#The JLD are freaking the FUCK out man

[fisticuffsatapplebees]

Maybe as a consequence of becoming an ancient Danny was made vulnerable in some new way that Vlad was able to take advantage of? I've never seen the show so take this with a grain of salt but I'm thinking a la the personification of dream being bound in the Sandman show?

His knowledge of Halfas would make him the most capable of managing some sort of binding magic that might do something like force Danny to listen to him or stay near him or sm. It would be a good way to explain why Ancient of Balance (and maybe space and protection please? (✿˵◕ᵕ◕) ) Danny wouldn't just fucking wreck Vlads ass which might be hard to explain if it was just a matter of Vlad threatening his friends or gaining custody after him parents dying.

It would also be a perfect explanation for why the summoning spell for Phantom didn't work. Because he's already bound to someone else.

Practice Your Skills

“You ever look at someone and wonder how hard it would be to get past their defenses and stab them.

Damian snapped his head to the side, looking at the young boy now standing beside him.

The boy put his hands up in front of him with a wince, “Not that I ever do that. Totally not, whaaaat???”

Damian huffed and turned back around to watch the gala participants.

“It’s just you kinda looked like you were contemplating the logistics of stabbing Mrs.Halterguild for squeezing your cheeks.”

Damian scowled. Then, after a moment’s beat, “It would not be very difficult. She is nearly blind in her left eye, I would be able to approach without repost.”

The kid hummed, turning back as well before motioning to another group to the far right, “What about Mr. Beckensmith, he’s a retired vet right?”

Damian rolled his eyes and scowled harder, “The man has only seen the battlefield of an office as he bribed his way from being fully enlisted and instead managed to pay for increasingly higher ranks and medals. He is a disgrace.”

The kid cocked his head to the side, looking suspicious for a second and then nodding with concession, “Fair enough, I bet I could get close enough too.”

Damian scoffed.

“What, don’t believe me?”

Damian leveled a doubtful glare at the civilian, making it clear by looking him up and down, “Hardly.”

The other smirked dangerously, “If I can get close enough to poke him and get away without being noticed, will you believe me?”

Damian narrowed his eyes but nodded succinctly and watched as the boy immediately took off, making a few loops around other people before finally backing up to Mr. Beckensmith and poking him on the opposite side as a group moved past.

Damian pursed his lips. Interesting. Certainly better than he would expect from an amateur. And an amateur civilian at that.

When the boy returns to his side Damian brushes off the asks of meaningless praise.

“Come on, I did it, now you have to go poke Mrs. Halterguild without getting caught.”

Damian sneers, “And why would I do that?”

“Because I don’t believe you either, the woman’s old but I bet she sees you and squeezes your cheeks again. Old ladies just have a sixth sense for that stuff you know.”

Damian nearly growls but sets off on his task. He makes sure to stay on her left side, but the woman turns at the last second, forcing Damian to use a passing waiter as cover to remain hidden and finally get close enough to poke her gaudy dress.

Then he sidles back up to the boy on the edges and provides his best ‘I am more capable than you’ scowl. The boy simply laughs and says, “Who’s next?”

They spend the night like that, choosing each other’s targets to attack non-lethally as though they were attempting to stab them, and Damian finds the gala going by in a significantly less tedious manner.

Right up until the boy laughs at him when he chooses a target. Only one bark of laughter escapes, but it is enough for Damian to consider stabbing him as well. If only with a butter knife.

Instead, Damian grinds his teeth and asks, “What is so different about Masters, do you really believe you would be unable to succeed?”

The other gives a breathless chuckle, “I’m pretty sure even you wouldn’t be able to successfully stab Vlad Masters,” The boy’s shoulders sag even as his jaw tightens with irritation, “He sees everything.”

Damian narrows his eyes. Something naws at the back of his brain but currently the critique of his capabilities takes precedence.

“I would be capable of stabbing Masters even without my favored sword,” Damian scowls and stands taller with annoyance.

“Sure you can, man,” At this, the boy quirks a sharp smile, “If you can actually get him, I’ll personally get you a magic sword,” he says with an air of amused indulgence. Like he thinks Damian is some insipid child saying he will find a fairy.

Damian grits his teeth and shakes the other’s hand, then immediately sets off after his target. How dare this civilian question him! He is the Son of the Bat, this is not even a challenge!

Damian growls as his approach is thwarted for the third time by the man turning in his direction and almost spotting him. How dare he! He will not fail!

Just as he reaches to jab the man in the side, already poised to make his escape, Masters whips around and clamps his fingers around Damian’s wrist with a vice grip.

