#but danny has also claimed that phantom can duplicate

[kaidatheghostdragon]

If phantoms identity is public knowledge in amity park, then danny is occassionally transforming on camera.

Due to shenanigans (clockwork, sentient amity park, liminality fuckery, technus and tucker, the giw, or something else, take your pick), none of the videos showing the transformation sequence, and almost none showing phantom at all leave amity park. Outsiders arent even aware that theyre missing videos, including the jl, until danny references the name of a missing video.

Danny gets an onslaught of commenters claiming they cant find the video, danny checks on his account diagnostics to find that all videos featuring phantom except for like two have gotten zero views outside of amity park. (The two exceptions showed phantom as a seperate entity from danny because he was duplicating to multitask, phantom was doing something in the background and was caught on camera completely by chance for just a few frames.)

Okay so, Danny is a streamer. A rather small one, actually, but his viewer count is limited to Amity park due to them operating on a different server than the rest of the world.

Now, Danny has been exposed as Phantom, and the reveal went well and by extension, Vlad has been exposed as Plasmius too and they're on somewhat friendly terms.

Most of Danny's streams involves him fighting with ghosts, or exploring the zone (with a device thankfully able to survive in it with both Tucker and his parent's amazing help). Heck, some of it is even just either wandering around Amity Park or involving ghost animals of some kind.

Funny thing is, even though the reveal went good, he's doing all this as a human.

Somehow, his streams get leaked out to the wider world and some havoc is caused for a few individuals.

The Batfamily is so concerned and confused, because there was this kid? Fighting villains??? Then this same kid was also going into some place filled with what looked like some weird strain of Lazarus Water (it isn't Lazarus Water at all, actually, but they don't know that).

Meanwhile, Constantine needs the strongest alcohol available, because he's very, very certain that this kid is fighting with ghosts from the Infinite Realms and stepping into said Realms with no fear for his own life.

"And this here is where the Ghost King sleeps guys! 0/10 would not recommend waking him up, he gets cranky and I barely put him back to sleep last time!"

THIS KID HAS DONE WHAT!?

[jinjeriffic]

Dan Phantom vs. the Justice League

Most DCxDP fanworks gloss over how Dark Danny/Phantom kills the JL, or argue that TUE wouldn't play out the same way in the DC universe, since there are tons of superheroes and some would have a way of beating Dan. So let us dig into this with a shovel!

I would like to point out that we have seen plenty of apocalyptic/dark futures in DC. Even without Dan, that superhero multiverse is constantly teetering on the knife's edge of catastrophe! It feels like every couple of months someone has to stop the end of the world. Dan is just one more possible future to avert.

Dan is not a mindless monster, he is capable of planning, subterfuge and working with/coercing others to work with him (i.e. Fright Knight). He has both Danny and Vlad's memories, so in a crossover setting there is no way he wouldn't know about the public superheroes and villains at least.

Speaking of, DC is obviously crawling with supervillains and world destroying entities. Nobody said Dan had to conquer the world alone! I can totally see him working with and manipulating other villains to achieve his goals, only to stab them in the back later (ho-ho).

Dan's powers of invisibility, intangibility, duplication, overshadowing etc. make him an ideal candidate for infiltration, espionage and sabotage. Unless a person or location is specifically shielded against ghosts with tech or magic, he can get in and out without anybody noticing. Sure, someone like Batman probably had his home proofed against supernatural attacks, but surely not most of them! I envision him taking down Earth's heroes by extensively spying on them first.

Consider: Dan causes a major disaster that requires superhero intervention (runaway train, high-rise fire, sinking oil tanker etc.) and waits for someone to show up. When they do, Dan uses his duplicates to follow the hero(es) home/to work etc. Learn their identity, their weaknesses, their loved ones etc.

Dan could strategically leak hero identities to villains with a grudge who have no problem going after their civilian lives. This could also act as a smoke screen so the heroes don't immediately realize someone is targeting all of them.

Overshadow a loved one and use them to kill the hero - "Oh, Hero X got in an argument with their SO and their SO shot them in a fit of passion? Their SO claims having blacked out just before they picked up the gun? Trauma will do that."

Use intangibility to plant bombs, nerve gas, radioactive materials, etc. in the homes of various heroes and set them off in a coordinated strike.

Probably the biggest threat to Dan would be magic based heroes or supernatural entities (Captain Marvel, Doctor Fate, the JLD, etc.). They would also be the most likely to have countermeasures in place against ghosts, or a way to detect him. But they're also mostly suited for fighting the supernatural. I admittedly don't know enough about a lot of these characters - would say, Zatanna think to have a shield in place against sudden sniper attacks? Dan could steal some money and hire Deathstroke/Deadshot etc to blow their head off when they're out in the open.

Have I mentioned what a nightmare Dan would be in terms of security? I can totally see him say, breaking into the CDC and unleashing smallpox, ebola and any number of virulent diseases on the world. Cause some nuclear meltdowns. Knock down a dam. Steal some highly radioactive isotopes! Would the magic heroes be protected against something that can give you a lethal dose of radiation within minutes?

What I'm saying is, a clever and ruthless villain like Dan could unleash enough chaos with his OP powerset to overwhelm the heroes and then pick a lot of them off. He's pretty much the definition of someone who just wants to see the world burn!

