Tuck's Labyrinth

Green Arrow #22 - "Fresh Water Kills V" (2025)

written by Chris Condon art by Montos & Adriano Lucas

Ares, Protector of Women

Article link at the end of post. Hi all! I recently downloaded Substack and wanted to write about a pretty messy topic that I have a lot of feelings on: Ares' unofficial title as 'protector of women' in modern cult space. While I personally use it and find there to be enough history to back it up as a UPG title, it's not super black and white when you look back into historical records and mythology.

So naturally I wrote a little article about it! I discuss myths that are usually used as sources for this title along with generally looking at how Ares interacts with gender norms and how that can influence the discussion.

I hope it's a fun read and please let me know if something went horribly catastrophically wrong on the actual posted part as I am not tech-savvy and not used to Substack. Link below!

open.substack.com

Ares: Protector of Women

A look at the semi-historical semi-title of the god of war.

I wonder what Danny thought after he had died? Like, reasonably, he wouldn’t come to the conclusion that he’s half dead. Sure he’s died but he’s still kind of alive so it’s fine. No. They all would have thought that he was a ghost. But that means that they must have searched for Danny’s body. Sam and Tucker would have been the ones to try the portal obviously but the off button’s on the inside. They can’t shut it down to check.

I wonder how long they thought that Danny’s body was just rotting behind the portal or floating somewhere in the ghost zone and knowing they can’t do anything about it. What if someone finds it and uses it against Danny? And what did they think when he turned back?Was he possessing his own body? Is that why they couldn’t find it? Or is he just shape shifting subconsciously?

Also, how the hell did they figure out he’s a halfa. In what world is that a logical conclusion? Oh yeah don’t worry guys I think I only kind of died. Half died. Like, what?

DPxDC Put on A Show

TW: suicide attempts but for fun

After a few years of doing the whole vigilante thing, Danny gets bored of his quick and simple transformation act. He gets bored of doing the memes along with it as well — the 'I guess I'll die' was funny at first, but there's really only so many times it works.

The solution? He starts staging his own deaths. Throwing a toaster in the bathtub, comically falling down on a knife, slipping on a banana peal and hitting his head, all that jazz. He has his own list of preferred suicides, ranking from the quickest to slowest and from the least to most painful, and another one that goes from the least inconvenient method to most troublesome one. The first one on the latter is getting shot at. The last is getting suffocated in a swarm of bees so far.

His friends are long used to it — they are all Amity kids, honestly, their idea of humor is really twisted. They laugh their asses off when Danny attempts to strangle himself with one of those sour candy strips. They laugh even harder when he succeeds.

But then Danny moves for college and realizes that most people outside Amity Park don't think performed suicide is funny.

And, well.

Sucks to be them because Danny does not plan on stopping any time soon!

The absolute culmination of it comes one dark November evening, when the Fenton luck strikes again and Danny finds himself being a hostage in Joker's old as time performance: making Batman choose between saving Robin or saving a helpless civilian, both of them hanging over the tanks full of acid.

Only, midway through the madman's pathetic speech, they all get to see said civilian wake up, look around to realize what kind of situation he ended up in, and then excitedly say, "Sick, a jacuzzi!"

And happily, eagerly wiggle his way out of the ropes to fall in, screaming, "Cannonball!"

every single time i see one of those ‘pov you forget to mute yourself on discord’ tiktoks i think of the batkids. i just fucking know they’ve spent so long boredly fucking around on comms during patrol that they have honed the skill to acapella any song they want on the fly just to entertain themselves during slow nights.

Bruce will be dealing with a group of muggers when out of nowhere about 6 different voices will perfectly team up with NO verbal planning before hand just to serenade him with Meghan Trainor or Britney Spears and they will Not Listen when he tells them it’s distracting.

one time Damian got smacked in the head with a brick during a group mission and he was collapsed on the ground trying to get his bearings and not throw up while Bruce and Dick were fighting to get to his side, and STILL despite the concussion they could hear the little fucker providing the background beat to Jason Tim and Stephs performance of Fallen Kingdom by Captainsparklez.

I got to work with @kinglazrus​ for their Invisobang fic “Blossoms on Her Tongue” that you can check out here –>(ao3|ffn)  :)!

