Danny Phantom is my first favorite cartoon so here are some reblogs from the phandom 🥀☕️🫖🥀 side blogs: raithbloom for cool stuff and lowkeydeceased for silly stuff
[Image ID: A very confused, and slightly horrified looking Danny Phantom holds the Little Baby Man version of himself that is hugging his hand and purring. /. End ID]
So here's a fun thought: Consider a situation in which LBM is NOT, in fact, a tiny Danny, but a mimic blob ghost that has adopted his image as a form of Batesian self defense. Then imagine Danny's reaction to seeing some fucked up little uncanny valley cat version of himself with zero warning or context.
Per Wikipedia: "Batesian mimicry is a form of mimicry where a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species directed at a predator of them both."
This gives me so many thoughts, especialy from the other reblogs.
If its mimicry, that implies that other strong ghosts also have blob mimics. Danny is freaking out about this weird blob, takes it to frostbite, who just congratulates danny for achieving a perfectly normal milestone for a ghost - being strong enough to be mimicked by a blob.
Then danny freaks out about how this is definitely not a good thing, he absolutely cannot have blobs wandering amity. Angst potential of bad fenton parents, could you imagine how dissecting a blob mimicking phantom would reinforce their theories, or how awful it would be for danny himself to witness it? Conversely, humor potential with good fenton parents who insist on collecting every phantom-mimic they encounter until theres an army of them living in fentonworks.
I propose a functional pathway that causes this to happen: ghosts are made out of ectoplasm, and common headcanon that ectoplasm is made of and 'programmed' by emotions. The stronger the ghost, the stronger the imprint they leave on the surrounding ambient, 'claiming' the area as their haunt/lair/etc. 'Patrolling' the territory also helps reinforce this.
Danny regularly patrols amity, and semi-regularly visits allies in the zone. If we think of 'claimed ecto' like a lingering smell, amity park and the fenton portal are drenched in phantom's, as well as decently-upkept paths from the fenton portal to each of danny's allies.
Enter the blobs, who have no strong self-identity and probably very limited intelligence. Perhaps there isnt even any intelligence at all and theyre literally just amorphic blobs of goo. They come across the programmed ambient ecto of a stronger ghost and, if its strong enough, it causes a cascade change over the blob, imparting the traces of lingering programming onto it. This isnt just visual - the ghost's actual ectosignature is involved, and the blob will mimic it the best it can from the ambient sample it just absorbed. This is good for the blob, as other ghosts will struggle to differentiate the blob from the original ghost. It wouldnt be successful mimicry otherwise.
With this function, we can infer a few things. First, lets assume that the blobs are sapient enough to have a self-preservation instinct. They dont even have to start out with this as it could come prepackaged with the programming they absorbed. Once a blob has encountered an ambient ecto-signature strong enough to change them, they are incentivized to remain within the territory of the signature they are now mimicking. That incentivization is further strengthened by the 'programming' left behind by the other ghost, especially if we're headcononing that ghosts are naturally territorial. The blob's presence is also beneficial to the host ghost because the blob's wandering about the territory also helps maintain the ecto-signature in the ambient ecto, making the host appear much more present and vigilant in their territory from the perspective of an outside ghost wandering in.
Now lets add that wandering ghost, who may have entered the territory for a number of reasons, from just traveling through to making a deliberate challenge for territory. If the wandering ghost is stronger than the host ghost, they have a chance at turning the blob. There will probably be some resistance no matter what, as the self-preservation programming of the ecto will create some degree of resistance to outside influences. But ultimately, we've created a scenario where blobs naturally congregate in the territories of the strongest ghosts over time.
In order to create a stable ecosystem of blob migration, there needs to be contrary forces countering this instinct. Id imagine a lot of smaller things add up:
1. Blobs naturally wander, even with instinct keeping them in the mimicked territory, sometimes they still get lost.
2. Outside forces of random chance and environment disorient and knock the blob out of a territory
3. While blobs resist changing while in a mimicked territory, when outside any territory, its best to lose that mimic as fast as possible, as entering a new territory with the old signature can be misinterpreted as aggressive behavior of the mimicked ghost and attract danger to the blob (especially if the defending ghost is the 'attack first, investigate later' type, which is generally more common for weaker ghosts that depend on an element of surprise to punch above their weight class)
4. Ghosts can deliberately abduct blobs from the borders of other territories, bring them home, and induce them to turn for the reasons stated above. Stealing from larger territories with higher populations of blobs is easier than stealing the singular micro-managed blob of a weaker ghost, creating a counterbalance to the strongest and largest territories that scales with them.
5. Blobs can be given and gifted to allies as a point of culture, something akin to the cat distribution system. Stronger ghosts can 'bless' weaker ghosts with a boon of several blobs, for example. Neighbors can trade blobs with developed behaviors that clash with the way they run their territory but would work better for their neighbor. (Ie, the more wandery blob goes to the neighbor with a more enclosed territory, and the more aggressive blob goes to the neighbor with fewer natural boundaries and higher risk of aggressive claims against them.)
