This is almost entirely a personal Danny Phantom/Batfam blog. You have been warned.
Update:
Relevant info: I am an aroace agender adult human. I don't care what pronouns you use for me, but strong preference for whatever's funniest in the moment.
I don't understand the point of DNI. If you're a meaniepants I'll just block you. I try not to be a meaniepants but it's still on you to block me if you don't like me (or Danny Phantom)
I grew up in the days when kids were taught internet safety so you're not going to find any personally identifiable info in here. Whomp whomp
Fic links:
One Like Me (Frankenstein 2025 and Danny Phantom crossover)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/77042286
Interstellar Rescue Ranch (Project Hail Mary and Danny Phantom)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/86380696/chapters/228519061
I adore the whole "Grace gets mistaken for a baby and gets adopted without his knowledge" idea so I simply had to get silly with it. I was inspired by a comment left on Speech Pattern that referenced the vine referenced here, but I also recommend Rockabye, Pebble-Song, Hope from the Silence of Space, and Adrian is a simple creature, they see sad pebble, they adopt sad pebble if you enjoy the trope ^^
Honestly think the Carl betrayal hits harder in some ways because like… Stratt was never fully Grace’s friend.
He was certainly closer to her than most people got to be, and he clearly made an effort to reach out to her as a human being, but they didn’t exactly hang out.
Stratt was Grace’s boss. She made an effort to support him and believed in him when others didn’t, but it was a workplace relationship.
Carl and Grace were actual friends. Like you can debate how close they were (since Carl doesn’t get too much screen time) but they indisputably enjoy hanging out together in the scenes they share.
Carl and Grace muck about together, mirror watch other’s body language and act much more like peers than Grace and Stratt ever do (because, again, she’s his boss).
Carl is professional and very much Here To Do A Job, but he’s having fun with it.
And like, how often do we think he gets to have fun at work? Dude’s job is kidnapping scientists to help avert the apocalypse. He’s probably CIA or something. Carl has likely seen and done Some Shit.
But hey, sometimes you get to take a breather. Sometimes you get a cushy job goofing off with a middle school science teacher and you get to do a bizarre craft project and justify putting candy on your expense account.
Oh, what’s that? The fate of the world now rests on killing the fun science teacher? While he screams and begs for his life?
Okay then.
Like I keep thinking about how Carl ended up by the fence. When Stratt picks up her phone and says “yep he’s running”— wouldn’t it make sense for the person on the other end to be Carl? One of her main security guys? Also someone Grace explicitly trusts?
And now he has to watch the guy fall and listen to him beg for his life while knowing that he can’t help him. The stakes are too high, it’s the whole world vs one man.
But also the guy just wants to go back to teaching kids, something he would be doing right now if Carl hadn’t encouraged him to take those dots.
Stratt is furious with Grace for his cowardice, and honestly I think with herself for allowing this catastrophe to happen. Like maybe if she’d put in more failsafes when designing the trolley, she wouldn’t now be stuck holding the lever.
Her last words to Grace are meant to hurt.
Carl, on the other hand, does try to give him some comfort. He can’t save his life, can’t spare him from the horror he’s about to go through, but why not let the last words he hears on Earth be something kind?
“You know who you are. You’re gonna do great.”
Let him go out knowing someone believes in him, even when he so wholeheartedly doesn’t believe in himself.
I feel very stupid but you'll probs think this is funny. I just learned the DOS prompt on computers, as in Disc Operating System prompt, THIS WHOLE TIME I THOUGHT IT WAS das Prompt. like "the prompt," but in german. I don't know why i thought that, it's not even grammatically correct
idk what dialects they are, but there are people who say das kinda like dos lmao
instinctively I'd say der prompt but according to possible translations linguee is giving me, it could be der, die, or das
even after all they've done and the sheer rage flowing through me right now, i don't think i could ever manage to hate Accredo Specialty Pharmacy nearly as much as they hate their customers. My god, if you're in the US don't use Accredo. They suck so bad
If I was Ryland Grace at least one of my messages back to Earth would be dedicated to bragging about how all three of humanity's first contact's with alien life were with me. Yes they all happened because everyone decided they were okay if I died in the process but historically in the science community they would have to record that all first interactions, discoveries and the naming of all three of the alien species were done by me. And this is after I was academically blacklisted? Oh my gosh I would be so smug. Truly forget being commemorated as humanity's savior I had nothing to do with that decision - THIS is what I want on my statues.
they don't tell you this but when an event is advertised as "for all ages" they mean kids. they mean kids. if you, a grown-up, show up expecting to do the arts'n'crafts, you're the weirdo. even though they said "all ages."
great news everynyan, the event that inspired me to make this post in anticipation had an art'n'craft that WAS in fact for all ages, including grown-ups. (in fact it was mosaic-making from recycled glass, with the tools to cut pieces down to size yourself if needed, so it was decidedly for people of a certain age.)
