#a lot of the earliest songs have somehow aged better for me than say. half of four. so there’s that to consider lol

[an-ivy-covered-summer]

new year’s project: ranking all one direction songs. that should be fun lol

[ohhicas]

I've only been into comics for a few years, but I've read enough of the old Flash stuff where I adore the classic incarnations of the Rogues. Honestly curious here: what's it like to be a fan of James Jesse back when he was retgonned around 10 years ago and see him brought back but now all mwahaha crazy evil? I'm way more used to Axel (and all that off-panel character development in Nu52, thanks DC) but even I find this kinda weird. Was James ever crazy evil in any arc?

^- me 90% of the time someone says James is coming back to recent media & it’s not a direct continuation of the comics prior to 2004

[ Warning: this is gonna get long and be full of a lot of assumptions. I can never form solid statements and things will get jumbled, because I suck at presenting things ]

[ this is my can of worms hill and you opened it so I’m dYING HERE ]

I mean, back in the earliest ages, no Rogue had a real personality to speak of? They were just “1960s Bad Guy in a different outfit” at the very start, with quirks! Like James having a thing for toys and nuclear powered flying tricycles. It wasn’t until that era ended that they started getting real distinct and into what a lot of ‘classic’ James fans loved and appreciated? 

(I think at least, I’m just One Person here pretending like I even understand HALF of what the ‘classic’ fandom enjoyed. I’m wildly speculating just going off what fanworks I’ve seen produced.)

(I don’t have all my scans anymore but I’ll toss in scans when I have them)

But that’s when we started getting things like James actually having specified friendships with certain people

or clear distaste towards others, and when you could tell he was more of a wild card than the others. Or when he decided to fuck off and hang out in Hollywood with Blue Devil for a bit, even siding with Kid Devil to deck out Captain Boomerang. 

Or when he decided to fuck off to Gotham, to mess with Catwoman by pretending he didn’t know who she was, but absolutely knew who she was because of how she walked and carried herself, but James being James was like “mmmmm long con, nope”

hey lil Cold, gimme all ur guns and don’t question why I’m in drag xoxo

Even then, he wasn’t shown to be vicious yet! He’d hopped around various places, was still considered A Rogue, A Criminal, and as far as any comic reader could tell by trying to count up how many civilians may have been crossfired at, he had no On Purpose deaths racked? Like, the only thing you could really argue was he may have made someone drive their car off a cliff once, but I’m like 98% sure they’re fine. He’s not a murderer, he’s just here for a laugh and a long-con for funsies because he know he can get away with it!

AND THEN WE GET A LITTLE OLDER, LITTLE DARKER

[ I’M PUTTING A CUT HERE CAUSE AFTER I THREW IT INTO DRAFTS, I REALIZED I GOT REALLY LONG, I’M SORRY IF MY LAYOUT SUCKS ASS FOR THIS. ]

little more 90s Hair. Little more 90s stereotypical “But what if EVERYONE WENT TO HELL” demon plots against Satanic Hockey Hair Neron. And James? still wasn’t evil? He was a little dismissive when everyone ELSE died sure but he still in the end turned around like “nghgng I’m THE ONLY ONE”, purposely got his ass down there, regretted it, and then beat Neron at his own game to save the entire fucking world. Because! He could! And he did it so well. STILL NOT EVIL, even when he had a chance right then and there to take over everything alongside Neron should he so desire. Like, two words, maybe some under the table BJs depending on how you feel about that pairing (I don’t), and bam. He would’ve bested nearly any other villain in the DCU save like, Satan himself. Or i guess one of those world destroyers. But we’ll get back around to those BOY HOWDY WE WILL GET AROUND TO THOSE. 

So James! Saves! The world! Sorta! Later they fight Neron again and his kid he somehow had somewhere down the road (it sounds like I’m complaining, i’m not, I love Billy and Mindy both I just wish they showed up like… ever again?) and he sTILL SAVES EVERYONE. 

