the So I’m jumping on board the trend of using artbreeder to make some faces for my faves (I was using it to get a face for my most recent rpg character, and my hand slipped and made Danny).
Here he is at 14 as both a human and a ghost... and in his mid-to-late 20s, the age he is in a lot of my fics. (I’m on ao3 as beaniebaneenie too, if anyone wants to go looking)
I’m in the camp of “Danny is a trans guy”, and I also subscribe to the popular theory that a ghost’s appearance has a lot to do with how they see themselves... so his ghost form is ever so slightly more masculine than his human face. Slightly wider, his jaw is a teeny bit more squared up (but he’s still got those great cheekbones that half of Amity Park considers extremely swoon-worthy).
When he’s in ghost form, I think he doesn’t have facial hair anymore, even if he did before he transformed... since he’s dead now, he can’t grow a beard.
Which leads to a lot of people falling into the Superman Trap* of, “Wes, Fenton CAN’T be Phantom... aside from the whole ‘Fenton is alive and not dead’ thing, Fenton has a BEARD and Phantom doesn’t. They definitely can’t be the same person!” .....which just makes Wes want to tear his hair out.
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*The Superman Trap refers to the phenomenon of everyone in Metropolis (and the wider world) completely discounting the theory that Clark Kent is Superman any time someone brings it up, because “Clark Kent wears glasses and Superman doesn’t.”
Danny also falls into another part of the Superman Trap... he doesn’t wear a mask. Neither does Clark, and it’s canon in the comics/tv shows that most of the Justice League doesn’t think Superman even has a secret identity at all... specifically because he doesn’t wear a mask. No one bothers looking for his secret identity, because Superman doesn’t hide his face. 90% of maintaining his secret is other people doing the work for him.
And Danny doesn’t wear a mask either. No one thinks Phantom has a secret identity, both because they all know exactly what his face looks like... and because they think he’s dead. No one in Amity knows who Phantom used to be, but if pressed, they wouldn’t consider that a “secret identity”, it’s just them not knowing the details and respecting his privacy.
And he’s done so much to help them that they’re not about to ask him what his name was before he died... that would be rude. He asked them to call him Phantom (even if he said his first name was Danny), so they’ll do that.