“Really Daniel I thought we were over-“ Masters pauses, looking at Damian critically as he glares at the man’s offending hand, “You are not young Daniel.”

“Remove your hand from my person at once,” Damian growls.

Instead of listening to Damian’s very sensible directions, Masters tightens his grip and twists his arm, most likely in an attempt to hurt him.

“Now why is a child attempting to-“

Damian doesn’t wait to hear the rest of the man’s words, sliding a dagger into his other hand and swinging towards him, until that hand is caught mid-movement as well.

“Heh-Hey there!”

Damian snaps his head to the side just in time to see Grayson take his dagger and slide it into his pocket. He ignores the bark of laughter he hears from across the room.

Masters’ hand disappears from his arm suspiciously fast, “Mr. Wayne, what a pleasure!”

Damian looks over his other shoulder to see his father standing behind him, a thin smile on his face, “Vladimir!”

His father’s figure quickly obscures his vision, putting an arm over Masters’ shoulders in a way that clearly makes him irritated but forces him to follow as he is steered away.

“Dami, I thought we talked about the stabbing at formal events,” Grayson says through a strained smile as he looks over the crowd to make sure no else saw.

“Tt, it was merely a demonstration of my skills, he was in no real danger until he refused to release me. I simply sought to correct that mistake.”

Grayson pinchesthe bridge of his nose, “Demonstration for who, Dames? We all already know your skills.”

“Tt,” Damian scowls and turns away.

Instead of pushing it, Grayson simply sighs heavily, “Just stay out of trouble for the rest of the gala okay? We’re almost done.”

Damian scoffed and waited for Grayson to leave. Once he does, Damian finally looks over to where he had been lingering with the boy.

Gone.

Clearly he’d taken the cowards way out when he’d seen that Damian had been accosted by Masters.

Pitiful.

Damian spends the rest of the night scowling from the wall and looking serendipitously for a head of black hair and blue eyes unrelated to him.

Of course it’s not until they are actively leaving that Damian sees him and immediately splits off of from his family.

He approaches with irritation, preparing to grab the other by the shoulder when suddenly he turns around and blue eyes meet Damian’s green.

“You,” Damian sneers.

“Me,” The other shrugs. He has an amused smile on his face, though it was strained at the edges.

They stare in silence for a minute, before the other’s smile grows and sharpens once more, “I didn’t expect you to actually try to stab him, y’know,” A slight laugh escapes him, “Not that it was unwelcome by any means, but still, unexpected.”

Damian scowls again, glaring at this foolish civilian.

“Oh, I never introduced myself did I?!”

The boy exclaims and holds out a hand, smile dangerous, “Daniel Fenton. Or if we’re being technical,” a pause as Damian finally returns the gesture and finds his hand trapped, “Daniel Masters, a pleasure to meet you Damian.”

“Hurry up little badger,” A voice says beside them, and Damian notices that it is indeed Vladimir Masters.

The man approaches, placing a heavy hand on Fenton’s shoulder, making the boy go taut, and then they both step into a dark car, leaving Damian on the front steps.

Damian’s anger flares and he shoots a glare directly to the boy getting into the car. It dies the moment they meet eyes and Damian sees the fear hiding in the other’s eyes.

Fear that Damian is all too familiar with.

Fear that reminded Damian of himself. Reminded him of his own eyes when he’d been under his grandfather.

But why did Fenton look like that?

[dapperfvck-arc]

🔥 The TV show... (Because I really want to know exactly why you don't like it [or hate it?] because i'm so freaking curious. Also I think in general a Constantine TV show would do best on AMC rather than NBC... FEEL FREE TO COMPLETELY RANT. I WANT TO KNOW. Please.)

Unpopular Opinion Time!

Oh boy. Hooooo boy. I’m still going to be relatively gentle, because honestly, I’m saving my true vitriol for the times that I must defend my choice not to RP it or for the hysterical consensus opinion from the fandom that TV show was an improvement over the film (lol nope, aside from Matt Ryan “looking the part” but that’s a whole other can of worms). 

Note: Cut for length and maybe a bit of brutality in my honesty.

