#we got a lot more lore for him

[aeroplaneblues]

A Heart is a Heavy Burden💙

4.2 AQ was such heartbreaking way to end of Fontaine’s story but I’m happy with most of it. It was def an improvement from Inazuma and it answered a lot of questions, I’m looking forward to more!

These two some moots and i got tsunami-d in after the AQ, the angst potential is strong and for me it has a lot of things I like in a ship🥰

[fyllophobia]

think fast! surprise trust fall

[sweetandsourcookies]

lying here in bed and thinking abt how alienated out i feel in the cookie run fandom. and then theres a polish sitcom playing in the background from a different room.

[seventh-district]

not even gonna tag this properly bc i don't wanna get Involved but i do have some Thoughts i need to get out into the void so here we go

(aaa quick edit: CW for mention/discussion of Boothill leaks)

[phoenixcatch7]

Man I am just SO CONFUSED. About the time line of this game.

No one is telling me how long links been gone! Or how long the botw-totk timeskip was! They all just started selling my stuff again lol. I'm going to have to get everything redyed!

Me: hey random stranger! Lore dump? You look like a lore dumper.

Kindly npc: why hullo there, link ^^! My, I haven't seen you in a while since the calamity ended! I was so worried when they said you and the princess had gone missing! But it's good to see you're well.

Me: aw, thanks. How long has it actually been tho.

Kindly npc: ^u^

[andragoras-in-vanity]

i know veilgaurd is absolutely incredible for gender reasons, and that it doesnt just let me have top scars but actually lets me acknowledge im trans in conversation like with taash and then when flirting with davrin (still dont know if im gonna romance him or lucanis yes, but asaan did cockblock me?????) but i do wish i could have gotten healing spells....although thinking about it now, because i wish i could have also given my rook my chronic pain/cfs, it makes sense i wouldnt be able to take healing spells, this is my new canon....(like either i get healing spells bevause i know pain and want to limit it for myself and others OR disability is disabling and im incapable of using healing spells since just like real life nothing eases this) anyway..

I like to headcanon that my rook DOES have chronic fatigue or minor pain because im an elf, but im also a mourn watcher, and it feels weird and wrong and unnatural to me for an elf to be living in the nevarra necropolis. i really love that being a mourn watcher has made me weird in conversation and just absolutely ready to let emmerich know how i want to be treated after i die, but nevarra is so dark and dusty, i have to wonder if as an elf being so close to spirits and so far from nature would effect me? so yeah, rook is screaming at all times and loves his home in the necropolis, myrna and vorgoth, the dead and the spirits, but leaving after the war of the banners helped him feel whole once he saw the forests for the first time, connected to his elven lineage (lmfao sorry bro), then he met varric who helped him get his top surgery. but it was the spirits and their lack of genders that helped him realize he also needed to do away with gender tho. i just really love my rook and this is the first time ive played a da game and not felt like i needed to run through it a few times to get everything out of it because i had to choose between male or female. also hes freaking adorable as hell.

[pavlovianpanic]

im surprised no one has mentioned this to me bc i just call it a "college verse" but in reality, sean is older than mark. yes, i did account for that!

nathan is 19 (i have fixed the mistakes of LIS 1), his sister based on what we know / what she says has to be ... 24? 25? at earliest.

because she works with the peace corps and you have to have a master's in social work for that, so we kind of assume she's likely gotten through schooling quick (including high school) to escape sean.

she has the resources / was well-educated, likely very smart, motivated, and wanted out. with warren around, is anyone surprised that someone else could be intelligent enough?

nathan, while texting like a maniac, writes very well, so it's clear he's smart, just misguided. he can't be dumb to do what he does.

he's inexperienced, lacks wisdom, and doesn't even know the right questions to ask. how can he even begin to find answers? by telling people everything he knows. he is busting at the seams to do this ... quite unlike his father.

mark is born april 11, 1975, so in october 2013, he's 38. if sean were mark's exact age, he would have been 13 or so when his daughter was born. not possible.

interestingly enough ...

