Dpx Dc AU: Ectoplasm is required for Ghosts to be visible to the human eye- And Danny creates his own ectoplasm.
Danny is visiting Jazz in Gotham and its weird how friendly everyone is. Like, the city gets a really bad rapport, everywhere he goes there is someone trying to strike up a conversation or answer his questions about getting around to the tourist spots. A few people even pointed out restaurants and ways to find off the beaten path gems! Jazz seems to role her eyes at him, but when he brings up her 'roommate' being kind of cute she flat out laughs.
Danny then comes to understand the Jazz doesn't have a roommate and that Ghosts in Gotham don't move far from their haunts- He's just been inadvertently turning these undead folks visible by accident of generating abnormal amounts of ectoplasm.
Which, is comforting in a way, he's never walking this dangerous city alone and really, most of the ghosts have been really friendly! They disappear once he's a few blocks away from them anyway.
---
Tim Drake is having a horrible day.
He'd been given intel that one of Black Mask's guys was going to snitch but that he'd died before given the opportunity to reach out to the GCPD. He tracks down the guy's last know whereabouts and yikes. Its next to the Theater. Tim was often grateful for his childhood obsessions, this time it backfired.
Tim and Bruce get into an argument about trust and respect and, worst of all, mental health. And even though Tim was vehemently against Batman accompanying Red Robin to the alleyway - that's exactly what happens.
They arrive and Bruce is closing up faster than a clam in the contaminated Gotham Bay- Clearly being in the Alley bothers him. No fucking shit. RR gets started on collecting evidence, there are a few extra blood splatters and a single left shoe... When a kid walks into the Alley.
"Uh, sorry to intrude-" The kid looks scared shitless, and runs away. And then, all of a sudden, Batman and Robin aren't alone in the Alley.
Tim can hardly believe his eyes as the dead man appears and quickly blabs Black Mask's bank passwords and what the plan had been- and While he's over joyed to have that closure, he turns around to Batman weeping in the arms of his parents.
The ghosts fade, and the emotions are certainly charged as this was never something Bruce or Tim would have ever dreamed of happening. Ghosts in Gotham. Talking, floating, granting closure.
"RR, Bats, come in." Oracle calls into their ears.
"Reporting in, but, uh, we need a minute."
"A minute? We have a case on 4th and-"
"O, we just saw the ghosts of the Waynes. It's going to be a minute."
"...Lots of Ghost reports lately then. Any chance you saw a kid looking like he could be adopted?"
"Yeah, actually, black hair and blue eyes. He was super polite before he ran away."
"We have work to do. Oracle, lets prioritize finding our person of interest and divert Nightwing and Robin to the case on 4th." Batman cut between them on the comms and he sounded... calmer than either of them anticipated.
---
Jazz is no longer laughing when Batman appears at her door explaining that he's looking for Danny (Who already flew away from town to get a good night's sleep before class on Monday). Turns out Danny reunited the man with his dead parents just briefly- and then the second guy appears and mentions how Danny had also given a guy who'd been murdered by a Mob enough time to explain the ongoing threats the city faced.
Jazz just rolls her eyes and says that it's not like the ghosts are going anywhere anytime soon and Danny will visit in another month. When pressed, she just explains that her brother is a weirdo. No of course he doesn't have powers. Gaslight and Girlbosses her way out.
And Jazz thinks that the game is up for at least another month, obviously when Danny visits more shit will stir up, but then this new guy appears.
Unlike the other Bats who are keen on watching her from a distance, the Red Hood knocks on her door. Are her eyebrows all the way into her hairline when Red Hood asks her to send his thanks along to Danny because somehow this whole situation led to his Dad expressing remorse for his actions and apologizing? Yes, yes they are.
But Jazz can smell Dissertation Data off of these vigilantes- Who is she to send them away? Jazz welcomes Red Hood into her place for a cup of tea and a small chat.
The story then devolves into Jazz getting shit done, Danny being cute by proximity and also bringing ghosts to the party, and the Bats having trauma resolve between them.
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I was reading a post about CoTG and I realized: Rick has seemingly started to write every character pairing with the exact same dynamic, and he's not good at writing that dynamic and it doesn't make sense for 90% of the characters he writes it for.
It's that very specific dynamic of one half of the pair who is almost aggressive to the other party - "teasing" them constantly/insulting them, affectionately punching/judo flipping/maiming/etc, seemingly almost always exasperated with the other - and said other party usually just accepts this treatment or blanketly views it fondly, and may generally be framed as more incompetent than their partner and a little bit of a doormat (particularly relating to being insulted/teased/etc by their partner).
