John Constantine

so you say you're ignored as it is
John Constantine is what would happen if a person (me) was like 'hmmm so I like these comics but also this movie' and then mashed them together in a delightful stew that has no consistency at all, at least not in hair color. Although I have pledged to stop ripping off his current face and assigning a new one, so that's a start.

In essence, he smokes many, many cigarettes, quotes the Bible with a sense of irony that is entirely unlike irony as hipsters define it, and doesn't want to hang out with you. At present time he has yet to save the world.

now give us your sad, sad trip
''"Scissors." His voice is thin, flat, as metallic as the bladed word itself, "I used scissors. And it wasn't about anybody else. Of course I thought about my parents - I have parents, I know the idea that I wasn't grown in some fucking cabbage patch for the hopeless is hard to swallow - and my sister, but you know what I really thought? I was tired, that's what I fucking thought, I was tired of being crazy. By that point we'd switched from Quetiapine to exorcism, which by the way when you're not actually possessed feels like someone's pulling teeth that aren't fucking there. If you had teeth in your soul, anyway, God knows--" he laughs the same 'nothing is funny' bloody coughing sound, "I probably do."''

To generalize broadly, most people in the 21st century who consider themselves religious do not have direct evidence of the divine; this is why the whole ...faith thing. John has more evidence of it than anyone could possibly ever want, and as a result he's crossed directly over faith when regarding all things otherwordly into the kind of cynicism that would do an atheist proud. He feels enormously screwed over by his heavenly father figure (see "God is a kid with an ant farm," @ canon dialogue), and reacts to all the world accordingly. Some of this he comes by honestly; the world in which he operates is not a pleasant one, and he's not allowed the luxury of living with the impression that that's not the case. Canonically the ability to see things as they are happens to the faithful; either they try to convince others of what they can see and everyone thinks they're crazy, or they cope with it as best they can and destroy themselves in the process. So on a lot of levels this functions as self-defense; if he contends that God is a bored preadolescent, then His silence and abandonment - being tasked with knowledge no child could handle and then being inevitably damned when he couldn't handle it - won't hurt. Not that he ever thinks of it that way, not even in his occasionally vulnerable moments, but there it is. Cynicism manifests most sharply in the closet idealist; underneath the bland conjecture that God simply doesn't care he still desperately wants an explanation. Again, because this version is half the age of his canon iteration, he's young enough to believe that one exists.

More generally, he's got a droll, dry sense of humor, and almost always chooses to exercise it when keeping his mouth shut would be the better option. This is pretty typical of his behavior overall; for someone who knows - and is terrified of - exactly what's going to happen to him when he dies, he has an astonishing propensity for self-destructive behavior. Smoking, drinking, previous to Lily making some really amazing hookup choices (because we can't have nice things, but we don't really want to be alone with ourselves either)...if it's bad for him he's probably doing it. Right now. It doesn't help that he forms habits like other people say, obsessively collect ceramic cats; all of these are things he should probably be being treated for, but for one thing he has recently had quite enough of the psychiatric industry, thank you. And for another he doesn't see himself as needing to seek help because everything that's wrong with him is the result of something done to him. Therefore he is not the problem, being psychic and God and God's stupid rules are the problem. Getting him into therapy at Quadrinity is like pulling teeth with tweezers. In the dark, during a hurricane.

But aside from that - or maybe entirely connectedly to that - it's useful to classify John in terms of being active (or at least the attempt thereof) in a world that's doing its damnedest (haha) to regulate him to passivity. His power has no offensive properties and actually makes him more vulnerable to the forces around him: "you see them, they see you," etc; ergo the anger that characterizes so much of his behavior is actually, horrifically enough, a positive step up from the crushing despair in which he spent most of his adolescence. Now he just has to segue from that into ....uh, well, more cynicism and bitterness, if the movie is anything to go by.

This may not happen, but we'll see.

assumed it's whether we're right: i'm wrong
John Constantine was born in Los Angeles to two very normal parents who were understandably kind of unhappy when their young son began around the age of ten to descend into giant screaming fits on a regular basis, insistent that he could see 'monsters,' often in very public places and at various influential people. (One of his father's business partners, for example, or the local parish priest.) They tried their best to fix the situation; as good standing members of the religious community they sought the help of the church, and then eventually various psychiatric institutions. John was in and out of hospitals and clinics and sanctuaries for virtually his entire childhood and on into adolescence, and none of it helped. In fact, it made it markedly worse: at the age of fifteen, after a priest at yet another clinic decided his problem was that he was possessed and subsequently performed an exorcism, he decided enough was just ...enough. Whether he was crazy or just cursed, he was never going to go through anything like that again. So when he came home he told his parents he was much better, thank you, and then he went into his bedroom and slit his wrists. Officially he was dead for two minutes before being revived in the ambulance, but as he tells it himself, two minutes in Hell is a lifetime. The thing it's hard to find in any religious textbook is that Hell is personal - suicides relieve their last moments of despair in an endless burning loop that would do Sisyphus proud. Two minutes is only a hundred and twenty seconds, until it's forever. When he was shocked back to life he was aware of two things: firstly, all the things he could see where real, and had always been real. And second, unless he could find a loophole, his escape from an unceasing cycle of despair and pain on a genuinely cosmic level was temporary at best. Once released from yet another hospital, the first thing he did was run away from home. He hasn't spoken to his parents since, and in all likelyhood they think that he's dead. John is less disturbed by that prospect than he might be; his parents were ultimately good people and they wanted what was best for him, but he couldn't, after that point, trust them to know what that was. And at seventeen he's angry enough to blame them for that.

