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The Others Are There Obv To Help But Like Those Are The Only 2 I Can See That Are In This SPECIFICALLY For Protecting Ppl - Blog Posts
Holy crap I just realized I rambled about the patents so much and now they barely matter to the actual plot aside from ‘at least the Fentons single way of making a profit is still only for them.’
I get way into the world building guys.
It’s gonna be a waste if I can’t make this a fully decked out fic, and with that motivation, summer-time writing is gonna get amazing.
If the Ao3 curse catches me before the final chapter is out, welp, reblogs exist to the public for a reason.
Once I get this mapped out, I’ll make sure to cross post chapters here and on my Ao3 :3
DpxDc Ficlet (May be transformed into a full fic one day): Vlads’s poor business management can fuck you up beyond the grave.
Vlad, Jack, and Maddie have known each other for years. Vlad chose to take the ghost tech aspect of their degrees and make BANK. Who knew how many paranoid millionaires with big scary empty mansions and people out to get them beyond the grave would be so willing to drain their bank accounts for a semblance of peace. Jack and Maddie decided to follow their passion at hunting ghosts. Nevertheless, they still make inventions each for their own wants and needs.
Since they were young and needed a more stable backing for FentonWorks and VladCo, incase it didn’t work out, they decided to come together to make their own sort of Parent Company of sorts. The company would be owned by all three of them in equal parts. (Dealers choice for whatever the Big Company’s name is) Vlad would take care of the business aspect of it and all would be okay incase it ended up being a waste. Thankfully Vlad managed to get it into their head that every invention that FentonWorks makes NEEDS to be patented as soon as it’s confirmed to work. The last time they didn’t patent it before releasing a press conference about their hard work was with the first wrist-rays. (THANK GOODNESS that version only left a mild burn and a little bit of excess ecto-radiation if it hit a human.)
The only downside to this was the drunken fiasco that was Fenton-Wipe but hey, it’s cheap and in amity park where liminals make up 40-60% of the population? That ecto-infused relief is like 4-ply for the price of single-ply.
Either way it’s safe to say that patent offices basically have their info memorized. Everything they have in the lab already has a file sent to the office to get it patented and you’d better believe they are seriously protective of their life’s work (the Fenton Portal) that the moment it was up and working they had emails drafted and phones ringing.
Vlad, after one too many deadly situations where he’d almost had to expose his status as ‘More than baseline human’ to get out of without the whole media fiasco and a faked long and grueling recovery, keeps getting calls from his shareholders (Big Company) about who his heir/successor would be considering he’s well past his prime and has the apparent luck of someone destined to die in a horribly tragic accident (Thank you Clockwork).
He states in his will that his Godson, Daniel James Fenton, would be the one to get his share of the company because as much as he loves Maddie, he knows that if he listed her she would think it was him buttering her up (it would be) and would only serve to drive her away. There was NO WAY Jack Fenton was getting his hands anywhere near his will, and while he was on good terms with Jazz, he knew she didn’t want to be tied to the ghost-gear business. Danny was the logical choice because if we’re being honest, he has no one else.
The ‘His share of the company’ eventually evolved into ‘Everything I own’ because FUCK YOU Jack, Maddie’s too smart for my textbook manipulation, and Jazz is on a completely different route.
Danny was not aware of this until the day finally came for Karma to get one on the fruit loop. Tragic plane crash, no possible survivors, and suddenly he is a Billionaire.
(Vlad got away but he knew the jig was up because there was NO WAY anyone was getting out of this. The Ghost Zone is now his permanent residence)
Anti ghost tech got REAL POPULAR after the Amity Park media blackout was lifted and people came by to prove it’s a hoax, only to then receive a campfire ghost story worth the scars.
Danny was also not aware it had been years since his parents gave Vlad their rights to the Big Company in order to focus more on FentonWorks. Since he got EVERYTHING Vlad owned, literally everything even Maddie was surprised he didn’t leave her something, that meant he now owned the biggest monopoly on ghost tech because no one else knew how to get ecto to ‘play nice’ with modern technology. Plus with all the patents and lawyers under Big Company, there was barely any ideas someone could have about an ecto-ANYTHING that hadn’t already been invented, perfected, and patented by FentonWorks aka Big Company.
Big Company also had contracts with the US Military before Danny took over and decided that they shouldn’t be in their trigger happy hands and took back the ecto-weaponry.