[ghostlyschwarbage]

Season 2, Episodes 8 & 9: The Ultimate Enemy 

In the future, everything outside of Amity Park is destroyed

Amity is kept safe by ghost shield towers

Val's father is missing an arm and an eye 

Phantom's wail broke the shield towers 

Fright Knight attacks Amity claiming he "serves a new master now"

Jazz got the highest score in the history of the C.A.T

There's 42 herbs in the Nasty Burger sauce 

The Observants are under oath not to act, which is why they get Clockwork to "do their dirty work"

Clockwork kidnapped Box Lunch and brought her to the past to mess with Danny 

Just a small packet of Nasty Burger sauce caused the Nasty Burger building to explode 

Lancer was walking around everywhere with a briefcase of the CAT answers handcuffed to him 

Danny fell through the briefcase and got the answer sheet stuck to his back 

Tucker was talking very loudly about Danny cheating, causing Lancer to overhear and check the briefcase

Danny mentions that he couldn't spend the previous month studying for the test like Sam and Tucker because he was fighting ghosts 

Lancer hints that he knows Danny has powers like turning invisible and reaching his hand in (this may be a stretch on my part, but I'm keeping that in) 

Future Skulker and Technus are merged together, and it's hinted that they are partners 

Future Skulker and Technus have weapons keyed specifically to Phantom, but Future Phantom is too powerful for it to work 

Danny, Sam and Tucker are brought to Clockwork's tower when future Skulker and Technus were brought outside of the present while Danny was still caught in a trap

Clockwork's tower is floating amongst gears  

Clockwork tells them that Danny does 2000 evil things in the future, which could imply that Danny killed 2000 people 

Clockwork tried to murder Danny with a scythe 

Clockwork's duplicates form as different versions of him throughout time: a caveman, a Viking, a soldier from the American Revolution, a soldier from the future and a modern soldier in camo 

Future Danny has the power to freeze Sam and Tucker where they stand

He also mentions that Clockwork is "meddling again"

Future Danny's ghost sense comes out of his nose 

Tucker to Sam: "For the record, I blame you" right before they get hit by debris  

Future Danny can make portals into the ghost zone and shapeshift into his younger self 

The other future ghosts were injured so badly by future Danny that their beings completely changed

Danny was brutally attacked by the future ghosts 

Danny's fear and pain at being attacked led to him developing his ghostly wail 10 years early 

Danny was so depressed when his parents died that he asked Vlad to take out the human part of him that was in pain, in doing so created an apathetic Phantom that separated Vlad's human and ghost halves and merged with Vlad's evil ghost side, implying that their humanity is what kept either ghost from being evil

Danny's evil ghost self killed his human self 

Mr. Lancer knows the Fenton house line off by heart (555-1221 FentonWorks)

When future Danny tells the Fentons that their son was half ghost, Jack tells Maddie "for the record, I blame you"

Future Danny can twist his neck completely around, but you can hear his bones cracking as he does it

When Danny directly wails at future Danny, you can hear his voice growling as the wail comes out 

Danny—for a split second—watched as his family, friends and teacher died; but Clockwork paused time and saved them 

Clockwork explains that the Observants see time as a parade, with one thing occurring after another in sequence, while Clockwork can see the parade from above: everything at once

A giant monster with tentacles attacks while Danny and Jazz talk about Jazz knowing he's half ghost

[artistfingers]

how. how does Identity Crisis happen in- Fun Danny and Super Danny. how do the Danny's try to explain their personalities suddenly changing- do they try to claim they got hit by something in the Fenton's lab at the same time and it messed them both up or do they just. try so hard to be normal and keep failing-

[Undercover AU]

OH MAN. IDENTITY CRISIS.

It probably begins with Danny throwing in the towel on needing to be in two places at once. He can’t duplicate and he can’t come clean about his two identities because he’s just too far gone—there isn’t a way to do it that might potentially cost him the friendships. who’s gonna be a fan of, “know how we’ve been really close friends for months and months now? Well i’ve been keeping core aspects of my identity a secret from you and also did some very questionable things in that process. let’s go for ice cream!”

so what does he do? Decide to go check out that Fenton Ghost catcher of course! Once, last year, he accidentally split himself in two with it. Not for long, of course, enough to be creeped out, sure. BUT. It worked, so surely he can keep it up all day, right? And really he only needs to be split like, sometimes. Friday nights and weekends, mostly. Yeah. He can make that work. Why did he never think of this before??

...He didn’t expect that neither half of him would want to go back to leading a double life and just. Straight up refuse. He didn’t expect the personality shifts, either. That’s definitely a new… experience...

Sam and Tucker have already seen the way ghosts can get messed up by tech, what with the way they all met, so it’s pretty easy to explain away as Phantom, if nothing else. As for Fenton? A little harder. I’m really amused by the idea of them trying so hard to be normal, but continually failing pfdhjf for that route, i might make the shifts a bit more subtle, or at least easier for him to put a cap on for a while. Ironically he probably nearly spills the beans on like ten different occasions across whatever week this incident spans and digs himself into several holes

At least he can get sam and tucker to stop bugging him to meet Phantom! Except when he lets them set it up and goes through with it, wow. Uh. interacting with himself is so off-putting and weird. he probably argues with himself about something. There’s an obvious secrete side-huddle between the two Dannys. Sam and Tucker are watching them like hawks and the whole thing ends with more questions than answers for those two.

