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Favorite Danny Phantom Fics
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Published:
2023-02-08
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2023-06-25
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2/?
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Haunted By My Roommate

Summary:

Inspired by a Tumblr post prompt:
"Johnny 13 and Dash are Roommates in Gotham."
Thought it was criminal that no one had written for it so I took matters into my own hands. Also, Fic description will be updated to be more relevant when I write future chapters.

Johnny disappeared around another turn, taking out two trash cans and a mailbox as he did. He mentally apologized to Shadow for running off but kept going. There wasn't any reason for the little punk to be going after him tonight. The only thing he'd broken was the speed limit!

... until Phantom showed up yelling about "needing to talk", then there might have been a small bit of property damage. Maybe more but who was keeping track of stuff like that? He wasn't keeping score or anything. Course not. thirty-two.

Chapter 1: Old Problems With New Sulotions

Summary:

Johnny isn't looking for trouble. No really, he isn't! But when Phantom starts flying next to him and telling him to slow down, well, he couldn't think of a better time to race.

Aka, why does Johnny agree to go to Gotham City in the first place?

Notes:

Hi! I'm thecatchat on Tumblr, but you can call me Cryptic Kitty, or CK for short.
I don't really have any solid plans for future chapters and I'm just starting out a new semester in college so this fic is likely not to be updated very frequently. I'm not marking it as complete or anything because I do plan to add to it, it just might take a while.
Hope you enjoy!
Edit 2/9/23 - fixing spelling errors

Chapter Text

Johnny's motorcycle rumbled as he hit the gas. The scenery blurred around him as he weaved around another corner. Phantom yelped behind him as they overshot the same turn and disappeared from view. Within seconds, they were back in view of his side mirror.

"Shadow," he called out, "defend!"

Shadow unfurled from underneath the bike and pounced at Phantom, sending the two careening into a building. Johnny disappeared around another turn, taking out two trash cans and a mailbox as he did. He mentally apologized to Shadow for running off but kept going. There wasn't any reason for Phantom to be going after him tonight. The only thing he'd broken was the speed limit!

... until the little punk had showed up yelling about "needing to talk". Then there might have been a small bit of property damage. Maybe a bit more than a small bit but who really needed all those mailboxes these days? Nobody was keeping track of it anyway especially not himself. He definitely wasn't keeping score or anything. Course not. That'd be dumb. thirty-two.

He continued his high speed get away for a few moments before ducking into an alleyway and killing his engine. Not that his bike made much noise anyway but hey, old habits die hard. He remembered to turn invisible too at the last second, barely missing getting spotted as Phantom soared over head with Shadow hot on his heels.

As the sound of fighting disappeared into the distance, Johnny dipped back into the visible spectrum. After a quick check that his precious cargo of the day was still intact, he sped off in the opposite direction towards Amity Park Mall.

Without his Shadow, driving his motorcycle felt that little extra bit of dangerous. Maybe it was just his memories of life clinging on to his ectoplasm, but driving around in the human realm always made him feel like he was a little alive somewhere inside. The heat of the sun on his back, the little bumps and cracks in the road, and the natural scenery had him both on ease and on edge all at once.

Phasing through the front doors, Johnny slowed his bike to a crawl as he weaved his way through the shopping crowd. While people startled and generally moved out of the way, nobody tried to shoot him anymore. That was nice. While the Fentons and a few others were still a problem, most of the town had gotten used to some ghosts hanging around town. Not everyone, Skulker and Technus were still a blast on sight policy, but a small handful of ghosts had gained the tentative trust of the town. Kitty liked to joke that they were like stray cats in a cafe that had snuck in enough times that they stopped trying to keep them out.

After a few minutes of biking around, he finally spotted the short green hair he was looking for. Kitty was floating next to Ember in front of some kind of clothes shop called "Spooky Shirts, Shoes, and Service". Johnny had never been inside it himself but it was supposed to be a clothing and tourist keepsakes shop, which had jokingly put up a sign declaring themselves ghost friendly. He wondered if the shop owners were still laughing?

"Johnny!" Kitty yelled as he parked his bike, "What took you so long? I thought you were just grabbing my purse."

"Five bucks says it was Dipsticks fault," Ember said as she pointed to his feet. "His Shadow ain't here and there's only one good reason for that."

