#and the change is something v hellblazer

[a-wild-things-rambles]

"At some point when John wasn't looking, new age travelers has become travelers, and bright eyes had gone dull. You could see the hippies underneath, but it was along time ago.

The roma were there too, another change. They kept to themselves in the corners of the field, but the children played together.

That was indicative of something. Something about how it was no longer a fun thing to rebel, but a way of life, with no safety nets. Strength in numbers, huddled together. Even the closed of Romani were aware of that.

The music was angrier. Deeper base, harsher beats, even the bubbly fiddly de de was talking of monsters.

It had changed while he was gone. The kids were new, some babes, some teens, some adults in their own right, with babes at the hip.

Fuck he was old. He remembered these people as bright eyed and bushy tailed and barely adults themselves. Now some were grandparents. Maybe that was why the roma came closer. There's something about raising your child on the move, how a movement becomes a community. They proved their skills and toughness."

the start of a fic about john going back to a traveler festival and the difference between then and now as well as musings on the creation of a people.

[thecursedhellblazer]

Discussed starter for @heksery - John & Juliana

John took one last look at the map, before folding it and messily stuffing it in one of the pockets of his trench coat. Blue eyes took in the half buried pyramid in front of him, following the angles of the worn stone that time and bad weather had eroded and chipped away. The name of this particular temple was long lost, but his sources were reliable enough to leave him very few doubts.

It was the right place, the lost lost building where the Haab had been hidden centuries before.

The magician pulled out a ruined package of Silk Cut, slipping a cigarette between his lips, before lighting it up with a small flame conjured on the tip of his thumb. He had spent a few years trying to locate that artefact. It had mostly been a side project, since he had had his hands full with more urgent business. In the last few months, however, life had surprisingly allowed him some breathing space, and he had decided to use it to take precautions to prevent a possible apocalypse for once, instead of rushing to stop it at the last moment, as it usually happened.

His steps were cautious as he approached the entrance, hidden away behind vines and debris. There was no telling what sort of magic might be protecting the place, even if he was pretty sure that it had to be of the nasty kind. After all, this was a temple dedicated to Kukulkan, the bloodthirsty Feathered Serpent. John had never met this one particular deity, but from the tales he had heard he had to be one nasty, self-righteous bastard.

Caution wasn't his forte, but lately he had had one brush too many with death and was ready to at least try to avoid unnecessary risks.

He was about to reach out and see if he could pull at the vines and squeeze inside without needing to use magic, when the sounds of approaching steps caught his attention.

The conman instantly turned his head in that direction, brows furrowing as he spotted a black-haired woman advancing towards his. Her clothes, while somewhat suitable for the kind of hike that led to the temple, still looked too expensive to fully fit their setting. Or, perhaps, it was the contrast between her outfit and John's creased and stained clothing.

Blimey. The last thing he had been expecting and wanted from that trip was to have company. No matter how good-looking the stranger could be. If she was there, it meant that she was after the artefact too, and that alone made her the bad kind of company.

"Oi, yeh lost, luv?" He called out nonchalantly, as if they had bumped into each other in some nameless alley in the suburbs. "I gots some business to take care o', so soz but I can't take yeh back. But I can show yeh th' direction to reach th' closest town."

And with that, he made a vague gesture towards the path he had made for himself while trudging through the forest.

"Dis ain't no fun place, 'specially at nite, so yeh might wants to 'urry up n' 'ed back."

[milfzatannaz]

vertigo canon can be split into two groups: anything related to swamp thing, and Everything Else.

you see in the 1980s Alan Moore had a stint on swamp thing that pretty much changed comics forever. in issue 37 he introduced this asshole Sting knockoff named John Constantine, which led to his solo book Hellblazer. Neil Gaiman, in his 20s with little comic writing experience and no divorces yet, wanted to write Hellblazer but Jaime Delano was already hired. Keep in mind that he was being mentored by Moore and So Karen Berger (our lord and savior) was like, what else do you want to write? And Mr Gaiman, young and embarrassingly nerdy, was like. Oh maybe I’ll write something to do with the obscure DC character the Sandman. And well, by 1989, history was made. (Other good pre-Vertigo Gaiman comics are Black Orchid and the Books of Magic). We have Swamp Thing to thank for the birth of a lot of these groundbreaking stories.

In 1993 Berger was tasked with creating a sister label to DC that would house more adult oriented material that would deviate a bit from the standard cape comic. This became Vertigo Comics, and the first comic published by them was Death: The High Cost of Living. During this stretch of the 90s and 2000s, the shared sandman and Hellblazer canon (which is really just swamp thing’s world and we’re living in it) produced multiple spinoffs and related titles like Deadboy Detectives, The Trenchcoat Brigade, The Children’s Crusade, multiple volumes and spinoffs for Books of Magic, The Dreaming, Death: The Time of Your Life, and even miniseries for minor characters like Bast and Thessaly.

Everything Else includes titles like Preacher, Animal Man, Shade: The Changing Man, Transmetropolitan, and Moore’s other trademark works like Watchmen and V for Vendetta were published under Vertigo.

I think ppl don’t rlly get how impactful this era of comics history is. We wouldn’t have multiple movies and TV shows without it, and a lot of what was written during that time period is still used in modern DC storylines. Vertigo rlly is that bitch when it comes to iconic comics!!!!!!!!!!

