OOC
GAME: Audeamus & With Wolves
DESCRIPTION: Dude, I just want to play Constantine.
DATE: April 2008
PB: Michael Vartan
JOURNAL: silkcut & silkcut
IC
the basics.
Name: John Constantine
Aliases: Leo Sumner, John Collier, John McMahon, Adrian Brown. Also known as Hellblazer, Hero of the Counterculture, Knight of Humanity, the Laughing Magician, Man for All Seasons, the Magus, and many other nicknames unsuitable for print.
Race: Human, with hefty doses of Watcher blood running sporadically throughout the Constantine line.
Age: Forty (May 10th, 1968)
Nationality: English, born and bred in Liverpool. Currently living in London.
Occupation: Working-class mystic.
the magic.
Skills: He mostly persists on a lot of base cunning and manipulation, from enlisting and cashing in favours, to brow-beating people into helping him, to blackmailing high-profile government figures, to lying outright in order to utilise friends' skills. He has a wealth of arcane knowledge and a list of contacts as long as his arm — though the list of the dead might be twice that. John fights dirty, possesses good sleight-of-hand, and lots of sheer fucking dumb luck. As for magic, he can do the following:
- Summoning and invocations Can draw the attention of demons, summon particular ones, and do pacts with them. This hasn't really worked out well anytime it's happened. Conversely, he also knows how to trap some demons and send them back to hell.
- Protective charms and curses Can lay curses on others, and perform charms keep him safe. Relatively. Sort of. He's mainly good with hiding and cloaking sigils. Oh John, you cowardly fuck.
- Illusions and memory alteration Mind control, very much along the lines of "These are not the droids you're looking for."
- Communicating with spirits He can speak to the dead if he likes, but tries not to notice them when they're around, though. He's getting real fucking tired of having the ghosts of old friends following him across the world.
- Necromancy Can raise zombies. Really, really doesn't like doing it.
- Ether control John is an old adept at the ether, and can communicate effectively across the medium, though he hates it.
- "Synchronicity Wave Traveling" Heh. An almost supernatural affinity for coincidence and insanely good luck: being in the right place at the right time, if you will. Constantine's occasional good fortune is pretty much the only thing having kept him alive to this day. On the flip side, he also has some really fucking bad luck.
Limitations: His mind tricks only work on mortals, and often not the magically-inclined ones, since they're more likely to see through his smoke and mirrors. John can only banish demons if he knows a lot about them, often needing their true name. His cloaking sigils are not infallible, and have been legendarily broken in the past; one of the people he was charged to protect died because of it. He also just doesn't use his magic all that often, relying instead on the old school of skills — he once took a chainsaw to an angel's wings. And his uncanny ability to keep himself alive at all costs has led to a trail of dead friends behind him. John ain't really a happy fellow when you get right down to it.
the man.
Personality: John Constantine is a bastard, and he wouldn't have it any other way. It's the only way he knows how to deal with his insane madhouse of a life, after all, and the method works oddly well: you have to spit in the face of heaven and hell and everything in between before they spit in yours. It's like running on slippery ice, because as long as you just keep moving, you can't fall. So he keeps running and improvising, trying to make it look like he's always, always one step ahead. John really doesn't give a damn what people think about him, but it's safer to look like everything's under control, after all — just in case. He is extremely capable at what he does, too, so if you trust him, odds are you'll probably emerge with what you want. Probably. There might be a few scars and unexpected losses along the way, but hey, at least you got what you asked for, right? He remembers who he owes favours to, and he remembers debts, and he usually pays them in the end. But to put it bluntly, Constantine will use and manipulate and gamble other people's lives with surprisingly few scruples in order to get what he wants. It's like most other human beings — and demons and spirits and angels — are merely cards in his metaphorical deck, and he's not above using you if he feels he should. A woman once told him his life was a one-player game, and the accusation did not hurt, because… well… it's looking more and more true by the day.
