Danny phantom Fic help

I am writing an AU fanfic of DP. Danny and Danielle are humans and all the ghosts I mention are humans . Danny and Sam are married and Danielle is their daughter. Their oldest daughter Lilith was murdered at the age of twelve when Danielle was five. Danielle was never really that close to her sister and viewed her as the ideal daughter.

Seven years later when Danielle is twelve she gets kidnapped by a couple of sadists who abduct and emotionally and physically torture young girls.

She seemingly 'dies' and watches what she thinks is her parents trying to find her killer and tries to nudge them in the right direction. she later realizes that she's reliving the investigation of her sister's death in a coma dream. Her captors were also responsible for the death of her sister and had been hiding in plain sight.

I have two concerns. One the fact that Danielle has an idealized view of her dead sister . The story is told somewhat from her point of view . I am afraid that this will make people believe that her sister Lillith is a Mary Sue. Danielle later realizes through her experience that Lillith was a person just like her and she is not obligated to replace her sister but to be her own person. How can I make it clear that the view we're getting is Danielle's perception not reality.

Two does this sound like a realistic depiction of a death of a family member and the aftermath from the Point of view of a five year old?

Danielle Fenton’s sister Lilith was seven years older than her and she was once a legend in the family. Her parents told stories about all the cute things she did and all the funny stories she told. Lilith was pretty, she had dark hair that went down to her back, she had her mother’s eyes and she liked to wear blue. Her favorite jacket was blue and purple with a gold zipper. She was the kind of girl who did pretty well in school and could be counted on to come home in time. She worked hard, got good grades and ran for student council. She helped out her neighbors and went to school functions. She also died when she was twelve years old.

Lilith went to school function on a Saturday to help out. It was some kind of fundraiser, maybe a bake sale. When she didn’t come back in time for dinner their father got worried and called the police. Hours passed and Danielle watched her parents get worse and worse. Lilith didn’t come home. She didn’t come home for several days afterward either. Days later the police came to her house again and her parents sent her upstairs.

As she left she was pretty sure she saw her mother crying. Later that night at dinner she asked when Lilith was coming home. Danielle had never seen her father cry before but that day tears started streaming down his face. He looked down and told her that Lillith wasn’t coming back. Some bad people had hurt her. It went quiet and her mother told her to go upstairs. She was pretty sure there was an argument but she couldn’t remember what it was about. Now that she understood why everyone was said she wished she didn’t, it was better holding on to the hope that her big sister was lost and would come home soon.

Soon afterwards they went to a church where the preacher talked about how sad it was that someone so young had been lost. Family members came all wearing black and gave Danielle hugs and told her how sorry they felt for her. It was honestly kind of weird and scary. Halfway through the memorial service, Danny got up and left taking Danielle with him. Looking back she realized it was probably because it was hard for him to be there too. They stopped at an ice cream parlor outside town and got a huge sundae. Danielle didn’t enjoy a bite of it because she was too busy worrying that Lillith would be mad at her for not staying. Danny saw to it that other people didn’t talk about Lilith in front of Danielle but that didn’t mean her older sister was out of her thoughts.

I wouldn't worry about Lilith being a Mary Sue. Many stories call for purely good and/or purely evil characters, and it sounds like Lilith being purely good is best for this story. It usually gets the reader to pull for the protagonist's success, making the reader want to keep reading. In this case, it sets up for a great story about what you said was going to unfold and be learned by Danielle.

As for your second question, I think it's a wonderful opening and exactly how a kid would describe it. Also with how it's written, I think it's clear that we're seeing Danielle's interpretation of things.

In general, I wouldn't call Lillith a Sue from your description — kids who die young are almost always talked about as if they where angels, and its kind of the nature of having someone you love die to emphasize the good in them if they where decent people. Besides, from what I understand, for Danielle the Lillith she has built up in her head is more of a goal than the real person from her memory, so I'm guessing that even when Lillith is brought up in relation to Danielle, there's going to be a lot more focus on Danielle as a character anyways.

How to make sure you actually make it look that way while writing? I'm not sure how to put it other than making sure "Lillith did X" is a bit more "Lillith did X so I will do X", or "Dad told me that Lillith used to like Y with W", or "I decided that because Lillith did H, she would likely also do G, so I will do G". The idea is that Lillith is a part of Danielle's reasoning system as the be-all end-all algorithm to what she needs to do herself, so Lillith will even get applied to places where she as a person would most likely have no personal experience, or in situations where the real person would act completely differently simply because she isn't perfect.

On the second question, I don't really much remember what it was like to be five, so... *shrugs* Good enough for me.