[donnerpartyofone]

Have you ever read any of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol comic book stuff? I think it's so weird and overlooked

Is it overlooked? Isn't there a recent TV adaptation of it? I'd agree that it's not as big as Avengers or whatever, but frankly anything that's *smart* tends to be a little more niche and not-for-everybody, and that kind of makes it special, not to be such a snob. But no, I never read it, it's a personal failing. My exposure to the British Invasion is kind of spotty to be honest; I read a lot of Preacher and Transmetropolitan, not very much Hellblazer for some reason, I forget what else. I read From Hell and V and Watchmen, naturally, but I never forgave Alan Moore for Lost Girls, what an obnoxious piece of shit! The major Grant Morrison title I read (setting aside little random things like We3 and some Seven Soldiers stuff) was The Invisibles, which I was really hot and cold on. It's a great repository for Morrison's amateur pop culture scholarship and it is written with a kind of infectious passion, but I felt like if the premise is "the stifling forces of order and conformity vs. the liberating forces of rebellion and anarchy", that gets kind of sabotaged by the fact that the chaos agents still have to be represented as cliches and stereotypes for them to be legible to the reader. Like a true non-conformist wouldn't just look exactly like Johnny Rotten or whoever, a real rebel wouldn't be so straight-from-central-casting. So there's kind of a big flaw in the basic conceit, because in order to have archetypal resonance, you have to default to preordained cookie cutter images (in this case of flappers and mods and harlequins and stuff), which is the opposite of the whole idea of the winds of change and the triumph of individuality and everything.

I'm sorry, this is totally not what you asked, I'm just riffing now. I have every reason to believe Doom Patrol is really great! Maybe I'll get around to it some day, but I haven't read a superhero comic in a long time. The last time I read them really devotedly was in a time before irony, to be frank, and sometimes I find modern titles a little too *knowing*, like a little too smug and proudly self-aware at the expense of having an engrossing narrative with convincing characters. (And if the only alternative is soapy fetishistic bullshit of the Joss Whedon variety then I am REALLY not about it) It's funny because I have this memory of reading Grant Morrison's Marvel Boy miniseries that was drawn by J.G. Jones when it first came out and I was a teenager, and it blew my mind so hard! I thought Jones was everything, I would have done anything to be able to draw like him, and it didn't hurt that I knew somebody who was friends with him and I got to visit his studio once and it was probably pretty obvious that I immediately fell in love with him. But that Marvel Boy series had a bit of a meta, post-modern quality to it, which at the time wasn't so common and I found it really excitingly intelligent--so I raved about it to this friend of mine, one of my best friends in high school who was slightly older and who I looked up to in some ways, and he just sneered and spat something about how it's fucked up that comics aren't this innocent thing for kids anymore, and he refused to do more than glance at the pages of this very slick, adult book that I loved and wanted to share with him. And I mean now that everything feels like its saturated with this juvenile sense of irony, I kind of get where he was coming from! Even though I still think he was being a dick to me at the time, because in hindsight I've realized how our friendship was a total one-way street and he would say this stuff to me about how I was "still a mystery" to him and he'd make it sound like he was anxious to get to know the Real Me, but if I let him in on anything he didn't directly relate to in a personal way then he wouldn't even tolerate a conversation about it. Ahem. This is also not part of your question at all. But now you know! My sincerest apologies.

[ramoth13]

Thoughts on an old love:

Vertigo Comics

With the release of the recent Sandman show (highly recommend!!! Mr. Gaiman is, as always, a brilliant storyteller), I thought it might be time to have a look back on my favorite publisher back in the day. I know a few people (especially towards its final days) didn't really distinguish Vertigo Comics from DC comics, but when I tell you that there was a difference, I mean it was just something that can't be replicated.

I don't exactly remember which Vertigo comic I read first. It could've been The House of Mystery or Hellblazer but I'm pretty sure it was Fables. And that's the thing, they were all so special.

I grew up reading comics because my older brother and my Dad before him had grown up reading them. Shazam and superman were Dad's favorites, Batman, JLA, and Green Lantern (Kyle Rainer) were my brother's. But I had grown up watching the Batman Animated Series, where Bruce Wayne was kind, and Batman wasn't jaded, but hopeful, and the comics started pulling away from that.

That's when it happened, I noticed that the characters kept changing, kept evolving from writer to writer, moving further and further from the ones that I knew. Superheroes had been around a long time and couldn't stay the same. Writers had new ideas, new ways to represent the old. Batman was mean, condescending, and sometimes cruel. If they couldn't be updated, they were killed off. Superman lost his love of Lois. Spiderman killed someone. The characters I thought I knew, no longer looked like the ones I loved. So in 2008 I stopped reading them.

But I missed comics. Later, a friend of mine gave me some digital comics, probably illegally now that I'm old enough to know better, but one of them was Fables. I read over 30 comics in one day. I ate them up. And whichever one I read next, Hellblazer or House of Mystery, I read those too. And then, because of course, I read Sandman which opened me up to a world I was already falling in love with. And V for Vendetta, and the Watchmen, Preacher, American Vampire, Y:The Last Man, and The Books of Magic. These were stories that spoke to my very being.

Anything with a Vertigo Logo was gold. The stories beautiful, compelling, and mindbending. The characters were diverse, intriguing, and mysterious. It was like finding a pillar of magic in a sea of ever evolving stories that could never decide on a true identity for itself, Vertigo knew what it wanted to be. The stories haunted me.

