i was wondering about danny's suit color in the batburger au, because while on one hand i like the red + the cardinal symbolism it doesn't match danny's usual green association.
then i remembered that on the off-chance danny goes ghost again (or the ghostly bleedover affects his clothes too) it's just as possible for the red to invert into green. plus the t-shirt danny wears as a human IS red and white too 👀
speculation is fun and i enjoy your au lots
hi hi!! I'm glad you're enjoying the story and the speculation about Danny's look (both now and in the future!). I spent a long time thinking about it (and still spend a lot of time thinking it over haha) and there are a lot of possibilities for sure! One thing I've always found kind of interesting about Danny is that in the show, his ghost look doesn't really have that much color to it, other than his eyes. His powers are green when he uses them (or blue-ish when he uses his ice powers), but his suit is entirely black and white. The Fenton Thermos also has a bit of green (plus the blue light when it's capturing ghosts), but Danny didn't design it, his parents did. They also, technically, designed his suit. His logo was designed by Sam, too (though I sort of barely acknowledge that episode since it has some weird implications IMO, but that's a different story lol). All that to say Danny didn't really get much of a say about any of his hero look, and even his hero name as a ghost is just a riff of his real name. In IYGABAB, Danny mentions in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment that Cardinal is a name he thought up a long time ago as a cool hero name. Plus, Word of God says red is one of his favorite colors canonically (and that is supported by his shirt and shoes being red in the show). Without getting too much into either spoiler territory, one of the themes I wanted to explore with Danny in the Batburger AU is the importance of choice, especially in circumstances when there aren't many choices to be made. Danny getting to choose a hero name with a color he likes, as something that represents him, was a difference between his hero life in Amity Park compared to Gotham. I won't say more about that just yet, but that was my intention with letting him choose Cardinal, with it being a bird that is red and has associations with dead and psychopomps ^^ As for color inversions, an interesting thing I noticed: as far as I have been able to confirm, only half-ghosts do the color inversion thing, which probably doesn't mean anything in canon given how...loose the world-building in Danny Phantom is (RIP), but it does give one a lot of opportunity to think about what to do with that information! For example, Poindexter, Box Ghost, Ghost Writer, and Desiree all kept their dark hair; Lunch Lady kept her white hair; Johnny, Klemper, and Dorothea are all blonde. There are outliers of course (e.g. Pariah, Fright Knight, Ember, Kitty) that don't fit neatly into boxes wrt hair color and potential inversions, but that's what I noticed. What this information means to me is that half-ghosts are somehow different from both ghosts and humans in ways that set them apart from both groups. I won't give any spoilers about what might happen in IYGABAB with Danny re: his ghost transformation and Cardinal suit, but to tap into the theme of choice and identity, there are hints in what we see happening with his hair color in the story ;D
Now that I've written all that, here is a just-for-fun and not canon concept art I made of Danny in a combination Cardinal/Phantom suit. The black and white are all from his Phantom jumpsuit, and the red is all Cardinal gear, not inversed. Maybe he put it on after his Phantom transformation. Maybe I just wanted to draw a fun hero suit and Danny is a blorbo. Maybe it's Maybelline. Who knows!