And, a twist, just for the fun of it: he doesn’t stay stable, split in half like this. So not only is he trying to act normal and living twice as much life as he normally does, but he’s also cut off from half his powers when he needs ‘em, and he’s got worsening destablization symptoms in both forms. And at the point he realizes it’s becoming a real problem, his halves can’t agree on how to fix it. Go back through the catcher? Or enlist Tuck to help build something new, the way he reverse engineered the thing that got Danny stuck as Phantom way back at the start?

So Fenton’s off with Tucker trying to build something new, and Phantom’s off with Sam trying to locate and wrangle Fenton into “helping” them “heal” Phantom with his “parent’s scarily useful inventions” and it leads to a big ruckus in the lab that, once he’s back together, Danny has to lie through his teeth to keep Sam and Tucker from figuring out his dual-identity right then and there hsgdfghs

… and onto Sam’s conspiracy corkboard Identity Crisis goes, and this happens directly after.

[autisticsupervillain]

I don't talk about my inFAMOUS hyperfixation enough, so here's some stuff.

Dark Danny and Kessler are basically polar opposites of each other as far as Evil Future Me villains go.

Kessler: I fucked up, destroyed the world, and lost everyone I ever cared about. I need to go back in time and make sure that doesn't happen.

Dark Danny: I fucked up, destroyed the world, and lost everyone I cared about. I better go back in time and make sure that does happen.

It gets me wondering... what if Dark Danny was The Beast that Kessler wanted Cole to destroy?

Let me introduce the inFAMOUS Phantom AU.

The year is 20xx in the not so distance future. Danny Phantom finally dropped his heroic charade and embraced his ghostly nature, going on a rampage from Wisconsin to Amity Park, decimating all he sees. The Guys In White only manage to capture and contain him using their newly aquired Conduit unites. Conduits are humans who have the Conduit gene, a genetic failsafe that, when activated, could give the bearer extraordinary powers. The Conduit gene was only able to be activated recently thanks to the advancements pushed by their head scientist, Cole MacGraph.

Cole is put in charge of containing Phantom. His technology is several years ahead of the rest of the world, after all, and it's jis discoveries that unlocked the secrets of the Conduit gene and allowed Phantom to be captured to begin with.

However, Phantom is incrediblybclever and quickly thinks up a plan to escape. Taking the form of his younger, human self, Danny Fenton, Phantom tells him of his origins. Of the ghost portal that turned him half ghost, of the grand heroic adventures he had.... and of how his parents kept trying to kill him, despite his heroic deeds. Phantom claims that his ghost half and his human half have separate personalities, and that his ghost half came to despise the human race for their hatred of him.

"Please... I just want to go home. I miss my friends... I miss my mom... Wait, my parents... the Fenton Ghost Catcher! You can separate my two halves! That way my ghost half will dissolve when separated from his host!"

This is all an elaborate lie, painstakingly sprinkled with enough truth to be believable. Daniel Fenton is dead. All that happens when the Ghost Catcher is used is that the ghost (Phantom) is expunged from his non-ghost containment chamber. Phantom uses the opportunity to possess Cole with an invisible duplicate while the Conduit team recontain him. He then uses Cole's notes and free access to the facility to carefully plan his escape, whilst assassinating the Conduit team to ensure they don't stand in his way. He also kills Cole's family, both to keep them from questioning his odd behavior and to give his own strange behavior an excuse. Of course he's getting strangely close to the Conduit team, he's grieving and needs companionship.

Fortunately, Phantom didn't plan for Cole having friends outside the GIW. When Zeke Dunbar strangely stops receiving Cole's calls, he goes undercover to investigate. Putting together what happened from Cole's notes on Phantom, Zeke frees Cole with the Fenton Ghost Catcher in front of what remains of the Conduit team. Cole and Zeke escape as Phantom slaughters what remains of the Conduit team, as well as the rest of the GIW.

Zeke urges Cole to help fight off Phantom, but Cole instead becomes obsessed with resurrecting his family. He ignores Zeke's attempts to reason with him, runs away again every time Phantom shows up wherever he's hiding. Until it's to late. To late to fight back. To late to do anything. As far as Cole knows, he's the last man on Earth when Phantom sends Zeke's battered body flying through his door.

Phantom recognizes him and laughs, taunting him over the sob story he had about his family. "The best part is that it's all true, to a degree. I didn't even have to lie to trick you."

But, as soon as Dan tries to blast him, Cole is saved by two words.

"Time Out."

Clockwork appears and gives Cole a Time Medallion, before deciding to strike a deal with him. He offers Cole the chance to go 20 years back in time in order to prevent this future. Cole accepts. Taking the name Kessler upom arriving in the past, Cole gets to work.

Firstly, Kessler rejoins the GIW under his new identity, quickly rising through the ranks with his forehand knowledge and scientific prestige. He pushes development of the Conduit project ahead by several decades, giving himself powers and creating a cult of personality around himself in the process. Anyone who opposes his hostile takeover is quietly disposed of and Cole MacGrath finds himself expelled from college on mysterious grounds, never getting a chance to join the GIW.