"I wasn't doin' nothin'!"

Ember scoffed, "You must have done something. The little dipstick doesn't just go after us for no reason. Come on, you can spill what ya did."

"Nothin'," he protested as he handed off Kitties purse, "I was just riding along until he flew up next to me and started telling me to pull over. I told him to save it 'til I got you your purse back. Then he starts yelling 'bout 'This is really important' and 'The sooner we talk the better'. He tried to shoot out Thirteen's tires! Can you believe it?"

"Thirteen's tires?"

Kitty explained affectionately, "He found out people named boats so he named his bike Thirteen."

"Ah, so he is a dork."

"No he's not-"

Johnny tuned out the ensuing argument as the two floated into the shop together. Neither had any human money but Kitty always insisted on bringing her purse with her on these types of outings. They never bought anything but they both liked to see the latest fashion trends, if only to make fun of them. He didn't really get the appeal but that's why it was an activity relegated to "Girl's Night 2.0". Neither of them would tell him what happened at the first Girl's Night but he can guess who put a stop to it.

He was brought out of his thoughts by Shadow slinking back underneath with a low grumble. Beat up but not completely down. They returned willingly. Which meant- "Johnny, I really need to talk to you"- Phantom couldn't be far behind.

"I wasn't doing anything worth talkin' about. Sit on it, will you?" Johnny started for his bike but Phantom darted in front of him.

"Dude, what is you're problem? I just need to talk to you!"

"Dream on, dude. You only ever come after me to take me back to the zone. What else would you need from me, my help?"

"Yes, actually," Danny said, "I do need your help, if you're willing."

Johnny waited for the other shoe to drop. He waited a little longer. A little bit longer. He blinked in disbelieve, "... wait, really? Ya could have led with that."

Danny moved out of the way to allow Johnny back to his bike. "I was trying to do that on the way over here. Now come on, it's a complicated situation and I need Tucker and Sam to help me explain it."

"Okay," Johnny agreed hesitantly as he hopped on his bike, "but why me?"

A flicker of several emotions crossed over Phantom's face before it settled into an easy smile, "You're the best pick for the job."

The best pick for the job? With Johnny's luck, that couldn't mean anything good.

"-and that's the whole situation." Tucker clicked a button on his PDA and ended the presentation. "Any questions?"

"Uhhh-" Johnny glanced over to Shadow, who just shrugged. It had been four maybe five hours since team Phantom had started pelting him with information. He'd stopped really listening about ... two minutes in and started regretting it by the second hour. What had stuck out to him was the talk about some other hero named Batman, something called corrupted ectoplasm, and a pool of some sort. Then he heard the word "politics" and tuned right back out again.

"I told you this was too much all at once," Sam said only slightly smugly.

"It is not-" Tucker defended as the two friends decended into aimless bickering.

Johnny watched awkwardly from the sidelines. Fights were fun but arguments were never his specialty. Shadow didn't seem to mind as it nodded along to each argument sent back and forth.

Peeling his eyes away from the heated words, Johnny looked over to Danny, now in human form, who was flipping through some kind of notebook.

"Here," he offered after finding the page he wanted, "I have the notes from when we first learned about it. It's kinda complicated."

Johnny thanked him and started skimming the pages. "Kinda complicated" was an understatement. From what he could understand, there had been a deal made with a group of humans a really long time ago with the previous king, Pariah Dark. A pool of ectoplasm was placed on earth for the people to... bath in? Weird, but not the craziest thing he'd heard done before. The purpose of the pool was to expand the lifespan of people who bathed in it. In exchange, Pariah Dark got a bunch of riches every decade or something. Classic type of deal.

Something that was only in the ghosts version of the paperwork was that the ectoplasm needed to be cleaned every couple years or so. If it didn't get cleaned, it would become corrupted and "really nasty". If the humans used the corrupt ectoplasm, it could cause all sorts of side effects like mood swings, glowing eyes, inhuman reflexes and strength, and resurrection after death.

... Johnny had to reread that last point a few times before he started to believe it.

