#reflection of self or danny in this case lol

[entity-of-the-rift]

Meep?

[halfagone]

Hi, Halfa!

Recently, I have seen a lot of fanfics regarding the relationship between Danny and Constantine, as in couple but most commonly father-son dynamic or similar.

Do you think they could work out or are their personalities too different? And what would that look like?

Hello, Anony! X3

There are definitely plenty of lovely fics with these two involved, romantic or not. There's Contractual Obligations by the lovely @arzuera and @tathartiel~ which is a father-son fic. There's also Ashes by the incredible @jaytriesstuff which features these two as a couple. Just a few examples if anyone is interested in them.

I do think that a relationship between these two can work, even despite or perhaps because they are different in many ways. Yes, there are many qualities they share- Constantine may be an ass but in the end for all his dubious morals he is still a hero, and that deserves some recognition. But in some regards, they have such different life experiences that maybe it can be hard to imagine them together or interacting in any way.

But you don't have to be the carbon copy of someone to love them. They say opposites attract, and that can be true. Sometimes you need that different perspective in your life to help you grow to be a better person or look past the biases you grew up with.

There are plenty of parents whose children grow to be nothing like them and they can still love them. Because a kid is not meant to be your do-over, a kid is meant to be a life you bring into the world so that they can live it. Even if it's not something you would have chosen for yourself. And there's plenty of parents who don't want their children to be anything like them, because they made mistakes they can't take back.

A lot of it depends on what kind of characterization you want Constantine to have. There are many versions of his character; sometimes he acts like a self-centered asshole only looking out for himself, sometimes he acts as a mentor to Billy Batson or Timothy Hunter because they're kids who need a hand.

Personally, Constantine as a father to me would be that parent who doesn't want their kid to turn out like them. He's done terrible things for the sake of survival that no one should have to. If he wanted to be a good parent, I can see him trying to distance himself or his past from Danny to make sure he doesn't get caught up in that. This might sound bad, but in some cases, it is genuinely better to give a child up for adoption, and that would probably be the same here for Constantine.

As a couple can be a little more tricky. Because you run the risk of Danny's relationship with John turning into a twisted 'I can fix him' scenario, which is never healthy. Yes, relationships can help you grow, but you should never go into one with the thought that you can change a person. For one, that's not realistic. For another, they don't always have to change. Sometimes one half of the couple just thinks the other half should, which again, unhealthy. And of course, that means you don't care about a person for who they are but some vision you have of them. Not much better.

But if these two are on equal footing, I can imagine it growing into something that has a lot of potential to be a healthy relationship. I love to think about how different their perspectives are on death and how that reflects on them as people. Constantine has made so many soul contracts in his endless attempts to escape death. On the other hand, Danny has died and embraces death every time he transforms into Phantom.

I could wax poetic about this pair if I wanted to, but I should really wrap this up at some point lol I do believe these two have a lot of potential, but I always have been a multi-shipper at heart.

[bigskydreaming]

Hypothetically speaking, if someone were working on a Beacon Bay AU one shot where a bunch of dolphin shifters and shark shifters go to the same beachside school, would Brett work better as the former or the latter? I can see either working for him, and put off deciding because he’s just a supporting role but he has to mack on Mason now, so I kinda gotta know in order to know what kind of insults jokes to write Liam making.

I mean. Allegedly. No wait, hypothetically. THE ALLEGED AUTHOR WHOMST IS NOT ME AND PROMISING NOTHING HYPOTHETICALLY MEANS.

Is what I meant to say. Theoretically.

Anywho, the other dolphin shifters are Scott, Isaac, Erica, Boyd, Liam, Corey and Nathan (the lacrosse player Malia hooks up with in Season 6.) The shark shifters are Danny, Jackson, Tracy, Josh, the twins and Hayden. Lydia’s a siren who hangs out with the sharks mostly, and Kira and her mom are a kind of trickster spirit tied to the ocean because ocean kitsune aren’t actually a thing, and Malia’s a Proteus style shapeshifter that can turn into any sea creature, because in this Corinne was just a modern guise of Circe’s. Peter’s a dolphin shifter as well, and the one who turned all the dolphin shifters, before backstory plot had Scott rally the others behind him and eventually drive Peter out of town. Mason’s a druid in training, specifically focused on ocean magic, as he and Deaton are of a sect of druids who guard lore bequeathed to their order by Manannan mac Lir, the Irish sea god, a thousand years ago.

