Self-Appointed Mushroom King

But what if it was filmed as a super soft romantic domestic moment, arms around each other’s waist, chit chat, quiet laughter, soft kisses kind of moment.

"So, how did you two meet?" That was fine, safe territory.

They both answered the same way, "a parking lot in Saskatchewan when we were 17."

But, the question, "so who made the first move?" Unsafe territory, turn back now.

"You introduced yourself to me!"

"That wasn't making a move! You organized a whole photoshoot."

"You shook my hand, twice! You looked me up and down!"

"I did not!"

"You had a crush on me."

"You had a crush on me!"

"You called me a hot player to watch."

"I did not and you know that, Rozanov."

"My English wasn't good."

"You - okay, draft night?"

"What about it? Oh, when you kept staring at my cock?"

"No! When you kept touching my hand and had your legs all spread in front of me!"

"You were staring at me."

"You winked at me."

"You took water bottle."

"Because you told me to!"

"Well, you were blushing on photoshoot."

"You called me pretty, twice!"

"You were laughing!"

"So were you!"

"Because you kept looking at me like - like that!"

"You told me you organized the shoot!"

"You agreed to it! You wanted to see me again."

"You starting jerking off at me in the shower!"

"Only because you were checking out my ass!"

"I was not!"

"Yes, you were! I would not do that if you were not checking me out!"

"You asked for my room number!"

"You waited for me to come out of the shower - I gave you time to leave!"

"I was drying my hair."

"You were waiting for me."

"I was not, I just wanted to talk!"

"Talk! You wanted to talk to hot Russian you invited to your room at night?"

"Yes!"

"You were on your knees in five seconds!"

Like, on any given roadie the people sharing walls with the Hollanovs can expect to overhear:

- One side of phone calls between Shane and his mother where every third word is FUCK and Shane's voice gets higher the more he works himself up about whatever league drama is pissing him off that week

- Ilya yelling in Russian (Non sex reasons) (He and Svetlana are talking about Matheson in Colorado. Again.)

- Ilya gets hay fever real bad in Seattle and spends an entire night sneezing at EAR SPLITTING volume, each sneeze followed by a, "AHH!" from Shane as he is startled awake. Again.

- The Christmas wish lists of every Pike child and how they're going to be divvy'd up for the year. This conversation takes place in September.

- "I'm telling you, the penalty kill could be a work of fucking art if Haas--oh fuck, right there, don't stop--"

- As stated before, an objectively obnoxious amount of showering is happening. At one point LaPointe turns to Bood and says something to the effect of, "Crazy that Hollander takes TWO showers after every game, I guess he really is superstitious," and Bood just. Chooses not to engage.

- A thunderous and almighty BANG. This is the sound of Ilya's suitcase hitting the floor after it inevitably slides off the bed.

- "Shaaaaane, look at the livestream from the dog hotel--look at how cute! She is so sleepy, she's holding her banana like a baaaaby--"

- Vin Diesel's voice, unimaginably loud, at one AM

- Russian Yelling (Non sex reasons) (Sasha did something stupid)

- "Unh unh unh UNH UNH UNH--" (Squeak. Squeak.)

- Celtics game. Twenty minutes beforehand: "Fuck, Shane, how do I get ESPN on the stupid--Roku stick thing--"

- "Okay, look, your dad played the word veer--is not real word, right? Like, deer with a V? It's real? Shane, we can't let your dad win--no, it's not cheating, he gets Yuna's help--"

- Stuff about Rose Landry's upcoming film that they should probably all sign NDAs for even thinking about.

- Russian Yelling (Sex reasons. Probably. It sounds...ardent.)

- One time, for an entire night, silence. The day immediately preceeding this night and the morning immediately after are best left unspoken about.

- The sound of Shane's fuckass electric toothbrush for WAY too long. Seriously man it cannot be healthy to brush your teeth for that lo--oh. Got it. Okay. Where are my earbuds.

- "I mean, it's not like I'm sixteen anymore, right? It's just that sometimes I think she looks at me and sees a fucking kid still, and I get it, I get it--and fuck, babe, I know it's not fair to feel this way, she's the only mom I'll ever have, and you don't even--ugh--"

- "I'm so terribly sorry the hotel misplaced your bags, Mister Rozanov. If there's any way that we can...make it up to you..." [Giggle. Kissing sound. Kissing sound. Moan.]

