The Collector (fanfic)

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 Mutantlover09, 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 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.

Tropes used in The Collector (fanfic) include:

• Above Good and Evil: The Curator at first.
• Action Girl: Melody.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Vlad isn't above begging for his teammates' sakes. Danny also resorts to it as a delay tactic.
• And I Must Scream: Ptolemy's fate.
• Badass: Vlad and Danny get called such in-story.
• Badass Adorable: Danny gets called adorable several times, but he still kicks ass.
• Badass Bookworm: Vlad is the most studious of the group and also the one who deals the most damage in the fights.
• Badass Cape: Vlad in ghost form.
• Badass in Charge: Vlad is the makeshift group's makeshift leader and an overall hardhat.
• Badass Normal: Ryder and Melody to a degree.
• Backstory: Ryder and Vlad. Also Melody to a lesser degree.
• Bald of Awesome: Ryder has one.
• Batman Gambit: Danny beats the Curator with one of these.
• Bash Brothers: Vlad and Danny.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Danny is the only not-criminal of the heroes, but is still one of the more competent fighters.
• Big Bad: The Curator.
• Blue and Orange Morality: The Curator at least at first.
• Book Dumb: Danny and Ryder.
• Break the Cutie: The Curator tries this very hard with Danny.
• Character Development: Like WHOA. Even the villain goes through some.
• 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.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Ryder.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Melody to Ryder's Cloudcuckoolander.
• Combat and Support: Vlad and Danny handle combat, while Melody and Ryder provide support.
• Compelling Voice: The Curator has an impressive one.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The Curator resorts to this after snapping.
• The Collector: It's even the Curator's nickname.
• Collector of the Strange: Said nickname is well earned.
• Cool Big Sis: Melody to Danny.
• 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.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Ryder.
• 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.
• Deadpan Snarker: Everyone gets in on this.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Melody's cold exterior thaws somewhat by the end of the story.
• Despair Event Horizon: Chapter 32 is this for Vlad when the Curator shoots Danny.
• Determinator: Vlad, dear lord, Vlad.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The other ghosts react quite violently to Ryder fighting with one of their own. Also the Curator starts heading this way with his 'punishments' later.
• Distaff Counterpart: Melody to Vlad. It even gets Lampshaded. Although the matter becomes less so once the Character Development kicks in.
• 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.
• Drunk with Power: Said word-for-word about the Curator.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The heroes really struggle in the story.
• Easy Amnesia: Danny in chapter 18.
  • Also works as Laser-Guided Amnesia.
• Electric Torture: the Curator grows very fond of this.
• Elemental Powers: Danny has ice and Vlad has lightning.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Curator is only ever referred to as such, or by the nickname 'Collector'.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The Curator has shades of this.
• A Father to His Men: Vlad evolves into this during the story.
• 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.
• Fire-Forged Friends: The heroes become this.
• First-Name Basis: 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.
• Foe Yay: Some of the fans joke that the Curator singles Vlad out because he likes him the most, and that his brutality towards Danny is because of jealousy.
• 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.
• Forced to Watch: The Curator's later punishments towards Vlad have shades of this, although the situation is more like Forced To Participate.
• 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.
• Food Fight: In Chapter 19.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble:
  • The Cynic: Melody
  • The Optimist: Danny
  • The Realist: Vlad
  • The Apathetic: Ryder
• Friendless Background: Ryder.
• Fun Personified: Ryder.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Vlad is revealed to be this.
• Gilded Cage: The museum starts as this, before the Curator realizes that comforts aren't enough to convince the heroes be happy with their lot.
• The Good, the Bad, and The Evil: There are some shifting alignments, but for the biggest part it's the heroes as Good, the guards and the exhibit ghosts as Bad (or Neutral) and the Curator as Evil.
• Great Escape: The museum really gives the impression of actually being a prison.
• Hammerspace: Danny doesn't want to know where Melody keeps her tools. And how did Ryder get that a ten-gallon cowboy hat to his stash without anyone noticing?
• Half-Human Hybrid: The reason Danny and Vlad pique the Curator's interest.
