#also you have NO idea how much fun i had drawing jack and vlad in this part

[mfdragon]

The Confession (Part 1)

So yea uh.... wanted to pop off a bit for the finale and it got a little out of hand. Regardless, really hope it was worth the wait :3 (Wanted to thank @notllorstel for helping render one of the pages and @ectospacecadet for helping with some of the dialogue. You guys rock!)

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[dannyphantom-justiceleauge]

I'm glad you agree with Dani having wind powers. I have been thinking about the other halfa's and their powers and why they have them. Vlad is fire, which is volatile and hurts others but it can also keep people warm (perhaps there is hope for him in another universe) and is something often used in human invention and Vlad is very smart. Danny is his opposite, Ice. Unlike fire, ice could be used to subdue his enemies without hurting them (1/2)

(2/2) However Ice is also be sharp and dangerous (he can be mean sometimes) and it is cold, which could maybe represent how alone he feels. It could also be tied into his love for space as space is cold. If Jazz was a ghost, I think she would have water powers, since it's like a melted version of her brothers ice (lol). She is cool and collected and prefers to talk things out and understand rather than fight. She can also be rather overbearing sometimes, like an ocean. Sorry if this is long.

~ ~ ~

it’s interesting to think what the various halfa’s elements would be. makes me think of the into the spiderverse au. i like the idea that jazz would be water. it suits her. cool and collected, even sometimes associated with healing. but equally capable of devastation if used for violence. since psychology is her thing, i’d also draw a comparison to that. it’s used to help and heal, but when used by people like spectra it can be the most damaging attack possible. it can destroy people on a level deeper than physical. i’d likewise suggest that jazz would be the one to figure out bloodbending as a concept for this world, but would proceed to avoid using it. if she ever has a dark dan version of herself, i could see Black Jasmine being far more terrifying than him. when jazz goes bad, she’d go really bad

though in terms of what would push her to that point, it think it’d probably be more difficult and less difficult than what happened to danny. she is all about control and discipline. she’d use denial and psychology to manage for as long as possible. that is if it’s something that no one could have predicted or stopped. an accident. but if say it was a failure on the school or societies part... if say a case of bullying landed danny trapped in a locker during a ghost attack, unable to escape, and he died because of an attack that she was involved in. if he died with her not even aware that he was feet from her and in danger...

well i could see her losing herself in her guilt and anger at the world. he could have been saved. if he wasn’t being bullied, if the teachers had done something, if the ghost hadn’t attacked, if she had known he was there. like i said dark jazz is scary.

that aside, i also want all potential halfas to have elements associated with them now. we’re all pretty much agreed that tucker is electric type, due to his love of technology, but also his impulsiveness. electricity can do a lot of damage when not controlled properly and we’ve seen tucker on more than one occasion struggle with control. he’s overconfident and surprisingly reckless at times. when he’s in his element he’s fantastic but he’s been known to abuse power when he has it. i think that would be his main conflict as tucker ghouly, controlling his powers and using them responsibly.

sam would be representative of the element wood. which is associated with flexibility, durability, and strong emotions. because she’s our resident plant girl. she is willful and passionate but also stubborn and demanding. she demands the most of herself but also others, she wants everyone to thrive but sometimes forgets what’s best for her isn’t what’s best for other. her conflict might end up being empathy, because while she has it in spades, she doesn’t always know how to use it, if that makes sense. she tends to take things as a personal attack on her and her veiws when people disagree with her, which can be pretty dangerous, especially when people absolutely have reasons for their own opinions. she needs to learn to listen to others, if she’s going to be a proper hero

that would leave the final element, metal to val. metal is the most stubborn and inflexible of the elements. she’s strong and disciplined, unyielding in her attacks and views. but as we know that’s for better or worse. she really difficult to convince she’s wrong. she’d probably end up being one of the strongest out of them, she’d figure out the most ways to use her powers and how to shape metal to her advantage. i’m actually struck by the fun idea of val using her metal powers to make jewelry and running a small business selling it. this val would still manage to create a body armor and probably be better at maintaining anonymity with her ghost activity. though i also see her as overworking herself. she tries to do everything and ends up failing classes, alienating her friends, and too exhausted to think straight..she became a ghost before she was friends with danny, so i like the idea of them ending up friends, probably during the flour baby episode, and danny being the one to finally convince her to chill out and manage her health better. full human danny, is still all about helping people and is probably more stable and viably smart when he has time to do his homework. he’d probably offer to help her study and manage her business when too busy, and just having someone to lean on means everything to val.

until of course, plasimius kills jack fenton, and danny goes down the path of seeking vengeance and fighting ghosts. i actually don’t thing they’d know each others hunter identities at first, so they’d initially be fighting for real. danny is almost as stubborn as val. (ice is also inflexable until given the time to melt. and cold and harsh and deadly when angry). i see the green hunter being the most dangerous thing val has faced so far because danny is unrelenting. once she figures out who she’s fighting (i see her giving fenton a necklace of a star when he’s human and hunter losing the necklace during a fight and val discovering it and initially thinking it was stolen but figuring out the truth throughout the episode) fighting someone innocent, who’s justified, but still wrong, she’d be forced to learn to be more flexible and understanding, just to convince danny to stop. because let’s be real, she agrees with danny. plasmius killed his father, if she were in his shoes, he’d do the same thing, but she needs him to understand that she’s not the bad guy. not all ghosts are bad.

she’d also need to learn to be more flexible just to fight vlad/plasmius. because he is manipulative and her straight foward way of thinking and fighting would get her in trouble with him. i could see him framing her for a lot. he’d also be hanging around danny as vlad and manipulating danny that way. she’d essentially be fighting 2 different people who turn out to be the same person. vlad, the billionaire friend of the fentons who’s inserting himself into the grieving family’s lives and encouraging danny to fight vigilante justice. and plasmiaus the op ghost who literally murders people who get in his way. vlad would absolutely do everything he can to keep up the facade of innocent human. leaving all the damage to his ghost half. and val would struggle to prove that he’s evil.

that was a bit of a tangent, anyway. all of the halfa’s having elements associated with them and eventually having an ultimate team up in a universe that brings them together to fight something or another. a team up of the elements. vlad being there and joining the team up as still a villain who the team is suspicious of, but who they need to win. perhaps pariah dark escapes again but this time the mech isn’t available. and danny isn’t strong enough to face him alone. so parallel dimension team up. actually maybe not main danny’s universe. maybe it’s one of the other universes that can’t manage pariah dark on their own. possibly val’s again? if jack’s dead they don’t have a mech. might even be able to incorporate maddie inventing parallel-dimensional summoning in her attempts to bring jack back. bonus points if it’s vlad who’s funding this, knowing full well anyone summon would be unstable and turn to goo soon after arriving.

can you tell i love the into the dannyverse au? this was fun - Hestia

@nastyburger @guardianrex @five-rivers @ibelieveinahappilyeverafter @enigmaris

[five-rivers]

Exile

Prompt by @halfaqueen. My goodness, this took forever to write. I have no idea how it got so long.

.

.

.

Danny hadn't realized that exile was still a thing, but when he and Jazz had gotten expelled, and their parents had been banned or barred from basically all public places, and all of them had gotten restraining orders of one sort or another, and dozens of lawsuits had been filed against Fentonworks... Well... Officially, it wasn't exile, but that was what Amity Park was clearly aiming for with this harassment campaign.

He watched his city, his haunt, disappear over the horizon from the back window of the GAV. It was all he could do not to cry out aloud. Leaving like this felt like tearing part of himself away.

"Don't worry, Danno!" said Jack, leaning over the back seat. He wasn't driving, as he had lost his license early on in the city's war against them. "Just give it a few weeks! They'll be begging for us to come back, what with all the ghost that'll attack!"

This did not make Danny feel better.

"Jack," said Maddie, drawing out her husband's name. As clear as day, her tone said, Don't get their hopes up.

"You betcha! Because nobody can catch a ghost better than the Fentons, that's for sure!"

Jack Fenton hadn't ever been good at reading things as abstract as tones.

"They think they can stop the ghosts by closing the portal? Please! If it was as easy as that, we'd have closed it ages ago!"

Danny cringed, and sunk lower in his seat. No. None of that made Danny feel better.

Amity Park had hired other ghost hunters, blatantly replacing the Fentons, but Danny didn't know how good they were. He didn't know how good he should hope they were, either. On one hand, he wanted them to be bad, so that Amity Park would drop the restraining orders and he could go home. On the other, he wanted them to be good, so that Amity Park would be safe, so that everyone would be safe and no one would be hurt. But, then, if they were good, and everything was fine, that meant that Amity Park didn't need him any more, that he wasn't helpful, and, even though it was selfish, part of him wanted to be needed.

But, worse, what if they were good enough to defeat the more common ghosts, but then someone powerful come through, someone big, and they couldn't handle it? What if the new hunters worked for the GIW and would send the ghosts they caught off to be experimented on?

Danny had warned away as many ghosts as he could about what was happening before they left, but it didn't seem to be enough. And what if that warning got to someone who would see it as an invitation? As an opportunity to strike, now that he, Phantom, was gone.

He'd been so worried, stressed, and paranoid that he'd made himself sick. He was probably going to make himself sick again before the day was out.

"Where are we going, anyway?" he mumbled.

"Didn't we tell you?" asked Maddie. Danny shrugged. "We're visiting some relatives of Jack's. They have an interest in the supernatural, and they offered to let us stay with them while we look for a more permanent solution."

"Yep!" said Jack. "My favorite cousin, Cory! She's not quite a ghost hunter, but she has that Fenton blood for sure!"

"Cordelia Nightingale," said Maddie. "I don't think that her branch of the family has been Fentons since the sixteen-hundreds."

Danny swallowed. He was not a fan of the name 'Nightingale,' all things considered. It reminded him too much of pain and Sam pushed up against a wooden stake.

He decided this, on top of everything else, was a bad omen. He bet that 'cousin Cordelia' was going to turn out to be a ghost or, somehow, something worse. Like a witch. Or she had something like Freakshows staff. Or she grew blood blossoms for fun. Or she was part of a cult.

Ugh, why did that sound like something that might happen? What was his life?

Half gone, that's what.

Jazz patted him on the knee. "Maybe it'll be nice?" she said, hopefully.

"Maybe," said Danny.

He didn't have high hopes.

.

Sam probably would have liked the house. Danny didn't. The Gothic architecture only accentuated his fears. He frowned up at the spikes on the railing and the darkly painted boards. No. He didn't like this house at all.

