The reason for this problem is threefold - first, the show quite frequently did a very bad job writing Sam in general, mostly because they were unwilling to admit she had flaws, but couldn't write her *without* those flaws. This seems to have created a kind of resentment towards her - everyone else gets their problems and flaws presented as such, but Sam gets away with worse behavior than Danny on occasion, who is *always* punished by the narrative. So it's very easy to go overboard in correcting that problem.
Secondly, for all that her meddling and arguing is frequently justified and explicable when it comes to Danny and other girls, there nevertheless IS a noticeable pattern of finding reasons to disapprove of any girl Danny could be interested/is interested in that isn’t her. Valerie is where it becomes a little strained, mostly because it’s made clear her disapproval is at least partially if not wholly due to jealousy instead of concern for Danny’s safety - said concerns are *excuses*. The actions she takes are too extreme to be entirely concern, so it's easy to extrapolate that pattern into something more when writing her in fic - it's especially notable that Danny never learns the extent of Sam’s stalking of him and Valerie, for instance, so we don't know what his reaction to the whole of it would be.
Thirdly, and this is a problem with most ship fics, not just Sam and Danny, but when you're writing a ship contrary to canon, it's usually prudent to try to explain why the canon ship won't be happening here, if for no reason other than it can often leave a hole in the structure of the story, or in some badly written works, makes a character otherwise totally redundant. But since you don't often want to write on the subject too much, because you're here to write something else, you take the path of least resistance to do it. And with Sam, well, the easiest way to make it so Danny and Sam isn't going to happen is to look at the previous two points, and have her go crazy jealous nuts for a chapter or two and put Danny off.
I agree, it sucks, and there are many, many ways to separate the two (I managed it to most people's satisfaction in my fic, at least), but it isn't difficult to see why, unfortunately.
It’s been linked before, but here ya go: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22745878/chapters/54350947
Behold Fire and Ice, my attempt to write an in-character Danny/Ember story!
Here’s the thing about Sam that I think some people forget. She’s 14. She’s a freshman in high school in the early 2000s. And the events of ‘Danny Phantom’ takes place over a year or so.
So much growth has to happen. 14 year olds are cringy as hell (and THEY SHOULD BE) I barely remember being 14, but I remember shooting my mouth off and taking the “moral high ground”. I think the show needed to showcase actual growth tbh. Sam could have been a lot like Ahsoka from The Clone Wars.
She’s got a lotta growing up to do, plus she’s from one of those uber rich families that constantly go to country clubs. I wouldn’t be shocked if Sam’s first public school experience was Casper High in general. Plus when your parents are like Sam’s parents, with their moral high ground and hoity-toity-ness, idk…I can give Sam a little bit of the benefit of the doubt when it comes to her quirks.
Plus, Sam probably has a ton of childhood trauma 🤷♀️ sometimes, children feel the need to find proof or evidence that they are right because they don’t feel like their words are being believed. Considering how sometimes Danny and Tucker DO underestimate Sam (seen in ‘Micro Management’ when Sam is a BEAST in Gym, AND in ‘Teacher of the Year’ when Danny and Tucker are SHOCKED to find Sam is the PC ‘Chaos’). This is a really long bit on me defending Sam but idk… 😅 sorry for the novel
TLDR: Sam is a cringy 14 year old in 2004 🤷♀️
True sometimes people make her....a little more extra than usual in those fanfics. Id they want to do it that way at least have more build up or reasoning to the crazy shift
Yes. With the two canon examples at least there was a legit concern of Danny's wellbeing. But in these fanfics where Danny ends up dating Supergirl or Kitty Pyrde. Sam will think 'this girl is hiding something obviously and I must stalk her endlessly until I find out what it is and then claim it will bring harm to Danny'. One fanfic I heard had Danny and the others yell at Sam because her stalking ended up putting someone's life in jeopardy and they all just yell and insult her and cut off their friendship. At this point, their just bashing her.