SPOILERS:

From Dream besting Lucifer in the oldest game, to Constantine fighting his demon twin, to Bigby Wolf FINALLY marrying Snow White (And Prince Charming's grand return), to finding out who the REAL adversary was in motherlands, these stories never deviated or changed on whims, they always felt honest, sincere, and true to themselves.

:END OF SPOILERS~

There are many other non-DC/Marvel publishers that I love, from Dark Horse (Conan series and Hellboy), to Image (SAGA, Magdelena, and WANTED), to even smaller publishers like ASPEN and Zenescope. Yet, none of these, nor DC or Marvel will ever feel the same as as Vertigo in its heyday.

DC may have made Constantine a superhero, the Watchmen a series, and added all of the best magical parts of Vertigo into its official brand, but the things that made those stories special have stayed with those original books. Nothing against the writers at DC, they work hard and I have no doubt try to remain faithful to the originals... but contrary to what DC wants you to think with their magical league of superheroes, you can't capture magic in a bottle.

And VERTIGO had magic, in spades.

[hintofelation99]

What is everyone's groupchat/text chat name? Like how Hal is Ring Ring Motherfucker etc etc

Tbh the list grows every day, but here’s what I have as of right now (as a side note—in the early chat posts all the batkids had just their usual vigilante names, so some of the ones I’m about to list might not be in a post yet):

Roy/Arsenal -> Arse/Arse ~ It just fits him so well it had to be used twice

Harley Quinn -> Aunty Harls ~ Bruce does not approve.

Bruce/Batman -> B/Batman ~ He refuses to participate

Barbara/Oracle-> Barbie/Know-it-All ~ She’s the mastermind behind all this and makes sure that Bruce keeps all the contact names.

Clark/Superman -> Smallville/Big Blue ~ His names were chosen by Lois and Dick.

Damian/Robin -> Demon/Blood Son ~ Jason voted to call him lollipop guild, Damian violently refused.

Cassandra/Black Bat -> Caassssssss/Silent but Cuddly ~ Her original Vigilante nickname was Snëki snäkē, but the new one is more fitting.

Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy -> CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL ~ She picked this, but Harley will probably give her a new one soon.

Selina/Catwoman -> Crazy Cat Lady/Kitty kitty ~ I’m probably gonna change hers soon but idk what to yet.

Dick/Nightwing -> Dickhead/The Good, the bad, and the booty ~ His vigilante name was v recently changed from Flippy Boi.

Constantine -> Gutter Mage ~ He has canonically been called this, also his recent increase in appearances is due to me reading a lot of the old hellblazer comics (they can be a bit problematic at points but some are surprisingly relevant to current events in the US)

Diana/Wonder Woman -> Prince(ss)/Jason’s favorite ~ She’s a proud aunt who adores Jason.

Jason/Red Hood -> Jaybird/Pew pew ~ He likes to mock Bruce by saying ‘I am Pew pew’ in a Batman voice.

Kon/Superboy -> Konkonkon/Token Punk ~ When Constantine saw Token Punk he asked Kon about it and they ended up bonding over punk music.

J’onn/Martian Manhunter -> TBD/Lean Green Fighting Machine ~ I don’t often think of him interacting with everyone as a civilian so he might not get a civvie name.

Barry/Flash -> TBD/Lightning McQueen ~ I’ll probably have a civilian name for him soon, just hasn’t come up yet.

Killer Croc -> Monch and Cronch ~ Don’t ask me why/How Waylon has a phone.

Oliver/Green Arrow -> Olly Olly Oxen Free/The Other Green One ~ He was a little bitter about his civilian name but Babs won’t let him change it (she is the keeper of names).

Duke/Signal -> Pretty Pretty Shiny Shiny/The Duke ~ Apollo might change his name soon. Ik they haven’t interacted in comics (at least not that I know of) but I like to imagine Andrew (Apollo) is to Duke as Diana is to Jason.

Steph/Batgirl -> Stephers/Pörple people eater ~ I always forget that I was reading her batgirl arc when I first added her so I made her batgirl instead of spoiler, Ik this lines up better but i do prefer the traditional spoiler Costume.

Riddler -> Riddle Me this, Why am I Here?? ~ He doesn’t understand why he is in their contact list.

Hal/Green Lantern -> TBD/Ring Ring Motherfucker ~ He hasn't entered civilian conversation yet, but maybe soon.

Dinah/Black Canary -> TBD/Scream Queen ~ Right now her civilian contact is Scream Queen, but I'm gonna switch that around and use something else for her civilian name

Billy/Captain Marvel -> TBD/Sparky Sparky Boom Man ~ Billy still thinks no one knows who he is. He is wrong.

Damian's Bestest Friend/Superboy 2.9 ~ The first one was just to annoy Damian. The other was supposed to be Superboy 2.0 but he messed up and now Barbara won't let him take it back.

Wally/Kid Flash -> Walls/The Real Speedy ~ Roy does not find this amusing.

Tim/Red Robin -> Timber/Yum ~ Now if Tim ever passes out they yell Timber, he is not amused.

Zatanna -> Witchy Woman ~ She's the only reason John joined the group chat. She's also the only reason why he no longer has a flip phone. He now has a Blackberry Curve.

Right now that's all of them. I am going to add Boston Brand, no clue how or why he'll have a phone, I just like him and want him to be along for the ride. His name will probably be something like "I GOTTA PHONE" or "Ghosts Have Rights Too". I'm definitely gonna add others (Midnighter and Apollo, my favs) just don't know who or when yet. But if there's anyone you rlly wanna see just lmk and I'll see what I can do :)

[markcampbells]

haley james scott or john constantine; drabbles or multi-part/chapter; sequels or prequels; series or standalone; female or male protagonist?

