#i love hellblazer there's so much random shit

[constantineshots]

[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.

[venus-of-the-hrdsell]

It's Hellblazer anon again and I finished it! What an amazing read! There's a thousand positive things I could say about it but instead I'm going to rant at you about those last 50 issues. You once mentioned that Azzerello was your villain origin story....well Milligan is mine. I have never read such dogshit writing in my entire life. The fact that it was Hellblazer's last issues really bloody rubs me the wrong way as well. It was character assassination on a world wide level, no survivors, everyone was annihilated. MY GOD WHAT WAS PETER MILLIGAN THINKING?? John was sooo pathetic and old and obsessed with having a wife?! All he does in those last issues is be obsessed with boring women? Like sweetie don't you have better things to do?? Phoebe was so bland, Epiphany was genuinely the absolute worst and Milligan tried sooo hard to sell us on this weird marriage? He even went as far as to bring back Kit and get John to tell her that he loves this random chick way more than he loved Kit 😭 like wtf, Kit was so important to John, their relationship was so special and Milligan just had to shit all over it just to prove a point? Making Angie a punchline to fat jokes was disgusting and so unnecessary. Holy shit poor bloody Gemma? Everything around what happened with her was so revolting and she deserved so much better. Milligan just couldn't write good John angst so he had to absolutely destroy Gemma's character and I hate him so much for it. Not even Chas could escape the onslaught! John literally left Chas to die, the only reason he saved him is because his passport got rejected, like I'm sorry but John would not let his best mate die?! Also....where did the horror go?? It just turned into the John and Epiphany show where all they did was have sex and talk about how shit everyone else was. Speaking of, words can not describe how much I hate Epiphany. Two dimensional, written way too edgy, and her being that young just felt like Milligan was trying to act out a fantasy. I just.....hated this run with my entire being. So boring, so badly written, lacking substance and I was glad that it ended. Also I have no idea wtf that ending was but I hate Milligan for having that privilege and absolutely fucking it up. He also gets the medal for writing the absolute worst love interests. Sorry that got so long but I had to tell someone! I'm honestly just pretending that none of that was canon. Gemma forgave her uncle and became a doctor, Kit and Angie lived happily ever after, Chas got a cool new car and John got to have a pint. There, fixed it.

(I'm so sorry for answering this so late) but anon I hear you and I FEEL YOU because I was sleepless the night I finished Hellblazer because of HOW BAD those last 50 issues were. It's infuriating that this trash trainwreck had more issues than the good writers Hellblazer had??? Like???

It's genuinely one of the few runs in comics that aren't salvageable for me because it both destroys John as a character, destroys the Hellblazer lore and it's side characters and sends continuity to hell (there's so many errors I can easily list here). It's also incredibly misoginistic by vertigo standards because everyone woman on it either gets disrespected, shamed abused or FRIDGED. And the fact that DC saw the shitty work this writer did on John and was like "this is the PERFECT candidate to write a Constantine lead team Justice League Dark:) "

So my best advice is to do as I do (and Spurrier) and pretend that run doesn't exist. For me, Diggle's run is the perfect conclusion for Hellblazer (this, or the route Lemire took with John on Swamp Thong: Green Hell).

[littlehollyleaf]

Name ten favourite characters from ten different things (books, tv, film, etc.) 

Then tag ten people

Tagged (ages ago, whoops!) by @castiel-saved-me-from-myself 

(I’m sorry, I got distracted!)

1.Supernatural. Castiel.

Obviously. I may be out of the fandom now, but I��ve never loved a character as much as Cas, and probably never will.

2. Good Omens. Aziraphale.

Thought I’d put both my darling angels at the top :) I suspect that without Zira there to pave the way Castiel may not even have existed, so I love him double - for himself and for Cas as well :p 

While really quite different when it comes to their personalities (just think how Zira would SHUDDER at Cas’ trenchcoat), they share a lot of character traits and tropes (mini-series!Zira anyway, maybe less so in the book, or less obviously anyway), so, no surprise that I should adore them both. I’ve also said before, and I stand by it, that Aziraphale is sort of a combination of my favourite aspects of both Cas and Dean in one, with Cas’ struggle with Heaven/god and trying to be a good angel and finding he loves humanity/earth more, plus Dean’s whole ‘performing Dean’ thing and repression of queer feelings he is scared to admit to (out loud) because he believes they are somehow ‘wrong.’ 