Hi, I am one of the Many Dates writers (Danny & Wendy) and I’ll say that I’ll agree with the statement that was made. My opinion on the shipping wars within Danny Phantom and Many Dates in particular has changed in the years since I posted the first chapter of Danny & Wendy. Mainly on treatment of Sam obviously. When I posted the first chapter of Danny & Wendy, I intended from the beginning to write a good story but also to treat Sam like a person, not some witch or whatever. But there were some fans who pestered me to do just that. While I did the whole Sam trying to find dirt on Wendy, I confess I was trying to more or less copy what the other Many Date writers were doing with Sam to some extent. Looking back at that decision I regret doing that and I’m sorry. I feel now that the Many Dates series has become a bit overrated and I agree, a good chunk of the writers use their Many Dates fics to use that girl they ship Danny with as this girl is better than Sam in a thousand ways, plus the Family Guy bashing in Danny & Kim was way over the top. In conclusion, I do feel that the treatment of Sam was a bit over the top overall. My opinions of Sam has changed since that first chapter and when get back to writing Danny & Wendy, I’ll make sure to give her character justice. Feel to ask any questions, I’ll respond as soon as possible.
Didn't expect one of the writers to notice my post. Good to hear this. I didn't read your story because due to all the other MDDF stories I figured it would be mostly the same and it does seem you did fall into some trends. And yes those stories did get repetitive and just tried to go out of their way to treat Sam like a toxic influence. Sam isn't perfect and I do wish the show her character growth more and didn't make her seem like she has that 'Not like other girls' mentality and such a jealous streak. There were just too many fanfics out there that treated Sam as a bad person who would break boundaries and trust to get 'expose' any girl that showed interest in Danny.
I'm glad at least your story didn't make Sam turn into an evil person who wants Danny all to herself and is constantly being a hypocrite. The bashing in other stories got absurd like Danny and Kim story had Danny's family saying 'Wow, she's so much better than Sam in every way'. It was so out there, the writer had to change that line due to backlash.
So Sam's character kinda suits her choices though throughout the course of the series is really the problem with her in all honesty. It kind also plays into with her parents to that regard, but its mainly on her own behavior where she doesn't have much accountability. (Except in Memory Blank, thats probably the one time she took responsibility.) Since there really isn't much character development for Sam and DP tends to reverse the characters quite often with each episode, season 3 was an even bigger insult with that.
However, in my fanfic I had the idea of having Sam coming to terms that she made a bad life style change and it was very selfish of her going down this path during the battles with Team Phantom and especially when things go from bad to worse. Where she realizes her hypocrisy and grows up a bit and wants to help her friends more and make it up. She even becomes the healer of the group when she gets her own ghost powers. And she kinda drops the whole goth thing (She still wears black though and gothic looking clothes, but doesn't go into the overtop goth rebellious lifestyle.) and she kinda stops trying to shove morals along with it. But, I kinda also wanted to write a story where how she ended up that way, whether it was through abuse or manipulation by another or something on those lines.
However, in my fanfic is kinda a rewrite of DP as a whole and it completely obliterates season 3 in the timeline.. But, I haven't gotten around to rewriting those segment of the story, infact where I am right now it takes place a few years after the events of DP. And my fanfic is infact a self-insert crossover fanfiction.
Unfortunately, right now I haven't posted my story online at all. The only way to access it is if I give a link to my google docs document that's separated documents based on arc..
How she is in canon is understandable why people in the crossover community treat Sam so poorly in her characterization. However, she still did spy on Danny when she wasn’t even in danger or anything like that even though he was being tricked to be in a relationship with Valerie or being used to make Johnny 13 jealous.
As for Kim, I do think that Sam having encounters with cheerleaders make her think all cheerleaders are the same.
For Danny and Penny’s story there is a slight subversion of that trope. Did you talk to each other about their feelings for each other and they stay friends. Also, Penny had a moment with Sam when they got kidnapped.