Piper helps by their 90s ponytails combined. 

Somewhere around here, because dates and timing aren’t my strong suit, he also goes and messes with Bart for a bit. It’s pretty much a Spy Vs Spy episode, but with less bloodshed. 

ANYWAY IT’S AFTER THIS POINT THAT THINGS GET… where I think the majority of “James is a Low Rate Joker” comes from? 

For some unknown goddamn reason, in between issues (James wasn’t a Super Frequent Rogue? He’d show up, sure, but in the huge run of the series he’d just kind of vanish for 20 issues at a time and you’d go “welp, guess he’s still alive”) James went super-cop? like, the FBI? For some reason? Hired James “I am a probably still wanted felon, a man who has escaped jail numerous times, probably never served a full sentence, known Trickster and liar” Jesse. to the FBI. And for so many issues it’s like he legit just. Did this. He threatens to shoot Piper who he was up until this very moment, considerably very close friends with (as far as comics would show Rogue/Rogue friendships), unwilling to help his friend clearly framed for murder of his parents and losing his mind by the day. Despite James talking Hart down a little on the whole ‘THE MAYOR IS ROSCOE ADN NOBODY BELIEVES MEEEEEEEE” thing. 

Also he steals Digger’s dead ass corpse? 

FBI James is a fucking enigma. Here he is standing up for Gay Rights even though Piper is like “mm maybe I should forgive my abuser??”

BUT. AFTER THIS? WE GET COUNTDOWN WHICH IS JUST. Countdown is. IT’s a problem. James’s personality is IMMEDIATELY HORRIBLY u-turned into “well we need SOMEONE to be the Bad Guy to Piper’s Good!” DESPITE. ALL THESE YEARS OF COMICS.This is the shit you’ll see people who don’t know better or just want a reason to hate the Trickster (despite being 100% okay for them to just say he’s annoying/they don’t like his tights/acrobats are stupid) reference. James is, suddenly, very abruptly, a homophobe. Like an “ew don’t touch me” level homophobe because I’m pretty sure DC snorts cocaine and threw a dart at a board for “how could they make these two fight” and landed on GAY RIGHTS IS TRENDING. 

BUTSTILL IN THE FUCKING END OF ALL OF THIS?After so many issues of James being a complete fuckass prick? 

springboards himself from his current job of being railroad face putty to catching bullets to make sure Piper wasn’t gonna die. Without knowing the proceedings of this entire plotline, James out of nowhere after so much gaybashing, still finds it in him to leap into the path of multiple bullets and save Piper. Because, yknow, he’s evil!

Later it’s shown he’s been working to take everyone down (y’know, like when he was in the FBI) and left Piper specific helpful notes to do it himself. Because Evil Bad Guy! Helping his gone-good friend! Take down bad guys! 

DC I STILL HAVE SO MANY GODDMAN QUESTOINgsd

But yeah that’s. That’s where we last saw James. in 2007, dead, after saving Piper when he could have easily pulled a Joker and ripped HIM down to take hte bullets and etcetc, y’know. Something a Very Bad Person would’ve done, like the characterization we’ve seen now. 

His ghost (easily argued as Piper’s own mental construction of James sassing him) sasses Hartley to even, in his mental state, saw off James’s hand so Piper doesn’t have to lug his weight around and has a fighting chance at living. And in the end, when Piper’s fighting the thing that can destroy the fucking world, it’s shown only Piper was the one who could save them? Because his flute, and his musical ability, and [enter DC comic science here]. You could argue this was James, once again, somehow knowing the long-con at play here, getting screwed over at EVERY turn, and sacrificing himself so they ‘good’ team had a fighting chance.You could also argue this is me losing my mind trying to make sense of the things they made James do. (my running argument is he was purposely a prick to push Piper away, so he could keep him safe) 

Also Piper plays James a Swan Song of Queen as the final boss explodes and he’s fully prepared to die. So like. There’s that. 