...just to give a little insight into my feelings about these two that was neither needed nor asked for...

4. Hellblazer. NBC Constantine. Legends of Tomorrow. John Constantine. 

Aaaand the other guy I love twice because Cas, and indeed spn in general, kinda owe their existence to him. Though in turn his fabulous live action portrayal by Matt Ryan probably owes its existence to spn and Castiel’s popularity. So... there’s a weird ouroboros situation happening with my favs here that makes my head spin whenever I think about it, but I love it - stories within stories built on stories feeding off stories, which connects to wider themes of story and storytelling being vital and intrinsic to life and stuff.

Anyway, despite his wardrobe, Johnny is NOTHING LIKE CAS. He is, in fact, a lot like Dean. But I like him more. Maybe because he’s British :p He has the whole ‘repressing his feelings’ things, a bit like Zira, but it’s not because he thinks they are wrong, it’s more of a coping mechanism to deal with the constant tragedy/trauma his life/lifestyle/fate causes him to suffer. But whatever the reason, I like my characters facing that struggle :) (actually the British element is probably way more significant to my enjoyment of him than I’ve been fully aware of... that’s probably why I loved Zira so fast as well... obviously they are both a completely different class of British, literally, but the fact they ARE British is INTRINSIC to both their characters, and I guess a little, vaguely patriotic part of me is excited by that... :p)

4. Gotham. Edward Nygma.

Since I’ve started giving explanations - I love Eddie because he’s also got the whole ‘emotionally repressed’ / out of touch with (his) emotions thing going on (as seen in Zira and Cas), but with the addition of various geeky / ‘tech guy’ character traits that I also love.

5. Doctor Who (Classic). Vislor Turlough.

I waxed poetic once about how I liked Gotham’s Edward Nygma because he reminded me a bit of Turlough. That was early on in my Gotham days though and given how Eddie developed I don’t see as many similarities now. Turlough shares some of Eddie’s ‘dark’ traits however - self-centered, often lacking in empathy for others and nonplussed (sometimes even happy) to see them get into trouble or hurt. But ultimately his attempts to be self-serving and cowardly end up thwarted by him developing feelings for specific individuals despite his best efforts, which is what I enjoy about him (and actually that’s a lot like Eddie still, huh... their endgame’s are opposing though ofc - while Eddie goes on to embrace being a villain, Turlough gives up on villainy and even becomes a bit of a hero, now and then). Plus, Turlough is the ONLY Companion (IIRC?) to have joined the Doctor specifically in order to MURDER him and... idk, I just think that’s cool :P

6. Doctor Who (New). Donna Noble.

(I’m trying not to double up on fandoms/shows so I can cover more, but New and Classic Who count as different things, kinda, right...?)

Donna doesn’t really fit any of the character traits I’ve talked about above, though I guess her low self-esteem is something that all my other favs share in various ways (though it’s not such an EXPLICIT aspect of their characters and story arcs as it was for Donna I’d say). What I first loved about her was that after YEARS of New companions (and other randoms) being literally in love with the Doctor, she had a strictly platonic relationship with him. Yeah, I think maybe the show was a bit heavy-handed about it, but even so it came as a huge breath of fresh air and frankly a RELIEF to me. Not that I’m opposed to the Doctor having romantic/sexual  relationships, it was just that... coming from a childhood love of the Classic series where that just... didn’t happen (save a fleeting kiss in the TV Movie - which I actually enjoyed fyi!), it just... idk, was starting to stretch my credulity that EVERYONE seemed to be falling for him maybe? Or at least for me it was growing tiresome. So the fact she didn’t have that element to her character/story was a plus. Then I just adore how loud and brash she is when calling anyone, including the Doctor, out on their shit (I envy her that maybe). Plus I like the way she isn’t... traditional TV pretty, you know? (ie. young and slim, like a lot of other companions).

...or maybe I just like redheads *shrug emoji* 

7. Spartacus. Naevia.

(she has two actresses okay? and they both deserve kudos!)

