Danny Phantom Lore - Tumblr Posts

oh bestie you have come to the right place

alright yall buckle up this is going to be a long ass post and the whole thing is going to be written on my phone so if you see typos no you fucking didnt✨

Let's get into the TEDTalk >:)

cores:

Cores are essentially energized balls of ectoplasm that are in the middle of the ghost's physical form (often the center of the chest but I have seen a few fics where they are in the head) cores have a lot of different head canons and essentially can act as batteries, centers of being, sources of power (danny is often said to have an ice core bc ice powers) and/or even a kind of third eye. sometimes also referred to as a piece of self or a soul. lots of people write then as the condensed point of the ghost's entire existence but not everyone thinks that way. cores are often a big plot point when it comes to the horror fics like dissection bc evil scientists (whether they are the Guys In White or sometimes Danny's parents) finding the center of a ghosts being is usually bad news. some people headcanon cores to be really personal and touching it is a huge problem and others ignore it. its kinda subjective.

obsessions:

okay so obsessions are usually tied up with cores in some way or another but not always. obsessions are kinda tricky to define bc people have a lot of different things they think (and actually can get pretty territorial over their particual headcanon) some people think of it as a base point that drives a ghost into existence; a sort of unfinished business. sometimes its an emotion that the ghost felt so powerfully upon death that it gave the ectoplasm the sentience it create a ghost and/or an after image of a person. sometimes its a huge deal in fics and becomes literally an OBSESSION and it can tear the ghost apart if they dont give into it (this is kind of the most extreme version of obsession hcs but some people are really into it bc it opens up a lot of horror aspects, specifically dark!danny) regardless if the obsession is actually obsessive, unfinished business, or just something that is an emotion the ghost feels particularly strongly, most people agree that danny's obsession is something along the lines of protection (protecting his town, his friends, his sister, and sometimes other ghost from vlad or the GIW)

haunts:

okay haunts are another thing that the fandom willed into existence. often times they are tied together w the ideas of cores and obsessions (only ghosts w strong cores have definable obsessions and only ghosts w strong obsessions can have haunts etc). i personally havent delved very far into the whole haunt thing but people get really into building haunts in the ghost zone and world building like ghosts cities and stuff. Ghost Kings and Gotham Bats by BlueGhostCardinal on ao3 talks a lot about ghost cities and politics and if you're into checking more stuff out about the GZ and all the stuff people put into it then just start reading😅

danny (in general):

the fandom, in general, loves to make danny suffer (its actually kinda funny). there are a lot of headcanons people have about him and honestly its too much to even talk about in depth in one post. i could probably write a doctoral thesis on danny lmao. basically, some ppl have danny just how he is in the show, sometimes he's more OP (bc let's face it even just in the show he is a pretty hardcore character) sometimes danny is a full ghost possessing his own corpse, sometimes he has to reanimate his body everytime he changes, etc etc. a big thing in the fandom is the portal and danny's death. it can get pretty graphic and everyone kind of has their own opinions about danny and his relationship w his death and by extension the portal (the thing that killed him). we just love to torture danny so you will see a lot of Jack and Maddie's A+ Parenting fics and all sorts of betrayal things. dissection and vivisection is also a really popular trope in the fandom (which honestly says a lot). there is also the whole thing with Danny being the ghost king which really can go either way (i personally am a major sucker for ghost king danny bc i feel like the pressure of that opens it up to a lot of good angst and responsibilities not to mention i think it really accentuates the whole idea that danny is a HALFA, the perfect split and divide between life and death)

the bad guys:

the bad guys in danny phantom also get a hell of a lot of attention. some people like it when dannys show villains become his allies against bigger threats (ive seen a lot of johnny 13 and kitty adopting danny fics lately so thats trending ig) and sometimes people keep really amp up his villains and make them scary, terrifying really (and people also do everything in between). Vlad in particular is a bad guy that people have different opinions on. some people want vlad to be like danny's father figure. some make vlad absolutely diabolical and the source of all of danny's pain. some people (me) like to just make him absolutely batshit insane for mostly comedic purposes. it all depends.

im open to expand on any specific questions you have and anyone pls add on in the notes. there is so much i know i didnt cover but i figure this is kinda like a starter pack.

Y’know what, can I just ask the Danny Phantom fans what’s going on? The last time I really got involved in the fandom I was still pretty little and just enjoyed random fics about Danny and Sam, and skirting around weird material on Deviantart lmao.

Now I’m trying to get involved again there’s so much that’s happened. What’s going on with all this stuff about Obsessions, and Cores, and haunts, and ESPECIALLY ghost children? Adoption of ghost children by adult ghosts?

Danny essentially being the world’s strongest fuckin infant in the world and that’s why people keep trying to kill him?

And if any of you have ORIGINS for this shit I’d love to hear it. I am down for either a crash course or an entire college multi-part lecture to figure out what the fuck is going on here

tl;dr The Danny Phantom fandom is just obsessed with Found Family and I FALL FOR IT EVERY TIME

Hear me out, people, hear me out......

FRAIDS.

that's it that's the post.

jk jk that is absolutely not the post, because I have SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT FRAIDS. Danny Phantom lore at it's FINEST.

Strap in folks, it's about time for another (weirdly long??) DP word blast!

Now this could be the "found family trope" lover in me, but I freaking love the possibilities that exist when it comes to the concept of a ghost fraid. What I've read in fics is just *chef's kiss*. We have the mental links, the ectoplasm based threads that bind everyone together, the found family idea of course, and pleeeeenty of angst potential. But I wanna talk about the nitty gritty details.

