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Fair Game explores this conflict by building up what happened between Danny and Valerie post Phantom Planet and post A Glitch in Time graphic novel. The latter is important since it is what made Valerie ¨snap¨, to put it in simple words.

Valerie is someone that for such a young age went through quite a lot: She suddenly lost her rich family status with her single dad losing his job because of a few incidents involving Cujo and Danny.  Her ¨friends¨ left her the moment she became poor, considering her a loser. She was forced to have a job for months because of her situation.

Because of this loss Valerie decided to take it out on ghosts, blaming them for what happened to her. She blames Phantom specially, Danny’s ghost half.

Along with this, once she learned that Danny and Vlad were lying to her, she felt tricked and more importantly hurt and betrayed by the few people she thought to be her friends. In her eyes she felt used by both of them even with Danny because she felt like they left her behind after the events of A Glitch in Time, not bothering to check what happened to her. (She ended up stranded in the middle of the Ghost Zone)

So in the new reality she decides she wants her ¨old life back¨ and that means trying to be part of the popular kids group again, the same ones that ditched her when Damon lost his job.

Valerie sees how popular she is when others learn she is a ghosthunter, impressed by her abilities. She uses this to try to get back to her popular girl status by showing the A-listers how good at ghosthunting she is. However, this proves to be easier said than done as she has trouble with catching Wulf and his companion. The A-listers start questioning her talents, especially Paulina.

As a result Valerie tries making a ghost weapon that can reduce the ghost to ¨nothing¨ by combining a substance she took from the Fentons with a powerful net launcher from her father. It is a very deadly weapon that disintegrates a ghost in an instant.

Why is she doing all this? This is because, while Valerie became a better person in the series in some ways, she was never confronted about her materialism and how she wasn’t only hurt by the idea of all the things she lost but also losing her social status as well. Her clothes, status of being a rich girl, how she is perceived by her peers, all that was important to Valerie. She is someone who cares about how others perceive her and she likes to be on the top enough to do anything to get back to it. It is understandable why she feels angry about this but it is also worth noting that she can be quite superficial and care too much about appearances.

Part of her journey in Fair Game is realizing that trying to impress the popular kids won’t make her get her previous life back again nor is making her happy.

After Lyca (Wulf’s companion) gets ¨vaporized¨ into emotions, they start to possess the A listers and Valerie. This makes all that she has been bottling up regarding Danny and her situation come to the surface as she fights Danny.

From his part Danny tries apologizing and admitting how he messed up in his own way with Valerie, he talks about how he avoided talking to her post Phantom Planet since he didn’t want to deal with all these complicated feelings of having lied to Valerie multiple times about his real identity when they were friends.

In the end Valerie realizes that doesn’t even like to have the A-listers as her friends and helps Danny with restoring Lyca to her original form. She apologizes to Wulf for over what happened and starts to reconsider things now that she knows ghosts are powered by emotion.

Fair Game ends with Valerie staring to see the error of her ways regarding thinking that all ghosts are evil and letting go of the things she lost from the start of the show as well as working through her feelings about Danny and other stuff.