Truth is I love FUCKING EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE IN THIS SHOW. Spartacus is like... my PERFECT SHOW. There isn’t a single moment, a single plotline, a single character that I don’t enjoy. I have never even CONSIDERED looking up or writing fic because the finished product is completely satisfying exactly as it is. God. But I wanted it represented in this list so I had to pick someone!

Considering the time period there couldn’t really BE a ‘geeky, emotionally repressed with low self-esteem’ character :p BUT nearly ALL of the characters have the whole ‘struggle to understand/discover who they are’ thing and the ‘who I am and want to be is counter to who I’ve been told I am / should be’ arc, on account of the main cast being rebelling slaves (though the other characters are equally complex and compelling and I love them too - Lucy Lawless in particular is incredible!). Anyone who’s seen me blog about the show before might have thought I’d pick either Agron or Nasir as my favs, since I do like to squee over their romance. But whenever I think about the show it’s usually Naevia who I remember first, because her character arc/development just BLEW ME AWAY. She went from someone I’d kinda dismissed at first as a typical het love interest to a WARRIOR GODDESS and you SEE all the key moments of that growth, you FEEL it, it makes ALL THE SENSE. And her romance with Crixus, which again I was initially a bit dismissive of as a typical, sudden, weak het romance, grows into, imo, one of the deepest, most developed, most believable love stories in the show. So yeah. Naevia. Amazing.

8. Due South. Ray Vecchio. 

(he’s the guy not the dog - gifs were limited! ...also the dog is actually a wolf, it’s a whole thing... that doesn’t need exploring at this juncture)

Ray was my first TV crush :P He had a bit of a sidekick vibe to him I guess, which I like (lead characters tend not to interest me as much). He wasn’t ‘geeky’ exactly, but he def had the ‘trying to look/act cooler than I am’ thing going on... also an obsessive attachment to his vintage car... meanwhile his partner Benny was the stoic, ‘British, stiff upper lip, keep emotions in check’ one who was always trying to live up to the ideal persona dictated by his people/employers, in this case the Royal Canadian Mounted Police... HUH, so... it’s actually SUPER WEIRD that I ended up loving Cas and Zira over Dean and Crowley when it seems pretty clear suddenly that my first big fictional fav was CLEARLY the Dean-Crowley to Benny’s Cas-Zira......?? Ray was FUNNY in a way Dean and Crowley aren’t though, I think? He def filled a ‘comic relief’ slot on the regular and I liked that a lot (it also made his serious, angsty moments EXTRA serious and angsty, and extra angst is something I always love!)

9. The Librarians. Eve Baird.

Remember this little show? It was... is... sorta ridiculous. Not amazing. Based on some... very cheap, very OBVIOUS Indiana Jones rip-off films, that were also ridiculous and... not... great (the third one is the best, with an awesome performance by Stana Katic aka Kate Beckett as a vampire, but I digress). But... idek, I am EXTREMELY FOND of the series for some reason :p

There are a WHOLE BUNCH of characters that fit my ‘type’ more than Eve tbh... in fact... probably every.single.other.main.cast.member (save perhaps Jenkins?) shares the traits above that typically make a character my fav. But... EVE! I just... think she’s neat! ...maybe it’s BECAUSE all the others are main/lead characters that makes me gravitate towards her? In a cast where ‘geeky, socially awkward, struggles with emotions’ is the norm, Eve being the no-nonsense, socially competent, badass soldier type therefore becomes different and thus more interesting to me? Also, much like with Donna, I appreciate that she’s an older woman who gets to have a full character and plot of her own. There’s also something about her romance with Flynn that... makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

10. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Jonathan Levinson.

(tumblr gif search failed me so I had to grab from elsewhere...)

Listen. Look. Okay. Buffy is pretty old school these days so, for anyone not in the know, as a character, originally, Jonathan... he wasn’t even a side character, he wasn’t even REOCCURRING, he was barely a background character. For several episodes he didn’t have a name and it wasn’t until several seasons after he became ‘Jonathan’ that he actually got a surname. Danny Strong was just an actor who happened to be occasionally on-hand when the script called for a random to have a line, until eventually that happened often enough for Joss to think ‘hey, you know what, let’s make this guy an actual part of the show...’ 