He wanted to go home.

But, at his mother's prodding, he bent and picked up his suitcase. Most of his things were still at home and, if this lasted longer than a week, would then be put into a storage locker along with the rest of the family's belongings, to await a time when they once again had a house of their own to live in.

Jack bounced up the steps and pressed the doorbell with his thumb. Almost at once, a thin woman with graying brown hair opened the door. She wore a black turtleneck and a dark, straight skirt that ended at her ankles. Somehow, she made the outfit look practically Victorian.

"Cory!" exclaimed Jack, giving her a trademark Jack Fenton hug.

Both Jazz and Danny cringed slightly. That felt a bit too familiar for someone who he hadn't seen for literally their entire lives. Danny just hoped this wouldn't be Vlad all over again.

But, to his surprise, Cordelia gave Jack a thin smile and hugged him back. She extracted herself and stepped away from the door, into the house.

"Please," she said, "come in. You must all be tired. Amity Park is hours away."

One by one, the Fentons passed through the door, Danny bringing up the suspicious and paranoid rear.

"You must be Jasmine and Daniel," said Cordelia, closing the door. It wasn't quite dark inside the house, but it did feel rather dim. It smelled sweet, but dusty. Like flowers. Old, dry flowers.

"Jazz and Danny, please, Ms. Nightingale," said Jazz.

"Call me Cordelia. We're family, after all."

Was that ominous, or was Danny just paranoid? Well, it wasn't paranoia if people really were out to get you, right?

His breath went cold in his mouth, and something moved out of the corner of his eye. He whirled, trying to trace it.

He couldn't see anything. His ghost sense hadn't gone off.

"Danny?" said Maddie. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just thought I saw something."

"Probably my cat," said Cordelia, calmly. "She's a shy little thing, but curious. Don't be surprised if you don't see her again."

"Right," said Danny, doubtful, but not wanting to press the point.

"Now, I've cleaned out rooms for you upstairs," she gestured, and began to lead the way.

Danny started to follow, but another shadow moved at the edge of his sight, this one distinctly humanoid. He turned again, trying to find what cast it. There was nothing. He hurried to catch up with the others.

"Do you live here all alone?" he asked as they climbed the stairs.

"Oh, no," said Cordelia. "This place is much too large for one person. I let out rooms to some nice young ladies who work in town. None of them are here right now, of course, but I'll introduce all of you at dinner."

Well, there went that theory. He glanced back down the stairs. There was definitely a chill in this house.

"You didn't have to give us this much space," said Maddie, snapping Danny's attention back to the conversation. "We should pay you."

"Nonsense. You're family, and those rooms weren't being used anyway. Here, this one has a king mattress, so you two will want this one, even if it is a bit tight, and Daniel, Jasmine, you two take the ones on either side."

Danny and Jazz shared a look. It was a lot easier for Jazz to cover for Danny, or for Danny to sneak into her room for help, when they were next to each other. But there was nothing to be done. They shrugged.

It didn't matter who took which room. Jazz went left. Danny went right.

The room was a lot like the rest of the house. Old-fashioned and dark. It was also meticulously clean and decorated like something out of an old movie. It looked like a set piece. It really did.

Then again, Cordelia did say she had just cleaned the rooms. It wasn't anything to get nervous about, even if it did make Danny feel like he was the main character in a horror film.

He put down his suitcase.

"The bathroom is just down at the end of the hall. The schedule is posted next to it, make sure you write down when you want to shower, so you don't disrupt anyone," said Cordelia, still talking to Jack and Maddie in the hall. "The kitchen is downstairs and in the back. If you take the last of something from the refrigerator, write it down on the shopping list. Otherwise, go ahead and make yourselves at home. Freshen up, take a nap. Dinner is at six."

"Do you want any help with that?" asked Maddie. "You're cooking for an awful lot of people."

"No, no, I'm more than used to it."

"Alright. Did you catch all that, kids?"

"Yes," said Jazz.

"Yeah," said Danny. He wanted to look for whatever was giving him this chill. He didn't like the idea of something supernatural sneaking up on him or his family while he slept.

.

He couldn't find it, and it was driving him crazy.

There was something in this house, even if Danny couldn't see it as anything but a shadow in his peripheral vision. Jazz couldn't see it at all, but she believed him after that whole thing with Youngblood.

Even if they couldn't find the thing, however, they found lots of other... things. Creepy things. Dead-eyed porcelain dolls. Dusty portraits. Bundles of dried herbs. Weird sculpture things. Light fixtures that should have been updated before Danny was born. A stuffed cat. A closet full of brooms.

"You know what I haven't seen?" asked Danny, as it turned five o'clock.

"No," said Jazz. "What? Ghosts?"

"A litter box," said Danny.

"That doesn't really mean anything," said Jazz. "It could be in one of the bedrooms, or there's a cat door and the cat goes outside."

"Maybe," said Danny. "Let's check out the yard."

This far from the nearest town, the yard was big and cut into a forest that loomed darkly over them even in the bright sunlight. The yard itself was full of flowering plants, but...

"I think these are all poisonous," he said. "At least, a lot of them are."

"Isn't that normal for decorative plants?" asked Jazz. "They weren't bred to eat."

"Yeah, I guess," said Danny, frowning. "But would you necessarily want a cat out here with all this?"

"Cats are carnivores. They wouldn't eat the plants. Can you see the neighbors?"

"No. Too many trees."

"How far away are we, I wonder?"

"It can't be that far," said Danny. "Not if her boarders commute to town."

"That's true. We're not in the wilderness." Jazz scanned up and down the height of the trees. "Not really."

"Maybe a little bit," said Danny. He could imagine some of those trees being hundreds of years old. The ground might not have been untrod by human feet, but... "Does everything here just sort of feel... off? Or is that just me?"

"I don't know," said Jazz.

Gravel crunched in the driveway, audible even from the other side of the house. Jazz and Danny walked to the corner of the house so that they could see around the corner and watch what was happening.

A small white car was pulling into the driveway. It stopped next to the GAV. As they watched, three young women stepped out. One of them had long, dark hair and wore a red sweater and skirt, reminiscent of Cordelia's. The second had pale blond, almost white, hair and wore a deep brown shirt and skirt. The third had red hair, and wore white. All of them had wicked looking boots and matching leather purses.

"Okay," whispered Jazz, pulling Danny back around the corner. "I... Maybe they just like to match?"

"I hate this so much," said Danny. "I want to go home."

"Maybe whatever is going on here is friendly?"

"We are literally never that lucky," said Danny. "I hope it's just a ghost. I can deal with ghosts. It's probably a ghost."

"Really?"

"No. Let's go in. We're going to have to meet them eventually."

.

"This is Sofia," said Cordelia, indicating the dark haired woman. "This is Alison." She put her hand on the blonde's shoulder. "And this is Morgan." She nodded at the redhead. "Girls, these are my cousins, Jack, Maddie, Jazz, and Danny."

Three sets of eyes moved sequentially from Jack, to Maddie, to Jazz, to Danny. They stayed on Danny.

"It's nice to meet you," said Sofia, still looking at Danny.

He tried to hide his discomfort. Could they tell he was half-ghost? He hoped not. That was his trump card if everything turned out as badly as he feared and he had to get his family out in a hurry.

What he wouldn't give for a piece of concrete evidence right now. Without it, his parents would never listen to him. They hadn't with Vlad.

They were still looking at him. Jazz slipped in front of him.

"So!" she said, brightly. "Dinner?"

Danny pushed back in front of Jazz. "Yeah! It's six, right?"

"Well, it sounds like the kids have inherited that good old Fenton appetite! Huh, Cory?" added Jack

"Yes, yes, come along. Girls, why don't you go ahead and get the table started. No, Maddie, the girls know how I like it, I'll show you later. You just sit down and relax." Cordelia disappeared into the kitchen.

The three younger women moved smoothly around the room, pulling plates and silverware- real silver silverware- from a china cabinet. They set the long table in the middle of the room with rigorous formality. There were more kinds of forks at each place setting than Danny had seen even when having dinner at Sam's. They topped it off with two candelabras.

Cordelia emerged with a casserole dish. Whatever was in it was thick, roughly cylindrical, and covered with a thick red sauce.

"Wow! Is that a roast?" asked Jack.

"Yes," said Cordelia. "I always make this when new guests arrive. The girls have all had it."

The 'girls' nodded as one, and retreated to the opposite side of the table. They almost moved in sync with one another.

Cordelia put the roast on the table, and went back to get side dishes. This gave the three women more time to stare at Danny.

On occasion, Danny did want attention, acknowledgement, what have you, but this scrutiny would have been a bit much even when he was at the height of his 'look at me' phase. He kept a tight hold on his core to keep himself from flickering invisible.

Cordelia came back with two serving dishes full of green... things. Possibly vegetables, but Danny didn't recognize them. She then started to, with excruciating slowness, carve the roast.

The slow exposure of the meat under all that sauce was enough to make Danny vaguely ill. It was too... wet. Too vibrant and too gray all at once. He swallowed against the smell.

"Wow!" said Jack, as Cordelia dropped a slab of meat on his plate. "This looks great, Cory! What kind of meat is it?" He was already sawing away at the flesh. It was all Danny could do to keep himself from slapping it away from him.

"Beef," said Cordelia, smiling at him as she carved. "Locally grown and harvested. It's an old family recipe, from before our branches split and we were all Nightingales."

"You mean Fentons!" said Jack around a mouthful of meat.

Cordelia's smile turned brittle. "However you would like to put it, Jack." She went around the table, serving herself last.

Danny made no move to pick up his utensils. The women on the other side of the table ate while watching him, barely looking at their food. Jazz was the only one who seemed to notice, and when Danny caught her eye and shook his head, she put down the bite of meat she had picked up, turning her focus to the vegetables.

"So," Jazz said, "what do you three do?"

Sofia's eyes flicked briefly to Jazz. "Graphic design," she said.

"That must be interesting."

"It's a job."

Danny didn't eat that night.

.

"I have some granola bars," said Jazz, grabbing his arm before he entered his guest room. Not that he intended to sleep there. Or anywhere.

"You keep them," he said. "I'm fine. You didn't eat much, either."

"You didn't eat anything," said Jazz.

"I'll be okay." Danny flared his eyes. "I've got an extra reserve, remember?"

"If you say so," said Jazz. She was frowning. "Danny... Let's share a room tonight."

"What?"

"I don't like how those three were looking at you," she said. "I can't believe Mom and Dad didn't notice..."

