DP x DC AU: Danny desperately wants to find the explosion guy. Tim is really good at covering his tracks... he didn't account for ghosts.
The explosions make it onto TV as purported terror activity and most people haven't heard of that part of the world much less ever given a second thought to care about it. The only real reason it gets reported on has something to do with the Justice League and... Danny knows too much.
He's been in training for Clockwork's court (which he's suspicious of- feels like kingly duty bullshit- but Danny is playing along out of curiosity for now) and he's learned a lot about how the living and non-living worlds collide. That means learning about CW's usual suspects- one of which just happened to have a ton of bases around the area Danny was seeing on the news.
It didn't take long for Danny to try to piece together that whoever blew up Nanda Parbat was trying to fuck with the League of Shadows, and was doing it successfully. Less green portals in the world the better, same goes for assassins. But it gets Danny thinking... Maybe he can employ similar tactics on the GIW Bases that keep spawning on the edges of Amity Park. It would at least set them back while he and his friends navigated the help line desk to request Justice League intervention. None of them can leave Amity Park, so outreach is going to have to be creative.
So Danny figures he'll just find the guy. Call up some ghosts who were there, or er, came from there and get a profile and track him down. But the ghosts keep saying it was The Detective. Annoying!
Danny goes full conspiracy theory, gets Tucker and Sam involved, and begrudgingly asks Wes Weston his thoughts.
He hadn't expected Wes to garble out a thirty minute presentation (that had 100 more slides left to go before he cut it off) about how Batman totally trained with a cult and so did his kids. Danny kind of rolled his eyes but... hey, new avenue of searching in the Infinite Realms at least.
The ghosts confirm that Bombs is for sure not Batman's MO- But maybe his second kid would know? The second kid was already brought back to life though, so no way to easily reach him... Danny starts to realize that this might be the work of a Robin now. Wasn't the red one known for solving cold cases? (Sam provides this information- its a social faux pas to not know hero gossip at Gotham Galas- everything she's learned is against her will).
It all comes to a head when Danny goes about the hard task of opening a portal for the guy to come through at just the right time, explain the infinite realms so he doesn't panic and then describe what the fuck was going on with the GIW. It takes months, just over a full year, of random (educated guesses) portal generating- Finally, Red Robin drops into the land of the dead.
"So, you're the guy I've got to talk to about explosions right?" Danny enthusiastically asks.
Tim thinks he's died and landed in the after life following 56 hours of being awake and plummeting off the side of a building into a Lazarus pool. Nothing makes sense about the kid in front of him.
"Yeah, I got a guy for munitions." Tim answers cooly.
"How do you feel about secretly sanctioned government operations that violate protected rights?"
"Gotta get rid of 'em some how. Need me to point you in the right direction?" This might as well be happening.
steddie relationship reveal coming not from the kids walking in on them or accidental pda but because Eddie's combat balance suddenly gets better and they realize it's cause Steve (the better strategist) is helping him with the combat prep. They know it's love cause Eddie threatened to shave Tews and blame it on Dustin the one time he picked up the wrong notebook/no one gets to see Eddie's DnD planning
house md wildest show on earth. a main character outright assassinates a known dictator, a moment that would be the very beginning or the mid-series crisis in any other show - an act which creates a power vacuum in a foreign nation already filled with child soldiers and genocide, and it's literally only brought up again throughout the season because that guy's wife divorces him over it. and occasionally to explore his relationship with who he is as a person and a catholic after having deliberately taken a life for what he calculates as the greater good, but mostly it's about his divorce
In a world where people can just be magically revived randomly and have been consistently, like idk, why not kill the Joker? Is it really so bad to not have him around for a little bit of time like you do anyways while writers focus on different villains? You could make a whole event of it. Really explore the impact that killing the Joker has on Batman and his family, on the Rogues, on Gotham (if it even has one at all).
