Little Guy Love Him

little guy love him

I might be the only one snickering about it, but I couldn't stop thinking about this all night

Donnie actually knows what it's like to be torn apart molecule by molecule

tl;dr The Danny Phantom fandom is just obsessed with Found Family and I FALL FOR IT EVERY TIME

Hear me out, people, hear me out......

FRAIDS.

that's it that's the post.

jk jk that is absolutely not the post, because I have SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT FRAIDS. Danny Phantom lore at it's FINEST.

Strap in folks, it's about time for another (weirdly long??) DP word blast!

Now this could be the "found family trope" lover in me, but I freaking love the possibilities that exist when it comes to the concept of a ghost fraid. What I've read in fics is just *chef's kiss*. We have the mental links, the ectoplasm based threads that bind everyone together, the found family idea of course, and pleeeeenty of angst potential. But I wanna talk about the nitty gritty details.

What is a Fraid, if not a subconsciously and artificially created link based on a ghost's heightened feelings of attachment, or ownership? Bear with me, I can explain; we'll use Danny and his Fraid as an example here. Typically, when introducing the idea that Danny is connected to his friends and Jazz and Dani via the concept of a "Fraid", fic authors use the image of threads created with ectoplasm to tell the reader that the group is connected together on a higher level. These threads are often a result of Danny unknowingly marking his people as his, and thereby telling the ghost world that messing with these people means messing with Phantom himself. To me, this sounds a lot like Danny is essentially layering his own ectoplasm onto his group so frequently, intensely, and even intently (despite his continued ignorance to what his ghostly side is doing), that his resulting Fraid essentially becomes a part of himself. The ectoplasmic threads are then a physical manifestation of Danny's ectoplasm as it exists in his friends.

But if this is the case, could a Fraid ever be created intentionally?

Let's lay out the apparent requirements to create a Fraid, based on the proposed example above. I'm postulating that, to create a Fraid, the ghost needs to 1) spend a sizable portion of time around the future fraid members, 2) feel strong feelings of possession, protection, obligation, or what have you, 3) maintain a large amount of affection for their persisted presence, and 4) feel safe enough around them to allow their ectoplasm to manifest like an aura, rather than keep it tightly inside and controlled. In Danny's case, all of these conditions are met by Sam, Tucker, Jazz, and Dani, and they are typically the ones you see being placed in Danny's Fraid. His parents aren't on that list, as they fail to meet condition 4, and possibly even condition 3 (which is not to say Danny doesn't feel affection towards his parents. He definitely loves them, but does he love them consistently, constantly, and in the same way as he does his friends?). While Danny is constantly choosing his friends (he chooses them day in, day out, after Sam convinces him to walk to his death, after Tucker makes a decision out of intense jealousy, after Dani hunts him, Danny is still choosing them), he isn't constantly choosing how he feels in their presence. That would be hard for anyone to do, let alone creatures whose entire being revolves around their emotional volatility. The idea of intentionally creating a Fraid is ruled out, based on the idea that, even for beings that run off emotional cognizance, feelings as vulnerable as those required for the process are difficult to create and maintain consciously.

Now how does Fraid creation actually work?

The way I've described it above, I'm going to claim that a Fraid is essentially the ghost version of a horcrux. Instead of the soul going into an object, the ghost is exposing other ghosts (or people, in Danny's case) to intense amounts of their ectoplasm (which could be argued to be their soul given form, I guess?) and the ectoplasm is then settling inside the other party, being absorbed into their core, or skin, and cementing that individual as a part of the ghost creating the Fraid. Since this kind of ectoplasm is primarily that of the ghost, it will invariably have ties to the emotions that ghost is experiencing, hence the idea mentioned above that there needs to be a prolonged feeling of relaxation and safety about the creatures in the pre-formed Fraid. This being the case, I like to think about how Fraids might function when they're made of other ghosts too, and whether or not those secondary ghosts can basically form a layer of Fraids (like one web of ectoplasm built on another web and on another etc with different ghosts being the center point....does that make sense?). Would a Fraid with mostly ghosts develop it's own impression of a core? Is there a threshold of ectoplasm needed to develop a power level in this case? That's some juicy theory building right there.