Kessler creates a weapon called the Ray Sphere, a device designed to explode and kill any non-Conduit caught in it's blast. The Conduits will have their powers supercharged by the bio-electricity absorbed from all non-Conduits killed in the explosion, artificial advancing their development.

Kessler manipulates Cole into detonating the Ray Sphere in Empire City, before using the GIW resources to launch a hostile take over the city to "control the damage", all whilst having the government create a cover story so that Phantom doesn't get involved. Cole is forced to adabt and become stronger to survive with all the odds stacked against him, exactly as Kessler intended, forging Cole into the hero that he himself was not. After Kessler kills Cole's girlfriend to keep him from getting distracted from his mission, he challenges his past self to a climactic final battle to prove he's become as strong as he needs to be.

Cole emerges victorious and Kessler uses his final breath to show Cole visions of the future. Of the massacre of mankind, of the death of his family, of the sob story that Phantom manipulated him with. Cole is sent reeling from the revelation that Kessler is his future self and it is now up to him to save the world. As a reminder of the task he must now uptake, Cole grabs the Time Medallion off Kessler's body, not knowing it's true significance.

But, of course, that is only one path thay the parade might take. There is an equally valid timeline where Cole takes the opposite lesson from all the hardship he endures. He learns not to be responsible, but to be strong. Not to be compassionate, but to be vengeful. Not to save lives, but to gain power. While in one world Cole becomes a FAMOUS hero, in another, he becomes an inFAMOUS villain.

Both Coles set course to Amity Park, with their best friend Zeke by their side. One hoping to save the world, the other hoping to destroy the competition. Good Cole takes the sneakier approach when challenging Phantom. He has Zeke create a distraction for the Fentons by claiming to be an investor interested in their research, while Cole sneaks downstairs. MacGrath trashes the ghost portal, alongside anything else that might be useful to Phantom in the fight against him, before carving "meet me in Central Park, Phantom" into the wall with lightning.

Evil Cole takes the more direct approach, instead blasting the Fenton building apart with a giant thunder bolt. What Cole wasn't prepared for was for the Fentons to survive and for their ghost weapons to be able to harm him, forcing him back long enough for Danny Fenton to transform into Danny Phantom.

Either way, Cole MacGrath comes face to face with a Danny Phantom who is varying degrees of pissed.

Their fight is suprisingly even and both end up bring good counters to the other. Cole's resistance to mind control is sufficiently enough that he can ward off Danny's possession, his Radar Sense counters invisibility thanks to homing in on Danny's bio-electricity, while his own projectile versatility is strong enough to match most of what Danny can throw at him and then some. Danny, meanwhile, has actual flight to counter Cole's gliding, shapeshifting and Intangibility to dodge attacks, and is a better close range fighter when compared to Cole's over reliance on range. Evil Cole also has in edge in that he's willing to leverage civilian lives to give himself an edge, either by using them as hostages or by outright draining their bio-electricity to heal himself. Either way, it's a long fight that sends the two flying and fighting across all of Amity Park.

It comes to an end when Sam and Tucker and the sidelines realize Cole's weakness to water, spraying him with a hose to incapacitate him long enough for Danny to get close. Zeke rushes in to help, as do Sam and Tucker, but Danny ends up grabbing Cole's time medallion, sending the five flying off to meet Clockwork.

When there, the five witness Danny's evil future firsthand, with even Evil Cole suprised by the raw power on display by Dark Danny. Clockwork appears and explains how he sent Kessler back in time to alter history and prevent this future, but that plan "failed" so now he's going to "kill" them. However, Cole is able to quickly deduce the importance of the medallions and throws one on him and Zeke. Evil Cole only gives more to Danny and Friends upon Zeke's insistence. The five run into the future, coming face to face with Dark Danny himself.

Dan recognizes Cole, Zeke, and Clockwork's medallions, commenting about how "even dead, MacGrath's a pain in my ass". Cole and Danny try to fight him, but neither can get any good hits in, and the five are forced to run away. Cole only manages to save Zeke at the last second by blasting his time medallion, causing him to do the same to the rest of the medallions to keep Dan from following them into the past.

Cole initially thinks that that's the end of it. Danny saw his future self and was just as horrifed as they were. He's scared straight and won't be a problem anymore. Evil Cole, meanwhile, immediately goes back to trying to kill Danny to eliminate the competition. Either way, Sam and Tucker interrupt and point out that Dark Danny could still come back. He has the time medallions and if he puts them back together, he could travel back in time to prevent his past from changing. Indeed, Dark Danny is trying to do just that, as he has enough Vlad in him to try putting the advanced tech back together.

Cole and Danny are forced to train together to defeat Dark Danny, giving Danny the opportunity to learn who Cole is and what his deal is. Especially seeing how destroyed all the Fenton tech, so teaming up is the only real option. This gives Cole the opportunity to test his mettle against Danny's villains, from stomping Technus by draining all his technology to working together to beat Vlad.

Within the span of a few months, Cole and Danny are stronger than ever... and they'll have to be, because Dark Danny has arrived. The Ultimate Enemy is here, and they're the only ones who can stop him.