Since Pariah Dark had been originally locked up, no one had been ordered to clean out the pool. So it had stayed there uncleaned for close to a thousand years. A pit of corrupt ectoplasm on earth for around a thousand years that can extend life spans, cause mood swings, and resurrect the dead. He didn't need it explained why that was a really bad thing.

It was the rest of the situation that needed explaining.

The rest of the notes were a lot more jumbled, skipping around and with messier hand writing, but still readable. The pool was in a city called Gotham which had it's own protector. Something or someone called Batman was the local hero, who was noted to look a lot like Shadow and occasionally had other bird themed people working along side them to stop crime. Another name that popped up a lot was Robin, who was described as a "walking traffic light". The word sword was written next to the name once with a lot of question marks after it, which was as confusing as it was concerning. The real confusing part was some kind of riddle written in big bold letters and underlined enough times to nearly tear the page.

"Only those who have fully seen through the veil of death may find the Lazarus Pit."

Johnny must have spent too long trying to make sense of it as Danny jumped into explain. "Yah, that specific requirement from the original deal is the problem. What it means is that the only people who can find the pit are people who have seen someone die in front of them or full ghosts, like you. Apparently being half dead aint dead enough." He grumbled out that last part like it had been made specifically to spite him. Which, knowing the little mans luck, wasn't an impossible explanation.

The puzzle peices started to click together in his mind as he pointed at the pages. "So, that's my job? Help you find this pit thing?"

"Yep," Danny nodded with a grimace, "and it's going to take a while."

"Not with my bike it won't." Johnny pointed out, "I'll just phase through everything until I find it. Should take a few hours, maybe a day or two tops."

"That's where you're wrong. Ya see-" Tucker was cut off by Sam pushing him aside and ranting angrily.

"Gotham city is covered in practically every type of curse, smog, and toxin you can think of!" She nearly screech out, catching herself at the last moment. She continued her rant in a barley contained seething hiss, "In the water, the air, and even the building supplies! We don't know why or what caused it but it makes quite a bit of Gotham ghost proof. Sometimes it's just a small section of wall but it can cover an entire city block in some parts. Which means searching is going to take a lot longer than Danny, or either of us, can spare."

Johnny huffed, "oh, so just cus I'm dead means I don't have anything to do?" He could feel Shadow slink back behind him. A reassuring presence that gave him that little extra boost of confidence to keep going. "What would I tell Kitty? What am I supposed to get out of this? Don't you have other ghost friends that could help you out?"

"Alright, alright, one question at a time," Tucker grumbled as he sat in one of the various bean bag chairs. "First off, if you can think of a way to disguise a seven foot tall ghost yeti with an ice arm as a human or update a medieval princess on a couple centuries of history to the point that they don't raise any eyebrows, we're all ears. Most of our ghost friends just don't blend in well enough. You, on the other hand, managed to disguise yourself so well Danny's parents didn't know you were a ghost when you tried dating Jazz."

"Second, uhh-" he looked over at the other two- "how should I phrase the whole 'fake living-identity college' thing?"

Now that grabbed Johnny's attention. He'd never gotten to go to college when he'd been alive, didn't have high enough grades to get in. The parties he heard about was the main draw in, but he'd been eyeing some of the schools with mechanical classes. He'd wanted to understand how his bike worked and save a few bucks by doing the maintenance himself. Maybe he could finally learn how a real engine ran on oil instead of ectoplasm.

The trio explained how they'd use Sam's family resources and Tuckers hacking skills to make him a fake identity and enroll him in Gotham University. He'd get to stay in on campus housing and join any clubs he wanted as long as he met the requirements the club had. He technically didn't have to go to any classes he didn't want to as it wasn't going to be a four year deal. If he couldn't find the Lazarus Pit by the end of the first semester, he'd come back to Amity Park and the trio would think of a new strategy.

As they explained, he was handed a couple of papers on classes and clubs. Looking through the lists he saw lots of classes that he didn't quite understand the names of and a couple that he did. A few even seemed specific to engines or bikes were underlined. But it was a crazy option. He's a ghost. The dead can't live among the living. Right?

"Phantom does," a little voice in the back of his head whispers, "and we could too."

