This is just to say

[taxonmods]

I have pushed back
the plot
that was in
the candy drawer

and which
you were probably
dreading
because diabetes

Forgive me
it was delicious
so sweet
and so sticky


--coff, that is to say that, since the meeting-thread is still going strong and we want to make sure we're not rushing you along like rabbits from one big event to the next, we'll probably sliiiightly push things back a bit-- Candy-Plot will start in September, and Hacking will be last week of August. If anyone has a problem with this for RL or other reasons, or wants to stick to the original timetable, just let us know. <3

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehn...wait that's not right!

[laughingmage]

Ignore the subject. It's a greeting post!

So. Hi. My name is Steven. And I will be joining you in your darling little community, complete with non-Shatnerian sentences starting with this one. No, that one. The one you just ready. Or just read a few sentences ago, geez, whatevs.

I'm afraid I'll have to make this short for now. Classes started this week, and I am swamped with last-minute requests. I'm an Instructional Designer, so faculty here who teach courses online are screaming for help, and I'm off to be a superhero. Cape and everything!

And yes, I will be playing John Constantine. Run for your lives!

EDIT: Adding here instead of a new post, but a little bit of background about how I'm handling Constantine.

Sit down children, and let Steven tell you a tale. Once upon a time, there was a critically successful comic book series called Hellblazer. Hellblazer took the character of John Constantine, a rather popular side character who first appeared in Swamp Thing, and gave him his own title. John is your classic Allan Moore creation--misanthropic, magical, and stolen from Allan Moore's cold dead hands by DC Comics. The comic was darker than most of DC's fare, and during a particularly dark and nasty run, DC started a new comic imprint called Vertigo. Hellblazer became one of Vertigo's most famous titles, and got even darker without the trappings of DC vanilla. John was a problem character for DC for a while--in DC comic fandom, there exists what is called the "Iron Curtain," which divides DC from Vertigo. Except characters like John Constantine, or the Endless of Sandman fame, appeared in DC first, then switched over. Still, Hellblazer was successful.

The comic lasted years, never going more than a few months without an issue, from 1988 to 2013. However, there were problems in paradise, as there always are. DC wanted to bring John Constantine back into its clutches. Nostalgia set in--during the Brightest Day event, John appeared with the Swamp Thing. Since then, he was a featuring character in Justice League Dark (an all-magic team), and has been given his own title called Constantine.

In true comic book fan way, I am not pleased with this turn of events. That said, it gives my wicked brain new ways to torture the poor man. So, here's the scoop:

While John has always looked younger than his 66 years (demon-blood in his veins), it's worse now. He looks right at 30, perhaps slightly younger. His memories are fuzzy--he primarily remembers the events of his Vertigo title, but he also remembers his time with Justice League Dark. Though married in the Vertigo title, his memories of his wife come and go--like much of his memories from either world.

In-canon, he has no idea why this is, and most of the time can't remember it happening enough to try and resolve out. Meta, this is because comic books are confusing and the Taxon aliens pulled both Hellblazer and Constantine at the same time. So John's dealing with basically being two different characters, but the same person, and yeah. Conflicting memories and selves.

Luckily, the Constantine movie has been well and truly forgotten by the annals of time. ¬.¬ For now, at least.

Good evening. :)

[empty_vessel]

Hi everyone, my name's Jolinar, and I play Jimmy Novak.

It's weird. I really like the characters, but I'm iffy on the show itself. Too many writers, too many questionable decisions, too many passes with the idiot ball? Who knows.

But, I was catching up on what I'd missed, and my creative muse (in all her fickle, fickle glory) latched onto the story of this one poor bastard that had signed on to help Castiel and gotten stuffed in the fridge. He got an episode when Castiel screwed up enough to get dragged off to Heaven, and a mention in the episode with Famine, and.... that was it. No closure, no mention that Jimmy'd been shuffled off to Heaven, nothing.

Now, granted, in the meta sense, I can understand that. Writers only having five seasons worth of episodes to work with, a writer's strike throwing everything up in the air.. But I felt that Jimmy deserved at least a little more than what he got. And thinking about him spiraled out into a very important question:

.... What would six years with Castiel do to a person. How would it have affected him?

My first thought was 'Trauma ahoy!' In canon, it's stated that Jimmy remembers fragments, impressions, nothing specific. And he's spent six years with an angel that's descending into madness, culminating in Castiel's dealings with Crowley and the Leviathans. Finishing with Castiel walking into the water to dissolve.

Which is where I came in. This is an AU of Jimmy, since it's never explained what happened to him (to my satisfaction, anyway.) And picks up with him arriving in Taxon after a week's layover in Atlanta, Georgia. He doesn't know how or why he's back among the living, but he's going to try again what he was trying to do before.

Get away from the angel and get home. Or, more realistically at this point, make a new life for himself somewhere.