When Danny's Fraid comes onto the scene, it gets a bit wonky.

Most of the time, his Fraid is made up of two (or three if you're counting Dan) ghosts and three (sometimes liminal sometimes not) humans, and there's almost of bit of a power imbalance. I would say that both Danny and Dani end up establishing this group of people as their individual Fraids, but how do the three humans influence the ectoplasm connection? And how does the fact that Danny and Dani virtually share an ectoplasm signature influence it? (this isn't to say that they share a core or are the same people, I am a firm lover of ice core danny and water core dani, but Dani is a clone and a product of Danny's ectoplasm....do you think they have the same signature, or would Dani develop her own signature?)

Connecting this to my first question above (is a Fraid a product of a ghost's feelings of "ownership" or "possession"): if you like your humans liminal like I do, I'm going to take a chance and say that Sam, Tucker, and Jazz have developed juuuust enough of a ghost core or an ecto signature for the Fraid threads to stick to them, and that ghosts probably wouldn't be able to draw regular, non-liminal humans into their Fraid unbeknownst to them. Due to this, I believe the humans would be able to reflect the ectoplasm back to Danny, creating a stable loop that allows for the continuance of the Fraid connection. I don't necessarily think this alone would allow for a strong connection - they're human, however liminal they might be, and liminal humans don't have the same ectoplasm reserves as a ghost, nor do they have the amount of "soul-like" ectoplasm needed to cement themselves inside the other parties like Danny could ( remember the horcrux analogy?). But! But but but! If Danny and Dani share an ectoplasm signature, and a Fraid is essentially an emotional feedback loop given substance, then you have two times the ectoplasm signature being run through and reflected back to each of the Fraid members, essentially....eliminating the original weakness of their connection?? And therefore you end up with a fully formed and healthy Fraid system?? I think that's pretty neat, right?

Idk dude, is this too long? Is there a limit to how much I can talk about this? I don't think there is.

for the sake of digestibility I'm going to DEFINITELY be writing a part 2 for this!!

But think about these questions in the meantime, if you want:

Would a ghost that isn't the Fraid's formation point be able to reject or leave the Fraid system? How?

What would happen to the Fraid "head" so to speak, if their Fraid threads were severed or rejected, based on the theory that it's essentially a part of themselves implanted in another creature?

Are potential Fraid members aware of what's happening when a Fraid is in its preliminary stages?

Could Fraids be rare?

Am I projecting my feelings of isolation onto a cool kid's show?? Who knows! I feel a fanfic idea coming tho....

Part 2 coming soon!

Dash, now a Junior, has had a Realization. Fenton does not weigh nearly enough.

He was doing his usual thing, picking on the dweeb but toned down because he's Maturing With Age, when he decided to pick Fenton up. Just to make fun of him for being short, that was all.

But Fenton weighs practically nothing.

Fenton wriggled out of his grip and scurried away with his friends, but Dash couldn't stop thinking about how...concerning. That was.

Dash starts looking up nutrition.

Starts paying attention in Health Class.

Starts watching cooking channels to learn how to cook.

Starts making more food than he can eat, balanced nutritionally for Fenton, and sitting menacingly in front of the dweeb until said dweeb ate the whole thing.

Starts stalking up behind Fenton and shoving snacks into his backpack, with whispered threats against his wellbeing if he didn't eat them.

Dash, over the course of his Junior year, becomes the school's most terrifying fitness coach the student body have ever seen.

And he charges everyone for his services; except Fenton.

He's decided forcing Fenton to be healthy is his new, socially acceptable way of bullying him.

Solidarity with Gaza: Needed Now more than Ever!

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The situation in Gaza moves from bad to worse, and there seems to be a real intention to perpetuate the war even if it means killing thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza and demolishing entire residential blocks with no regard for the lives of people.

My family in Gaza, like all the people there, continues to run in a vicious circle of pain, fear, and death. Please continue to Donate, reblog, and share my campaign everywhere to help me save my family. Thank you so much for your support so far!!!

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