You’ve already had like pretty much half the bloody DC universe be killed and then revived again and what not. (Including Jason Todd who was once a part of the little “will not be revived ever” group). If you really can’t permanently kill the Joker then don’t. Just kill him a little bit. It will probably make a more compelling story than whatever the fuck Gotham War was. And if you don’t want revival to come into it, idk, maybe have someone take on the mantle? Don’t ever have to know who it is or really why they’re doing it just like the original Joker, but it could be interesting to see how that would change dynamics.
Idk I just think exploring the idea of the Death of the Joker would be neat character wise and story wise given how it tends to be like the first thing people think of when they think about Batman’s whole routine not working. What happens when you finally get what you want? Does it solve anything? Does it really change anything? Does it make the characters feel any better realistically?
Idk I just think it could be fun. Especially when death in comics rarely has any long term impact so when you do want to use him again just dig him out of his grave and toss him into the Pit or whatever mystical bullshit is compelling the plot!
You know how there's a whole thing about how DC superheroes die and get brought back a lot? Well, for DPxDC, how about this?
Every time a Justice League member gets resurrected, their ghost remains in the Ghost Zone.
So you'll have a member of the Justice League bite the bullet for whatever reason, they'll form as a ghost in the Ghost Zone. They'll make themselves comfortable, maybe they'll even becoming defenders of peaceful ghosts who have no experience fighting or no desire to fight. Maybe they'll find dead family members and re-establish their bonds. Maybe they'll find other dead members of the Justice League and make and undead branch of the Justice League. Maybe they'll meet Danny and either help teach him how to be a hero (if he's still young) or become a hero group supported by him (if he becomes the king).
And then, for whatever reason, someone found the magical amulet that can revive a person, they somehow developed 1-Ups for a limited time, the revival machine finally got a tune up, the hero gets revived. But the ghost doesn't leave the Ghost Zone. Because of this, the revived hero doesn't have any memories of their time in the afterlife. The ghost probably doesn't even notice something changed and that their old body is up and running again.
This all ends up coming to a head when the GIW decide to push the manhunt for Danny Phantom and all other ghosts, lying to the Justice League in order to convince them to help. They eventually decide to hunt down Danny and corner him, ready to capture him...
… And suddenly he's saved by a bunch of ghosts that look identical to them.
FOR A BEAT OF HEART, THE BREATH IS SHOT.
AND WITHIN A BREATH, THE HEART IS CAUGHT.
THE PIPES ARE BURSTING, UNDER GREAT STRESS,
BOLTS TORN ASUNDER, MAKING A MESS.
A FINAL COUGH, A FINAL RETCH,
A GOREY SLOUGH, CLAIMED BY WRETCH.
i love how fraught and complicated discourse around various utena characters ‘dying’ is when anthy is literally stabbed to death eternally by a million swords imbued with human hatred. and then utena gets stabbed to death by them also. like. ‘death’ is incredibly interesting in rgu because most of the time it’s this ambiguous figurative thing that has interesting implications re: ohtori as a closed-off world one can escape. we are all trapped in our coffins. mamiya is the only named character with a grave. nemuro memorial hall functions as one all the same. ruka is implied to have died in the hospital— was he dead all along? who was the boy we saw for these two episodes? is this dead boy the same boy, or is this just another coincidence from the shadow girls, cutting like a knife? it’s heavily implied that akio and anthy murder kanae by poisoning her, adding to the previous implication that they were poisoning mr ohtori too, but there are no perceptible consequences of this. kanae’s absence is not felt. she’s fed an apple slice. what happens to the bodies? we know what happened to the 100 boys, but what about everyone else? and so on and so forth. ‘death’ is a tricky thing in utena, i think it’s constantly functioning on figurative and literal levels in very different ways for very different purposes. dios died. dios was dying. dios didn’t die. he grew up. etc etc
au where chay can see ghosts. they can't see him -- they're too busy drifting along the paths of their past lives, haunting the places and people they loved most.
chay has always wondered why he's never seen his mother before.