#the Fentons are supportive and he starts being masc presenting

[dat1angel]

When Ra's needed an heir, Talia impregnated herself with The Detective's DNA to give him the perfect offspring. When she delived fraternal twins the boy was raised to one day take over the League and the girl was kept around so that she might one day provide the LoA with new recruits. When she came of age and learned that the only reason she was kept around was the idea of her future children, she fled. They never found her.

Years later, Duke Thomas introduces his family to his new boyfriend, Danny Fenton.

[al-n-cartoons]

I did not, in fact, do school work.

“Hey, Al, what’re the relationships in A Story Told?”

Excellent question!

Ben’s in an open relationship with Ed. Ben is either pan or bi (undecided) whereas Ed is demiromantic and asexual.

Ben is quietly omnigender but prefers he/him pronouns. He will use any pronoun or gendered title he can fit into a pun or joke. He started leaning hard on his masc attributes after someone implied to him that he was too obviously Not Cis-Hetero (this is pre-gay-marriage America).

Ed is proudly agender and uses kit/kits pronouns. Kit is alright with people using they/them on kit and is willing to join Ben in the closet when around Ben’s family and coworkers.

Ed comes from somewhere wherein gay rights are a given and kit thinks the political sphere Ben comes from is philosophically archaic.

Ben and Rex are two buds with massive competitive streaks and spend a lot of their time together bantering. Sometimes they fight or bicker but at the end of the day, they have each other's backs. They try dating for a short stint but Rex realizes he’s heteroromantic so the two omit romance from the picture.

Rex and Ed don’t click. At all. They respect one another and care about a lot of the same people, but their friendship is heavily reliant on the two not interacting too much.

Danny and Ben are on friendly terms and find allyship in each other. However, both identify the obvious conflict of interest in being around one another too often (as it’s a risk for Danny’s identity being discovered). They come to play a fake game of cat and mouse where Ben, someone seen by the public as a clear hero, presents as a faux nemesis to Phantom, whom the populace view to be a menace. In actuality, this is an act of cunning as it allows for Danny to more easily escape and hide in plain sight. Ben also gives Danny (et co.) advice on avoiding attention and preventing discovery.

These two sometimes spar together for the heck of it.

Side note: Danny is genderfluid. Her predominant pronouns are “he” and “it” but they use different ones all the time.

Ed and Tucker are buds. Tucker helps Ed figure out modern technology, Ed explains alchemy, the two are a menace to all things creative.

Ed and Sam are also buds. These two spend most of their time together grieving the recklessness of their boyfriends (save for Tucker, who doesn’t spend his time being shot at).

Sam, Tucker, and Danny are obviously a wholesome, mutually supportive polycule. I dare you to defy me.

Ben and Sam can get on one another’s nerves but generally get along.

Rex and Danny don’t know one another too well but eventually become long distance friends.

Tucker and tech are a match made in heaven, obviously. With Ben’s funds and Rex’s resources, Tucker begins making more gadgets and is slowly catching up on the Fentons.

Tucker goes on to use the loophole of Anything on Ed Remains to create a group chat across their bundle of realities. Ed hates having to unearth the secret of Using a Touch Screen but enjoys having infinite access to Google Maps.

Ben and Rook start out on iffy terms but eventually become amicable…? Their relationship can best be described as an uneasy truce; Ben isn’t the all powerful, extremely professional partner whom Rook was promised and a partner and full time internship isn’t something Ben had been told he was getting until maintaining them was suddenly expected of him.

Rook begrudgingly realizes that he’s been tasked with babysitting what turned out to be the human equivalent of an adolescent, superpowered though Ben may be.

Ben tries to establish boundaries with Rook or otherwise just refuse the partnership outright but (1) is unable to work alone and (2) feels bad for ditching Rook.

Max and Ben: Max assigned Rook to Ben because he doesn’t want Ben to be left alone in Gwen and Kevin’s absence. He’s worried about Ben’s emotional wellbeing and social development and his best solution is to give Ben someone who can watch his back when on the field (and generally keep up with him).

Max is disappointed when Ben initially rejects Rook and tells Ben that he needs to be more responsible.

Ben and Lucy are somewhat estranged and generally don’t interact too much. When they do, they have fun, but there’s an underlying awkwardness the two can’t shake.

Ben and Gwen are estranged and in denial about that fact.

Ben and Sunny were never close but start to find themselves venting to one another about their woes. Sunny is considered a bad influence and she does bring out aspects in Ben that his family find undesirable, but it’s the most honest relationship Ben has in his family (or from his reality) so the two continue chatting together on-and-of.

After Ben eventually leaves (dude runs away), Sunny is the only person he keeps in touch with.

Ben and Verdona: Ben doesn’t have “the spark” and thus Verdona is uninterested in this grandchild. He makes some good jokes, that’s nice.

Carl and Ben: After Verdonna left the family because her children didn’t have “The Spark”, Carl set out to have his own ordinary family of perfectly ordinary people. Carl’s desire for normalcy bleeds out in his expectations for Ben’s extracurriculars, academic performance, social life, self expression, etcetera. When Ben turns out not to be normal in terms of a learning disability (severe ADHD), Carl is rather understanding. At first. He decides that, if his son isn’t academically talented, sports should be the way to go. Ben is okay at them and rather enjoys soccer but, for some reason, he just can’t seem to last as long as his peers. He runs out of breath faster and never seems to catch it. His chest often hurts from the heavy humid air but maybe he can be a good goalie?