Thanks for the correction. Honestly I know nothing about what happens to the body after you die so I just posted what I had in mind.

I do think that opens up even more possibilities though. Especially when wondering if he’s dead or alive. I mean the stiffness went away right? But there are so many other things that happen once someone dies like you mentioned. I think he would struggle with the identity crisis but also like, literally nobody has ever gone through what he is or ever will. He would have no one to go to for advice or about his worries. Now that is lonely and I can’t imagine how literally decomposing would feel like.

There’s this massive idea in the phanon that when Danny died he left behind a body (as it should this idea is amazing).

First of all I want to know what happens to Danny when he turns human again. Is he just a ghost shape shifting to look human? Does he go back to his body and it looks like he just passed out? Does he overshadow his body? Did he just, like, regrow his entire mortal form?

Either way, that’s not what I’m here for. There is another, slightly less popular idea that Danny’s body is constantly decaying. I am here to propose a middleman.

Now all the basics happen. Danny dies, he sees his body and panics. He decides to bury it because, you know, dead and all that. Except he’s under the impression that he just straight up died, no funky business. So he happened to fall asleep that night.

When he woke up he couldn’t see. He couldn’t breath. He shouldn’t need to breath but everything was suffocating. Danny tries to phase out but it doesn’t work. So he digs widely because he can’t breathe, where is he, he needs out. And he finally manages to drag himself out of his own grave to realize he’s completely human.

So, obviously he goes about his day, literally what else can he do? Except he feels a bit more stiff than normal. Throughout the day it gets harder and harder to move until he’s struggling to even stand. Then it finally hits him. Rigamortus. 

The Batfamily knowing military hand signals is a hilarious concept to me. Cause like, you can not tell me Damian wouldn’t be constantly drawing his hand across this throat at every mild inconvenience and person with Dick trying to hide the fact that his ten-year-old brother is telling him he wants to eliminate 80% of the guests there

Damian standing next to Bruce who is in full on Brucie Wayne mode: *eliminate that man*

Jason: *say again*

Dick, taking notice of the gestures: *emphatically gives Damian a negative*

Steph sneaking up on the man with Cass: *assault assault*

Now from what I can tell there are two main explanations for Danny’s ghost powers. 

The first one is the “canon” version. As in it’s more accurate to the explanation in the show but this is the phandom so it obviously differs somewhat. This one says that when Danny turned on the portal it put him in direct connect with an unlimited supply of ectoplasm as the portal opened on top of him. At the same time, massive volts of electricity ran through him, binding the ectoplasm to his DNA. Honestly I like this version less but I think it makes more sense from a logical perspective if you want a like actual explanation.

The second version is my favorite. It’s much more fantasy and mystical. And in my opinion is better for angst, which everyone knows is the most important thing in the phandom. Anyway this theory says that when Danny turned on the ghost portal it opened inside of him, not just on top of him. This caused him to simultaneously exist in the ghost zone and the material realm. When this happened, Danny was hit with a huge surge of electricity, killing him. But things don’t affect people the same way in the ghost zone so can you really expect that nothing weird happened when he was in both. It caused him to die in one dimension but survive in another, making him a paradox existing as both dead and alive. I like to think that perspective changes depending on which dimension he’s in.

Anyway that’s just my take on it and whoever came up with all this is a genius.

Tuck's Labyrinth

[Phic Phight Phill Phor @mistythefifth!]

Tucker was a lot of things.  A genius.  A first-rate bachelor.  A carnivore.   A snack.  A geek.  Unbelievably handsome.  An Esperantist.  God’s gift to women (and men of good taste).  A gamer.  Cool beyond cool.  A hacker.  Eminently eligible.  A ghost hunter.  Drop-dead gorgeous.  A hobbyist archer.  A magnet for Cupid’s arrows.  The reincarnation of an ancient and possibly evil pharaoh.  Bootylicious. The best friend of the personification of memento mori and also Danny Fenton.  And, most importantly, too fine.  

He was not, however, in any way equipped to deal with this.  

