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little-pondhead · 9 months

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DP x DC Prompt

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There are no more heroes.

Well, okay. Rewind a bit.

Danny has been doing the hero thing for a while now. He’s had a big reveal; everyone has accepted him (including his parents), the GIW disbanded, the Anti-Ecto acts repealed, and generally, everything is going great. Some of the A-Listers are even training as junior ghost hunters to help give him a break from his rogues! (Being Ghost King makes things hectic sometimes, and he just needs the extra help. Sue him!)

The point is, literally nothing is wrong with Danny Phantom’s afterlife.

And then Valerie Gray, the Red Huntress, disappears in front of his eyes.

Danny is baffled! She’s just…gone! Valerie just popped out of existence, like she was never there. But no matter how hard he searches in the Ghost Zone, he can’t find her soul anywhere. His core isn't broken in grief. So she’s not dead. Which is good. So then, where is she?

Some of the others come forward with ideas on how to find her. A few ghosts volunteer to go out into the mortal realm, an area Danny had declared off-limits, to see if she was out there. Danny approves it. He rounds up some of the friendlier (i.e., discreet) ghosts and Amity Parkers and demolishes the outside travel ban.

So everyone spreads out, looking for their dear frenemy and teammate. But it becomes apparent very quickly that something is wrong with the rest of the world.

There are no more heroes.

Every single living superhero on the face of the Earth has just…vanished. Villains are running amok; the countries are in chaos! Some aliens are invading Earth, mythical deities are trying to take over, and society is crumbling to the ground. Everything is on the brink of collapse.

Well, Danny was still there. And so were his people. They were pretty spread out, so could they just…take up the mantles? He also knew where to find the souls of dead heroes in the Zone; surely they wouldn't mind coming out of retirement for a little bit, especially if they couldn't die again. Oh! And that skeleton army leftover from Pariah Dark's reign might be useful in repelling those invading forces.

Honestly, there were more than enough hands to go around! And with the heroes gone, Danny didn't mind letting everyone out for a little break, as long as they followed his rules. They wouldn't stop the search for the other heroes, but hopefully, when they found them, the heroes wouldn't mind Danny's intervention too much. :)

In other words:

Someone fucks up, and all of Earth's living heroes are either wished out of existence or are whisked away to some far-off realm where Danny hasn't checked yet. In the attempt to figure out what's going on, Danny lets the dead run amok over the Earth as they search for clues. The skeleton army repels the invading armies, the souls of dead heroes deal with the world leaders, and his rogues and other Amity Parkers set up shop in place of famous heroes, trying to get the cities under control again.

Basically, they just do their best to keep everything from imploding until the Justice League and others are back.

(And why is it that Danny hasn't disappeared? Well, whatever caused everyone to go poof! only affected living heroes. Anyone heroes that were dead in the first place, or even just half-dead, stayed behind.)

#pondhead blurbs #danny phantom #dpxdc #reveal gone right au #ghost king au #for plot reasons #it doesn't count if the hero had died and then came back to life #lots of heroes would still be around then #but this is me pushing the halfa!jason todd narrative work with me here he deserves the fun #deadman is there too #and he's just thriving honestly. it's so nice to be around his own kind even if the world is ending #maybe ellie is whooshed away too cause she never technically died but she took up danny's moniker when he was crowned #vlad is ecstatic cause danny put him in charge of several states while they looked for clues including Wisconsin #skulker is replacing superman and just has a shitty S painted on his chest and just eats kryptonite like candy the first time he meets Lex #Kitty and Johnny take over in gotham and sam is now the new wonder woman #idk man just stupid stuff like this #the press is flabbergasted cause the fucking KING OF GHOSTS just showed up and he's 14 and just looking for some friends #Danny: hey guys sorry about the zombies and fire i'm just here to find my coworker and lil sister and maybe the other heroes #Danny: in the meantime i'll just let my army into the mortal realm to defend it while we figure out what's going on pls don't yell at us :)#the press: how do we explain this to the justice league when they come back. how do we explain that earth was saved by a 14 year old boy-#also idk which heroes are technically dead but are still kicking so if you feel like someone deserves liminal status slap it on them idc #some villains are trying for world dominance and some are just trying to find their buddies. their fight buds. where'd they go? :(#joker gets bitch slapped by a skeleton two days in and waylon becomes bffs with wulf #danny uses the watchtower as a base of operations and it's the only thing he doesn't want to give up when the heroes are back #i have no plot ideas beyond this #i just want everyone to be baffled that an army of the dead showed up while they were gone and just made sure everything stayed cool #later danny realizes he was technically the ruler of the world for a bit since his people were everywhere keeping the villains in check