"This information can be found on a website opened on Max's computer in Episode 3 set up to protest against Mr. Jefferson's suspension if he got suspended in the previous episode. Originally, Jefferson's date of birth was April 11, 1967, but it was changed with a patch update on January 15, 2016."

okay, okay ... why change it? be real: jefferson looks his age.

he looks 38. not quite 40, struggling with being washed up, and still "available" to his young audience. what i mean by that is that he seems just attainable enough to be cool, not "quite as old as their parents" so he has relevance to them, and can understand them. i am not saying he is a "good fit" for students, i am just saying i get why they would change this. he doesn't come off as almost fifty, he comes off as someone struggling to be almost forty. i imagine thirty was very hard for him.

his original date of birth lines up a lot better, but i have to do what i have to do:

so, likely, sean has to be born somewhere around 1968, making him around 45 in LIS 1. i go with this year: 1968.

we would assume he's also born earlier in the year, probably around may (idk why i picked may tbh). this means he was around 20-21 when his daughter was born, in the prime of his college youth.

a quick bit about sean and his wife: what's going on?

his wife i imagine was a year beneath him. they met at a football game. he was 19, she was 18. they dated until they had a breakup at just around 21 for sean, 20 for her. she went back to florida.

sean graduates in chicago, starts going for his master's during his daughter's childhood, and finishes after nathan is born.

she found out she was pregnant, had kris on her own for a while, creating a "distance" with kris and sean.

in rekindling, they started seeing each other again. she later becomes pregnant with nathan. they finally get married at her insistence (they can't keep putting this off, she's having his second kid now). he agrees. he does have to finish his master's, which he insists doing in chicago. things go wrong, but he finishes, separates from mark, and goes to florida to now be a father and husband (and do business there, which he finds profitable for the "legacy" part of his life, not the dark room business he was pursuing).

a brief aside about sean and abuse.

this explains a lot why and he kris are so distant. he doesn't know how to be a dad to nathan, but is more "present" for him.

becoming more devoted to caroline, being a dad, being in florida ... this all accounts for mark and sean separating (on top of their "mistake" or the incident), as well as nathan being born and primarily raised in florida. i leave it vague if he came back his junior year right before blackwell turned over into a senior academy or right as a first-year senior.

onto sean and mark:

it's easier to call it a "college verse" but it's not that simple. mark is an undergrad. he's young, up-and-coming, freshly eighteen, and ready to take on the world. he has a darkness in him, but that's fine, he can manage it. his work is a little eccentric, a little scary, but hey, it makes him thrilling. after all, he's from some dumb place called fruitland, idaho, but he moved to oregon young, somewhere around grants pass, but was given an opportunity to go to the american academy of art, chicago. he accepted.

sean is from oregon. he also got an opportunity to go to college in chicago, but he was not going to the same university. in fact, by the time mark gets there, sean is going for a master's in business, likely the university of chicago. sean is around 24 when he starts his master's, which takes 1-4 years, probably around 3 for him. he's also ... delaying a bit his time there for dark room purposes with mark.

nathan is a photographer. mark is a photographer. sean is a businessman with experience in a dark room ie he can develop photos, but he's not really keen to take them. he pulls the business strings for mark, mark takes the shots, sean and mark sell these images to a darker clientele where they feed a niche market and essentially take "requests" with a theme being very much a loss of innocence. an unsurprisingly heavy market. we know their target types, we know how they operate. they are dangerous men that, separate, are individually dangerous, but together? far worse.

so, sean is older than mark ... how do they meet?

mark has to make a living in college / sean is set up to not fail. when mark reaches out for freelance work, sean accepts his offer (not a direct call to sean, more a general call to an audience that sean accepts). mark has unknowingly called his best and worst asset to his side by doing this; this is the man that will help encourage mark to become who he is. it has to start somewhere.