AND THATS BASICALLY THE COMICS? The main, ‘canon timeline’ comics. I’m missing a LOT of little things here and there, but I’m not missing anything like body counts, or murder attempts, beyond the old Silver Age “Bad guy of the week” things like trying to make Flash’s head explode, or you know. Other “nobody really has a personality, we just have quirks”. 

MY NUMBER ONE GUESS TO WHERE THIS NEW PERSONALITY TREND COMES FROM?

Mark Hamil|’s OG run as him in the old live action show. That characterization was fun, for the time, and I even enjoyed it cause it was just that off the wall and you could tell it was what they used to decide he should be the Joker for the BATS Joker. Consider it a prototype (combined with all the previous comic jokers but that’s not for this long ass post) 

And if it’d stayed there, that’d be it! That’s it! But then JLU came along, and they referenced the old show for their version of James with a sprinkling of early-era comics, and a lot of people loved and watched that show. That was their version of the Trickster, because it was their first meeting with him! And I can’t fault that! But that guy was clearly off his rocker and I’m sure if the JLU allowed a higher rating, it would’ve been even closer to the old TV show. 

And both of THOSE were heavily, heavily referenced for the CW version, which as I’m at this point now means I need to slap my usual anti-CW tag onto things. I hate the CW James. There is so little comic in him it’s almost disgusting, and they ramped up so much of the Joker side of JLU & OGTV he might as well just be the Joker. It’s not a good representation of him at all. I have, also, only seen his first appearance episode, so maybe I’m wrong? But when you fuck up hard on the first run, why would I return for round 2? 

So with ALL THIS– 

REBOOT TIME. Whatever the newnew remake is calling itself. 

At first! With how James was! In the first panel flash of him clearly behind the scenes tugging so many wires and lines, watching everything with a bucket of popcorn while pulling others to his side, sitting pretty in an old museum? warehouse? highlighted in purples and vintage toys, I was like “holy shit this it. This is My Boy, back from the goddamn limbo-dead. It’s him.” But then“taking over the city entirely” to do? What? Turn it into the world’s biggest Trickster themepark? Make everyone wear striped leggings and combat boots? Martial Law of murder if you don’t carry rubber chickens? This is already veering from anything major James has ever done. As it stands I can’t see the gag here. Its’ weirdly dark and edgy, and way too close to something we saw the 90s TV show Trickster do, in the episode where he basically took over the place. The previews show him being what I’m assuming a Judge, Jury, & Executioner joke– and unless this spins into a Clopin song and dance number and his little hand puppet crops up to slam the button on the guillotine, I’m not having it, DC. 

They’re trying to tie him back into the CW, despite the writer saying he really enjoyed the Neron-era things with James (if I’m remembering the interview correctly). And it’s also why you may see me constantly saying “Well I sure as fuck hope Neron shows up” at anything new that’s released, to explain away all of… this.

This isn’t him. If they wanted a murderous Trickster, they should’ve just used Axel. The kid, canonly, tied explosives to stray dogs and homeless people. AXEL is the not-good Trickster, the murderous Trickster, the one you aren’t suppose to feel sorry for beyond being in way over his head due to his young age. 

i think I somehow didn’t answer your question

TL;DR

it sucks? it’s also great because there’s a .5% chance that maybe they’ll do it right and won’t reference the fucking 90s noncomic media. But then they do. And all I can do is laugh and shrug like ‘welp I expected nothing’. But when they get it RIGHT it’s like christmas came early.

[chaifootsteps]

Day 17 (January 23rd) - Anders and Sadness

Anders ages the way the bulrushes age. 

Greyer certainly -- the years have turned all his golds to silver, leaving only his eyes to remember them by -- but softer in the places where he’s begun to fray. He’s the personification of a warm autumn afternoon, and the fading light does miraculous things when it shines on him.

Oh, how he shines.