All shifter types have specific innate magic, which is why Peter was turning teens - dolphin magic is empathy and storm summoning. They can sense emotions and also project them, and in a pod, they can summon storms/manipulate the weather in specific ways via music. A solitary dolphin shifter singing on their own could maybe whip up a wind or stir up some fog, but you need a whole group to actually get a decent storm brewing....but the local dolphins were all surfers and skaters before being lured and turned by Peter, so no one’s really all that surprised to see them hanging out on the beach at night, camped out by bonfires and playing their guitars and being wild and loud. 

The rules of ‘the shape you take reflects the person you are’ still apply here, and dolphins are characterized by being playful, mischievous or chaos-loving, as well as naturally social. Shifters don’t need to bite or claw someone to change them, specifically - its about bringing a human to death’s door, the threshold between life and death ie the place where greatest transformations have the potential to occur....and then the shifter’s magic either finds a match in the shape of the human’s spirit, in which case they pull them back across the threshold, now a shifter themselves....or if the spirit doesn’t match their shifter type, the human like...dies. 

So basically to change them, Peter kinda...lured them out into the waves, siren style (except dolphin shifters are NOT sirens, thank you very much, says Lydia, who is very tired of having to remind people, sirens are a type of Fae, and dolphin shifters are just the result of a bunch of pirates pissing off the Greek god of wine, madness and revels a few thousand years ago, which apparently was supposed to be a punishment, but somehow just ended up making a bunch of mystical shapeshifting party animals....whatever, Dionysus was never particularly known for thinking things through. In his defense, he was probably drunk at the time).

Anyway, so to change them, Peter lured them out into the waves at night via empathy manipulations, yes the grossness is very much implied, but all backstory only, and then dragged them down under the water until they were drowning, at which point sharing breath either changes them or doesn’t work and they drown. Course, it doesn’t have to be a gross thing, for instance after becoming the pod’s Triton (the dolphin equivalent of an Alpha, the central focus point of their magic and the only one who can actually turn people) Scott turned Liam to save his life....Liam was a surfer who got caught in an undertow and dragged far enough down that by the time Scott got to him, he wouldn’t have been able to get him to the surface in time, so he tried giving him underwater CPR instead basically, and it worked, dolphin Liam.

Anyway, one can imagine a ton of different ways Peter would be game to exploit a bunch of impressionable teenagers with the power to manipulate moods and emotions just by being near someone, but they weren’t having it and backed Scott in challenging Peter until he peaced outta town. (Derek and Cora exist here, but they’re...elsewhere, as are the Argents, because plot reasons).

Problem with kicking the only dude who actually knows how to properly use their magic the hell out of Dodge though, is the dolphins only sorta kinda know how to use their magic. They kinda mostly got the whole storm singing thing down, and they can feel emotions just fine, but when it comes to the reverse, well, they haven’t quite figured out where the off switch on that is yet. So they kinda just each have this aura about them that can’t help but spread their emotions to whomever comes in range, like...contagious emotions. Which is a big part of the reason why they’re so loud and obnoxious and like, party animals (this pod, at least) - because they figure if they can’t stop being Mother Magic’s little emotion factories, they’d rather be pumping out dopamine among their surroundings, instead of like...magic depression hour. 

(Oh yeah, basically supernatural creatures have their own idea of a third kinda primal nature figure, like there’s Mother Nature and Father Sky, and in supernatural cultures, they also refer a lot to Mother Magic, who is basically like, the idea of the source point of everything supernatural in the world).