He got a couple of episodes focused on him in S03 and S04 respectively, but didn’t become a regular until S06 (and wasn’t in S05 AT ALL). Other than that he had a HANDFUL of ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moments here and there, not even full scenes for the most part, usually lasting no longer than the above gif.

I tell you all this so that when I say childhood me (well... somewhere between 12 and 14 years anyway) was OBSESSED with this character in the show, and I mean O B S E S S E D (to the point of spending hours painstakingly making VHS recordings purely of the episodes he was in), you understand how UTTERLY BIZARRE that was. Because this obsession pre-dated S06. Was, in fact, in full swing during the airing of his S04 episode - which was, like, a fucking DREAM COME TRUE for freakily obsessed me fyi, because the whole episode was constructed with him as the LEAD CHARACTER, because he’d performed a spell to make him super awesome. They even changed the title sequence to read ‘Jonathan’ instead of Buffy! And while other fans were no doubt just lol-ing at the random I was bouncing about on my sofa all ‘MY TIME HAS COME!’ and fucking SWOONING over seeing MY CHARACTER suddenly in the spotlight and getting to do crazy fun OOC shit like this -

Then when S06 rolled around and HE WAS A LEGIT REGULAR, omg, I was in HEAVEN! First TV boxset I ever bought that - Buffy S06 :P

So... yeah. A bit of a fav. Geeky. Outcast. Slowly grows more morally grey, what with that spell I mentioned and also the fact he was teamed with the ANTAGONISTS in S06. I guess you could say he was the beginning of a lot of my fav fictional character traits/tropes (though looking back - I think his ‘villainous’ teammates in S06, Andrew and Warren, are more my ‘type’ these days, and I did end up loving Andrew especially a whole damn lot, but at the time I’d been a Jonathan fangirl for so.fucking.long. there was just no chance anyone else in the show was ever gonna come close to my heart!)

THE END.

Sorry not sorry for the tmi. I got a bit too into this one.

Actually sorry I have so few women on the list :( Internalised misogyny/sexism is a real thing and I spent a lot of my life being... somewhat unfairly dismissive of female characters or at least prioritising male ones over them. I’m working on it.

Ten people is SO.MANY. to tag. But I might as well do this right this time, since I’ve come so far. But if you’d rather not play, no worries! <3

@enchantersnight @momecat @bold-sartorial-statement @vampirebillionaire @edwardnashtons @miss-olivia-cellophane @knightinpinkunderwear @supes9 @leaper182 @hamburgergod

Honourable mentions (because I CAN):

Gotham. Lucius Fox.

Gotham. Fish Mooney.

Gotham. Tabitha Galavan.

Doctor Who. The Doctor.

Doctor Who. The Master/Missy.

Supernatural. Hannah.

Supernatural. Naomi.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Andrew Wells.

[morethanonepage]

Constantine

send me a character and i’ll list:

favorite thing about them: ugh who knows he’s TERRIBLE. (ok but seriously it’s that while he’s terrible and pretends to be sooooo dark and tortured and selfish, he cares so much about his friends -- like more than half the shit he gets into is bc he was out helping “an old friend” who usually dies or at least is never seen again BUT STILL)

least favorite thing about them: how he’s written every time he’s put on a TEAM(tm) which seems ironic bc I do like seeing John w/ people he considers friends but that’s only for his normie friends -- his normie working class buddies are the only people I want or need to see John Constantine hanging out w/

favorite line: “Does he swallow?” (s/o to that deep cut tho tbf it’s probably not a deep cut w/in this fandom circle)

brOTP: John/Ellie in the comics (just general shouts out to Ellie, living the Demon/Angel love story w/ the most tragic of endings)

OTP: i mean it’s obvious but look it’s canon, the alt world teen lesbians prove it!!!! (it’s john/chas and it will always be john/chas bc i’m trash for soulmates to best friends to lovers, sorrrrryyyyy)

nOTP: john/team stories. also john/epiphany like WHAT the fuck

random headcanon: it’s comics canon that john watches like, a lot of pop culture stuff (your Doctor Whos, your Star Treks) and he’s seen Spinal Tap, so I do picture show!John esp being big into like, keeping up with The Golden Age of Television somewhat and/or watching a lot of Fast & Furious or Conjuring movies. He hates Sherlock and the MCU. Nu Who is on thin fucking ice since Eccleston left.

