dead kids cant be astronauts

like this is something he has spent his whole life on. after the accident it's been his guiding light. but is that what he really wants? without that goal, what even is he? what is his purpose? what has he been working for all this time?

at first he's dannys greatest, scariest adversary. danny is genuinely terrified of the guy. but vlad doesn't want danny to hate him. he really wants the opposite. but there's no way he can earn danny's trust when he already screwed up the introduction so badly.

so he starts changing the way he acts around danny. starts giving long, cheesy speeches about taking over the world and ruling the earth. he acts more overconfident. leaves obvious holes in his plans for danny to exploit.

eventually he's just another villain of the week. someone annoying that danny has to deal with, but not the biggest threat he's faced. they even work together sometimes when the situation is dire. he becomes a joke, but through that, he becomes someone who danny doesn't really mind having around. like a fly that you can't be bothered to squash.

dannys method, of course, is far superior. when he's worried about vlad's wellbeing he does increasingly annoying things to and around vlad such as spamming his phone every half hour with pictures of him edited to be bald, organizing a fist fight with johnny on vlads front lawn, and on one occasion when vlad was particularly unresponsive, throwing a brick through his window. this continues until vlad gets so annoyed it snaps him out of his own misery.

to danny, he feels responsible for what happened to valerie. he couldnt stop cujo in time and so her life fell apart. now he kind of feels a need to be involved and try to help her because she represents his own failure. and danny really hates failure. she's also someone that he can connect with and relate to as a fellow teenage ghost hunter. both of them can't live normal lives because of their dedication to helping the town. they're constantly tired and overworked. they have to hide a large part of their life from the people closest to them. danny finds some comfort in knowing that he's not the only one going through this. sam and tucker experience some of it, but not to the full extent that danny does. but valerie does experience much of the violence and targeting and insecurity that danny does, just without the ghost powers.

for valerie, danny is the bright side of what happened to her. she's lost her social status and her friends and her house and her money. but if she hadn't lost all of that, she would have never even spoken to danny. now she has this new connection with someone that helps her feel a bit more normal. he's someone she can protect, who helps her feel less lonely, who would understand the crazy world of ghost hunting that she's now been forced into because of his parents. her feelings towards phantom are much more complicated. she blames him for what happened to her, but she also can rely on him when she needs backup. he's sort of the symbol of her new life. he's the reason why she started fighting ghosts, but he's also the closest thing she has to an ally when she's on the field.

danny died. sam and tucker watched their friend die, and encouraged him to do the thing that caused his death. now there are ghosts attacking their home and putting people in danger. they feel totally helpless. they can't "fix" what happened to danny, and they can't shut off the portal for good. but fighting ghosts feels like something real and tangible that they can do in response to this thing that happened. they can figure out danny's new powers and try to protect the people they love. it's also a way to establish a new normal, the monster of the week routine that replaces the one they had before (danny's line about "usually we beat the bad guy, learn some lesson about honesty or something, and go home." what does a teenage boy who is in a freak accident and develops superpowers do? he becomes a superhero). they cope by trying to be proactive, to do something instead of sit around and be helpless, but in turn they're kind of using ghost hunting to ignore this traumatic thing that happened to them, and they're not ready to face what this actually means for danny and the life he'll life (dead kids can't be astronauts).

similarly, valerie's life was totally destroyed. she lost her home, her money, her friends, her dad lost his job. this is all too broken to fix. and even if everything got reset back to the way it was before, now she knows what it's like to be overworked and helpless, she knows how quickly she can lose the security she has, and she knows that her friends love for her was superficial. she can't do anything about this. but she can try to stop what happened to her from happening to anyone else. she can try to eliminate the thing that caused her life to fall apart in the first place. like the main trio, valerie is using ghost hunting to be proactive about her problem. it makes her feel more in control of her life. valerie now sees the world as dangerous and untrustworthy, and has vowed to be someone who will bring safety and stability to other people. this also is not a great coping mechanism, and doesn't address the insecurity she feels as a response to what happened to her.

vlad was in a freak accident and then had to watch the person who caused it live the life he always wanted to live. he's used his newfound powers to make sure something like this would never happen to him again. he's not going to be a helpless victim stuck in a hospital bed anymore. in fact, he'll be the perpetrator. he has money, he has status, he has smarts, he has hired henchmen and ghost weapons and complete mastery over his powers. no one is stronger than him, so he'll never be hurt again. all he needs now is that life that he lost. so he's obsessed with destroying jack and taking what he feels should have been his. once he does that, his life will finally be back on track, and he will be strong enough to ensure that he never loses it ever again. vlad is desperate for his life to go back to the way it was "supposed" to go. this will never happen. he's in denial.

for danny it's a lot more about how his life is not going to follow the life that you are supposed to live. you grow up, find a partner, get married, have kids, etc ("Isn't it supposed to be that simple?"). that's something that he can never do. he feels like an outcast both in and outside of the queer community where so much of the world is centered around romantic love. and what danny wants above all else is to be normal and accepted.

so valerie and danny for example. danny's obsession is with safety. valerie is someone who he failed to save, she's hunting him down (not safe), and she's a fellow ghost hunter he can rely on (protecting the town= safe, putting herself in danger= not safe)

vlads obsession is love. his fixations on maddie, danny, and jack kind of represent three different types of love. maddie-- romantic, danny-- familial, jack-- platonic (though this can be debatable depending on how you see vlads real feelings for jack lol).

and of course the badger cereal of it all (because i won't deny that most of my dp posts are about one thing).

vlad is very much NOT safe. he's danny's enemy who is trying to hunt him down and hurt his family. he is also someone who could provide danny safety, and seems to want to (teaching him how to use his powers, financial security, etc.) but the cost is too high (letting vlad kill his father and pursue his uninterested mother = not safe).

getting into more fanon territory he has also probably killed for danny before. which is a weird safe-not safe combo that does not compute in danny's brain. so obviously his feelings towards him are going to be a little complicated.

on vlads side, danny is the product of a relationship between someone that vlad loves and someone that he lost love for. danny is maddie's son and he loves all things related to maddie, but the fact that maddie has a son and it's not with him bothers him, and the fact that it's with jack fenton is even worse. this is partially why he's so fixated on killing jack and having danny recognize him as his father. he feels like he can cut jack out of the equation and paste himself in and then these complicated feelings with disappear.

in my interpretation of badger cereal, danny is someone who bounces pretty quickly between "loving" vlad and "not loving" vlad. they get along very well, they spend time together, and danny seems to care about his safety (something that is moreso a product of danny's obsession than a personal connection, but that vlad's obsession with love causes him to misinterpret). but danny's "love" of (friendliness towards) vlad is conditional. they are very reasonable conditions but the fact that it's not stable bothers him.