#tue analysis

[pokelolmc]

The Ultimate Enemy is a Disappointment (and How I'd Fix It) (Part 1)

A couple years back, I started analysing a list of DP episodes I thought had missed potential--and my analysis on TUE got SO big I made it its own thing. I rewrote it to death and could never settle on something concise enough, so I abandoned it. But I'm BACK baby. I can't remember where it is now, but I came across a poll on whether Reign Storm or TUE is the better special and the discourse reignited my passion for this analysis, and gave me motivation to trim off some of the fat.

Don't get me wrong, at the end of the day I do like this episode--or at least its ideas. I really liked the episode the less I thought about it, but now I see issue after issue in its execution. Hence, the "disappointment": it could've been great, but it missed the mark. This won't just be a one-sided roast of TUE, though. I have a ton of cool ideas for how to rewrite plot holes or fill in the gaps. The best roasts are constructive! (Though I would be rewriting it in a more mature fashion compared to canon's writing--keep that in mind).

Part 2 is now up: you can find it here.

So here we go: Part 1--the general plot contrivances/contradictions unrelated to Dan's character or the time travel system.

The episode introduced taking off the Time Medallions as a way to immediately return to one’s native time period, but then forgot this late into the second act.

Technically this plot hole involves time travel devices, but I'm counting it as a plot hole by character decisions.

The episode gives no explicit rules on lag time between removing the medallion and returning home, but it takes only one to two seconds to return Skulktech to the future after they dropped theirs, and it had to have been instant for Sam and Tucker to return to the past in time to escape rubble falling from FentonWorks (which was only roughly two to three stories high, not counting the Ops Centre).

Danny should’ve been sent back almost instantly when Dan took his medallion off—which would’ve completely defeated the purpose of Dan’s attempt to trap Danny there in the first place.

If they wanted to keep the plot point, they could’ve just had Dan grab the medallion and turn it intangible while it’s still around Danny’s neck…and that’s assuming that making it intangible while Danny’s still tangible doesn’t count as “removal”. That’s it. He never needed to remove it to begin with.

2. The Nasty Sauce explosion just…sucks. In my opinion, it’s too silly for the tone the episode’s trying to go for (and as a cause of major character death), and it wrecks the worldbuilding.

I tried to put it in way more verbose ways in my previous drafts, but I found another post somewhere on tumblr that did what I couldn’t—say it in three words:

“It’s just stupid.”

Assuming that semi-realistic laws exist in-place in the Danny Phantom universe (so it’s BASICALLY similar to ours) the Nasty Burger shouldn’t have been able to stay in business without a LOT of red tape, cover-ups and NDA’s. They had an explosive substance on premises, being taken care of by unqualified, minimum-wage part-timers instead of trained chemical safety specialists. Forget handling it, they shouldn’t have even had it in the first place! If they got it by going UNDER the law and covering everything up, then one of their employees shouldn’t have been able to just CONFESS to it at a public school assembly.

It also sounds ridiculous that a “certain combination of secret herbs and spices” could catastrophically combust in the first place. They could’ve made the explosion ghost-powered/altered; they could’ve made it not the sauce itself, but a pressure issue with its containment vats; they could’ve made it a gas leak or malfunction of cooking equipment starting a fire, or something. They could’ve made the explosion a Fenton invention at their home (where the whole family had reason to be at once, and Mr Lancer could hold the parent-teacher conference there like in Teacher of the Year). They've used more serious threats of explosion in previous episodes (like the Ecto-Filtrator in Million Dollar Ghost).

And instead they decided “Yep! This commonly sold and digested sauce is a dangerous explosive, and even a small handout serving is enough to blow clean through a wall when it’s heated up!” This is how we're going to kill all of the main characters' loved ones to send him on a villain arc!

Like what?

Nowhere else after TUE did the show acknowledge the Nasty Sauce in worldbuilding. There were no consequences of its risk being publicly revealed, nor did it ever pose a hazard again. It’s understandable, given the show’s episodic nature. Bu at least in The Ultimate Enemy itself, they should've thought about how it affected most of the previous episodes.

During his fight with Boxed Lunch, one of Danny's ectoblasts to a sauce packet demolishes an entire section of wall in the Nasty Burger. So how hadn’t any ghost fights ignited any Nasty Sauce before—or damaged the main vat, god forbid—and caused an explosion already?

If the sauce was always a part of the Nasty Burger’s recipe, then the entire restaurant was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off since season one, and nothing short of a miracle could explain why it hadn’t happened before.

3. This episode committed character assassination of Mr Lancer, for the sake of setting up stakes in the plot. And contradicted his personality changes in previous episodes (such as “Teacher of the Year”).

Mr Lancer, in my opinion, is the character done the single dirtiest in the episode. It warps his entire character around the plot, and turns him into a contrived mouthpiece for how important the CAT is. It leaves him even more malicious and mean-spirited than his behaviour in the first episode of the entire show—leaving him even worse than he started.

He didn’t have much character development, but there were some more positive changes happening in his personality as later episodes occurred. He started out as a selfish, corrupt authority figure (think Mystery Meat, Fright Night and other S1 episodes where he deliberately lets the jocks off the hook for their behaviour), but unwittingly acts in favour of the main characters in “Fanning the Flames”—although ineffective and easily taken down by Ember.

By the time of “Teacher of the Year”, we finally got a glimpse into his (albeit scant) ideology as a teacher around helping his students succeed, and his concern for Danny’s failing grades.

It even revealed his personal interest in Doomed, which gave him more in common with Danny and Tucker and humanised him in way a few other episodes hadn’t. Season two even demonstrated his (albeit brief) willingness to stand up and defend his students from a ghost attack in “Memory Blank”. Lancer, for a brief period of time, became more than just his job, book title swears and his frustration with rebellious students.  

We're talking about the teacher who, in the early 2000s, kept a picture of himself crossdressing at school to convince his students to try their best with a "story about his sister".

The Ultimate Enemy, however, took Mr Lancer’s humanity towards the students—particularly Danny—and flipped it all on its head. It turned him into an elitist, mean-spirited asshole who verbally attacked his students (past and present) based on their performances on this single. Fucking. Test.

They made Mr. “there is no cheat code in school, or in life” Lancer into a cruel enforcer of the hamfisted and childish importance of the CAT. Actual “get rich vs dead-end, minimum-wage job” propaganda.

(Teacher of the Year)

And... one season later:

(that sure sounds like a cheat code in life to me)

To add insult to injury, TUE used Lancer’s death as the butt of a joke directly after spending the majority treating him like a total asshole—following up character assassination with literal assassination , and excluding him from the rest of the explosion victims in their memorial.

It feels to me, that it'd make more sense for Mr Lancer to be sceptical of the importance of the CAT based on TOTY. Replace him in the assembly with Principal Ishiyama or something. A stickler-for-the-rules school administrator looking to boost the school's image by pressuring kids on a standardised test? That ABSOLUTELY makes sense.