“It's so obvious,” said Wes.  “If you'd just open your eyes–”

“You're the one who needs to open his eyes.  Or at least get checked for colorblindness.”

“Do you hear yourself?  If even you think it's reasonable to mix up Fenton and Phantom just by swapping colors–”

“Uh, one, it isn't, and, two, I was talking about coming to school wearing… that.”

Paulina pointed a manicured fingernail in the direction of Wes's clothing, which was, in her defense, a particularly eye-searing combination of flannel plaid jacket, striped t-shirt, novelty camouflage pants, and bright orange boots.  Even Tucker didn't dress like that.  Regularly.  Wes hunched in on himself.  

“It's laundry day,” he said. 

“Your mama's washing your shoes too, huh?”

“Shut up,” said Wes.  “I don't need to take this from a necrophiliac.”

“You–!”

Tucker couldn't take much more of this.  “You guys do know that there's an actual evil ghost in here somewhere?  You know, the one who turned the school into a maze and trapped us in it?”

“I don't know what you're worried about,” said Wes, “Fenton's not going to leave you here.”

Paulina scoffed.  “Fenton's hiding in a closet somewhere. Mi amor, Phantom, on the other hand, will beat up that nasty ghost and sweep me off my feet at any moment.  You can thank me now.”

Tucker loved Danny like a brother, but these guys had way too much faith in a guy who'd once lost a fight with a grocery bag.  (Long story.)

“That's great,” said Tucker.  “But may I remind you: giant maze.”

Wes rolled his eyes.  “Mazes are easy.  You just have to make all right turns.  You can stop the performance already.”

“My what?”

“You know, hyping up your lying friend.  Being a ghost doesn't make him cool.”

“Nothing could make any of you cool,” said Paulina, “but Mr. Delusional is right.  Mazes are easy.”

“You're calling me delusional, when you're–?!”

“Okay, okay,” said Tucker.  “So, three things.  One, the right hand turns thing is only good for getting out of a maze, not for finding people in it.  Two, it only works if you start with a wall that connects with the outside.  And, most importantly, for it to work, you have to actually be doing it.”

Tucker was definitely channeling Danny, or maybe Sam, but there was such a thing as being too laid back.

“Well, we're not stopping you,” said Paulina, examining her fingernails.  “Go run off and do whatever.  I'll tell Phantom when he comes to rescue me.  Probably.”

“Hey, wait, no, Fenton's coming for him–”

Yeah, Tucker wished he could leave.  But these two had no ghost fighting experience, would throw themselves at a ghost if they thought it would get Danny's attention, and would throw themselves at each other if Tucker wasn’t here.  Heck, they were doing it with him here. 

Sam probably would have left, which meant that he was channeling Danny.  

This was terrible.  How did Danny do this?

“Look,” said Tucker, interrupting the argument.  “Even if you think that we’re going to be rescued, we don’t know when and we don’t know if there are other ghosts around who could attack us.  We need some kind of a plan.”  

Paulina and Wes stared at him.  

“Other than just waiting to be rescued,” clarified Tucker.  He waved at the ‘room’ around them.  “We aren’t even somewhere we can barricade, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a drinking fountain or a bathroom anywhere.”  They were, in fact, in a fairly featureless stretch of hallway, complete with lockers, slightly-cracked linoleum, and buzzing fluorescent lights.  The locker numbers were non-sequential and had three more digits than the highest-numbered real lockers at the school.  

“I never go to the bathroom at school,” said Wes.  “That’s where they get you.”

“Dude,” said Tucker.  “Like, how?  Do you not drink or what?”

“I don’t drink at school.  If I did, I’d have to use the bathroom.”

“No wonder you’re so crazy,” said Paulina.  “I’d say that you should just go to the bathroom with your friends, like a normal person, but you don’t have any of those.”

“I do too!”

“Yeah?  Who?” asked Paulina.  

Tucker listened, too.  And took out his PDA.  This would be good data for his all-school relationship map.  

(Hey, it was an important multi-function tool.  How was he supposed to know who to ask out without it?  Or who to blackmail with what if someone more credible than Wes Weston found out Danny’s secret?)

“I’m not going to tell you.  You’ll just say that they aren’t real.”