So this is a hard one, because Haley and John and what they mean to me represent two pretty distinct phases in my life. I still don’t see a lot of characters like Haley, particularly teenage characters, because pretty much every teen drama is wrapped up in teens having sex and dating and not recognizing that not everybody has that (or is interested in that, if you’re asexual or aromantic, as many people I know are). Haley had the same insecurities about sex and body image I wasn’t really seeing reflected anywhere else, and that helped me when I was feeling like I’d never find a partner who wanted somebody like me. And John kind of represents the next phase of that, in that John was integral in me figuring out for good I’m under the bi umbrella, and watching a character like him constantly sort out interpersonal messes is a good metaphor for what my late twenties has felt like. So I can’t really decide between either of them because they both represent something really important to me. (That said, I do call John my favorite fictional character of all time, so take that as you will.)

Okay, if I’m writing it: drabbles. If I’m reading it, I’m starting to come around to multichapter. For me personally, I like shorter-form stuff and the freedom to switch things totally around and make different decisions, and something multichapter doesn’t offer that freedom unless you’re willing to totally discard your plans and change everything ever. I’m not a huge fanfiction reader, but I enjoy published JAFF which is obviously multichapter, and I’ve read and loved some multichapter McKirk fics this year (Safeword by shoreleave [NSFW and BDSM-centric] and Switch by Ceres_Libera). I have to be in the mood to commit to reading a long fanfiction, but if I do and the author is as capable as those writers are, I enjoy them a lot.

I think I’m going to say sequels, because something I enjoy the most in fiction is getting to see how characters develop, and sequels give me that. Like the new Star Wars trilogy or not, it took the characters we knew interesting places. And as someone who saw the Star Trek TOS films for the first time this year, I honestly liked them even better than the series because there was something really special in how the characters were allowed to develop and be shown outside the confines of the series. (Nobody talk to me about the camping scenes in V and how much I cried. NOBODY. TALK. TO ME.)

Ummmmmmmmmm series, same token. Tales of the City, Kitty, and Hellblazer have really shown me how much I love stories that are built over time and again, seeing how characters develop is a huge part of that.

Something that gets discussed a lot in fandom is that often women (straight or not) are drawn to stories with male protagonists (often queer male protagonists) and why that is, and sometimes it has to do with women feeling like they can engage with these stories and not feel objectified as they might if the story was female-focused. I’ll admit that a lot of my favorite characters are men, particularly queer men, and that this is probably part of that token. But there’s value to be had in both male and female protagonists as well as protagonists outside the gender binary, and I think my favorite pieces of media span a range.

[mynameisphil]

v: talking to myself

(or how John Constantine stole himself a time ship)

[Note: This is based on one of my verses, so I’m stealing some stuff from it.]

Rip has been the AI of the time ship Hunter for as long as he can remember. He has worked with many captains and, over time, developed his own character. Unfortunately, the ship was badly damaged in a recent mission, its captain transferred to a different time ship and the Hunter left to be repaired at the Vanishing Point.

Enter John Constantine. After having been imprisoned by the Time Masters for using time magic to change his own past, he somehow finds a way to escape. John manages to get on board of the Hunter and uses a virus to deal with Rip, basically taking command of the ship. What he did not expect the virus to do was to actually damage the AI to the point where it was split into two halves, Rip, who retains all knowledge about time travel and how to run the ship, and Phil.

Phil isn’t aware that he is actually a computer program, he believes that he is a real person. He appears as a hologram all over the ship, looking solid and with rarely any flickering. Phil is able to “Interact” with the ship’s consoles and any devices that are controlled by the ship, i.e. a door he touches will open for him to walk through. He knows he is the pilot of the ship and will sit in one of the chairs to fly it. He reacts to his environment as if he is really there, which means that he will grab something for support if the ship is hit during an attack, etc. Phil is basically a program that has been split into two parts, one being the hologram and the other half that is controlling the ship. Phil appears as a young man as well, but his appearance and his clothing are based on his ‘mood’ and are entirely unpredictable.

John renames the ship Hellblazer and spends his days on the run from the Time Masters. Rip isn’t happy about the situation while Phil is slowly starting to enjoy his ‘life’. Eventually they run into the time ship Waverider and meet the ship’s AI Gideon.

[thecursedhellblazer]

Plotted Starter for @overlooksouls​​​ - John Constantine & Johanna Constantine

The air was heavy with dust, satured to the point of being almost unbreathable. He might be used to the much more suffocating, toxic fumes of Pandemonia, but that didn’t make every gulp of oxygen he had to take less unpleasant.

John cursed heavily out aloud, which was a mistake because it just triggered another painful fit of coughing that shook his whole upper body for thirty good seconds. Fuck that rotten mine. Fuck the idiots who had chosen it. And fuck them all over again a second time for not having made sure to delete that bloody thing from history’s memory once and for all. If they had done their job properly, he wouldn’t have been standing there now, forced to finish it.

There was a very good reason if Hell itself had decided to lock away those entities. There was a very good reason if the punishment of the one who had been so foolish to open their cage had been one of the harshest in history. And there was a very good reason why the last person who had got their hands on that cursed Box had wanted it forgotten, as were the horrors that it had once unleashed in times far too ancient for their echoes to reach the present.