• Happily Ever After: The 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 Face Turn: Vlad, hesitantly at first, but he ends up being happy with his choice.
• 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.
• Heroic Resolve: Vlad has this in spades.
• Heroic Spirit: The heroes must have this to survive the emotional trauma.
• Hope Spot: In chapter 23, the heroes make it out of the museum right before the Despair Event Horizon kicks in.
• An Ice Person: Danny.
• Ice Queen: Melody, it's even her nickname!
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Danny loves these, and Ryder also utters a few.
• 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.
• It Amused Me: The Curator's 'punishments' turn into this. The Curator even admits as much.
• Jerkass: Gregory the 'multiplying ghost'.
• Kitsch Collection: The Curator is quite fond of human items, all human items, even though he doesn't understand their functions or purposes completely.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Vlad and Danny when Vlad is under the Curator's control.
• Like a Son to Me: Vlad says this to Danny.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Vlad and Danny to each other, also Vlad to the team as a whole to a lesser extent.
• Love Epiphany: Vlad has one of the platonic sort in chapter 18.
• Love Redeems: Vlad's confusion over his own feelings makes it hard to make out which came first: the redemption or the love.
• Made of Iron: The heroes take insane levels of abuse and suffer severe injuries that they still manage to recover from.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: Danny's Ghostly Wail.
• Man Hug: Danny and Vlad hug once per almost every chapter after their first hug in chapter 18.
• Manipulative Bastard: Vlad and the Curator compete in this.
• Me's a Crowd: Vlad and Gregory.
• 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.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The Curator forces Vlad to unleash this against Danny.
• Not So Different: Invoked with Vlad and the Curator, only the Curator becomes worse than Vlad ever was while Vlad becomes better.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Vlad and Danny suspect Ryder is doing this. It's his real personality, but he is smarter than he appears.
• One-Man Army: Vlad, and to a lesser degree Danny, in chapter 31.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: in true Danny Phatom form.
• Overprotective Dad: or dad-like figure.
• Papa Wolf: Ryder. Vlad develops into this.
• Parental Substitute: Vlad to Danny.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Danny is the youngest and smallest of the group but can still take out oponents of a higher weight class.
• Platonic Life Partners: Ryder and Melody.
• Power of Friendship: Oh yeah.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The heroes wonder several times how they manage to work together without killing each other.
• Remember That You Trust Me: Vlad needs to put in effort to be able open up about his problems.
• Rich Bitch: Melody starts out as this.
• Running Gag: Vlad being called Batman and comments about Melody's butt being big.
• Sanity Slippage: The Curator, big time.
• Shadow Archetype: Vlad and the Curator are both Manipulative Bastards that enjoy being that way, only, Vlad's getting past that.
• Shock and Awe: Vlad.
• Shout-Out: Ryder's fire-related joke is actually lyrics from the song We Didn't Start the Fire.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: The Curator
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: The heroes' favorite snarking targets are each other.
• So Proud of You: Vlad to Danny after the final battle.
• Stepford Snarker: Vlad snarks whether he's happy or sad, but gets even more snarky if he's upset.
• Sudden Humility: Vlad sees the events in chapter 30 as this.
• Sympathetic POV: 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 Dad: Vlad starts playing this role without at first realizing he's doing it.
• Team Mom: Danny really has his work cut out for him trying to keep everyone together.
• Traumatic Haircut: Twice. For Danny and Melody. Although only Melody reacts this way, in both instances it's treated as a sign of the Collector's Slowly Slipping Into Evil.
• True Companions: The heroes become this.
• The Unfettered: The Curator.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Implied with Melody.
• Villainous Breakdown: The Curator as he slowly decends into utter madness.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Danny and Vlad, due to their background as rivals, as well as Ryder and Melody, due to their personalities clashing.
• Volleying Insults: Vlad and Danny participate in this throughout the story, only their tone changes from malicious to playful.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Or a closet in Ryder's case, who is claustrophobic.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Curator, hooboy.
• World of Snark
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Danny tries to get Vlad to believe this more than once with varying degrees of success.