"my name is sean prescott, and i am reaching out in response to your ad. i think we have similar visions. i would like to meet. call me."

this is sean's answer to mark (not a screencap, this is an edit by me).

but mark, again, has been fighting this all along, right? he's undoubtedly troubled, just far more put together, and he doesn't have a rich family to go unhinged on the public with, so he's got to play this far better than nathan in the future.

this is why he partially sees himself in nathan; he crafts nathan the way he wants to craft him. sean is also crafting nathan. he has been nathan's whole life. this is a battle for nathan's soul ... no outcome is good for him. either option ends poorly. meanwhile, nathan is also acting a lot on his own in the future, so ... take that as you will.

basically -> sean is in his master's program with all his personal drama going on and is forming this very toxic relationship with him.

sean is someone mark fears, respects, and wants to thrive under ... but wants his own success. they work together at first, and it goes well, but then there's the incident (among other things we shall not discuss ... that's a lis joke btw), and things fall apart, they go their separate ways, and then it is sean that calls on mark ... and mark answers his call all these years later. it is not the 1980s and 1990s anymore. most of their active time was in the 1990s.

sean is 21 by 1989. he started college in 1986.

so, i call it a college verse, but it's a little more complicated than that.

and this isn't even getting into their feelings on each other, their dynamic, mark's submission and fear of sean, how they operate together in LIS 1, etc. but that phone call ... is everything i needed. their dynamic is exactly as otter and i predicted it to be.

mark is the way he is now bc xyz leads to xyz (insert meta here).

sean comes into mark's life at an impressionable age. i've mentioned mark already had a darkness in him that he was "managing" to a degree, finding an artistic outlet for, and was just sort of "coping" with. maybe all people have this? he's considered that. that they're just hiding it. maybe that's a source to seek innocence? a proof it exists (finds it does, becomes obsessed, has a type himself) / it eventually fills a market niche he is providing for.

but no question - sean and mark have a toxic relationship (use the word relationship to your discretion).

sean is manipulative to mark, mentally abuses him, emotionally degrades him, makes mark reliant on him emotionally and financially, has a power and age dynamic over mark, and is also coaching mark how to be evil and get away with it. sean finds mark's clients, allows mark to "be free with his art" while making money, and is funding his lifestyle. sean lies to mark about his life, his family, and only really gives vague and cryptic context about his past, not his present. her infers he has a wife, but never children.

sean essentially coaxes and encourages mark to be his worst.

without sean, mark would objectively be bad, but not as ... not quite what we see. without sean, mark isn't even "mark" to the way we know him. sean made mark in his image, but they split, so mark becomes his own man under the influence sean gave to him. they have an age difference.

when mark is 38, sean is 45, so about 7 years.

mark at 18 vs mark at 38? with a 25-26-year-old sean as his "mentor" at 18-19+?

with how nathan turned out? arguably, without sean, there is no mark jefferson as we know him. he would have been a bad boss or lover and a creep, sure, but i don't think he would have started the dark room without sean ... because the dark room is sean's.

mark does to nathan what sean does to mark a lot, but mark is also acting in tandem with sean as this "good and bad cop" routine i've talked about.

nathan and his mother:

nathan relies a lot on his mom for self-confidence and comfort, but they aren't close right now because he's at blackwell.

she's kind of like a favorite person type, but i'd say she's more like "the lightest hand" he knows. the way sean favored his mother, nathan favored his own.

some extra context.

i mean that literally for nathan btw he favors his mother in having bipolar but also in face quite a bit. yes, he looks like sean, but nathan is much thinner, lankier, and overall positioned genetically to look like his mother as the firstborn son. daughters look like their dads as firstborns. so it makes sense? kris favors sean / nathan favors their mother (caroline). however, nathan does have his father's hair color. we can see that in their photo together.

nathan finds comfort in his mom in that she is a) highly religious so sort of offers him faith and healing, something he terrorizes kate over. more on that soon. she not necessarily "babies" him but definitely sees the best in him? she sees nathan as a good boy that is struggling, that he is emotional, and that he needs help. while sean says "book an appointment with us", caroline is more available to nathan when he's with her. he often cries to her, is very emotional, and overall much ... i don't want to say softer but more "authentic" in a way that he isn't with others. he's not as guarded.

nathan's mom gives him boundaries. while she's a spiritual advocate, she kind of ... holds that over his head. his virtue is important to her. she knows he's suffering, but she's following her husband's lead her, and that lead is having a tight leash that he barely watches the dog on, if that makes sense?