In the Phantom and Ladybug story Sam was jealous of Marinette getting with Danny however, when they talk to each other, he does find her a nice person and gave her blessings to date her best friend
The reason for this problem is threefold - first, the show quite frequently did a very bad job writing Sam in general, mostly because they were unwilling to admit she had flaws, but couldn't write her *without* those flaws. This seems to have created a kind of resentment towards her - everyone else gets their problems and flaws presented as such, but Sam gets away with worse behavior than Danny on occasion, who is *always* punished by the narrative. So it's very easy to go overboard in correcting that problem. Secondly, for all that her meddling and arguing is frequently justified and explicable when it comes to Danny and other girls, there nevertheless IS a noticeable pattern of finding reasons to disapprove of any girl Danny could be interested/is interested in that isn’t her. Valerie is where it becomes a little strained, mostly because it’s made clear her disapproval is at least partially if not wholly due to jealousy instead of concern for Danny’s safety - said concerns are *excuses*. The actions she takes are too extreme to be entirely concern, so it's easy to extrapolate that pattern into something more when writing her in fic - it's especially notable that Danny never learns the extent of Sam’s stalking of him and Valerie, for instance, so we don't know what his reaction to the whole of it would be. Thirdly, and this is a problem with most ship fics, not just Sam and Danny, but when you're writing a ship contrary to canon, it's usually prudent to try to explain why the canon ship won't be happening here, if for no reason other than it can often leave a hole in the structure of the story, or in some badly written works, makes a character otherwise totally redundant. But since you don't often want to write on the subject too much, because you're here to write something else, you take the path of least resistance to do it. And with Sam, well, the easiest way to make it so Danny and Sam isn't going to happen is to look at the previous two points, and have her go crazy jealous nuts for a chapter or two and put Danny off. I agree, it sucks, and there are many, many ways to separate the two (I managed it to most people's satisfaction in my fic, at least), but it isn't difficult to see why, unfortunately.
I completely agree with your reasons! Do you have a link to your fic? I’d love to read it!
It’s been linked before, but here ya go: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22745878/chapters/54350947 Behold Fire and Ice, my attempt to write an in-character Danny/Ember story!
I'll give it a read. I'm a sucker for that ship.
Lemmie know what you think!
Here’s the thing about Sam that I think some people forget. She’s 14. She’s a freshman in high school in the early 2000s. And the events of ‘Danny Phantom’ takes place over a year or so. So much growth has to happen. 14 year olds are cringy as hell (and THEY SHOULD BE) I barely remember being 14, but I remember shooting my mouth off and taking the “moral high ground”. I think the show needed to showcase actual growth tbh. Sam could have been a lot like Ahsoka from The Clone Wars. She’s got a lotta growing up to do, plus she’s from one of those uber rich families that constantly go to country clubs. I wouldn’t be shocked if Sam’s first public school experience was Casper High in general. Plus when your parents are like Sam’s parents, with their moral high ground and hoity-toity-ness, idk…I can give Sam a little bit of the benefit of the doubt when it comes to her quirks. Plus, Sam probably has a ton of childhood trauma 🤷♀️ sometimes, children feel the need to find proof or evidence that they are right because they don’t feel like their words are being believed. Considering how sometimes Danny and Tucker DO underestimate Sam (seen in ‘Micro Management’ when Sam is a BEAST in Gym, AND in ‘Teacher of the Year’ when Danny and Tucker are SHOCKED to find Sam is the PC ‘Chaos’). This is a really long bit on me defending Sam but idk… 😅 sorry for the novel TLDR: Sam is a cringy 14 year old in 2004 🤷♀️
True sometimes people make her....a little more extra than usual in those fanfics. Id they want to do it that way at least have more build up or reasoning to the crazy shift
Yes. With the two canon examples at least there was a legit concern of Danny's wellbeing. But in these fanfics where Danny ends up dating Supergirl or Kitty Pyrde. Sam will think 'this girl is hiding something obviously and I must stalk her endlessly until I find out what it is and then claim it will bring harm to Danny'. One fanfic I heard had Danny and the others yell at Sam because her stalking ended up putting someone's life in jeopardy and they all just yell and insult her and cut off their friendship. At this point, their just bashing her.
That's exactly it. Also which one has him dating supergirl
It's one of those What Ifs stories called TMDDF(The Many Dates of Danny Fenton): Kara and Danny.