Being self-taught does have some upsides though, as some of them have figured out their own unique tricks that they probably wouldn’t have, if they’d been taught ‘properly’ by older shifters who are limited by their own ideas of what is or isn’t possible. For instance, they’ve never heard of any other dolphins who are able to pull off Corey’s trick of projecting an aura of some combination of emotions that basically lets him go virtually unnoticed, like...everyone in his vicinity is emotionally cued to just overlook him entirely, when he gets himself in the right mindset to project the effect he’s going for here. Its not true invisibility, he still shows up on camera and everything, its more like....they don’t register seeing him, even as their eyes pass by him.

Then you got the shark shifters on the other hand, who are a lot more serious...they’re not bloodthirsty like a lot of people would tend to assume, but rather their nature is that of guardians and lore keepers. Which prompts a lot of confusion as to how Jackson made the cut, and Danny just sighs and says see, obviously there’s more to him than meets the eye, which is actually just his way of covering for the fact that he doesn’t have a clue either. But shark shifters are largely born shifters, because they have strict laws among their own kind about turning humans, like....a large wolf attacks a human and bites them and they later die? Its noteworthy, but not like, as noteworthy as shark attacks, given the actual scarcity of the latter, so shark shifters are like....yeah, no biting the humans. Jackson and Hayden are actually the only bitten shifters in the local clan....Jackson was bitten by a rogue shifter years ago (luckily with shark shifters, if the Change takes, it takes hold quickly enough to like....start healing the damage from the bite before they bleed out, lmao). 

Hayden was turned in her old town by a clan whose leader was not a Good Guy, and her sister was like NOPE, and got her the hell out of town and kept driving until they found a shark clan with a good reputation. The Beacon Bay clan has been around for decades and are well established (the Mahealanis are the clan leaders, and Danny’s in line to be in charge next). But yeah, other than Jackson, the others are all born into local shark shifter families - like Josh and Tracy, or else they’re like the twins, who were born into another clan that was killed by hunters, and then the Beacon Bay clan took them in. So the same thing could work for Brett and Lori, because it wouldn’t work for them to be born dolphin shifters even from out of town, since that wouldn’t fit with the local dolphins all being self-taught in their magic....if I make them dolphin shifters too, they’d be turned ones as well.

Shark magic is in the blood...born shifters have ancestral memories of previous shifters in their bloodline, and because of the ‘shape of your spirit is what matters’ rule of thumb, bloodlines in this case is kinda symbolic....so even bitten sharks like Jackson and Hayden have blood memories from the previous generations of Beacon Bay sharks by virtue of the fact that they are clan now and see themselves that way, so as far as the magic is concerned, it counts. But at the same time, they also still have trace connections to the bloodlines of the shifters who bit and turned them, so they each for example occasionally get a flash of something from a different clan’s history...just like the twins still get flashes of their old clan’s blood memories.

And this is why they’re the lorekeepers of the various shifter types, because just like sharks are ancient as fuck, compared to other animals, shark shifters are said to be the oldest of the shifter types except for the crocodiles. So some of the oldest shark clans have memories going all the way back to the earliest eras of human history. This happens to include Danny’s clan, of course, and in fact his great great great grandfather was what’s known among shifters as a throwback - basically a shifter whose specific spirit DNA/coding/whatever/lol combines with the blueprint for their animal side in such a way that like.....the shape they take is that of a much earlier prototype of their shifter species, further back the evolutionary chain. So Danny’s great great great grandfather’s shifted form was basically less great white and more...megalodon, lol. Not quite that extreme, but close enough that his descendants are still catching the tail end of that prestige wave, almost a hundred years later. But basically that goes hand in hand with the fact that their clan’s lineage traces all the way back to the earliest shark shifters, the ones said to remember when gods still walked the earth themselves. 

And then sharks’ other magic, besides the blood memories (cuz all shifter types have two, like the dolphins have their empathy and their storm-singing; there’s a more passive type and an active type)....so the active type of shark magic ties into their nature as guardians. Just like sharks can smell blood in the water from miles away, shark shifters can ‘feel’ not blood in the water per se, its more like they can ‘smell’ violence from similar lengths. Like, they just have a sense for it, and can hone in on it, track it....and in the presence of spilled blood, they get a boost across the board...their strength, speed, healing, etc, all ramp up and give them a heightened edge in fighting whatever’s the source of the violence...at least until the blood stops spilling, either because they’ve successfully fought off whatever attacked someone and someone’s gotten the bleeding to stop, or because like....they died. LOL. 