We start seeing this dynamic in HoO with Percy and Annabeth, as a sort of semi-inconsistent twist on their rivals-to-friends-to-lovers dynamic from the first series. Then the dynamic pattern develops further with Leo and Calypso. Then Magnus and Alex. Then Nico and Will, particularly in TSATS. And now in CoTG, it's Percy and Annabeth again but even more in this direction.
I know people have talked about Nico and Will's relationship over the series rapidly being shoehorned into Percabeth Two™, and it's extremely apparent in TSATS that Rick's doing it on purpose (including directly quoting Percabeth scenes but minorly tweaking them to be Solangelo). But recognizing it as an overarching trend in Rick's later books honestly reminds me a lot of how Rick started trying to apply the "Percy Formula" so-to-speak to nearly every protagonist in HoO (and then try to replicate similar character archetypes with Magnus and Apollo's narrations - moreso Magnus in being jaded and sarcastic, very much trying to be first series Percy. He only sounds unique because Rick failed at making him Percy 2. Apollo is more akin to later-series Percy characterization of being goofy and incompetent. Apollo [and Zeus] even got retconned to give Apollo a more similar backstory to Percy's). Rick seems to have decided that he thinks the audience wants this specific dynamic but 10 times over, except he's not good at writing it the first time because it's a bastardization of the time he did a different thing okay.
And Rick also seems aware of that too! Because he retconned Calypso and Leo at the end of TOA, probably because he realized how absolutely awful it was reading when they were written with that dynamic of Calypso just functionally hating Leo and constantly being aggressive towards him! The only time Rick's actually made the dynamic even semi-successful was with Magnus and Alex, because it actually fits within their characters, their dynamics with each other, and their environment. Alex beheading Magnus on the regular works out fine because there are no repercussions to that in Valhalla, Magnus will be fine, so it does genuinely come off as humorous. And Alex has been effectively established to be abrasive at times but have her genuine feelings shine through regularly, and that meshes well with Magnus' jaded-and-aloof-but-quietly-very-empathetic character. And Magnus has been established to, yes, not be great at combat, particularly compared to Alex. They are the only time that flavor of dynamic in that form was effective and cohesive.
Percabeth is no longer rivals-to-friends-to-lovers badasses on equal levels with shaky pasts who finally found some form of permanence with one another. Now it's super smart doting and affectionately aggressive girlfriend and her silly goofy 50%-of-the-time incompetent boyfriend who she judo flips/pushes off cliffs/etc - but affectionately~! Solangelo is trying to riff off of the early series "Poseidon & Athena are enemies" dynamic that Percabeth had but with Apollo & Hades being "opposites" but learning to accept each other, except it ends up with Will just coming off as a huge asshole and Nico being retconned to a complete doormat about it - when prior to that those characterizations would be completely contrary to their established characters (even just from TOA!). Calypso in HoO gets retconned from her PJO characterization to being snooty and aggressive, and Leo's false persona gets merged into his just normal personality except he just also becomes a doormat but more goofy than Nico with occasional haha-dark/depression-humor! Which Nico also got. Which was also a bastardized Percy trait that got redistributed.
It's exhausting. Rick write more than one relationship dynamic you can do it I promise
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Soul and Maka tho 👀
I love them a normal amount. I wonder why I ship them. Gee, it couldn't be any number of these little things.
bickers like an old married couple, compares a partner exchange/breakup to infidelity. "Cool men don't cheat."
literally the narrator: "Maka, and her partner and weapon, Soul Eater-"
dies for her. dies for her. dies for him.
bonus: breaks her fall
(this post keeps going, i'm putting the rest under a readmore)
Staying at the bedside while in recovery. The babies.
Couple's Therapy lmao
Domestic as all be.
Didn't have to have a special little dance to form a gameplan! Didn't have to dress up for it to enter the black room!
Trusted him to be her lifeline to pull her out of the depths of madness. So he pulled her out of the depths of madness.
"It's always there for me. This is my Soul Eater's soul!"
"The sound of his soul. All his emotions, they're flowing from him straight into me. What I'm sensing is…faith, and confidence. This is our foundation. This is our courage!" ok baby stop being so sappy ugh ♥I'm well aware synchronizing is essential to a solid resonance, but they went HARD on this. Soul went hard on this, to stand a chance in this fight. He did this for her.
THIS???? Saving him from certain death and/or madness?? She ventured literally DEEP inside his soul to bring him back from the brink.
If Soul's courage is for Maka, of course she'd have the key! PRECIOUS. Key to his heart chest! Yaaasss
Goes even deeper into his soul, to retrieve that petrified little piece of him he's locked away in the lockbox.
Because none of this is meaningful or intimate as heck, nooooope.
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