Ok so lets get the plot going
Danny was crowned as the Infinite Realms Ghost Prince because
1) look at that mischievous face and snark and then tell me he’s not going to cause the entire dimension to crash and burn the moment he sits on that throne (be it by accident or completely on purpose, only Clockwork may know)
2) He is under a lot of stress in his human life because he just became somewhat of a celebrity. (There is a YouTube compilation of every-time during the Vlad Memorial where you can physically see his face going from aww man this person care about died to his internal monologue of oh god how do I act sad knowing that the fruitloop is drinking ecto-piña colada’s rn, externally showing in his face as he tries to subtly smother his giggles (the paparazzi hound him after someone got a lucky pic and are wondering if this was his evil plan all along)
3) Under Realms Logic For a Halfa Rulers, they get to live out their normal lifespan before becoming subject to the fiasco that is the territory disputes, royal manners of respect mixed with ghost manners of Punch now Ask for their name later, and the beuracratic nightmare of relations outside the realms.
He is still phantom because even though he’s the king, he was their friend first. He knows that ghost need to feed their obsessions in order to not fade out and having a permanent portal instead of having to hope you find one means ghost are gonna flock to it like a moth to a flame. There is the agreement to make sure you don’t interact with the living unless you have to (ember comes to mind) and make sure you do it in a way that doesn’t hurt them (goddamit ember and your stupid mind control). He lays out new laws with his princely powers which basically state you can’t kill or harm (both physically or psychologically) any living being if you use his Portal. That’s the best he could do because until he’s king, the natural portals are sadly fair game.
His obsession as Phantom is being a hero so he still flies around and stops rambunctious ghosts who either start to forget the rules they are under or got lucky with a natural portals and are terrorizing the innocent.
Good Fenton reveal where his parents help out on patrol too and catch/release any ghosts who are not interested in safe/sane/consensual haunting.
They know about phantom and are more proud than anything to have one of their kids waking in their ghostly footsteps. They stop with the non-sentient mindset after meeting and actually talking to a few ghosts too.
They post their new findings and now it’s well known that ghost are real, they’re sentient, and are just here because they NEED to be. This causes the Anti-Ecto acts to crave entirely and allows ghost under the Meta rights act.
Danny decides it’s too much of a haste to keep up with a secret identity and goes public as both Fenton & Phantom. He now doesn’t need to hide his useful inhumaness. He isn’t in any danger because his only rouges already knew his identity, he isn’t a villain that needs to be on the JL watchlist, and what could someone do to him without ghost tech? He knows his friends and family is safe because well, while he may be the most powerful on team phantom, the bar is very high and they are grazing it. If you go up against them, you’re gonna lose. Maddie and Jack? Be so for real right now and tell me anyone in their right mind would go up against a black belt in peak physique, decked out in energy weapons and regular weapons, or Built Like A Double Fridge Jack Fenton, who people swear must be kryptonian with the way he runs through brick walls like the kool-aid man. Sam? She has no less than 13 fashionably concealed weapons on her at all times. Tucker? He’s like a Russian nesting doll with all the gadget he pulls out of his ass whenever he’s in a situation. This is all without mentioning how Danny Fenton will personally go to the ends of the earth for each of them and any ghost worth their salt can see the practically corporeal fraid bonds from THE FUCKING KING to these people. Everyone knows not to fuck with Daniel James Fenton or anyone he cares about because that is a poorly concealed tired snarky man just WAITING for a reason to go all-out.
Him being the sole owner of Big Company not only makes him relatively untouchable, it also makes him physically untouchable because the only people with anti-ghost weapons are him, team phantom(now with supportive Mr. & Mrs Fenton), and the Justice League Dark who he knows he can count on incase a bad timeline happens or he is indisposed and theres a ghost harming people.
Everyone knows who he is, there’s no hiding parts of himself, he is comfortable in his own skin for the first time in years, and now he finally feels like he understands what Clockwork was saying all those times he said “All is as it should be.”
That is until Vlad’s past of Overshadow Based Business, bites him square in his ass. People know about phantom’s powerset. They know how his overshadowing works. They know he would never, but they also know not everyone who gets powers is as good-natured as him. They remember what Vlad was like, smug, creepy, and good god he had an ego. They know phantom got his powers from an ecto-related lab accident. Y’know who else was in an ecto-related lab accident where he was literally hospitalized for years? Vlad fucking Masters. Y’know how he got rich in a record time and how nobody was able to prove any foul play took place? Yeah, people are smarter than you think. Now Big Company is falling down in shambles as past contracts demand a Class Action Lawsuit.
Vlad didn’t live long per se, but he sure made A LOT of enemies.
Now don’t get the people wrong, they have it out for Vlad, not Danny, but seeing as they also want their money back, Danny is gonna have to shut up and deal with it because holy hell how many people can one man piss off.
The answer is 473.
473 individual million/billion dollar businesses who he screwed over in the years he was head of the company. Danny is so screwed.
He is unemployed, sure he’s a hero, but that doesn’t pay the bills. Sure he’s got kingly reserves, but they’re locked up until he’s 83. He is 24 years old. No prior work experience. Besides the obviously blank resume, he had SHIT grades that no amount of catching up his senior year after going public was going to erase. He didn’t graduate, he’s a drop out. He didn’t even have a GED.
