallen! Glad to see I actually have a chance if we go PvP this time, I could only ever beat you on PC!" Danny always chuckled, but there was an underlying of something else... It was rare to see the other have subtle emotions, but Tucker was surprised to see his friend was genuinely frustrated! "Yeah, my hands haven't really been on my side for a bit. Me and Jazz think I just need to actually sleep for once, maybe I caught some kind of bug to make my mind foggy. Give me a few days of rest and I'll be back to my winning streak!"
Tucker was silent for a split second- Danny never admitted he was tired at all since starting being Phantom, even if he and Sam had noticed it- before grinning. "By the time that happens I'll have grown to match you, good luck getting a win over me!"
Tucker Foley hadn't seen a reason for actual concern, there was simply something a bit off with his friend, something that was easily fixable. It was easy to wait and hope for the best!
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Yesterday I couldn't sleep after seeing Dune in theatre so I made a Danny Phantom rewrite in my head. I always wanted the show to be deeper and more mature, you know, serious issues, learning how to navigate unwelcoming world and all that stuff. I ended up making it more angst lol. I already wrote most of first chapter but I'm super curious what would you change :>
So here's what I'm thinking:
Ghosts are "unfinished business" merged with plasma, intention so strong it lingers after death. When it meets ectoplasm, it changes into the shape of the intention + the owner of it. They're animated ectoplasm with a single goal: an obsession. The longer they exist, the less human they are.
Danny’s obsession is fixing, due to the fact he died trying to fix the portal to try to fix his family. He was unstable at first, lacking purpose, but once he realized he wants to fix his mistake and protect Amity, it stabilized him.
Danny accidentally opens the portal, and now it can’t be closed, since the off button is behind the portal. The ghost comes to the living world and Danny thinks it’s his fault. He feels the need to fix it.
Right after opening the portal he can't control his anger and fear as a ghost so he runs away to the forest and is found 5 days later.
Ghost don't belong in living world, just like humans in ghost, so they need to recharge in Ghost zone. Because Danny’s only a half ghost he just needs to be close the portal. If ghost consume their power entirely, they disappear, half ghost change back to human form, unless they force themselves/are forced to stay in ghost form.
Danny’s room is located above the portal, thanks to that he recharges while sleeping. + The room is space themed, because he loves space.
After the accident, he gets a bit paler than he was before. His pulse and body temperature are below normal.
There’s a Lichtenberg scar covering the right side of his body from the accident, going from his shoulder over his back, neck, and knee. It wraps behind the ear on his forehead, only delicately visible, but Danny covers it with his hair. He gets called Harry Potter puns, like closet boy, because of that.
His fangs are sharper and more prominent, even in human form.
At first he has problems controlling his strength, for example he bit a glass and shattered it by accident, because he was zoning out.
Accident triggered Danny's joint problems as well as injured his right knee. He suffers chronic pain, a headache disorder and mild cognitive impairments in memory, attention, and mood regulation. He had multiple physically aggressive outbursts since the injury, but he never hurt anyone.
Danny is mathematically “gifted”, Tucker technologically and Sam literary. That’s why people pick on them. From an outsider's point of view, they have it easier. After the accident, Danny is acknowledged as disabled, but he "doesn't look like he really is". They are different, and school achievements comes easy to them. Their parents are pretty neglectful, so they can do whatever they want. People get jealous.
Due to being a ghost you can't stare at Phantom too long, your brain will struggle to comprehend what it's seeing. The longer you spend with a ghost, the easier it is to see them. All ghosts are like that.
Ghost can finish their unfinished business and disappear.
I have many more ideas, but that's all I'm going say for now :>
So, what would you want to see in a rewrite?
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