"They don't notice anything," said Danny. He pulled Jazz into the dubious safety of his room. He didn't want to have this conversation out in the hallway. "Wait," he said, eyes flicking over the room. "Where's my suitcase?"

Jazz shrugged. "Kind of reminds me," she said, not quite whispering. "I was thinking about barricading the door."

Danny hissed through his teeth. "I put my thermos up here when we went to eat. It's gone, too."

"If this were a horror movie, this would be when we yelled at the screen for the characters to leave."

"Think we can convince Mom and Dad?"

"Maybe together?"

Danny shrugged. "Let's give it a try."

They left the bedroom, and knocked on their parents' door. There was no answer.

Jazz frowned. "Maybe they have their earplugs in already," she said. "Can you, you know." She made a gesture where her arms crossed each other.

"Let's see," he said, going back to the bedroom. He waited until Jazz shut the door to turn invisible and phase through the wall.

Passing through the wall felt... odd. Like walking through layers of cobwebs. He shook his head as if to clear it and surveyed the room. Jack and Maddie were already in bed. He made a face and stepped back into the other room, becoming visible and tangible for Jazz.

"They're asleep," he said, shaking his head.

"First thing tomorrow morning, then," Jazz said, wringing her hands. "Maybe- Do you think we should sleep in the GAV? Put up the ghost shield?"

"I'm not even sure that this is a ghost," said Danny. He walked around the bed, part of him still looking for his missing suitcase. "But you have a point, I just..." He glanced at the wall his room shared with his parents'. If he and Jazz slept in the GAV, Jazz would be very safe, but their parents would be vulnerable. If he stayed here, and Jazz slept in the GAV, she'd be safer than sleeping alone in the house, and his parents would be safer, but if something happened to her, he wouldn't be able to react to it, he wouldn't be able to protect her. "I don't know."

"Let's at least go down and look. Maybe you left your suitcase in there, after all?"

"I don't think so," said Danny.

"We can get the weapons locker."

Danny blinked. "I almost forgot about that. Yeah. Let's go."

They were halfway down the stairs when Jazz grabbed his shoulder. "What?" whispered Danny.

"I can't hear anything."

"Huh?"

"This house is old. These stairs creaked when we were walking on it before. Why isn't it now?"

Danny bit his lip. "Let's keep going." He put his hand on Jazz's and made them both invisible.

"I can't see my feet," said Jazz.

"Just be careful," said Danny, continuing down the stairs. "I'm going to phase us through the front door, okay?"

"Fine."

It was still twilight when they stepped outside, the first stars just beginning to show. It wasn't hard for them to navigate, slipping around the white car, but when they did, and finally got a good look at the GAV, they froze.

Jazz said something very un-Jazz-like. Danny let his invisibility fade.

"What happened?" asked Jazz, in shock.

"It looks like someone beat it with a crowbar," said Danny, almost reverently, touching the crumpled metal. "A really big, really fast crowbar."

"Danny, this glass is supposed to be bulletproof."

"And ghost-proof," agreed Danny. "Let's go barricade your room. Think it can get through a dresser?"

.

The thing about being under high levels of stress for long periods of time was that it was tiring. Exhausting, even. So, even though Danny didn't intend to sleep, he did.

He woke up unable to move, something heavy weighing down his chest. His eyes fluttered open. Something huge and dark, the shadow he'd only glimpsed before, loomed over him, pressed down on him. He could see Jazz's bright hair hanging off of the bed above him. He tried to call out, to warn her, to get her to run, but he couldn't speak.

He couldn't breathe-

.

When his eyes opened again, light was weakly streaming through the thick glass of the windows, making the dust in the room sparkle gold. He sat straight up, breathing hard. He was still in Jazz's room, the dresser pulled across the doorway. Why do that and then leave him here? It didn't make sense.

"What's wrong?" asked Jazz, voice deep and crackled with sleep. She yawned.

Danny told her.

"That sounds like sleep paralysis."

"Like what now?"

"Sleep paralysis," said Jazz. She yawned again. "Some people get it. They wake up, but they're still asleep and they can't move. And also they hallucinate."

"That sounds fake."

"You sound fake."

"You know what? That's fair. That's actually fair. This whole situation sounds fake, so why not add sleep paralysis to the whole thing? It's better than an actual literal demon." He took a deep breath. "What do we do now?"

Jazz licked her lips and ran a hand through her hair.

"We tell them that the GAV has been trashed, that those women were staring at you like they wanted to eat you all dinner, and that your clothes were stolen. And then I'll spell it out for them, if I have to."

"What, that this place is probably haunted or possessed and Dad's cousin is a witch?"

"No," said Jazz, making a face. "That'll probably only make them want to stay even more. That those three are probably pedophiles who stole your clothing and wrecked the GAV so we couldn't leave, and that neither of us felt safe sleeping alone. Sorry. Then we'll make them call a cab."

"No, no, that's fine. That's a better explanation than I could come up with. Let's do that. I would honestly rather stay at Vlad's than here."

"Yeah," Jazz dragged her hand through her hair again, and grimaced. "Let me get dressed, first. Do you see my brush over there?"

"No," said Danny.

Jazz looked around the room. "Actually... Where is my suitcase?"

"It was-" Danny stopped. "It was in that corner when we came in, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," said Jazz. "Okay, forget getting dressed. We're talking to Mom and Dad now." She swung out of bed and made her way to the door.

Danny phased through her, so he would reach the dresser first and easily pushed it out of the way. He stuck his head out the door, looking both ways for Cordelia and the borders.

The door to the room next to Jazz's, their parent's room, was open.

"Shoot," said Danny. He walked over. "They're not here."

"Downstairs? Maybe they went to get breakfast." Jazz emerged from the room crossing her arms over her chest.

"Maybe," said Danny. He had a bad feeling about this.

Cautiously, they made their way down the stairs and peered into the kitchen. No one was there.

"Hello, children," said Cordelia, directly behind them.

They jumped, both trying to get away and spin at the same time. Jazz clipped her elbow on the doorway and almost fell. Danny caught her and pulled her back up.

"If you are looking for your parents, you just missed them."

"What do you mean?" asked Jazz, a little more sharply than she usually would.

"I mean, they just left," said Cordelia mildly. "They took that vehicle of yours to town to go shopping. Something about not eating me out of my house. It was very kind of them."

"But the GAV was wrecked..." said Jazz, even as Danny gave a tug on her arm.

"Was it?" asked Cordelia, smiling. "It seemed fine when they left. You should get dressed, though, Jasmine, and, Daniel, are those the clothes you were wearing yesterday?"

"Our clothes are gone," said Jazz.

"You left them in your car? Well, no wonder you're looking for your parents. I think I might have some old clothes that will fit you. Come along, now." She turned.

Possibilities tumbled through Danny's head. A large part of him wanted to just grab Jazz and fly away to find their parents in town, but he estimated that there was a pretty good chance that they weren't in town, but trapped here somewhere. Jazz had apparently made that same calculation, because she was giving him the 'don't you dare use your powers' head shake.

Fine. Okay. Play along it was, then.

Cordelia lead them into a dusty ground floor room full of chests. She opened one, knocking free a number of cobwebs. "These are a little old fashioned, I'm afraid, Daniel, but it has been a while since a boy your age lived here." She handed him a small, neat stack of clothing. "And these are for you, Jasmine. I wore them when I was about your age. I grew a few inches, after that."

"Right," said Jazz, already backing away. "We'll just go... change... then. Right Danny?"

"Yeah," said Danny.

Jazz didn't speak to him until they were back upstairs. "What now?"

"Now," said Danny, "I go ghost and see if Mom and Dad are trapped in a dungeon under the house or something. If not, I take you and get the heck out of here. If they are, I rescue them, we get the heck out of here. We'll steal Cordelia's car or something."

"Not much of a plan."

"Don't kid yourself. We never have a plan. Do you want to get dressed, first, or...?"

"Pass."

"I'll have to bring you with me. I don't want to leave you alone up here while I'm searching," warned Danny.

"I know. I don't want to be alone here, either."

Danny took a breath and-

Did not go ghost. He doubled over, gasping for breath, transformation rings flickering to nothing around him as the shadows pressed inward, suffocating him. The huge fingers around his chest- The almost-human silhouette-

"Danny?" asked Jazz, alarmed, shaking his shoulder. "What's wrong? What's happening?"

"Not," wheezed Danny, "sleep paralysis."

The shadows crept up over his eyes and everything went dark.

.

When he woke up, he was wearing different clothes. Very different clothes. They were all white and loose. He wasn't sure if he should call them robes, but they had that kind of feeling. His shoes were gone. He was in his guest room, on the bed. Jazz was nowhere to be seen.

Danny should have taken his family and run as soon as he saw that not-ghost shadow. He swallowed, shaking, and clenched his fists. It was still here, watching him. He could feel it, even if he couldn't see it.

Okay. First step, get out of here.

He swung his feet off the bed. As soon as they touched the floor, something twined around his ankle and rapidly climbed up his leg. He gasped and yanked himself back, trying to free his knee from the shadow twisted around it. It held fast, firmly squeezing his thigh.

Danny growled. This wasn't the first shadow he had fought. He gathered ectoplasm in his hand and poured energy into it until it burned brighter than magnesium. The shadow retreated, and Danny scrambled to stand on the middle of the bed, ectoblast still in his fist.

"Now, now, no need for any of that."

Cordelia stood in the doorway, not the least bit surprised to see Danny wielding supernatural powers.

"Where's my family?" demanded Danny.

"Safe," said Cordelia, neutrally, "and they will continue to remain so."

Danny shifted, and the bed springs squealed. "What do you want?" he asked.

"My heritage. Come along. I will explain as we go." She turned in the doorway and looked over her shoulder. "Our shadow will not trouble you, should you follow now."

Danny clenched his jaw at the threat but gingerly climbed down from the bed and followed Cordelia across the frigid floor.

"Our last common ancestor was Elizabeth Nightingale," said Cordelia. "She was married to James Fenton. They had two children, John Fenton-Nightingale and Mary Fenton-Nightingale." She paused. "Elizabeth was knowledgeable in what would have been called witchcraft, and she was very, very good at it."

They climbed down the stairs to the first floor. All of the lights were off.

"But, as these things happen, she died. A mistake with a summoning." Cordelia turned into a long hallway Danny had missed in his earlier explorations of the house. "John and Mary were divided on how to handle her legacy. John," the name was said with anger, "decided that Elizabeth's craft, her knowledge, was evil, and decided to destroy it. He burned generations of Nightingale knowledge in a single night. When Mary tried to stop him, to salvage her mother's legacy, he tried to burn her, too. He denounced her as a witch."