The magician gritted his teeth, hands uselessly brushing off the soil that had clung to his coat and trousers while he had crawled his way down in the depth of the earth. There it was, encased in a half collapsed wall of rock, its metal surface as shiny and exquisitely carved as if it hadn’t spent the last two centuries buried away in humidity and dirt.

Pandora’s Box.

A shiver ran down Constantine’s spine, against his will. During his life he had faced and touched and tasted evil in too many forms to count, and yet there was something in the dark energy that emanated from the Box that caused even the Hellblazer to pause. A part of him felt a terror that was much older than he was or could ever be, a fear that dated before the era of humanity. It made him want to rush back where he had come from and forget about that whole affair. Let someone else deal with it, because his own plate was always too full of shit that demanded his attention anyway.

On the other hand, though, just as strong was the attraction. The dark charm of a power that alluringly whispered tales of both unspeakable horrors and endless possibilities in his ears. It was addictive, far more than the adrenaline that the fear was pumping in his system, and John Constantine had never been good at resisting that sort of tempation.

His palms pressed against the Box’s enchanted surface before he could realise that he had stepped forward. The artefact hummed under his touch, the vibration spreading through his skin and nerves, so deliciously terrifying. What a dangerous high it was, because he knew how to open it and touch its power, but not how to seal it back closed.

His contemplation, however, was cut short abruptly. In his daze and rush, he hadn’t realised that he had cut himself during the uncomfortable journey down to the chamber where the Box was being held and blood had started to drip from his fingers down on the metal. The crimson liquid slipped in the chiseled lines and following them, flowing faster and faster until it reached one particular seal, less perfect and less deeply carved than the others

The next moment, the artefact began to glow, so bright that John felt himself being swallowed by it and then...nothing.

He couldn’t have said for how long he had been suspended in the blinding light, but when his consciousness suddenly came back he was no longer in the depths of the mine. Instead, he was on his hands and knees on a large lawn, spread around a building that, even at distance, caught the eye for the noble, rich elegance of its structure.

The place was completely foreign, even if there was a nagging feeling of familiarity he couldn’t place at the back of his skull. And, even worse, Pandora’s Box was nowhere in sight.

The magician gaped, blue eyes wide as his mind scrambled to try, in vain, to grasp what had happened.

“Woh in th’ bloody Nines...?”

[thecursedhellblazer]

Semi-plotted starter for @youstolemycoat

John Constantine didn’t have an issue with the Justice League per se. The concept in itself wasn’t so bad, quite the contrary. After all, someone had to stand up and face the worst crises, unless the whole planet, and the universe too at times, wished to kiss their sorry arse goodbye. It was also fair and appropriate that the job had fallen on the shoulders of people who were capable of carrying its burden. It saved lives and it kicked all the sorts of evil back to where they belonged.

So, no, he didn’t have an issue with the organisation and its purpose. What he had a problem with were its members. Self-righteous, arrogant, know-it-all, overconfident jerks, who never got off their high horse. And half of them were gullible too, which both made it worse and, at the same time, was a trait that the magician had exploited often in the past.

And, not for the first time, if he had found himself in that kind of ugly trouble, it was all their fault. He really needed to stop picking up his phone whenever he got a call for a number he didn’t recognise. Assuming that it would have been enough to spare him from being forced to join them.

His fist collided with the jaw of the man who was lying underneath him on the ground. When he had first arrived and caught sight of the bastard, for a moment he had thought that he had to be having a nightmare. He had hoped that it was the case. However, the slap he had given himself had only gained him a glare from Batman and a curt order to step in and help, a command that John hadn’t heard. Instead, he had rushed forward, tackling the other on the ground and starting to hit him as hard as he could, no matter if it made his hands hurt and his knuckles bruised.

All the pain in the world was worth the chance to reduced into a pulp the man who had wrecked him in more ways he could explain. His old mentor, his former lover, the one he had trusted with all himself.

“Yeh bloody piece o’ gobshite! The shoulda stayed dead! Shoulda stayed in th’ fuckin’ Pit where yeh belong! I ‘ad warned yeh th’ last time we saw each other! ‘M goin’ to send yeh back to ‘Ell meself!”

[thecursedhellblazer]

Starter for @justifiedmuses​​ { John Constantine for Astra Logue }

The silence all around the building was almost eerie. The house was set slightly away from the street, sunk into the bottom end a cul-de-sac that kept it hidden away even if it was still in plain sight, with nothing but high metal fences on each side.

The place was exactly how he remembered it. If it hadn’t been for the vines that had grown to cover a big portion of the outside walls, the dirt covering the windows and the cobblestones, and the visibly unkept garden, one could have thought that the building had been frozen in time for almost twenty-five years.

John clenched and unclenched his fists, before wiping his sweaty palms against his trousers. If someone had told him just a few months before that he would have willingly returned to Newcastle, the place that had given his life the last shove down towards the abyss, he would have laughed in their face...and then sent them to hell. Perhaps even literally. And yet, there he was, standing before the very same house where he had committed his second original sin.

The magician’s blue eyes moved wearily along the lines of the building, before falling on the gates. Someone had placed wards around the property, relatively recently. He could tell because there was still a trail of power lingering in the air...and because sure as hell there had been none the last time he had been there. One more piece of evidence that told him that the information he had gathered was correct.

She was back and, if his timing was right, she was inside. The real question was...Could he truly face her again? Not that he had much of a choice, because if he didn’t show up first, she would have haunted him down, and that might have made things even more difficult.