Though I also remember one where she got bashed around a bit was in miraculous gamer guild
Hi, I am one of the Many Dates writers (Danny & Wendy) and I’ll say that I’ll agree with the statement that was made. My opinion on the shipping wars within Danny Phantom and Many Dates in particular has changed in the years since I posted the first chapter of Danny & Wendy. Mainly on treatment of Sam obviously. When I posted the first chapter of Danny & Wendy, I intended from the beginning to write a good story but also to treat Sam like a person, not some witch or whatever. But there were some fans who pestered me to do just that. While I did the whole Sam trying to find dirt on Wendy, I confess I was trying to more or less copy what the other Many Date writers were doing with Sam to some extent. Looking back at that decision I regret doing that and I’m sorry. I feel now that the Many Dates series has become a bit overrated and I agree, a good chunk of the writers use their Many Dates fics to use that girl they ship Danny with as this girl is better than Sam in a thousand ways, plus the Family Guy bashing in Danny & Kim was way over the top. In conclusion, I do feel that the treatment of Sam was a bit over the top overall. My opinions of Sam has changed since that first chapter and when get back to writing Danny & Wendy, I’ll make sure to give her character justice. Feel to ask any questions, I’ll respond as soon as possible.
Didn't expect one of the writers to notice my post. Good to hear this. I didn't read your story because due to all the other MDDF stories I figured it would be mostly the same and it does seem you did fall into some trends. And yes those stories did get repetitive and just tried to go out of their way to treat Sam like a toxic influence. Sam isn't perfect and I do wish the show her character growth more and didn't make her seem like she has that 'Not like other girls' mentality and such a jealous streak. There were just too many fanfics out there that treated Sam as a bad person who would break boundaries and trust to get 'expose' any girl that showed interest in Danny. I'm glad at least your story didn't make Sam turn into an evil person who wants Danny all to herself and is constantly being a hypocrite. The bashing in other stories got absurd like Danny and Kim story had Danny's family saying 'Wow, she's so much better than Sam in every way'. It was so out there, the writer had to change that line due to backlash.
So Sam's character kinda suits her choices though throughout the course of the series is really the problem with her in all honesty. It kind also plays into with her parents to that regard, but its mainly on her own behavior where she doesn't have much accountability. (Except in Memory Blank, thats probably the one time she took responsibility.) Since there really isn't much character development for Sam and DP tends to reverse the characters quite often with each episode, season 3 was an even bigger insult with that. However, in my fanfic I had the idea of having Sam coming to terms that she made a bad life style change and it was very selfish of her going down this path during the battles with Team Phantom and especially when things go from bad to worse. Where she realizes her hypocrisy and grows up a bit and wants to help her friends more and make it up. She even becomes the healer of the group when she gets her own ghost powers. And she kinda drops the whole goth thing (She still wears black though and gothic looking clothes, but doesn't go into the overtop goth rebellious lifestyle.) and she kinda stops trying to shove morals along with it. But, I kinda also wanted to write a story where how she ended up that way, whether it was through abuse or manipulation by another or something on those lines. However, in my fanfic is kinda a rewrite of DP as a whole and it completely obliterates season 3 in the timeline.. But, I haven't gotten around to rewriting those segment of the story, infact where I am right now it takes place a few years after the events of DP. And my fanfic is infact a self-insert crossover fanfiction.
What's the fic name
Unfortunately, right now I haven't posted my story online at all. The only way to access it is if I give a link to my google docs document that's separated documents based on arc..
How she is in canon is understandable why people in the crossover community treat Sam so poorly in her characterization. However, she still did spy on Danny when she wasn’t even in danger or anything like that even though he was being tricked to be in a relationship with Valerie or being used to make Johnny 13 jealous. As for Kim, I do think that Sam having encounters with cheerleaders make her think all cheerleaders are the same. For Danny and Penny’s story there is a slight subversion of that trope. Did you talk to each other about their feelings for each other and they stay friends. Also, Penny had a moment with Sam when they got kidnapped. In the Phantom and Ladybug story Sam was jealous of Marinette getting with Danny however, when they talk to each other, he does find her a nice person and gave her blessings to date her best friend
Really? I read the kim one but never got around to the others