"I'm sorry about that," said Danny. "I really am." After all, he knew exactly what that felt like. "But I don't see what that has to do with us. That was hundreds of years ago. A bit late for revenge, don't you think?" A sufficiently disturbed ghost wouldn't, but Cordelia was, as far as Danny could tell, human.

"This isn't about revenge," said Cordelia. "Besides, it has everything to do with you. Of the two of us, you are the one who met the man, Phantom."

"What are you talking about?"

"There's no need for you to play coy with me, young man," said Cordelia. "Why else do you think I put so much time and effort into getting you here? The magics to turn your town against your parents weren't child's play, after all." She bent and seized the corner of a rug, pulling it up and back to reveal a trap door. "Neither was calling the shadow to keep you bound." She lifted the ring handle on the trap door, pulling it open. "After you."

Danny stared down the dark hole below. There was a metal ladder, but he couldn't tell where it ended. A very faint light from somewhere to the right reflected off of some of the rungs.

"Is this where you reveal you're a cannibal?" asked Danny, unimpressed. "Is that what horror movie this is?"

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Hardly. Although you and Jasmine refusing to eat with us last night made everything harder than it had to be."

That definitely wasn't Danny's stomach growling at the reminder that he hadn't eaten since lunchtime yesterday. "Drugged, was it?"

They stared at each other over the trap door.

"If you refuse to cooperate, we can always use Jack. Or Jasmine."

Danny's lips twitched as he held back a snarl. "Fine," he snapped, angrily climbing down, into the hole.

It turned out that the ladder wasn't terribly long after all. It descended into a basement of normal height.

That was, however, the only normal thing about the space. Far from simply being unfinished, the floor of the basement seemed to be stone. So were what little he could see of the walls. It was like the basement had been carved from one huge piece of bedrock, but that couldn't be possible. Danny didn't know, well, anything about geology, but he was pretty sure houses usually weren't built on stuff like this.

To the right, there was a small table with a single burning candle on it and two chairs, one on each side. Beyond that, Danny could make out a circle on the ground marked with chalk.

The cold feeling that had been plaguing Danny since yesterday was a hundred times stronger in this room. His core was alert, but the relief that his ghost sense usually brought just never came.

The strain was beginning to ache.

"Sit down," said Cordelia, indicating the chair closest to the chalk circle.

Danny complied, tense, and Cordelia moved the candle to one side, taking out a book and setting it on the table. The book was old and singed, the edges of the leather cover and several of the pages burnt and curled. Cordelia stroked it, reverently.

"This is all that Mary managed to salvage from the flames," she said. "Just this one book, out of so many. All that knowledge lost. Elizabeth was the last one to have it."

Danny heard movement in the dark corners of the room and turned his head to Sofia, Alison, and Morgan emerging, all of them in robes similar to his own, but in their own colors. They came close, and grabbed the back and arms of his chair.

"You asked me what I wanted. I want Elizabeth Nightingale."

A surprised laugh, almost a scoff, forced its way between Danny's lips. "Well, I'm sorry, but I don't exactly have her in my back pocket. Do these pants even have pockets?"

"You might not have her," said Cordelia, annoyance creeping into her otherwise level tone, "but you can get her. Bring her back from beyond."

"Uh, not sure what's in your book, but, contrary to popular belief, not all dead people know each other. She might not even be a ghost. She might have moved on."

"She hasn't," said Cordelia, almost smiling. "Not with the summoning she was doing. We are going to send you to her, and you are going to bring her back." She tilted her head to one side. "We could do this with any blood relative. The original plan was to use Jack, but your condition makes you so much more open to this kind of thing. Your chances of success are much higher."

Danny crossed his arms. "And if I don't succeed, you'll make Dad and Jazz try."

"That's right."

"Why don't you do it?" asked Danny. "You're a blood relative, aren't you?"

"Sadly, the ritual requires four people."

"Yeah, that's the only reason, huh?" said Danny, because he liked to antagonize people he couldn't strike back against in other ways, and also because he was an idiot.

"As I said, we can always use one of the others if you do not cooperate."

"And you'll let us all go if I do?"

"If you bring back Elizabeth, yes."

"Fine," said Danny. "What do I need to do?"

"Very little," said Cordelia. "Give me your hand. Your right hand."

Reluctantly, Danny held out his hand. Cordelia took it and wrapped a thin, white cord around it.

"That will lead you to her."

"I thought you were sending me to her," said Danny.

"You won't be in exactly the same spot," said Cordelia.

Then she whipped a knife out from under the table and sliced deeply into Danny's hand. He pushed back, away, holding his bleeding hand close to his chest. The only reason the chair didn't tip back was because the other three witches were holding on to it.

"Go stand in the circle," ordered Cordelia.

In a fit of pique, Danny phased backwards through the three women holding the chair, not bothering to wait for them to move away to let him go. The shadow pushed uncomfortably against his shoulders, but did not otherwise protest.

The circle was simple, no runes or symbols, just a single line of white chalk on the dark stone. Danny stared at it for a long moment, before stepping over it and standing at the center, his elbow dripping blood as it ran down his arm from his hand.

"Alright, girls, you know what we need to do," said Cordelia.

.

Danny stood in a field of washed-out red grass. Overhead, the sky billowed with rolling, boiling gray clouds. They seemed too close. The air smelled of smoke. The horizon was blurred and warped, as if Danny were looking at it through thick, wavy glass, or as if in a dream.

This wasn't the Ghost Zone.

He took a deep breath, the smoke washing through him. Okay. He was here. Now he needed to find Elizabeth Nightingale.

He looked down at his hand. The white cord had been turned red with his blood, and it had grown longer, reaching back over his shoulder.

"Eat your hear out, Ariadne," muttered Danny. He looked over his shoulder.

A forest was on fire.

The tall, straight, slender trees burned from their tops, like candles. Their trunks were bare, entirely free of leaves, needles, or branches. Danny should have felt the heat, even at this distance. He didn't.

The bloody cord led between the trees.

"Right," muttered Danny, "because nothing can be easy."

Resigned, he started walking towards the trees and discovered that the 'grass' on the ground actually consisted of thin-walled ceramic-like tubes. Fragile ceramic tubes. The ones he stepped on shattered and cut into his bare feet. He hissed, resisting the urge to hop around and get even more shards stuck into him. The bottoms of his feet felt wet and hot. He tried to phase the shards out and couldn't.

"Is this hell?" asked Danny, aloud. "This has to be hell. Ancients."

He couldn't feel the shadow near him anymore, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. Despite the 'grass,' he hesitated to try and go ghost to fly over it. He didn't want to pass out onto the tubes and break them even more. He didn't want those shards in his face or hands.

The squelching of his blood as he shifted his weight decided it for him. He couldn't walk over all of this.

He sent one last look around him for the shadow and summoned his rings. He was relieved when they flowed smoothly over him, transforming him into a ghost, into Phantom.

His normal hazmat suit did not appear, however. Instead, the white robes he had been dressed in turned black. Danny frowned at this. He was not a fan. He wanted his hazmat back.

Whatever. There were more important things to focus on. For example, both his blood and the cord had turned a lurid, ectoplasmic green. Much easier to see against the red-hued backdrop of this world.

He lifted up off the ground and flew on, occasionally pausing to pull shards out of his feet. His accelerated healing made the wounds scab over quickly. The cut on his hand, however, continued to bleed freely. This was beginning to concern him. He didn't have an infinite supply of blood. Or ectoplasm. Whatever.

As he approached the burning forest, he expected to start feeling heat, but even when he was right at the treeline, hovering midway up the impossibly tall, thin tree trunks, he couldn't feel anything. It wasn't hot. It wasn't cold. The smoke didn't smell any stronger.

Even so, he knew fire didn't have to be hot to burn. Fire was a chemical reaction, and Danny had no intention of being one of the reactants.

That was, if this place obeyed anything like normal physical laws. Since the trees hadn't actually burned down at all, the fire staying at the same height, he had to conclude that they didn't.

Still. He was going to stay away from the fire. Briefly, he considered flying over the forest, but the cord angled ever so slightly down, and he didn't know how the cord would fare trailing through the fire. Nothing the witches had said made him think it was indestructible.

He flew under the fires. It was bright underneath the trees, in a sort of inverse of a real forest. Bright, dry, and somehow brittle. Danny flew cautiously. This might nor be the Ghost Zone, but he didn't trust it not to have carnivorous landscape features, and even Earthly forests had their dangers. Lions and tigers and bears.

Oh my.

The angle on the cord began to point down more sharply. Danny was getting closer. The forest was also becoming stranger. The tree trunks bled, and glowing eight-legged flies licked at the ichor. Flowers of sickly fire bloomed from the ground in intricate geometric patterns.

Then, amid the burning brightness, Danny saw a house. A big house. A castle, even, its sides built into the burning trees, its pennants alight with flame, smaller fires moving, no, patrolling the battlements.

Danny quickly went invisible. He had a horrible suspicion that Elizabeth would be in the dungeons of that castle. The cord was going to make him hilariously easy to see, not to mention that he was still dripping blood. This was going to suck so much.

But as Danny approached, the fire creatures did not appear to have noticed the cord at all. Some of them even passed through it without slowing down.

Okay. So, as shocking as it was, Danny had actually caught a break.

Slowly, relying on the fire creatures to open the doors, Danny made his way through the castle and down. Down. Down.

The walls down here glowed, as if with heat, but it was a dull, old, tired glow. A rosy cherry color that burned Danny's eyes and made his head pound. Doors in the walls were made of wood that burned from the inside, veins of embers streaking their surface. The bars set in them glowed white-orange.

The green cord snaked across the floor and wove in between the bars of one of these doors.

Danny stopped. He was quite sure Elizabeth was behind that door. But...

Was freeing her the right thing to do? He had gotten the impression that she was dangerous. At least as dangerous as those witches. Even to save his family, should he set someone like that loose on the world?

But Danny had made this decision and all decisions like it the moment he died in the portal. That was the essence of an Obsession.

Besides. Elizabeth was family, too.

He held out his hands, letting frost form on his fingers and palms and pressed them against the door. Once again, he wondered why he couldn't feel any heat. He should. His ice should at least be registering the pressure, the power drain, of something trying to melt it. It didn't.

