Warning: Long post?
—
Jason did not expect his ghost form to feel…like this.
(Oh, dealing with his body randomly phasing through the ground and smacking his face onto hard concrete was not fun, but Jason dealt with that just like with every other hurdle in his life. By being more stubborn than the problem itself.)
It felt like something… settled into place. That was the best way he could describe it.
He felt as if spite and anger were finally not the only things keeping him awake and running.
He felt calm, almost. Stable, at least. Whatever pent up energy that was stuck in his chest cavity now flowed freely throughout his body, redistributed, instinctually easier to manage.
It's almost like he could breathe a little bit easier.
(After much… ranting that Jason decided to ignore for his own sanity, Danny said that his case ectoplasmic corruption was probably due to the fact that Death, as a concept, doesn’t let go of things easily, time shenanigans notwithstanding.)
(Becoming a half-ghost was seemingly the only working compromise.)
—
Danny once told him that broad strokes of a ghost’s personality could be guessed by looking at their physical appearance.
Despite the cool powers, this was a slight downside. Jason dealing with the filth of the Earth meant that being to hide his emotions and who he is was kind of important. Life saving, even.
He realized later on that his ghost form was way too easy to read.
—
He looked at his arms covered in bandages, and got reminded of the amount of times he had to patch himself up in the last month.
His jacket was ripped in place he knew that would have been sewn together when he was a living breathing human (well, as much as he could be).
He always looked slightly on fire?
(Danny told him it's probably related to his... core?)
(He know he died in an explosion but really?)
And then, there was his… veil? Shroud? Cloak?
It looked really nice.
But on the other hand…
It drooped when he felt under the weather. It flicked and thrashed around when he’s either irritated or barely holding back his urge to headshot someone.
And—
(No Danny, my cloak was not fucking wagging when you brought me fresh ectoplasm last week, you’ll have to get your goddamn eyes checked—)
He'll deny it until the day he dies (a second time).
And then his cloak could sometimes just…grow bigger. He figured that it acted as an extension of his own body, and had a nice add-on of allowing him to sense things he couldn't see. Hell, he could even make a hand out of it (wacking Danny with it - gently - never gets old). Jason had to also admit it looked cool, with the wispy bits and with one of its sides becoming a bright yellow.
(It reminded him a bit of his time as Robin.)
—
Being a ghost had a lotta perks.
Dealing with targets was so much easier when no one could see you. Inflitration was so much simpler when walls became optional. Cameras will glitch out when he's around, he left no traces visible to the naked eye and, combined with his training, to say that it was useful would be an understatement.
But, sometimes, he feels like he’s changing as well the more he transforms. Not drastically, but enough for him to look back and notice.
He usually was someone who prided on being efficient and straight to the point.
But now he’s starting to… have fun.
He started using his claws whenever he could. Don't het him wrong, he still uses his guns plenty, but there was just something deeply satisfying about vaulting over things, scaling a wall or crawling on the ceiling with bare hands.
(Punching people is still the most satisfying by far, though.)
That one time hunting down the Joker wannabes was fun too.
(Danny said he’d get along great with Skulker? Did Jason want to find out? No.)
Fading in and out of invisibility, he picked them off one by one, watching as panic and dread slowly but surely creeped up on the remaining ones.
(After all, he has no respect for those trying to emulate the dead clown.)
—
(Yeah, the Joker was dead.)
(Surprisingly, that has not been a good day.)
—
One of the favorite things he liked to do was rooftop parkour. The… bendability of gravity is… fun, not gonna lie.
(Not flying though. Jason is used to having feet in regular contact with solid ground, thank you very much. No offense, Danny.)
But he gets why ghosts love to fly. When he’s jumping from rooftop to rooftop in Gotham in the at night, watching the city light fly by, cloak spread behind him, it’s as if nothing else matters.
(No Joker, no petty criminals to beat up, no avoiding the Bats so they don’t find out about his existence—)
He can just enjoy, even just for a little bit.
—
(Somehow the Demon Brat and Orphan could sense him. Will keep and eyes on those two, and also the more reasons to avoid them.)
(The real problem was the new Bat in town. Bruce, what the fuck, another one? Again?)
(The yellow one, Signal. No time to check his profile yet, but probably a meta or something.)
(First night out and the guy almost managed to actually fucking see him —looked at him straight in the eyes and all, then did a double take. Jason never phased into the pavement so fast in his entire fucking life.)
(And so far no Bats on his cloak tails yet.)
(He did help the guy incognito, just a couple of times.)
(And he also did steal his escrima sticks for fun, and once the guy went out looking for them, he’d put them right back where they were.)
(Turns out, he discovered later, that being a little shit runs in the ghost community.)
—
(Sometimes he also wonders what happened to Danny before they met.)
(He wasn't a Gothamite, that was obvious. He doesn’t pry, but it doesn’t take a lot to piece two and two together.)
(He just wonders who he has to kill this time.)
—
(Jason could not believe he forgot and underestimated just how fucking persistent every single one of the Bats could be. Of course it had to run in the family.)
He gazed down, thought the agony, at the gaping wound under his right armpit.
(The Bats have been chasing him relentlessly for a while now. He got more injuries than he can count, especially from Bruce.)
(They know. Oh, they know.)
(It didn’t go well.)