Ooh.  That was just sad.  Tucker put his PDA away.

“Well, now I am,” said Paulina.  

There was a sudden, startling chime from the PA system.  Tucker looked around, trying to find the speaker.  

“Hi, so, first off, don’t panic,” said Danny’s voice.  

That… was maybe not the best way for Danny to start.  Jeez.  

“Oh!  Oh!  It’s Phantom!” said Paulina, bouncing distractingly.  

“It’s Fenton,” said Wes, “and it’s about time.”

“And, secondly, no, I haven’t found the office.  I’m possessing the PA system.  And, no, I can’t hear you, unless you find one of the PA buttons and–”

There were a series of beeps, followed by shouting, followed by a screech of feedback.  

“--ough of that!” said Danny, getting control of the system again.  “So, if you can get to a button, I can hear you, but I can’t teleport you out, so that’s kind of pointless.  Unless you’re being attacked or something.  Which could be happening.  This guy named himself Daedalmouse, which sort of implies the existence of a Mousotaur, and I’ve been fighting a lot of ghost rats trying to find him.  I’m pretty sure that finding him and beating him up will undo the whole labyrinth thing, but I don’t know how long it will take – yes, I know about the right hand wall trick, but that only works for getting out of mazes that are, you know, following the laws of physics, and not finding crazy ghosts that aren’t following the laws of physics.  I’ll try to check in by possessing the speakers every couple of hours, but in the meantime, hang tight, find places with water, all that survivalist stuff.  If you find a way out, go for it, but no Icarus stuff.  Icarus,” mumbled Danny, sounding distracted.  “Icarus.  Icar-mouse?”  The PDA system chimed again, and then fell silent.  

Except for everyone mashing the buttons, but that was just unintelligible noise and didn’t count.  

“The ghost is named Deadmau5?” asked Paulina.  “What a rip off.”

“He said Daedalmouse.  Like Daedalus?  From Greek mythology?  Ringing any bells?” asked Wes.  

“Whatever,” said Paulina.  “I bet you don’t even know who Deadmau5 is.”

Tucker breathed in slowly through his nose.  “Let’s at least find one of the call buttons so that we can, you know, call for help?  Hello?  Wes?  Paulina?”  Tucker sighed and adjusted his glasses.  “Or so that we can call Phantom when he gets on next?”

“Please, like you need the announcement system to call your best frie–”

“Yes, and then once Phantom knows where I am, he will come and rescue me,” said Paulina, skipping down the hallway.  

“Sure,” said Tucker.  He started walking.  He didn’t want Paulina to get too far ahead.  “Are you coming, Wes?”

“You could just call him,” said Wes.  “On your phone.”

As a point of fact, Tucker had already tried that.  It didn’t work.  “I don’t have Phantom’s number, Wes.”

“I hate you so much.  All of you.”

“I know, Wes.”   

.

“Oh!  Look at that!” said Paulina, pointing around the corner.  

Tucker ran forward - well, jogged, they’d been walking for a while, vainly searching for a classroom door - thinking she’d seen a ghost.  She hadn’t.  

They all looked at the vending machine, hungrily. 

Paulina ran forward and punched in a number on the vending machine keypad, then stopped and turned back to Tucker and Wes.

“Do, like, either of you have any money?”

“Aren’t you rich or something?” asked Wes.  

“Which is how you know I’ll pay you back,” said Paulina.  She flipped her hair over her shoulder.  “I can’t believe that the one time I leave my purse in my locker during school, this happens.”

“Is it still school property if it’s in a nightmare ghost maze?” asked Tucker, because there was jerky in there, and his ultra-predator instincts needed fuel, darn it.  “We can always say the ghost broke it.”

“Okay, but, like, how?” asked Paulina.  “I’m not breaking my nails on this thing.”

“Just move,” said Tucker, pulling out his PDA and nudging Paulina to the side.  He probably had some dongle or other that would connect to the vending machine.  Not this one…  Not that one…  There, he could slide that into the card reader and then just run the program.  He hadn’t tested this before, so he had no idea if it would–

Tucker didn’t have Danny’s ghost sense, but after over a year of ghost hunting, he’d picked up a few things.  Like when a ghost was about to cream him.  Unfortunately, he still didn’t have much of a skill set when it came to what to do when he noticed a ghost was about to cream him.  He looked over his shoulder.  