The catch-22 of shark blood magic is that its geared towards making them better able to guard and protect those within their territories, but people familiar with their shifter type and how their magic works know that their best chance of beating a shark shifter running to the rescue is to like.....kill the person they’re coming to protect, shut off the spigot, so to speak. Part of why the shark clans like Danny’s have become a lot more insular and reclusive in recent decades is because hunters started to get savvy about baiting traps for shark shifters....use someone as bait to lure a shark shifter close, and then soon as they’re within range of the hunters’ ambush or whatever, kill the victim and the shark shifter’s been lured out and yet now is no more powerful or formidable than any other average shifter. Which is still plenty badass, but nothing that hunters who can take down werewolves and weretigers and the like, like...can’t handle.

Anyway, that’s me rambling on.

Oh yeah, and Theo exists but probably won’t be in this one shot because like....its mostly done and he’s not here, so I mean. Yeah. Probably not gonna surprise me with a sneak appearance. If I manage to finish this and ever get around to doing a second one in the same universe, that’s where he would show up. I know what he is though, like, the Dread Doctors don’t exist here, but something/someone kinda like them does, and Theo’s the result of one of their experiments. There’s an Inuit spirit called an akhlut, who can turn into an orca in the ocean and a wolf on land....to be clear, he is NOT that, nor is it even clear in-universe whether they exist or not, but basically like....someone was trying to engineer a shifter based on that legend, via a combination of science and magic. And that’s how you get a Theo here. Anyway, he’d end up in Beacon Bay searching for an artifact that’s legendary among the shifter clans in the way Excalibur is legendary to us....no one can seem to say for sure if it even exists or not, let alone does what its rumored to do, but the stories are endless....something called Circe’s Diadem, said to belong to the enchantress herself, and imbued with the power to change the shape of a person’s spirit.

And if you can change the shape of your spirit (or someone else’s) to whatever you want, then you can also by extension guarantee the specific type of shifter they could be transformed into as well.

Anyway, I have this other later idea for a bunch of factions, Theo included, all converging on Beacon Bay because someone’s been going around whispering in various ears that Circe’s Diadem is hidden in the town somewhere.

Whether or not this has anything to do with Circe’s daughter living in that town....or how many people (such as Theo) actually know that’s who she is...well, who can say.

And yeah, Malia’s met her before, and she’s Not A Fan. She knows who Corinne really is too (Circe has a sizable reputation as Corinne, her latest in a long line of guises/personas, but while she’s well known among the supernatural world as an infamous and feared mercenary and assassin, very very few know that she is in fact Circe herself....who was rumored to have died, been killed, vanished, etc, three thousand years ago, according to an endless array of legends, with pretty much every supernatural culture having their own idea of what happened to her. Circe is about as famous as it gets in the supernatural world, but she’s specifically revered/feared by the various shifter clans, most of whom believe that she had something to do with the creation of the very first shifters. Some stories say she’s the daughter of Mother Magic herself, others say she’s a goddess, still others insist she was nothing more than a very gifted con artist with a penchant for taking credit for other peoples’ work. Even Malia doesn’t know for sure. She and Mommy Dearest don’t really talk much. And every time Corinne does show up, she seems to have some kind of agenda in mind for Malia, which Malia’s like yeah no, I object, and Corinne’s like, you haven’t even heard what it is, and Malia’s like yeah I don’t need to, oh hey, have you met my girlfriend, Kira? Its such a small world, apparently you know her mom?

And then Noshiko’s like, hello...Corinne, is it, these days? 

And Circe is like....oh. Hello. Noshiko. 

And Noshiko just smiles, this beautiful, serene, dangerous smile: It’s been awhile, hasn’t it.

Circe: I suppose it has. About six hundred years, give or take a decade, I think?