[monotype-on-phantom]

I did say I was gonna talk about these two, but as entertaining as they are, they’re not exactly two characters. They’re two halves of Danny. Despite that, they have such extreme, distinct personalities, and I do think it’s worth discussing why. Especially since this is something that happens again in a much different context.

To start with, let’s pull a couple of older posts out of the depths: my theory about Danny’s powers and my post about Danny’s view of himself as shown in Maternal Instinct. I do recommend reading both of these first if you haven’t already, because they’ll help back up some things I’ll be claiming in this post.

I’ve mentioned before that I believe a ghost's appearance is something they choose for themselves, whether consciously or subconsciously. Their appearance is either how they see themselves or how they wish to be seen, depending on how aware they are of the control they have. While Danny’s ghost form isn’t much different from his human form, I do think his self image does affect things.

Danny sees himself as small and weak because, well…he sort of is. He’s bullied at school for it. On top of that, he’s shy, awkward, and scrawny. While his ghost form isn’t much different, his expressions are often more confident when he’s in it. His shoulders are broader, his limbs are thicker, and if my observations about Super!Danny are right, he might even be a little taller.

I mentioned in my Maternal Instinct post that Danny has two very distinct roles for his two halves, and it makes a lot of sense. Danny Fenton is the weak one. The awkward loser who fumbles over his words and is banned from all fragile school equipment. Danny Phantom is faster, stronger, and capable of some really amazing things. He fights ghosts on a regular basis. As stressful as it is, it gives him confidence. He feels stronger when he can use his powers against an enemy than when he can’t, even when the ghost enemy is several times more powerful than the human one.

That said, by this time, Pirate Radio has happened, and this view has shifted slightly.

Danny’s confidence has finally started to extend to his human form. He’s able to speak up for himself when he needs to, he can take charge, and he can even fight against ghosts without being able to rely on his powers at all. He’s come a long way since season one. He’s still Danny, but he’s allowed his view of himself to change a bit more completely, and he doesn’t seem to be viewing his two halves as nearly as separate anymore.

That doesn’t make living the double life less stressful, though.

Danny just wanted to have a ghost-free weekend with his friends, but he accidentally let Technus loose and that’s taken a bit of a priority. Sure, Danny could technically ignore him. There are other ghost fighters around. Nobody knows he’s the ghost boy aside from his friends and sister. He doesn’t have to worry about Technus. We all know he’s going to anyway, though. That’s the way he is. He could also technically just push the weekend back a bit. Worry about Technus now and move the “Weekend of Fun” to next weekend. Tucker and Sam have said they don’t mind helping him fight Technus for the weekend instead. Danny doesn’t want that, either. He wants to have fun with his friends, and besides, this is something he promised them.

He can’t duplicate himself yet, but with the Ghost Catcher, he can actually remove his ghost half.

He’s flown through it on accident before, so he knows that it can remove all the ectoplasm from his DNA, and subsequently his ghost half. However, a ghost needs some sort of consciousness to exist. Without that, it’d just be a puddle of ectoplasm. So, his Phantom half had to take half of his mind with it.

The result is his two halves becoming the extremes of his intentions for them.

Danny Phantom, full-time superhero and Danny Fenton, full-time “fun dude.”

The first time Danny went through the Ghost Catcher, it was an accident. Without the intention to split apart there, the separation was likely not as drastic, which allowed him to merge together again quite easily.

Here, though? Danny went through with the very clear intention of splitting himself into a Danny Phantom who could handle the superheroics and a Danny Fenton who could have fun with his friends. Since his ghost half has to take have of his consciousness with him, though, we didn’t end up with two ordinary Dannys. Instead, we got the extreme superhero and the extreme fun guy.

Super!Danny is a pretty stereotypical superhero archetype, probably modeled a lot after superheroes Danny watched on cartoons growing up and/or people he looks up to. He’s still Danny, though. Just with all the traits of him that best suit the superhero life. Super!Danny took Danny’s sense of responsibility, his hard working side, his desire to protect people, and even the goofy banter, since that’s something Danny always connected to his ghost fighting. He has no need or desire to sleep, eat, or have fun. His life is centered around spreading “ghostly justice" and keeping people safe.

Fun!Danny, on the other hand, got the qualities of Danny that best suit someone who just wants to have lazy fun all weekend. He has no sense of responsibility or much consideration for others. He’s a lot more lazy, only taking interest in things that he thinks are fun. He’s not even that interested in trying to save his family from Technus. He’d rather go bowling. He has to be talked into it by being told it’ll be fun. He doesn’t especially care about ghosts at all.

They do still both have some similar traits, though. They both run to check on Jack when he crashes in the Specter Speeder, because both halves of him still love their family. They both still enjoy being around Sam and Tucker. They both have no desire to hurt innocent people, and they both want to keep their secret hidden from their family. All of these traits fit both a fun guy and a superhero just fine, so they’re just divided evenly between the two.

The second time they go through the Ghost Catcher in this episode, the intent is for his ghost half and human half to join together again. Unfortunately, since they went through the wrong side, we end up with two incomplete halfas instead of one Danny. The merging of human and ghost DNA was the only focus, rather than the minds, so the personalities remain the same as the ones they had before. There was no reason for their minds to be redivided, after all. Just the human and ghost halves, specifically.

