how I'd rewrite Danny Phantom
forever salty that elmer glue ruined such a good concept so it’s my territory now
Ghosts are dead, 100%. The science behind it is very paranormal investigation-y but the Fenton family is ten thousand times better than the other “ghost hunters” of their time.
Also, there are some ghosts that come from metaphorical deaths. I.E. Pandora, she technically didn’t exist but when the Ancient Greek culture died out, so did the gods and goddesses. They’re not technically ghosts but they are ectoplasm-based, so they get lumped in with them.
The Fenton family has been a bit dysfunctional for the past four years (10-14 for Danny, 12-16 for Jazz) because it took four years for Jack and Maddie to build the ghost portal. Jazz took over and learned how to really clean the house, while Danny learned how to cook. He’s not the best, but Danny can definitely make some good Ramen from scratch.
Maddie and Jack realized a bit later that the portal had overtaken their life and feel really bad for abandoning their kids, and when it didn’t work they tried to rekindle those relationships. Even with it working, they still do.
We all know what happened when the portal finished; it didn’t work. Because Jack put a switch on the inside that should’ve been on the outside, not the “on-off” button. The switch was loose and when Danny knocked into it, the portal turned on, because it was just waiting for a little spark-- like how when a cord is not totally plugged in.
This was the beginning of summer, around the end of May, and a month after it was technically done. Danny (no stranger to the hospital, he’d been in a few times when he was younger because he was born two weeks premature) was in the hospital until August, a few weeks before school started. He was exempt from his eighth-grade exams and passed all of his classes, so the district let him slide.
Danny doesn’t have an ice core. As cool as it is (pun intended) it makes no sense in the narrative. Like, he was electrocuted, and he’s got the “ghost-stinger” ability, why would he have ICE POWERS? He’s got an electricity core instead (slightly inspired by the electric undead oops).
His ghost sense is less of a mist and more of a gut feeling, and he literally becomes a static electricity magnet.
Danny’s character is a bit closer to the show.
He's quiet around strangers, but open with his friends. Trust thing.
Still made fun of for being the kid of two weird parents, but he’s honestly used to it by high school. He’s also bullied for his autism and ADHD, but he’s been bullied for them for about ten years so he’s used to it.
Still wants to be an astronaut-- science is his best subject, second to math. History is his third-best, he hates English and Gym class.
He’s tiny and scrawny, like a toothpick. It comes from being a sick child, though after the accident he’s able to lean out and gain a bit of “muscle”.
After the accident, he gets a bit paler than he was before and doesn’t tan. There’s also a Lichtenberg scar covering about half of the right side of his body from the accident, going from his fingertips, up his arm and over his chest, neck, about down to his knee.
He’s incredibly self-conscious about it but it doesn’t hurt, weirdly enough. For the “first season” he covers up and wears a lot of sweaters and long-sleeves.
His pulse and body temperature are much below normal. The hospital was concerned with this after the accident, but after a few days of him seeming fine, they had to drop it. Danny can also hold his breath about five times longer than a normal human.
Is he half-dead? Yes, technically. Does he not try and think about his mortality? Yes.
He enjoys puns and jokes still, though he makes them more as Phantom.
Speaking of Phantom, no, he doesn’t go by “Danny Phantom”. Just Phantom. He is trying to avoid dissection from his parents, you know.
Phantom has no scars from the accident, the only thing that he has in common with his human half is the mole on his cheek, but it’s green now (because yes, both halves have freckles!) because of his ectoplasm. He’s much more floaty, and if you don’t focus on him he looks like he’s made of television static. He also has little fangs.
You can see his details better up close, and the longer you spend with Phantom, the more details you can see. All ghosts are like that, their energy is on the fritz all the time and human eyes need to adjust to it to understand certain features. The only reason Sam and Tucker know him right away is because they watched him, y’know...
Danny is asexual, only realizing the identity in the middle of freshman year when Sam literally had to explain that yes, Danny, sexual attraction is a thing and not made up. (Based on my own experience.)