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drifting-pieces-blog-blog · 3 months

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LET’S TALK ABOUT THE GENIUS OF THE INTRODUCTION!

So I don’t think I’ve talked about this yet, and shame on me for not doing it in depth if I have.

The pure beauty of the story telling when it come to character introduction in this show.

As has been said many times by the writers/directors/Oscar: They originally planned to start with Marc but then realized that the story needed to be about Steven introducing Marc to us. Introducing this world to us.

And this is a classic approach to storytelling. You typically have someone that doesn’t know anything so that the audience can learn about the world with them on this adventure/journey.

So why start with Steven?

Let’s go back to the comics!

In the comics, we start with Marc. We get Marc’s story. We see Marc’s life, his regrets and mistakes. We see him die and come back and act drastically to change.

But when we leave all of that behind, our first look at the new established life in New York is with Steven and then immediately into Jake. We don’t officially come back to Marc for some time. But that’s done at a very fast pace and you get to know Steven and Jake’s life very quickly in an introductory blurb before you even see it.

Not exactly something that can be done in a show. So we have to pick someone that the audience can follow. Someone that the audience can fall in love with and trust.

That certainly isn't Marc Spector. (It's interesting that they chose Steven over Jake, considering the personality from the comics... But that's a meta for a different day, as I have a lot to say on that).

So in the show, we first meet Steven.

(Look at this bundle of perfection)

We follow Steven and we get to know Steven. We love Steven. We would follow Steven anywhere and do anything for him.

Then we see something/someone throwing a wrench into Steven’s life and causing him problems and stress and ruining everything for Steven.

And we get our first look at Marc through Steven’s eyes.

In fact! We don’t even see Marc at first. We just see the result of Marc. The displaced jaw and people shooting at him. The bloody bodies, the car chase, the gun, the violence, the stress. We see the ruined love life, the lonely life, and the dead fish.

So we know that whatever this thing is that is causing him problems is dangerous and not to be trusted. We feel Steven’s stress and expect the worst.

Even when we first hear Marc, it’s a stressed out voice demanding that he stop. We just get to see a ghost of a man. Something dark lurking in the shadows and acting menacing. This is Steven’s view of what’s going on and this is Marc’s view of what he is to Steven at this point.

(SIDE BONUS META: The first time we hear Marc actually talk to Steven is directly after the phone call with Layla. Marc has been ghosting her and ignoring her and playing dead with her for a while now and suddenly Steven talks to her and in that one brief confusing phone call for Steven and Layla, Marc is triggered out and everything he has been setting up for both of them in what, he views, to be a perfect life without him is going down the grain. He’s stressed, he’s watching everything spiral down the same way he has been spiraling down for months now… In that one moment, of course he lets his frustration out and he yells at Steven to stop. He just wants Steven to cooperate and go back to how things used to be so that Steven can live the normal life and Marc can sit back and watch and pretend that things are okay.)

NOW we as the audience get our FIRST good look at Marc before Steven does.

What do we have here? Marc lingering behind Steven. Marc watching Steven run into danger and looking anxious, worried, and like he wants to do anything to take it all back and protect this man. Marc even looks back to check Steven’s 6. Menacing and in the shadows? Or a man that is about to risk everything just to protect Steven?