A second chance. Something a lot of ghosts would kill for if the notion wasn't impossible and insane. But here it was, a chance that was sounding more and more plausible with every passing word. Kitty had been pestering him to learn about things other than bikes. He wouldn't really have anything to lose if it went south or he got found out. He'd get to go someplace new which was always exciting. Staying in one spot for so long was starting to cramp his style. His core buzzed in anticipation of the long drive to somewhere else.

He wouldn't be alive but he'd certainly be living.

"... one condition," he paused, watching the three hanging onto every word, "I'm not the one to explain this to Kitty."

Wary groans and mumbled complaints were loud but brief. The sounds quickly turned to excited chatter as details and choices were thrown around with reckless abandon. Johnny just leaned back into the bean bag chair he'd been sitting in and twirled the edges of Shadow around his fingers. There was a lot to chose and think about for the next few weeks. But it seemed like it'd work out well in the end.

Maybe his luck wasn't so bad.

Chapter 2: Well, That's Some Luck

Summary:

Johnny meets his roommate for the first time! Unfortunately, it's someone he recognizes. And they recognize him too.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“-and this building here is the oldest dorm on campus. It was originally created to be a fort but was instead used to house injured and dead soldiers during the civil war. It was later damaged by mob activity and turned into a speakeasy in the 1920s. During the reconstruction by the mob, they added the many gargoyles and art-deco inspired flourishes to both the outside and inside of the building. Many students say that this building-“

The tour guide pauses to yawn and sway, looking more dead on his feet than Johnny did.

Guess I’ll blend in better than I thought.

He’d shown up ten minutes late with a minor limp and a coffee that Johnny could smell from six feet away. He introduced himself as “‘im ‘rake” which his name tag corrected to “Tim Drake”.

Tim had finished the coffee in the first five minutes. It didn’t seem to help. The limp forced them to take a slow, shuffled pace. While his eyes appeared focused and alert, Johnny could see the way his eyes kept drifting off. Despite all that, Tim had managed to shuffle his way all around campus while explaining the rich and bloody history of all the buildings they passed.

Johnny waited for him to continue the obviously well-worn speech.

And waited… and waited… and waited.

People can’t die standing up right? He’s breathing but not moving- oh right, sleeping. Forgot about that.

Taking a chance, Johnny glanced down at Shadow, who was playing the part of a regular shadow wonderfully. They shrugged and mimed poking at Tim before settling back into shape.

Reaching out, his wrist was seized in an iron tight grip. Tim’s eyes flew open.

“Easy man, chill. Just checking you hadn’t died on me. Or something. Uh, you were saying the students call this building…?” Johnny prompts awkwardly as he waits for his wrist to be released.

“Right,” Tim continues, dragging Johnny behind him with a surprisingly strong grip, “it’s supposed to be the most haunted building on campus. Especially the dorm rooms in the multiple spires around the outside of the building. This isn’t the only building with spires on campus. In fact, there are a total of seventy spires that have dorm rooms. Dorm rooms in the spires all start with the number six, so if your room number starts with six, congratulations on getting the coolest or spookiest room type on campus. Depending on who you ask.”

Tim paused in the common room of the building, still holding Johnny’s arm in a death grip while his eyes were yo-yoing between alert and glazed over.

“… you good dude?”

“Fine,” Tim said, in a tone so awake and confident, it almost made up for the bags under his eyes, “we’re at the end of our tour. Do you need any help for anything else?”

“… I think you need some help getting back to your room before you pass out on me man.”

“My leg is fine. It’s my ankle that got minorly punctured from fighting-“

Tim stops and stares right at Johnny like he’s trying to look into his soul. It’s calculating and clear. It’s the most awake and alive he’s looked all day and it makes something in Johnny want to start running. Somewhere between being observed like a bug pinned to a board and being sized up by another ghost.

People don’t fight as a greeting. Living people don’t fight as a greeting. Do not fight the tour guide!

The look passes after a few moments as Tim settles back into the haze of exhaustion.

“No. I misspoke. I sprained it while wrestling with my brother, Damian. We wrestle a lot so if you see another injury, that’s probably where it’s from. I’ll make it to my dorm room just fine. You go get settled into your own. Have a nice day.”

Tim’s eyes gloss over fully. Almost mechanically, he turns and walks off in full stride. Not the dead exhausted shuffle but a full stride that has his head snapping back up every time his left leg bares any weight.