Ice spread over the door, extinguishing the light and making the metal creak. Feathery tendrils wound up the bars and encased the hinges. The wood began to fall into ash, as if the fire had been the only thing holding it together, and the bars clattered to the ground.

The inside of the cell was incandescent white. The only dark spot was a huddled, burnt black figure in the corner. The cord let straight to it.

Danny, very emphatically, did not want to go into that room. He hovered at the threshold.

"Elizabeth Nightingale?" he called, softly. If the falling bars hadn't alerted the fire creatures to his presence, he wasn't going to ruin that luck by speaking too loud. "Elizabeth?"

The figure abruptly lurched sideways and fell. Danny flinched. Bit by bit, the figure clawed their way towards the door, dragging itself onward.

Danny could hardly bring himself to watch. Part of him wanted to help. Part of him wanted to run far, far away and never come back.

But, at last, the ruined and horrible body made it to the threshold. It reached up with a claw-like hand and grasped Danny's ankle. He cringed at the feeling of the flaking burnt flesh, but didn't try to shake off the hand. He bent slightly, unsure if he should try to help the figure up.

"You," rasped the figure, ash falling from its jaw, "not from here."

"Um," said Danny. "No. I'm not."

The figure began to pull itself up. As it did so, it sort of began to piece itself back together. Danny had seen similar things before, with ghosts returning to their base form, healing, after an unusually devastating attack. Usually, though, it was slower and usually-

Danny abruptly pulled away. Usually ghosts who were doing that were draining his energy to do it. He glared.

"One of mine?" asked the figure, that was now decidedly feminine. It finally drew itself to its knees. Her knees. "One of my," she coughed, "grandchildren?"

"I'm a descendant of yours, I guess," said Danny, cautiously. He wasn't quite pressed up against the far wall, but he was close.

"You came for me," she said. Her voice was still too rough and dry for Danny to detect any emotion in it.

"I was sent," said Danny, flatly. "If I pick you up, are you going to start draining me again?"

She didn't respond for a long time. "No," she said, finally.

"Great," said Danny. "Let's go."

Elizabeth wasn't hard to carry. She wasn't much larger than Jazz, and he flew her around all the time. The problem was, he couldn't seem to extend his invisibility to her. Any power he sent to cover her was simply absorbed.

"Okay," he said, finally. "We'll just have to be fast, then." Mentally, he began to map out the path he would have to take, and how many doors he would have to blow down. It made for a discouraging picture.

"They can't harm you," croaked Elizabeth.

"What?"

"Pure soul. They can't harm you." She reached up to trace his chin and cheek with her still-charred fingers. "You don't feel the heat. You can't. You can't be harmed."

"Uh. Yeah. I don't think that's how it works. I stepped on some sharp stuff when I first got here, and, let me tell you, it hurt."

"The fires can't burn you. Sending you was clever." Elizabeth seemed to have exhausted herself at that; her hand fell back into her lap.

Right. Well. Whatever. The fires hadn't burnt him yet, but he had stayed well away from them. He was going to continue to do so.

He took a deep breath and flew out of the dungeons as quickly as he could. As expected, the fire creatures spotted him quickly, and they began to shout and shriek in a language Danny couldn't even begin to understand.

They also threw fireballs. And fire spears. And fire chains. Just, a lot of things made out of fire.

It was a good thing Danny had ice powers. Otherwise he would have had a hard time combating all this. A few fireballs passed far too close to his head for comfort. His ice also seemed to be unusually effective on doors.

Finally, Danny was able to get above ground, and, no longer constrained to follow the cord around his wrist, he escaped through a window. He spiraled up, almost high enough to hit the underside of the flames licking at the trees, and then dove away.

"So," he said, "what now?"

"You don't know?" Elizabeth looked a lot better now. Almost human.

"I wasn't given a whole lot of information when they coerced me into doing this. They just said to follow the cord to you, and I did that." Speaking of which, what had happened to the cord? It had just vanished, without Danny even noticing. "I was half-expecting to just get zapped back the moment I found you."

"Coerced?"

"They said they'd make my dad or my sister do this, if I didn't, and they can't fly."

"They're alive."

"Yeah."

There was something like a frown on Elizabeth's face. "They shouldn't have done that."

"Yeah. You don't have to tell me that." More shrieks were approaching from the direction of the castle. "They did this with one of your books. Please tell me you know how to get out of here."

Elizabeth licked her lips. Her tongue was pink. "We go out where you came in," she said.

Danny looked at the trees around him. He only knew where the castle was because of the noises coming from that direction. Otherwise, everything looked the same in every direction. He was pretty sure that even if he went back to the castle, he wouldn't be able to tell which direction he had approached it from, and after that...

They were screwed.

"Follow the blood," said Elizabeth.

It was better than nothing, Danny supposed. His green blood did stand out against the red, but he's been high in the air when he shed it. Following that trail was going to suck, and it still required going back to the castle and avoiding all the fire creatures.

Some of this must have shown on his face, because Elizabeth said, "Not like that, boy, look." She pointed to the small puddle of ectoplasm that had dripped from his hand while they had been talking.

Flowers and vines were growing from it. Ghostly green and blue flowers and vines. As he watched, the vines grew longer, the flowers opened wider.

"Oh," Danny said. "I guess that makes things easier."

.

Easier was, of course, a relative term. Was following the trail left by ghostly plants growing out of Danny's blood easier than stumbling blindly around the burning forest? Yes. Was it easy? No. No it was not. Especially not with the fire creatures hunting them through the trees and how far apart the blood spatters could be.

Still. Danny was able to follow the trail for an hour before the fire creatures caught up to him.

When they did, they seemed almost, confused. They didn't attack. It was like they were waiting for something.

Danny would have run, but he was worried that he'd lose the trail if he tried to do that, and he didn't think he'd be able to find it again. He and the fire creatures stared each other down. Every few seconds, one of them would make a noise and another would answer.

Rapidly, Danny was becoming surrounded. He would have to make his move soon. He really didn't want to lose the trail, but he didn't think he could win this fight.

Too many enemies. Too much fire. Maybe if he flew straight up, he-

The fire creatures attacked. Danny ducked, wove, and conjured shields of ice and ectoenergy, but there was a limit to what he could do against this many attackers, especially while carrying Elizabeth.

He saw a ball of fire coming that he couldn't dodge and instinctively twisted to spare Elizabeth.

It splashed against him harmlessly.

Everything stopped. The fire creatures froze, even their flames going still, as though they were videos that had been paused. One began to wail, and then they all fled, disappearing into the brightness of the forest.

"A pure soul," said Elizabeth again. She patted his shoulder. Her skin was a burnt red, now. Her eyes were as blue as his were when he was human. Her frown was deeper, more obvious. "It was clever to send you... but they shouldn't have."

"Sure," said Danny, a little surprised. He scanned the trees, trying to see if any of the fire creatures were waiting in ambush. Seeing none, he continued.

.

They reached the field of tubes, and Danny followed his blood trail back to where he had lacerated his feet.

"Now what," he said.

"Land," said Elizabeth.

Danny grimaced, remembering what had happened to his feet the last time he had tried to walk here. He landed carefully on what looked like the thickest part of the vine growing from his blood-

-and was abruptly back in the chalk circle in Cordelia's basement.

The shadow pounced on him. Unprepared, Danny dropped Elizabeth and fell. Pain sparkled along his limbs as the shadow pulled at his ghost form. It was too much. The lack of sleep, the hunger, the stress, the energy he had spent finding Elizabeth and bringing her back, the blood loss and pain from the wound in his hand, his inability to protect his family, and now this attack. He curled up, trying to protect his head and hand, and abandoned his ghost form.

"Stop this at once!"

"Grandmother, I-"

"Call off this shadow."

A beat. "Very well." The shadow stopped its assault, and Danny stumbled up and out of the circle, scuffing the lines beyond all recognition. Cordelia and Elizabeth were the only women standing. The boarders were all kneeling, faces hidden.

"Grandmother, many times great grandmother, I greet you. I am Cordelia, the last descendant of your daughter, Mary, and I have labored long to bring you back to this world, so that your works will not be lost."

Elizabeth, Danny noted, was standing very straight, her skin sunburn-pink in all but a few places, her arms crossed over the burnt rags of what might have once been a shirt. She did not look pleased.

"So my works won't be lost," repeated Elizabeth.

"Your son betrayed you," said Cordelia. "He burned all your books, all your magics. This is all that survived." Cordelia held up the singed book.

Elizabeth pressed her eyelids together briefly. "And so, you forced your cousin, a child, into that place after me, rather than coming on your own?"

"There was no choice-"

"There is always a choice," said Elizabeth, cutting her off with a sharp gesture. "Better that book should have burned as well, and I was imprisoned forever. You were lucky in my captors. Others would have delighted in taking a pure soul as an ornament for their court, even if they couldn't have harmed him."

"You can't mean that-"

"I do. Is it true you have imprisoned the other members of this boy's family?"

"He would never have agreed, otherwise. Please, this is all we have left of our heritage. We need you. This was all necessary. I beg of you, teach us."

Danny began to back away, to the ladder. Maybe if he got out fast enough, he could trap them in the basement and look for Jazz and his parents.

"Do you know how I wound up there? In that place?" asked Elizabeth. "I went too far, and I ignored the rules. What's your name?"

"Cordelia."

"Cordelia. Cordelia Nightingale-Fenton?"

"Just Nightingale."

"I begin to see," said Elizabeth.

Danny was almost to the ladder. Maybe he could tap into his ghost powers a little bit and float up, quietly.

"If you had come to get me yourself, if you had even asked him-" Elizabeth gestured to where Danny had been. Both women did a double-take, and then their eyes traced up to where Danny currently was.

"What are you doing?" hissed Cordelia. This was the first time Danny had seen her visibly angry.

"Stop," said Elizabeth, grabbing Cordelia's shoulder. "What is your name, boy?"

"It's Daniel Fenton," said Cordelia, when Danny didn't answer.

Elizabeth considered Danny for a moment. "Go to your family, Daniel. Whatever curses or enchantments Cordelia cast on them should be lifted. Including that hate curse." She ran her fingers down Cordelia's arm. "Why on earth did you cast that?" Her eyes flicked back up. "Expect to receive my correspondence, Daniel Fenton."

.

Danny found Jazz and his parents in the attic. Their luggage was there, too, and Danny and Jazz's missing clothing. Maddie's cell phone was going off. Danny ignored it. He started shaking them. Slowly, they came awake.

"Danny?" said Jazz. She scrubbed at her eyes. "Ugh, what's that sound?"

"Mom's phone is going off."

