So, as always, I do not own Danny Phantom or its characters *sigh*
Anyways... On with the story.
Danny Fenton stared at the show that was -and wasn't- based off his life. He watched the show's main character, a fourteen-year-old boy, and wondered why they hadn't portrayed him as the painfully young boy who had been roped into ghost hunting at the ripe old age of twelve. He marveled at the way the show glossed over his brilliant parents, and somehow managed to make his father seem an incompetent oaf. Yes, it was true, his father couldn't aim to save his life, and he enjoyed blathering about ghosts, but it was because, first and foremost, he was a scientist. He was not a ghost hunter. He was not a bumbling idiot. In fact he was one of the most precise and careful men Danny had ever met- and using a Cola as ecto-filtrator, that would never have been his father's fault. If Jack had to be anything, he would have been field support for Maddie, who was never the scientist the show painted her as, although she had been a talented inventor, and a ghost hunter. She had never been that obsessed with ghosts, and she hadn't been a borderline neglectful parent. They were not fools, and the show's characters' were pale shades of the originals. In the program, they were plot devices, and seemed to have nothing in common besides ghosts. The show neglected the warm smiles they had shared as they watched the sunset from the Ops center. It grazed over the family trips in which his mother would tell horror stories while sitting encircled in the loop of his father's arms. It never mentioned the twos' anniversary trip to Rio where they went hang-gliding over the rainforest. That show gave them no life beyond ghost hunting, and showed them as incompetent at that, and it never gave them the personality, the love, or the warmth that the two had always shared. To Danny, that was a crime.
Danny also hated the way they portrayed ghosts in that program. Because the ghosts that came to the world were not capable of the feelings the show gave them. There were no Frostbites, Doras, Wulfs, or Dairy Kings. There was no Clockwork. And most of all, there was no Phantom. Ghosts in the real world were malevolent. They were not helpful, not kind, and very few of them had anything that resembled reason. Ghosts wreaked destruction upon everything they saw. They did not have obsessions; their sole purpose was to cause destruction. They were not people who had died; they were the embodiment of the negative emotions that often followed death. They were less along the lines of an imitation of a once living person and more along the lines of a dybbuk from Jewish mythology. The single exception being Spooky- Danny's pet owl- and the only reason he was different was because he was not even a real ghost. He was an experiment that his father had made, an embodiment of positive emotion, of love, and safety, and happiness, and peace. His father had created quite a few animals like Spooky, who were made of ectoplasm and joy, and had released them into the ghost zone with trackers. Danny could remember when his father had gone pale as the blinking red dots vanished one by one in the first hour, and the look of sorrow as his father took of his monitoring goggles and set them on the desk before shuffling upstairs. Danny could remember watching the portal hatefully before a little blob of ectoplasm fell out. Being the ghost hunter he was, his gun had been whipped out in in instant, but it was just a little owl, destabilized by some monster that had thought it easy prey and a little hole in its wing where the tracer had been, and Danny had thrown cation to the wind before dumping ectoplasm on the ghost and stabilizing it with the same equipment that it had been made from.
Danny mostly hated what the show had made him into. He despised the casual way that the opening scene had killed him. He was angry at the way the show made him seem like Casper the friendly ghost when Danny would have sooner fell into the embrace of death before he became one of the ghouls he hunted. He was dismayed every time the show seemed to imply that his parents didn't know what they were talking about when they said all ghosts were evil, and the spite doubled every time they held up his mugshot and said "Look, it's a hero ghost!" Danny loathed the way they made his human form weak, when he had spent every day since he picked up his first ecto-pistol working on honing his body into a living weapon. He growled every time they showed him come back from a ghost fight without a scrape when Danny had acquired so many scars and calluses and broken bones that the people at the hospital knew him on a first name basis. And he detested that the version of him on the show took everything he had for granted. His character was blatantly ignorant of how lucky he was to have parents who respected him enough to let him be late for curfew every night without pushing for answers, to have two friends who would have risked their lives for him, to have a sister who would stay up in the nightmare filled nights to comfort him, and that didn't even touch on the fictional aspects. Danny Phantom had ghost mentors, and ghost friends, and superhuman healing - all of which the real him envied. After all, Danny had few friends, no healing powers, no powers at all, and only one mentor, which brought him to the next thing about the show that he so despised.
