In young justice lex and conner should have had the same relationship as danny and vlad in danny phantom in this essay i will-
other actors: I sent live rats to my costars and drank sewage water bc I’m a method actor
rpatz: I played sonic everyday —but only the dark version— to really get in the headspace
John Constantine is seventeen, angry and entirely ready to lose himself in the occult.
The open book in front of him details a particularly nasty ritual, but not one he’s unwilling to pay the price for. He bought the book from the shop on Eaton street, ‘Occult Exposition’. It’s not a nice shop. The clientele tend to be even dodgier than John and the owner always goes out of his way to make him as uncomfortable as possible.
John supposes that that’s just the price of authenticity.
The book is authentic. He knows that. One of the first things John learned was that the fakes always do well when it comes to flair but never quite catch the essence of a true ritual.
Fully set up in the back garden, John begins his ritual.
He chants and moves and shifts his thoughts in all the right directions. He slits the throat of a rabbit and cuts out the eye of the hawk that caught it. He spins a web of spider silk around the remains and watches it turn into a spun glass cage that contains something entirely different.
John lifts the same knife he used to cut out the hawks eyes and slit the rabbits throat, ready to plunge it into the beating heart the glass now contains.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” a voice calls out from behind him.
John spins around with his knife at the ready to defend himself. Instead if someone attacking him all John sees is a beautiful girl leaning against the dirty wall of his garden shed.
“Are you sure you want to stick around until the police come arrest you for trespassing?” he snarls, caught off guard.
The girl has the gall to roll her eyes. “As if you would call the police.” Considering the garden stinks of weed John supposes that the girl may have a point. “And anyway, I’m just giving you some sound advice. Nothing malicious about me at all.”
John narrows his eyes. “There aren’t many people who offer advice for free.”
“Well maybe I’m just feeling generous today.” the girl says with a grin. The smile drops promptly. “The blood rune won’t work, so you’re just going to be compelled to rip your heart out and eat it. Do you want to rip your heart out and eat it?”
John scoffs even as he sends the blood rune an uncertain look. “The rune is fine.”
The girl shoots him a withering look. “It has to be virgin's blood.”
“It is vir-“ John pauses. Resets. “Oh shit.”
“What? Are you still feeling lucky?”
“Fuck off.” John says on reflex. Then, “Thanks for telling me though. That could’ve been nasty.”
The girl finally smiles properly. Broad and shining and even John is forced to admit to himself that it’s a beautiful smile. “You’re very welcome. My name's Zatanna.” she says, sticking her hand out for him to shake.
“John.”
“I know,” she says with a wink as they clasp hands. “If you ever want a little more sound advice then just give me a call. Promise I’m a better option than you ever you got that book from.”
John raises an eyebrow. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but what’s put you in such a sharing mood?”
“I said I was feeling generous.” Her expression softens. “I think you’re going to be powerful. The kind of powerful that’s going to get people killed if you don’t know how to handle it. Call me when you’re in trouble.”
When she finishes speaking a wind summons itself up around her. Twisting and twirling until she’s stood in the centre of a spinning tornado. The speed of the wind reaches a climax and dissipates all of a sudden, leaving behind no sign of Zatanna.
John takes a step towards the space she used to occupy and spots something on the ground. It’s a business card. Pristine white with edges sharp enough to cut through flesh. On the card is a name, ‘Zatanna Zatara’, and a phone number.
There are two ‘x’s handwritten below the number and they make John feel oddly warm.
“Fuck.” he says to empty air. “Fuck.”
He turns back to his aborted ritual and starts cleaning up the blood.
Ann froze.
She was right in front of the door. All she needed to do was to reach out and knock, but to cross the gulf of space those few feet had turned into seemed nigh impossible.
As she’d walked to the address scribbled in magic on the back of her hand she had considered the possibility of freezing up. It had been one of the worries that were distinctly more real than the others that had crossed her mind, but perhaps due to its mundanity Ann had pushed it aside. It was easy to argue that she’d faced far scarier things that were far more likely to kill her in the past and the fear she felt now wouldn’t be anything like that.
It turned out that those thoughts were wrong and this fear was exactly like that. Ann wasn’t one to freeze at danger anymore though.
The reason that Ann was trapped inside her own mind at that moment was, when going through all the possible emotional dangers of this visit, she hadn’t thought about the physical ones. Namely warding to stop anyone too powerful from attempting to breach the threshold.
She started to reach out with her mind a little, trying to feel for any cracks in the warding without alerting the person who set them she was doing so. Any shapes that weren’t perfectly regular, any lines that didn’t quite connect, any place where the magic wasn’t quite strong enough. She tried to extend her arm and found she could stretch it about halfway to the door. She smiled at that with it quickly turning into a grin when she realised that there was no resistance when she moved her mouth.
Ann could feel a little of the shape of the power when she reached out. It was unwavering and secure, exactly how warding magic should be, but she knew that if she felt a bit deeper there would have to be some way to make it crumble and
Huh. It feels like me, she thought. That’s weird.
And with that her ever so careful prodding of the house’s defences lost all subtlety while her subconscious took over in its ravenous hunger for answers.
She tried to reign it in as quickly as she could, take back control of the feelers she’d woven through the warding network, but if there are two things that don’t often work well together they are emotions and control.
A moment later a man was opening the door. He was about a head taller than Ann, in his mid thirties with bags under his eyes, accompanied by an air of annoyance which didn’t quite match a man greeting a dangerous fellow magician he’d warded his house to protect against.
Ann was frozen again but this time it wasn’t anything to do with the warding. There were a thousand versions of everything that could happen next filling the uncrossable space between them. Ann could see in the way the man’s eyes widened that he saw the impossibility of reaching out across that void of possibilities as well as she did. The movement drew attention to his eyes and away from the bags underneath them.
The irises were the same shade of blue as Ann’s own.
“Huh. You look like me.” She said, forgetting for a moment how inconceivable it was less than a moment ago to cross that chasm. “That’s weird.”
@elowenp hands over 🙇♂️🙇♂️ demoncat is actually my greatest weakness and this piece referencing this part (below) of their fic!!
the outfits r kinda generic but i was rlly happy how selina turned out. i will make more pieces based on their series “stay” but drops this n runs for now! this is my first time trying this layout, i didn’t rlly enjoy it but i was too deep to not not finish it 🫥 but i hope it is still not too bad!
fic is linked here, please give it a shot!! damian is rlly cute there but the demoncat dynamic hits like … rlly good.
living in gotham is like. you are going to be consumed. you are going to see your worst fears in horrific visions. these visions will be provided by someone who doesn’t even know your name. someone is going to shoot you. you are going to laugh and you will not want to. you are going to kill someone. whether or not your house gets blown up will be decided by a coin flip. someone put acid in the water. you are going to be in a hostage situation. a fucking furry is going to be the only reason you survive any of this