"What?" said Maddie, groggily. "My phone?" She fumbled at her pocket. "Yes, what is it? Yes, this is Doctor Fenton. What? Well," this last word was a bit snide. "It's about time. We'll be there before the end of the day." She snapped the phone closed. "Jack, sweetheart, wake up, we're going back home. All the charges against us have been dropped, and they want us to look into a ghost attack. Apparently, Phantom didn't show up. As we knew he wouldn't."

"Huh? Ghost? Where?"

"In Amity Park, Jack."

"In Amity Park! Alright!" said Jack, jumping to his feet, and grabbing most of the luggage. "I knew they wouldn't last two days without us! Let's go, kids!"

He ran down the stairs. Maddie took a moment to look around, pursing her lips. "How did we get up here?" she asked. She shook her head, dismissing the question. "Do either of you kids know where Cordelia is?"

"She went out," said Danny. "To town. She won't be back 'til later."

"We'll have to leave a note, then. You two should get dressed before we go, or you'll have to try and do it in the GAV bathroom."

"So what really happened?" asked Jazz, after Maddie went down the stairs.

"Long story," said Danny, throwing on a pair of jeans, "and we really do need to leave. Fast." He took his luggage and rushed down the stairs.

.

Danny watched Cordelia's house shrink in the rear-view mirror of the GAV, right up until it shimmered out of existence like a mirage. He clenched his teeth. He had seen worse.

He turned in his seat and put his hands in his pockets, intending to brood over what had happened, but his hand encountered a stiff piece of paper that had definitely, absolutely, not been there before. Well. Elizabeth had said to expect her correspondence.

He pulled a crisp white envelope out of his pocket. On the front, in spidery cursive, was his name. He turned it over. On the back flap was written the name Elizabeth NF.

She was family. Distantly. He put his thumb under the back flap, and began to open the letter.

[forte7]

Forte’s Fan Character Flashback Friday - #7

Name:: Valarie Masters Series: Danny Phantom Background: Holey moley guacamole! I missed Fan Character Flashback Friday! I mean... today is a Friday, but I was supposed to post this last week! Dangit! I'm sorry! Things are kinda crazy on my end still and it only dawned on me today that I had forgotten to do something - and it was this.

A thousand apologies for my tardiness, but going on about that still won't get this posted.

I've actually been waiting to post this character because I KNOW I had old art of her SOMEWHERE around and I cannot, for the life of me, find it, and unfortunately, I'm down in Texas right now to help out my aunt and uncle so I can't even continue looking for the physical copies of said old art if it even still exists. I KNOW it exists, because I used to post art for this character on a Danny Phantom fan forum I would RP on and heck, I even found that old forum, managed to log in to see if any of those old links still worked, and NOPE.

Guess I deleted them off the Photobucket I once had them on at some point and where the physical copies are, I'm not sure, because I don't remember seeing them when going through my old drawing binders.

It's really quite frustrating.

Anyway, this is Valarie, who I named forgetting about the actual Valerie Grey character from the series, cause the name fit the general bad fan character naming system of "it starts with the same letter of the character I like and is kinda similar, so I'll go with it".  I kept it anyway, cause little me reasoned, "well, this Valarie spells it with two As while the other is with an A and an E, so it's fine."

Just kinda funny that they're both linked to Vlad though, so yay, I guess? Hahah, I dunno.

Anywho, Valarie was set up/designed to be Vlad's daughter, but not even his biological daughter, though not a clone like some of my other fan characters, though with things that happen later in the actual series, it would actually be... possible/viable. Instead, she was a extraordinary creation of the Ghost Zone and was more or less "born" of the supernatural energies that construct that dimension.

I guess you can kind of compare her existence to that of Maria from Silent Hill 2. The Born from a Wish scenario kind of implies that Maria was manifested by the town using James' subconscious memories and feelings regarding his wife. Valarie, in the same vein, was manifested by the Ghost Zone, for whatever reason, to help placate Vlad's need and want for a family of his own.

Mind you, this entire backstory was cobbled together before Kindred Spirits introduced Dani Phantom and her entire storyline... which... is.... kinda the same, really, to Valarie's, and I remember at the time, was kind of mad about it back in the day.

Speaking of Dani Phantom, I remember how a lot of people were mad about Butch Hartman's apparent laziness in her character design and creation, cause it was pretty akin to many "bad fan characters" that you see out there, which, hey, I won't deny; that's what this whole Flashback thing I do is about, but you know, this just serves as a good example of the fact that pretty much... everyone does this. Everyone makes bad fan characters, even for their own things, so I think it's just more healthy for people to realize this and embrace it, hahaha.

Going back to Valarie - she's more or less a person who exists to help Vlad chill the fuck out and maybe not ruin things for everyone or everything. A more recent reason I came up with for this was that Clockwork and/or The Observants that are seen in the Ultimate Enemy special with Dark Danny foresaw Vlad's ambitions proving to be too troublesome in the future, so to prevent this from causing way more havoc than it's worth, even with Danny around to stop him or whatever, they're like "hey just throw him a kid; that'll keep him busy a little, right?"

Even with her supernatural origins, Valarie is half-human and half-ghost like Vlad and looks much like him thanks to just her being a physical manifestation of one of his subconscious desires. Physically, she’s about seven or eight years old and generally acts playful, though polite, but can occasionally come off as spoiled.

She shares many of her father’s sentiments towards various issues and people, though it’s safe to assume she doesn’t fully understand his reasoning for those feelings due to how young she is. For example, she harbors a dislike for Jack, though finds his clumsiness more amusing than idiotic and only really says she hates him because Vlad does.

In regards to Danny, she likes him and finds him fun to play with, but in her terms, that means toying around with him. Despite her small size, she can hold her own in battle and has a good handle on her ghost powers and won’t hesitate to use them to pull pranks or harass other people, especially if she has or is told to. Her antics can be described as impish while in ghost form, though she likes to feign innocence if caught.

A big point of curiosity with her is her memory; she has no memory of a time before not “being” and has no real answer when asked about her childhood. She doesn’t seem bothered by this lack of knowledge and usually shrugs it off, intent that she exists because she does; she feels no need to question it further. For her things are simple: if her father is happy, she’s happy. Be this just some childish thought process or some more ingrained sense of purpose because of her strange origins is up for debate.

More was actually done with this character than others and like I said, there used to be old sketches of her about. If I ever find them (and I hope I do, really), I’ll be sure to post them.

But aside from that, like I said, I did role play with this character on a Danny Phantom fan thread and boy was that a cringy time. I will admit now, that back then, when I was like 12 or whatever, I was an obnoxious brat who didn’t know how to really socialize or what she was doing on the Internet. Hahaha, when going back there to find the old image links, I ventured onto some of my older posts and…. Whooooo boy, no thank you.

I know at that point I did also write short fanfics from time to time, but I think those might be locked on boot drives from our old computers and don’t have a way of looking for them now either. For those, if I ever do find them, I might also post them, but it all depends on just HOW much cringe I want to trudge up and share, hahaha.

I know I’ve been ranting a lot now and it’s already now past Friday, even for the time zone I’m in, but I’m gonna go on a little side story as… an apology, though it just means a bit more ranting.

When I said I RPed on this site, I can’t actually say a lot of actual character development happened. I don’t remember what the system was for RPing canon show characters and the times they did pop up, it was on a situational basis, because more people were interested in playing their own character and pretty much everyone on that forum had half-ghost, half-human characters that had their powers for one reason or another.

There was one thread that was particularly popular though that I spent a lot of time in with most of the other players, called Halfa High, so it was just kids in high school. Characters, like mine, that were younger than high school age, had various reasons for being there, like they’re super geniuses or they have a sibling there they’ve come to see or something like that; it’s a fandom RP so anything can happen. Most of the stuff in here, because it was 12-14 or whatever year olds, was just characters pairing up with each other, cause I guess that’s just what kids care about, hahaha. I don’t know, I’m just an old lady now.

Anyway, this thread went on for a good number of pages and eventually they started a second one. And then they had one where everyone went to summer camp, so other weird adventures could be had without the confines of going to school.

This was the one I remember doing the most in though frankly, I don’t remember what the overarching storyline was at the time, though I don’t think I knew what was really going on back in the day either.

One of the big points I do remember was the fact that many of the people on this forum looked up to one particular member, who I’ll call Susan, because that was her character’s name. I’m pretty sure she was in her early 20s at this time, so a lot of the younger people gravitated towards her because she was mature and knew how to keep things moving in terms of RP story; she was more or less the main storyteller of the Halfa threads, coming up with a lot of the plot points and twists. She was also just popular cause she had been there for a while, I think, and she was a pretty good artist on the forum.

She wasn’t necessarily a bad person and usually always open to adapting an RP to involve suggested ideas, but I remember at the time, I was super jealous of her. One, because she did have really good art and I felt like a poo-poo artist and two, because she seemed to have a lot of sway in terms of what she wanted to happen in most scenarios, so much so, it was treated as forum canon that her character was married to Dark Danny and had two kids with him.

Nowadays, of course, I don’t give a damn. Whatever. But back then, it was annoying to me. And I guess some part of me wanted to pair my characters with Older Dan. I remember actually being openly mad about it on the forums and to her in private messages about it and did get in trouble for being a salty, little brat for it. One time, I even wrote a bitter fanfic that was less than subtle in regards to it, but I remember cooling my jets enough for them to not just full out ban me.

Like I said, I was obnoxious back then; it’s a phase all kids go through I guess, cause I see it in kids that age even now.

Anyway, this actually developed into a story point in the RP when I agreed to not be such an Angsty Annie about the whole thing and the Halfa Summer Camp thread took some weird turns. Besides the usual pairing of everyone’s characters with one another and other summer camp-y hijinks, it had time travel, an evil group that were named after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and political unrest regarding a ghostly royal family.

The royal family, of course, consisted of Susan and Dan, and their two kids. They had a son and a little girl, who I don’t remember the names of in the slightest. Susan got crowned? Queen of the Ghost Zone after she and some members of some Ghost Council? Were able to seal away Pariah Dark… and in that timeline, Dan was a fugitive, so they got married in secret and still managed to have secret relations enough to have their two kids.

But see, that was in the future of the Ghost Zone, which was like 20-30 years away from the time of the events of the actual RP. Why they were going back in time, I don’t remember, but I think it was something to do with Clockwork sending them back or something, who knows.

