#also bc i only read hellblazer i've never actually seen him DATING zatanna

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johnny constantinny for the reverse opinions?

Ppl send topics and instead of salt or hot takes, you MUST talk abt smth you like about it. Good excuse to gush abt smth you already love, OR think and find smth positive to say.

Hard mode, “missed potential” is NOT allowed as an answer.

oh this one is easy bc i genuinely do love this disaster man. 

like i just legit am delighted by everything john represents: this blond, canonically handsome, canonically pretty smart, guy who dresses in what reads as a very respectable manner (i mean HE WEARS A TIE. why??? why does he do this????), who ostensibly seems like the epitome of like, English competence (white, male, blond), is actually a complete fucking disaster. 

like he’s lazy, he’s mean, he ruins the lives of his friends and loved ones. he ruins his OWN life with predictable regularity. he starts the beginning of a day wearing a tie and a white shirt and a fancy trenchcoat, and he ends it disheveled and almost certainly covered in ~fluids. whenever he has a moment of normalcy and peace, he freaks out, partly out of boredom, partly out of just inability to process what it is to be normal anymore.

and he’s just so bad at things. whenever he tries to fix a problem he either makes it worse, or manages, at the last minute, to pull off a solution (that inevitably leads to another, worse problem for him, down the line). 

but he’s still just a person. he’s working class, he drinks too much and smokes too much, has PTSD , is always filled with a base level of guilt for what he’s done and fear of what the future holds, but still does stuff like -- go to the movies. goof around with chas. watch star trek and doctor who. read william blake poetry and talk about it with a one night stand. 

he’s supposedly an awful boyfriend but when we see him try -- with Kit, with Dani -- he can be genuinely quite sweet and caring and giving (by which i mean -- oral). he has a strange chivalrous streak -- an impulse to defend women and children -- that he always seems almost embarrassed about, but which shows up as early as when he was a child. 

and he cares about his friends, too. when he does try to fix problems, they’re almost always because a friend needs him to, or asks him to. he’ll grumble about it and try to get out of it (not very hard) but he’ll always try to help the people in his life. 

and i just love how many normie friends John has -- this is partly why i can never get into comics where John’s on a superhero team or w/e, bc to me, John is at his best when he’s floating into the otherwise very mundane, working class, English world he comes from, bantering w his friends who are cabbies or writers for cheap tabloids or unemployed & spending most of their time down at the pub. the contrast of his ~magic and ~spooky shit world with people just living their lives, and the way he’s torn between contempt and jealousy when interacting with them is just -- 😘👌

also love how much of an unreliable narrator he is. just like ‘blah blah blah chas’ marriage and home life suuuuuucks’ when it’s like, yeah that’s literally only when/because you’re around, john. 

and y’know, the canon bisexuality and awful punk band backstory and just fundamental, consistently progressive politics mixed with his cynicism, it’s all just -- good. It’s good stuff, and I like it.