Daughter of Phantom, Lady Gotham.
I love Lady Gotham stuff in the DCxDP stories, like a lot, so what if, hear me out (Long post is long, I rambled again)
Lady Gotham is Danny's daughter.
How? How about Danny is hurt (his parents? GIW? Vlad?), like badly, to the point even his core is damaged and the time needed to heal would take years, like a lot of years. Like it was bad that even his Rogues were shocked and shaken. They eventually get him to the Realms but are unsure what to do next. So they're scrambling trying to figure out how to save him.
So when CW appeared he asked to handed the Core because he knows what to do, where to hide him so he can heal they don't question it, everyone in the Realms know CW, the Ancient of Time itself, has a soft spot for Phantom. He opens a portal to a different world, not Danny's he can't run the risk of GIW finding him, to a just beginning world, the new world will help speed up his healing, and with Frostbite's help they set up a healing chamber deep, deep in the ground. Once they made sure everything is set up and safe, they place his core inside the healing pod and return every so often to check on him.
Over time though, above on the surface of that world it's timeline starts. Animals, creatures, humans, aliens, magic users, etc etc begin and with it, because even as a half healing core, Danny's power and ectoplasm starts effecting the area he's resting in (Ghost King Danny? Young/New Ancient/Eldritch Being? Or just an OP Danny?) (Clockwork and even Frostbite showing up every so often doesn't help either, it explains why Gotham is so cold sometimes or why time seems... off)
Anyways due to Danny's power (along with bits of Clockwork and Frostbite), magic of this world, and people beginning to build a small town on top of the land it gives birth to the namesake of the town.
GOTHAM.
CW foresaw her 'birth' and finds her sitting in front of Danny's healing pod. He always knew Gotham would eventually form, the belief/love her people have in her would had given her a form eventually he just wasn't expecting her to form so soon (this is why Danny remains his favorite person, he always did something CW never really see's to often) nor was he expecting her to become Danny's daughter. Gotham looks a bit like Danny, dark hair, blue eyes, pointed ears, sharp teeth, glowing star like freckles, but she also reflects her people, the ones that call Gotham home so her image shifts sometimes. But he can see small hints of maybe himself and Frostbite in the shifts.
She is 100% Danny's daughter via spirit/ectoplasm. If anything CW and Frostbite are like many times removed family members when it comes down to ectoplasm.
She's silent for a moment before she asks if "You and the other come here often to see him... The one sleeping is he my father?" Which CW does confirm, he explains why Danny is healing and who he and Frostbite are and why they show up to make sure he is doing better. How his healing will take many, many years. She goes silent again before saying "Teach me how to protect him. I am new and young compared to others... and yet I already know if anyone desires him for the power he gives, they will stop at nothing. He is my father and I am his daughter, I need to keep him safe just how I know he would keep me safe. This much I know."
CW agrees.
She learns, from her father's allies (CW, Frostbite, Pandora, etc etc) how to defend and fight. How to protect what she loves. She watches over her father and fights off demon's, monsters, sometimes an alien that senses the slumbering power, evil magic users. Etc. She watches over the town and people who named her as well, falls in love with the humans who call her home as well and defends them as well.
She even gets the blunt force of a curse a powerful old entity that tired to place it on her father after she had just banished it from her lands. It's an old powerful curse that CW or Frostbite can't rid of because it would weaken her far to much that they run the risk of her fading, the only way to get rid of it is if she had a family member feeding her ectoplasim to help sustain her. (Her aunts can't because Jazz isn't ghostly enough and Danielle can't because hers is limited due to being a clone (like she has enough for herself but does need to visit the Infinite Realms during her travels to get more ectoplasim to filter in and out). Danny is their only chance because he's constantly filtering ectoplasim in and out and even creating it because of how he died with a portal opening up at the same time)
The curse slowly starts eating away at Gotham, makes it hard for her to have a solid corporeal form because pain (when she has to use this form to fight off others she has to bare through the pain), her appearance starts changing (eyes turn from sharp ice blue to glowing yellow, skin turns deathly sickly pale, her star freckles slowly blinking in and out, hands become inked claws, her dark hair is unkempt and spills like an oil sludge down her body and face) and because Danny is still healing himself he can't help her and she can't see him all too often anymore because she doesn't want to run the risk of the curse effecting his healing core, she does get updates from the other ghosts that visit him and then her. She still defends him though, outside of his healing chambers should on the rare chance something finds it way down to him.