Yep.  That was a giant ghost rat, all right.  

He dropped his PDA, then threw himself to the floor as the rat jumped straight at his head.  It hit the vending machine, sending it crashing to the floor.  Paulina screamed and ducked around the corner.  Wes stared, frozen.  

Tucker shoved his hands in his pockets and pulled out his lipstick laser.  He spun the top and started firing.  The rat yelped.  He loved this thing so much.

But giant ghost rats had thicker skin than the typical animal ghost, because it jumped on Tucker, knocking the laser out of his hands.  He and the rat rolled around, wrestling.  

Man, all this scene needed was some fire, and then it’d be straight out of that one mov–

Paulina came screaming back around the corner, carrying a large cork board over her head.  It was covered in motivational posters with slogans like ‘If someone tells you that you cannot become immortal, they are liars,’ ‘Doesn’t it make sense that a lot of witch hunts are witch hunts because it’s your birthday?’ and ‘If we all work together we can make the north pole collapse under its own weight.’  

She slammed the board down on the rat’s head and it sort of staggered off Tucker, twitching.  It was a good thing it was too stupid to go intangible.  Paulina had used enough force that Tucker would have some broken ribs if the rat was smart.  

But the rat’s disorientation was momentary.  It turned back to Paulina and Tucker, teeth bared.  Which was when Wes started shooting the rat with the lipstick laser.  The rat yelped and twisted to face him, levitating up into the air, which in turn gave Tucker enough time to roll to his feet and activate his wrist ray.  

He didn’t like the wrist rays as much as the lipstick laser, they were harder for him to aim, but at this range, that hardly mattered.  After being hit a few dozen times, the rat ran away, squeaking.  

“Thanks,” said Tucker.  “That was–  Thanks.  Can I have that back?”

Wes, pale faced, handed the lipstick laser back to Tucker like it was a loaded gun…  Which wasn’t exactly inaccurate…  

“That was so gross,” said Paulina, holding her hands out in front of her as if they were contaminated.  Tucker didn’t know what her problem was, she hadn’t even touched the rat.  

“Yeah,” agreed Wes, who hadn’t even been near the rat, breathlessly.  He was getting some of his color back, though, so that was good.  Tucker never knew what to do when people passed out.  Unless those people were Danny, in which case what to do usually involved evacuation, ghost first aid, and deciding how many days to tell Danny he’d been out for when he woke up.  

“Could’ve been worse,” said Tucker.  “Luckily, you had me.  Tucker Foley, too fine.”

Paulina and Wes stared at him, lips starting to curl.  Tough crowd.  

How did Danny do this?

Tucker shrugged, discarding the thought, and walked over to the vending machine.  He rescued his PDA - the reinforcement upgrades were really paying off! - kicked the machine to shake off some of the broken glass, and reached in to pull out a packet of jerky.  It had his name on it.  Metaphorically speaking.  

“Are you really going to eat that?” asked Wes.  “That thing was all over you.”

“Well, yeah,” said Tucker, peeling open the packet.  “But it was dead, so…”

“It could have the plague,” said Wes.

“Then I’m already dead,” said Tucker.  “Since it was all over me and all.  Ooh, this type has cheese in it.”  He took a bite and the walls shimmered.  The next thing Tucker knew, he was standing on the front lawn of the school, along with the rest of the student body.

“We’re out?” asked Wes.  

“Phantom saved us,” said Paulina, clasping her hands together, her previous disgust forgotten.  “I knew he would.  Next time, I’ll have to give him a hero’s reward.  Fate is so cruel, to keep us apart.”

Wes scoffed.  “He literally sits two rows behind you in almost every class you have.”

Tucker took a deep breath, anticipating the argument, then turned and walked away.  They were out of the maze.  It wasn’t his problem anymore.  He could enjoy his jerky.  

High overhead, Tucker heard Danny scream.  “It was about the ‘mice’ finding the cheese in your stupid maze?  Why the heck are you Ancient Greek themed if you’re just a mad scientist?!”