Noshiko: And yet I remember it like it was yesterday.

*awkward silence*

Circe: Well, I really must be going Malia, sweetheart, we’ll catch up some other time, toodles, gotta jet, murder waits on no woman, after all. Ta, darling!

So, that’s a thing. Corinne and Noshiko definitely have beef.

But Malia only knows who her mother really is because of Noshiko, who refuses to tell her or Kira any more than that, because as Noshiko puts it, she doesn’t really come off all that great in the story either, and would prefer to just wield the threat of it as a blunt instrument to keep Corinne at bay, rather than like...actually unpack it. If at all possible.

And as Peter was run out of town before Malia found out the truth of her biological parentage, she’s not actually sure whether Peter knew who she really was and just never said anything, or even if Peter actually knew who Corinne really was when he was with her. Given his obsession with the occult and ancient legends, its entirely possible Peter did know though, or even sought her out specifically because he’d deduced she was really Circe. From things he mentioned in passing now and then, Scott and his pod are fairly certain that Peter was looking for Circe’s Diadem too, and has been for a very long time. But again, whether that’s a hint towards him knowing who Corinne was, or against....they have no idea. 

Deaton’s theory, when pressed, because he really doesn’t like to speculate, lmao, but he was concerned they were only considering one angle at the exclusion of all others....so he mentioned an old story passed down from the earliest days of his own sect of druids, about an ancient sea witch who might have been another one of Circe’s many names/personas....and the story said three times a man came to the sea witch in a different guise, first a lover, then a friend, then a foe, and each time he tried to steal her magic (though what precisely this means, the story didn’t say). And after the third time, the sea witch hid most of her magic in her crown, and gave it to her most loyal servant, who she then turned into an albatross and commanded to take it far away and hide it until she came for it. So taking into account that story, its possible Circe herself doesn’t actually know for sure where her Diadem is, and for whatever reason, she stored the majority of her magic in it long, long ago...and she’s been hunting for it ever since. So maybe, they speculate, it wasn’t even Peter that sought Corinne out, but rather she who sought him out, because she’d heard of his search and thought he might be on the right track.

But yeah. So Malia has no idea if Peter knew who he was sleeping with at the time, or if he even knows now, and is Theo working for Corinne, for Peter, for someone else entirely, or is he an independent agent, is Circe’s Diadem even in Beacon Bay at all, is it even real or just the longest con ever, and if so, what does she stand to gain from it? Mysteries abound!

The sea keeps its secrets well, and so does Beacon Bay.

Dun dun dun.

fshalsfhlafjal god Im such a melodramatic shit why am i so fucking amused by myself science side of tumblr i need answers but be gentle im delicate

[flightyrock]

Ectober Day 5: Midnight

Summary:  Direct continuation of Days 3 and 4.  Danny reflects on the events of the evening.  Last part.

Warnings: Discussed morality, suicide ideation hinted at

Relationships: Platonic Danny and Vlad

Word Count: ~1000

This is the end of the angst train for now, lol.  Tomorrow’s is super lighthearted and fun.  I didn’t edit this one too closely because it would never be finished, and I’m tired of looking at it.  Enjoy!

Danny sighed heavily, running a hand over his face as he allowed himself to collapse backwards onto his bed.  He glanced at his clock, knowing that sleep wasn’t likely to find him again this night, or rather, morning.

After he and Vlad parted ways, he made his way back to Tucker’s house, collected his things, and left them a note.  Somehow, their company wasn’t appealing at the moment.  He needed some time to himself.

Midnight.  It seemed insane that it was only just that late, and any other time Danny would suspect his clock was on its last legs, as it had been midnight for what felt like the past four hours.  But Vlad had warned him of this phenomenon before they parted ways.

“There is much I do not know about the spirit event.  But, at least last time, it seemed to have a rather curious side effect.  I can only describe it as a temporal anomaly, but I swear time quite literally stood still for a long while after the last lights faded away.