Mr Lancer could still be seen as a threat (or someone Danny can't reach out to for help), but in the department of simply being an authority figure Danny's used to dodging around with his ghost activities. Someone who'd still enforce consequences for Danny getting caught cheating. Someone who'd get his parents involved. He's the closest thing Danny could have to any level of support at Casper High, and Danny could think he's even lost THAT.

4. The way Danny got the CAT answers was contrived, and broke the previously established rules of ghost intangibility.

To cut a long story short, Boxed Lunch’s fight with Danny shouldn’t have gotten the test answers stuck to Danny’s back. Danny immediately turned intangible in anticipation of the explosion, and was thrown outside the Nasty Burger and through Mr. Lancer’s briefcase before turning tangible again.

That didn’t make sense; the series previously established that ghosts (in this case, halfas) were physically unaffected by explosions when intangible. “Million-Dollar Ghost” even demonstrated it when Vlad escaped his castle’s explosion in the same manner, and was left completely unmoved from his position at ground zero. The sauce packet explosion shouldn’t have even moved Danny out of place, let alone flung him out of the building (especially not compared to Vlad and an Ecto-filtrator explosion).

On top of that, the test answers couldn’t have gotten stuck to his back while he passed through the suitcase, as Danny was intangible and the answers sheet was solid. Even if it were possible for already intangible ghosts to grab onto tangible objects and bring them into intangibility, that’d certainly require conscious intention that Danny didn’t have in the episode.  The test answers got stuck to his back by sheer accident on his part. Bringing other objects into tangibility always previously involved a tangible ghost grabbing hold of other tangible people/objects and consciously willing them intangible together. Ergo, he should’ve simply passed through the suitcase and its contents all at once—go to the other side, pass go, do not collect CAT cheat sheet.

The solution for this one is pretty simple—just remove the scene entirely. Not only does it break the lore, but it’s entirely pointless and redundant (more on that later when I talk about Clockwork—giving Danny the answers was his idea, and it was a terrible one). Instead, it would’ve been much more compelling if Danny stole the answers on purpose with his ghost powers—being put under so much pressure to succeed that he felt like he had to forgo his morals and use his powers to cheat.

[pokelolmc]

The Ultimate Enemy is a Disappointment (and How I'd Fix It) (Part 3)

Happy holidays, everyone! Welcome to part three of my analysis on The Ultimate Enemy. If you want to check out the previous parts, you can start at part 2.5 and go backwards. After this, there's only two...maybe 2.5....more to go! To make up for the long waffle on why the "Dan is a fusion" plotline doesn't work, this one's relatively shorter.

(Part 2.5), Part 3, (Part 4)

This one is about the issues with the episode's time travel. To be honest, I couldn't find much to say about it logistically because it was so vague/poorly defined. I have more to say about the time-travelling characters and their decision-making, which will be part four.

Problems with the Time Travel:

The events leading to Dan’s timeline only happen in the episode because of the very time travel used (in an attempt) to prevent them

The episode never actually shows us how Danny’s tragedy started in the alternate timeline itself, outside of Vlad’s flashback of what happened at his castle. But that was the very end of the chain of dominoes that led to Dan. However, we do get to see the alleged events leading up to that play out in the main timeline (before Clockwork saves Danny’s loved ones)—as part of the episode’s plot. The only problem is, the way it happens in the main timeline was only possible because of time travel.

(Clockwork is literally the only reason this happened)

In the main timeline, Danny’s alleged cheating—the first major event in the alternate timeline—only happened because Clockwork set it up. He wanted to give Danny a “moral test” of some sort. And it only happened, logistically, because he sent Boxed Lunch back into the past to attack Danny.

Then he sent back Skulktech, which facilitated the trio hitching a ride to his tower and getting access to the alternate future. Which facilitated Dan realising that his creation was in jeopardy and coming back into the past to cheat in Danny’s place.

The second major event, the Nasty Burger explosion, also only happened because of time travel. Arguably, in order for Danny to go to Vlad (assuming he went un-coerced/of his own choice), everyone that was there had to die. At least one survivor would’ve enough to change his fate.

If he still had Jazz, for example—they could’ve been moved into an orphanage or with Aunt Alicia or some sort of temporary care but (hopefully) still at least had each other. Sam and/or Tucker surviving would’ve given Danny social support and an external voice of reason against going to Vlad. At least one of his parents surviving…that’s a no-brainer—he doesn’t leave their care.

But in the episode, Danny’s parents and Lancer were only at the Nasty Burger because Dan time travelled back and cheated on the CAT in Danny’s place. Sam and Tucker were only there because of their own time travel (they learned of their deaths in the future, and came to the NB to warn everyone), and Jazz because of Dan’s (she came to warn everyone “Danny” was an impostor).

The episode makes these events specific consequences of time travel. There’s no indicator of whether Danny would’ve come up with cheating on the CAT/getting the answers without Clockwork’s prompting, or just given up and flunked the test in frustration (and Danny failing the test couldn’t have led to the parent-teacher meeting at the NB because the results wouldn’t have been out yet). While you could argue Sam and Tucker have reason to be at the Nasty Burger without Dan (because they hang out there regularly), Jazz doesn’t really have one…unless I guess she wanted in on the parent-teacher conference…? Why?

But even then, the newspaper article in the alternate timeline implied that Danny, his loved ones and Lancer were the only ones caught in the explosion (they died and Danny was the “sole survivor”). So that means no one else was at the Nasty Burger.

The explosion happened on a school day, in the afternoon/evening after school, with all of them having a different reason to be there and there was no one else at the restaurant? Not even any staff?

In that case, it’d have to be closed…but it was only closed in the main timeline because of the smaller explosion from the Boxed Lunch fight. And if another previous Nasty Sauce incident somehow closed it early in the alternate timeline, that means Sam and Tucker had no reason to be at the Nasty Burger for the explosion. Why go hang out when it’s closed?

I guess we just have to assume there was some other offscreen reason that they happened in the alternate timeline, with little prompting or explanation…but I still argue that if Danny cheated of his own volition in the alternate timeline, then Clockwork shouldn’t have given Danny the answers in the main one—and the "what could've been" in the alternate timeline would’ve been the better/more compelling story to tell. And Danny’s loved ones lining up for the explosion just feels…it feels like it’s busted there. Without the time travel seen in the main timeline, it just couldn’t happen the way the episode said it did. But the episode can’t be a time loop (where the time travel happened in the alternate timeline) because it would’ve been broken at the end.

Unfortunately, I don't have any real ideas on what to do about this except for my now-repeated insistence of Danny steals the answers of his own volition and gets to finish cheating. And there's probably some way to change the circumstances of the explosion/whatever kills Danny's loved ones so everyone has a reason to be there without time travel.

2. The Boo-merang shouldn’t be able to reach Danny in the alternate future because it didn’t time travel. It could even potentially risk a time paradox.

The Boo-merang takes Jazz’s message from the present-day events of the episode (main timeline) to Danny in the Ghost Zone of alternate future, without using any time travel. Instead, it simply waits the long way around. It seems clever and creative at first glance, but it doesn’t actually make sense.