Danny hated the way they turned Vlad into a villain. Yes, Vlad wasn't perfect, but he wasn't the creepy, obsessed fruit loop the show pegged him as. He was rough, and bitter, but never at Danny's parents. He was slightly arrogant, and rude, but underneath that was a marshmallow who loved Danny as the son he never had. He had a kind smile, although it rarely appeared without Danny's prompting, and a heart of gold. Danny hated that the show had made them into enemies when Vlad had been the person to stich him up night after night. It was at Vlad's house that Danny was able to truly relax, knowing that the man would have sacrificed himself to keep Danny safe any day. Danny loved Vlad, he was like a father to him, and that parental figure was a bolster to Danny whenever he felt lost. Vlad hated that Danny was so keen on ghost hunting, and had urged him to give it up and move to the safety of his Wisconsin mansion, but Danny was not to be swayed. So, Vlad did the second best thing, he ran for mayor, and won by a landslide- despite the fact that no overshadowing had taken place- he then implemented a series of reforms that took a lot of stress of the teenage ghost hunter. Also, Vlad had been the one to give Danny his serious ghost hunting equipment.
Danny had been outed to Vlad in a way similar to that of the the show; Danny had had his mobile ghost sensor go off in the night, pulled out his ecto pistol and threw on a hoodie. He had crept out of the guest room at Vlad's mansion, his family had indeed been there for a college reunion, and he had quietly tiptoed down the hall, waiting for the drop in temperature that showed a ghost in the vicinity. Of course, at the time he was still a rookie and hadn't realized that as soon as he had stepped out of the room it was significantly colder. Therefore, when the ghost dropped invisibility right in front of him he was taken completely by surprise. The following fight had been incredibly one-sided, with a beaten thirteen year old backed into a corner with blood dripping into his eyes. He had pressed his hand to a gash in his abdomen and closed his eyes, waiting for the final blow a ghost would never hesitate to deliver, when a whirring sound cut through his heavy breaths. A screech followed from the ghoul as it disintegrated in the beam of an ecto weapon, and Danny's eyes popped open only to be blinded by the residual light from the beam. Danny rubbed bright spots and blood out of his eyes, and peered up at his rescuer; a man in a rumpled white dress shirt and black slacks. At first the man, who Danny had recognized as someone from the reunion earlier, seemed suspicious of Danny, but then, he seemed to recognize Danny, and his eyes went wide as he rushed over to help him.
After that encounter, Vlad had patched Danny up every time he was hurt, lectured him in technique, funded his ever growing arsenal of ghost hunting equipment, and provided Danny with an alibi whenever he needed one, and yet, in Danny Phantom he was the main antagonist.
Another thing the show had gotten all wrong was Danny's team. Tucker, he was semi-accurate. But he wasn't as girl crazy as his counterpart, and he also had a love for white asparagus, and ate balanced meals. He was nearly as in shape as Danny was, but rarely went into the field. He was Danny's tech support, but he had other interests, like birdwatching, and baking. Tucker was an A student, and served as Danny's tutor right alongside Jazz. He was well rounded and was worth so much more than comedic relief. He was a jokester who could make someone smile even as their world crumbled, and Danny hated that the show hadn't captured that.
Jazz was less accurate than Tucker, in the show she seemed an endlessly peppy girl who was absolutely worthless at ghost hunting. She served as emotional support, but nothing more. In reality, Jazz was priceless; she kept Danny sane. She was his counselor; and unlike in the show, they spent hours together, not only talking about feelings, but also plotting out improved strategies he could use in his hunts. Jazz was also an excellent sharpshooter, but was more of a support unit than a front line fighter. She spent almost as much time poring over ghosts than Danny, and she was a wealth of knowledge when it came to the paranormal. In addition, she had been with him from the start, a worried 14 year old to his impulsive 12. In the beginning, Jazz had been the lead, and Danny the support, but as time passed she had given Danny point in favor of researching and strategy, something he was ever grateful for.