At least, those are my headcanons. You’re free to see things differently, of course.

This might sound like I’m overthinking a goofy and irrelevant episode, but as I mentioned before, this happens again later. I was gonna talk about specifically why this episode is relevant, but I think I actually covered that in this analysis. I didn’t get extremely specific, but I’ll be bringing this up again in a few episodes. For now, I’ll just leave it at this.

[digital-strategy]

http://ift.tt/2p52Gkv

The depth of your product range is a big factor in how your pages rank in search engines.

According to Searchmetrics, ecommerce pages that appear in the top 10 search results have a 30% larger file size than other queries. Speed is clearly important, for everyone, but Google will make concessions on page load times for online retailers because searchers prefer results with more products to choose from. A fast ecommerce website with a lot of inventory generally wins.

Searchmetrics’ study highlights a lot of signals that correlate with better rankings – a 25% higher word count than in non-retail SERPs and 73% more internal links, for example – but these are just symptomatic. Nobody is suggesting you need more internal links to improve your search rankings. You need more products.

The challenge for a search engine: a page with more products is more likely to match a visitor’s intent, but which product was it they intended to find? Could a search engine determine whether that product is on a page/abundant/easy to spot in the range?

Resource identification from organic and structured content

Theoretically Google can now make direct use of a website’s database to determine whether it has the stock or inventory to answer a search query, according to a new patent spotted by Bill Slawski (who else?)

Bill notes some of the advantages this patent provides:

Websites need not generate multiple “optimized webpages” that are optimized for particular instances of queries to ensure the website is identified in a search result. Instead, the underlying capabilities of the website database and the authority of the website are used as metrics to surface websites and databases that are of high quality with respect to a particular query. This reduces the overall cost of website management, and provides users with data that are more likely to satisfy the user’s informational need than the optimized webpages.

Ignoring that the reference to an underlying “authority of the website” contradicts recent claims from several Googlers (no, seriously, just don’t think about it) there are some problems with this approach:

The ability of a webpage to technically answer a query is not the only factor ranking that page – a single page answering many potential queries is unlikely to rank highly for any of them. Basics like meta data and <h1> attributes would be down weighted

A visitor who had searched for “black leather jackets” but is served a /leather-jackets/ page with black leather jackets on it would have to click a filter to see what they specifically searched for unless brands could be more confident that Google could handle their filters, which at present they can’t

Google has a problem with software automatically spinning up landing pages based on keyword searches/volumes, which seems to be in vogue again – this is an extreme example of a terrible user experience but these “doorway pages” do seem to get caught up in the Panda algorithm (or a “core algorithm update” as it’s now known)

The assumption here is that searchers are already wedded to their choices. From the patent:

The systems and methods can utilize the conceptual schemas of the databases to provide additional information for queries that may not otherwise be derived from the queries. For example, a user that types in the search query [Brand X cameras under 300] may be searching for Brand X cameras that cost less than $300. The user, however, may not know that the “Q” models of Brand X cameras are prosumer models that each retail in excess of $300. Thus, by use of a product database, the search engine may determine that “Q” model are each in excess of $300. Thus, the search engine may modify the query with an operator that excludes the “Q” models, e.g., [Brand X cameras under 300 OP:NOT(Q)], or, alternatively, modify the query to emphasize resources that include reference to Brand X models that are priced under $300. The search engine thus surfaces fewer resources that include extraneous information, thereby satisfying the user’s informational need more quickly than if the extraneous information were provided.

What’s to say that a searcher wouldn’t be more likely to buy a camera if it cost $320 but was reduced from $500? Many people would cough up the extra cash if they thought they were getting a great deal, but perhaps a result like this would not be displayed. Google may think that it’s “satisfying the user’s informational need more quickly” whereas it’s actually impeding the user’s ability to research the product they want to buy (which is the one thing Google is fantastic at).

If anything, the camera example from the patent implies webpages that include products that don’t match the query are less likely to be surfaced, making it more important for big websites to have “optimised” landing pages.

Bill has some interesting thoughts on how Google might rank and display results using this method so I suggest reading the whole post, but the patent is an evolution of something we noticed after the first Panda updates.

The size of your inventory is a ranking factor

Back in 2013 Patrick referenced an AJ Kohn post about short clicks vs. long clicks in the context of thePanda algorithm. Patrick wrote

One of the key signals Google looks at is the number of people who visit your site and then return quickly to Google to search for the exact same thing again. This indicates to Google that the searcher is not satisfied with what they found on your site.

When Panda was launched it affected a number of key verticals including voucher sites and car classified websites. The problem with both of these sites is they generate a lot of short clicks and have really struggled to recover from Panda in a lot of cases.

Google denied using short clicks as a way to penalise or reward sites for years before Danny Sullivan was able to confirm that clicks were at least partially used to determine quality of results in 2015.

Google confirms watching clicks to evaluate results quality. FYI Google still won’t say if clicks used as rank signal http://pic.twitter.com/jzNGc5reQk

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) March 25, 2015

For an easy demonstration of why voucher sites have been so badly affected by Panda (/Phantom) updates, search for “nandos vouchers”. Click on the first result. The page lists deals that you’re probably aware Nando’s always offer, and nothing particularly impressive, so the chances are high that you would return to the search page and click on the next result down. And repeat. Because Nando’s don’t do vouchers.

