reach out and touch faith | taxonomites application
Your name/crazy internet handle/whatever: Carlee/Car
Personal journal: yourlivewire
Email: seemssosurreal@hotmail.com
AIM: this pink ribbon @ aim.
Characters in Taxon (if applicable): Max Guevara and Elena Gilbert
Character name: Angela Dodson
Genre (TV/books/etc): Film
Fandom: Constantine
Birthday (if applicable): It's never specified.
Canon point: Post movie, as she's leaving John on the rooftop to hide the Spear of Destiny.
Why this Character and Canon point?: Angela fits rather well into the type of characters I tend to play - tough but vulnerable female leads.
Joking aside, I wanted to play her because I thought there was something really interesting about the fact that she had all this power at one point in her life, an in into the world behind the world and the supernatural, and rather than exploring it the way most characters in this genre do, she wants to push it away while someone else close to her (her twin) decides to embrace it. She's a walking contradiction in the sense that she doesn't want to see the evil in the world, but she takes a job that involves protecting the innocent. She's a devout Catholic and clings desperately to her faith, but struggles with the idea that God wants her to be a killer. She loves her sister and wants to heal and protect her, but betrays her when she sees what their ability does to her and allows her to be committed. Her age and experience also appeals to me - most of my characters are in their teens or early twenties, and they, while they may have had a lot of rough life experiences, are still somewhat naive in certain parts of life. Angela is in her thirties and has a bit more worldly experience.
As for the canon point, I considered drawing her from a bit earlier in the movie, but decided she'd be more open to the idea of being abducted to an alien planet at the end of the movie. While she's by no means an expert in the field of the occult, she knows better how to protect herself from the forces of evil and will be eager to learn more.
Programmed Possession: The Spear of Destiny.
Abilities/Weaknesses: Angela is a skilled LAPD homicide detective and is a bit stronger and faster-moving than most women of her height and build, but there's nothing supernatural about it - she's just well-trained and makes sure to stay healthy and in good shape so she can do her job and do it well. Something that contributes to this, though she doesn't realize it at the beginning of the movie, is her psychic ability, which manifests when she and Isabel are children. Seeing what it does to her sister, Angela denies her ability to the point of it being dormant from early adolescence to adulthood, but it makes itself present in other ways - she is always in the wrong place at the wrong time when something dangerous is going down and always knows exactly where to aim and the right moment to fire to kill whoever's causing the trouble. It also helps her find the right places to duck and stay out of harm's way. After her ability is re-awakened by John, she's able to see the same things that he does, but there's something more to her ability and it's much stronger than his - she's able to see that Balthazar killed Beeman and slips into a trance-like state where she's seeing Beeman's death through his eyes almost immediately after they're tapped back into.
As for weaknesses, I mentioned before that she denied her ability when she saw what it did to her sister and how people reacted to her telling everyone, and she did it because she was terrified of the same thing happening to her. She says to John "I'm stronger than Isabel", but I think she only half-believes that this is true - Isabel was honest all along while she lied to keep herself safe. This is a bit of a roundabout way of coming to my point, but what it is is that she does not scare easily, but when she is truly afraid, fear inhibits her and her capabilities. She also has trouble dealing with grief - it's mentioned in the novelization of the movie that her mother died, and when that happened she did everything she could to distract herself from her own pain, and you also get a sense that this is how she is dealing with what happened to her sister aside from the base reason of her wanting to get to the bottom of the reasons for her death.
Psychology/Personality:
One of the biggest parts of Angela's personality is her strength - even if you ignore the way she's able to handle everything Constantine introduces to her with relative grace, despite it going against everything she's believed up until that point, there's something to be said about the kind of profession she's employed in. You don't go into her line of work, especially in a city like Los Angeles, without being prepared to see some awful things and being able to handle them. Her faith also play a huge role in her life: she is clearly struggling with it throughout the course of the film, especially in the beginning of it, but it's something that she clings to. With her job, she sees a lot of the ugliness in the world and how people suffer from it. She sees it with her sister. And she has to believe that there's a reason for the suffering, has to believe that there's a reason to keep fighting against it, that she shouldn't just back down and give up. She has to believe that there is peace at the end of the tunnel for everyone that's hurting in the world.
