#the amount of lore that can be gleaned from this show is 💯

[dekalko-mania]

On the Topic of the Ghost Portal

I've used this idea a few times in fics, but I have a theory that the Fentons built the ghost portal in Amity for a reason. Jack and Maddie live, breathe, and eat ghost (like literally, their food's contaminated lol), and after college, they decided to dedicate their lives to the supernatural. Meaning? They most likely chose to live there because the city had a special connection to the zone.

We know Maddie's not from there, and I assume Jack may not be either if they met at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Though people from Illinois tend to visit Wisconsin, so who knows, maybe he was from another part of the state and grew up hearing about it. There could've been other options, but if they planned to get married, then it needed to be a place where they could raise a family comfortably.

So that's my first reasoning as to why they moved there, but I think there was more to it. Even before the portal opened, the place had its lore. Ex. Sydney Poindexter as well as Desiree originating in a genie's lamp, not the zone. They could've been 'asleep' for years, with enough ambient ectoplasm to cause some controversy, but not enough to bring them to full power. All this to say, I think the rift separating these two dimensions was very thin to begin with. It's why natural portals are so common, why Pariah Dark was able to suck them into the zone no problem, and why Wulf is able to tear into it so easily. What better place to punch a hole straight through their reality, than one where half the work is already done for them?

The question is, why take this risk in the first place? Common sense dictates this is an obviously risky thing to do. You open a door, it goes both ways. Why would two people that absolutely hate ghosts...invite them in? They're scientists, and while they've shown to make some negligent choices, they're also incredibly intelligent. I'm inclined to think that they put more thought behind this decision, instead of going the show's route and saying they were being reckless. Again, just an idea though.

If they were going to do this, it could imply that the benefits outweighed the costs. My guess is that Amity was growing incredibly unstable, and that eventually, all that tension building between both dimensions would cause a catastrophe. It's like getting a flimsy bag and gradually filling it with water. Keep doing that and the whole thing will burst. So to counter that, what can they do? Create a stable portal that relieves just enough of that tension so that the dimensions are no longer in danger of collapsing into one another. Think of it as a controlled tear, like the one made by doctors when a patient's lung has too much pressure. It's why the portal requires so much maintenance, there was literally an episode where Jack said the ecto filtrator needed replacing twice a year, or the whole thing would explode. It's dangerous, but in theory both sides win. Jack and Maddie get their research, and the city becomes more stable. That's their simplified version at least, their poor son got stuck dealing with most of the fallout. Bet that's not something they predicted.

Side note, but it also explains the Fentons' arsenal of weapons and some of their biases. If they're gonna open this gateway, they need to prepare means of defending themselves ahead of time. Expecting the worst in the 20 years of planning this thing is bound to make one think the inhabitants of that dimension can only be evil.

#danny phantom #on the topic #just me rambling lol #the amount of lore that can be gleaned from this show is 💯 #danny fenton #jack fenton #maddie fenton