This is obviously an extreme example. But imagine you wanted to buy a jacket: if the first result Google returns is a page with 5 jackets you’re not likely to spend a lot of time with that result before returning to the SERPs and clicking the next listing. Many browsers – people who don’t already have a brand in mind – are likely to spend their time with ASOS because it’s a website that ranks well and has an enormous range of jackets.

Inventory = how to beat Google

Inventory can be broadly taken to mean what a website has available – for ecommerce websites that means product listings or ads for classifieds websites.

Searchers click on a result because they have a reasonable expectation that the website will have what they’re looking for and as a result the websites with the largest range of products tend to win. It’s the internet version of why you’ll jump in your car and drive to a large supermarket rather than visiting the shop on the corner. It’s even likely that you’ve visited that local shop in the past and been left disappointed with the stock available – from now on you’ll go straight to the supermarket. That’s the real life equivalent of short clicks vs. long clicks.

This is also one of the reasons “department store” style retailers dominate search results. It’s partially because enormous sites like tesco.com have 28 products in a niche and furniture specialists like made.com have half that…

…but it’s more to do with the fact that Tesco does such a good job of telling people they have the product range often enough (see the snippet above) that people believe them and click on the result without fear of wasting time.

This goes further. According to Jason Del Rey on Recode 55% of product searchers now start with Amazon. Inventory – and the ease with which it can be accessed – is the reason Google is so scared of Amazon. Shoppers expect that Amazon stocks what they are looking for – and it does. It’s also easier to find, so why trust Google to return the right result on Amazon when you could cut out a click and potentially save yourself the trouble of searching again?

Although there is no previous data, it’s still encouraging to see that 13% of product searches are started on a retailer’s website. This is only half as many as Google, Bing, Yahoo! etc. combined. Imagine how many customers could be prevented from ever using a search engine during a purchase if retailers improved their own internal search functionality?

Niche-specific “Amazons” are surfacing too (Amazon’s “niche” is everything that you can buy, and that’s pretty broad). Skyscanner isn’t far off becoming “Amazon for flights”. See also: Autotrader. From Patrick’s post:

Loads of car classified sites have been hit by Panda in the past two years and the main signal (other than things like duplicate content etc. which are easy to fix) is the fact that none of the mid-sized sites can claim to offer the definitive car search experience for a searcher. No matter how good the site is, there are very few people who will just look at one website and be happy, unless that site is Autotrader.

Skyscanner can’t claim to list more flights than Google does (unless you’re limiting your thoughts to Google’s inferior flight search product), nor can Autotrader claim to have a broader selection of cars. You can use Google to find almost every flight, car or product that anyone has online. But these brands are successfully convincing the public that they can be absolutely trusted to have the answer or product that is searched for, returned without quite so much noise. So cut out the middle man.

I’m waiting for an “Amazon of finance”. Why sift through the nonsense content from banks that Google is forced to return if you can ask MoneySupermarket.com, Money.co.uk or Confused.com a question about your finances and expect that they will have an answer for you that you can trust?

I don’t think I’ll be waiting for long.

The future for Google

In February 2016 an announcement came from Mountain View that would see Google Search Appliance retired. No new hardware would be bought or sold from 2017, with renewals due to end next year. A cloud-based Search Appliance “replacement” is apparently on the horizon (it might not be cheap). From Fortune:

Google’s appliance was intended for companies that want to use Google technology to search internal documents by author name, prices, dates, and other data. Google’s partners made money by integrating the appliance’s search with customer document archives, applications, and websites.

Take a look at some of Search Appliance’s capabilities – it was a decent product plenty of companies invested in (and plenty of companies are being forced to invest in migrating away from it now). Patents like Resource identification from organic and structured content suggest that Google hasn’t abandoned the idea of integrating websites’ own internal search functions with Google.com et al. If it can convince the public that it’s still the best way to search retailers’ inventory, maybe it can “cut out the middleman” (Amazon) and even serve some ads in the process.

For now…some rules to live by

It’s worth noting that the publication of a patent doesn’t mean the techniques mentioned are currently in use (although as Bill points out we’ll know it’s likely to have been implemented once we start to see search results like the one shown in the screenshot above) – the value for us is the context the author provides as to why the techniques could be considered a good idea.

For now though there are certainly a handful of rules that brands should follow that will benefit brands now- regardless of if and when the “Resource identification from organic and structured content” patent is implemented.

Brands stocking a smaller range of products (or posting a smaller number of classified ads etc.) than competitors have to supplement that range with useful content if they hope to keep users on a webpage for longer. Don’t confuse useful content with boilerplate – the aim is to keep visitors on the page and if content is easily and willfully ignored it really isn’t useful.

If the brand with the market-leading range also has the market-leading content then don’t think in terms of trying to outrank them; think in terms of trying to make your webpage safe. A webpage with a small number of products and a little boilerplate copy (or no copy at all) is at risk from the next “core algorithm update”/”phantom”/Panda iteration.