“Stop bein’ a bloody coward n’ get o’er wit’ it, yeh daft prick,” Constantine muttered under his breath, his inner frustration growing. “Stallin’ ain’t goin’ to do any good to yeh. Or to anyone else.”

Gritting his teeth, John sucked in one last, deep breath through his nose and finally managed to force himself to shove the gate open. The rusty metal squeaked as it moved, the sound awfully resembling a choked scream, and he knew felt a light shock of energy as he crossed the threshold. His presence had to have activated the wards, which means that he would have been an expected, unwanted guest now.

His steps got heavier and heavier as he approached the house main door, but he forced himself to ignore the feeling until he was standing right in front of it. Something twisted in his chest, a mixture of regret, dread and another feeling he couldn’t identify.

Moment of truth, old son.

He raised his hand and knocked.

[thecursedhellblazer]

Rolling Down this Mad, Mad Road

Plotted starter for @laughter-in-white​ 

Very important self-reminder. The next time you end up in this cursed city, bring Chas with you, old son. So the crooks can grab him instead while you deal with your shite.

John let out a low groan as the hood that had been forced on his head was finally torn off once again. The back of his head still hurt from where one of those bastards had hit him with...He wasn’t even sure of what, but it had been one hell of a blow without doubt since it had been enough to knock him unconscious. There was also an ache in his ribs from where the tugs had landed a couple of punches and he was so very much hoping that he wouldn’t find himself nursing a broken bone.

The only, small satisfaction came from the dry stickiness on the fingers of his right hand. Blood. Fist fights had never been his forte, but that knowledge didn’t stop him from feeling proud of the punch he had landed on the nose of one of his attackers.

Gritting his teeth, he tried to move, quickly finding out that his wrists were tied behind the back of the metal chair he had woken up in. His ankles too had been restrained, and that limited his movements even more. Now, if there was something Constantine was good at, it was getting out of any sort of handcuffs and the likes of them, but firstly he needed to assess the situation. Namely, finding out who had snatched him, why and in how much trouble he had landed himself.

“Where th’ fuck in th’ Nines...” He croaked out, blinking rapidly a few times to try and clear his still blurred sight.

The room around him was bare and anonymous, probably looking a lot like any other small basement that could be found in Gotham. There was someone moving, just at the edge of his field of view, but no matter how much he tried to twist himself, he didn’t manage to get a good look at them.

“Oi! If yeh gots to be such lousy hosts, can someone at least lite me a fag? Or is dis one o’ those times where yeh tryin’ to intimidate yeh captive by leavin’ th’ poor sod alone in th’ bloody darkness? ‘Cause lemme tell yeh somet’in’, mate. It ain’t goin’ to work wit’ me. Let us not waste our time n’ yeh jus’ tell me woh th’ fuck dis is all about, aye?”

[thecursedhellblazer]

Semi-plotted starter for @sassgardkeep​​ { John for Talia }

Gods, he was in trouble.

There was nothing surprising in that fact per se, but that time might have been the one when he would have hit the rock bottom and then sunk past it, straight into Hell’s gaping jaws. The Void between the planes was suffocating him, sucking the air from his lungs, as tendrils of darkness darted out from every direction, trying to drag him down in its pitch black depths.

Throwing himself into a portal, without a clear destination in mind, hadn’t been the wisest plan, especially since his mind was unfocused because of the poison rushing in his veins and the blood loss he had sustained. However, he had needed a quick escape route and that had been his only chance.

Now, though, he was starting to regret that leap, also because the damned beast that had reduced him in such state had managed to follow him in the Void.

All of a sudden, the path under his feet gave out and he felt himself falling, darkness coiling tightly around his legs. A stream of curses erupted from his throat, and he desperately sought for a any sort of handhold. Any sort of door that could get him out.

It was then that he felt it. Something magical, close enough for him to reach it. And he did, even if pushing through the barrier burnt like hellfire, because his life literally depended on it. Warding seals, and powerful ones. They might have consumed him, hadn’t it been for his tainted blood.

A rip in the fabric of reality opened and John Constantine tumbled out of it, covered in mud and blood, clothes ripped and a nasty looking set of claw marks on the right side of his chest, with no idea of where he had ended up.

His consciousness quickly started to fade, as his body gave into the smooth, cool floor underneath him. Right before he passed out, he noticed a scent in the air. Incense perhaps? At least it wasn’t rot and sulphur, which meant that he wasn’t in Hell, and that was progress...Right?

[thecursedhellblazer]

Plotted starter for @blindeddevil​​

London had many shapes. Some of them were visible to everyone, from her stable residents to the tourist who set their foot in her bosom for the very first time. Others were more subtle and so well hidden that you could have lived in the City from the womb to the grave and you would have never been able to noticed them. It was the kind of impossible things that required not just an attentive eye, but a very open mind too. And they also a brave leap of faith, the stubborn will to believe in what most would have considered madness, dark myths, horrific fantasies.

John Constantine had always had the right eye for everything strange, out of place, impossible. The darker the better and the easier for him to spot. His mind had been cracked open at a very young age, too young for him not to bear the marks of it, in his sanity, on his body and on his soul, and it was both a blessing and a damnation. It made him good at what he did, but the price had been so very often almost too much to bear. He coped with chain smoking to soothe his nerves, casual sex to delude himself, in one, brief moment of thoughtless bliss, that he could have seen another dawn without shattering for the umpteenth time, and far too much drinking to knock him unconscious, in the hope that the alcohol would have push him deep enough for the nightmares to catch up with him. It wasn’t ideal, but nor was balancing himself between unrepentant selfishness and a too stormy ocean of self-loathing.