Years… YEARS of work put into making sure Steven doesn’t know about him and is happy and safe and secure… And he knows that he has to risk it all. Perhaps at this moment he is contemplating if he should. If Steven will get out of it on his own or if he really needs to find a way to step in and force Steven to black out. But Steven is scared and on to him. He knows he has to talk to Steven. Something he probably hasn’t done since they were just children.

(BONUS META: If you zoom in real good, that second reflection? The expression is just a little different than the first. The mouth is pulled just a wee bit tighter. Jake easter egg? Probably not, since the show was so careful about only hinting at a ghost of Jake… But I choose to think that we see Jake there behind Marc, much like Marc is behind Steven, looking back to watch their 6 and making sure they are safe.)

So in classic Marc fashion, he appears as a disaster and Steven sees a disaster.

Okay. That was a bad day. Marc was stressed and they were in danger. The absolute carnage that happened (Marc you really lost your cool there, buddy. You could have easily finished that jackal off and moved on. You were just angry and you lost your temper. That bathroom did not have to be so trashed.) was not Marc’s best work.

So let’s meet Marc again from Steven’s eyes now that he isn’t scared and about to die.

Yeah. Steven does not have a very good view of this man. Funnily enough, he’s seeing him in black and white, which is how he’s being presented to him at this point. He sees a violent man that is stealing his life and ruining it. All he can see is the black and white. He knows nothing else about this man.

And Marc looks right back from the black and white of himself. A man that wishes he wasn’t there. A man that only knows pain and violence. It’s almost like he’s giving up here. He’s saying “Well, I told you to stop looking and now here we are. Look all you want. You see me. Bet you wish you didn’t. If you keep going, this is what you get.”

And our previous Steven? He keeps looking. So we get a calmer less dumpster fire Marc.

No. I take it back. More of a dumpster fire somehow. He’s tired. He’s stressed out beyond reason. He’s watching everything fall apart and he has no control over any of it for the first time in his life. The one thing he thought he could control is now on fire.

And Steven sees a disheveled (handsome) man that sits alone in his storage room with his illegal things and weapons. Not a good picture. Not to mention the whole Khonshu troll bit that comes along with Marc.

Steven is not seeing Marc in good light. And the Audience feels for Steven even more. Who is this man that’s ruining this sweet cinnamon roll’s life?

So let’s give the audience another perspective.

Would you look at that! An upside down shot to show us that we we are seeing is going to be flipped upside down soon.

(I would do anything for her.)

And what cleaver writers... We see Layla instantly from Steven’s point of view. This lonely love starved man meets HER and the audience has no choice but to fall head over heels for her.

But now we are looking at Steven from Layla’s point of view.

But she isn’t seeing Steven. She’s seeing Marc being ‘Not Marc’.

We see her return to the flat and she examines Steven’s life. Before we saw everything from Steven’s point of view, but now we get to see her explore it and not just gloss over things but pick them up and examine them. Question them. Question his life.

And while she’s looking for Marc in Steven, we see Steven looking at Marc watching Layla.

She watches the fish, alone and unaware. Marc watches her, alone and mesmerized by her, desperate to see her, wanting everything in the world to be with her but too afraid to get closer. He’s in the tank for a reason here. This isn’t Steven’s fish. This is Marc’s fish. This is the replacement fish. And now, Steven is aware of what’s going on outside of his tank and Marc is the one that’s trapped.

And as the audience, we find a flicker of sympathy for this intruder. This man that watches her with the look of longing etched across his face.

But it’s quickly dashed as Marc tries to get rid of her and Steven finds out about the divorce papers. Marc’s a disgrace to try to toss aside someone as lovely as Layla. Steven has no sympathy for him.

From here we see the rift between them. We see them argue. We see Steven lash out at the images of Marc with insults. He judges Marc and Marc does nothing to try to dissuade him. Marc thinks he deserves it. He just wants to finish the mission.