Eventually due to Danny's and Gotham's natural ectoplasim filtering on the lands, visiting and powerful ghosts, Gotham fighting off powerful beings trying to use her father for power, and the curse on Gotham herself, the town that had been built on the ground above by humans becomes the very city we all know.
Its a whole mixed bag do to so many factors, that's why Gotham is the way it is.
Gotham does her best to keep her people safe from well... everything but due to the curse and the fighting off another person/entity/demon/magic user/etc coming for her father's power, she can't always do much by the time one crisis is over and a new one pops up, she's slowly breaking down the longer it takes.
That's why she has a soft spot for her Dark Knight and his family and allies, they help her from the pain from the curse by trying as both the Wayne's and as the Batclan to fix up her city self, its not enough to really fix her fully but it helps with the pain that eats at her.
She does her best to give them tiny blessings though, but due to her duty of protecting her father she can't always do much (she wept when news of Jason, her second Robin, her rough around the edges bookworm, had died came to her. She couldn't protect him because he was out of her reach. Its why when Joker returned she made it very hard for him to really gain his foothold in her again but had to stop because CW told her if she kept making it too hard for the clown he'd go running off to 'play' with a different hero and that... that timeline would lead the world to ruin. She begrudgingly stopped but when Joker had taken her third Robin, her tiny Tim the one she loved watching shadow her knights, she did everything she could to keep him sane from the pain he had been put in, and lead Batman to the warehouse to save him. Also it turns out her heartbreak over Jason's death, her curse acting up, and her ectoplasim sparking off at the same time it helped bring him back from his grave not fully but somewhat, she was so shocked that she didn't have time to send hints to Bruce to get him when he was taken by Talia and once again out of her reach. She tried hinting it to Bruce that Talia had taken him but by the time he would check on the League, Talia would had moved him)
Gotham, depsite being young in the eyes of many other powerful beings and entities has held her own and kept those that wanted to use her father for power packing. Despite being cursed that is slowly eating her alive she still holds onto the hope her father will awaken and she will finally get to meet him. (She hopes she made him proud, he is a protector spirit core after all and she had been steadfast with keeping him safe all these years).
Things however take a turn for the worse when Gotham awakens from some sort of powerful slumber (she doesn't know what happened?! Did something knock her out?! When did she fall asleep?! Was it magic? Did the curse do it? Did someone or something-) And discovers someone or something had managed to steal her father slumbering core. (So close to healing, so close to awakening according to Frostbite, just a few more days he says. Just. A. Few. More. Days)
She tries to go find him but is suddenly hurting more, her curse has progressed even worse, she can barely stand, let alone fight whoever had her father. And she knows her father's friends won't be back to see her until far later.
And then all of Gotham shakes and shudders when her rage, panic, and terror are felt that early morning.
-×-×-
Deep in the Batcave, Batman and the others are searching for whatever caused that strange almost magical but not (ectoplasm) shudder that morning.
They were expecting a full scale attack. Magical, alien, maybe even all the Rogues in Gotham working together. An all scaled war. They were looking for any signs of it, maybe to by some miracle stop it before it becomes to late.
They however weren't expecting a strange sick looking woman with yellow glowing eyes, oil ink like hair covering her face and body, clawed hands like they had dipped in ink as well, star like freckles blinking in and out on her body and face, sharp ears, breathing heavily and coughing every so often to appear in the cave. Like she had sunk out from the shadows in pure silence. (Even Cass did not hear her)
Nor were they expecting her not to even flinch when they trained their weapons onto her. Instead all she did was laugh, a raspy low laugh, but it held warmth and mirth.
"Now, now my knights... No need for that. I come needing help and you are the only ones I will ever trust with this mission..." her voice was soft but harsh, talking seemed to hurt her though for she had to take deep breaths and suppress a cough. Her eyes trailed across them all, despite her sickly look her eyes gleamed with a motherly warmth in a strange sense, something all of them could feel "I can not hold this corporal form for long. Long story short I am cursed, have been for a very long time and whatever happened to me earlier this morning has aggravated it even more and thus I can not stay in the world of the 'living' to do much. My father, the one I have been protecting since my creation from all sorts of terrible and dangerous things, for should they get a hold of him it could spell the end of life itself for he is that powerful, has been taken from his healing chamber. I do not know who or where but I know he still remains in the city, that much I can sense."