There's also something to be said about the relationship she has with her twin sister, Isabel. They have no interaction in the movie while Isabel is alive, but there are several things she says and does that hint at the kind of relationship they had, and many of them contradict each other - she fights for Isabel to have a Catholic funeral, insists that she wouldn't have taken her own life, picks glass from her face when she sees her body. But she also tries to distance herself from her - she tells John "I'm not like my sister", she has her committed, she lies and denies her powers to the point of them being dormant while Isabel tells everyone she can about what she sees, and even lies to Isabel when she asks why she doesn't tell people. She obviously loves her sister very much, is very protective of her, and will always feel guilty that she wasn't honest ("I abandoned her, John. I left her all alone"), but seeing what their gift did to Isabel and how people reacted to her telling everyone what she saw terrified her, and the fear caused her to push away that part of herself and betray her sister.
In an interview on the character, Rachel Weisz describes Angela as a loner, someone who's "not quite totally living fully", which is something that comes from suppressing such a huge part of herself for so many years. We're not given much insight into her personal life, but we see that she lives alone and the novelization mentions that there are people at the precinct who have names for her (which have to do with the fact that she's so willing to use her gun), so she probably doesn't have very many people she feels she can consider friends. We also see a picture of her with her partner, Detective Xavier, on her desk when she arrives home, and they appear very close. The commentary of the movie mentions that in earlier drafts of the script, she'd been involved in a relationship with him, and some of their behavior towards each other confirms that this was likely the case, though she's rather cold to him while he's more open towards her. This suggests that she's not particularly good at relationships, which makes sense, because if she can't be open with herself, how can she be expected to be honest with someone else?
She is not all hard edges and coldness, though: she is shown to have a gentle, compassionate nature and a dry sense of humor. She obviously has issues opening up to people, but she seems to truly care about the people she does get close to and will fight with them and to defend them and their honor (this is shown several times when it comes to Isabel) until the end.
History:
We are first introduced to Angela when she's in a confessional booth, asking for forgiveness for taking a man's life. It's quickly revealed that this is not the first time this has happened and it frightens her - most cops go for years without ever firing their guns, she's killed four murderers within six months, and all of them have been one-shot, one-kill deals. It makes her question her faith. She wonders aloud if there's something wrong with her, something evil, because what kind of God would want her to be a killer? After her time in confession, she goes home and goes about her business, eventually falling asleep, and she has a dream about a woman with her face in the psychiatric ward of a hospital. The woman is terrified, being chased by voices chanting her name and ghosts that we can't see that follow her to the roof of the building. She stands at the edge and pulls her hospital bracelet off, revealing to us a symbol in the form of a raised welt on her wrist, before stepping off the edge and crashing through the ceiling and into the pool of the hospital's hydrotherapy room. Angela wakes up terrified and gasping for air.
The next day, it's revealed that the woman who jumped off the roof was a premonition, but not involving Angela herself - it was her twin sister, Isabel. Grief-stricken and shocked, she kneels beside her twin's dead body and states, mainly to herself, that Isabel fell from the roof, but she's quickly told by Detective Xavier that she jumped rather than fell. Angela denies this, insisting that Isabel wouldn't have taken her own life, and then is shown the security tapes that prove that it's the truth. Even after seeing the truth play out before her eyes, Angela refuses to believe that her sister would have taken her own life and goes to the Theological Society to request a Catholic funeral for her, but her request is denied.
In both situations - at the hospital and at the Theological Society - Angela encounters a man she's heard about at the precinct who's been in and out of lock up several times and was even nearly convicted of a murder at one point - John Constantine. At the hospital he lets an elevator door close in her face after she asks for him to hold it, at the Theological Society he insists "first come, first serve" when they ask to speak with one of the members (though, as it turns out, they're there to speak with different people). It's clear after both encounters that she doesn't think very highly of the man, and she doesn't think too much about him or why he was at either place at the same time she was until she's at home re-watching the video of Isabel's suicide and Isabel's image turns to look right at her and says one word: 'Constantine'.
Despite her initial skepticism and consideration that what she saw and heard may have been a hallucination, the same pull inside, the same knowledge of who to kill, where to aim, and where to hide that follows her while she's in the field, tells her not to ignore the sign, and even ignoring that, she figures that with his background, he may be able to help. She gathers information on him, including his address, and goes to see if he can help her figure out what happened to her sister. He tries to turn her away at first, not in the mood to help anyone out after having been diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer and turned away by the people he asks for help, but she insists on letting her tell him what happened to her sister, theorizing that a cult or a legion may have gotten to her and brainwashed her into killing herself. He turns her away, and when she tells him that Isabel wouldn't have taken her life and why she believes she wouldn't, he tells her that her soul would be dragged to Hell, where she'd be ripped apart in "screaming, brutal agony for all eternity". Shocked and hurt, and upset that her last resort is apparently a loss, she (essentially) tells him to go to Hell himself and leaves, slamming the door behind her.
