Like Roomates and Adoption, I wrote this during 2017 CampNano and decided that now was as good as time as any to post this fice.
Full Summary:The characters in DP know they existed for more than just to tell some tale about a half dead boy. They know that their voices aren't their own, that they are just a bunch of shapes and 2d things animated into existence. However, everyone is restricted by a limited set of phrases or motions and it's a torturous hell being trapped in a body where you can't freely express how you feel in an animated hell.
Based off of the song "Build Up Our Machine" by DAGames
1. Animated Hells and Animals
Danny knows he's neither just a creepy little boy with creepy little powers or a ghost trying to fit in with humans like Spectra says-he also knows that she was devastated having to say it to him; Danny hopes she knows he doesn't hold that against her, it wasn't her fault, it never was. He's more than that, always has and always will be. Danny glances upwards at Casper High, unprepared to enter the colorful hell. He's grown detached from Dash repeatedly slamming him in lockers and he barely bats an eye when Lancer gives him a detention. Nothing that happens at Casper High fazes him anymore; in fact when you go to such a place everyday, nothing ordinary, nothing extraordinary surprises Danny.
Unless, it involved the script. That's the only thing that can spark a reaction out of him. Tucker and Sam trail behind him, as he rambles on using the same old pre recorded phrases Kaufman left behind combined with limited motion to express how he truly feels. Sam and Tucker uses the same old lines their voice actors left them along with the trite motions their animators animated for them. He opens his locker, thank goodness the animators and writers decided to script him doing that, Danny has no clue how he would have survived being a ninth grader forever if he couldn't do that.
Tucker and Sam continued trailing behind him to the door of Lancer's class. He looked behind him and gave the two an odd stare and rose an eyebrow.
_"Now here's an interesting predicament." He wanted to say ,and it was only then Tucker and Sam realized the problem: none of them could enter the room because they were never scripted to walk into a class like normal teenagers. Apparently, the production team thought that being crime fighting teens, saving the citizens from ghosts, who needs to walk into a classroom like a regular person when you just fly in a classroom or kick down doors like some badass spy in a overly cliche movie? Yea, the team were idiots. Mr. Lancer was already in the classroom teaching the class a book they've heard nearly a thousand times-but it's the only way he can teach, it's not Mr. Lancer's fault he wasn't scripted to teach anything else.
The door won't magically open itself either. So there was that.
A few students pass by, whispering nonsense to each other. It must be wonderful to say whatever you want, the trio thinks bitterly. To have the animators not care about you, and not have scripted lines. Yet that is neither here nor there and they have to get over the bitterness that continually salts their wounds. Danny growls from both his bitterness and his frustration at the production team, grabs Sam and Tucker by their wrists, fly outside the school and through the windows leading to Mr. Lancer's classroom, turned intangible and sat in their seats. Mr. Lancer is still teaching, no one else turns around to acknowledge the trio. Everyone knows the jigs up, everyone knows his secret. It's been out since April 3rd, 2004 when Mystery Meat aired.
"Chronic tardiness." Mr. Lancer barked out as he wrote on the chalkboard. "Detention."
Danny doesn't respond. He's too used to it and his animations didn't seem to fit how he actually felt. Sighing, he rests his head on his desk and falls asleep because the animators decided that was the only thing he could do in a classroom.
Spectra wasn't wrong calling him a "creepy little boy or a ghost trying to fit in with humans" but she missed something. He didn't blame her for missing it, emotions were running high and all that jazz. She just failed to acknowledge that their entire existence was made possible by animators animating them in a colorful hell, writers writing their lines, Butch creating them, and Nickelodeon greenlighting their existence. Billionfold Studios produced them and then they were distributed by the Canadian animation company known as Nelvana. Badaboom badabing, suddenly they're broadcasted across millions of television screens.
They existed to entertain children. But the children are gone, Nick cut them off. Now they all exist on an infinite loop to tell some tale about a half dead boy in a hell made possible by Butch and Nickelodeon.
So it goes.
Valerie Gray appears in Parental Bonding. It's not for long and she doesn't say much. Despite the fact she has very few lines to recite, Val can't forget the elation she had when Tucker asked her to the dance nor the crushing disappointment when she got dumped for Mason.
But that grudge is gone, for the most part.
She appears in Shades of Gray and she knows three things:
One, at first she was rich. Pretty purple dress worth five hundred and seventy nine dollars, and worth "every single one of my Daddy's pennies."
Two, then she become poor. Riches to rags. That type of thing.