At the end of it all, though, he's scared of losing more people. He's getting old. He wants to keep friends alive, and the only soul he's really good at laying on the line is his own — which he does so often it's starting to lose its market value. He's more reliable, see? When you have to think faster than a whole lot of people and entities out for your blood, the only person you can truly depend on is yourself. And John's found that his own fucked up, half-assed plans have gotten him out of every sticky mess so far, even when other people weren't willing to come along for the ride. And John's tried that whole thing with caring about others. Really, he has! He's had friends and girlfriends. It's just— their expiry dates do seem to come by a hell of a lot sooner when they're involved with him. He has underlying guilt complexes to rival that of any Greek hero, but he doesn't choose to wallow in that regret very often. He just keeps moving.
And the question that everyone keeps asking — usually in frustration, usually after seeing him screw everything and himself over — is "why?" Why does he willingly plunge himself into all of this when he could just walk away from all the death and horror? Well. At the root of all the madness lies, quite frankly, an addiction to magic. A dependence on adrenaline. If John is not doing magic — if he's living in a boring flat with a boring job knowing boring people — then he is living a life more bland, more dull, less invigorating. And that's no fuckin' life at all. He needs to feel alive, and he needs to do what makes him feel best: which is having magic in his veins and staying ahead of some pretty nasty figures. He's a junkie, you guys. He'll do anything to get that fix and keep that life going, which makes him extremely risky to be around.
John's also surprisingly introspective, however. He's a good friend when you have him, though you'll want to punch him in the face for being so reckless. He's good to his sister and even better to Chas, though "better" is entirely relative when it comes to Constantine's behaviour — he'll still treat you like shit, of course, but the best thing he could ever do is make sure you don't get hurt as a result of his job. He's also wary to define himself as fighting for the forces of 'good' (anyone with that many moral scruples has to be), especially considering his hatred of the pompous, euphoric, ingratiating angels. But fine. He'll admit he likes them more than the alternative. John may be a foul-mouthed cynic, and he may hate what the world has become, but he does like being here. He wouldn't keep fighting tooth-and-claw to stay alive if he didn't enjoy this place at least a little, right?
Reputation: Widely-known as a guy who travels in occult circles — he knows a little about a lot of things, just enough to make him dangerous. An insolent jackass and skeptic who braves the odds pretty much every single day. It's a wonder he's still alive, but he'll get the job done if you go to him.
Likes: Alcohol, sex, Silk Cut cigarettes, magic and having his friends not die. Chas. His sister and niece. The bog creature. Casey. His arcane collection. His punk rock collection. Pub crawls. Liverpool.
Dislikes: Demons. Angels. Thatcher. "Piggy" Huntoon. Ravenscar Institute. Newcastle. Hard drugs.
Sexuality: Bisexual, but it's women more often than not.
the physical.
Appearance: Despite the blond hair and blue eyes, John isn't angelic by any stretch of the imagination. He's been mistaken for a gutter hobo more than once, since he's often pretty bad at taking care of himself — he forgets to sleep, forgets to eat, and wears a notoriously battered trenchcoat. He doesn't cut the most elegant figure when he's drunk, either, but at least it keeps everything at bay for a while. At any one time, he probably reeks of nicotine, whiskey, cologne, and maybe a little bit of demon scent that no one but the occult-inclined would notice. Tall and sturdy, tired eyes, thin nose, and an infuriating smirk — he can be pretty handsome when he's not covered in monster gunk.
Hair: Blond.
Eyes: Blue.
the background.
Family:
Father: Thomas Constantine, b.1929, one of seven sons of a poor stevedore (who loads and unloads ships).
Uncle: Jack Constantine, b.1931
Mother: Mary-Anne Quinn (deceased)
Older sister: Cheryl Constantine-Masters, b.1958, ten years older than John.
Brother-in-law: Tony Masters
Niece: Gemma Masters
Aunt and uncle: Dolly and Harry
History: Two people died to bring John Constantine into this world. A bright start, innit? This would, unfortunately, only become indicative of his life in general, and the trail of dead he leaves behind him. Mary-Anne Constnatine was first pregnant with twins, but the other fetus was healthy and strong while John was stunted and small — even in the womb, his paranormal senses told him only one baby would survive the birth. Ever the survivor, John wrapped the umbilical cord around his healthier brother's neck, rupturing the placenta and complicating the birth; hemorrhaging killed Mary and the stronger child, but John was left alive and kicking.