Considering how the meeting went down, Angela is quite surprised when John follows her out onto the street, telling her that God and the Devil made a bet long ago to see how many souls they could win onto their respective sides just by influence. She asks why, and he tells her that it was for the fun of it, which she responds to with anger and sarcasm ("it's fun when a man beats his wife to death, it's fun when a mother drowns her own baby, and you think the Devil is responsible?"). It's her belief that people are evil and the ones who are behind the awful things in the world, and that to put the blame on something people can't see because they can't own up to the things they've done is ridiculous. Constantine agrees that people are capable of terrible things, but then "sometimes something else comes along, gives us just the right nudge". Angela counters that she doesn't believe in the Devil, and John tells her that she should, because he believes in her. She's about to say something else to him (probably "go away"), and then the streetlight directly above where her car is parked flickers out.
The same thing starts to happen down the street in both directions, darkness beginning to surround them, and Angela theorizes that it must be a power outage - until her car locks itself. John grabs her arm, telling her they should leave the area, and then both start to hear fluttering in the distance that's gradually coming closer. John realizes that an attack is approaching and takes out a highly flammable cloth (the shroud Moses wore to Mount Sinai) while Angela pulls out her gun, keeping it drawn even after being told "that's really not going to help". He fights off the attack - a mass of seplatives, "scavengers of the damned" - with the holy fire, and after they disintegrate, the lights come back on, John walks into the center of the street to make sure the fire did its job, and Angela staggers to her feet and throws up. She asks what just attacked them and he tells her, adding that he didn't think they were after him. He then agrees to help her, beginning with finding out whether or not Isabel's really in hell.
To confirm this, they go to Angela's apartment where John uses Angela's cat and a pan of water to transfer from their plane into Hell, and while there, he sees Isabel re-enacting her suicide. To prove to Angela that her sister did take her own life, he grabs Isabel's hospital bracelet as she's tossing it away. When Angela sees the bracelet, she's shocked and wants to know how it's possible - how could someone who believed so strongly in the idea that death by suicide would be a one-way ticket to a place she'd feared her entire life suddenly decide that taking her own life was the only option? John takes her to an all night diner, where he explains that he's been able to see demons and angels since childhood - or, to be more accurate, half-breeds. Half-breeds are demons and angels sent to earth wrapped in human skin, and they have the power to influence humans one way or the other. These visions and the treatments he went through - the last treatment being an exorcism, which apparently has a very painful and unpleasant effect on someone who is not possessed - led to him committing suicide by slitting his wrists. He was revived in an ambulance after having been dead for two minutes, and those two minutes had been spent in Hell. He goes on to explain that whenever he sees a demon trying to break the rules of the Balance (the agreement between Heaven and Hell that they would only use the power of influence to win humans over to their respective sides) by possessing them, he "deports" them back to Hell by exorcising them, hoping to send enough demons back to ensure his entry into Heaven when he dies. Angela accurately describes this as "trying to buy your way into Heaven", to which John replies "what would you do if you were sentenced to a prison where half the inmates were put there by you?". Angela mentions that Isabel also saw things when they were children, and then her phone rings with news of a death at a nearby liquor store.
The death turns out to be a friend of John's, Father Hennessey, who has been tricked into drinking himself to death. But before he died, he cut a symbol into his hand, which John describes to another one of his friends (Beeman) over the phone before telling Angela that he needs to see where Isabel died. Angela agrees and takes him to Ravenscar Hospital, where Isabel had been a patient in the psychiatric ward. She first takes him to the hydrotherapy room, then to the room where she'd been sleeping, telling him the various ways Isabel would try to make sense of what was happening to her and what she saw, and that she'd stopped talking for nearly a year. John mentions that "you don't walk off the edge of a building without leaving something behind" and begins searching for clues. Angela gets offended, insisting that there's nothing there, until John hounds her and she remembers that when she and Isabel were children, they left messages for each other on windows, and breathes on the window to see if one comes up. One does: COR: 17:1, or Corinthians 17:1. Angela's confused, since there is no seventeenth act in Corinthians, and John explains that Corinthians goes up to twenty one acts in the Bible in Hell. (Because yes, they have Bibles in Hell.)