The justice league FINALLY investigates Amity, and realizes that they’ve made a grave mistake by letting a burgeoning hero shoulder a large problem without any training or support. They rectify this immediately by offering a position in the JL along with an assortment of mentors and other teen heroes to bond with. 

Phantom is made of bravado and the false confidence of desperation (yeah he wins, and does it well, but he started fighting for Sam’s life and that leaves a mark i bet) so he can’t just break down crying, or break.

“So, the Justice League’s here to pick a side, huh?”

Phantom’s snarky and sounds cocksure-but that’s a real question. Are they picking a side? Is it that Red = Human = Good? Maybe they just think he’s a thousand years too old to be interested in their help?

Nope.

“The Justice League defends humanity from threats” or “We exist to fight threats like you” or maybe even “Did you expect us not to?”

(They think they’re being reassuring. If you call for help we will answer. We are here for you. Valerie Grey, young and full of rage she’s forged into hate definitely agrees.) Danny, who guarded the town from threats while she swanned around with bullies and jerks, sees more prejudice. Threats. Yet more people supposed to protect him turning on him.

Maybe Phantom pulls off a snappy one liner before disappearing. Maybe it’s disquieting. Maybe they think back later and wish they’d listened better. Maybe he just gets well out of dodge-with the ghost gone, there’s no reason to stick around, not when Valerie never found a fight she wouldn’t escalate.

But this is important and noteworthy, so there’s a crowd. Danny Fenton is definitely in that crowd. If Sam & Tucker aren’t, they’re getting it liveblogged. Either way, This Is A Problem.

But not really a surprise. Authorities being an obstacle? Them against the Powers That Be? Sooo not new. (Yeah this an escalation. This is the Justice League. They’re Not Thinking About That Thanks.)

Apparently Red Huntress is the new line of defense for humans against ghosts. But who’s going to protect the ghosts from her? What’s she doing with them? Are they going to the GIW? Is the Justice League dumping them in the Phantom Zone? Have they figured out how to confine them in places like Belle Reve?

Team Phantom started out as protectors of Humans against ghostly aggression. By the time the Justice League is done with Amity Park, they’re firmly ghost heroes, protectors of the dead.

Also! If this is happening after, i think Kindred Spirits? would Valerie tell about Dani? And Vlad? Because she’s seen both of them transform. She let Dani go when it came down to the wire, but I’m pretty sure she thinks of her as a kid who has ghost powers and Vlad as an evil ghost pretending to be human. Imagine the Justice League going after him. Not (just) because he’s a criminal but because he’s not human. Sure, the Justice League only care because he does crimes, but identity theft of Vlad Masters is likely to come up and what sells better headlines “Billionaire wanted for financial crimes” (who committed them with superpowers) or “Billionaire secretly horror movie monster!” (uses it for evil! commits superpowered crimes!).

They wouldn’t want to leave Dani alone either. In their experience, clones tend to be either Evil or Mind Controlled, and one with her powers is dangerous. Oh sure, they’d want to help her, but I bet part of that would include discouraging ghostliness, embracing her humanity. And definitely staying where they can see her. What if there’s sleeper programming? And that’s only if Huntress is right about her being mostly human. After all, they know she’s young and rash. Maybe their newest trainee got taken in. Either way, Dani needs Managing.

He doesn’t even try to blackmail the league or appeal to their better nature and convince them he shouldn’t be given to the GIW, he spent years of paranoia worrying that they’d someday catch on to him, years he investigated each and every one of them either personally with cloning, invisibility and intangibility or through hired ghosts with the same powers, documenting strengths, weaknesses and psychological profiles. He has had his portal long enough to visit other timelines where the heroes lost, to take note of how and work it into his plans, he has even sneaked into Batman’s network through overshadowing and collected the info and plans the Dark Knight made for his own team, used it all to build bigger plans, better plans, more lethal plans.

The League doesn’t take Vlad as a serious threat at first. Val goes along with Superman and Flash to confront him, eager for her revenge, only to find out the hard way how unprepared they all are when Vlad presses a button and suddenly they are scrambling to save civilians as hidden bombs all across the city start exploding in sequence, they are forced to let Vlad escape to save lives… only Vlad doesn’t escape.

