Underrated thing I love about your fics - short Keith!! I forget where in “Where the Apple Falls” I realized he was shorter than Lance but omg that stuff is like crack cocaine to me. It makes so much sense, especially with your characterization of him. Strong but not very tall, and certainly not leggy Lance tall (hc that Lance outgrew him during their time in space and would not shut up about it until he realized keith looking up at him was weirdly cute/hot(???) and he proceeded to never mention it again out of embarrassment). Imagining Keith as shorter than every single other McClain except for Lances mom and the children was an A+ visual. He’s just a little guy.
Keith being shorter than Lance's sisters is actually the most important thing in the world to me
Voltron x atla (3/3)
Keith teaches lance firebending but lance is distracted.
So! For the first few weeks after his accident, whenever Danny would try to help the people of Amity Park, he would be treated as a Villain.
No matter if he had just defeated the Big Bad of the Week or saved a Cat from a tree, everybody in town only saw him as a Monster or Villain to he feared and hunted down. Danny was really getting sick of trying to get them on his side, until Sam made a suggestion.
"Why not just...play into it?" She said, barely looking up from painting her nails.
It was just an offhand suggestion, but it stuck with Danny. Why shouldn't he lean into it? The people of Amity Park already saw Ghosts as Evil, and they already assumed he was in cahoots with the Ghosts attacking the town. Why shouldn't he just...play into it?
So he does just that.
From that day on, whenever Phantom was spotted he would dramatically monologue about his Evil Plans, or claim that another Rogues attack on the City was his own act of terror.
Box Ghost destroys the towns Warehouses? It was on his orders.
Ember mind controls masses of Teenagers? All part of his Plans somehow.
Every Adult in Town is kidnapped by Young Blood? Danny gave them over to a friend as a Gift.
He crafts an identity for himself as the most Vile and Horrible Ghost that has ever attacked the City, using his own infamy to cement his legend even more firmly. The town only sees a Monsterous Villain, who has eveded capture near effortlessly for months on end, who constantly attacks their City and gets away with it.
Of course he still needs an excuse for how his plans keep getting stopped, and he gets it when his girlfriend Valerie becomes the Red Huntress. Before that, he just claimed infighting or the Fentons getting lucky, but Valerie becoming the Town's Hero meant he had a plausible excuse for how he kept getting "Foiled".
Val was suspicious, because she was not as involved as Phantom painted her to be, but in the end she had no proof of him faking his defeats. And she couldn't come up with any explanations for why he would do that in the first place. I mean, who would fake being a Supervillain? It had to he something else.
This did come back to bite him a while later, when the Justice League decided that enough was enough, and dispatched Justice League Dark to recruit Red Huntress and help Deal with him.
Coincidentally, that was the same day Pariah Dark attacked the Mortal Realm and sucked Amity Park into the Ghost Zone.
And honestly? Danny had spent over a Year proclaiming himself as a Villain who commanded Ghosts to attack the Human Realm, and he had heard about the Right of Conquest being Absolute in the Ghost Zone, so why not make it official? Why not overthrow the Ghost King, become the Ghost King, and cement his identity as a Villain while also forbidding Ghosts from entering the Human Realm without his permission?
He may have gotten a bit carried away and forgotten that the Villain thing was a disguise...but hey! He was still preventing Ghost Attacks! ...mostly. That's got to count for something right?
He may have let the Bit run a bit too far...
...
Check the tags for more context!
Tim: We convince Dick Grayson to come back as Robin with a really well-made argument.
Danny: Agreed.
Tim: With words Danny
Danny: Yes.
Tim: I don't think you understand.
Danny: I understand plenty
Tim: Then why are you bringing a bat?
Danny: One. This isn't a bat. It's the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick. Two. we going to talk to him at first but if that fails *Swings*
Tim:.... how are we twins?
Danny: You took all the morals in the womb, and I gained charisma in the adoption. Which I once again want to remind you that my parents are totally up for adopting you too
Tim: I have parents
Danny: Parents with an alarmingly lack of Anti-Creep sticks.
For context, this was before he even started training to be Robin.
Lady Gotham as I saw her in @jotaroslooseeyebrowhair fic (Un)Dead Beat Dad. It's not one on one but this is how she appears in my head 👻
Danny, outed to the government as a ghostly entity, is not only wanted by the government but unable to find work because of that.
Sam gave him money to help him escape, but an unfortunate run in with more than one gang of meta traffickers blew through that in an instant.
He needs a job. He needs to find a place to sleep.
He decides to answer an ad in a newspaper, for a personal chef for an unnamed person. Is it sketchy? Yes. Is it very likely to be under the table with no government checks? Also yes.
Besides, if it turns out to be someone bad, he can just go invisible and disappear for a bit. It'll be...unfortunate, cuz he'll have to steal what he needs, but it's doable.
He arrives at the meeting place, and there's a car waiting to pick him up.
Okay.
He gets in the car. Secondary location, here he comes.
It drives to a mansion.
Oh no.
It's Oliver Queen.
Oliver Queen put up that ad.
Oliver Queen takes one look at him, hums, and says that Danny is absolutely what he was looking for. That Danny just looks like how a chef should look.
Five minutes later, Danny finds himself in a kitchen larger than his old house, internally panicking and scrolling as fast as he can through cooking lessons on youtube.
Turns out, Danny's got a knack for cooking.
Like, he's actually pretty phenomenal at it.
If the food isn't trying to come back to life and eat him, once he's got the basics down, it's pretty easy to throw together a meal.
~~~~~~
Oliver, sleep deprived and injured, meant to ask Stan to make him something to eat.
Somehow he failed step one of just texting the man, and ended up reaching out to and placing an ad in a local newspaper for a personal chef.
Naturally, when someone answers it, he decides to get them over to his place so he can apologize for his stupidity and pay them the money they lost wasting time going to him.
Except that's a kid.
A dirty, unkempt, homeless teenager.
And...fuck.
Look, Oliver isn't a complete and total jackass, and it's not like the kid can mess up much if he's in the kitchen, of all places.
So he pretends like the ad is legit. Throws the kid in the kitchen.
Accidentally finds out that the kid wasn't fucking lying about being a good chef that was out of practice, holy shit? This food is so good????
Looks into the kid's background, quietly.
...
And in true Green Arrow fashion, uncovers a government conspiracy.
demon twins
Another de-aged Danny au, but he's with Dan & Ellie & Jazz as well.
Jason has like just arrived back to Gotham, caused chaos in the underbelly due to well, 8 heads in a duffle bag, and is just starting his takeover of Crime Alley. It's going good, great even! And then he busts some sort of gang or smuggling ring run by people in white suits and there's... holy shit why do these four toddlers have Lazarus eyes?!
Is that a lab?! And Lazarus waters?! Jason might be a bit mad but he's not an asshole, he's not going to just leave these kids here to the streets. He can't just take them to the Batclan either, and as much as he begrudgingly trusts Talia, he sure as fuck doesn't trust Ras. Who knows what he'd do to four... what are they, pit-kids?
Now he's juggling his whole revenge-thing, running a criminal empire, taking over Gotham's underbelly, and being a single dad. At least the goonion seems to be down for helping, seeing as he's making Crime Alley safer...? .... Fuck he needs some proper sleep