John has Beeman look up the chapter and he sees the symbol that Hennessy had cut into his hand - the sign of Mammon, the son of the Devil. It mentions that conventional rules when it comes to demons crossing over would not apply - meaning that Mammon could cross over, but he would need to possess a powerful psychic (Isabel) and would also need the help of God. After revealing this, Beeman realizes he's about to die, and tells John that while he doesn't have much faith, they have faith in him and hangs up. Angela drives them to the bowling alley, where they discover Beeman's body after it's been ravaged by insects. John is, understandably, distraught about this and tells Angela to leave before he gets her killed, too.
But she doesn't, or if she does, she returns after a few hours, coming clean to John about how she used to see things too - "but you already knew that, didn't you?". She tells him that she needs to understand and see what Isabel saw, to make up for the fact that she abandoned her years ago and to fight the ones who killed her sister ("I'd trade places with her if I could"). He finally agrees, but not before warning her that there's no turning back - "you see them, they see you". Angela agrees, and he performs the same spell that he did in her apartment - submerging part of the body in water so they can transition onto the next plane. Only in Angela's case, since her abilities have been dormant for so long, this essentially involves drowning her, and John's bathtub is broken in the process. After this, Angela's immediately able to see who killed Beeman - the demon Balthazar, who John had a personal history with.
They drive to Balthazar's building after John assembles a weapon known as the Holy Shotgun, intent on killing the hell out of him after finding out how Mammon's planning to cross over. He gives Angela an amulet for protection, telling her to stay in the car while he does this, but after a while she essentially says "fuck this misogynistic 'stay in the car' shit" and goes to help him. (Unfortunately, the amulet falls off as she's leaving.) As she arrives, Balthazar - or, more accurately, the remains of his head - turns to her and laughs, saying to John "she was my only job, and you've led her right to us". John blows the rest of his head away and he leads Angela to the elevators, telling her that Mammon was planning to cross over with the blood of God, using the stains on the Spear of Destiny (which was what really killed Christ, not being nailed to a cross). Angela mentions that he still needs to locate a powerful psychic, to which John replies "not really" - she's the target now. Shortly after this, she's yanked through A LOT OF WALLS and across town, back to where her sister died.
She crashes into the pool, where the same spell that reawakened her abilities is performed on her again, only after this trip, she comes back possessed by Mammon. John, who, with some help from his apprentice (Chas) and a witch doctor (Papa Midnite), has found out where she is and has (literally) blown through the demons who were guarding the doors, pulls her out of the pool and he and Chas perform an exorcism on her. It works, until Chas is yanked away and violently crushed against the ceiling and floor by the same force that pulled Angela to Ravenscar. Furious, John summons who did this - the archangel Gabriel.
Angela is unconscious for much of what happens next, but it's important so I'll include it anyway - Gabriel's plan was to turn Earth over to Mammon so that the members of humanity that survived would truly be worthy of God's love. He sends John into the next room and shuts the door. John asks for God's help, but then gets the idea to summon Lucifer by slitting his wrists again, on the off chance that a) the rumors that his soul was the one he would come to Earth to collect himself were true and b) that he didn't know what his son had planned. Luck was on his side - he would, and he didn't, and he stops Gabriel from using the spear on Angela and sends his son back to Hell. He then goes back to John and asks what he wants - he owes him one since John did him a favor, and he asks him to set Isabel's soul free. Lucifer agrees and starts to drag John off, only he starts to ascend instead of descend - because he was willing to sacrifice his life for Isabel's soul, he was granted access to Heaven. Angered by this, Lucifer pulls him back to Earth, cleans his lungs of cancer, and seals his wrists back up, telling him that he will live long enough to prove that his soul truly belongs in Hell. After this, Angela wakes up, and John comes over to her, discovering that Gabriel's been turned into a human as punishment for betraying God. Gabriel offers John the chance to be the hand of God and end his life, but instead John punches him in the face and he and Angela leave.
The movie ends on the rooftop of a building where John's asked Angela to meet. He gives her the Spear of Destiny, telling her to hide it where no one will be able to find it, not even him, and then mentions that he has some cleaning up to do. She says she'll see him around, he mentions that he'd like that, and she walks off to hide the spear somewhere safe.