Looking at him, most people wouldn’t have been able to see the constant, bone-deep exhaustion that accompanied in every waking moment. All they saw was the charming, sharp smirk and the irritating devil-may-care attitude. Trench coat with every kind of weather, smart, comebacks, all cigarette and arrogance. He burst into their lives, did and took whatever he needed to and then left, leaving them confused, torn between annoyance, disbelief and fascination. So blinded by what he showed off that they were never allowed to spot the cracks that ran all over underneath the surface, large and ugly and impossible to fix.

John knew all that and he constantly exploited every advantage that it bought him, every opening that it provided, every weak spot that it uncover. Ruthless because he had no choice but being it, without hesitation because there was always time for the guilt to come back to haunt him later. And oh, how many regrets he had accumulated already. Too many to count, even if he could have named each one of them with deadly precision.

It was a mostly lonely life, one in which every connection could have been turned in yet another thing you would have either lost because of a bad choice, a mistake or been forced to sacrifice in the same of something else. Magic always came with a price and there was no way to cheat that rule, not even for the man who was known as “Conjob” even in Hell.

The magician chewed the butt of his cigarette slowly, studying the building before him. It looked nothing more than an abandoned warehouse, one of the many that still stood in the outskirts of the City. Scribbled walls, eroded by rain and humidity, broken windows kept closed by old wooden boards, chains on the rusty doors blocking entrance. A crumbling construction waiting for someone to decide its sad fate. However, he could feel that there was much more to it, under its anonymous facade, and literally under the building itself too. Dark energy sprouting from the ground and raising, reaching out from the cloudy sky, trying to suck the light out and poisoning the air all around.

At first, when he had decided to investigate the sightings, he had been slightly skeptical. However, the alternative would have been agreeing to pack up and allowing Chas to drag him into that bloody vacation his best friend kept insisting he needed so badly, so he had used them as an excuse to evade the other’s insistence once again. However, it had turned out that, all considered, he had made the right choice, and not just the selfish one. There was something going on there, something that couldn’t be explained with some random rumour made to drive people to keep away from a bad neighbourhood so that the local criminals could handle their business in peace. The Darkness was thick and strong, impossible to miss for someone like him, who knew how to perceive it.

Constantine blew out one last mouthful of smoke before letting his cigarette fall on the ground. The trail, however, didn’t dissipate in the cold air of the night, but instead it shaped itself in a line at a flick of his wrist and a whispered word, a thread that, from where he was standing, stretched toward the building. A track for him to follow, straight into the open jaws of whatever horror was lying in wait ahead of him.

A mysterious figure ripping through the shadows, a monster with the head of a stag leaving a trail of blood but no corpses behind it. Ghostly whispers echoing among the walls of narrow alleys, coming apparently from nowhere. And damn if that place held a smell that was very familiar even if it shouldn’t have been. The very peculiar stench of Hell itself, a mixture of sulfur, rot and despair.

One last look at his surroundings, blue eyes scanning the veil of darkness that had fallen on the roads, just to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything, and John stepped forward, following the trail of smoke he had willed into becoming his guide towards the source of the energy he was sensing. He was probably about to walk into some sort of trouble, crossing that threshold without knowing what he would find behind it, but after all that was what he tended to do. You couldn’t win a game of gambling if you didn’t take risks. And, among the many things, he happened to be a gambler too.

[thecursedhellblazer]

To Hell and Back

Starter for @thedemonconstantine

He had been a fool. An utter, bloody fool. But then again, where was the news? No matter how many times he fell for them, there were some tricks that he just could not recognise. They hit his abused weak spots, causing him to send any sort of logic or rational thinking to fuck off and to run straight in the traps that had been set out for him. Manipulating him was child play for whoever knew him well enough to know which chords to touch, really. And he was supposed to be the one they called “ConJob”, even in down in the literal Hell. Those were the times when he thought that whoever had given him that nickname had overestimated him and his intelligence.

Self-loathing aside, that time his bloody impulsiveness had landed him in really dangerous waters and he wasn’t sure of how he would have managed to get himself out of them. Normally, if you truly were looking for a trip down to the land of Eternal Damnation, the easiest way to do it was to firstly make sure you had lived a shitty life and then kill yourself. You had to consider, though, that there would have been no coming back from such a trip. If, instead, you were planning to step in the Pit while still alive and breathing, before the time for your rotten soul to join all the others, and get back to Earth, now that was way trickier. Opening a portal that could take you from the mortal realm to the lands of Hell wasn’t an easy task. It required a lot of energy and seals that were far more complicated than the ones necessary for an exorcism or a summoning. Not to mention that traveling back was even harder, no matter how many precautions you might have taken.

John Constantine had the back luck of having both the knowledge of how to create such rip in the veil and enough power to do so. Not enough to keep it open, though, also because that would have meant allowing some demonic bastard to sneak out while he went around his business. Moreover, and especially, he had stupidity in spades, which meant that he was the kind of guy who, given the right motivation, would have used aforementioned knowledge and power and thrown himself in Hell, consequences be literally damned.

