Cursed
is the eighth story in Stranded. Danny and Star try to enjoy their first Valentine's Day but the Ghost Writer has other plans.
Tropes:
- Act of True Love: Danny partakes in a series of challenges to prove his love for Star and undo the Ghost Writer's spell on her.
- Adaptational Villainy: In canon, the Ghost Writer was simply teaching Danny a lesson on what happens when you act spiteful to people over Christmas. Due to his imprisonment by Walker, he's become far less well-intentioned. He curses Star for being Danny's girlfriend as an act of spite and goes about ruining other people's Valentine's Day out of pettiness.
- Apology Gift: In the end, the Ghost Writer is forced by Madame Valentine to make amends to Danny and Star by using his powers to give them a Valentine's Day gift. The couple asks him to expose Colette and Paulina's scheme so as to mitigate any fallout from the forged love letter. Along with destroying Colette's collage of Danny.
- Call-Forward: Sam's secret admirer is revealed in the future to be Christopher John Morgan.
- Contrived Coincidence: When the Ghost Writer takes Danny to the Ghost Zone to test his love for Star, the ghost in charge of testing Danny turns out to be Madame Valentine/Shelley, the Ghost Writer's ex-girlfriend.
- Disproportionate Retribution: While it's understandable that the Ghost Writer was angry with Danny for destroying his poem, as well as getting him arrested, he went completely overboard turning Star into a swan, just for being Danny's girlfriend.
- Evil Is Petty: The Ghost Writer's real motive (aside from wanting payback on Danny) was based mostly on him being bitter that his girlfriend broke up with him prior to Valentine's Day and jealous of the other couples.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Even the Ghost Writer regards Colette to be despicable and while he briefly thought about rewriting reality to make Danny and her a couple, he rejected it as he couldn't consider typing anything about her that would compliment her.
- False Soulmate: Kwan is this to Star.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The Ghost Writer has an understandable reason for hating Danny since Danny destroyed his poem and even gloated about it. Originally, he just tried to get even with Danny and teach him a lesson, only to end up in jail as a result. Upon confronting each other, Danny acknowledges that the Ghost Writer has a good reason to be upset and genuinely apologizes to him. However, the Ghost Writer refuses to accept Danny's apology, pointing out that it is not enough for being in jail and destroying his keyboard. Initially, Danny accepts that, but when the Ghost Writer turns Star into a swan, Danny feels he crossed a line since Star was innocent and did nothing to him. Danny still tries to apologize to the Ghost Writer and asks to end this peacefully, pointing out that he does not have a right to take out his anger on Amity Park. However, the Ghost Writer refuses to listen and keeps trying to ruin Valentine's Day. Upon revealing the real reason that he wants revenge (his girlfriend Madame Valentine/Shelley broke up with him through a letter before Valentine's Day while he was in jail), Danny is disgusted by the Ghost Writer's hypocrisy; Danny and Shelley would later point out that it does not excuse his petty actions. Danny loses whatever sympathies he had left for the Ghost Writer and is more determined to stop him.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: While punishing Colette for how she and Paulina tried to sabotage Danny and Star's relationship, Stella calls her "Colette Anastasie Marie Bevier".
- Hypocrite: After the Ghost Writer's motives were revealed, Danny calls him out how hypocritical he is acting, given that he had punished Danny for his own negative attitude towards Christmas. The Ghost Writer, however, points out Christmas is far more important to the Ghost Zone than Valentine's Day is.
- Ignored Epiphany Zigzagged as Kwan shows that he still misses Star and wishes she would return to the A-Listers. This is despite Star having made it clear that she hated her time at the A-Listers and no longer wished to be a part of them. Star has shown that she desires to become a better person and has outgrown her former "mean girl" mentality. Kwan, for a while, tried to respect her decisions, and while he did want to confront Danny out of jealousy and blame him for Star's change, he did not actually want to start a fight with him. He only thought Danny was cheating on her.
- Implied Love Interest: It's hinted that Georgia (the Strong family's housekeeper) has a boyfriend or at least an admirer named Frank, who is a delivery man.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: After the ordeal with the Ghost Writer, Sam not only accepts Danny and Star's relationship, but genuinely hopes they'll be happy together despite her lingering feelings for Danny.
- Love Letter Lunacy: With Paulina's help, Colette creates a fake love letter addressed to herself with Danny's signature on it and sends it to everyone he knows in an attempt to break him and Star up.
- Misplaced Retribution: The Ghost Writer takes out his anger over his girlfriend breaking up with him on all of Amity Park just for enjoying Valentine's Day.
- Name One: Star refuses to get back together with Kwan, citing that their relationship was turbulent and unhappy. However, Kwan denies this and challenges her to name one example. She promptly brings up the time he dumped her for Colette for a whole week. Kwan then weakly suggests she can't name another one, only for Star to list off two other times he ditched her (for another girl and to hang out with his friends) and makes it clear there are many more, causing him to give up.
- Never My Fault: Instead of accepting his own behavior as the reason Madame Valentine dumped him, the Ghost Writer blames Danny. He also blames Danny for rallying all the ghosts at the Christmas truce party, ignoring the fact that he led them to Danny, hoping they'd attack the latter.
- Not Good with Rejection: The Ghost Writer reacts to his girlfriend breaking up with him by cursing all of Amity Park.
- Parent-Preferred Suitor: According to Star, after she told her parents how Kwan was not very faithful or helpful to her while they dated, Johnathan and (eventually) Stella believed that Danny is a better boyfriend for her.
- Pet the Dog: Sam is genuinely concerned for Star when she is turned into a swan and briefly takes care of her until they can help her. When Danny, Jazz, and Tucker are surprised, Sam defends that she loves animals (and would never want anything bad to happen to Star).
- Rejected Apology: The Ghost Writer does not forgive Danny after he apologizes for destroying his poem, given he spent months in Walker's prison the entire time since then.
- Secret Admirer: Sam finds a black rose and gothic poem in her locker from a secret admirer on Valentine's Day. When it happens again the next day, she becomes intrigued.
- Shout-Out: Star rejects Kwan by saying, "Plus, if I'm going to be an artist by the time I graduate college and open my own art studio by the time I'm in my 20's, I need a boyfriend who's not such a complete doofus, who'd dump me when he gets a 'better offer'." This is similar to Elle Woods telling off her ex in Legally Blonde.
- Spotting the Thread: Sam recognizes Paulina's handwriting on "Danny"'s love letter, which, combined with the sloppy penmanship and superficial wording, causes her to realize Paulina and Colette faked it.
- Stalker with a Crush: After seeing Colette's edited photos of him in her room, Danny declares her to be an even worse stalker than Paulina is with his ghost half.
- Stating the Simple Solution: After the Ghost Writer tells Shelley what Danny did to earn his ire, she points out that, since he can alter reality with his keyboard, he "could've just rewrote the poem back to normal whenever the mood struck".
- Tricked into Signing: Paulina got Danny to sign Colette's love letter by presenting it as a petition.
- True Love's Kiss: The final step for Danny to turn Star back from a swan into a human is to declare his love for her and kiss her. Danny lampshades the cliche and ridiculous nature of this, but his feelings are sincere.
- Valentine's Day Episode: This story is about Danny and Star's first Valentine's Day as a couple.