Arrival Post (Third Person):
The past few days have not been the easiest time in Angela Dodson's life, and today had actually started out as an exception. It had remained an exception until the meeting on the rooftop with John, where he'd given her the Spear of Destiny and asked her to hide it. She wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of having it in her possession - not only was the object incredibly powerful and potentially dangerous, but it had nearly been used to sacrifice her and bring the son of the Devil into the world - but the idea of the spearhead being kept somewhere so close was somehow worse than holding onto it for a few days. So she'd agreed, taking the spear with her off the rooftop, intent on going back home and getting the first decent night's sleep she'd be having in nearly a week and planning where to hide it first thing in the morning. Maybe she'd even have a bath (because while she was wary of the idea of going anywhere near a pool again, a steaming hot bubble bath still somehow sounded appealing).
Only she doesn't get to do any of this, because as she steps through the doorway of the stairwell that leads to the roof of the building, she finds herself in a large, metallic chamber.
Angela looks around a moment or two, the expression on her face one of utter disbelief before it shifts into one of irritation. She re-wraps the spearhead carefully before tucking it away into her purse (looking a little bit relieved that she's not touching it anymore), bringing out her phone in its place as she reaches behind her back to pull her gun out of its hidden holster. (She knows by now that it won't help much against a demon attack, but she feels safer having this than nothing.)
"This is unbelievable," she mutters to herself before hitting the 'send' button on her phone - she's not sure what John could do to help or how she's going to describe what's just happened, but he's the only one she can think of to call who might know what's going on. It doesn't really matter anyway, since there's not even a dial tone to be heard. She pulls the phone away from her face, frowning deeper before shoving it back into her purse and cocking her gun.
"LAPD. Whoever's behind this, show yourselves, now."
There's no answer. Not even a hint that anyone is around, and more than that, it doesn't look as if anyone has been around, at least not recently. She's not getting a reading on who her captors may be, just other people like her - confused and trapped.
She huffs, frustrated, and then spots something out of the corner of her eye - the tablet, set atop a pedestal. She leans in closer, getting a good look at the screen and what its functions are, but doesn't touch it or pick it up. Until she sees the light that indicates that it's recording, and then she does pick it up, giving it a wary look before she attempts speaking into it.
"Hello?" she tries, not sure whether or not she's expecting an answer (and if she is, who or what she expects is on the other end of the line). "Not that I don't appreciate the vacation," (well, she doesn't, but that's beside the point), "but I'd have preferred to plan it myself. Whatever or whoever you are, I want to be sent back, and failing that, I'd like to know what the hell is going on here."
She sounds more confident than she feels, but she's been well trained not to show fear, especially in situations like this. Setting the tablet back down, she sighs again, pressing her lips together before her face tightens into a bitter smile.
"At least it wasn't through walls this time."
Additional Third Person Sample:
John had had his chance to say goodbye to a friend, and now it was Angela's turn to do the same thing.
It had taken some time, but she'd eventually been able to convince Father Garret to give Isabel a Catholic funeral (but she didn't have everything to do with that - actually, she hadn't had much to do with it at all, and she'd already stopped by Chas's grave). Knowing that her sister's soul was in Heaven (John had told her, but she'd somehow known it already, an inner satisfaction that she was at peace) and that she'd been given the burial she deserved, Angela finally felt like she'd done right by her, but she wasn't done yet.
She stood by Isabel's grave, kneeling in front of the headstone and placing her hand on the edge of it. She looked down for a moment, gathering her thoughts, and then looked back up, her voice soft as she spoke.
"I'm not sure whether or not you can hear me," she began, her voice surprisingly even. "But if you can - I know you're probably not interested in hearing it anymore, but I wanted to do it anyway." She felt her throat tighten, but no tears were coming yet, so she continued. "I know where you are now - I know you're at peace. But I wanted to say I'm sorry, for not doing more to help you while you were here."
Tears were coming now, and she blinked several times to clear them before she continued. "I was scared. Terrified. That's why I said I didn't see. Maybe it doesn't matter now, but you deserved to hear why." She looked to the sky, a few stray tears slipping down her cheeks before she wiped them away, and then she looked back at the headstone, smiling in a sad sort of way before she drew an item from the pocket of her jeans.
"I love you, Izzy," she said, bringing the ring engraved with her initial ('I' for Isabel, 'A' for Angela - hers was kept in a jewelery box) to her lips and kissing it before pressing it into the dirt. "Goodbye."
After that, she stood, kissing her fingertips and pressing them to the top of Isabel's headstone before heading towards the cemetery gates, a warm feeling filling her up and wrapping protective arms around her as she walked. She paused for a moment, closing her eyes and smiling again, only this time there wasn't any tears. There was no need for them.
She'd been heard by her sister, and forgiven. And she wasn't afraid anymore.