i love your art, especially of gentleman ghost!! if you don't mind me asking, i was curious what your opinion on dc universe ghost rules might be. mechanics and the like, what they can and can't do, etc. i'm working on a batman villain ghost oc and i have a few ideas but i'd love to hear what you think!
imo, you can go HOG WILD with what ghosts can and can’t do. here i present to you a ramble about DC ghosts, headcanon and canon dueling together for dominance:
this got long so i’ll put it under a cut
possession? gentleman ghost can’t do it (or at least, doesn’t do it very often) but some other ghosts can. (IE, deadman)
telekinesis? In some versions, gentleman ghost is telekinetic
teleportation? yep, in some versions
The simple rules of internal consistency to my version of DC ghosts essentially boils down to:
1.) they’re made of ectoplasm, and it’s what they form their weaponry and clothing out of, unless they voluntarily wear a human item.
1a.) ( as a small caveat to that, I don’t think it’s right that ghosts should be able to pick up a non-spectral item and take it with them through a wall. otherwise... characters like gentleman ghost could just steal whatever thing they’re after and go intangibly into the ground and escape, and suddenly the hero’s plans are a hundred percent foiled )
2.) they don’t need to eat, drink, sleep, or breathe; but they do experience pain and pleasure, and as a hold-out from life, will probably make vocalizations like they do breathe- ie, clearing one’s throat, grunting in pain, sighing, inhaling sharply when annoyed- and characters like craddock, who are partially invisible, will flicker into visibility when hurt.
They have all of their senses, unless you don’t want them to. my craddock has perfectly fine senses of touch, sight, smell, and sound, but can’t taste anything at all. you can mix-and-match. play around with it! they’re dead! maybe they’ve lost something over the years!
3.) WEAKNESSES. Since characters like gentleman ghost have the potential to be so powerful (in his various canons, gentleman ghost has: flight, intangibility, invisibility, telekinesis, body possession, no need to rest/eat/drink/breathe, can summon weapons that don’t need to be reloaded AND a fucking horse, can teleport, has interdimensional travel(!?!), enhanced speed, strength, and regeneration, “spectral energy projection”, and control over the undead.) they obviously need some weaknesses.
The tried and true standard I shoot for when talking about DC ghost weaknesses is nth metal; I usually depict it as hurting quite a bit when touching the skin of a ghost, and makes it impossible for them to concentrate on anything other than maintaining a solid form. IE, gentleman ghost is in so much pain wearing nth metal handcuffs he can’t spare thoughts about the whole corpse face thing, lest he want to disintegrate into ectoplasmic goop. I’d imagine as an extension of this it’s impossible for a character who’s a possessor to take control of a host body that has nth metal attached to themself, because it’ll burn the ghost.
I think the singular Kryptonite is probably good enough for most ghosts, but in various comics Craddock can’t harm virgins or those of royal blood with his weaponry, having instead to rely on non-spectral objects to hurt them. You could try that, depending on whom this OC is being pitted against.
( Magic is also a good tool against a ghost. )
Hmm, what else...
4.) You can make your ghost appear as just about anything you’d like. Some ghosts are pretty and flawless as they were before their death, and some sort of... age with their corpse. It depends on the character, I suppose!
I think that’s about everything. Ghosts in general are fairly flexible things, since, y’know... they don’t exist.
Thank you for the question!
