The Curator to the most prestigious and honorable ghost museum in all the Ghost Zone is tired of collecting simple artifacts of art and history. He's not satisfied with interesting, important ghosts that enjoy being on display. His new sights are set on collecting humans. Most recently, his eyes have fallen on a match set of Halfas, and he has finally decided to collect them.
A collaboration between Pixie Girl 13 and Mutant Lover 09, The Collector is a Danny Phantom fanfic of epic proportions (over 30 chapters that are mostly over 15 pages long) that starts with Vlad and Danny having one of their spats, only to be interrupted by a mysterious ghost who can make them follow his orders with the power of his voice. He introduces himself as The Curator, the caretaker of a Ghost Zone museum that is known for its rare and high quality exhibits. He has recently started adding humans to the museum collection, regardless if they want to be put on display or not. Danny and Vlad have to team up, not only with each other, but with a pair of human thieves in order to escape their captivity.
The Collector puts a high emphasis on character interaction and character development, often to the effect of placing the escape plot on the backseat. This makes the story seem slow to some, but the authors do good quality work for both the action scenes as well as the character scenes.
The story can be found in full here
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Tropes Used In the Story
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Vlad isn't above begging for his teammates' sakes. Danny also resorts to it as a delay tactic.
- Badass Adorable: Danny gets called adorable several times, but he still kicks ass.
- Chekhov's Hobby: Ryder's hoarding is foreshadowing for his kleptomania.
- Chekhov's Skill: Melody's hacking and Ryder's thieving skills both come up before they're used for the final escape attempt.
- Children Raise You: Vlad's overall personality improves a great deal after he starts playing Parental Substitute to Danny.
- Combat and Support: Vlad and Danny handle combat, while Melody and Ryder provide support.
- Cool Old Guy: Vlad is middle-aged and older than any of his teammates by a noticeable marigin, but he is also the most capable one in battle.
- Cultured Badass: Vlad reads War and Peace in French and can still kick tons of ass.
- Cute Bruiser: Danny's teammates fawn over his cuteness but he's still the second most competent fighter.
- Darkest Hour: Chapter 24. The heroes make it out of the museum only to see that they're surrounded by a shield that repels both ghosts and humans, which means it's impossible to penetrate. Only Vlad living up to his status as the Determinator gets them to carry on.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Melody's cold exterior thaws somewhat by the end of the story.
- Drama Bomb: At first the fic seems like a reasonably light-hearted Great Escape-themed fic. Then the Curator starts delivering more and more sadistic punishments.
- Elemental Powers: Danny has ice powers and Vlad has lightning powers.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Curator is only ever referred to as such, or by the nickname 'Collector'.
- Family-Unfriendly Violence: For a fic based on a kids' show, the violence in the fic can get really graphic.
- Fantastic Racism: Just like in the show, ghosts aren't too keen about humans here either.
- Foreshadowing: A few times, usually with Vlad. The first time he asks Melody what she'd do if someone cut her hair and soon afterwards the Curator does just that. The second time he playfully shocks Danny with his electricity powers during training. Some chapters later the Curator forces him to shock all of his friends as torture. The moment the final grand plan starts brewing in Vlad's mind is also already in chapter 19, even though it tooks nearly ten chapters for him to voice any part of it.
- Forgot About His Powers: Vlad doesn't once try to use his power of teleportation in the story. Said power was rarely seen on the show as well.
- Happily Ever After: The story ends with the heroes united with their loved ones and already in the process of actually improving their lives from before the kidnapping.
- Heel Realization: Subverted. While the Curator realizes he's become a villain, he doesn't mind. Also inverted with Vlad, who realizes he's becoming a good guy.
- Hope Spot: In chapter 23, the heroes make it out of the museum right before the Despair Event Horizon kicks in.
- Indy Ploy: A large chuck of the escape plans are pretty spur of the moment, meant to only get them out of the locked room they're being kept in, leaving getting out of the museum as a whole as something to be figured out as they go along.
- Made of Iron: The heroes take insane levels of abuse and suffer severe injuries that they still manage to recover from.
- Man Hug: Danny and Vlad hug once per almost every chapter after their first hug in chapter 18.
- Motive Decay: Played for Drama. At first the Curator wanted his 'exhibits' to be comfortable in his museum. This turned into a desire to control them, which finally transformed into wanting to break them.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Melody and Ryder are ridiculously capable by human standards, but can't really keep up with ghosts and half-ghosts.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Danny is the youngest and smallest of the group but can still take out oponents of a higher weight class.
- Running Gag: Vlad being called Batman and comments about Melody's butt being big.
- Shadow Archetype: Vlad and the Curator are both Manipulative Bastards that enjoy being that way, only, Vlad's getting past that.
- Shout-Out: Ryder's fire-related joke is actually lyrics from the song "We Didn't Start the Fire".
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: The heroes' favorite snarking targets are each other.
- Stepford Snarker: Vlad snarks whether he's happy or sad, but gets even more snarky if he's upset.
- Sympathetic P.O.V.: If we didn't have Vlad's perspective showing us that he really doesn't understand how normal interaction works, he'd come across as much more of a Jerkass in the earlier chapters.
- Team Mom: Danny really has his work cut out for him trying to keep everyone together.
- Terms of Endangerment: The Curator trades 'Mr Masters' for 'Vlad' during the final battle, which makes him appear much more intimidating after he's stuck to formality until then.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Ryder, who has claustrophobia, dreads being stuck inside a closet or display case.
