Respawn is Phantom
When Danny was electrocuted in the portal, he died, it's true, but it wasn't just his soul that came out. You could call it a case of bad luck, but a ghost was looking to return to the world of the living and saw an opportunity.
So the reason Phantom has that appearance is because the ghost that got mixed into Danny's DNA is Respawn. Slade and Talia's clone who had recently passed away.
Danny is unaware of this at first, but after confronting Dan he began to wonder: why separating his ghost from his human side would make him aggressive? Why does he sometimes feel things that he swears don't make sense? And if Phantom was just a manifestation of his ghost powers, how could he be separated into his own being?
He'd been split up before but it created two versions of Danny, not Danny and Phantom. How could his powers grow a personality of their own without him?
Each of those questions has its own explanation: His ghost side is actually Respawn, which is slowly being absorbed by Danny. Respawn knows exactly who he is (or was) but as long as he's attached to Danny he is Danny, to an extent. Or at least, Phantom, who's a part of Danny more than he is Respawn.
He can remember everything but he can't make Danny remember any of it, because it's not his memories. And Danny both as Fenton and Phantom takes priority in their mind. The reason Dan was like this was because of the influence of Plasmius and Respawn. After all, the serum in Slade's blood often drives teenagers crazy.
Respawn lived all his life questioning his status as a person due to the fact that he was a clone. Living with Slade and seeing their differences made the process easier, but now? Now he can only influence the person who has him trapped, even if it is accidentally. Not knowing if one day he will disappear into Danny's consciousness.
Respawn can't make Danny remember his life, not out of any moral or emotional reason, he is locked behind a mental block, an entire person deep in Danny's subconscious that he doesn't know about and doesn't get to come out pretty much ever.
There are decisions in which Respawn positively influenced Danny. As the way of taking Dani's existence, because he knew exactly how she felt at that time, and Dani reminded him too much of his sister Rose. His influence has also extended to Phantom's way of acting: More fearless and risk-taking than when he's just Danny, he's also more easily swayed by anger (something that was very present in Respawn when he was alive).
Basically, he can affect small things like the aforementioned confidence and anger, emotions and stray thoughts mostly, especially intrusive ones, but he's not in control of anything.
The moment Slade shows up at Amity Park and sees Phantom is when things start to get complicated for Danny and Respawn.
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i went to get my t-shot yesterday and it took me an hour and a half to get to the clinic and as soon as i got on the bed the nurse dropped my t-shot and it broke and now they're trying to make me pay for the replacement. i think the fuck not lmao
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at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
you create because you're greedy.
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One thing i've run up against when dealing with fandom and characters making less than ideal choices is that people seem to treat a character's decision being sympathetic, the decision being understandable, the decision being reasonable, and it being objectively the best solution for the situation, as synonymous. When those are 4 very different things.
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Okay but one-sided staticradio from an outsider's pov within their universe has got to be, like, objectively so funny. Like, you have a guy with a TV for a head who's got beef with a sadistic deer radio host (who also decided to sponsor the princess of hell's hotel) singing about how said rival is now a washed up nobody with no power. And then you see that said radio host literally could not give a fuck about what his supposed rival is doing until the guy with a TV for a head says something that pisses said radio host off so bad that all cards are off the table. All while said TV headed guy is obviously seething with lust every time he even interacts in any form with said radio host. Like, wow. That has to be so amusing to watch from the outside
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I think it's incredibly important to remind folks on testosterone or folks who want to reverse patterned baldness about their options, but man, does it sometimes suck wondering how much of our insecurities about our hair stem from backwards beliefs that to strive towards beauty is not only preferable but "makes you good."
As someone with a rather masculinized body pre-medical transition, patterned baldness has always seemed neutral. Hair is incredibly important (hell, much of my own energy is spent on my hair because I like it), but the pressure to have hair, to have hair the "right way" is something that I absolutely loathe.
I'm not here to judge people who don't want patterned hair loss or baldness, I'm here to say that those traits will never make you lesser. Not only is it neutral, but it is also just as worthy and beautiful.
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