Sam and Tucker are both different in this story, but they still remain Danny’s only friends. They have other friends, though.
She wears all black and even dyed her ginger hair black. There aren’t many surviving photos of Sam with her natural hair, she made sure of it.
Sam is like... punk-goth? Punk-goth-grunge? She identifies as goth, but her clothes can fit all three categories, really.
100% bisexual, has bi pins all over her bag. Out to her parents, who are slowly trying to understand. She doesn’t mind they/them pronouns, either, and her gender identity is just a shrug with middle fingers.
She knows a lot of the LGBT students at school and is the vice-president of the GSA she helped found.
Both Sam and Danny had a mutual crush on each other through half of freshman year and all of eighth grade, Sam decided that she’d rather be friends and Danny realized it was mostly him wanting to be friends.
Sam is vegan. She isn’t as pushy about it as she is in the show (I feel like it was extreme and really made fun of vegans/vegetarians, I know it’s a kids show but still) and all of her family is vegan, too. She’s big on animal rights, but recognizes the line to not cross.
Her family is also Jewish, like in canon.
Though she did campaign and successfully get the school cafeteria to have a “Tofu Tuesday” every other week, so that’s something, at least! (And where Mystery Meat would start)
Still mourns My Chemical Romance, into all music like that.
Tucker is still a “nerd”, but he doesn’t get picked on by the jocks for being a nerd.
He’s pretty hipster, too. His red beret is now a red beanie, and he has naturally curly hair poking out. He loves his natural hair, he just loves the beanie.
His “nerd” seems from his technological abilities. He has the latest smartphone a month after it comes out, and always has a “tablet”/iPad knockoff in his bag. He knows how to take things apart and sell them for money, and is also pretty good at programming.
Tucker DEFINITELY has a gaming channel. He only has about 3,000 subscribers, but that’s still pretty good. His most-popular video is him talking about the Indie game industry. He might try and program some of his own games (ahemPhantomfangameahem)
He loves meat, just like in the show. He jokes about it a lot with Sam, and Sam jokes back. Sometimes they can lead into fights if neither are in the mood, but both of them are pretty good-natured about it.
Tucker is a ladies-man, and a man’s-man, and a nonbinary’s-man-- he’s pansexual. Doesn’t figure out that’s a thing until he stays behind school one day to help Sam with the GSA, but once he does he’s out and proud. Still flirts terribly, though, but now no one is immune from his terrible flirts.
Scared of doctors and needles-- had a bad experience as a child, projects it on everything medicine-related. Tries to avoid taking medicine at all cost, unless it’s really severe. Hates flu season, can be a bit of a hypochondriac/germaphobe. Has one of those Bath and Body Works hand sanitizer things on his bag.
Out of the trio, he’s more terrified of the ghosts, though after a while he gets used to them.
The A-Listers and school remain mostly the same.
Wes Weston is 100% a thing.
The A-Listers are more preppy than before, and definitely try and get away with what they can with modern fashion-- at least, Paulina and Star will. Dash and Kwan are a bit fashion-deaf (Kwan. Owns. Crocs.)
They’re still jerks and Dash still picks on Danny a lot, but the teachers are more competent and he can’t get away with more physical stuff unless no one is looking. Dash is probably a victim of his own domestic abuse at home and takes it out on people-- totally wrong and not moral, but he doesn’t think there’s much of an option. Only Kwan and Paulina know about his situation.
Kwan is pretty smart and strong, but he dresses like a disaster. He mostly sticks to wearing his letterman jacket and a black t-shirt and jeans, but if he ever has to “dress-up” or wears something else, it’s awful. Cargo shorts galore. Crocs. Someone get the Fab 5 to help him, please.