She coughed and took a shuddering breath "But alas I can not go to his aid as I once has been able to, this is where you all come in. I need you to find my father, find his core. Bring him to safety. I had fought so many to keep him safe, to make sure he heals in peace for so long, and he... So close. Just a few more days he needed... then I could had finally had met him."
She lightly muttered those last few words, eyes looking lost for a moment before coughing hard.
"Who are you." Batman, Bruce Wayne, stonely demanded but for some reason he couldn't help but feel like he knows her, like from a foggy memory, and by the looks of his family they all could sense the same thing.
The woman, or whatever she was, merely smiled, sharp teeth bared in it as she looked him right in the eyes and said.
"Gotham, my dear Dark Knight. I am Lady Gotham herself. Its wonderful to finally meet you despite the circumstances."
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Thinking about time travel and all the secrets Lu Guang is keeping. And how long he's been keeping them.
And also what his limitations are... because I don't think he knows as much as he thinks he knows.
I've got a lot of thoughts and a lot of questions. I tried to organize them in the hopes to maybe work out some ideas, but it got a bit... Much. Weigh in if you have thoughts because...I'm clearly vibrating in place wanting to talk about this. But anyway, here we go.
How is the present affected by future dives into the past? (Alternate timelines or pre-determined track)
This section is basically me asking a lot of questions that might just be writing holes or maybe not and we just don't find out for, like, 6 years. And that's fine. I'm here for it, I just need to sort out all these theories in my head.
In S1E9, LG looks into the surveillance photo and sees CXS on the solo dive. Is this because CXS was currently in the photo? Is it because CXS had already done the solo dive and so LG was seeing the affected photo? Is it because CXS was always going to go into the photo, so LG saw the past that always was going to be?
When Liu Min called from Xu Shanshan's phone, was it because CXS was always going to set up the meeting? What if CXS hadn't come to that conclusion and didn't reveal himself in Shanshan's body? Would the call have never happened? Does Lu Guang allow this huge "deviation" because he saw it was supposed to happen? Did he lie about what he saw in the photo? Was his elevated concern in that moment he claimed was about CXS's potential mental state while of going into his friend's potentially dying body actually about CXS starting the game? Is he just as clueless as everyone else and now everything is spiralling?
Chen Xiao. Chen Xiao, Chen Xiao. Oh man. "Nothing will be affected" my ass Lu Guang. Pretty sure you created an entire person that didn't previously exist from that mission. Sure, all the people that were supposed to die in the earthquake died, but Chen Xiao did NOT have a wedding ring on when he came to the photoshop to hire them. He was a miserable man with regrets he couldn't move past, including missing his "first love." Now, I get that first loves have a lot of weight, but he's like 30+ and so desperate... this is not a man who looks at his wedding ring with care and sings his son to sleep. But he becomes that. Where did that child come from?!?
Just because the 12 hours after the photo are the same doesn't mean that the 12 years after it are. Lingering resentment--or the lack thereof-- is a strong shaping force. Also. Chen Xiao's lack of regrets from a successful mission means that he never would have hired them to dive in the first place. So to make it full circle, Chen Xiao "returns" to the photo shop (for the first time?) to have CXS develop the photos he took himself on the camera he saved from the wreckage...And, I have to assume from the implication of a new timeline, THAT is how they get paid for the job. How much are they charging to develop film? Was it worth it??
Does LG even know about this kind of change? Is it just too far out of his range to see? He didn't seem to know about Emma until he saw the news, so maybe he's limited in what he can see, but he found that article pretty fast, so maybe he knew something was happening. It's hard to know.
What are the extent of LG's powers? Is he from the future?
He always says not to ask about the "past or future." I assumed this meant the future of the past that CXS was currently in, but what if he also means the future of the present that we're currently seeing? Can he see the future of the present he's in now?
