Eachdraidh Info Post

[constant_magus]

( CHARACTER INFORMATION )
- ★ NAME: John Constantine
- ★ AGE: 46
- ★ CANON & CANON POINT: Hellblazer, after Warren Ellis's run, so issue 143
- ★ CANON INFORMATION: wikipedia, DC Database

- ★ PERSONALITY: John Constantine's a right bastard. Ask anyone; it's no secret. He'll even tell you so himself. But what do you expect when his first act of magic was to put his childhood innocence and vulnerability in a box and bury it? Then he followed that up by cursing his own father to a wasting death – not exactly the act of someone you'd want to spend a lot of time with.

Of course, there are others who'd say that's not true at all. (Chas is first among these, of course, but then he's one of the few to survive a long association with John Constantine.) Sure, they say, he's snarky and likes to talk a good game and sometimes you don't know what's true and what's lies, but John's a good friend, especially to the people the rest of society spits on. He can be charming when he wants to be, a real life of the party. And if you come to him for help, he'll do what he can. (Though he won't do it for free if you can afford to pay.)

These are, of course, both true. John can be a good friend. He does care. And he does his best to help those who ask him (at least, he does if he likes them). But it's also true that he always has his own angle on things. If he's helping, he's getting something out of it, either right then or with the favor he'll ask for later. For example: sure, he helped the Swamp Thing have a child, just like he'd been asked. Of course, by doing so, he also foiled the plan of a cult called the Resurrection Crusade, who hoped to use a prophecy to bring about the Second Coming, as well as some demons who intended to use the same prophecy for the Antichrist. And naturally he'd promised the demon he'd help him, too – even got some demon blood out of it, only to double-cross him in the end. The point is that everything has a price and there are always strings attached. Nothing's free when it comes to John Constantine and if it looks like it is, you should check your wallet.

If you asked him, he might tell you he got into magic to impress the girls – part of the sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll scene he was into during the 1960s and 1970s. It's even partially true. John likes to have a good time and magic has certainly gotten him that a time or two. But it started, really, as survival. He put away his innocence because he couldn't afford to have it. His father was a bitter, alcoholic ex-con who hated his son and his mother was dead. His sister did what she could, but she was only a teenager herself. On top of that, his whole family had a bad reputation, so John didn't have any friends. So he did what he had to in order to take care of himself and he's continued in that vein. Whatever he does, he's no martyr or saint. He often feels guilt about it later, but he's still always looking out for number one.

Given his upbringing, it's also no surprise that he's a loner at heart. Sure, he likes people, at least some of them, and he has a way of meeting and charming people. On his good days, he's the friendly guy who'll strike up a conversation with a stranger at the bar. He's been a mentor a time or two as well, most notably to Tim Hunter and the Swamp Thing, but he's either doing it for his own purposes or reluctantly for someone else's. In his opinion, he's shit at it and they'd be better off with someone else. After all, John's made enough mistakes of his own; he doesn't want to be responsible for someone else's.

No matter how friendly he is, he doesn't completely trust anyone; he's been betrayed too often for that. And smart people don't entirely trust him either (and especially not blindly); even when he means well, he never tells the whole truth. Even when he was dying, he only left Chas an envelope full of money rather than telling him about it. (And when his plan succeeded and he dind't die, he never explained why he'd done that.) John's a con-man and a thief and always has been. He's run cons with magic and without, selling people fake relics or convincing them that the British royal family are all lizard people. He charmed Madame Xanadu in order to get close enough to steal from her, though she eventually forgave him. He's even been known to say that's basically how magic works for him: he cons the universe into believing a lie.

He does have a bit of a hero complex, though he'd deny it. Not so much that he feels compelled to help anyone in need; more that if the world needs saving and it comes down to him, he'll do what it takes - even if what it takes requires getting his hands dirty. For example, even when the fight against the Darkness took almost every friend he had, John was right there in it, holding his seance even as his companions burned to death. (It took awhile for Zatanna to forgive him for that one. It wasn't John's fault that her father died and he didn't, but it had been his plan.)

Of course, there's a lot of self-interest in that sort of heroics, too. As much as he hates the world sometimes, it's where he keeps his stuff, as they say, and he's not ready to just let that go.

He's also too impulsive for his own good. Sure, later he realized that tricking the First of the Fallen into drinking holy water and then hitting him over the head with a bottle was incredibly stupid, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. He has a way of pissing off the powerful, especially, maybe because he hates anyone who thinks they're better than everyone else. Anyone with an elitist attitude is a target; if they're talking to him, he finds it hard not to take the opportunity to at least mouth off to them. Someone with real power is even better: he's had a long career of tricking demons and screwing over angels and the biggest reason is mostly that he loves the thrill of it. He's made an angel fall and got the First of the Fallen kicked out of Hell and while there were some dicey moments involved, he loved it. The satisfaction of humiliating someone who could squash him like a bug is a high like no other.