unpopular opinion: “John is shit at relationships” is kind of like a canon wide assumption but honestly?? By the time comics-canon starts up he’s not that bad. Like when he’s in actual committed monogamous relationships within the Hellblazer timeline at least, he does....okay. No worse than most men honestly, especially with Kit & Dani. What I’m saying is when he got around to settling down with Chas it would go fine. It’d be fine! Neither of them talks about feelings but their love languages are in tune & it’s all good.

song i associate with them: I Heard It Through the Grapevine, but the California Raisins version.

favorite picture of them:

it’s where he belongs. just pressing his face into the comforting chest/shoulder area of a warm bear dilf.

[awesome22123]

LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS

Right off the bat I wanna say I love Constantine, the character, John is my favorite bisexual arsehole. And I got really excited when I first heard the news that we’d be getting more comics about him. Sure I’m a little late in picking them up but better sometime than never right? Here’s some of the things that have been glaringly obvious on my first read through

The most recent [and I’m talking like 2015-6 recent] attempt at DC to make Constantine a more mainstream character. Since he’s always been a more callous and dark story it could be tough to get the age group DC usually aims for with most of their comics [13+] to get into reading a swearing, dark magic abusing alcoholic. That’s the kinda junk bad guys do. So they’ve tried to sort of tone him down.

While I love John,  he’s my favorite idiot, I’m used to the grungy bastard from the original DC run and Vertigo’s guy.

Even though that’s still kinda new, 2000′s ish, but it’s a good representation of the kind of grunge I expect from John Constantine. 

This guy still looks too clean cut. Like you might still introduce this dude to your friends, maybe a brother. Older Constantine is someone you’d kick back into the gutter to get away from if you saw him in the middle of the night. That’s the John I know.

Before we even talk about all the other junk that stuck out to me, this stuck out every single time mentioned. John has more eyes for blokes [one in particular in this volume] but they’re showing off more of John’s attraction towards men from the start here. Yes he’s bisexual, yes that’s how it’s been since the beginning, he’s a bi character, you’ll never take him from me, not even from my cold dead hands. And while it does touch on his life’s big in love moment, and it was with a woman, it feels like they’re trying to showcase his bisexuality more and his tastes in men. I’m all for that, I love that, I WANT THAT IN MORE BOOKS GODDAMMIT. 

It still feels slightly like a very obvious statement on his sexuality, like I can’t put it into words very well but it’s like they’re trying to make up for him having more sexual interaction with females in the past by inserting more thoughts on how he sees the men around him. And it feels a teeny bit in your face almost. I don’t know if that’s cause I’ve gotten so used to seeing that kinda shit from a straight persons point of view in comics and books and EVERYWHERE, so my brain is picking up on it more easily cause I haven’t seen it as much. Or if it is as forced in there as other romances usually are in plots these days. Still unsure about that, gunna think on it a bit more.

Let’s get back to that attempt at mainstreaming this storyline eh? DC’s ratings go from E- for everyone up to mature. So if we’re talking mainstream comics and culture we’re talking shit that’s somewhere between E for everyone and  Teen Plus [which is 15+]. Now, considering most of the shit that happens in Hellblazer; selling your soul to demons, hanging out with them, summoning them, rampant alcoholism, non-stop smoking, possessions, blood and carnage, random shagging [sometimes demonic sometimes not] it feels like it should be more for mature readers. Yanno intense violence, extensive profanity, nudity, sexual themes.

Here’s what they’ve done to mainstream John

They censor the swear words, mostly Fuck [like oh no we can do all the others but not the big bad F word]. Which is more Teen+

John gets little pentagrams

And the ghosts get these cute little skulls 

Of course there’s nudity 

It’s mostly censored nudity, so even though everyone knows its there we don’t actually get to see it. So they can still let it pass for Teen+ [graphic imagery and/or suggestive themes]

But here’s something that hedges the dangerous side of the fence

We know he’s having a shag, we don’t see any of the bits and pieces, but it’s quite obvious he’s having a shag. Now yeah, I get what you’re saying, they didn’t show nothing, it still falls under suggestive theme. I would agree if it wasn’t for the definition of the mature rating, they’re bumped up from suggestive to sexual themes.