Valarie, however, is also technically part of the Ghost Royal Family (cause that’s a thing here…. hahaha), because I guess Susan was… Vlad’s niece? Somehow? So that made her and Valarie cousins, but because Susan was the one who sealed the Big Bad away, that meant she got to be Queen, just… because? There will be a lot of uncertainty with this recollection, cause again, heck if I actually knew or know what happened then.

Anyway, I guess in the uhm… present timeline, Susan was going to summer camp and this was before her and Danny were even a thing, cause doesn’t happen until they’re adults? I think, but she runs into a version of Dan that’s… in between him being a teenage and the future version that’s married to Susan… and… there was some contention with that, but again, I don’t remember what…

But eventually, everyone’s future selves end up appearing at summer camp, again for their own various reasons, along with Susan’s future kids, who get caught up in things, mainly because of misunderstanding and people having grudges and just wanting to kill other people without talking it out.

This loops back to my annoyance with Susan getting her character paired with a major canon character and the aforementioned political unrest, because it led to Older Valarie being a quiet, hardened soldier with a hidden, strong, but deeply unrequited love for Dan, which of course, causes a bit of tension with her and Susan, who is the Queen in the future. Also, apparently, I guess? There was a Ghost War or something? In the future or at some point that they set up a Royal Guard and Army, cause Valarie was more or less the Captain of all that, along with the personal trainer of the eldest son of the Royal Family. Future Susan, of course, is fine with her being in such a position of power cause I guess she’s proved it by this point and she doesn’t know of Valarie’s feelings for her husband, so it’s all right as rain as long as she just… stews about it silently to herself, because that is totally the healthy thing to do.

Older Valarie also goes back in time though, because eventually, people start coming across the aforementioned Four Horsemen, which aren’t really horsemen, because they don’t even have horses, but again, are named after them and are supposed to be the “living embodiments” of their namesake. So we have super powerful characters named War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death running around for… reasons? That I can’t even remember. Certain members’ characters are actually the younger versions of the Four before they’re… corrupted? Or something like that and given those names and most the people who turn into whichever, of course, have to fight their evil, older selves cause that’s cool or whatever.

Younger Valarie, at the time, was just hanging about and I guess fawning over a teenage Danny or the in between Dan (this is just as confusing to remember as it is to read, trust me), and I think makes friends with the Future Prince and Princess, who again are running around. I think the Prince was there to try and find Dan, because he believes he? Killed his father? Even though Dan is his father? And Dan was there anyway to protect the younger version of his future wife…? And the Princess was there just cause she wanted her mom, which is Future Susan, who went back to… do…. Something…?

But anyway, Younger Valarie ends up getting approached by her future self, who had originally come to serve her duty as Captain of the Royal Guard and protect Future Queen Susan, but eventually starts to realize that she could perhaps mess with the past to change things to the way she really wants them (even though I know now that would probably create some annoying paradox but please don’t get me on time paradoxes cause we’ve been here long enough already), so she starts to put it in her younger self’s head that everything going on here isn’t fair and she should do more than just be obedient and trusting and take whatever Susan says without question, because by not being more open and honest about your feelings just leads to a life of misery, pain and loneliness.

However, Younger Valarie just doesn’t get why she would say these things and rejects that line of thinking, which kinda makes Older Valarie snap and be like “okay, fine, I guess I’ll just go kill some peeps and then you’ll see what I mean”... I mean, I think? She does try to stop influencing her younger self and try to take matters into her own hands though.

Because at one point, we did have it where Older Valarie confronts Older Susan about her deep, dark hidden feelings, and they get into a fight over it, especially after Older Valarie threatens to go kill the Prince, but being a trained soldier and the Captain of the Royal Guard, Older Valarie does kick Older Queen Susan’s butt, but I think… is interrupted by one of the Four, that being War.

I think Older Dan also comes in at some point and chides Older Valarie for her actions, but heck if I remember. To be honest, if I fully cared and wanted to really relive some cringe, I could probably go to the forum and just read over the whole thread, but that was like 200+ (if not more) of pages and I…. do not feel like doing that, hahaha.

Anyway, Older Valarie and War end up getting into a fight, because it turns out War himself has some issue with Older Valarie. And it turns out that he used to be like her second in command? Or something? Who disappeared while on a mission and ended up into some spoopy, dark, dangerous, evil place, where he got corrupted and turned into War and it turns out he was okay with it, because he was also angry and bitter, cause surprise! He himself had feelings for Older Valarie, but poor guy got friendzoned and his attempts went unnoticed because she instead had feelings for Older Dan, because love triangles are also a cool plot twist to do, cause why not, I guess.

Uhm… I think during this fight was when Older Valarie started to notice the error? Of her ways? Or something like that after seeing one of her closest subordinates fall into darkness, so her story shifts to trying to get War to remember who he used to be. This character did have an original name, but I totally forget what it was… Anyway, War claims that there’s nothing she can do because he embraced and was more than willing to give up his soul or whatever for the power to actually make Older Valarie notice him or something.

I… actually don’t remember much past this point, though. I want to say she did end up getting through to him, but that might just be me rewriting history. That character, though, was more or less being set up to give someone for Young Valarie to pair with and I do thing there was a present day or at least an uncorrupted version of that character pop up at one point….

But besides that, I don’t even remember if that RP was finished, mainly because I think I started to stop going there as much and lost interest. The RP itself, actually, I think started to slow down, mainly because people got busy with other things, especially Susan and because she was again, more or less the driving force behind most things, it petered out.

I’m actually uncertain how old I was when there, because I will admit, when I was in my first year of college, I toyed around with some of the concepts from this RP and wanted to repurpose it into a story. It was mainly the stuff that took place in the future with the Royal Family and with the Four Horsemen, where basically, it would follow Older Valarie (hell, the “rewrites” character name might have just been Valarie for simplicity sake) as she dealt with her feelings with the Royal family and her relation to it, trying to protect the Kingdom and its people, and eventually deal with the disappearance of her Second in Command and his reappearance as a giant threat later on.

…. Really, I still kinda like the idea…

ANYWAY, I have talked long enough and am tardy enough with just this post as it is, so I’ll leave it at that. According to the Google Doc where I’m writing all this before actually posting, this is six pages long, so even more apologies for my rambling.

Still, hope you liked this month’s look back in time and look forward to the next one!

[acaseforpencils]

Jason Chatfield.

Bio: I grew up in the far flung suburbs of Perth, in Western Australia, and used to spend my paper route money on MAD Magazines (I cheaped-out and stole my dentist’s waiting room issues of the New Yorker. I think I was the only kid who looked forward to going to the dentist).

I moved to New York in 2014 and started pitching to the mag in person. I’m not sure Bob liked me, so I went back to pitching via email. Then I went in on his last day and finally sold my first piece. I feel like it was his final f—k you to the magazine. “Here! Have a Chatfield!” 

Find this print here!

The cartoon was a goofy play on Vlad the Impaler. 

I didn’t sell to the magazine again until last month, but I’ve had a handful sold as dailies. And I’m published in MAD often, so they’ve clearly done away with any of their standards.

When I’m not drawing gag cartoons I write and draw a syndicated legacy strip called Ginger Meggs which I took over 10 years ago. It’s been around since 1921 and now appears daily in 34 countries. He’s kind of an Australian version of Dennis the Menace, except he predates him by about 30 years.

Tools of choice: For drawing/roughs, I use a Prismacolor Turquoise clutch pencil with a red lead and try to find some paper with a little bit of tooth. The mixed media pads at Blick do the trick nicely.

I ink using a Uni-ball Vision Elite Stick Roller Ball Pen… or a Pigma Micron 03. 

DO NOT use the Uni-Ball Vision Rollerball Pens, Fine Point (0.7mm) if you’re traveling. They explode on planes. And ruin your copy of The New Yorker.

For a wash, I just use watercolor and whatever brush is lying around. Nothing fancy. There’s a scanning app on my phone called “Adobe Scan” which does a nice job of scanning line-art into a PDF when I’m out of the studio and need to email in a quick rough.

I use a Wacom Mobilestudio Pro for finished artwork. I like to get out of the studio and work from a bar or restaurant, so it helps that I can take that with me. I use a little glove that I got on Amazon so I don’t grease up the screen, and the felt-tip nib that comes in the pen-holder makes the friction between the stylus and the screen more like pencil on paper. Unfortunately, they’re not waterproof, as I found on a recent vacation…

My wife plays piano and sings at bars around the city so I’ll often sit at the bar during her sets and draw. Digital/Traditional depends on what deadlines are most pressing. (She has a weekly residency in Astoria —if anyone’s interested in going, let me know!)

A lot of people email me for advice about tablets —I’ve been trialling/demo-ing Wacom products for 15 years— I think they’re great. If you’re married to doing stuff by hand but want to colour digitally, you can get a decent tablet without going broke. Depends on your workflow.

Writing Desk: My wife and I were living upstairs in 5A when my neighbour in 4B died. He was a brilliant poet and had an incredible old writing desk. It’s the only thing that was left in the apartment, so I’m looking after it ’til his grandson moves in at the end of our lease. I work for countless hours at this old thing. It’s beat up, but I’ve patched it together enough that it won’t collapse and bury me mid-brushstroke. I’ve stuck a few of my favourite toons on the top of it.

Tool I wish I could use better: My brain. It really is a sack of cats. Whenever I want to sit and do work, it clocks off. Then it comes up with a pearler of an idea at 3 in the morning when I’m trying to sleep. I write it down in my phone, but autocorrect makes it indecipherable by morning.

I like working with my writer friend, Scott. We both do comedy at night and have developed a nice short-hand. We also seem to have the same library of references and can build on each others’ premises, which tames my sack-of-cats.

Tool I wish existed: The Deadline Extender.® I’ve never missed a deadline, but that said… an extra 3 or 4 minutes to allow for a terrible wifi connection, or a errant scanner wouldn’t go astray.

Also: The Deadline Extender® PREMIUM: Let’s you go back in time to when you were procrastinating and slap yourself in the face. $30 p/month.

Tricks: Ok, well. This is going to sound a bit Dalton Trumbo, but bear with me: I do my best work…in the bath.The most productive 3 hours of my week are during Scotchbath Sunday; an immoveable chunk of time on Sunday evening whereby I lock myself in the bathroom, run a bath, lug my drawing stuff onto a bit of wood that sits over the bath, and just write and draw. Nothing else. I write weeks worth of my syndicated comic strip (Ginger Meggs), I write New Yorker cartoons, scribble up roughs for dailies— and when I feel like I’ve earned it (usually 2 hours in) I tap the side of the bath three times, and my wife peels herself from her piano and I unlock the door to a nice big glass of scotch. It’s a hell of a carrot on a stick to work towards when you’re stuck. (PS. Lest you think I’m some kind of Don Draper-era misogynist; the scotch reward part was her idea. I think she realized it keeps me in the bath and out of her way.)