What is a Fraid, if not a subconsciously and artificially created link based on a ghost's heightened feelings of attachment, or ownership? Bear with me, I can explain; we'll use Danny and his Fraid as an example here. Typically, when introducing the idea that Danny is connected to his friends and Jazz and Dani via the concept of a "Fraid", fic authors use the image of threads created with ectoplasm to tell the reader that the group is connected together on a higher level. These threads are often a result of Danny unknowingly marking his people as his, and thereby telling the ghost world that messing with these people means messing with Phantom himself. To me, this sounds a lot like Danny is essentially layering his own ectoplasm onto his group so frequently, intensely, and even intently (despite his continued ignorance to what his ghostly side is doing), that his resulting Fraid essentially becomes a part of himself. The ectoplasmic threads are then a physical manifestation of Danny's ectoplasm as it exists in his friends.

But if this is the case, could a Fraid ever be created intentionally?

Let's lay out the apparent requirements to create a Fraid, based on the proposed example above. I'm postulating that, to create a Fraid, the ghost needs to 1) spend a sizable portion of time around the future fraid members, 2) feel strong feelings of possession, protection, obligation, or what have you, 3) maintain a large amount of affection for their persisted presence, and 4) feel safe enough around them to allow their ectoplasm to manifest like an aura, rather than keep it tightly inside and controlled. In Danny's case, all of these conditions are met by Sam, Tucker, Jazz, and Dani, and they are typically the ones you see being placed in Danny's Fraid. His parents aren't on that list, as they fail to meet condition 4, and possibly even condition 3 (which is not to say Danny doesn't feel affection towards his parents. He definitely loves them, but does he love them consistently, constantly, and in the same way as he does his friends?). While Danny is constantly choosing his friends (he chooses them day in, day out, after Sam convinces him to walk to his death, after Tucker makes a decision out of intense jealousy, after Dani hunts him, Danny is still choosing them), he isn't constantly choosing how he feels in their presence. That would be hard for anyone to do, let alone creatures whose entire being revolves around their emotional volatility. The idea of intentionally creating a Fraid is ruled out, based on the idea that, even for beings that run off emotional cognizance, feelings as vulnerable as those required for the process are difficult to create and maintain consciously.

Now how does Fraid creation actually work?

The way I've described it above, I'm going to claim that a Fraid is essentially the ghost version of a horcrux. Instead of the soul going into an object, the ghost is exposing other ghosts (or people, in Danny's case) to intense amounts of their ectoplasm (which could be argued to be their soul given form, I guess?) and the ectoplasm is then settling inside the other party, being absorbed into their core, or skin, and cementing that individual as a part of the ghost creating the Fraid. Since this kind of ectoplasm is primarily that of the ghost, it will invariably have ties to the emotions that ghost is experiencing, hence the idea mentioned above that there needs to be a prolonged feeling of relaxation and safety about the creatures in the pre-formed Fraid. This being the case, I like to think about how Fraids might function when they're made of other ghosts too, and whether or not those secondary ghosts can basically form a layer of Fraids (like one web of ectoplasm built on another web and on another etc with different ghosts being the center point....does that make sense?). Would a Fraid with mostly ghosts develop it's own impression of a core? Is there a threshold of ectoplasm needed to develop a power level in this case? That's some juicy theory building right there.

When Danny's Fraid comes onto the scene, it gets a bit wonky.

Most of the time, his Fraid is made up of two (or three if you're counting Dan) ghosts and three (sometimes liminal sometimes not) humans, and there's almost of bit of a power imbalance. I would say that both Danny and Dani end up establishing this group of people as their individual Fraids, but how do the three humans influence the ectoplasm connection? And how does the fact that Danny and Dani virtually share an ectoplasm signature influence it? (this isn't to say that they share a core or are the same people, I am a firm lover of ice core danny and water core dani, but Dani is a clone and a product of Danny's ectoplasm....do you think they have the same signature, or would Dani develop her own signature?)

Connecting this to my first question above (is a Fraid a product of a ghost's feelings of "ownership" or "possession"): if you like your humans liminal like I do, I'm going to take a chance and say that Sam, Tucker, and Jazz have developed juuuust enough of a ghost core or an ecto signature for the Fraid threads to stick to them, and that ghosts probably wouldn't be able to draw regular, non-liminal humans into their Fraid unbeknownst to them. Due to this, I believe the humans would be able to reflect the ectoplasm back to Danny, creating a stable loop that allows for the continuance of the Fraid connection. I don't necessarily think this alone would allow for a strong connection - they're human, however liminal they might be, and liminal humans don't have the same ectoplasm reserves as a ghost, nor do they have the amount of "soul-like" ectoplasm needed to cement themselves inside the other parties like Danny could ( remember the horcrux analogy?). But! But but but! If Danny and Dani share an ectoplasm signature, and a Fraid is essentially an emotional feedback loop given substance, then you have two times the ectoplasm signature being run through and reflected back to each of the Fraid members, essentially....eliminating the original weakness of their connection?? And therefore you end up with a fully formed and healthy Fraid system?? I think that's pretty neat, right?

Idk dude, is this too long? Is there a limit to how much I can talk about this? I don't think there is.

for the sake of digestibility I'm going to DEFINITELY be writing a part 2 for this!!

But think about these questions in the meantime, if you want:

Would a ghost that isn't the Fraid's formation point be able to reject or leave the Fraid system? How?

What would happen to the Fraid "head" so to speak, if their Fraid threads were severed or rejected, based on the theory that it's essentially a part of themselves implanted in another creature?

Are potential Fraid members aware of what's happening when a Fraid is in its preliminary stages?

Could Fraids be rare?

Am I projecting my feelings of isolation onto a cool kid's show?? Who knows! I feel a fanfic idea coming tho....

Part 2 coming soon!