Superman is lifting a brand new school bus from a collapsing bridge when lead-layered compartments open to reveal kryptonite based laser guns, the man of steal manages to bring the bus to safety only through sheer determination before succumbing to his injuries, the last thing he sees is a cheerful ad stating the bus was built by DalvCo. The Flash is forced to save people from a heavily populated area, running all around through hospitals and public buildings with their AC cranked to max, he ignores his hunger as it gnaws at him much earlier and more insistent than the usual only to watch in horror as some of the kids he just saved seemingly wither away in front of him, collapsing soon after as the airborne ghost parasite Vlad acquired from a nearby dimension and set to be released by the AC of all public service buildings upon his command eat him from inside out, his much faster metabolism speeding up what will be a weeks long agonizing process for the other victims caught on the crossfire into only a few minutes; see, Vlad can be merciful even to his enemies. Val is by far the easiest one, for some reason she never expected the suit he gave her to come with some surprises attached, the enormous power output of the entire suit suddenly being channeled through her nervous system makes short work of her.

After that Vlad wastes no time. He had made a point to figure out and collect airtight evidence on the identities of all heroes either directly working with the League or somehow affiliated, that information hits simultaneously 5 news outlets on every country with a number of mission reports, only true enough to be extremely hard to refute and just doctored enough to paint the League in the most sinister light he can. Simultaneously a program he had set up misses a deactivation code, automatically hacking into Gotham’s Gazete to publish a news article written by Vlad stating Batman killed a major mob boss in the city, Failsafe is activated, the combination of keywords in the article initiating a sub-routine Vlad had called a favor from Technus to hide which change the robot’s directive from killing Batman to killing all Gotham vigilantes, at the same time a back-door no one knew about is accessed into the Watchtower, charging it’s entire energy output and reserves into a laser-beam that razes Gateway City to the ground, the heroes up there die in mass at the life-support being cut and Mister Terrific is assumed dead, which - alongside Batman’s problems or even outright death - majorly cripples the League’s strategic capabilities and helps sour public opinion on them.

The GIW attempts to attack Vlad next, their ghost specific tech making them confident on being able to contain, experiment and then end the original halfa. They don’t realize that their tech is supplied by Vlad through a number of shell-companies. All equipment is set with an especial failsafe which Vlad activates by saying a code in the presence of a GIW agent who came to take him, their blaster gun - which they didn’t even know had a recording device - releases a signal that is perpetuated through their entire network . The lucky ones are vaporized when all their technology suddenly explodes, the unlucky ones though receive a sudden overdose of ecto in their bodies, abruptly switching them from base-human, straight past liminal and into maddened mutated monsters with ghostly powers, mindless just as they always claimed ghosts to be, funny how that works isn’t it? The Fentons then take their best shot, but Vlad exploits an error in the base of their technology he spotted soon after his accident, he refrains from killing both for Maddie and Danny, but all their life’s work is rendered useless upon being exposed to a certain element’s electromagnetic field.

That would usually not be enough to truly defeat the JL, at least not in Vlad’s eyes who had seen them escape from crisis just as bad, so he made some calls. One of the many advantages of the GZ is the chances it gives for networking. Vlad coordinates and arranges for a demon incursion, Trigon’s invasion and Parallax attack to happen simultaneously just as the League is at its weakest. The rogues of many heroes make a point to kill their loved ones driving moral down the drain, and then Darkseid takes the opportunity to raze all that is left, forcing the bulk of the remaining population into taking Vlad upon his offer for Asylum in a nearby empty dimension he scouted out over a decade prior in exchange for accepting him as their leader.

The justice league FINALLY investigates Amity, and realizes that they’ve made a grave mistake by letting a burgeoning hero shoulder a large problem without any training or support. They rectify this immediately by offering a position in the JL along with an assortment of mentors and other teen heroes to bond with. 

Danny was a lot of things right now, but most of all, he was over it.

What is it, you may ask? Everything. The ghost fights. The being hunted. The slipping grades. The bullying. The contempt of the town and now the world at large. And heck, considering that the Green Lanterns work with the Justice League, maybe even the universe. He wonders if the Guardian Green Lanterns have been informed of the villain Phantom yet, if they’re going to be informed at all.

Before Danny had fully processed this information and everything it implied for him going forward, when he was still in shock that Red Huntress, the ghost hunter, who spewed bias and hatred like it was her native language, was the hero here.

The point of the episode, to me, is that Morty is the type of person who upon losing his empathy, turns to sympathy. That's just who he is. The episode isn't showing that Morty is turning into Rick Prime or Evil Morty or anything like that. It's showing that he has the capacity to, but chooses not to consciously.