nathan's mom favors kate marsh quite a bit. not physically necessarily, but definitely in the whole "she was a good girl, got involved with a bad guy, and essentially got coerced into this marriage, became a wife and mother, and essentially was silenced". she is fragile herself, and she feels for nathan, but is sometimes unavailable to him.

he feels that she might be the only one that truly loves him? the others would be victoria, he thought mark, and rachel. he convinced himself she loved him the way he "loved" her.

she isn't much of a phone person? that's more sean's thing. so, she writes letters to nathan, i think. he keeps them.

she worries about him at blackwell. she knows there are temptations.

she doesn't know too much of what he's actually doing ... but she does fear for him, and assuages often that he needs to go to church with her. he hates going to church. he stopped going as a teen.

she feels guilty. sean presses hard that he should have picked a "better womb" for nathan, degrading his wife while sort of weaponizing his son. she also feels guilty for "giving nathan bipolar" or "making him sick". this is an unfair tactic essentially beaten into her by sean, primarily mentally influencing her view of herself and her son.

whatever happens to nathan? she cannot really bear it. it's easier if he's in prison. we have no idea where she is during the storm, presumably somewhere safe? losing so much is just so hard on her. nathan going missing / dying or him going to prison is just not ideal. if he goes to prison, she does visit him, but she is ... afraid of him? something complicated. more than what i can say.

this basically accounts mostly for timeline stuff for mark, sean, and caroline, as well as the kids.

this post is good to follow up with. it explains even more.

[ilovettrpgs]

rip Magnus Carter you would have loved causing problems for the general public and also not having mad cow syndrome

[anothermonikan]

Have I told you guys about the fucked up dreams I've been having recently? I've been having some fucked up dreams lately. yeah <3

[torgawl]

when will genshin give us any sort of information on the underground intelligence network? we don't even have a name for it... GIVE US A CRUMB. A SINGLE ONE, I BEG.

[citrine-elephant]

what if zane just had implants in his brain to make him think faster (on account of how fast he can move and process the battlefield)

but it was just that meme of "i'm stupid, FASTER"

[gensymscribes]

grumbling and kicking rocks down the road as i continue sulking about rasputin

[fortune-maiden]

A little over halfway through Season 1 of DNT now, I thought I was starting to warm up to it.

But then I got to the Castrop Rebellion Episode.

Soulless doesn't even begin to cover it......

[hbosscreations]

The Reason Dead in America Doesn't Work for Me

I know that this is the autism brain in me and not necessarily a rational argument that other people will have or even care about, and I don't think anyone is going to see this or care, but what is this platform good for if not shouting into the void?

There are a lot of things wrong with Dead in America, and if I got into the whole 'British White Dude talking about American Racism without understanding nuance or being particularly aware of British Racism' thing...well, I think I'd lose it again. Other people have talked about it more eloquently than I ever could.

So instead, let's talk about the feelings I'm having and the in universe reason that Dead in America feels...wrong to me. This isn't something a person who's starting with Dead in America might pick up on, but it lives rent free in my head and I haven't seen anyone else talk about it.

The world John is in isn't his world. Rather, the SOUL in John's body is from a different universe's John Constantine.

To be fair, if you're not reading the trade of the 2019 run, you might also not have read the Halloween special in which the apocalypse created by Tim Hunter (from Books of Magic) is happening and John gets Chas and his taxi exploded, but it's kind of important to the rest of the story, so I'm glad it was included in the trade. Kind of wish it was included as the first issue of the run. The trade also includes the issue of how John gets a cell phone with an angel trapped inside it, but that's less important.

Let me explain.

Basically, Tim Hunter is an extremely powerful magic user who punched a hole into the multiverse. John is an extremely powerful magic user who, as we all know, REALLY does NOT want to die. The apocalypse is happening, Zatanna is dying, Tefe is dying, John just sacrificed Chas and is dying. So, when a future version of him appears that seems happy and says 'hey, babe, just promise me that you'll give me your soul and I'll heal you up and send you somewhere you're needed' John says yes.

Why does older him want his soul? Fuck if John knows. Future John makes it sound like a con on the universe, and John's into that shit. 'Keep it in the family'.

Remember that line.

He wakes up in a universe where he's been in Ravenscar for years, the only visible scar on him we see is the deal he made with himself. The burn on his hand.