The Boo-merang’s ten-year wait to reach Danny runs simultaneously to the school day, the CAT and the final fight at the Nasty Burger, which differ from the events that led to Dan’s birth. By the time the Boo-merang had only been in the Ghost Zone for a few hours, Danny’s loved ones would’ve been saved and the future it was headed to would’ve been/become non-existent. Reaching Danny’s destination in Dan’s timeline would’ve been impossible. He never would’ve gotten the letter.

How it’d affect the timeline/events of the episode if Danny didn’t get Jazz’s letter…well…it depends. All Jazz’s letter did was remind him of Vlad, so it’s still possible he could’ve figured it out on his own if given more time. Jazz’s letter not arriving would just remove the guarantee that Danny found Vlad. Assuming that he could’ve eventually thought of Vlad on his own, or found someone in the GZ to help him remove the Time Medallion, there’s still a chance he could get back to the past without Jazz’s letter, Vlad or the Ghost Gauntlets. But that leaves a problem:

Without Vlad, he never would’ve heard about Dan’s backstory. He’d have watched his loved ones die (or been sent back to the past by Dan, in the aftermath of their deaths) and been liable to follow the path to Dan’s existence (not knowing that he had to avoid going to Vlad and the fusion). However, that would’ve created the alternate future, resulting in the Boo-merang’s destination in the future existing in the main timeline, and being able to reach Danny just by waiting. Danny would’ve then found his way to Vlad, and resulted in an eventual victory over Dan (and avoiding the alternate future) as per the episode’s ending (making the Boo-merang unable to reach its destination again). This creates a time paradox.

I'm not really sure what to do about this. It was what the writers set up the Boo-merang for (outside of outing Dan to Jazz because it doesn't react to his ectosignature) and it feels like they were really trying to be clever. I feel like you'd have to give Jazz some other role in the story. Maybe Dan brought a Time Medallion back as his only way of accessing the past (stolen from Sam/Tucker, instead of canon where he seems to just open a portal to the past??) and she gets a hold of it? I don't know I'm just spitballing here.

[pokelolmc]

Fixing TUE Part 4.5--Clockwork and the Observants Headcanons

Welcome back to my analysis of The Ultimate Enemy. Anyone who wants some juicy Clockwork lore, welcome! I've criticised his canon portrayal in Part 4, so here we are onto the changes!

(Part 4), Part 4.5, (Part 5)

I’m not entirely sure on how I'd change the events of The Ultimate Enemy itself—but I can spitball some ideas for background lore of what Clockwork is, what he's capable of and how he works. Establishing limits/profiles of Clockwork’s power, knowledge or moral compass to help guide how his character would act in a rewrite.

Idea one: Limit Clockwork's knowledge. He can only see time by viewing the time window, and has the ability to gain knowledge in real time. He's distinctly fallible.

Idea two: We could limits Clockwork’s power to act on his knowledge by saying that his existence happens outside of normal time—and mixes with it like oil and water. Perhaps his tower/lair is a rift in time, the temporal dimension bleeding into the Ghost Zone—so it’s sort of a “negative space” compared to normal time. Rather than his “Time Outs” being just a tool to manipulate time…it’s his only means of navigating the flow of normal time itself. He can interact with normal time only by existing in these moments “in between”.

The amulets allow him to bring other elements or people from regular time into this “gap in time” to talk to them, but he has limited power outside of communicating with them during these time-outs so they can act in his stead. Hence, why he relies on other ghosts to do his dirty work.

The only problem is, of course, that would still leave the question of “Why not inform the other characters of Dan’s origin story?”, “why not get other characters to interfere with the birth of Dan” and “why not just bring Dan outside of time to fight or contain him?”…but I don’t have answers for that just yet.

Idea Three: Alter Clockwork's intentions, morality or free will. For example, what if Clockwork wasn’t a ghost in control of time, or a master of time, but literal time itself? 

That is, he was less of a person and more of a force of nature. As if the rift in time, which created his tower, leaked energy in the Ghost Zone until it gathered enough ectoplasm to create an avatar for itself. Clockwork is time’s ghostly extension, or an extra limb…or if time itself had its hands up the back of an ectoplasmic sock puppet, making it talk.

Time itself could be a primeval or fundamental force. But just like in real life, it’s not a person. It doesn’t really have thoughts, or feelings, or free will/agency to act on its own behalf. Time…simply is. It just exists. It just…happens the way it does. If time is a program, Clockwork could be like the holographic interface or pop-up window telling the user what’s going on in the OS. An ectoplasmic AI which has learned how ghosts communicate, but isn't as self-aware.

So, we have an interesting twist on the age-old “wise master of time refuses to interfere because they want to be responsible” trope (like the Time Lords from Doctor Who). It's not that there's some "grand plan". Clockwork’s lack of proactivity to change things optimally is because he is the avatar of time. And time just is--it doesn’t try to change itself. Heavy attempts to alter time are a very human…or…ghost thing to do.

This could be why the Observants are the ones who prompt him into action. Perhaps the Observants were the ghosts to discover time travel, and to whatever extent that they have manipulation over time, they have control over Clockwork. They’ve given up on interfering and instead prompt Clockwork to do their bidding.

If we wanted him to have character development, we could have him gradually gaining more "humanity" as he interacts with Danny. Or maybe the Observants' control stunted the development of Clockwork's ghost as his own person, and Danny releases him.

Or perhaps he already has some level of personhood/his own mind as his own ghost, but since he’s still connected to time itself he has limited free will—he is still largely directed by the whims of fate. Though you would have to establish that some sort of fate exists.

Idea three: This is another limitation or weakness that revolves around Clockwork more as a thinking person than the face of an unthinking force. It’s inspired by the Bootstrap Paradox.

Clockwork, as someone who (in canon) can both affect the events of the timeline AND see future outcomes in the time window…should be theoretically able to see timelines/events that result from his own actions, before he gets the idea of what to do. Either he could see what he does, or the results of what he does and infer what he did in his own relative future.

But if Clockwork only knows what to do, because he saw it (or could only deduce what he’d done) in the results in the time window… He didn’t realise it by himself, but was affected by the information of how his future alterations would affect time—he watched what he would do, and knew what to do from there. And the only reason his future self would’ve done that would be because he saw it in the time window too. In that case, where would Clockwork’s ideas have come from? How much free will did Clockwork have?

Which is why I propose the idea that Clockwork can see the results of others’ decisions in the time window, but not his own. He can see what everyone else can do, but not what he can as a being outside of normal time. He has to predict the results of his actions the way a normal person has to rely on guesswork, but with more intelligence involved.

This wouldn’t excuse stupid actions like giving Danny the CAT answers, since he’d still be highly intelligent or wise, but he at least wouldn’t be already know the impacts of his own choices before he makes them. It gives him more wiggle room to potentially fail, or be surprised by Danny’s choices and humanity. Things could have a viable reason to take him off-guard.