“Honestly, I was tempted to panic for awhile; people and animals were frozen in place, and not even the wind blew.  I thought maybe I was stuck in a pocket dimension of some sort, doomed to be more alone than I ever was before.  But it eventually faded away.”

Vlad, struck by a sudden thought, pulled back a glove to glance at the watch beneath, only to chuckle mirthlessly, before flying away without explanation, leaving Danny to make his own way back.

Well, at least Danny knew why now.  The universe a sense of humor so clichéd, it was almost predictable.

This was just one more element on top of the overwhelming amount of information he needed to process from the evening’s events.  Obviously, the spectacle of lights had been an experience that he wasn’t entirely certain how to categorize.  Already, the impressions of the event were blurring together into a confusing sensation that his mind was having trouble quantifying.

Regardless, now he felt…almost exposed?  Feelings and impressions he didn’t remember he had felt very raw.  Colors were bolder, sensations were pronounced.  Somehow, he felt more alive and present than he’s ever felt before.  But it also brought to mind his unresolved difficulties.

Danny still had not completely reconciled the events of his misadventure in the alternate timeline with his evil counterpart.  So many of his core beliefs and values were shaken, including his sense of security in his support system.  It could so easily be taken from him, and he had no idea how he would survive without them even with intimate knowledge of the adverse consequences.  Part of him suspected that Clockwork knew this, and restored his family and friends due to his inability to deal with the grief rather than any merit of his that earned him a second chance.

He was disturbed to no end what he appeared to be capable of.  It was an irrelevant detail that the destruction was caused by his ghost half combined with Vlad’s; it was still part of him.

Evil and good.  Black and white morality had been all he’d ever known, impressed on him heavily in childhood.  There was no grey area; there was right and wrong, and that was that. His father emphasized this from a young age, so he tried to be good without fail.

But he did fail, didn’t he? He did things he knew were wrong because, at the time, they were the most convenient.  So was he evil?  He supposed, that according to his definition, he was.  But he felt that he was much less evil than Vlad.  But did that make him good?  And was this even meant to be quantified.  He didn’t know, but thinking about it just seemed to create more questions. People were much more complex than he’d given them credit for, and on some level, he’d known it for a while now.

Honestly, he had been suppressing the problems with his morality system for a long time, mostly because it was Vlad that brought it to his attention.  He didn’t want Vlad to be right, especially after his scathing insults to Danny’s intelligence and maturity level.  But after tonight, he was running out of excuses.

He couldn’t deny that tonight, Vlad had been different.  There was simply no other way to put it.  For the first time, Vlad hadn’t struck him as something evil to defend against.  Well, for the most part.

There was almost an improvisational and dare he say nervous quality to Vlad’s actions that night.  He was almost vulnerable.  And at the spectacle, he hadn’t missed the tears that had stained the elder half ghosts’ cheeks as well, and their chat afterward had been…many levels of disturbing.

For the first time, Danny realized how close-minded he had been, and was ashamed.  He had thought he was incredibly open minded, but that just wasn’t the case.  He saw ghosts as lesser beings, despite being one himself.  He minimized Vlad’s human status because of his behavior, which was not totally insane like Danny had always thought.  Vlad really had been through a lot in his life, and he did it all alone.  No wonder he was so fixated on Danny and his mother.

Not, he shuddered, that it made it any less creepy.

But maybe, he would retire some of his harsher insults.  He did not approve of Vlad’s reactions to his unfortunate circumstances, but after his experiences with his evil alternate self, Danny couldn’t be certain that he wouldn’t react the same way.  And if Vlad continued to get under his skin, so what?  Danny was supposed to be the hero.

Not that this really changed anything.  Danny was certain that he and Vlad would continue to clash.  But maybe, after tonight, neither would be quite as cruel.

As Danny’s thoughts settled down for the night, he drifted to sleep despite himself, missing the quick flash as his digital display flipped from 12:00 to 12:01.

A/N:  So, yeah.  These last three days turned out so much more angsty than I had planned.  I also didn’t plan for this whole thing to be connected.  But it sets up for some fun interactions later.

Tomorrow is going to be lighthearted and fun, promise!  Thanks for reading!