This is a universe (I suspect) where he didn't sell his soul to get rid of his cancer. What would be the point of punting him here if Future John would have to figure out how to get the soul away from the demons who may or may not still have a claim to it.

More to the point, I think this is a universe where Future John was supposed to have a measure of control over the happenings. Let me explain. We see this in Scrubbing Up Part 2 when John talks to Clarice.

(If you don't know who Clarice and Map are, they're from the original run and they're fantastic, but they're also magic people who've worked with John in the past.)

There's a prophesy that says a hungry void is murdering whichever magi it could not first consume, you say? A void like a tulpa, perhaps? An abomination under parliament? You mean the tulpa of Albion that Future John creates?

Why do I think these things are specifically Future John's doing?

Because the story says so.

Back in the 2019 Halloween special, John starts to lose his memories of the multiverse, his lives, his loves. He starts to CUT THEM OFF because they cannot coexist with this world that is so much more limited in scope.

John regularly complains in this run that the CGI shit is 'not his scene' which Future John scoffs at. Of course it's his scene, that's where he's at now, and while people like to forget about it, it was his thing in the original run too once he'd passed through a few hands.

The 90s were a hell of a drug for the comic book industry, I'm just saying.

Side tangent, this would have been an AMAZING jumping off point for newer readers. You literally don't need to know anything because he's been in a drug induced haze for a decade and doesn't remember his old life. A good writer could use this and have John be trying to parse through his memories and figure out what's real, what's not, and what the other him wanted.

Anyway, back to Future John's motives.

'You don't have to be afraid. I'll fix you up. Set you down where this unholy fucktangle didn't reach yet. Somewhere you're needed.'

Emphasis is something that should be important in a comic (Unless you're Frank Miller, I guess). In particular, Future John says 'where this unholy fucktangle didn't reach yet'. 'This unholy fucktangle'. Not 'this unholy fucktangle'.

Meaning there's a place that's already made and ready for John. A place his future self has chosen.

Where, exactly?

'Somewhere you're needed'.

Not 'somewhere peaceful' or 'somewhere exciting' or even 'somewhere familiar'.

No, 'somewhere you're needed'.

And the first thing after the issue of John getting his magical cell phone, what's the first real thing that happens to John that's not a mundanity?

Noah happens.

Noah, who was supposed to be hunting down Clarice (An OLD WOMAN IN A CAR WITH A BODYGUARD) and somehow convinces his friend and partner in crime that actually John is the person they are supposed to be kidnapping.

Noah has no clue why he decided to bring a man who looks anywhere between his 40's to 70's depending on the issue, but John does not look like a five foot tall brunette in a designer dress with a sleek car and a bodyguard, does he?

So, why would Noah do that? Why would Isa go along with it?

This time, this place, this universe was chosen for a reason.

Man, wouldn't it be interesting if John was here because of Noah?

Future John says 'I'm going to send you somewhere you're needed', John wakes up and pretty quickly gets himself attacked by his own son (we can argue about how long based on hair growth since there are not any dates given, but I digress).

His son who has a mother in a coma that hasn't woken up in seven years. His son who has a grandmother no one ever sees, names, or mentions again after the single issue she's first mentioned in. His son who is disabled because of magic and monsters and demon shit. His son who is so angry and yet so, so kind (No, I am not over the fact that he held the hand of his mother's would-be murderer as she died and offered her comfort despite her being an angry, bitter racist).

His son who WILL be killed by his own hands (even if those hands are a future alternate version of him or a tulpa of himself that he created) if John doesn't do what he's told.

His son, who was willing to walk back into the place where his only friend we ever see was mutilated in front of him, because John needed him.

His son who needed him not for his magic but because he was John.

What a perfect carrot. What a perfect stick.

Talk about 'keeping it in the family', eh?

WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH DEAD IN AMERICA?!

Valid question! So valid! So real! This is a tangent that really in my opinion highlights why Dead in America doesn't work.

What does any of this rambling about John Constantine Hellblazer 2019 have to do with Hellblazer: Dead in America?

Nothing.

And that's the problem.