[pokelolmc]

The Ultimate Enemy is a Disappointment (and How I'd Fix it) (Part 4)

Clockwork is one of the biggest problems with TUE. Change my mind. (Third biggest, specifically, behind Dan and the CAT).

I feel a little guilty, trash-talking fan-favourite Time Dad, but that’s okay—his character concept is really interesting, and I like him in fanon. But canon Clockwork, on the other hand...the writers fucked him up.

Writing a wise, all-knowing (or extensively foreknowing) character is challenging, and they put none of the thought required into it. They try to portray him as sympathetic in the ending--but everything that came before it accidentally implies he's negligent, morally unsympathetic and/or incompetent. And I don’t see ANYONE talking about it.

I still have some say about the Observants at the end, but there's just not as much on them. They appear less, and seem to be deliberately portrayed as incompetent, so their faults are bit more excusable.

(Like section 2, this'll be the criticisms and the fixes will be their own post. I have some very interesting ideas for Clockwork/Observant lore).

(Part 3), Part 4, (Part 4.5)

Part 4--A Wrench in the (Clock)works--The Ultimate Enemy’s failure at writing foreknowing/near-omniscient characters.

Clockwork behaves inconsistently with an all-knowing character. Rather than actively preventing Dan’s existence, he only pushes the events of Dan’s timeline along. And he makes statements/assertions in the episode that are factually wrong.

Given the quote above, and his ability to see the alternate future as he pleased, it’s openly possible that he had access to everything in both timelines, at any time he wanted in the episode, from the time window. So he could know of all the major events of The Ultimate Enemy itself in advance.

While I won’t say this with absolute certainty, I will criticise the writers for establishing this idea in the first place without putting any limitations on his character (to eliminate the possibility of complete foreknowledge). So assume that as just the upper limit. The actuality might be somewhere in the middle.

And this leaves some MASSIVE holes in the writing.

For an apparently wise/all-knowing “Master of Time”, Clockwork makes some terrible decisions.

He wants to demonstrate to the Observants that Danny “won’t grow up evil because he cheated on a test”. So he decides…to give Danny the answers (by orchestrating an “accident”), and see whether he’d cheat or not. This makes no sense and is entirely pointless (if he's as all-knowing as the episode treats him).

He should should already KNOW how his "test" will turn out. If it he didn't need it for himself, but was just trying to prove a point to the Observants, it’s still redundant. There's no reason to tempt Danny to cheat, when the response he already knows is coming won’t prove his point.

If Danny was going to come to the idea of cheating on his own, all Clockwork had to do was sit back and wait. All he ends up doing is make Danny “cheating” happen faster.

He also indirectly leads everyone at the Nasty Burger to their would-be deaths by enabling/facilitating all of the episode's time travel in the first place. The only reason everyone ends up at the Nasty Burger for the explosion in canon is because of the trio and Dan’s time travel (see part 3). Clockwork is the one who obliged the Observants' request to attack Danny. He sent back Skulktech, which gave the trio access to his tower--and to the alternate future, which prompted Dan to go back to the past to railroad his timeline into happening.

Which is something Clockwork should’ve been able to see coming, and did nothing to prevent—not even when he explicitly saw Dan meddling with the past in front of him.

How was the trio able to get behind the back of someone as knowing and powerful as Clockwork (to get the time medallions and hop into the future)? Why did he get so carelessly distracted by Danny? The only explanation is either Clockwork is actually incompetent enough to get outwitted by three (two and a half) human teenagers, or he allowed them to go.

Perhaps everyone still could’ve gone on their own, without future knowledge (not that the episode gives us any options for how that would happen—again, see part 3) but he still made everything worse.

And there’s no reason Clockwork couldn’t check Dan’s timeline ten years back and see the fusion. But he still spends the entire episode acting as if Danny and Dan are the same person. Which is factually incorrect.

We could assume he secretly knows, but just pretends not to--except his actions otherwise are still highly questionable.

He could’ve been cooperative and transparent—just used the ghosts he sent after Danny to get the trio to his tower to talk (foreseeing them hitching a ride with Skulktech), while still complying with the Observants on paper. There, he could’ve explained, “There’s an alternate future where you and the other halfa fuse into a powerful monster; he’s brought the world to ruin and the Observants put a hit on you because overkill…”

(Yeah, remember this? If he's acting, he's sure as hell getting into it for no good reason...)

But instead he tells Danny “I’ve been tasked with eliminating your future, so [Dan] doesn't happen” and acts like a threat to the trio when it would’ve been much more efficient to talk things out!

Claiming that "Danny's future is sealed" because he chose to keep the answers is just blatantly wrong, and he should know better as a guardian of time himself. And cheating on a test is too petty for someone of his scale to consider so morally significant.

2. The episode doesn’t establish/justify why Clockwork didn’t just deal with Dan himself, and spare everyone else the unnecessary strife/trauma. The entire episode can only be possible because of his negligence.

For all the ominous hype about Dan being “inevitable” and “Danny’s going to turn into him”, he really…really isn’t. He’s more so the opposite, given the circumstances are so hyperspecific. The domino effect that leads to his birth is so causally fragile that one small change could completely wipe him off the map.

(like...literally fucking ANYTHING?! It's your call, dude! I'm not the Master of Time!)

Clockwork didn’t even need to be powerful enough to win against Dan one-on-one. He could’ve interfered in Dan’s past by giving information to other characters to change their decisions (steer Lancer and the Fenton’s away from the Nasty Burger via Jazz, keep Danny away from Vlad, etc). If Dan was really that big a threat to both worlds, then he has all the moral justification (for the sake of efficiency) to do so to prevent harm!

And yet, he doesn’t. There's no explained character reason he doesn't interfere--either why he can't or why he thinks he shouldn't. To use a dominantly time-travel series as an example--Doctor Who created lore on time having special "fixed points" that can't be altered without damaging the fabric of time itself. It also had moral/character conflicts exploring the Doctor choosing not to interfere with historical disasters.

But with Clockwork, we don't even get a line. Whether it's a throwaway line on not having the power to interact with regular time directly, or about how he's already tried to prevent Dan's birth and failed (and now thing are in the last stretch). The closest we get are lines such as "things are how they're supposed be" (implying he has a standard of how events should happen), but that's just window-dressing to make him sound mysterious and impressive. There's never an explanation of what does or doesn't count.

If he really couldn’t stop The Ultimate Enemy from happening in the first place, then see point one: Openly allying with/fully informing the trio from the start is more efficient and helpful than letting them treat you like an adversary and stumble in blind. Why did Danny have to go to Vlad to learn about Dan’s origin when Clockwork was right there?!

Tons of people experience trauma (or even die) because of Clockwork’s allowance or inaction. The trio, Jazz, Danny's parents and Mr Lancer (though technically they never remember), future!Valerie and her dad. Even everyone who died because of Dan in the alternate future (because Clockwork could’ve stopped it from ever reaching that point if he tried. If I can come up with ways to prevent Dan's birth, the all-knowing Master of Time can!).