“Alright,” Johnny says once Tim disappears, “I guess I’m finding my room by myself.”

Shadow huffs quietly.

“What? Can’t have people seeing me without you. Oh, stop glaring like that. Fine. We are going to find my room. Happy?”

They purr, sounding more like an engine revving than a cat. They stretch contently to cover the entire floor and settle back into shape.

It takes two wrong flights of stairs and half an hour of wondering around before Johnny gives up on walking. He finds a hidden corner to turn invisible and starts flying around. He’d nearly forgotten how exhausting walking was. Finally, after going through every other spire in the building, he finds his room.

On the south side of the building, with a lovely view of the nearby graveyard, his room sits at the top of the spire. It’s a double with two beds, two desks, and a window that clearly lets in a draft. According to the sign down the hall, it’s also the spire with the most ghost stories told about it. Figures.

“I guess the building really is haunted now,” Johnny says as he floats onto the bed.

He dumps the duffle bag of ‘living stuff’ he’d been given by team phantom onto the floor.

Shadow wastes no time in launching off the ground and growing into his regular form. Every inch of the room is explored as they dart around: the window, the beds, behind the desks, and even the waste bins.

“Hey Shadow,” Johnny calls over the shade before the bad luck kicks in, “why don’t you go explore around campus? Maybe you’ll find a few of my classes.”

Shadow perks up and thinks for a moment. They shift to look like the shadow of another student, which quickly becomes recognizable once they start miming yawning and drinking coffee.

“Yah, if you see Tim, maybe keep an eye on him and make sure he actually makes it to his dorm instead of passing out on the sidewalk.”

They snicker and phase up through the ceiling. And the ceiling light, which flickers once before dying in a small shower of glass.

Ah, there goes Sam’s security deposit.

He didn’t expect for the room to stay in one piece for the first week, but he’d been hoping to at least meet his roommate before anything broke. He phased all the glass he could find into the floor before starting to unpack.

He phased his hand through the duffle bag and pulled out the first thing he grabbed. His bag of ectoplasm. Danny had given it to him, explaining that while Gotham had a higher ambient level of ectoplasm than most cities, it was nowhere near as high or as consistent as Amity Park’s. He’d need to bring and regularly consume some ectoplasm. How much ectoplasm? Well, they weren’t really sure about that, so they just packed him a coin purse filled with vials of ectoplasm and hoped for the best.

Reaching blindly into his bag once again, he pulls out the binder Sam and Tucker had provided with information on Gotham. From the major landmarks to the various villains to the flock of birds and bats that defended the city. Gotham was apparently a place that was attacked as frequently as Amity was, but the attackers were more often living than dead.

At least, Johnny assumed some of the attackers were some kind of dead. Batman was definitely some kind of shadow ghost, no matter what Sam and Tucker said. Nobody alive is really that good at blending into shadows and sneaking up on people.

Speak of the devil. Shadow returns through the wall and curls up around Johnny’s feet.

“Hey Shadow, how’s campus? Did you find our guide on the ground or-“

Shadow perks at the question and launches into a shadow puppet show, minus the puppets.

Stories and shapes flow over the wall. A stray cat startled by Shadow’s sudden appearance. Another student encountered a bit of bad luck with a spilled drink. What looks like a professor losing a stack of papers to a sudden gust of wind. Finally, a familiar slumping, shambling shape shows up on the wall. Instead of heading into any of the dorms, Tim climbs into the back of a car.

“Well,” he says as the shadow show ends, “at least he didn’t pass out on the sidewalk.”

He turns back to his bag. “Help me finish unpacking before my roommate shows up.”

As the two continue to unpack, Johnny starts to wonder what his roommate will be like.

Maybe his roommate will be a local and know some stories about Batman and the rest of his crew? They’d probably have more reliable information than the tabloids and newspapers that Tucker and Sam searched through.

His luck doesn’t tend to be that good though. Maybe an out of towner? It seems unlikely considering the – everything that Johnny’s learned about Gotham so far. Then again, Sam had demanded photos of Gotham’s buildings and gargoyles so goths might flock to the town.

If his roommate is a goth, maybe they’ll be cool with him being a ghost? Or they’ll try and get him to move on or attempt an exorcism. It wouldn’t work, but it would probably make things awkward.