*sighs* Ok, I’ll first preface this with that I still have like four episodes to go. Obviously, I have massive issues in the needless changes made to the adaption of comic canon. It was unnecessary to make Chas American while retaining the fact that he’s John’s oldest and best of friends. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but who knows. Maybe it’s explained a little better in one of the last few episodes, but you know. My hopes aren’t high. I don’t like Chas’s virtual invulnerability, not just because it takes away the stakes of the danger he’s putting himself in, but also? It’s a plot device scarcely used? So why make that choice if it’s not going to be capitalized on with meaningful frequency? I hated that Zed was portrayed as a novice, and that the teeth were taken out from the Newcastle Incident. Now obviously, I understand why they’d have to alter a bit of it due to Network censorship, but at the same??? I mean child abuse and sexual violence are nothing new on shows like Law and Order: SVU and Criminal minds so…Idek, it kind of comes off as an excuse. It’s not a child’s show. Maybe it could be argued that it was marketed toward teenagers, but it’s not like they’re ignorant to those horrors in the world. I’m not asking them to show Astra’s rape, just to acknowledge the true horror of the situation instead of making it all about John’s failure. So yeah, I was annoyed by the occasional attempt to adapt source material and completely mucking it all up.

Now to begin with, I completely get the SP/N’s fandom bitterness more than ever. Before watching it I thought they were just trying to be like “whaaaat, another show about magic and exorcism? Of course it’s a ripoff because don’t you know our fandom invented those things?” I honestly believe the crux of the issue is that NBC clearly wanted their own SP/N as well as to cash in the popularity of comic book based media, so there’s that. To me, it comes off as a shameless cash grab. I honestly believe if I felt like there was some kind of passion from its creators, I could have dealt with some of those changes, but I don’t get that. It’s been a soulless experience overall. Like it’s not been a matter of me nitpicking like “oh this is wrong, this has been changed, boo hoo, it’s not all existential horror and fucking and drugs.”

Because frankly...I just think it’s a bad show. It’s poorly written, poorly made, poorly researched, poorly acted, it’s just bad. The main issue I have with it is that it’s a lot of telling and not showing. There’s not a lot of tension or foreshadowing, just “boom this is how it is” and so much exposition. John, for example, about half of his dialogue in any given show is verbal exposition. It’s frustrating, tbh. Like, it doesn’t make sense for me in this day and age for a TV show, even on a network channel, to be this bad. Over the past several years, television series have improved exponentially in content and writing. It’s not shameful anymore to start off on TV anymore. We’re in a very exciting time that television and cinema are almost completely on equal par of perceived quality. So yeah, it’s been an even greater disappointment for me because it’s not just that they fuck with the source material but because on top of that it’s literally a bad show. I’m not one bit surprised that it wasn’t renewed because there just...Isn’t enough to like about it. It’s not faithful enough to the comic to secure that base of fans and it’s not good enough to be taken for face value. 

The other massive issue I have is the portrayal of magic, which honestly extends to DC’s handling of Hellblazer and John as well. See, what you have to understand is that predominately, throughout the Vertigo series, it’s clear to me that most of its writers either have some awareness of how magic works or at least have done their research. I can follow the logic and ritual in what he’s doing. ​Let me tell you a little something about magic. It's all about focus and will. You can do and say whatever the hell you want as long as you're putting your intent behind it. The ritual of spell work, use of candles, crystals, incense, chanting, incantations, etc. are meant to be the focus of a magician's energy and will on a particular result, but it could be attempted without as well. To explain it in more fantastical terms, in Harry Potter casting without a wand is considered impressive. This implies that the wizard's focus and will is so strong that they no longer need a wand to draw out their intent. Now I get it. By this understanding magic doesn't make good TV viewing (I guess...), but my main concern with this series is there's no attempt to portray an iota of witchcraft's reality along with the fantastical. Now part of this problem is that they've removed a great deal of John's innate ability. He can no longer see spirits/ghosts and there is no mention to his connection to synchronicity (as far I’ve seen, mind). Instead of happening to end up where he needs to be or what have you, he's following a map, and he uses a lot of artifacts and other implementation to get the job done. Which bothers me on a few levels. For one, it imbues the focus, not the caster with the power, which is not how magic works (at least in the sense of portraying gritty urban fantasy), and for two, it's very much against character. Let me give you an example: In the two part story Newcastle Calling, at the end of it, John hands a dying man a twig, telling him it's the finger bone of St. Cavartigan and that it's known to bring relief to those in need. He tells him to squeeze it tightly and focus on the pain going away. Near the end of the scene, the young man tells John that it's working. A couple things can be taken away from this scene: John's will was that the dying man would believe as he was told and his instructions were rote ritual. By contrast, in the series, John would probably had actually given him a Saint's fingerbone. You see the comparison takes the power of the scene away, as well as the mystery. Is the power of John's suggestion so strong that he could make the guy believe by holding that twig his pain would do away? Or was he so desperate to believe in order to not die in pain? You can interpret it either way. Hell, I could invent other interpretations, but going by what I believe would happen in the show, it can only be interpreted in the most literal sense. Now, to be honest, most television shows portray magic poorly. Even movies do a better job while keeping fantastical elements. The Craft, for all it’s 90s cheese, is a great example of this. So I suppose I could be blamed for getting my hopes up to be dashed because it’s just following the formula of 95% of all TV shows that feature a magical element or theme, but I mean...it’s not like Buffy or Charmed that was working without a script, so to speak. The TV series had a ready made blueprint and still chose to take the mumbo-jumbo bullshit route. Now, I have a lot of theories on the why for this, but that’s another post altogether and this has already gone on for way too long and I still have more to say.