We are very aware that he’s having a shag, there’s nothing to suggest here lads, we know damn well it’s happening. Now, I’m not hung up on a technicality, maybe a tinge, but we’re talking about shagging a demon mate, that’s gotta bump it up a notch. 

Then we have our main issue of the comic, a vengeance monster coming along and going after all of John’s ghost friends [by that I mean all the friends John had who ended up dead cause he done ballsed something up and they ended up as ghosts haunting his arse]. And halfway through, he has a depressive episode, drinks himself stupid, and gets them destroyed into nothing. Lemme simplify, he already got these people killed once, and then he fucks up a second time and gets their ghosts turned into NOTHING during a drunken stupor. There ain’t nothing Teen+ about that besides John’s immaturity in handling the situation.

If we’re gunna show all of that crap but censor swearing, then you shouldn’t be wasting time with censorship to try and make this accessible to a slightly younger crowd. 

I want more John, but I want raw John, this feels more like a John that’s been watered down enough so you can give a half glass [with ice] to your younger brother so he doesn’t get fucking wasted cause you’re stuck babysitting but you wanted to throw a party with booze. 

I’m still gunna read the rest of this, I wanna see where they take him. I wanna see if we hit real grundge. And I would recommend it, but I’d recommend it after you’ve read some of the older stuff so you can see the difference between original and new.

[dapperfvck-arc]

ok, so random question I've had for you for fifty years and keep forgetting to ask. What would your ideal canon for John be? From all of his incarnations, what would you keep? What would you throw out? What would you like to burn in a fire?

Although it’s probably been muddied over the couple years I’ve been running this blog (second anniversary coming early in January eyyyy *fingerguns*), I’ve pretty much given up on DC’s stuff aside from his inception in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing. I’ve yet to read anything that was completely satisfying. Even Simon Oliver’s early issues of the Rebirth series I felt were somewhat lacking. No offense, maybe he was under pressures in the background by editors, but it was 95% of a nostalgic circle jerk. I’ll never forgive him for what he did with Map, who is hands down one of my favorite side characters in Hellblazer, either. Injustice and Justice League Dark and New 52 in general can go choke on the biggest, most aggressive dick ever.

So I’ve pretty much given over entirely to the old Vertigo series, which is a much more satisfying read overall. I do have two writers and their story arcs that I completely ignore like “I don’t know her”. Long time followers will know, but for people who haven’t been or haven’t been awake at four am when I’m incoherently bitching, I hate Brian Azzerello’s run with the fire of a thousand burning suns and didn’t bother with Peter Milligan’s run after too many trusted people had told me that it was a waste of paper. I think I read one or two of his issues and checked out after he retconned Nergal’s blood back into John, knowing his demonic other half would be in later issues AND YOU CAN’T HAVE BOTH BECAUSE DEMON!JOHN WAS CREATED OUT OF A GOLUM THAT JOHN MADE OF HIMSELF AND ONE OF THE COMPONENTS WAS NERGAL’S BLOOD. There’s a lot more to hate, too. Basically I’ve had friends tell me about Peter Milligan’s story arcs and gotten mad af and relieved that I didn’t try to read it like I did with other things that just left me angry that I’d wasted time on it.

But for more positive things: I live and breath for Warren Ellis’s brief run and Andy Diggle’s. They are peak quality Hellblazer. I’ve also re-read a lot of Garth Ennis’s over a holiday in October and gained a new respect for them. It’s really hard to tell that he hated John. Either that or the hatred was in retrospect idek. XD; I also may have been looking for overlapping themes with Preacher. (100% the idea for Genesis was birthed in Hellblazer, rooted in the story of Ellie’s affair with an angel that ended with her pregnant and giving birth to a half demon/half angel, and it’s absolutely my head canon that Genesis is that progeny.) 