And John likes his highs. He doesn't do hard drugs – he's seen them ruin too many lives – but he's a chain smoker and an alcoholic. How functional an alcoholic he is depends on how things are going; he even spent some time on the street as a homeless wino after Kit left him. He's an addict, always chasing highs of one sort or another: magic, sex, a good con, a bender, whatever's handy or looks good at the time.

He can be a cocky bastard, perhaps because he gets away with so much. He once told Tim Hunter that “in three weeks, I can get into anything” and for the most part, it's been true. (Though his failures tend to be correspondingly epic, which usually means people die or go insane.)

But for all his attitude and arrogance, he also has few illusions about who he is and what he's done. He knows he's often selfish and stupid. He knows he uses people. He thinks they should expect it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know it makes him an asshole. John's pretty cynical about everything, especially himself. He has a lot of self-loathing and guilt over things he's done. Most of his friends end up dead and even though it's usually not directly his fault, he blames himself for it, seeing himself as literally haunted by them. He'll pretend nothing much gets to him, but on some level, he never gets over anything.

Newcastle's the big one, the event that really made him what he is. That's not so surprising: how do you just get over condemning an abused child to hell? But it's hardly the only one. Constantine has a metaphorical suitcase of regrets. Because the thing is, that bit about everything having a price? It applies to him, too. Everything in his life has had a price and it's a high one. He's paid and paid and it's still never quite enough. Literal demons are actually better than the metaphorical ones in his mind: those he'll never escape.

And if all this seems a bit contradictory, that's John all over. His life is made of contradictions and extremes; a happy medium is something he only knows if you mean someone who channels spirits and also happens to be in a good mood. He's probably not actually delusional or bipolar, even if he does have moodswings. (Canon makes it pretty clear the strange things he sees are at least mostly real.) Then again, he was never formally discharged from the mental institution. (But I wouldn't say he really needs to be institutionalized. He's just not the most stable person.)

- ★ COURT ALLIANCE: Unseelie. Sure, John's mostly a friend of the weak and foe of the powerful, but he's also basically a walking force of chaos. He thinks honor's for chumps and chivalry's a con. Tradition's most often just another way of saying “I got mine, now fuck you.” He hates angels and demons alike, but he might honestly prefer the demons if he had to choose between them: they're both tyrants, but at least the demons are more honest about it.

- ★ ABILITIES:
Hellblazer magic (really, Vertigo Comics magic in general) is fairly vague and free-form. It seems to be largely about a combination of talent and the will of the magician. Constantine describes it as basically conning reality and this is probably how it feels to him.

That said, here's stuff he specifically does in canon:

- It's commented in an issue of Swamp Thing that John has a gift for being in the right place at the right time. This is true in a more literal sense than they might have meant; he has a sense for luck and chance, and his gift for synchronicity is such that he can use it to travel, often moving between countries with neither tickets nor passports. (Obviously the travel bit of it will not work here.)

- He's a ritual magician, capable of some pretty impressive feats given the materials, the spell, and the time and space. He seems to specialize mostly in summonings, protections, and exorcisms, though he also does quite a lot of divination, usually for finding someone or something. He doesn't seem to have the gift to use it to see the future; he's always depended on others for that. (I'd imagine summonings probably would not work here either.)

- Divination plus synchronicity means that when he gambles, he always wins, so much so that bookies who know about him usually won't take his bets. (Gambling is at least part of how he supports himself. However, this is not always reliable here.)

- He uses a lot of sigils for things and he's even carved a sigil into a soul twice before, which were told takes real power. Sigils seem to be mostly used for binding/sealing.

- Most of the instant things he can do are mental effects: making himself unseen, making someone see something not there, that sort of thing. He's also used minor magic to get through locked doors.

- At least once, he switched the location of two substances (he exchanged someone's cocaine for their relative's ashes). It's actually unclear to me if he really did this or just fooled the victim into believing he did, but since belief is so important to magic, it might be functionally the same.

- He's also good at sensing magic used nearby (which does not mean he can tell what it is, who cast it, or how to undo it) and hence he can often see through illusions. He can see ghosts and spirits as well as various omens, though he's not a medium or any kind of psychic.

Beyond this, he can presumably read at least Latin and Greek, since a lot of his occult books are in those languages. He is, however, rather reliant on those books as well as living sources, so not having those is limiting in itself.

- ★ INVENTORY: white shirt, brown slacks, black tie, dress shoes, brown trenchcoat, wallet, 2 packs cigarettes, 1 book of matches, 1 metal flask of gin