I understand 100% where you're coming from and I have a rant on what the organizers probably meant by "all ages". This is coming from spending too many years running public festivals for anywhere from 100 to 20,000 people at every size of venue from school cafeteria to national convention center, though of course there are exceptions.
The organizers almost certainly really did intend that anyone of any age was welcome to participate in the activities. The problem, I have found, seems to come in 2 parts: the audience's socio-cultural expectations and how they respond to peer pressure (real or imagined), and the likelihood of who shows up at certain kinds of events depending on the regional demographics and how the event is advertised.
My rambling below the cut:
Take this with a grain of salt but I find it interesting and have spent a decade in arguments about it, so. The (US) audience for many hands-on / interactive events that appeal to both kids and adults, based on all the marketing data I have personally collected or paid tens of thousands of dollars for from third-party agencies, basically says that women ages 30-45 are driving almost all the social media views. Many of those women are trying to plan educational and fun excursions for their children ages 2-13.
The problem comes when you, the adult who is actually invited to participate in said activities, comes to an event with a lot of families with children ages 2-13. People with social graces will say: "I need to let the children enjoy this; it is uncomfortable if I take a spot from a child. Also if I am a man or otherwise have some caution I might be worried that as a solo adult surrounded by kids I will be seen as suspicious." So they just watch from a distance and then usually go home. Which to me sucks because there's often nothing inherent about the activity that makes it enjoyable only to kids.
But too many events don't seem to be at the stage of understanding you need to signal in 1) the advertising and 2) the actual physical setup that both adults and kids are welcome, or need separate stations, or hours that are for certain age groups. I think this is why a lot of museums started doing adult nights, especially science museums. If you ever go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, this will be abundantly clear: the museum is genuinely designed to be fascinating to anyone from a preschooler to a postdoc but unless there's space to allow for all and curated exhibit design with big and small tables, for example, it triggers the mental block of "let the kids have this".
Anyway I spent a decade of my life arguing two things:
Built the event so that both kids and adults have separate and mixed space and train the activity leaders how to welcome and engage the whole spectrum of participants.
Recognize that sometimes you actually do need to provide a separate interaction time or space to make the adults feel welcome, especially childless adults, or at least signage to make sure everyone understands that no, it's actually the point.
I usually work on events that have "low threshold, high ceiling" activities so your mileage may vary. (Meaning: anyone can try doing the thing, even at a very basic or shallow level; the ones who want to go deep focus or discussion about what's behind the activity will find the presenters are VERY capable of talking details or having a back-and-forth about it all day.)
I had a really fun time running an event at a big public television station's festival where just as many adults without kids accompanying them did the activity as kids did, and stayed for a full hour or more as it really was pure fun, and also sensory-friendly compared to much of the other activities. I also wore myself out trying to argue with co-event organizers over the years that hands-on stuff really does appeal to everybody BUT sit-down performances and lectures usually really do have age categories, and it can be a big waste of money to try to combine the two in one mega-event if you don't have ticket revenue or reservations to judge interest by in advance.
That said, I definitely find more events run by neurodivergent people or audiences try harder to be welcoming – especially if the presenters get to engage in their special interests with all kinds of people.
I could write an essay on online or hybrid event design as well, featuring such sections as "you need to ASSIGN SOMEONE TO TELL THE ONLINE PEOPLE WTF IS HAPPENING AND MAKE SURE THEY CAN SEE/HEAR" and "people's attention spans rarely exceed one hour, and even that is a lot when online". Gretchen McCulloch did a really fabulous blog post series during the pandemic about taking LingCon online only and what they learned about event design. If you enjoy gatherings as much as I do, I also highly recommend Priya Parker's book The Art of Gathering because she basically point blank says what vibes and outcomes are you trying to achieve, does the event model you believe you need actually achieve those things (whether it's a baby shower or a happy hour or a conference), and what do the attendees actually want that would make them happy to be part of it.
it's really funny how the entire world basically just blew the fuck up six short years ago and nobody wants to admit that that may have had some lasting consequences lmao
like so much of Everything today is premised on the idea that the earth-shattering catastrophe which happened within living memory of everyone older than a third grader has had no meaningful material or psychological effects on the general public and i don't think that's good, lol.
"(some of) the top-line economic indicators (sorta) recovered (in most places) so everything is fine and we don't need to talk about it" is not a sustainable framework for interfacing with reality
