in the episode with Freakshow and the Reality Gauntlet (Reality Trip? idk my memory's shit) Danny uses the gauntlet to make sure only Jazz, Sam, and Tucker remember he's a halfa. sure. canon shit. but like. what about Vlad. my dear Vlad Masters. the man that's obsessed with the Fentons. the man with a lab full of Danny clones. the man that probably ONLY associates Danny Fenton with being a halfa. imagine Vlad minding his own business off in Wisconsin and SUDDENLY there's a whole chunk of memories missing from his head. and when he's trying to figure out why his head is all fuzzy, he finds notes. hundreds of thousands of notes on a supposed halfa like him, that he apparently knows, that's apparently a FENTON, and that he's apparently been cloning for who knows how long. like. Obsessive Vlad + Zero Memories + Halfa??? recipe for disaster.

I have a Danny Corpse AU im slooooowly working on where Danny *actually* died in the portal accident. like. electrocuted FATALLY. Sam and Tucker ran away when it happened because what else are they supposed to do??? their friend is DEAD in front of them and they're FOURTEEN (ish). Danny's body fixes itself of course, but he is *just* a corpse. so he has do deal with the fact that he's literally dead, he's a ghost piloting his corpse, being alone (Sam and Tucker are traumatised and don't talk to him) and everything a normal kid has to deal with too. not exactly great. and THEN he meets Vlad Masters. The only other halfa in existence. but Vlad is more alive than dead. He still has a heartbeat, and he still breathes, and he's more *alive* than *dead*, where Danny is more dead than alive. and Danny L O A T H E S him for it. its like their canon rivalry but a thousand times worse and Danny only hates Vlad because he didn't die like Danny did (Danny's death was fast, Vlad's was slow from the ecto-acne or some other condition he got from his accident) and Danny doesn't even CARE about Vlad trying to kill Jack because he's too busy wanting to kill Vlad to make him like he is.

IMAGINE if The Ultimate Enemy happened BEFORE Bitter Reunions. like. Danny has to go forward in time to fight his older self, which is half-him and half-some random billionaire he's never met. Dan (dark danny whatever the hell you wanna call him) still went to Vlad after his family died, only because the Fentons listed him in their will (i imagine they made one way back in uni when their portal stuff started getting dangerous, so Vlad was still listed as the one person that gets everything because they never updated it) (I know Maddie has a sister but maybe they went through a rough patch or something) and their life was okay at first (awkward, of course, because he has to live with a strange man) but then Dan found out that Vlad was a halfa, and maybe that sent him over the edge of hatred when he then asked Vlad to rip out his humanity, and then blah blah blah. so THEN. Danny. Poor little Danny. He defeats Dan and goes back to his own time. And now he knows this random Vlad Masters guy is a halfa like him. and he doesn't know what to do with that information. his parents have never even MENTIONED a Vlad before. And then. The invite comes. 21st uni reunion or something. and Danny meets Vlad FULLY knowing that this guy is the ONLY other halfa in existence. And he doesn't know what to do with that information.

now i may know NOTHING about the danny phantom vampire/merfolk aus outside of three super short fanfics i half remember, BUT i think it'd be funny if in some universe Danny and Vlad are, of course, half-vampires or half-merfolk depending on context. and you'd expect the Fentons to be either vampire hunters or merfolk hunters. but. but they're just. still ghost hunters. their Ghost Portal is NEVER going to work because the Ghost Zone DOES NOT exist, and not understanding that is what turned Danny and Vlad into half-vampire/merfolk. its like a more comedic version of the canon events of Danny not revealing his halfa identity to his parents because he's scared of them going after him because he's half-ghost, but now Danny doesn't tell his parents because he thinks its funny they think ghosts exist while they have a vampire/merman living under their roof

my phones fuckin OLD which means spotify hasn't updated in over a year (maybe two??) so i get to do a Neat Trick where i exit out of the app whenever an ad comes on and go back in immediately and it cancels out the ads and its wonderful lmao

ah yes, my three favourite danny phantom characters: powerful ghost with red eyes, powerful ghost with red eyes and white hair, powerful halfa with red eyes and white hair. . . . . . hey wait a second

Danny Phantom rockstar au where Danny wrangles Vlad into joining his band. that's it. that's the au.

lowkey i really like the role swap aus i've seen of Vlad and Danny, where Danny's evil and Vlad's a hero or Danny's the adult mentor guy and Vlad's a kid, but I *really* wanna see one where everything is pretty much the same except for their relationship with each other and their ghost halves. like Vlad still *hates* Jack and wants to get Maddie to love him, but he's less properly experienced with his powers (he's still experimented with them and is good at using them, but he doesn't know everything he can do because by the time he opened a ghost portal for himself, he attributed other ghosts' powers that he didn't have to be something special to them), and Danny is more experienced because of all the fights he's been in and the general knowledge of the scope of ghost powers (like from Frostbite), and either Vlad sees this and chases after him so Danny will teach him, or Danny manipulates Vlad into doing things for him (because who WOULDNT want a powerful billionaire at their disposal?) by withholding information about powers (and about how to win Maddie over more)

imagine if Bitter Reunions had happened way later when Danny already had a really good grasp on his powers. Vlad still probably would've been ecstatic to find another halfa, but the whole mentor/mentee thing that Vlad wanted with Danny in canon would've never crossed his mind because Danny *isn't* some weak helpless kid that's only had his powers for a few months (especially if Danny isn't fourteen and is like. sixteen or something). i feel like it'd be a lot more of "evil plots to get Danny to like him" rather than "evil plots to get rid of Jack and Danny to be his son" because Vlad still wouldn't want to be *alone* when there's a whole other *halfa* out there, but he wouldn't be able to teach Danny anything new or make him more powerful. Danny would still kinda hate Vlad for trying to kill his dad BUT he'd probably see him as less of an actual threat and more like a Box-Ghost level annoyance that he pranks and bothers sometimes

Ghost King Danny Phantom au where the Ghost King title isn't *just* wielding the Crown of Fire and the Ring of Rage but actually absorbing the previous Ghost King's essence in some way, which is what Pariah Dark did with the ghost king before him, and that ghost king before him, and et cetera et cetera, and sometime after the events of the show Pariah Dark's sarcophagus cracks, and someone notices (i imagine the Fright Knight probably would) so he goes to Danny, since he defeated Pariah Dark before, and he says that the most sure way to make sure Pariah Dark won't hurt anyone after his sarcophagus completely breaks would be to absorb his essence while he's still weak in the sarcophagus (the Fright Knight obviously knows this means Danny will be the next king, but he imagines that a halfa ruling would probably be better than whatever chaos Pariah will bring), which leads to Danny accidentally becoming the next Ghost King when he absolutely does NOT want to.

i've been seeing a few "Phantom (or Danny Fenton) gets a cult" stories and i think it'd lowkey be pretty funny if in one of them Vlad was the cult leader/prophet/whatever. He's a rich billionaire with a desire for power and fame, and he'd probably be a decent cult leader if he put some effort into it (since he seems to be a pretty good mayor anyway). if he found a fledgling cult worshipping Phantom he could scoop them up and exploit his (rocky) relationship with Danny to secure his point at the top, and then grow the cult and get more followers and satisfy his power hungry tendencies. Or you could go a full crack-fic route and make Danny do something that Vlad's never seen any other ghost do and *actually* just like. start a cult.