Fanfic / Family Bonding And Other Perilous Pursuits

Family Bonding and other Perilous Pursuits is a Danny Phantom and Batman by Shynnohwen. They have also written Visitant Lights, Alfred And The Tiny Attic Squatters, and The Misadventures Of Cosplay Man.

In this story, even as Danny struggles to make all his progress in ghost-human relations work, he and his class make a trip to Gotham City, which inadvertently reveals Bruce Wayne and Jack Fenton are half-brothers.

Tropes for this series include:

• Action Survivor: Every member of Danny's classmates. These terrors rip through the Gotham underworld, taking down the local Russian mafia, and abduct several of Batman's Rogues (Riddler, the Scarecrow and Two-Face for the curious) to make them serve as teachers. These are all the normal ones by the way; Danny cripples the Joker in a berserk rage after he stabbed Damian while holding both of them hostage.
• Adaptational Sexuality: In canon Johnny and Danny were never confirmed to be anything other than straight. Here they dated at one point.
• Alliterative Name: Jack's mother Felicity Fenton.
• Amazon Chaser: Apparently this is a common tendency in male Fentons, as both Jack and his maternal grandfather fell for a woman who they first met when she mistook him for a supernatural creature and pummeled him. Danny also attributes this family trait to his off and on relationship with Val.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: While running for Mayor, the Box Ghost says "all teachers will get a massive raises and six weeks of paid vacation time! And commemorate little boxes!".
• Bait-and-Switch: After looking up Damian, Danny notes that they look kind of like they could be half-siblings, and Bruce briefly wonders if he's sired another son unknowingly. He hasn't, but Thomas Wayne, on the other hand, fathered Jack.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite how incompetent Jack seems as a ghost hunter, and life in general, once he reaches the state of Tranquil Fury about something, he becomes terrifyingly competent at whatever he sets out to accomplish. Thankfully the world, the only thing which seems to accomplish this is messing with government bureaucracies, and dealing with any and all threats to his children.
• The Chooser of the One: The Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage are what choose the King or Queen of the Ghost Zone. Danny gets out of the job because Jack convinces them that he's too young and inexperienced and offers himself as a replacement.
• Clones Are People, Too: Not only do Jack and Maddie accept Dani as their daughter, they consider all the 'failed' clones to be their dead sons.
• Crazy Enough to Work: Danny manages to get several of his rogues to stop being a problem by getting them jobs.
• Crossover Relatives: In this universe, Jack Fenton is the paternal half-brother of Bruce.
• Cutting the Knot: While Bruce and Tim are spiraling, trying to come up with a plan to subtly find out if Jack and his family knows that they're related, Damian just calls Danny and asks him some questions.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Jack is at peace with never getting to know Thomas, pointing it's rather hard to be a dad when you're not even aware of having reproduced to begin with.
• Drives Like Crazy: Jack, as usual, with the Waynes sans Bruce being subjected to it.
• Exact Words: Thomas Wayne's eulogy for his father. "I loved my father as much as he loved this city and all of it's inhabitants, especially the poorer districts, our amazing new arrivals from other places around the world and all the people of color. I am sure he would have been overcome with emotion to know of the many funds I started to help these people, and I can perfectly picture his heartfelt reaction to the Patrick Wayne Education Foundation that will help the schools and families of the Narrows. I hope where ever he is, it keeps him very warm for all eternity as he gets the true rewards his actions in life have reaped."
• Hollywood Restraining Order:
  • The Riddler files one on the Amity Park students after they kidnap him.
  • The Fentons have one filed against them by the entire IRS.
• Hybrids Are a Crapshoot: Jack's ancestor Humphrey was 50% Kryptonian, 25% Green Martian, and 25% Human, and he married a human woman, so his descendants are practically rolling the dice on what traits, good or bad, they get. For instance, Jack can deadlift a bus, even though his meta gene is mostly inactive, but has the Martian weakness to fire.
• Gold Digger:
  • Part of the reason why Jack never sought to introduce himself to Bruce, especially right after graduating — he was afraid that Bruce would think his half-brother only cared about finding a wealthy sponsor for his research and decided to stay away. Plus he just assumed Bruce knew about him in turn, and took the lack of contact as a message there.
    • Bruce acknowledges that at that age he might indeed have reached that conclusion.
  • Patrick Wayne, in spite of already being rich, only married Old Money women and was called a gold digger in-universe.
• Intimidating Revenue Service: Subverted, at least for the Fentons. Jack and Maddie at the very least routinely broke IRS officials sent to them, half not passing their psych evaluations afterwards, to the point that last year they sent the Fentons a letter that they're no longer allowed to do taxes and putting out a restraining order on them. Apparently there's a supernatural element involved.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Not only did Patrick's treatment of his son and keeping him Locked Out of the Loop about Jack's existence mean that when he died Thomas donated his body to science (wrapped in newspaper, carried by a cart), had the ashes of his surrogate father placed within the family mausoleum, and the eulogy he gave for his sperm donor was a masterful bit of double-speak where he revealed he said Patrick was going to hell, and Thomas would dedicate his life to spitting on everything the man valued. Bruce unknowingly follows in his father's footsteps, as it's noted more than once that the heavily racist, sexist, and classist man would be rolling over in his grave (if he had one), at the current state of the Wayne family (his biological grandson Damian is of Arabic heritage, his adoptive grandchildren include an African American boy, an Asian girl, etc.). Tim even mentally calls the situation "karma at it's finest".
