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aikoiya · 2 years

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DP HC - Halfa Biology

Halfas are an interesting case no matter what you're talking about.

For instance, they have a psychological makeup similar to humanoid Ecto-Forms (a.k.a. spirits of the dead that came to the Ghost Zone & formed an ectoplasmic core & body), but the psychological stability of Ecto-Sapiens (a.k.a. lifeforms that evolved as living organisms inside the GZ & were never part of the living realms) or Ecto-Liminals.

Halfas are actually considered both True Ecto-Liminals & Actual Ghosts while also being something entirely new & separate from liminality.

Liminal is defined as relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. Or occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

There are many types of liminal. For instance, those with psychic powers are considered Psycho-Liminals while magic-users such as Wizards, Wiccans, Warlocks, Witches, & Sorcerers are Magi-Liminals & Mediums are Spirit-Liminals. There are percentages of liminal & the higher the percentage, the more power you have.

Being ecto-liminal & being a halfa are 2 distinctly different yet interconnected things. Ecto-liminals are ecto-contaminated & have a connection to ectoplasm & ghosts, but no real connection to death as you don't need to actually experience death to be ecto-liminal.

On the other hand, halfas are intrinsically connected to death, having experienced it themselves. You cannot be a halfa without dying. And all halfas are also liminal because that ecto-contamination greatly increases the chances of a core forming between death & resurrection, which is exactly how halfas are created. The higher the percentage of ecto in the body, the higher the chances of this happening.

There is normally no way to artificially increase one's liminality in a single lifetime as it takes several generations of continuous exposure to get a high enough level. Vlad was actually extremely lucky as he'd grown up in an ecto-free area & had no hunter ancestors to increase it for him. If not for the ecto-acne (which was actually a form of ecto-herpies), he would've died for good. Ecto-herpies is the only real way to increase one's level of ecto-contamination quickly enough to maybe become halfa in a first gen liminal, but even with that, Vlad still had very low liminality & it was only due to having become a lugat that he was resurrected & became a halfa.

The yetis of the Far Frozen are full Ecto-Liminals (otherwise called Pseudo-Ghosts), their society was a sort of creature made of magic that had wandered through a natural portal eons ago & began to live in the GZ. The first generation died of ecto-poisoning, but before that their children were born & became resistant. As more generations passed, they adapted & even eventually began to develop pseudo-cores of their own & be able to manipulate the ectoplasm around them so long as they're in areas with high levels of ambient ectoplasm.

There are a couple things that they can do without ambient ectoplasm. Things that directly involve the body, such as stronger base physical stats, the ability to touch ghosts, see better in the dark, slow your fall, effect one's object permanence in regards to one's self, ect. The higher an Ecto-Liminal's percentage of liminality & the higher the ambient ectoplasm, the more powerful or effective these things will be. At full liminality & high-levels of ectoplasm, you basically have night vision, superhuman capabilities, the ability to glide & even hover for short periods, as well as go intangible, for short periods. Plus, they also have access to low-levels of psychic or elemental powers. At medium-levels of ectoplasm, you can go invisible also for short periods.

An area considered to have very high-levels of ambient ectoplasm would be Amity & places with mid-to-slightly-high levels would, surprisingly, be Gotham City & Nanda Parbat. You see, before the Fentons opened a portal to the Infinite Realms in their basement, Amity was a medium. What do these places all have in common? They all have a Lazarus Pit of their own, which are basically Ghost Zone Compost Piles. Though, the one in Nanda Parbat has been corrupted with necromantic & other dark magics while the ones in Gotham & Amity are not & filter into the drinking water & causes strange mental effects. Things like unusually high emotions & slight obsessiveness in things they like.

Obviously, the IR is considered a place with super-high-levels of ectoplasm, so these powers are even more powerful there & they're able to use them more frequently.