And if he had the power to undo ALL of the damage to the timeline all along (rewinding time to save Danny’s loved ones) …why does anything that happens in this episode matter, at all (outside of the memories of three people)?!

Why couldn’t he have done that when the alternate timeline went awry in the first place?!

Sure, it could be said that Danny learned something from the experience...but I doubt any lesson he could've been "taught" is morally worth the apocalyptic destruction of another timeline and forcing Danny to fight as powerful a threat as Dan unassisted.

Lessons like moral honesty had already been taught in far lower-stakes ways than TUE. Since he didn’t really “become Dan” or do anything actually evil, there was nothing specific he could’ve only learned from Dan’s existence other than "don't create a fusion with Vlad". Dan's wide-scale harm was unnecessary.

3. After sidling all of this bullshit on a fourteen year old kid, Clockwork doesn’t even make up for it properly.

If he wanted to give Danny fair “second chance”, he could’ve sent him back to before any of the time travel happened—the moment in the kitchen before Boxed Lunch attacked. This would’ve undone all the alterations to the timeline and given Danny time to study—especially since he was responsible for the ghost attacks that robbed Danny of his last study days. The boy just had several massive fights and watched his loved ones blow up!

But no. His idea of a “second chance” is dropping Danny off RIGHT before the CAT! To take the blame for Dan opening the answers! All for the purpose of a little triumphant “Danny’s learned his lesson” moment for a half-assed anti-cheating message, when Danny never even cheated! In canon, he couldn't just tell Lancer “a ghost from another timeline opened the answers”—but that wouldn’t have been necessary if Clockwork just sent him further back in time! He basically ripped Danny off.

4. Why does Clockwork even listen to the Observants? What power do they have over him? Why did he oblige their request to go after Danny in the first place?

Clockwork seems to suggest that they see time in a more limited fashion than he does—perhaps with causality in a stricter order, or one-way with less alternate possibilities (based on his parade analogy)…but we see them observing Clockwork at the time window. He essentially shares access to it, so why couldn’t Clockwork just show the Observants Dan’s origin story? That’d raise the same problem with ill-informed decision-making that I already discussed.

And the episode doesn't make it clear what power the Observants have over Clockwork, and why he has any reason to listen to them. If he was right and had the better way of doing things all along, why not just outright refuse the Observants and prove himself right to them with his results? Why entertain their irrational backseating?

[pokelolmc]

The Ultimate Enemy is a Disappointment (and How I'd Fix It) (Part 2)

Here I am, back with Part 2 of my analysis on The Ultimate Enemy. If you haven't read part one, I suggest you check it out. But I suppose this one works in isolation, too. This time we're going into everything to do with our main villain/the episode's attempt at the "alternate villain self of the hero" trope. This one's a doozy, so be prepared! Unfortunately this post got too long, so this'll be the criticisms and the fixes will get their own post. But I have some interesting headcanons in mind, if that's any consolation!

I think I got a bit too heated with this one--I was running on frustration while trying to figure it out. Oops.

(Part 1), Part 2, (Part 2.5)

Part 2--The Problems with Dan’s character/story arc:

The writers minimised Danny’s moral responsibility in the events of Dan’s existence/creation.

So I noticed a pretty glaring pattern with this episode, but I don’t think it was intentional on the writers’ part, probably just subconscious:

Any time we see our hero doing supposedly bad things, which are supposed to lead to his own villain origin story, the writer’s minimise Danny’s responsibility as much as possible.

They insist that Danny’s going to become evil/turn into Dan, but the events that lead to Dan’s timeline (as far as we get to see them recur in the main timeline) essentially drag a very passive and reactive Danny behind them on a leash. It comes off as very hollow. Like they want to do an “alternate timeline villain self” superhero plot, but couldn’t actually commit to the bit when they wanted to show our Danny having the “seeds” of Dan’s immorality (or the events that lead to Dan’s timeline gradually coming to fruition because of Danny's actions, and risking Dan's creation again).

Exhibits A through C:

“Danny cheated on the CAT”! Except he didn't. The idea didn’t occur to him on his own, nor did he break his own moral code to steal the answers with his ghost powers. The fucking Master of Time just GAVE them to him! Danny just basically just accepted someone else’s offer (his own choice, but reactive and minor). He doesn't even think about cheating until Clockwork drops the answers in his lap. And we'll never know if he would have without them.

And after that, he never even actually GOT to cheat. He didn't get to finish opening the envelope (he was interrupted), and the one who actually cheated in his place to make the story happen was the main villain.

By the end of the episode, Danny had still never seen the answers! He could’ve sat the CAT right there at the very end, without handing the answers to Lancer, and it would’ve been totally legit!

(Keeping the answers with the intent to cheat was still a dishonest move…but a fourteen year old kid doing that, especially when he never got to actually go through with cheating, is extremely minor. That's not evil, ladies and gentlemen. It’s petty academic misconduct at best. Compared to Dan’s actual crimes, it’s laughable.)

Being a victim in the deaths of his loved ones was totally fair…but then we find out how Dan was born. Danny didn’t spend the next ten years spiralling into grief or madness and becoming a villain alone. Instead he had his ghost half fused with an already established villain and Vlad’s evil overwhelmed his mind.

In theory, the writing team had the freedom here to write it however they wanted. They really could’ve just written the “alternate villain self” trope straight—“Dan is literally just Danny, but he’s older and had a massive shift in his personality and moral compass for (insert reasons)”.

But instead, the writers gave us “Danny fused with an already-villainous character and absorbed their evil”. Seriously?

There could be plenty of alternatives—“Danny dealt terribly with his trauma and took it out by abusing his powers (starting small, but escalating) and got corrupted by them”. “He spiralled into madness and split himself in half to try end the pain, but his ghost half ended up with all his negative/toxic traits (or emotional pain) and no restraint (so it went evil on its own)”.

Heck, maybe you could even throw in a toxic relationship with Vlad, for good measure—becoming Danny’s “new father”, clinging to him as “the only person who could understand him”, isolating him, manipulating him, teaching Danny his own bad coping mechanisms and cutthroat philosophy (because Vlad also had trauma, don’t forget) and using Danny to carry out his errands as a gateway to villainous behaviour. Think Silco and Jinx’s relationship from Arcane.

Or, use the idea of fusion, but at least acknowledge Danny’s not the only person responsible for Dan’s creation and explore that in the story.

If they wanted to show Danny at risk of becoming evil, they should've actually shown him more actively making/resorting to immoral decisions instead of dragging him into those situations and calling it "evil".

2. Dan being a fusion of Danny and Vlad’s ghost halves means he can’t be the same person as Danny. He has to be either a mixture of both of them, or a new person born from them combining (they're basically the ingredients for somebody new).

We don’t know how halfa fusions work, but it wouldn’t make sense for a fusion to be the same person as only one of the components. Dan By the episode's logic, Dan was a "future version of Vlad" then, too. But the episode refused to acknowledge that. Dan only acknowledged his relation to Vlad from Danny’s point of view, as “his cheesehead archenemy”.