People know his name, face, and the HUGE WORLDWIDE SCANDAL he’s caught up in. He had to give up every dollar. Thank-god he managed to end up without debt, but he had to sell every car, yacht, private jet, beach house, the cheese castle, the packers memorabilia, EVERYTHING in order to avoid being millions in debt. Big Company is no longer a thing. Thank god for Maddie’s awareness of not wanting to be in debt to Vlad because Fentonworks would’ve took a HIT had she not cut ties all those years ago.
Danny Fenton is 24, getting hounded by paparazzi asking him what he’s gonna do now after living it easy for 7 years (Vlad ‘died’ when he was 17). He wasn’t lying when he said he barely made it out of the whole ordeal without debt. He lost all his possessions that weren’t in his childhood room, and now has a whopping $4.73 to his name.
Ironic huh.
He’s currently residing in his old room. He’s sure Clockwork is somewhere laughing his ass off watching. His half-life has gone to absolute shit. He’s never living(ha) this down.
He’s about to go back down to the lab to make himself useful because no one likes a leech, when he gets a call on his JL communicator. At least it isn’t flashing the way it would if there was an emergency, he thinks before picking it up.
On the screen, a message reads as follows
‘Your presence is required at a meeting regarding your position in the League next week on xx/xx/xxxx’
Oh god, now he’s getting fired from the one job he actually cared about. He’s going to have to deal with obsession starving on top of his shit half-life!?
Listen, there’s only so many ghost still fucking around to find out after seeing Ancients get their asses handed to them by him, the only obsession-related enrichment he’s been getting these past 2 years came solely from JL events. Rescue missions? Delectable. Fighting the BigBad? Spectacular. Cleanup after a big fight? Not the best but it’s honest work and keeps him satiated.
He’s not looking forward to being forced to either
A) keep working alongside the JL without their knowledge as a somewhat invisible help to keep him from starving
Or
B) being forced to listen to police chatter somewhere crime is rampant because Amity Part ain’t it, it’s as far away from crime ridden as a place can get. The last crime that happened was when a kid accidentally stole a bag of chips from the convenience store. He just walked back in, put it back, and apologized.
Yeah no, Amity is not gonna cut it.
He’s already feeling the drawbacks of not hero-ing because the last 6 months he’s been going Court to Court nonstop bi-weekly. When he wasn’t in a courthouse, he was either with his lawyers seeing the best outcome, selling Vlads old shit on eBay, or keeping his appetite from OH GOD IM STARVING to I’m still fucking hungry but I’ll live(ha).
He’s currently nearing the IM STARVING stage and needs to go protect someone right now before he goes into obsession withdrawal. Turns out Vlad wasn’t just that unhinged, he was just constantly in withdrawal from his obsession (family) that he couldn’t think too far ahead in his schemes to get from ‘we’re talking now, yay (forcefully because there’s a bigger problem to deal with)!’ to ‘wait you don’t like me and the problem I made so that you would be forced to talk to me is actually a problem that needs to be dealt with’
He isn’t looking forward to having his ability to think compromised by ‘must protect, keep safe’ playing over and over again in his head. He’d actually go crazy.
The last time he had a withdrawal episode, he summoned an ancient entity so that the world was in severe danger just so he could go beat it to a bloody pulp, banish it, and be left with the terrible fallout now that he could think clearly. He still gets stares from Green Lantern for it. Thankfully after being made aware of this unfortunate drawback of his ghost physiology, the Justice League makes sure to notify him every time there’s a big bad so he can at least help with the cleanup.
Since they know he needs to do hero shit to not become a bigger nuisance, surely he won’t be getting fired, right? He’s not entirely sure and that scares him because unless you’re a ghost, you don’t know how severe obsession withdrawal can be. You get so caught up in it, you end up just creating more damage.
He and team phantom (thank the ancients for his ride or die(ha) friends) get drafting plans incase his place with the JL goes up in flames. The best plan they have right now is Invisibly keep crime down in Gotham (as to not alert his maybe former co-worker). Gotham is literally drowning in crime, he should have an easy time finding someone to protect there. The invisibility part is more so for peace of mind to avoid awkward confrontation because no one wants the disappointed bat glare.
He’s gotten better at portals so living arrangements wouldn’t really be a problem. Theres a 1 hour time difference so that just means he won’t have to wait as long before it’s nighttime over there. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad? He doesn’t really need to eat cuz of the halfa privelage of ecto=food and vice versa. Bills on the house are all paid and his parents are doing really well considering they now dominate the ecto-tech field. He’ll help out in the lab too and do household chores to feel less like a leech too but all things considered, aside from being in the public eye, it doesn’t seem that bad.