I tend to treat his canon as fast and loose because honestly? Not a lot of people have read the old Hellblazer comics. I will say most of the things that John will mention one off in a conversation are references to events that happened in the comic. When it comes to major life events and relationships, I keep them in tact. Generally I consider his mainverse as vaguely occurring after  issue #249 of Hellblazer. With Brian Azzerello’s issues completely struck out of his history. Nope never happened. I don’t give a fuck. 

Of course I also love the Constantine movie to pieces and aggressively defend it and its choices, however I do consider it an alternate universe. Obviously, given they chose to change his nationality, lore, and race (and let me tell you it never stops amusing me that in this day and age when people claim to be hungry for race bending characters that people shit so hard on Keanu as John because he “doesn’t look the part”. Mind you know it’s because most people seem to slap a vague “white guy” label on Keanu even though he’s clearly and obviously racially diverse, but still. Too funny).

Also uh, for super new followers, I’m super not into the TV series so if you came for that, you should probably lower your expectations, but hey, maybe you’ll still like my writing, so stick around ????? 

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2017 Fic Roundup Meme

Total Fics Posted: Nine. Ooof. 

Total Words Posted: 44041

Total Words (of Anything Excluding Blogs) Written: Man I don’t even know how I’d count this -- I’ve written at least ten briefs for work and those are usually between 2 - 5 pages, and I write a lot of WIPs that I don’t end up posting. So I mean it’s probably in the 100,000 range but the majority of that (obviously) is either not fandom related or not likely to see the light of day as publicly consumable or both.

My favorite fic story this year: greenwood -- written as part of an AU meme and so so random -- Maurice-AUs are hardly a fandom trope y’know -- but man that’s one I wish I could commit to writing more of. I love Maurice (both the film and the book) so much and I love John/Chas so much as a pairing that I just kind of forced it to work, and I think it mostly did. But it’s just too far from the Constantine premise to be worth expanding, beyond just for the gimmick. Like as a historical AU I feel like I’d have to incorporate some magic nonsense to it and it wouldn’t be impossible but ugh, plots. Better to leave them in that nice, tender moment with all the possibilities before them. My one regret for it was that I got a little fade-to-black about the sex (not true in the initial conception and I did a little draft of some more explicit from Chas’ POV) but in the end I felt like I’d written too much porn lately (and was trying to be in keeping with the aesthetic of the original story), so.

My best story this year: Adrift -- I’ve re-read it to myself a bunch of times, and I just genuinely enjoyed working through it and figuring out the relationship dynamics and possibilities and putting in references to so many well established headcanons of mine. And John’s SUCH an unreliable narrator/POV character that I always have a great time trying to write him as clearly feeling SOMETHING while he’s pretending he doesn’t. And idk it’s just one of my top pairings ever and I was glad to finally devote myself to writing a nice, slow developing relationship fic with just the two of them working their shit out. 

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:  Honestly at this point, given that I’m writing almost entirely John/Chas fics, and otherwise for very niche pairings, I think any appreciation my fics get is a miracle. Though I do kind of wish I’d written Adrift in the Constantine fandom’s hey-day, because it’s a chaptered developing relationship fic and those are hard to come by and I feel weird saying it’s great but it’s solid and got really good reactions from people who did read it, and I’m proud of that. 

Also I’m not as proud of blended cotton with gannex twill, in terms of its actual quality (I’m not sure the POV shifts quite work as well as I wanted them to) but it took me SO LONG to finish it and it was such a goofy premise that I’m really glad I did, and again I’m a little sad some of the early-day Constantine people didn’t get a chance to read it when I first started goofing around about the possibility of a sentient trenchcoat.

I’m also kind of surprised a reasonable amount of trouble was the least popular of the historic AUs I wrote -- I joked that I didn’t really know what noir was but I think it was close enough and I tried to set a (vaguely angsty) mood of both yearning but inevitable dissatisfaction to it. Maybe I didn’t go gritty enough with it? That tends to be my flaw for any Hellblazer related stuff, admittedly -- I can’t quite commit to the bleakness I know it merits.

Sexiest Story:  Adrift has a lot of sex in it (IT’S NECESSARY TO THE PLOT, she said, not at all defensively), which was described with a fair amount of detail, and then I backed up to more subtle depictions b/c I thought all that sex stuff would get boring. There’s also a lot of John telling himself he’s pretty meh on the sex itself. So I feel like the sexiness of it was kind of neutered by it being so much about the plot (like, the shifts of what they actually get up to were to represent emotional shifts in how they were feeling about each other). Which at least made it less sexy for me to write, anyway.