He was homeless for about two years, a period which was alternately as great as that sounds in L.A. and more bearable in varying degrees; he learned how to take care of himself after getting jacked the requisite first few times, he made the kinds of connections necessary to have someone at his back when it counted, and he even met a girl. A homed person, at that! He kept seeing ghosts and demons, and most of the people knew thought he was crazy - it's not uncommon among the displaced population, unfortunately, although more so in someone so young - but on a number of levels that worked for him. Thanks to Lily he could even count on semi-regular food and sleep - he wasn't what a more mainstream member of society would call happy, but he was doing okay for a homeless, psychic teenager with the sword of Damnocles (...you see what I did there) over his head. And then he was unceremoniously kidnapped twice in as many weeks, first by The Fellowship, one of a great number of religious organizations (see: ...cult like apparatus) interested in people with John's unique ability, and then by representatives of Quadrinity! They were thoughtful enough to also pick up Lily, and en route to Illinois their respective psychic abilities were revealed to one another - John refused to get on the plane they were all meant to board because one of its passengers was a demon (although notably these details were obscured; all Lily knows for sure is that John saw something no one else could see which their adult companions took very seriously) and on the flight they ended up taking instead, a man died, fulfilling a nightmare Lily had had in the van.

Since arriving at school he's existed in a fantastic state of brittle 'fuck you'-ness, but having Lily there does go toward keeping him from skidding totally off the rails of acceptable behavior, and he can't deny that some of what he's learning here (such as what is currently only the very fundamental rudiments of the theory of magic) seems like it might be ...kind of awesome, actually.

He's forming a plan, you see. Surely if he just takes out enough demons, God will have to let him into heaven. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair. Right?

we're doomed, and there's plenty for all
Against his will (not ...really), John has actually taken pretty well to QCI, for a given value thereof. He sings for a terrible, terrible band called The Shroud Eaters who could theoretically actually be less terrible someday, has somehow acquired a handful of people he very reluctantly cares about, and has taken to his unique classes with smartassed aplomb thinly veiling his genuine, if cagey interest in like ...dead languages and magic and exorcism. The usual.

how dare you catch me counting?
John's player (still me) has racked all the brains available for YEARS trying to describe what his psychic ability actually is, and the best way to cover that is that he Just Knows Stuff. Typically he "knows" things because he actually sees them; this includes being able to identify other psychics and a gist of their ability on sight, basic health status and other physical markers (such as: has your character been getting some? John KNOWS, and he cannot unknow, because God is cruel), and whether or not a being wearing human skin is actually human. Perhaps you are thinking this is a given, but you would be wrong, because ~demons~. Which is always fun. (Actually, it sucks, or so John would tell a person for hours were he permitted to discuss it, but he's not, so your character has no idea. Shhh.)

how dare you call this suffering?

 * Lily Sloane :: "Lily, you're the only thing in my life that isn't pressure." AND ALSO definitely a shameless Jezebel, so guess how this works, and the answer is 'fantastically, yet terrifyingly'. To wit: Lily is John's girlfriend, and currently holds the ....no pressure title of the most significant person in his world who's never totally fucked him over. This sounds like, uh, a really great baseline, but--this is John, so actually yes. And for some unfathomable reason, she loves him! Naturally this means that he is basically just waiting for the other shoe of abandonment to drop, but before it does that John will continue to be extremely protective; he perceives Lily as having this quality of goodness (he is a budding humanist, it bears repeating) that hasn't been ruined by any of her numerous awful experiences.
 * Max Guevara :: Max is stealth-snarky, which John finds deeply entertaining. He's occasionally guarded with her, because ....telepathy, but their relationship has an ease to it he values.
 * Kindle Veda :: So Kindle is ....insane, and their friendship is more the result of like, Kindle collecting John (literally, like a Pokemon) than anything else, BUT Kindle has managed to earn John's admiration for her general kickassness, which means that she can have his back without him constantly looking over his shoulder, and vice versa.
 * Gloria Leclair

how dare you call at all?

 * Noah Tessaro So this one time John and Noah went through metaphorical slash literal Hell together, and now John will cut you if you so much as look askance at Noah. Since said young person is kind of a dick, this means John may have to cut the entire population of QCI with the exception of Noah's boyfriend, but there that is.
 * Ethan Ford
 * Morgan Hurlitz
 * Blake Angler
 * Ryan Letowski
 * Roman McKenzie

you're right, i get it; it all makes sense now
The Gaslight Anthem | God's Gonna Cut You Down (Johnny Cash Cover) :: you can run on for a long time, run on on for a long time. sooner or later god'll cut you down. go and tell that long-tongued liar, go and tell that midnight rider, tell the rambler, the gambler, the backbiter: tell him that god's gonna cut him down. well, my goodness gracious, let me tell you the news: my head's been wet with the midnight dew. i've been down on bended knee talking to the man from galilee. he spoke to me in a voice so sweet i thought i heard the shuffle of angels' feet. he called my name and my heart stood still when he said 'john, go do my will.' you can throw your rock and hide your hand working in the dark against your fellow man, but as sure as god made black and white, what's done in the dark will be brought to the light. you can run on for a long time, run on for a long time. sooner or later, god'll cut you down. sooner or later god'll cut you down.

Eve 6 | Tongue Tied :: hooked on nicotine and phonics, fun like macroeconomics. still and quiet, like they taught us, fun like macroeconomics. vigilante thoughts and a cheap guitar; i am my own movie star. i don't know you, i don't want to, i don't know you and i don't want to.take my tongue, it's cocked and loaded. the board has dubbed you special student so you sit alone, sweat in silence. we don't tolerate defiance.

Chevelle | Straitjacket Fashion

let's all live in your imaginary life
John Constantine is property many people who aren't me, and no money is changing hands at this particular temple.