But then something changes for just a moment as Steven enters into Marc’s world.

Sure, there’s the scene with the suit. The scene with the bus where he compliments Steven and acts like the impressed older brother and reasons with Steven to get control.

What changed? I’ve talked in depth about it before… But here it is again:

Harrow started talking about killing children and then asked to speak to Marc. And Steven expects Marc to demand the body again. He expects Marc to fight him for it and to be loud and complaintive like he was with Layla or like he was in the car. Clearly he can tell Marc is there and he even sees Marc watching them and Marc is talking to him too.

Yet the second child murder comes up and Harrow starts going after Marc, Steven watches Marc step back. Maybe he can sense there’s something there. Maybe he can sense that Marc needs him.

Because suddenly Steven goes on the attack. The tables flip and Steven shows his true strength. He starts to reason and show that he is always thinking things through and always picking up the little things.

In this one motion of protecting Marc, we see Marc calm down a little. This lets Marc take a minute to let Steven have his time.

And when Steven gives Marc back control, we take another look at Marc from Layla’s eyes.

She just watched who she thought was her husband having a break down and then become a different Moon Knight, solidifying that this was NOT her husband, but something ‘different’.

But suddenly Marc is there before her and she can’t pretend that maybe she really did have the wrong guy. That maybe he’s a doppelganger and Marc is out there somewhere else. Because Marc is right there before her and he’s speechless.

Yeah, that’s the look that lets him know that he fucked up.

But here we are again, not looking at Marc. We see the man in the suit with powers and control and strength.

And then he fails his mission. Not only is everything he’s been working on his whole life breaking down, but now the people he cares about are in danger and the whole reason he ran off was to keep this from happening.

And Steven comes back and the audience gets a full view of not just how Steven sees Marc, but how Marc sees Marc.

And from here, we get the hand off. The audience is now taking Steven’s perceptions of Marc and stepping over to Marc’s views of himself.

In fact, in the next episode we see the struggle between Marc and Steven, but this time we only see Marc’s side of it. Before we saw Steven and blacked out with him. Now we see Marc and we black out with him. We know Marc is trying to get things done. We see him trying to do things right and Steven is the one getting in the way.

We see a glimpse of Marc being vulnerable when he goes before the Ennad. We see that he’s a man barely in control of anything in his life. We find him broken and abused. He’s just an open wound but you don’t have the full picture. You wonder what it is about this man that tells us to trust him?

We see him fail over and over again in everything he’s been doing since we first met him!

If this was all we had, we would only see the picture of a frustrated, angry, and disaster of a man.

So what keeps us from finding Marc as despicable as he sees himself?

She’s looking at him there with new eyes. She doesn’t know what’s going on with him, but now she knows that he’s hiding things and after all his running, she’s finally cornered him and she isn’t about to give up on him.

Her persistence gives us the need to know who he is. Why does she love him so much after everything he did? She only knows part of this world and we are still going on this journey of discovery with her now.

And through her, we start to see Marc’s pain.

And honestly, it’s this scene right here that is the biggest turning point in how we see Marc.

She loves him and he loves her. You can see how much he loves her. With every fiber of his being he’s radiating such deep pain and longing as he still pushes her away and closes himself off.

And she doesn’t push back. She’s in pain too. She wants to help him and love him. Perhaps in their relationship they had struggled with this before. Him coming back from a mission with Khonshu and being in pain and pushing her away when she tries to help. She’s fallen into a pattern of letting him pull away because she knows that if she pushes too hard, he shuts down so completely.

And we go into the next scene with her letting him hold her at a distance. She’s angry at him and confused and hurt.

We see him walling himself off and she can’t reach him.

And then Steven starts to fight back again. He wants to help. He wants to prevent the violence he knows Marc can do. He wants to go home. We start to see Steven sticking up for himself, REALLY pushing back, and asserting himself.

