u/vivvav

Y'know, the old-looking dingy ice cream truck that's always parked near the Ranch? I'm assuming it's not a functional ice cream vendor unless the crew at Warner Bros really love tetanus flavor. I think I see it parked in different spots sometimes, so someone's driving it, but what's the deal? I've been seeing it for years and finally realized SOMEONE in town has to know.

Does Peter Milligan hate women or something? His run closing it out isn't like, the worst comic I've ever read or anything, but I can see why people don't like it. What bugs me the most is his portrayal of EVERY female character. You've got:

-Phoebe Cliffton: Good and normal except for the part where she's kind of fucked in the head chasing something that's bad for her in John until it gets her killed by a jealous shapeshifting demon. Also John basically tries to rape her which is just too far of being a bastard even for Constantine himself.

-Epiphany Greaves: YIKES YIKES YIKES YIKES YIKES. A woman less than half John's age who saw him once when she was a teenage girl and decided he'd be hers forever, then they wind up getting married even with all the shit with her crime lord dad.

-Gemma Masters: Dear fucking god, poor Gemma. I hoped from the very first time the character was introduced back in Delano's run that she wouldn't fall into the old family habits. When other writers portrayed her as doing just that, I accepted it as the cyclical tragedy of the Constantine family that it was. But having gone through therapy to get over the magic mad world she followed her uncle into, only to get RAPED by his evil demon twin!? And then it sends her down this path of madness that has her obsessed with John, trying to make him jealous by making out with his wife who's even younger than her, trying to get some witches to kill him, sleeping around with a grody gangster to get revenge on him who beats her when he realizes he's not in love with her, and possibly murdering him as the finale? WHAT THE HELL?

-Angie Spatchcock: What a bizarre choice to bring a cool character back just to go "she's fat now, she's not over John, and she's jealous and bitter about his marriage".

-Sia Brady: So she was magically manipulated by her husband's stepbrother to betray him, curse him, and also have sex with him, I guess? So another rape victim?

-Cheryl Masters: John's sister in Hell who we find out had a baby boy she abandoned when she was 14, and because John crosses his fingers while making a promise to her as part of his deal with the First of the Fallen to get her out of Hell, she's still technically trapped there? Even after he both ultimately fulfills that promise AND his second deal with the Devil to free her in the final issue? We never get any confirmation that she actually gets to move on to Heaven where she belongs. She just keeps suffering when we see her.

There's more I could list, but I think the ONLY female characters in Milligan's run who aren't portrayed as making bad choices or being a victim are Chas's wife and Phoebe's other doctor friend who tells her Constantine is no good for her. Oh and maybe Kit whose brief appearance before the wedding felt especially pointless. So I gotta know: Was Milligan going through a rough divorce or something? Does he always write women like this? What the actual fuck?

He's the Commander-in-Chief of the World Government but I don't fully get what that means. I think at some point I got the impression that he was like, equal in power to the Five Elders but more directly connected to the Marines? But he doesn't do anything ever, at least not that I can recall. Aside from stopping Sengoku and Garp from resigning after Marineford, which I feel like the Five Elders could've commanded on their own. In both an in-story sense and meta sense, considering how littlle this character has been used/done, I feel like there's no point to him existing at all.

Recently it occurred to me that I don't think I've ever suffered an autistic meltdown. But also, I think my view of what one can look like is pretty narrow. It seems like in my head, "autistic meltdown" is either an adult throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler, or just a complete shutdown where they become uncommunicative. And while there are times when I've expressed anger very readily or not wanted to talk to people, I don't feel like I've ever experienced those to the point where it's like, pathological and debilitating and I can't control myself in a public setting. At the very least I've always been able to remove myself from a situation on my own volition. But also that view might just be incredibly myopic? Do you ever have meltdowns? What's it like?