Now, they're not Halfas, but the Far Frozen are the closest thing to Halfa you can get without actually being one. By this I mean, that they don't have ectoplasm in their very DNA, nor do they have ectoplasm living in literally every cell in their body thus giving them Ecto-Sapianic alternate forms like Halfas do or even Obsessions. Instead, they have something called Fixations which are like Obsessions, but less compulsive & easier to handle.

Halfas have both. For instance, Danny is Obsessed with protecting people, but he's also Fixated on space. Meanwhile, Vlad is Obsessed with having a family of his own that loves & understands him & he has a Fixation on power (he believes that money gives one power). Ellie is Obsessed with finding a family that will love her (much like Vlad), but her Fixation is freedom & enjoying life.

A halfa's Fixation can sometimes effect how one goes about achieving their Obsession. In Vlad's case, his Fixation on power & his belief that money gives power, as well as his personal experiences gives him the mistaken belief that he can gain a loving family by obtaining power. This is obviously not the case.

On the other hand, Ellie's Fixation with freedom effects her Obsession because by fulfilling her Fixation, which she is under the mistaken idea that freedom refers to the ability to go wherever whenever, so, as she travels all over the world, she ends up actively searching for a family.

Anyway, this makes the Far Frozen the best able to handle Danny's medical problems. Even so, they don't know anything about actual Halfas & are still learning.

This is somewhat inspired by @five-rivers & their ideas on liminality.

Danny is exceedingly rare because he is perfectly 100/100 ghost & human making him not just full Ecto-Liminal with an Ecto-Sapianic alternate form, but he also has a true core rather than a pseudo one & can sustain himself almost indefinitely by converting his own thoughts & feelings into ectoplasm provided he pace himself in areas of low ectoplasm.

By Ecto-Sapianic alternate form, I mean that Danny has ectoplasm in every cell of his body & when he switches to Phantom, that ectoplasm activates. It's something like matter conversion I think.

Actual ectoplasmic cells are something entirely unique to halfas.

Like, even as a ghost, he still has a heart that beats (though a lot less), lungs that breathe (also a lot less), bones, kidneys, even blood, & they all perform the same functions as when he's human. It's just that it's ectoplasmic in nature now.

That isn't to say that he's complety human in human form. There is always a number of ectoplasmic blood cells active. This causes a Halfa's blood to be slightly darker & their hearts beat a bit slower. In ghost form, they have legitimate, liquidy blood, ectoplasm-based though it may be, rather than the thick, goopy raw ectoplasm that Ecto-Forms have.

However, due to having human organs in both forms, halfas still need to breath, eat, & sleep. While they breath much less than humans & as much sleep as a human, they actually require more food than humans in a similar way to how Speedsters do. The reason being their metabolisms.

Ghosts can't eat human food, but they do eat ectoplasmic food. While in the living realms where there is no ectoplasmic food, they fall back on the emotional vampirism that ghosts are known for as the emotions of the living, as well as satisfying their Obsessions, help to sustain them when food isn't available.

Except, halfas need both human & ghost food, as well as to satisfy their Obsessions in order to be truly healthy.

Moving on, Halfas are actually supposed to retain their more human-like appearance with fleshy skin color even in ghost form, but instead of pink or red flushing (like, not only embarrassment, just places where the blood is closer to the surface) their flushing will match whatever color of ectoplasmic blood they have. So, if you were to look into their mouths, you'd see varying darker shapes of whatever color their blood is.

Danny & Dani are both examples of having human-like coloring.

Sure, once halfa puberty hits, they begin to develop slightly more ghostly features such as sharp teeth, which can come out in various ways, including fangs, full canines, shark-like, ect. Also, slightly pointed, elf-like ears, then tongues & claws of varying types, & slitted pupils. Ears & pupils are the only things consistent in shape.

For instance, Vlad grew fangs, a snake-like tongue, & talon-like claws.

The claws are supposed to be retractable while sharp teeth can be somewhat so, however mental instability & moral bankruptcy hampers this.