And this next scene is still my most favorite scene there is. The first time she really sees Steven and since we, the audience, are now following Layla, this is our first time seeing Steven from her point of view. And… I would argue that this is the first time that we really see him.

(I could fall in love with both of them over and over again with this scene)

And now we are seeing Steven new all over again. We see him standing up to take on the mission instead of trying to just run back home. We see him talking to Layla and showing off his knowledge and skills. We see her falling for him and he struggles to understand what she sees in Marc, but he’s happy to be with her.

We trade off a bit when Marc and Steven continue to argue over the body. Their views of one another start to suffer again. Steven has found his strength and now he’s pushing Marc around a bit. He’s tired of being kept in the dark and pushed away.

We even get to witness Layla’s strength and that she can kick ass on her own.

And in that one scene with her and Harrow, we watch her perception of Marc shift and we follow her with new eyes. We see his guilt and regret but we see him not fight back. He is willing to throw it all away and admit to everything that she thinks of him if it means that he finally gets to keep her safe by pushing her away.

Welcome to the Duat! Or, as I like to think of it: The place where Marc’s walls are ripped away and we get to see unfiltered and pure Marc Spector. (I’ve talked about this before too).

And our perception as the audience is now playing tug of war. We follow Steven and we follow Marc on his desperate attempts to make Steven stop. He doesn’t want Steven to see him and he tries to prevent Steven, and us, from knowing him.

The more we follow Marc, the more we see his absolute terror in letting himself be known.

And at last… At long last…. Steven sees Marc for who he is for the first time.

Now, we are the audience, can see Marc. We know him. We’ve seen the real him and we know his story.

And it’s Marc’s turn to let us see Steven.

Steven the protector. Steven the capable. Steven the mighty.

And because we now know them, we can see Layla’s love.

And through them, we see her in her pain and strength.

Her determination to carry on and finish the mission for them and get a little revenge too. Because as angry and hurt by Marc as she was, she still loves him so deeply.

We’ve just watched a whole episode of Marc being hated and loathed and denied love and of Steven being lonely and without love, and now we open on Layla showing that love was always there waiting for them.

Hey look! A call back!

Only this time, she’s right-side up!

And he isn’t curled up in a little ball!

And this time, he runs to her, instead of standing at a distance.

The look on his face. Pure relief. Pure love.

The absolute desperation on her face. He’s there and the last argument they ever had isn’t the last word.

And in this moment, we are seeing them all from the same viewpoint. We see Layla the hero, Steven the hero, and Marc the hero. All three of them with their own strengths and their own love. They know the pain of the other and they can see more than what was presented to them and us at the start.

Oh… And a little bonus.

The first time Layla saw Jake:

We’ll just keep that one in mind for…you know… season 2…someday… someday…

So after all that? After all that, the audience is taken back to the start to look at them all over again. To meet them. To hold these characters in their hands so gently.

They wake up together, confirming that they aren’t alone. We see two people here working together now. (though they are very sleepy).

But They are still trapped. Two fish now, keeping one another company, but still stuck in the little tank.

At least they aren’t lonely anymore. And at least now they have love.

But maybe… Maybe the ending scene wasn’t for them. They are happy in their little tank. They aren’t the man that is lonely in a world without love.

What about the one that’s stuck outside of the tank? What about the one that is still very much alone….?

And now the audience gets the first time we see Jake:

We see him so small, framed in a little rectangular mirror watching and waiting.

We don’t yet know his story. What we do know?

His name is Jake Lockley and no one hurts his system.

#Moon Knight #Moon Knight Meta #Marc Spector #Jake Lockley #Steven Grant #Layla El Faouly #I'm back at it again #still digging #It's been so many years (2)#I miss them so much #Every time I see a gif or image I'm falling down the rabbit hole all over again #Hey it's even 1am my time while I post this! LIke old times #Why is it always midnight here #Meta now with bad screen shots!#(Hey look! A wild Meta has appeared! I'm still going on about Moon Knight MCU. I must be desperate

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