Paulina is pretty prissy, and doesn’t like getting dirty often. She’s a cheerleader and she’s good at it, but she’s only second-in-command of the squad, or however that works. She doesn’t mind, less work for her to do, and the person in charge enjoys it a lot. Paulina tends to make fun of Sam and Tucker’s clothes often, and like the rest of the A-Listers, everything listed above for Danny (sans the Phantom thing). Once Phantom becomes big, she gets a huge celebrity crush on him, probably has ten different Stan accounts for him.
Star is the head cheerleader, and enjoys every moment of it. She also enjoys math, and she’s really good at that too. Of the canon characters, only Danny can keep up. She isn’t good at much else academia-wise, though she does enjoy a bit of biology and forensics. Much smarter than most people think-- it will astound you.
Valerie is a part of their squad at first, only because she, Paulina and Star live in the same neighborhood. After Valerie moves to an apartment, their friendship falls apart after a big fight-- this is entirely not ghost-related, by the way. Vlad only contacts her after learning that her dad was hurt in a ghost attack and Phantom wasn’t there to help, and emotionally manipulates her. She becomes the Red Huntress and hunts Danny, and they do date for a few months before calling it quits. I’m not big on shipping, per say, but if there has to be a canon endgame, it’ll be these two.
Wes Weston. He’s technically canon? I guess? But also fanon? Either way, having a character like Wesley Weston trying to expose Danny as Phantom and always failing is hilarious, but can also introduce other things into the series as well. How does Wes know? Is he like, psychic, or something...?
He’s much more emotionally manipulative. Danny was really considering having him train him in ghost-powers and stuff until Vlad made an off-comment about Jack, and Danny saw through the act.
They’re very much enemies. Not frenemies, but enemies. Danny is terrified of Vlad, but doesn’t want him to hurt his family.
Vlad, above all, wants a family. He missed out on those years being in and out of the hospital because of his own, botched accident, and he has scars all over his face from the “ecto-acne” that he hides with makeup.
He’s equivalent to Elon Musk, but less of a weeabo. DALV Corporations has a lot more stock in experimental sciences, though, including paranormal investigation. When he learns that Jack and Maddie had successfully created the Ghost Portal, he puts a lot more funding into their projects and reconnects.
Still got the creepy Maddie-crush. Does get a cat named Matti, though (no connection or correlation, shut up, Daniel). Hates Jack because of his own accident, and begins to despise him even more for not noticing the scars left on Danny’s accident, too.
Less of a vampire in ghost form. He has a fire core, which makes a lot of his ectoplasm heat-based. Probably has laser eyes that Danny desperately tries to emulate but alas, cannot. The only reason he has a leg up on Danny is experience, not strength. He was only blasted in the face, not the whole body, after all.
At some point there’s probably an argument with Vlad and the Fentons and he decides “screw it” and makes an offset of DALV that focuses on ghost-hunting.
No Mayor thing, but he does move away from Wisconsin to live in Amity Park.
Amity Park is... Well, it’s something.
It was already a pretty creepy town before the ghosts get involved.
It was already a pretty creepy town before the ghosts get involved.
There’s always been unexplained murders, disappearances, and strange lights in the sky that no one could identify—a lot of hints towards something other-than-ghosts existing, which makes sense.
Amity Park is much weirder after the ghost portal opens. Not because of the ghost attacks and their ghostly superhero, but because the veil was torn a bit, and it was felt throughout the town.
On the moment of Danny’s accident, there was a massive power outage, and they become a bit more frequent to everyone’s dismay. Much of the older residents of the town are against ghosts—if excepting Phantom, on occasion. The younger residents are more open to the undead spectres, though, and are much less afraid of them.
Phantom becomes a youth icon, and his twitter account that started off small and as a joke gets him national popularity.
Tucker, naturally, rides this wave and gets a giant boost in YouTube subscribers, especially after he posted a few videos with Phantom. No one questions this except the A-Listers, who just want to know howhe did this.
Okay that’s enough of an info-dump I don’t want to spoil everything. I’ll probably post this stuff on my ao3—calling this story “Hero Complex” for now, still working on the title.
