This Reddit Post Is So Good.

this reddit post is so good.

a trans guy who is also a butch who dates both men and women-- I aspire to be like this. oh, to play 5d chess with gender.

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.

Behold. My new favorite reaction image.

i love axel being a great dad while also seeming like someone you would never leave responsible for children. like yeah he’s an arsonist in his mid-to-late twenties who spent like ten years as an assassin in an evil death cult and quite possibly eats nothing but ice cream. he’s also the loving adopted father of at least two teenagers.

I have a weird relationship with gender. I kind of don’t get it? I don’t associate pronouns with gender in my head, so I don’t care what ones people use on me. I just kind of feel like a floating consciousness. That being said, I have been socialized as a girl and I’m afab, so that experience does have an impact on my sense of self. I present sort of gender neutral, maybe a bit more on the masc side with usually short hair and button downs and cargo pants. I also am not comfortable in dresses and skirts. But gender presentation ≠ gender identity. So I see myself as like mostly a girl to everyone because that’s easier but also not quite? Choosing a definite label for my gender stresses me out as well since that feels very formal and like I’m making a big statement which I don’t want to. Maybe my gender is lesbian, if that makes any sense.

It is somewhat validating to learn that I’m not alone, and that autistic people are more likely to have nebulous and outside of the box gender identity/ expression. Doesn’t make it any less confusing and frustrating as someone who craves definitive labels to explain myself.

tell me about the two vanitases. vaniti

Post I made a while ago about it (might be slightly awkward / messy bc it’s from 2 years ago) :)

Essentially, at the end of bbs Vanitas and ven have a “battle of hearts” (similar to Roxas and sora in kh2) and Vanitas, as the weaker heart, loses and retreats back into his “origin”, ven’s heart. We see sparkles dissipate into vens stain glass, signifying that Vanitas has become embedded into ven’s heart. THEN ven becomes embedded in Sora’s heart, thus making a sort of matryoshka effect inside of sora;

sora<-(inside, ven [<-inside, vanitas])

Cut to ddd where sora is DEEP inside his own heart and thus coming across a lot of shit embedded within. Including Vanitas who appears as a fractured vision saying Sora’s heart is a prison “even if he’s not the prisoner.” Upon hearing this most people’s immediate thought would be *terra/aqua voice* ven!! But most people miss the hidden layer (cleverness intended) that would also mean Vanitas since he’s inside ven. Of course if someone is locked inside a prisoner in jail that also means they’re in the prison, whether them also being locked up was intentional or not

Cut to kh3. The first instance we see Vanitas is monsters inc. but we don’t see Vanitas first, we see the manifestation of his power because as he explains he needed enough energy to come back to life. The clever part about this is this only happens because sora is there with ven in his heart, thus physically bringing Vanitas’s heart to a place where he can regenerate and, if the plan works out, extract himself/ven from Sora’s body. There’s an extra bonus that the power becomes even more potent by upsetting sora and therefor having a STRONG sense of negativity which had been building in our poor boy all game, and as Ansem The Wise said, sora is able to make things be real and that means he was able to make Vanitas come back to life without whatever Xehanort did to make him, even though he didn’t mean to

Then Vanitas gets bodied by scully and thrown into a door, seemingly gone forever

Then like 3 seconds later we see him again in the land of departure. But. Wait. Didn’t scully just throw him to somewhere in Connecticut?

Act II: The second Vanitas

This Vanitas is a replica Xehanort pulled from the post. Xehanort had no fucking clue where Vanitas went after bbs bc he just disappears and honestly he clearly didn’t care because hes always known could just make another one so he does. The reason I know this isn’t monsters inc Vanitas is because one that’s impossible, it was 100% intentional this scene happens after yeetus Vanitas, and two Vanitas acts. Different. For one he’s much more brazen than he was in MI, instead of just his long winded monologuing he’s actually goading them on and being arrogant and feisty and trying to fight, immediately transporting us back to the kind of personality he had before. You know. Ven kicked his ass. And he also teleports and does magic and is way stronger than MI Vanitas because that Vanitas had just formed. There’s no possible way he had all his strength back after being rebirthed for 3 seconds so the fact that he was able to hold his own against aqua who’s been fighting nonstop for 10 years definitely raises an eyebrow and points to this theory because how was that possible and why didn’t he fight in MI if this was the case.

Some people have pointed out that it’s weird Vanitas wears a cloak of darkness in MI and thinking about it I think there’s two answers. The first is he was weak and I think it’s possible the cloak could protect him, esp if he’s not fully darkness anymore bc he has his own heart, has regenerated on his own instead of being extracted by Xehanort’s dark power, and was touched by two very powerful lights for like 10 years (they probably got their light cooties on him lol) and two, I think he was hiding from Xehanort. Vanitas likely knew of his plan since his conception even though he might not have fully understood was it was and therefore he would’ve known what was going on in kh3 and been like “shit. I’m not following the plan bc I’m not even a part of the plan anymore so Xehanort can’t find out.” Because if you remember in com DiZ says the cloaks can hide you from anyone and if Xehanort knew Vanitas was back he would at the very least force him to do his plan again or at the worst destroy him because he’s an unknown factor

Then sora fights replica Vanitas and he goes back into the past and somewhere out there Vanitas is walking around the streets of New York (or shibuya) having no clue what the fuck is going on

So yes. Two Vanitases bc we can’t get enough of this boy. Two of them