(He knows the others are there surrounding him to prevent him from escaping, he knows that Dick is right behind him, but at the moment he couldn’t care less.)
It has been a long time since the last time he got shot.
(It felt like someone set his right side on fire.)
What was flowing out in abundance was a neon, toxic green.
(The Pit Waters, ectoplasm, he didn’t even know that he could fucking bleed in ghost form—)
(Danny—)
He looked back up at Batman, holding a (frankly) ugly gun, white casing and highlights in the same shade of toxic green.
(A gun that Danny warned him about. And everything behind it.)
Jason felt something in him... snap.
(Why did it have to be you, Bruce.)
His mouth opened—
(waitsincewhenhecoulddothatthroughtthe mask—)
(Jason could see the billows of neon green smoke—)
(He couldn’t see Bruce’s expression.)
(Every. Single. Goddamn. Time.)
— and wailed.
---------------------------------------------------
I am genuinely delighted that my last post got that much attention! Thank you so much, to all who liked, rebblogged and commented, it really does mean the most. 💕
This AU may be continued? No guarantees, tho.
For those interested: Part 01
@fandomnerd103 @phoenixdemonqueen @satisfactionbroughtmeback @ascetic-orange @apointlessbox @bathildaburp @fisticuffsatapplebees @aisforanonymity @phandomhyperfixationblog @help-i-need-a-cool-username @hashtagdrivebywrites @did-i-miss-anyone-tagging-is-a-monk's-job-first-time-doing-this-aaaaaaaaaaaaaa
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ok so. I can't keep quiet about this any longer. It's just swirling round and round in my brain and I need to get it out or I'm gonna die.
I have this theory that the reason that this new dapg revival era has been so similar to 2018 is not just because they're following the same blueprint for when they were planning to come out, but that coming out *together* was the original plan.
The reason?
During late 2017-2018, it wasn't just the amount of gay jokes that increased. We also noticed how much more comfortable they'd gotten showing affection to each other. To the point where a lot of people were convinced they were going to hard launch their relationship soon. I don't think those people were wrong. I think that since they were going to come out right before going on a world tour and were also in the process of buying a house, they thought it would be better to rip the bandaid off and come out as gay AND a couple.
So what changed?
Dan's burnout/breakdown that eventually led to the decision to put a pause on the dnp brand. I know that people have said this before, but I think the break was necessary to allow Dan to explore his identity and figure out who he was outside of Dan and Phil. I also think they probably made a lot of changes to II after deciding to put the breaks on the dnp brand and postpone the coming out and that's part of why it felt so rushed.
Now Dan has gone on his journey of self discovery and come out the other end with the realization that he wants Phil to always be by his side. They're back as a duo, but this time they're old and gay and so is their audience...
but Dan has said it himself. He LOVES touring. it gives him purpose. So where do they go from here?
They pick up where they left off before Dan's breakdown. They hard launch their relationship and go on another world tour, but THIS time they do it right.
They were close to the edge of the cliff in 2018, but got scared and backed away at the last minute. Now they're standing on the precipice again, but this time they're ready to take the plunge. Hand in hand.
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In light of the info about the properties of souls in The Unwanted Guest, I want to shout out that Gideon — with no grounding in the theoretical underpinnings of the subject whatsoever — actually makes basically the same observation about the permeability of the soul at the end of Harrow the Ninth, when she's in Harrow's body and (with some justification) is pretty sure she's about to die in the River:
Harrowhark, did you know that if you die by drowning, apparently your whole life flashes in front of your eyes? I didn't know, as I died and took you along with me—having kept you alive for what, a whole two hours?—whether it was going to show me both. Like, at the end of everything, if it was going to be you and me, layered over each other as we always were. A final blurring of the edges between us, like water spilt over ink outlines. Melted steel. Mingled blood. Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last.
‘As we always were’! ‘Melted steel, mingled blood’! (Also interesting that despite saying earlier in the book that all she ever wanted was for Harrow to eat her (oh Gideon), the metaphors Gideon reaches for here are not about consumption ala what Ianthe’s deal and thus traditional lyctorhood is presented as in TUG, it’s about similar and equal substances joining together to a new whole, more like what we see with Paul. I personally feel like a Paul-style merging for Harrow and Gideon is not in the cards and would not be a satisfying ending — it worked as a bittersweet conclusion specifically for Pal and Cam because those two are utterly nuts in all their sanity lol, but I don’t think the series means to present it as The definitive answer to the central question of individuation vs. connection. There is something so moving to me, though, in the fact that right at the end this is what Gideon wants for her and Harrow. Not for Harrow to eat her, not simply to be of use to her, but to be made together from the same stuff. It’s a longing for connection and union that’s finally at least in imagery free from the imbalance within the ultimately hierarchical roles of necromancer and cavalier that Gideon internalizes through her corruption arc in Gideon the Ninth, understandably so as it’s the only model she’s presented with in their society to understand intimacy and attachment and devotion through. But Gideon says Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last, mutually and equally. And I’ve written about this before, but at what must be almost exactly the same time, the same process is happening in Harrow’s mind through the evolution in the symbolism of her dream bubbles. Help I am emotions now)
Palamedes is so right, Gideon is a lot smarter than most people -- including Gideon herself -- ever give her credit for.
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