Anyway. It’s a great way to switch gears creatively. It’s like being on an aeroplane. No wifi, no phones — just the work you need to get done. Get involved. #ScotchBathSunday.

Oh! And if I get my deadlines done for the week, I have a small budget for a solo lunch somewhere where I can eat cheese and draw. I really didn’t know cheese ’til I moved to America. (And yes, I’ve already been to Wisconsin. Good Lord.)

Tips? I always tell younger artists to not even think about touching a drawing tablet until they’ve learned to draw by hand first. Otherwise they’ll always be drawing away, knowing they have the insurance of the CTRL+Z key at their disposal if they screw up a line. That’s not a good habit to have when you’re working to a deadline. But, once you do know how to draw, by all means dive head-first into the digital realm. It’s incredible. Procreate, Sketchbook or Photoshop are all great.

Misc: One of the hangovers from working in advertising illustration is that I’ve had to be a bit of a chameleon style-wise for the last 15 years and haven’t allowed myself to just settle into one style. Lately, I’ve just decided to say “Bugger it!” and try and find a loose, consistent style that I’m comfortable with, that’s an apt conduit to my silly ideas.

I always loved George Booth’s line, and his ability to create a scene with so much movement but just at the right moment in time. Also Sam Gross’ dark, hilarious cartoons with perfect line-economy. And I’d give my left arm (I draw with my right) to know how Barry Blitt has so much control with his washes…

Chatfield’s portrait of Sam Gross

While I’m geeking out, I love seeing younger cartoonists find their feet and thrive in a style that just feels like they’re speaking to you— Ellis J. Rosen, Sofia Warren, Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell, Jason Katzenstein, Amy Kurzweil, and a seemingly endless list of talented younger artists who are putting in the work are a big inspiration. 

I know it should be Steig or Thurber or Addams, but my favourite cartoonist is Sergio Aragones.

I was always so enamoured of MAD growing up and studied the lines of Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee and the Usual Gang of Idiots. I remember being so frustrated I couldn’t even come close to getting my work to look like theirs, but I think I found a style somewhere in between when I fell short. 

I think Wil McPhail’s poses are masterful, and I wish I knew how how the hell he did that. One day I’ll trudge up to England and knock on his door to ask him. I find myself doubled-over at John Cuneo’s Instagram, and Ed Steed’s absurdly funny gags. I have a slew of toons I’ve torn out of years’ worth of magazines and taped to my studio wall, or my zillion year-old writing desk. I’m constantly humbled by how generous and welcoming the existing crop of New Yorker cartoonists have been to a goofy Aussie immigrant — Joe Dator, Matt Diffee and Pat Byrnes, Mort Gerberg and an ever-growing list of prolific, talented cartoonists who make the 99% weekly rejection tolerable.

I’ve made some of my closest friends and have been lucky enough to meet my cartooning heroes through the National Cartoonists Society. I got to spend a lot of time with Sergio at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in the UK last year which made my year. We were signing together for a whole afternoon and I spent more time geeking out with him than signing.

Okay. Enough drooling. Sorry.

I’m a fan of cartoonists.

Website, etc. I have a weekly podcast where I throw around ideas for New Yorker cartoons with a fellow comedian and writer, Scott Dooley. It’s called “Is There Something In This?” It’s a bit of fun. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the art of writing gags very seriously. It’s an extremely difficult skill to master, and we’re virtually zygotes at it. We have lots of listeners now, which is bewildering. Talking about drawing is like dancing about architecture, but here we are. Anyway you can find it on iTunes or wherever you waste time listening to podcasts.

My website is jasonchatfield.com and my comedy stuff is up at jasonchatfieldcomedy.com  ( I’ve been doing stand-up comedy for 11 years. If anyone wants to come see a show, hit me up! I’ll put you on the door). My instagram is @jasonchatfield. I’m still trolling the British chap who has the @jasonchatfield handle on Twitter to no avail. To that end, I’m @jason_chatfield on Twitter.

If you want more art supplies in your life, A Case for Pencils is on Instagram and Twitter.  You can also find me, Jane (the person who created/edits this blog), on Twitter here, which is where I stick the paintings that I’ve been doing instead of interviewing people consistently (I needed to balance working on other people’s work and my own work!). Oh, and If you’d like to support this blog, which is always very appreciated, there are many different ways to do so, which you can find here!

[atundratoadstool]

Hi! Do you have any theories/headcanons about the Dracula characters' ages are? We know Jack is 29 and says Jonathan, Quincey, and Arthur are younger than him, and Jonathan would probably have to be a certain age to be a official solicitor. Do you have any thoughts? Thanks!

Okay! I do not have hard and fast headcanons for exact numbers here, but –as is often the case– I do have some overly zealous research facts that shape my impressions. So, because everyone knows I love to geek out about this stuff, I’m going to list out some of those assorted facts with my resulting thoughts about the characters’ ages and what their ages probably tell us. This will probably make this a much longer answer than this ask might seem to demand, but it’s Dracula Day (or it was when I started) and I am ready to Dracula as hard as I can.

So, just to set the stage, the generally agreed upon date during which the events of the book take place is 1893, based on the fact that Stoker’s timeline in his notes has days of the week that align with this year, and the mention of the recent death of Jean-Martin Charcot and the term “New Woman” position. This is the date I’m using in trying to extract fun pre-Dracula-timeline Dracula ideas. Some people, of course, tend to favor an 1890 date, given that the epilogue of the novel seems to indicate the events took place 7 years prior to the publication of the novel, but I prefer ‘93 because more minor details of the text make sense with it. (I won’t even get started with Leonard Wolf and his attempt to assign dates based on moon phases.)

R. M. Renfield: Renfield is explicitly 59 (b. 1834). We don’t know much about him; heck – we don’t even know his first name; and there’s not a lot we can draw conclusions about. It might be sort of interesting to someone, I guess, that Stoker initially gave his age as 49 in the typescript before crossing it out and that Renfield and that Patrick Rourke (a brain injury patient from whom some of Renfield’s medical info was drawn) was 50, but it’s not super interesting to me. Slightly more interesting may be the fact that he is within an age range where he feels chill speaking about Arthur’s dad as a peer, but there’s not a terrible lot to be extrapolated from that given that Renfield still has no past and Lord Godalming still has no personality.

Jack Seward: Jack is explicitly 29 (b. 1864), and if we take Van Helsing being his mentor as an indication that he studied in Amsterdam, he would have had to have spent 6 years of his life earning his M.D. in addition to spending however many it takes to wrangle himself into being superintendent of a private asylum and however many it takes one to go on adventures in Siberia and Korea with one’s bros when the latter country only opened its borders in 1882. This all feeds into my long held headcanon that he inherited his post as superintendent at a private asylum that was some manner of dynastic institution, as this makes more sense than Jack being some sort of savant who was able to get himself a superintendency immediately after a decade of med school and shooting wolves. Also, this allows Jack to join the “everyone’s parents are dead” club that has the rest of the novel as its membership.

Lucy Westenra: Lucy is explicitly 19 (b. 1874), but she is due to turn 20 in September of the year in which the novel takes place, and we do not know if she has a birthday somewhere in the midst of tragically dying that month. If we want to get super sad and well into the spirit of Stokerian Victorian melodrama, let’s just say that she was going to get married on her birthday (September 28) and instead of getting either married or having any sort of birthday celebration, she had a violent post-mortem confrontation with her fiance in which she was about to chew on a baby. On a tangential chronology-related note, her parents may have been a bit old or predestined to tragedy, given that her father has been dead for over two years at the time of the novel (She is described as wearing white – i.e. not in mourning.) and given that her mother has a heart problem that seems suited to those who are elderly, cursed, or shameless plot devices.

Mr. Swales: Mr. Swales is the character claims that he is nearly 100 (b. 1793?) and he was apparently already sailing around with the Greenland fishing fleet at the time of the Battle of Waterloo (1815), which means he was probably killing whales and speaking incomprehensible dialect with his bros from the age of 22 to possibly some time in his late 40s when the fleet was phased out of existence in the 1840s. What he did with his life afterwards remains a mystery until around 1873, when he started sitting on Geordie Canon’s grave and bothering tourists.

Jonathan Harker: Jonathan’s age isn’t given, but I’m going to put him at around 21 (b. 1872). Why this specific number? Because it required 5 years apprenticeship to a trained solicitor to qualify for examination in the 1890s, and while I haven’t looked up the laws, I imagine that you probably can’t start that sort of thing before the age of 16, even if the solicitor in question is your adoptive dad and you’ve probably been soliciting under him forever. While theoretically Jonathan could have started a formal apprenticeship later or gotten special permission to take the exam after a 3 year stint, I’m going with the narrative that he started his apprenticeship to Hawkins as soon as humanly possible. I also like this because I envision Mina as being of his age or slightly older, and as we’ll get to next, I envision her as being in her early twenties.

Mina Harker: Mina’s age isn’t given, and I don’t have any fun historical facts to help pinpoint it, but I’m on board with the headcanon that many adapters and annotators have, which is that she attended the same boarding/finishing school as Lucy, where they became friends, and was eventually taken by the institution on as an assistant schoolmistress. Somewhere between 21-23 (b. 1869-72) is my general estimate for her.

Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris: Arthur and Quincey are explicitly mentioned as being younger than Jack, but I don’t think they’re as young as Jonathan is. The only date we have that connects all three men is the Korea thing, and given that Jack was 18 when the borders opened and probably wasn’t out of med school until the age of 22 at least, I’m going to place the expedition around ‘87 and assume Arthur and Quincey were in their early twenties at the time, with Quincey being a little older to account for him having likely adventured more in his life than Art. I’d put them around 25 (Art, b. 1868) and 27 (Quincey, b. 1866) at the time of the novel.

Abraham Van Helsing: Abraham is given as being in his 50s. I’m putting him at 52 because this was William Thornley Stoker’s age at the time of Dracula’s publication, and I tend to imagine that Van Helsing is pretty solidly based, at least in part, on Thornley.

Dracula: I post about how i’m like... not at all a fan of the Drac = Vlad III from time to time, but if you want to get into specifics as to what age I think he hails from, it’s the 1500s to 1600s rather than the 1400s. I could explain, but this guy already did.