Carl instills the ableistic mentality that disability is inherently shameful and that they are something that must not be discussed openly. It is okay to have a disability and to need medicine so as to be normal, but one cannot let others onto the fact that he isn’t normal.

Ben comes to develop early onset bipolar, Carl helps Ben figure out a good treatment regimen (medically supervised). Then Ben comes to be the bearer of some intergalactic megaweapon that turns him into aliens??? And Carl can’t get the thing off??? Then Ben says he’s anemic??? What- No, those are a few steps too far, stop it.

Ben does not magically stop being a public figure. Also, his blood doesn’t care about keeping up appearances (much to Carl’s chagrin).

The two progressively drift apart over the years.

Sandra and Ben have a somewhat similar relationship as that between Carl and Ben, emphasis on the somewhat. Like Carl, Sandra believes it is important that her son be normal. Unlike Carl, she believes that her son is a perfectly healthy, perfectly happy person because why wouldn’t her son be? He doesn’t need pills or doctors, those are just wastes of money that change her son from what he truly is.

When young, newly-diagnosed-with-ADHD-Ben doesn’t have the reaction to Adderall that Carl hoped for, Sandra cemented her belief that the pharmaceutical industry is a scam (and an accusation that she’s failed as a parent).

Sandra leans hard on alternative treatments; sports, yoga, herbs, herbal supplements (not from pharmacies ‘cause big pharma).

Sandra takes Ben off of his mood stabilizers (and then Ultimate Alien happened).

Did I end on a bummer note? I think I ended on a bummer note. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… Drew Saturday basically adopts Ben? Ben starts seeing Dr. Holiday and gets back into a good regimen for maintaining his health? Ed punches abelists in the face with his metal fist? Enter funny tidbit here?

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

Was thinking about the OP Danny tag and had an Idea.

So you know that one fic where everyone not from Amity Park are instinctively terrified of Danny? It’s basically that but with superheroes.

The supers are expecting, prepared for even, the aura of danger that Phantom and other ghosts emit and therefore aren’t too freaked out by him.

What they aren’t expecting however is feeling Existential Dread when they meet the otherwise unassuming son of Dr. and Dr. Fenton.

I'm not sure which fic that is but please!! send me a link!! I want to read it!! I love anything about outsiders interacting with anything/one from Amity Park

also Dr. and Dr. Fenton I am all about that, I've had it in my head for a long time that people who don't know them personally refer to them as Dr, but not people in their general daily life because they find it confusing, and I'm now realising I never made a post about that oops

(to clarify, the Fentons go by Mr and Mrs in regards to school meetings and professional conversations and such so they know which one of them someone is addressing, using body language and eye contact cues do not work because Jack doesn't generally look at people he's speaking with, it was Maddie's idea to drop the Dr titles because she preferred to make things easier for Jack rather than harass him about being better at reading people, because she is a Supportive Wife who doesn't shame her neurodivergent husband)

and I love that Creepy Boy aura, especially when people don't know he's Phantom because okay since we've been using DC heroes a lot I'll use them as a solid example for this next giant tangent

they probably wouldn't peg Danny's secret identity right away, like we know Batman is World's Greatest Detective but until he actually sees both Danny AND Phantom with his own two eyes he wouldn't make the connection because Danny has a Superman identity

by which I mean his strength is that nobody expects him to have a secret identity

people think Superman lives in the Fortress of Solitude, he has an alien home and an alien name and as far as people are concerned he just dropped onto earth a fully grown man, why would he need a secret identity?

Danny is exactly the same, as far as people know he's a ghost, his home is the Ghost Zone, he can't have a secret identity because he's dead, the closest thing he has to that is whoever he was when he was alive and that could have been anyone from any time within the last decade, any similarity noticed between Phantom and Danny would be chalked up to a simple coincidence, especially considering the headcanon that Phantom's body is built slightly different to Danny's (I run this through the transdanny canon where his ghost self presents more masc due to it reflecting Danny's body in a way that Feels Right to him)

so nobody, not even Batman, expects him to have any kind of human disguise, the only giveaway would be the fact that Batman has seen this trick before with Superman and still figured it out, so once he meets this kid who is the child of ghost hunters, who lives on top of the ghost portal, has an incredibly off-putting aura, and looks an awful lot like Phantom, that would be enough for him to start digging where most people would brush it away as coincidence

but like, who even knows how long it would take for him to come into contact with Danny's human self, he could have known about Phantom for days, weeks, or even years before ever realising that he's part human

it is super fun to imagine that first meeting though, when this gangly needy teenager is tagging along with his parents on this trip to install ghost tech in the watchtower (actually I vaguely recall reading a one shot fic about that premise yeeeaaaars ago but I can't remember what it was called RIP if I find it again I'll link it) and then any one of these seasoned superheroes who interact with him are like, 'bruh that kid gives me the creeps'

I can't help but draw a comparison to people feeling the same way around him as they feel around Jason Todd, because death leaves a stank on people that they just can't shake off

also I just want another excuse to use the Dead Boys Squad tag again sorry not sorry