Physically, it’d be impossible for Dan to exist without Vlad. He was physically comprised of half-Plasmius. His physical design reflected a hybrid of both Danny and Vlad’s ghost halves (and in Vlad’s case, also his human half). His blue skin, ponytail, facial hair and cape (and likely also the red eyes) drew from Vlad/Plasmius. Dan, as he was, could not exist without both of them.

Vlad’s recollection of Dan’s backstory also implies that most of Dan’s “evil” came from him. And we know from Identity Crisis that separated halves aren’t just one or two pure emotions—they have some self-image, or level of awareness and personality. When Plasmius was separated from Vlad in TUE, he would’ve had some self-image or identity of his own to carry into the fusion. It wouldn’t just have been “Phantom’s identity plus Plasmius’s evil”. It would’ve been both of their identities mixing. If whatever constituted as Plasmius’s “evil” (rooted in his memories/backstory, emotions and personality traits) was able to “overwhelm” Phantom, it’d only make sense for his whole mind to win overall.  But for some bizarre reason, Phantom is Dan’s dominant identity--and treated as his only one.

How could Plasmius overtake Phantom in the battle of wills enough to flood the latter with his malice, but somehow Danny’s identity or memories were dominant enough that THEY won?

Besides, in a mental battle between a mentally stronger, older man with more experience with his ghost powers, and the fourteen-year-old kid who was still too weak to beat him directly one-on-one, it’d make no sense for Danny to win. They were both in grief over losing the only people they truly "loved" (Maddie, for Vlad) and Vlad as twenty other years of built-up, unresolved pain to stew in first (not to mention his already strong maliciousness/selfishness). So Danny probably wouldn't win out on negative emotions alone.

Though, we are taking Vlad on his word here, which was rather dubious and vague in canon…but I personally trust him on that statement because he’d have little motivation to lie about this to Danny. That statement directly incriminated Vlad in Dan’s villainous nature to Danny, only giving a reason for the latter to further oppose him or be outraged. If he had any reason to lie, it’d be to make himself look better or avoid directly admitting fault. He already seemed to do that in previous parts of the same flashback.

We absolutely know the fusion happened, though—because Dan’s mixed design outside of the flashback was undeniable and alternate Vlad was in ruin without a ghost half.

And if we want to say that Danny still technically counts as "becoming Dan" because his and Vlad's ghost halves both became Dan together (assuming Dan is an active combination of both halves back-and-forth, rather than a new person just made from both of them) I don't believe it's fair to say that Danny's crimes were Dan's, or hold him (main!Danny) primarily responsible for Dan as a problem. This is because of the disconnection of identity and moral control between Danny Fenton and Dan.

It was never clear, not even in Identity Crisis, what happened to the original, whole halfa’s sense of self or consciousness when split into two. Danny obviously didn’t have much, if any, control over his halves in Identity Crisis—they had to cooperate like two separate people, and their personalities and behaviours were distinctly exaggerated and out of character for his whole self. Individual parts no longer controlled or regulated by the larger whole.

By that logic, Danny couldn’t be held fully morally responsible for the actions of his halves while separated, since they weren’t under his conscious control/he wasn’t of his full mind (similar to the reason insanity pleas exist in court, or you can't properly consent when under the influence of drugs/alcohol). His responsibility would be there somewhere, but unclear and debatable.  It’s possible they could be separate identities from him entirely. The only thing fully his responsibility is the decision to split in the first place, which facilitated their actions (since he did that while still of his own sound mind).

That creates a degree of separation between Danny and his split halves before his ghost half even fuses with another person. Adding a literal separate individual into the mix would make Dan two degrees of separation away from the original Danny Fenton. Alternate!Danny could be held fully responsible for requesting/going along with Vlad's Ghost Gauntlets procedure (facilitating Dan in the first place), but after that, his moral responsibility is in doubt from the moment he's split apart. And considering that this hyperspecific method for Dan existing is relatively easy for our main Danny to avoid (as long as he's informed), I highly doubt it's even REMOTELY fair to accuse past/main timeline!Danny of everything Dan has done. The episode's repeated assertions of "this is what Danny will do...in time" when referring to what Dan did is just not correct.

3. The episode’s plot does so much telling the audience that Danny and Dan are the same person, and that Dan’s crimes are consequently Danny’s, mostly through character dialogue. Dan's backstory throws all of this into question, and the plot does NOTHING to explore or remedy the apparent complexity/contradiction.

While “Dan is Danny’s future self” could be “technically” true—in the sense that the Phantom half mixed into Dan is the only remnant of Danny in the future—it’s not true that he IS Danny as a person. He’s a fusion with an entirely separate individual, who was already villainous before the fusion. The question remains as to whether Phantom and Plasmius are both intact as identities inside of Phantom, or he's a new person entirely.

But the episode repeatedly had a handful of characters spell out that “Dan was Danny but evil”, mistake past/main timeline!Danny for Dan, or accuse Danny of what Dan's done. And even when characters have a reason to be wrong in-universe, the sheer repetition of their mistake in the script (out-of-universe) serves as a framing device for what the narrative wants us to believe.

Clockwork and Dan himself both have every reason to know of his origin as a fusion, and yet they still refer to him and Danny as if they’re the same person.

In the light of Dan's nature as a fusion, this rings hollow. The situation is more complex than anyone is letting on.

And when Vlad reveals Dan’s backstory, NOTHING is made of this information. Danny doesn’t even verbally react to it, to show that he’s processed it. It doesn’t change how he sees Dan or lead to him trying to figure out what Dan is. He doesn’t react to the “my evil overwhelmed you” comment from Vlad. He still goes into the final fight with Dan insisting “I won’t become you!”. The episode says nothing of it—the only thing Danny takes out of his encounter with Vlad is the Ghost Gauntlets.

[pokelolmc]

Fixing TUE Part 2.5--How I'd change Dan's story.

This is my take on Dan's narrative as "Danny's evil future self" in my analysis of The Ultimate Enemy. You can find part two here:

(Part 2), Part 2.5, (Part 3)

The episode tried to play the "alternate timeline evil self" straight, but turning Dan into a Danny and Vlad fusion causes it to veer off the "Dan is Danny turned evil" mark and contradict the episode's previous setup.

I'll admit, I got a bit negative in the last post, so it's a good thing this is more about ideas for improvements.

The obvious choice is either: make Dan literally just Danny/Phantom as an adult, turned evil (to play into the original narrative) or keep the fusion aspect and subvert the narrative.

So, while it'd make for a much more straightfoward/correct "villain self" story if Dan really was just if "Danny woke up and chose violence", I think I'd stick with the fusion aspect. Because that leaves so many interesting questions to explore about identity and moral responsibility--and it'd create an interesting twist on the typical "alternative villain self" trope.

Let's say that the new version of the episode follows a similar portrayal of Dan to canon initially--"Dan is Danny's evil future self", "Danny is going to become Dan" (without Clockwork's commentary, since he knows better)--and Danny agonises over it (after he actually makes legitimate moral mistakes in the episode and feels guilty about it, like actively abusing his ghost powers to cheat the CAT).