All it had taken had been a glamour, the simplest trick when it came to illusions, one that even the greenest horns could pull off. The kind that should have been easy to detect for someone like him, with all his baggage of mistrust and experience in the real of magic. However, all he had been able to see when the images had materialised before his eyes had been his former girlfriend’s face, contracted in agony and begging for his help as she was dragged down in Hell to suffer a fate she did not deserve.

If the doubt that it might have been a trick had come to his mind, he had dismissed it before it could even touch his consciousness, because he didn’t remember having any hesitation. He had grabbed what he needed, drawn the seal on the floor of the shitty motel room he had currently been occupying and jumped through the portal the moment it had been opened. Now that he was faced with the reality of what had truly happened, he was wishing that he had at least taken the time to pack a couple of bottle of alcohol and, especially, a full stash of cigarettes, because it looked like he wouldn’t be leaving any time soon.

“Seems like you did get me this time, mate,” he huffed with a hint of distaste and with a confidence he didn’t have. His knees were hurt from where he had landed on them, blood staining the tears that had been opened in his trouser and from a cut on his left temple. Five minutes down there and he was already injured, even if just slightly. Not the best start. “And to think that one of the reasons I made you was to get ‘er out of my head.”

Kit. He had been a fool also for thinking that transferring his yearning for her into some clay monster would have been enough to completely eradicate the meaning she had and would have always had for him. However, finding out that it hadn’t worked had been no surprise. After all, deluding himself into thinking that he could fix things, especially when they involved him in first person, was one of his specialties.

A cutting smirk touched his face. “So, ‘aving fun around ‘ere?” One day his cockiness and arrogance would have got him killed and damned, and said day might as well have come already. He had no doubt of what waited ahead of him. Torture, physical and psychological, till his hour had come and then for the rest of eternity. Unless he managed to find a way out of there.

He chewed the inner side of his cheek, barely noticing when he started to taste blood. It might have sounded like nothing he hadn’t already faced in the past, but there was something terrifying in knowing that he would be suffering them at the hand of someone who was perhaps the only being fully capable of breaking him for good. Himself. A twisted, corrupted version of him, which however, as time had proved, at the end of the day wasn’t that different from the original.

[thecursedhellblazer]

@areswriites​ said: “ Shit shit, are you okay?! ” {from Eddie/Venom}

Bloody fucking Hell.

John Constantine, dabbler of the Occult and Hellblazer, has seen a lot of weird shit during his life. The fact is hardly surprising considering the kind of profession he has more or less chosen for himself, back when he was perhaps too young to really know what he was getting himself in. Demons, spirits of all kinds, inhuman creatures of all shapes. Entire realms that exist on different planes of reality. Truly a bit of everything, for all tastes, and then some more. With that in mind, it’s easy to guess that he isn’t easy to spook or catch off guard, but it seems that, even nowadays, after all he has been through, the universe still has a few tricks up its sleeve he hasn’t anticipated.

His eyes are still wide as he picks himself up from where he has landed on the ground, hands distractedly fixing his clothes while his gaze remains locked on the man in front of him. Or, at least, on what he assumes being a human being, because he is quite sure that a bloke shouldn’t be able to sprout tentacles of black goo or turning into an over six feet tall monster with razor-sharp teeth. And, as curious as the sight might be, he definitely hasn’t accepted the fact that the thing had tried to chomp his head off just as it has done to the pair of now headless corpses lying across him, on the other side of the alley. Good thing he has quick reflexes and an even quicker hand when it comes to protective spells.

He scowls, looking down at his scraped palms. His head is hurting from where he has banged it against the side of the rubbish skip and he’ll probably have a new collection of bruises by next morning. It makes him want to roll his eyes. That’s what he gets for sticking his nose where he shouldn’t have. He should have just kept walking and minded his own business, instead of stopping by when he had noticed the unrest going on a few feet away from where he was. A mugging, or perhaps just a beating to even a debt, he hadn’t cared to gather the detail. What had been evident, however, was that the guy in the middle was having a real rough time.

He had barely had the time to get one of the attackers off their target when that thing had fallen from the sky or, most likely, from the roof above their heads and the massacre had begun. The victim had run for his life almost immediately, and so had the remaining members of the gang, as soon as the creature had decided to turn on John next. Good thing that it had listened, when he had shouted that he was just trying to help the poor lad in turn. However, that had been after the impact of the thing against his barrier had slammed him into the dumpster.

“Cor blimey, mate!” Is the first exclamation that leaves his lips, once he is done gaping. It isn’t the first time something tries to eat him or to bite off a piece of him, but it isn’t exactly a daily occurrence either, especially not in the streets of San Francisco, on a night that isn’t any different from many others.

“That...Fuck.” Constantine raises his hands, showing his palms as he slowly takes a step closer to the man. His fingers are itching with the magic that is still coursing under his skin, ready to be use if the needs arises again. “That ’s one hell of a case of demonic possession you got there. Or whatever other kind of motherfucker slithered up your arse.”

Theoretically speaking, there is a limited number of creatures that can infiltrate and efficiently take possession of a human body, but experience has taught the magician that theory is rarely right and that, in real life, almost everything can find a way to do it, even when they shouldn’t have been able to.

“‘M an exorcist...n’ a lot of other things too,” he goes on, licking his lips briefly. Damn, he’s going to need a glass of something strong once they will be done there. Or, even better, a whole bottle. “What I mean ‘s...Dealin’ wit’ that kind of shite? ‘S what I do for a livin’. So, if you’re lookin’ for some help to get the wanker out, whatever it is, ‘m your guy.”