I got good feedback about The (Shamelessly Indulgent) Sex Chapter in blended cotton with gannex twill [which was somewhat necessary b/c I wanted to get all manner of bodily fluids on the coat b/c in my vague headcanon/justification that’s what actively pushes it into true sentience but--], but honestly I think my truly sexiest fic of the year is mages against literacy -- to the point I was actively embarrassed writing it, and didn’t read it again for months after I posted it, and then went back and was like “w o w”.

Most fun story:  blended cotton with gannex twill. TRENCHIE NO! TRENCHIE YES.

Also a boy with a thorn in his side is....fun for me and a few very specific people, probably. I wrote another high school AU Star Wars fic in 2016 that was way more fun and goofy and idealistic -- it’s called the id fic for a reason -- but if the id fic was what I wish high school had been like for me, ABWATIHS is -- what high school was, tbh. I mean not precisely, but Cassian’s EMOTIONS and his inability to deal with them was #relatable. I wrote it so fast, mostly because I was so intrigued by the possibilities of it and the headcanons I came up with for it, which I’m still really fond of. Like if I were to ever write original fic, I’d file off the serial numbers and make a go of it there.

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: In Good Faith wasn’t, in my opinion, a great fic -- I wrote it too quickly and without enough of a reason beyond ‘someone asked for it’, and some parts were very derivative -- but I did work through some things with it, about Kes and Shara’s potential relationship history, and about what Shara’s flaws might be and what her life was like and why she and Kes work so well together. Not a lot of which actually came out in the fic IMO, but at least I had that going on in my head. 

Hardest story to write: partly mors et fugacem persequitur virum, because I didn’t remember nearly as much about Roman history as I thought I did (and what was I going to do, research??? [I did do some but none of it is actually like -- visible in the fic], and I was overconfident about my ability to make it work and still be in IC. I’m.....still not sure if I didn’t fail on one or both of those accounts.

Also I wrote Anything Can Happen (On Halloween) for no fucking reason other than because I wanted to post the 100th fic in the John/Chas tag (I EARNED THISSS) and I think it shows. Again I wrote it too quickly (in about a week?? ridiculous), I was too nervous about someone else posting something else as the 100th fic instead of me and that my hardwork would’ve GONE TO WASTE wah wah wah anyway the ending was boring and I still feel guilty about it not being very good.  Biggest surprise: Anything Can Happen (On Halloween) was actually surprisingly (to me) well received -- like it got very quick positive reactions and idk why since I’m still genuinely embarrassed by it -- I mean I don’t think it’s a bad fic but it’s rushed and clunky and not terribly original.  A story I want remembered:  Someone on twitter said that Adrift made them ship John/Chas and honestly that’s all I want for it -- that and for the people who keep coming to the lil’ Constantine fandom that there is and go looking for fic find it and read it and at least kind of understand why some rando keeps flooding the tag with John/Chas nonsense. 

Resolutions for 2018: This has been a very John/Chas year for me and while I’m mostly okay with that, I do want to at least try to make my way back to finnpoe again -- I’m working on a bigbang fic so I desperately want to finish that (it’s outlined and everything and I think it may end up being one of my most personal fics) but we’ll see -- Star Wars fandom continues to push me away, and I won’t be able to post it until May, which is rough for someone like me, who depends so much on positive attention. There’s also a bunch of DamFam things I want to explore, especially now. 

I also want to keep writing the John/Chas but I want to stop feeling so embarrassed about it -- like so what that it was so long ago, people are still into it! Every few weeks or so I get someone on tumblr clearly going through my John/Chas tag, anyway. So at least I will have/still have some readers for that nonsense. 

I want to be better about prompts people give me -- I try to set expectations at the floor level for these things but I do genuinely like writing things for people, at least partly b/c I’m terrible at coming up with ideas on my own, so I want to try harder to fill memes and such. 

And idk maybe I’d like to find another ship that I like, that’s not from a dead show, where the fandom isn’t the worst. DARE TO DREAM (the impossible dream).