I'm on the writing grind, you can see that I just finished rewatching the Teen Titans (2003).
Edit: Here is some art I did for Titan!Phantom
.・゜-: ✧ :-
(The end is near.)
Gripping the communicator, the bright yellow case with a cartoonish 'T' on top glared back at him.
(The portal was growing.)
He presses the button, the communicator switches on and he calls out.
"Phantom to Titans, do you hear me? Phantom to Titans."
The crackling sound came as a sign of connection, It didn't take any heavy weight off, however.
"Robin here, Phantom? Everything alright?" The soothing voice of Teen Titans leader answers him, and he suppresses a sigh.
"Robin," he bites his lip, the portal only growing.
The ghost zone is eating Amity and all just because fucking Vlad couldn't, for one ancient time, sit still.
"I—" a deep breath. "I'm sorry," he apologises with a wince. "You're gonna be really angry at me when you... find out."
Concern leaks through the voice as Robin speaks. "Phantom? What's going on?"
Thr screen on the communicator switches on and Robins brow knitted expression stares back at him.
It quickly changes, alarmed. "Phantom." The vigilante says. "Is Amity Park okay? Do you need backup?"
Always on the right track, dear leader. Danny shakes his head fondly.
"It's too late for backup," he admits quietly.
"Phan—"
"Just tell new members of me, okay?"
Danny doesn't let the other finish, giving a bitter smile before throwing the communicator on the ground, breaking it.
The familiar yet threatening green of the ghost zone welcomes him.
—
"Titans! Emergency call, Phantom got a situation!"
The bright red lights is enough for the rest of the team to flood to the common room.
"Rob?" Cyborg asks. "What's the situation?"
"We don't know!" The bird answers, stressed. He's pulling the audio and video recording of the call up to the monitor, replaying it for the team.
They don't figure it out until they are at Amity, landing with the jet and jumping from their seats.
Raven and Starfire fly ahead, and they all reach the border of Amity.
Or what of Amity remains.
Because–
The entire city is gone—!!
Complete annihilation.
(When robin finds out who did this, he will have words with them.)
"Robin," Raven waves them all over to her side. She's crouching, hand in a sphere of black, her magic. "Amity wasn't destroyed. It was relocated."
Her expression is grim. "Someone abducted a whole city."
All he does is nod, looking at the team before him.
"Someone call Herald, Titans, we got work to do. Our mission is to find Amity Park, Phantom, and save both." With sombre nods, they prepared for take off.
"Titans! Go!"
And they separate.
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I think Luz's trauma due to being an abuse victim gets ignored a lot in favor of other characters. Luz has an odd role in the fandom as this character who other characters rely on, or who isn't an abuse victim but is supportive of her friends who are, and I think that ends up missing a huge part of her story.
Belos compliments her a lot, which is partially because he wants to reach out to her and mostly because he thinks he can manipulate her. He does some backhanded compliments, telling her she's improved but she still has work to do to catch up to him. He also thanks her quite a few times. The way he thanks her intentionally triggers her guilt, especially when he thanks her for helping him with Hunter. He also compliments her to put other people down, like when he tells her she's "better than this" (implying their race makes them morally superior).
He also uses the same manipulation tactic on Luz that he does on Hunter, although it doesn't work as well on her. He tries to remove his own agency for his physical violence by blaming the Curse. The biggest example is in King's Tide, when he pretends he can't hear her as he's racing after her to try and kill her. He ends up cutting her face while pretending to be out of control and then in the same sequence has full control and clarity to talk to Hunter and the Collector. He gaslights Luz by trying to make it seem like it was The Curse causing him to act in the way he did.
He refers to Luz as "crazy" to invalidate her emotions and harming Hunter in front of her also is a form of abuse. He's obviously aware that hurting Hunter traumatizes Luz (and everyone else) but as his focus transfers from Hunter to Luz in Hollow Mind, he starts targeting her specifically by harming Hunter to hurt her (especially in TTT). Belos shifts the blame for events from himself to Luz and also attempts to make her feel guilty. Hunter seems to understand that Luz is also being abused and tries to reassure her that Belos is an abuser and she shouldn't take what he says at face value. Luz ends up taking that advice to heart after she's able to forgive herself and face Belos. She doesn't speak to him but is able to hear his manipulation tactics and just. stare at him bc he's full of bullshit.
Just because he 'only' hits her a few times and isn't her guardian doesn't mean he can't abuse her or that he didn't. It's not really a protagonist-antagonist relationship as much as it is "adult man nuking 14 year old repeatedly until she becomes god and kills him". The idea that child abuse can only come from parents and not role models or other adults in your life is odd, because he distinctly holds a position of power over her (literally an Emperor and an adult who intentionally isolates her and the other kids alone to abuse them) and uses it to emotionally and physically harm her.
Papa Titan has to reassure her that she's okay to kill Belos because he's literally a serial killer who's lying about his intentions. Luz still slightly falls for Belos's sympathetic line until that moment because he very intentionally tried to get her to feel bad for him and also feel guilt about herself.
This is also why I really detest any fandom takes where Belos canonically is supposed to care about her, or Luz owes him anything. Manipulation is not sympathetic. Belos committed premeditated murder and then used the remains of his murder victim to try to make a "Better Version" of his murder victim which was actually just a way to punish him repeatedly and keep taking out revenge on kids who had nothing to do with the original conflict. Belos is Luz's abuser also, and Luz doesn't owe him any sort of kindness or consideration and her anger is valid.
Luz is an abuse victim of Belos's in addition to Hunter and the Collector (and Vee/Lilith by extension), and she should be considered as such rather than her trauma being invalidated in favor of other characters.
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