In season 1, he knew that CXS would appear as himself when he dove into the surveillance camera footage. How? It was obviously CXS's first time doing that, but maybe not LG's. If it was his first time, how did he know?
We recently learned that he can see the present through surveillance footage the same way he does looking at footage of the past. Does this mean he can also see 12 hours into the future? It's 20:44 when LG unlocks Chen Bin's phone, so it's probably around 21:00 when he uses his powers. Does he know how things will unfold? Does he see the twins moving through the building? Does he realize there are two of them?
He's obviously been up to something this whole season: watching the clock, hiding photos, opening up stitches without much physical effort beyond using his powers... 🤔
My current crack theory is that LG reopening his stitches while using his powers to watch the fight is actually related to him escaping and/or jumping off the boat to free CXS. I'm not sure how because it's definitely more than 12 hours between the events, but something is up.
It's not surprising to me that CXS and Wang Juan were controlled through touch. The moment Li Tianxi reached out her hand to shake CXS's I yelled at my TV. It looked too similar to LG reaching out to start a dive.
And I yelled even louder when she made contact
CXS can dive on his own and LG can see into a photo on his own. The physical touch only connects their minds, it's not necessary to activate the powers. Could LG touch CXS and communicate telepathically without diving into a photo if they had an activation touch? Does LJ need a time travel element to get into CXS's head?
I think Li Tianchen's powers at least are touch related because when he touched Xixi, CXS lost his connection with LG. But I think there may be something else going on with the twins. I'm just not sure what I think yet. We wouldn't know if one was possessing the other because their eyes are the same.
How do the powers manifest, and what does that mean for Lu Guang's backstory?
I think we saw the moment when Li Tianxi and/or Li Tianchen acquire powers. Was it a predisposition that unlocked during a highly traumatic moment or did it just manifest somehow from an extreme desire to take control of the situation?
Li Tianxi was a child who wanted to communicate and be present but felt trapped in her over stimulated body. Li Tianchen was a boy with strong ideals and a sense of protectiveness... without the strength of an adult body to follow through with that protection. While they were holding the photo, huddled together in close physical contact after Tianchen's head injury, one of them or the combined force of them was able to 1.) take over their mother's body and 2.) blank out Xixi's mind to the point of cutting CXS's connection with LG and eventually the whole photo. But something went very wrong along the way. Maybe some signals were crossed.
CXS is a highly empathetic person. He feels so much for everyone and wants to connect with people emotionally. And his powers reflect that. We know CXS has probably at some point had a strong enough desire to go back in time, if anything to see his parents.
What, then, do the circumstances look like for a logical, emotionally reserved--but deeply caring--person to acquire powers to see snapshots of the past? What would drive him to want to change the past so much that he manifests these powers?
We know CXS had never done a dive without LG before he temporarily went rogue in S1E9... because he didn't know he could do it until he tried.
We know S1E1 isn't the first time they dive. CXS nags LG about having heard the rules a hyperbolic amount of times. So the powers aren't new at this point. But I don't think they both had powers before they met. So how and when did they get their powers? Was it when they met? When they travelled abroad? After some accident or something?
LG just shows up in CXS's life unannounced. Twice. And that's how they got close. Was it just the random fated meeting of soulmates as per fiction standards or did LG intentionally seek out CXS for more timey-wimey reasons? Did meeting LG activate CXS's powers? Did they experience something together to have compatible abilities? Did LG already have his and teach CXS how to manifest his own? How much did LG already know before he picked up that basketball?
I have this other crack theory that I absolutely hate and don't want to be true at all and almost certainly isn't, but, like...what if if LG and CXS are actually the same person from different timelines. Like LG is a version of CXS that doesn't get to have familial love and maybe experiences too much trauma, and he goes back in time to give himself some semblance of a home and a set of rules to hone his powers without altering the timeline that he's actively changing. They're intentionally written to be two halves of a whole, and there's been more than one joke made about LG being a ghost or not existing. I hate it. But it's in my head.
One last question for today... because I have to wonder:
Who makes the rules?
Has LG just read enough books to feel knowledgeable about how time travel works? Is he from the future trying to maintain a desired outcome? Are they following the rules of a third party who's orchestrating the flow of events from a distance? Are they... Leaving their fates to the ones who aren't in control?
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