Now, I guess I should, at least briefly, touch on the elephant in the room: Matt Ryan as John. What did I think? Because a lot of people have told me that he’s the shining beacon of this show, even literally admitting that yeah, it’s a poor representation of Hellblazer but that Matt Ryan man, he’s great! The problem that I have is that it’s not a good a show, and so no, I don’t like him in the role. I’m not going to compare him to Keanu because that’s not fair for a number of reasons, and maybe I’m a little biased because I adore Keanu (there’s also that can of worms I mentioned earlier, which is honestly yet another separate post lol). The way John’s written for this show, he’s positively insufferable. He’s not charming at all, which is find the most offensive, because one thing that can be said across all series and iterations of the character is that John is magnetic even despite xyz (he’s dangerous, he can be an asshole, he’s unreliable, etc.). Here he’s just a know-it-all, condescending prick. Now I do think with better writing, in a better representation of John’s character and Hellblazer in general (and maybe with a voice coach or director to discourage that Welshy intonation because yeah, his accent does irritate the shit out of me, but I’ve been very vocal about that before and honestly, at this point, I’ve come to realize that Ryan’s vowels are the least of this show’s problem), I think he has potential to be a fine John. As it stands in the media he’s portrayed John in so far (idk, maybe he was good on Arrow, but I’m talking the TV Series here and the JLD animation, which I’ve admittedly not seen, but I hated the comic so I’m not real likely to give that a chance considering my disposition toward the source material), I’m not entirely sold on him. Like if they tried another TV series for Hellblazer and didn’t cast him in the role, I wouldn’t be upset over it. 

I do agree that it probably could have been better on another channel, but here’s the rub, all the blood and gore and sex and loose censorship in the world could not save that show without better writing and direction. It could have been a fine show even on network if it had been crafted with some degree of caring. Let me give you an example off the top of head, namely the handling of the Newcastle incident. It was laid out pretty plainly within a few episodes. Alterations from canon aside, it doesn’t portray the horror of it at all and is one of the show’s many missed opportunities to really play up the scarier, more mysterious elements of John’s backstory. For example, instead of laying it out in a sloppy flashback with a laughable puppet, picture this scene instead: ​John is having a chat with someone, maybe Zed or Chas or some b-plot character. Something reminds him of the Newcastle incident and he gets a far off look in his eyes. The folly drops away to an eerie silence as the camera comes in tight on John's expression. Filling up the silence is a little girl's scream, then the voices of his friends, perhaps some sounds of violence, an inhuman sound or voice, it all blends together to become a hellish cacophony of sound as John's expression becomes more strained. Then suddenly the other person calling his name snaps him out of his reverie. The screams stop, the folly returns, and the scene appears jarringly normal. John shakes his head, makes a joke, and they move on. Yeah, that kind of scene has been done before, but the reason for that is it’s effective without giving away the whole story. It shows that this is a man haunted by something horrible. It’s also cheap and doesn’t necessitate straining the no doubt thin budget of a TV show that has yet to prove itself worthy of having more money thrown at it. 

Honestly, the issues I have with this show are innumerable and I’m just scratching the surface here and laying out my biggest problems. I could nitpick for days, and that’s the reason I’ve stayed mum about my opinions. There are people that follow me and that I write with that really like and care about the show, and I don’t want to make them feel...you know, bad about it or that they can’t talk to me or whatever. You know, if they found it enjoyable more power to them. I just didn’t and that’s maybe on me. By no means am I trying to bash the show here (because lord if I wanted to, I could), but to offer up what was requested, and that’s my undiluted opinions and feelings about the series. Of course I’m sorry that I couldn’t share the joy and that I couldn’t even like it on a similar level that I do the film (as a very solid AU, which people have tried to sell the show as to me, knowing my previous understanding of some of the changes made that deviate strongly from canon. As I said, maybe if it had been better made and written, I could, but as it stands currently, I can’t and unless real changes are made in the future, I’m unlikely to alter my opinion of it).

So yeah that’s it. Apologies that this got so very long, but as you can tell, there’s been a lot that I’ve been holding back.