Shadow brings him out of his thoughts with a concerned growl.

“I’m fine buddy,” he sooths as they sink back down to the floor, “just thinkin’ about my roommate and everything.”

“Like, they probably won’t catch on too quickly. I tricked the Fenton’s for a while so I can definitely fake it. Just, haven’t had to do it long term. We can make it through the semester, right? Maybe not. Would it be worse if they found out near the end of the semester? Freak out that they’ve been livin’ with the dead for so long.”

“I don’t- It doesn’t matter what they think. I don’t care. It would just make it easier. If they were cool with the whole ghost thing. Maybe that should be my icebreaker? Ask them if they believe in ghosts?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’ll be fine. I’ll just not tell them I’m a ghost. As long as I remember not to do anything too ghostly in front of them, I’ll be fine. We’ve got this.”

"Uh,” a new voice cut in, “did you haunt me all the way from Amity? Or are you new?"

Shit. Johnny could have sworn the door was locked. He couldn’t have left it unlocked; he’d phased through the door. Only roommates were supposed to have keys!

Turning around, he saw a familiar looking face standing in the doorway. Some football kid, if he was getting it right. Of course, there would be a kid from Amity here, easily identified by the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick held loosely in his grip. It was just Johnny's rotten luck.

"Long story, but I'm not here to haunt anyone-" He quickly but gently pulls the guy inside- "and please don't blow my cover. It's a favor for Phantom."

The guy was still tense but relaxes a little at the mention of the town’s little savior and suspiciously asks, "What kind of favor?"

Johnny sighs. If this guy really wants to play twenty questions, it’ll have to wait until after he meets his roommate.

With a quick flick of the wrist Shadow wraps around the guy and lifts him off the ground. Even with the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick, he doesn’t have the strength or blast power to take on Shadow.

"Look," Johnny hisses as politely as he can, "Phantom is a bit too busy keeping Amity in Amity to investigate this place and this place is pretty important. I'm not telling you why exactly I'm here though so if you don't mind leaving before my new roommate gets here, I'd like to at least last a week before they find out I'm a ghost. Now split."

Shadow pushes the guy out the door and is already sliding the lock into place before he can say a word. Problem solved.

Johnny collapses onto the bed and calls up Shadow for a quick check up. Fenton weaponry wasn't always harmful to the touch for ghosts (as Phantom demonstrated daily) but nobody ever knows when that might change. His attention snaps back to the door only seconds later as it opens once again.

The same guy shyly sticks his head in while holding up his key. "Um, hey," he mumbles as Johnny realizes what's written on the key tag, "room number 666, right? I'm Dash if you didn't know. Lucky us, I guess?"

Lucky. Yah, this was just Johnny's type of luck.

Notes:

Hello everyone! Thank you for your overwhelming support and patience for this fic! I am very slowly working on this fic but I hope to get the next chapter out before December hits. Between finishing my first year of college and many IRL life things happening, I was not in the right headspace to write anything. But, I think I've got the hang of everything now.

One thing I realized while writing this chapter is that I'm not sure how to write the Batfamily. I know there are a lot of different interpretations and such, but I find it intimidating, especially since there are so many of them.

As far as I am aware, the current roster of the active batfam is: Bruce Wayne: Batman, Alfred: head of the bat family, Dick: Nightwing, Jason: Red Hood, Barbra Gordon: Oracle, Duke: The Signal, Damian: Robin, Stephanie: Spoiler, Tim: Red Robin, Cassandra: Orphan. I am especially unsure about writing about Duke, Stephanie, and Cassandra.

I may end up not including those last three characters because I know them the least well, which would not be great because I do know Duke has light powers that are not very defined so I can mess with them and how he sees ghosts, but including him and not the other two just seems rude to the other two- Just, any advice on writing the Batfam in general is appreciated. I know the basic backgrounds of each character, but it is very hard to find any kind of simple: "this is how they generally act" or "stand out traits" without shifting through so much extra information.

Johnny 13 and Dash both don't have a lot known about either of them, which gives me plenty of room to interpret and create my own stuff. The batfam is very much the opposite.

Even if you don't have any advice, let me know in the comments what your favorite part was!