Three, she was kind of a bitch throughout that whole episode. Slightly, if she had to say so herself( but alas she could not since the writers never scripted it. Although, she had sufficient reason to act like the bitch she was...in the second half of the episode. Besides, it wasn't her fault she acted the way she did. It was the writers' fault. They didn't handle her characterization properly and it was her creator's fault for allowing her to be portrayed in...that way. It wasn't her fault.
Not a single bit.
That was what she told herself to feel better, to get through the infinite days in the animated Amity Park, to simply exist.
Valerie does wonder about Cujo. It was common knowledge to every Amity citizen that Cujo came from the Fentons' Ghost Portal yet no one really knew where he came from…
Partially, no one really knew where he came from. There was the short form answer: Butch and Nickelodeon.
That was the simple answer.
Then there was the long form answer and that was what Valerie wanted to know. Why was Cujo even at Axiom Labs? What were they doing with the dogs at the lab? When did they die? What had happened for Cujo to die? And when he did come back, why did he have to come back and of all things, he caused destruction and havoc for a simple plushie?
She tries to piece together what she knows but in the end, there are no viable answers that satisfies her curiosity. Perhaps it was best if she to her father and asked him herself. Hopping on her hoverboard, she flies towards Axiom Labs(or was it Vladco? She can't really remember; too much change too quickly has fucked her over several times) and stifles her surprise when the colorful gradient of rosy oranges, red and pinks suddenly faded into a cool purple.
Valerie forgot how time, essentially, was a mere illusion.
Seeing her father stand outside Axiom Labs, she flew down in front of her father, summoning her regular clothes once again. Stepping off her hoverboard, Valerie hugged her father tightly.
"Hi Daddy."
Damon Gray tilts his head in confusion, he's never seen his daughter at his place of work except for Flirting With Disaster, so why was she here now? "What are you doing here Valerie?"
Valerie flung her hands at her hips, her cheeks flushing up in frustration as she tried to mangle her scripted lines and animations so that she could accurately convey her true intentions. Seconds later, she deflated, eyes closing in a pained matter before grinding her teeth, "Ghost dog."
"Ghost dog?" He repeated, and he can't help the blinding rage that marred his voice. But then he realizes, that his daughter wanted to know where Cujo came from. Then with a heavy sigh, he rested his hand in his hair, "Smelly security dogs are a thing of a past." Damon said quietly.
A beat of silence hangs over them.
"Maybe I'll just rest...for a second." Valerie whispered. It wasn't the best line she could have used, but it was the only line she could think of at the moment. Stepping back from her father, she summoned her suit and hoverboard, a bright pink light wrapping around her body until she was outfitted in her Red Huntress suit and flew off.
She needed to think.
"One time when I was five," Danny clasped his hands together, a dreamy look taking over. "I really wanted a puppy, but my parents-"
But his parents what? was the question that remained unanswered. Danny supposed the reason he never had a puppy was that his parents would have accidentally splashed ectoplasm all over the innocent thing, mutating it beyond repair. However, he was fourteen now and he had a puppy...kinda. Cujo, the 'puppy' in question also had the ability to transform from an cute, adorable, innocent puppy to an menacing, murderous, killer adult as quickly as half as a second. The puppy thing was kinda questionable.
One time when he was still in development, before he was Danny Phantom, before he had ghost powers, he had Spooky. There was a world that Butch had, where Danny never had a ghost half but instead of being half-ghost, he had Spooky as his companion. He liked Spooky, he couldn't wait to hit the big screens to interact with Spooky. But just as quickly as Danny became enamored with Spooky, Butch just as quickly scrapped the idea of him riding around on an awesome motorcycle and the snowy owl being his companion.
The reason his creator had to snatch Spooky away from Danny?
Harry soddin' Potter.
Copyright issues, everyone claimed. It wasn't a good idea to have two supernatural teens to have snowy owls out on the creative market. So Harry got to keep Hedwig because he had been around longer, while Danny had to have Spooky taken away. Harry Potter won, Danny Fenton lost, simple as that right?
He was Danny Fenton, for god's sakes! Nothing was ever easy. What had made the loss hurt even more was the critical acclaim Hedwig had, if Rowling had procrastinated on writing her novels then that could have been him and Spooky, soaking in success.
But the thing that enraged Danny was that Butch never alluded to Spooky not once throughout the entire series. He had room to allude to Nightmare On Elm Street or elements from Marvel but he couldn't squeeze in Spooky on a random poster? He couldn't have done anything to preserve Spooky's existence, to at least commemorate his memory?
Apparently not. Because not once had Spooky been mentioned.
"I really wanted a puppy."
Danny doesn't want a puppy, he wanted Spooky.