Then he finds out how Dan was actually created, and it's treated like a plot twist. The final act reveals that Dan is a fusion of two ghost halves, and Danny's not responsible for Dan in the same way he thought he was. Alternate!Phantom is still a part of Dan, but Dan and Danny's dynamic is different now.

In-universe, maybe the reason Dan only identifies as Danny is he didn’t want to remember the truth of his creation, and went into complete denial. The fact that he was born from Danny and Vlad's deep grief/loss/loneliness/emotional pain was too much for him to confront. It was one massive, overwhelming, toxic concoction. So, he decided he’d rather forget it. Since Vlad’s human half was still alive somewhere and could meet him again (reminding him of his fusion nature), his mind could’ve chosen to disconnect from the Plasmius component of his identity.

Instead, he deluded himself into believing that he was just a Danny who turned evil after he lost his loved ones and “purified” himself of his painful human half, since Danny’s identity was the most convenient to appropriate (with his human half being dead,  and all) and the fusion woke up with Danny's logo.

Ironically, he didn’t actually lose his painful emotions. The halfa-splitting sorted deep emotional pain into the two ghost halves—based on the mental states/desires of the halfas when the separations occurred (eg., Danny’s desire to remove his pain). Rather than “ridding himself of emotions”, he became that negativity/pain incarnate, and it came out in the most destructive and monstrous way possible. After all, anger and wrath can come from a defence/vent for unacknowledged pain.

When Danny learns of Dan's backstory, he has to take a step back to process it all. He knows that Alternate!Vlad's too weak to kill him, even with the Ghost Gauntlets, so he reluctantly trusts his nemesis(...?) and makes a deal--if Vlad knows anything that could be used to stop Dan, give it over to Danny and he can go after Dan himself to undo everything in the past. No fight for the sake of a cutaway gag, here--we get some relationship development (on Danny's end, at least).

Vlad reluctantly agrees (he believes there's no way Danny can win, but he doesn't have much else of a choice--he's backed into a corner, and just thinks "What the hell? I've got nothing...")...and that triggers him to admit what happened ten years ago. Then he gives Danny the Ghost Gauntlets willingly and gets all serious:

"...Daniel?"

"...Yeah?"

"You have to promise me one thing?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just swear it!"

"O-okay, okay! Jeez! I swear. Happy?"

Vlad looks down pensively before his sunken, hollow eyes bury into Danny's with alarming clarity.

"If you fail...NEVER go to me. Leave Amity Park, move to another country, hide in the Ghost Zone...I don't care. Just...stay away from me, at all costs. If I chase you, run. Run like the world depends on it."

For someone who's never seen Vlad want nothing to do with him before...acting more like Danny's response to Vlad's advances in the past...it's bizarre. It prompts him to question what's really going on in Vlad's head in his own timeline, and what if there's something still in him like this?

So Dan's backstory actually affects the plot, and plays a role in the climax of the episode. And even though he doesn't show up in person, we address Vlad's responsibility in Dan's creation and he gets to contibute, willingly and meaningfully--by providing Danny with Dan's backstory (not just the Ghost Gauntlets Danny stole from him in combat).

It could come into play as a psychological weapon, to shatter Dan's denial— “I’m not you, Dan…I CREATED you!”, “You’re not me, you were MY MISTAKE!”, causing Dan to have a third-act breakdown (technically not main!Danny's mistake, since he's not Alternate!Danny, but he's putting it in the words Dan used in order to correct him). Then the Ghostly Wail can finish him off...or maybe he's strong enough that the Ghostly Wail doesn't end him, and it's the shock of the revelation that immobilises him enough for Danny to get him into the thermos.

[pokelolmc]

The Ultimate Enemy is a Disappointment (and How I'd Fix It) (Part 5)

(rises from the dead to give you something that's been stuck in my drafts list for literal years)

This is the final part of my analysis on TUE. Where I basically just roast the entire CAT plotline to ashes. I've written other parts if you want to start from the beginning. Honestly, it's better served as one of those one-hour video essays you listen to in the background, but I have NO IDEA how to record or edit anything so there's no way I could. But anyway, here it is.

If you want to read interesting Clockwork headcanons, try part 4.5.

(Part 4.5), (Part 5) (or you can go back to the start here; but be prepared for the long read!)

Part 5's about the CAT and the anti-cheating message. The episode comes off as hamfistedly pro-authority/pro-institution, making this melodramatic display about cheating being "evil" without any reason or explanation about WHY.

And as a former goody-two-shoes student, who had a massive mental breakdown over trying to get a standardised test score good enough to get into the uni I wanted...this round's fucking PERSONAL.

So I've rewritten/repurposed the narrative with the CAT with all of the personal experience I can muster. I want to know what y'all think.

FINAL PART: I Rewrote the Entire CAT Plotline because "Cheating is Bad" Sucks Ass

The CAT sounds ridiculous in worldbuilding and the anti-cheating message is very one-note and dumbed down.

In my opinion, canon's entire use of the CAT is just one big problem.

First of all, what's the CAT actually for?

Based on Lancer's presentation, it's a "Career Aptitude Test" (whatever that means) which determines what future job prospects are available to you as an adult. The PowerPoint slides equated success on it with pictures of physical wealth, and that failing meant "being stuck at the Nasty Burger for the rest of your life". He used the CAT's "lowest scorer" as an example and made several remarks or jokes later on about it.

Obviously, like in real life, he could easily be exaggerating or lying to put pressure on the students. But even if we assume the cartoonish determinism of "get rich or get stuck in fast food" isn't actually true, the episode still leans in its favour.

If Irving (the lowest scorer who sets up the Nasty Sauce plot point) isn't actually stuck at the Nasty Burger because of his CAT score, why is he still working there years later? Does he like working at the Nasty Burger? The episode doesn't even TOUCH that. It doesn't challenge Lancer's initial tie between Irving's job and his CAT score.

And if it's not entirely a lie, then how the hell does their society operate if people's prospects outside of school are somewhat affected by test results from FRESHMEN YEAR?! That's WAY too early to be accurate to ANYTHING!

To the episode’s credit, they do PRESENT a counter-narrative for the test's importance, but it's only two quick scenes in the middle. And then they never show up again.

Jack's line may have been a joke, but it still served a valid point: even though he failed the CAT, he turned out somewhat successful (but to be fair, he DOES share a household and income with Maddie). And Jazz has the most nuanced take on the CAT in this entire episode (which isn't saying much, unfortunately). It’s a shame it’s lost under the screaming pile of “THIS TEST DETERMINES YOUR FUTURE!!!”.

2. The "Danny cheating" plotline is so badly written that it's ONLY possible because of plot contrivances. It doesn't give Danny a compelling enough motivation to cheat, and in the end he doesn't even cheat at all.

(but the episode makes Danny own up to it anyway, when it was Clockwork's and Dan's fault, and he never even saw the answers; he could've LITERALLY sat down right then and there, and taken the test, completely legitimately)

Why would Danny need to cheat the CAT, anyway?