You see, a ghost's outward appearance is greatly influenced by how they see themselves, but Halfas are more affected by their mental faculties.

When a Halfa loses sight of themselves or their Obsession controls them rather than the other way around, their eyes turn entirely one color, their skin changes color, & they can't retract their fangs or claws. In cases where they become evil, their eyes turn blood red. Oddly, evil & crazy can be mutually exclusive. So, there are instances where one is sane, yet evil, at which point, their eyes are like Dan's are. See, he isn't actually crazy, he's just angry with severe mental issues, & evil. He knows exactly what he's doing, he just doesn't care. Vlad while he is unhinged, is also not insane, but he does let his Obsession control him & he's evil. Dan is different in that he controls his Obsession, but still indulges it far more than he should.

Anyway, even if they regain stability & come back to themselves, their appearance won't go back to what it was. The experience left a visible scar. Yes, they'll regain a more fleshy skin tone, but it'll still hold a slight colored hue to it. Their sclera, iris, & pupil will be able to be differentiated again, but the sclera will never be white again & the iris will also be a different color. Their claws may be able to retract depending on the person, but not their sharper teeth.

This is simply something they'll have to live with for the rest of their lives.

So, if Vlad had never lost his gourd, he'd look more like this:

Also, Halfas retain their deathmark. It's like a birthmark, but it's what caused a Halfa to initially die. Which, yes, you have to die in order to become a Halfa. There is no other way. You don't have to stay dead, in fact that's part of the process, but you do have to die.

It's best done quickly & with electricity. The revival that is. You don't want to wait too long before being brought back or you could remain dead.

So, if you looked, you could find lichtenberg scars under Phantom's suit. They start from the palm of his hand, go up his arm & across his chest, before stopping at his heart. They glow a bright white-green with core-plasm & brighten & dim & brighten again with his every heartbeat.

Not to mention his wail. If you recorded it & used sound tech, his friends would realize that it was the exact sound he made when he died in the portal. It's the sound of an infinity of pain in a single moment stretched out & distorted.

Each created Halfa gets a powerful attack based on that exact moment when it happened.

As such, Ellie might not get one because she was made that way & thus never had to experience death. She could end up getting the Ghostly Wail via inheritance or if you want, you could say that she actually did die when she destabilized. In such a situation, her death attack could be something involving acid.

As for Vlad, it could be difficult to determine what his would be because we don't actually know how he died. Like, we saw the moment he was infected with ecto-acne, but we didn't see what took his life in the end, nor how he was revived (though, I hc that he was revived as a lugat due to his desire to be loved was so great, rather than a human), just that it was likely in a hospital. Though, I think we can safely say that (in the case of him not turning into a lugat) he was likely revived via defibrillator. So, his attack could involve electricity, but it could also involve venom/acid based on the fact that his transformation began when he was sprayed in the face by diet soda-infused portal goo.

Not to mention that neither Vlad nor Ellie are full 100/100 Halfas. Vlad is more 45/100 in favor of human (or lugat) while Ellie is 95/75 in favor of ghost because of the way she was cloned using mostly ghostly methods & not a mix of ghostly & organic. So, they naturally have less potential for power than Danny.

But that's only part of why he's so op. Another reason is because he's always fighting. Vlad is a businessman & Ellie's a traveler. Neither are very likely to encounter opposition on a daily basis the way Danny does & they do say that experience is the best teacher.

Not to mention, Danny was younger than Vlad when he became a Halfa. Just starting puberty in fact & puberty alone results in a lot of growth. Vlad was all-but fully grown when it happened to him, so he had less room to grow & adapt to his new genetics.

All this results in Danny very quickly catching up to Vlad.

For more, go to my Ghost Zone Masterlist.

#danny phantom #dp #ghost lore #ghost psychology #halfa psychology #halfa biology #liminality #ecto-liminals #obsessions vs fixations #obsessions #fixations #aikoiya hc #writing prompt

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