Stricken by his wife's death and what had happened, Thomas Constantine essentially shunned the new baby and blamed it for what had happened. Consequently, growing up wasn't fun. Cheryl and John settled into a largely harmless teasing-and-taunting dynamic, as brothers and sisters are wont to do, but John and his father would incessantly butt heads, all the way up until Tom was sent to prison for stealing women's skivvies. When that happened, John and his sister ran away to live with uncle Harry and aunt Dolly for a while. This was not pleasant either. Harry had a tendency to give both Dolly and John beatings. The boy had a lively escapist imagination as a kid, his head filled with games of Peter Pan and cowboys and Indians. He would always fear the Chamber of Horrors at the local fair, but was the type to always go in anyway, despite how sick it made him — he was too thrilled off the adrenaline to pass it by.
When he was fourteen, he was expelled from school for an "Out Demons Out" rally that got a bit out of hand — enraged, Thomas burned all his son's magic books, verbally tearing him apart for his useless hobby and unrealistic dreams. The heart-broken teen rescued an article entitled "Practical Magic: To Wreak Slow Death Upon Your Enemy" from the fire, which would effectively end his time under the thumb of adults: he performed a botched curse on his father, which made Thomas become withered and frail. John would meddle more with magic at age fifteen, just for laughs and sex, but then run off to London the next year. This would begin both the twenty-year rift with his father, and the beginning of his friendship with Francis "Chas" Chandler, who John lived with.
During his twenties, his smoking reached a level of thirty cigarettes a day, and he started cruising proper occult circles — and punk circles — in London. This is when Constantine developed his true passion for magic. He formed a band called "Mucous Membrane" who were pretty damn good, and even got signed for some small album releases — but eventually, Constantine's fascination with magic became stronger than his interest in music, and he decided to disband Mucous Membrane.
John studied magic, travelled a lot (going wherever the biggest occult news was, really), eventually encountering Zatanna Zatarra, more magic, and tantric sex circles in America. Back home, however, his other contacts just weren't so good at the magic thing yet — because Newcastle happened.
What was Newcastle? A demonic exorcism gone horribly wrong, and instead of saving a little girl named Astra who'd been sexually abused for years, her soul ended up being snatched down to hell by the Big Bad. John came out of that building wild-eyed and crying, holding on to severed arm of the child: the only thing left of her.
After this, Constantine was committed to the Ravenscar Mental Institute for two years. He was horribly mistreated there, not only by his supervising doctor but also by the guards and wardens, who mistakenly believed John was the offender behind Astra's sexual abuse. Additionally, he was subjected to painful electric shock therapy to eliminate his "delusions" of demons — he is never quite the same again. The attendants taught him a 'lesson' by breaking his fingers and knocking his teeth out; the doctors conveniently ignored the bruises left from the nighlty beatings, believing they had twisted child predator on their hands. John was released from the institute a few times, but always relapsed and inevitably came back.
Finally, finally, John was permanently released when a gangster in London needed John's magical help and obtained a forced release for him. The man wasn't anywhere near cured yet, and begged to stay in the asylum — despite everything. Weirdly enough, he has somehow emerged from that place functional. Mostly. Sort of. John is arguably quite fucking mad, and the memory of Ravenscar hasn't quite left him yet, but he's managed to get return to a life of sorts. He's dedicated to himself to the occult for a little over a decade since then.
Now he's pretty goddamn good at that, too.
Trivia: Afraid of needles. Smokes primarily Silk Cuts. Has been a chain smoker since the age of fifteen. Smokes marijuana when the situation arises, but not otherwise. Has done hallucinogenics in the past. Not a fan of other drugs. Has only had one serious, year-long relationship in his life, which was with Kit, the ex-wife of his (deceased) best friend, Brendan Finn.
SOUNDTRACK
See here!
LOGS (AUDEAMUS)
May 1997: John and Coraline, ten years ago
November 27, 2007: Tsi-noo, I love you!
Unfinished: Pubcrawl
February, 2008: London-Heathrow to Chicago, Illinois.
May 10, 2008: Forty.