On the subject of Panda, don’t just list all your colour variants separately and expect it to look like a broader range of products – everything is likely to rank worse than before. It’s fine to list slight product variations separately as long as precautions are taken (canonical tags being the most obvious).

I’d generally recommend sub-category level pages with fewer than 10 products are too thin to be sub-category pages on their own unless the products are extremely niche. Remember, you’re not trying to convince Google you have a page worth ranking – you’re trying to convince visitors that the variety on offer is interesting enough to spend some time with you. If you have 5 products in a niche, and everyone else has 2, you’re probably going to win.

Regardless of the size of your inventory you should be using all available Schema.org markup. As per the patent referenced above (and by Bill) it’s likely to become essential for brands with broad product ranges – and right now it’s still an advantage for smaller brands as many huge retailers don’t mark everything up.

Please, please, please have a site search strategy. If you’re not paying attention to the results you’re choosing to show your customers why do you care what Google shows so much?

The intention of the patent is to assess whether websites may be capable of answering questions. You can either wait until someone such as myself has a stab that this may be a factor in a “Phantom” update, or you can assess this yourself. Audit your website’s internal search function.

via BlogStorm

[kizzer55555]

Don’t mind me, going through all the reblogs and adding all the ones I like into one thing. This contains reblogs from @bet-on-me-13, @beesarekindaswag, and @zylev-blog 

What if the different Videos are basically Themed differently?

The Fight Videos are all themed like Found Footage, having been recorded by a Human Duplicate of Danny as the Original Body did the actual fights. Danny would chase around his Original as he and the Rogue fought to their hearts content.

...

The Amity Exploration Videos are themed like normal Vlogs, just Danny walking around, talking about Amity and the different Locations he has been to. Sometimes he complains about his Life, or just gives Normal life updates. But in the background you can always see something crazy happening, because it's Amity.

You'll see Trash Cans floating, before someone just smacks them with a Broom as they fall to the ground.

You'll see Blobs casually perched on Power Lines and on Buildings just chilling like Birds.

You'll see a normal Human walking their 4 ft tall Cat down the Street as if it's a completely normal occurrence.

...

The Realms Exploration Videos are themed like Steve Irwin/Bear Grills type documentary videos, with Danny doing a fake but fun Imitation of their voices as he explains the intricacies of the Realms Wilderness and Beasts.

"And this is the rare Blood Blossom. It's a Magical Flower and one of the few things that can harm a Realms Being, but it's also Invasive, so..." *lights it on green fire* *the flower seems to scream and cry out as it is buring away*

"Now let's be quiet for a second. You are now witnessing one of the Realms most dangerous Beasts. The Hill Crabs ate giant crabs that can eat anything! And their Armor is hard enough to withstand practically anything as well. Thankfully this one is small, but let's be careful to not attract the adults to the location" *points to the 'baby' which is the size of a mountain already*

"Now don't worry, these kind of Ecto-Pi are non-hostile normally. It's okay for them to wrap around my neck like this, but be sure to give them a good thump on the side if they start squeezing a bit too tight. They will understand and loosen their grip...unless it's an Ecto-Pi of the Asphyxia Family, which is practically indistinguishable from the normal variety and will tighten their gri-" *starts choking as the ecto-pi tightens its grip* "cut the feed! Cut the feed!"

(The next video is a Cooking video dedicated to Realms Dishes. The main dish? Calimary.)

Due to Amity shenanigans, none of the League can get in contact with Danny through regular means; emails won’t reach, phone calls won’t go through and don’t even get started on the weird barriers keeping them physically out…

Long story short - they resort to the most dignified of communications… Danny’s twitch chat.

“Hey, thanks ‘theJusticeLeague’ for the follow - really appreciate it”

Yeah, it wasn’t the best plan

Danny: so like, theJusticeLeague is really adamant about getting me to leave Amity??? Like no?? That’s just a recipe for disaster

Tucker; stranger danger, dude.

Sam: I mean, what’s the chances that it’s the actual Justice League anyway?

Okay so, Danny is a streamer. A rather small one, actually, but his viewer count is limited to Amity park due to them operating on a different server than the rest of the world.

Now, Danny has been exposed as Phantom, and the reveal went well and by extension, Vlad has been exposed as Plasmius too and they're on somewhat friendly terms.

Most of Danny's streams involves him fighting with ghosts, or exploring the zone (with a device thankfully able to survive in it with both Tucker and his parent's amazing help). Heck, some of it is even just either wandering around Amity Park or involving ghost animals of some kind.

Funny thing is, even though the reveal went good, he's doing all this as a human.

Somehow, his streams get leaked out to the wider world and some havoc is caused for a few individuals.

The Batfamily is so concerned and confused, because there was this kid? Fighting villains??? Then this same kid was also going into some place filled with what looked like some weird strain of Lazarus Water (it isn't Lazarus Water at all, actually, but they don't know that).

Meanwhile, Constantine needs the strongest alcohol available, because he's very, very certain that this kid is fighting with ghosts from the Infinite Realms and stepping into said Realms with no fear for his own life.

"And this here is where the Ghost King sleeps guys! 0/10 would not recommend waking him up, he gets cranky and I barely put him back to sleep last time!"

THIS KID HAS DONE WHAT!?