And then there was the final member of the team, the one they had based two characters off; Persephone Athis. Percy was the sum of Valerie Gray and Samantha Manson. She was too complex to have been just one flat cartoon character; even the creators could admit that, so they made two. Percy had the same olive skin of Valerie Gray, as well as her curly dark hair, and the luminous violet eyes and delicate features of Samantha Manson. She had was the same ultra-recyclo-vegetarian Sam was, and supported many of the same causes that the show gave her, but she was less in everyone's face about it. She never switched the lunch menu at Casper High, because she respected that other people had a right to their own opinions. She also had the same fiery temper of both her characters, and the same fierce ghost hating attitude as Valerie. She was simultaneously sweet and fierce, strong but vulnerable, and headstrong yet understanding. She was a Goth, but stood out among them because she loved to smile. She adored the color yellow and put it into her outfits, she smiled at the rising sun, and she spent hours dancing in the pavilion in her backyard. Just like Sam, Percy was incredibly wealthy, but hated flaunting it. She had a laugh like bells, and would have given anything to have a mother to throw pink dresses at her. Like Valarie, it was just her and her father. It had been since that fateful day when she turned thirteen and a ghost attack had left Amity Park with its first ghost related casualty. It was also the day Danny was left with a grieving best friend who painted her entire wardrobe black, except for a yellow scarf that had been gifted to her that day by her mother, who had addressed the last card she ever sent to her "ray of sunshine"
Percy was the best parts of Sam and Valarie, and she was Danny's true partner. They were a dynamic duo, and unlike in the show, they were equals. They both were capable fighters, and Danny probably would have gotten himself killed in the first year if he had been without her. Of course, that wasn't to say he hadn't come to her rescue as well. That was the beauty of their relationship. It was a mutual give and take, a dance between a pair of people that complemented each other like the opposite sides of the same coin. They were strong apart, but when they fought together they were poetry in motion. And even when they weren't fighting the connection they shared was like a neon sign. They had gotten together in freshman year, once they had both gotten used to the trauma the loss of family entailed, and now that they were both almost eighteen, a white dress was tucked in Percy's closet, and a yellow diamond perched on a white gold ring that sat in Danny's safety deposit box. In all honesty, Danny didn't know what he would do without Percy, who was in every dream of the future he could come up with, and he was achingly disappointed in the show that made his character choose between parts of her that he loved equally.
And if Danny had to choose the one thing about the show he hated most he would say it was one episode, well, a T.V. movie really. And it was "The Ultimate Enemy". He hated that they portrayed him as a cheater. That they made him a disappointment to his family when all he had ever done was to strive to make them proud. He hated that it was his future self that killed his family, though it didn't bother him as much as it should have because the show finally got the whole 'ghosts are evil' thing right. But most of all he hated that his family had been brought back to life. It sounded sick and twisted, but Danny wished the show had left them dead. It felt like walking on a grave every time he watched that episode, because he had lost family to ghosts, and he knew that death was permanent. He had struggled for months after his mother had been fatally wounded in a ghost hunt, and he had searched for a way to bring her back in the far recesses of the ghost zone. Of course it was a foolhardy search, and it had left him feeling more broken than before. It had only been through the help of Jazz, some guidance from Vlad, several dozen loaves of homemade bread from Tucker, his shared tears with his father, and his misplaced aggression with Percy that he had been able to right himself, and the way the show threated death so lightly made him seethe inside.
Danny hated that show that wasn't really based off his life. He was slightly grateful, because he got a considerable chunk of profit from it, and he was putting it towards his future. But even so, he didn't think it was worth it, to have his life manipulated in such a way felt like blatant disrespect not only to him, but to the people he cared about, and he knew that he would try to talk about getting Vlad to have it cancelled before they did something even more toxic with his family. Perhaps they could end it on a happier note; in fact maybe he could talk Vlad into having the creators allow Casper the Friendly Ghost to save the world, and perhaps they would call it something cheesy, like Phantom's Earth.
Actually, that turned out better than I thought it would, and I hope you enjoyed. Hasta luego amigos.