It's not like he's stupid. He may not be as book smart as his sister, but he got an A- in Teacher of the Year, when he had the extra time and assistance to apply himself properly. And presumably a standardised test isn't really going to be something you can prepare for outside of old tests or mock tests. It's more of a generalised questions thing than studying a specific subject to a high level. So surely even relatively average kids like Danny have a decent chance of at least scraping the bare minimum, right?

But for some reason, the episode (and most of the characters) speak as if his chances are low and/or he's already doomed to fail. Except, it doesn't give ANY actual indicator of how difficult the test is or how likely Danny actually is to succeed.

For example—if they'd shown him receiving bad results on a mock test early in the episode, or a line about how his normal inability to study due to ghost hunting is even WORSE now (which other episodes already did)...then that'd be fair.

But no. We only see Danny's low self-esteem and defeatism in the kitchen before Boxed Lunch shows up (so how does he go from thinking about giving up to planning to cheat? The answer...? He doesn't. Not without somebody else dropping an easy way to cheat into his hands first.) We don't see any of his actual abilities or risk of failure.

The ONLY sense of compulsion for Danny to try hard (let alone cheat) is the repeated empty threat of "you're gonna fail if you don't do something!".

The episode just slegehammers the audience repeatedly with numerous characters saying "don't fail the test", "you'll end up at the Nasty Burger if you fail!", "if he cheats then I will ruin his future!", "the world is going to end because Danny cheated on a test?" (or in the case of the Observants and Clockwork, literally SAYING how "he's going to cheat" when he doesn't even THINK TO DO IT on his own!), and expects all of the repetition to follow through.

But it's not enough.

Which brings me to how Danny's alleged "cheating" comes about:

The ONLY REASON Danny ever gets to cheating in the first place is because Clockwork gives him the answers. Afterwards, his attitude magically changes from defeatism/giving up completely to wanting to cheat with no proper buildup. But only because the way to do so literally dropped into his path. You can't get more reactive or passive than that.

Clockwork literally OFFERED Danny the chance to cheat before it ever occurred to him--and the answer papers had to break the pre-established laws of ghost intangibility to get stuck to Danny's back in the first place (see part 1).

If not for Clockwork, there's no telling if Danny would've ever had the idea to cheat on his own. Instead, he simply reacts to the plot around him and only cheats because the narrative effectively SCREAMS AT HIM to do it.

And in the end, he never cheated anyway. He never saw the test answers because Skulktech attacked right as he went to open the envelope. Dan went back into the past and cheated in his place trying to railroad his own creation into existence.

3. What if we gave Danny a personal motivation to cheat by tying it into his astronaut dream? Replace the anti-cheating message with a message about accepting change and failure, letting go of lost dreams and not having control.

The CAT could be some resume-booster/certification when looking for part-time jobs. After all, 14-15 is the age when kids can start looking for work in the US. Since they have no previous work experience, taking an "aptitude test" could allow for potential employers to "gauge" what their problem-solving skills or general reasoning are like. Yes…I know it’s still bullshit, but let their society still be fucked up.

Just like in real life, the scores wouldn't be relevant for long. Once you have previous work experience, you can demonstrate your skills without the CAT. Maaaaybe Ivy League institutions or other extremely competitive places could look at it in the footnotes of character statements/college applications, or something? But only because they're splitting hairs trying to reject people.

Tie this in with Danny's desire to become an astronaut, which the fanon has taken and run with because canon so sorely underutilised it.

Because becoming an astronaut is insanely competitive—you need at least a master’s degree, several extra years of experience, fitness tests...

He has a lot of time to turn things around at fourteen, but because of the way ghost hunting has affected his life/studies, things aren’t looking good if nothing changes.

Not to mention he couldn't take any physical exams--he’s not fully human, after all.

So, let’s say that Danny’s reminded of his dream future when the CAT crops up, sees himself as "far behind", and panics.

He irrationally projects into the future that he’ll never get into an astronaut program a decade down the line with the way his grades are now. The CAT becomes "vital" to his future because he believes it is, even when others don't. Hence why he's so invested in keeping his score high that he's willing to cheat. He's breaking under the pressure of a character trait introduced in the first episode.

The school exaggerates the importance of the CAT for their bottom line, and Danny spirals. In his twisted logic, he sees it as a way to compensate, like extra credit he has to scrounge up. Heck, maybe society IS fucked up enough that it’s harder to get into highly competitive careers, like being an astronaut, without a high CAT score. Not impossible, but much harder--because of how extremely competitive it is. Or maybe NASA itself prioritises high CAT scores for some ridiculous fucked up reason.

Danny might even rationalise, in the face of others telling him the CAT doesn't matter long-term, "Sure, it’s totally irrelevant for other jobs—but not at NASA!"

He doesn't want to accept his childhood dream was unrealistic in the first place. He doesn't want to accept that the portal accident changed his life so much it's probably out of reach now. (What if he can't take the physical exams? What if he can't leave Amity Park without absolute chaos breaking out? Will he be stuck fighting ghosts long into adulthood?).

He doesn't want to have to sit and reconsider the long-term consequences of being half-ghost. And the CAT is his coping mechanism. He wants to magically think that acing it will give him the control to assure his dream/ideal future.

This creates a major character flaw to tie into Danny's lesson in the episode as well. I'm swapping out the heavy-handed "anti-cheating" message for "the future is not set in stone...even if there are times you want it to be". Cheating would play a part and still be a bad decision, obviously, but "cheating is evil and you should be a hero by owning up to/not doing it" isn't what the moral of the episode revolves around.

When it's linked to his loved ones dying (it’s still, admittedly, a bit contrived in the literal sense), it at least has more thematic weight. It’s not just “oh no, Danny cheated on a test! Now it’s literally the end of the world!”. Because it’s not the cheating that matters--it's what it represents: Danny’s distorted ideas about the future, his perfectionism, his stubbornness to cling to a childhood dream that’s no longer (was maybe NEVER) within reach, rejecting the unwanted drawbacks of his new life as a halfa by pretending his life can still easily go in the direction he already desired pre-accident.

It becomes a bitter irony—he’s the one who tried to set a desired future in stone by cheating, and instead he indirectly facilitated the most unideal future.

This also establishes a direct parallel to Dan before he even shows up (because in my version, Danny cheats on the CAT before they head to the future)—being willing to do something dirty to secure the future he wants.

Instead of an anti-cheating message, it becomes about spiralling mental health, a commentary on how standardised tests are fucked up, our main character’s superpowers impacting his future (his human future—not just a ghost-instigated apocalypse) how you shouldn’t take your present for granted…and, most importantly, that some dreams are unrealistic and need to be reconsidered or let go. And you can’t control the future to go exactly how you want it. No one has 100% control.

The idea of the future not being set in stone isn’t just a theme through Danny’s victory over Dan, but what kickstarts the entire alternate future in the first place and the lesson Danny has to learn.