• Locked Out of the Loop: Thomas Wayne never learned that he had a son before Bruce, as his own father Patrick basically forced Felicity to move from Gotham and never contact Thomas again.
• My God, What Have I Done??: Jack and Maddie are mentioned to have become guilt ridden and horrified that they had been attacking their son and could have seriously hurt him. They nearly destroyed their life's work out of shame and grief, until Danny and Jazz talked them out of it.
• Meaningful Rename: When Danielle was officially adopted by the Fentons, her middle name is changed from "Madaline" to "Jacklyn", specifically to give a middle finger to Vlad.
• Mistaken Identity: Danny keeps getting kidnapped because he's mistaken for Damian... despite Danny being three years older, Caucasian where Damian is of clearly middle eastern ancestry, etc. When Danny looks Damian up after a few kidnappings, he wonders if the average Gothamite is blind. Even the Joker confuses them despite having actually kidnapped both of them at the same time.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: After finding out about Danny, Jack and Maddie utterly dismantled the Guys in White, and stuffed Vlad into a thermos. And welded it shut.
• One Degree of Separation:
  • Jack and Bruce are paternal half-brothers, and Damian is best friends with Jon Kent, who is dating Dani in this story. Damien didn't realize this until Jon tricked him into agreeing to take him to Amity with them so he can see her, because he tends to tune Jon out when he starts repeating himself.
  • Warden Walker is Maddie's dad.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Whenever Jack let's a small and gentle smile show, Danny knows something big is going down.
  • In fact, when Dani sees Jack showcasing silent fury while welding a Thermos, she has a hunch something had happened to REALLY piss him off, the implication from other chapters being that Vlad is the one in the Thermos.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Jack Fenton never introduced himself to his younger half-brother Bruce because he feared to look like some Gold Digger more interested in the Wayne inheritance than family and thought Bruce would come to him if he wanted to have a relationship. However, Bruce didn't know he had a brother due to Patrick keeping Thomas Locked Out of the Loop, preventing contact between them.
  • Jack and Maddie did notice Danny's powers, they just assumed that they were from his Martian and/or Kryptonian genes instead of his halfa nature, and never said anything because they were waiting for him to be ready.
• Racist Grandpa: Patrick Wayne was a real piece of work even by the standards of his day. It's noted more than once that he'd be aghast at how his only biological great-grandchild is of Arabic descent, to say nothing of all his adoptive great-grandchildren.
• Refuge in Audacity: Jack is an expert in being so audacious and over the top when breaking rules that just leaving him alone is less of a hassle than explaining what he just did. Hence why the IRS doesn't make him pay taxes anymore.
  • This is actually a trait/tactic of the Fentons as a whole.
• Reluctant Ruler: Danny is technically the new Ghost King after defeating Pariah Dark. Despite having done a great job of improving human-ghost relations in a relatively short time, he denies that he's doing it for any other reason than for finally getting a good night's sleep, and keeps rejecting the prodding of the Observants to officially take up the role because it would run counter to that. Eventually his dad uses this, and Danny's age, to get Danny off the hook; at least for now.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Vlad is currently sealed in a Fenton Thermos indefinitely, with his 'prison' being a place Warden Walker is confident will never be found.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Most of the school (Mr. Lancer included) and many other people in Amity Park knew Danny Fenton is Danny Phantom without Danny suspecting they knew.
• Sickening Sweethearts: Dani and Jon Kent to the dismay of everyone around them. Damien actually missed how the two were dating because the normally observant Robin completely tuned out the latter gushing about the former.
• Springtime for Hitler: Danny's class won the Thomas & Martha Wayne Foundation contest and a trip to Gotham... despite actively trying not to. Danny is baffled by how they did it.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Invoked, the Waynes bring Jarro along to Amity because they figure that with all the ghosts around, with various appearances, they wouldn't have to worry about people freaking out so much. In fact, a group of ghosts from Star Planet had actually shown up recently, so Jack initially assumed that Jarro was a ghost for a second.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Patrick Wayne was reportedly respected and well-liked, but in actuality he was highly classist, sexist, and racist, supporting segregation, hindering mom and pop shops owned by "undesirables", and having his sixth wife Avaline Arkham committed after she gave him Thomas (and tried to murder him, though given that he was apparently domestically abusive and may have been involved in the demises of four of his first five brides based on what Tim found, it's hard to blame her).
• Weirdness Magnet: The extended Fenton clan, and going back multiple generations at that, seems to have a talent for getting into crazy situations. For example, Danny is actually far from the first family member to be cloned. Moreover, Maddie and Jack were aware Danny had gained power, if failing they were ghost related, and just assumed it was some of his Kryptonian or Martian heritage acting up!

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