Okay thats pretty much all the thoughts i have about this. I just really love this idea.
Loving this idea, and couldn’t help but add to it with way more detail than people probably care about. 😅
So, in no particular order:
Since blob ghosts absorb ambient ecto-signature slowly to become a blob mimic (blobic? I’m going with blobic), if two ghosts share a haunt, the blobic will absorb from both of them and carry traits of both. The dominant or more obvious traits will be from the ghost who’s left the stronger ambient ecto, or has spent the most time with the blobic (can have blobics that look like a combination of both “parents”, or maybe Danny’s blobics have traits from his most common rogues) (Do you shed more ambient ecto / ecto-signature because of a fight?)
Blobs all naturally filter ambient ecto, which is how they collect the ecto signature needed to become a blobic (assuming any single ecto-signature is strong enough). Once they’re a blobic, they only need to keep small amounts of the newly collected ecto-signature to maintain their form, and the rest will be released with the filtered ecto (helping spread the ecto-signature through the haunt).
Blob ghosts in shared spaces may break down ecto-signatures naturally, instead of collecting or releasing, which prevents frequent visitors from trying to accidentally claim the shared spaces. Can also apply to blobics actually, breaking down all ecto-signatures but their own ghosts (unless in high enough concentrations to influence the blobic) to keep the haunt “clean”
Blobics are more advanced than blob ghosts so may be more efficient at filtering
The blobics generally WANT to remain in their ghosts territory (free food!), but if the ghost is absent too long or significantly weakens, there may not be enough ambient ecto to support them so the blobic may have to leave or risk turning back into normal blob ghosts (can you imagine the angst of a weakening ghost trying to save their blobics? 😭)
Because of this, finding someone’s blobic away from their territory could be a sign that they or their territory is weakened. If it’s a friend’s blobic, cue the panic and “why didn’t they say something was wrong?!” Or maybe ‘enemies to friends/lovers’ happens over worry about finding the enemies blobic away from home (“I didn’t even know they had blobics” could point to the enemy being secretly very protective of the little ones)
To convert a possibly stolen blobic to be yours, you either have to dose them gradually with higher concentrations of your own ecto to slowly morph them, or give them a bunch of your ecto all at once to force convert them, which likely has some negative effect (temporary or otherwise) for the blobic. Stealing a blobic with either method is faster than waiting for one to form naturally.
Since blobics carry the ecto signature of the ghost they represent, they could be used against their ghost. For example, to calibrate magical spells, curses, or individualized summoning circles to affect a specific ghost (along with the standard ecto-weapon targeting)
This gives incentive to those ghosts who may be targeted by enemies to (a) protect their blobics, (b) drive away blob ghosts before they can form into blobics, or (c) destroy them after they’ve formed.
Since blobs and blobics filter ecto, not having any means your haunt’s ecto can get gross or dangerous. Paranoid ghosts may end up going mad by driving away the blobs/blobics then getting sick from the unfiltered ecto, or collect blob ghosts for the filtering and destroy them once they become blobics (if a powerful ghost doesn’t seem to have blobics, are they protective, mad, or cruel?)
Seeing someone’s blobic in another ghosts territory (love the cultural part you mentioned!), where it is still looking mostly like them, is a sign of trust because (1) stealing the blobic would change it to have more of your ecto-signature, so the blobic was brought willingly by the other ghost, and (2) the other ghost visits enough to leave sufficient ecto-signature to keep the blobic looking like them. These may need to be “indoor blobics” so they don’t wander too far from where their own ghosts ecto-signature has accumulated (could a ghost embed some ecto into an object, like a cat collar maybe, to help preserve the blobics form when gifted?)
Maybe sufficiently strong (or old, or whatever other criteria) blobics can be used as messengers or a warning system (they come let you know if they think something is wrong, though what you and your blobic count as an emergency may differ)
For a DPxDC addition (though it does move away from the blobics):
If you wanna add in King!Danny, maybe the current king is tied to the ambient ecto of the infinite realms. This could mean that naturally occurring pools of ambient ecto (like the Lazarus pits) might develop blobics that either resemble the current king or are influenced by their traits.
No surprise that Pariah Dark (who had been king for longer than Ra’s had been alive) resulted in pit demons. What will Danny’s pit “demons” look like?
How will the Demon’s Head react to a sudden drastic change in the nature of the Lazarus pit, caused by Danny taking the crown (willingly or otherwise)?
Would that change to the pit itself impact those who have previously been in the pit? Maybe everyone who has been exposed, or possibly just those who happened to be inside one of the pits when the change occurred?
This ended up SO MUCH LONGER than I expected, and I probably should make it it’s own post, but I hope people enjoy it anyway!
Feel free to use or ignore whatever you like, and add on as you like.
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