Look, I get that comic runs often don't have much to do with the previous runs, but Hellblazer has always been strongest when the stories built on one another. When there was a transition. And it was written by the same writer, as a continuation of his previous run.

Dead in America feels like someone who's got a vague idea and a bone to pick. 'Look at how racist the Americans are!'

I'm not going to go into too deep of a dive on this one, but I do have a serious question that highlights why Dead in America doesn't work.

What does John Constantine have to do with American racism?

Is there prejudice against non-Americans who are white in the US? Sure, but that's not the story being told. What does this story have to say about racism? That it's bad, that poor white Americans are stupid and racist, and rich white Americans are evil and racist.

WHY IS A BRITISH WRITER WORKING ON A BRITISH CHARACTER HEADING THIS CONVERSATION?!

AND WHY IS DC LETTING HIM KEEP DOING IT SO BADLY?!

There are good pieces of Dead in America, but they're just that, pieces. This story does not work as a standalone, it does not work in relation to anything that came before it, it does not work as a Hellblazer story, it does not work as a John Constantine story.

And it completely forgets EVERYTHING that came before it BY THE SAME WRITER! Did Si Spurrier forget that HE IS THE ONE WHO SENT JOHN INTO ANOTHER UNIVERSE?! WHY ARE WE SEEING PEOPLE FROM THE MAIN DCU WHEN WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN A UNIVERSE WHERE JOHN IS ALONE WITH NO SUPPORT BECAUSE HE FUCKING KILLED THEM ALL IN PREPARATION?!?! THAT'S A MAJOR POINT OF THE PREVIOUS RUN, THAT THE FUTURE VERSION OF HIM HAS KILLED/CHASED OFF ANYONE LEFT BEHIND WHO MIGHT BE ABLE TO KEEP JOHN ALIVE! HOW THE FUCK IS ETRIGAN AROUND WHEN I'M CERTAIN FUTURE JOHN IS THE REASON CHAS DIED OF CANCER?!

And don't tell me 'oh, Future John's a tulpa, he couldn't have done that!'. HE COULD HAVE BECAUSE HE FUCKING DID ALREADY! BEING A TULPA DOESN'T NEGATE EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED IN THIS RUN!!!

WHY DID WE GET THIS INSTEAD OF AN ACTUAL CONTINUATION OF THE STORYLINE THAT WAS CANCELED ON HIM?!

Fuck, I WANT to be positive about the things I like. I'm so in love with the 2019 run that I went out and bought the entire original Hellblazer in both physical and digital formats, after years of not really reading comic books anymore just so I could make sure I really understood John Constantine as a character. I know Spurrier can write better than this because he did it five years ago.

I'm still buying the comics because I don't want Constantine to become another character DC pulls out for crossovers and to die and be resurrected as so many other characters are, but FUCK I really hope that someone considers a different writer before continuing forward or at least some better guidelines, because Dead in America is disappointing.

[je-suis-problematique]

We're in a mood for moodboards so have our PREVIOUS fronting team that was comprised of Caliban, Judeau, Grael (he had a very strong presence in the system back in the day), Jasper (an alter from Chris' subsystem), Black Reaper (an alter from Kaneki's subsystem), Kovacs (me), May, Krauser (another alter from Chris' subsystem.... They used to switch more often back then), and Griffith (OG Griffith, not one of his many AUs). All of these alters took a billion steps back after the whole substance abuse crisis that was mixed into the drama from the breakup with our partner system IRL, nowadays it's mostly the Baldur's Gate folks running the show and everyone who used to be active fronters BEFORE the drug crisis happened kind of just hid themselves away, claiming that they aren't in possession of enough mental energy to help out with what's currently been happening on Main. I can't say I blame them honestly. Our life is incredibly stressful and we ARE falling apart at the seams so the exhausted veterans made way for the still-somewhat-put-together newbies to handle our daily life in their stead. I would like to say that we've been in recovery this whole time but some wounds take a LOT of time to heal which makes me happy that we found a new therapist today and that she agreed to help us sort through the psychological and emotional salad we've been carrying with us this whole time without knowing how to even BEGIN to unravel it.

– Kovacs

[l0ganberry]

How tf did I get Bob Velseb brainrot???

AGAIN!?!