It could be so much worse than it is, and even on the hardest of days, that fact doesn’t escape them. Decades have passed since Divine Victoria ordered an official end to the Circles…a few less since the Hero of Ferelden brought about a cure for the darkspawn Taint that loomed over their shoulders for so much of their lives. Through there will always be mages in agreement that no man was ever less deserving of a quiet retirement among the Antivan hills, each month sees a few travelers who want nothing more than to shake his hand and offer their thanks.

They bring gifts, sometimes. Blankets, books, little trinkets carved or forged or sewn with feathers. Faded notes from when they or their parents lived behind stone walls, counting the wasted years; things Anders gently insists they keep. The really savvy ones bring food.

(“We’re going to be poisoned one of these days,” he once mused aloud, selecting another custard roll. Ain had scoffed gently.

“If they do, I hope it’s another butter cake. I wouldn’t have objected to dying on that butter cake.”)

But Anders is not a healthy man, and hasn’t been since the day they found each other in the Nevarran backcountry. Before Justice took his leave, he regretfully contemplated that perhaps humans only came into the world with so much strength. Perhaps he had pushed Anders into exhausting all of his years before his time. Anders had replied that Justice never expressly forbade him from stopping for a sandwich now and again, and that the blame was as much his as anyone else’s.

He’ll be seventy-eight in Ferventis. He still doesn’t stop for sandwiches.

The cough does not mark the beginning, nor does it mark the end.

Rather, it’s a milestone of sorts; the first time Ain has to run from the house in the dead of night and bruise his knuckles on the healer’s door. He holds his partner’s hand by lamplight, whispering comforting nonsense as the old elven woman slips a needle between the hard, visible rises of his ribs and drains the fluid into a glass jug.

(Until his dying day, Ain will recall that it looked exactly like bad ale, complete with foam head.)

Once upon a time, Anders had taken a pragmatic approach to the passage of time; optimistic in a way he hadn’t been about anything since their earliest days together at Vigil’s Keep. The way he’s chosen to see it, as long as he’s capable of getting out into the forest for his daily walk and feeding the cats in the morning, he's far from being old. After that long night passes, life goes on as usual -- rising too early, drinking their tea together, complaining bitterly about the price of grain this year -- but marked by a series of small, insistent reminders. 

When Anders’ feet grow cold, and when he picks up a stray cut or bruise, how long it takes to heal. 

When the list of draughts and bitter powders the healer prescribed grows ever longer, filling up the cabinets and resting on windowsills. 

When the small aches and pains that have plagued him for years suddenly grow fangs, and neither of them can explain why.

When Ain finds him on the ground by the woodline, last winter’s fallen leaves in his cloak, and spends the next day and a half stroking his hair, wondering if this is how the inevitable finds them.

When he wakes, and admits that maybe, today, the porch will do.

The last time they ever make love, it’s a snowy evening in late Frumentum; fire stoked high as it will go, surrounded on all sides by a copious amount of propped up pillows, and set against the backdrop of knowledge that they’re both going to ache tomorrow. Somehow, despite all of this, it remains one of the few things that can truly make the years fall away.

“Andraste’s gaudy bonnet,” Anders pants, hair falling in his eyes. Ain slips his arms around him, circling fingertips around the bite mark forming on his upper thigh.

“Andraste says to stop invoking her name. It forces her to check in on us and then she just feels greasy.” 

“You’re greasy.”

"Well, not anymore.”

Anders laughs a throaty, satisfied laugh, turns over to look at him, and Ain’s heart stumbles a little, because there will never come a time when Anders isn’t beautiful to him. When he doesn’t want to kiss every inch of his body and devour him until someone complains about the noise. 

They get three glorious minutes in the thick of the afterglow. Three minutes before Anders turns sharply, swiftly, and doubles over. 

The cough that nearly killed him those three years ago never really left. With frantic hands, he grabs the deep, dark medicine bottle from the bedside cabinet -- the one meant to warm his lungs and clear his airway. Three drops on a cloth pad, and he inhales it with wet, uneven breaths for what seems an agonizingly long time. The oil itself smells of Antivan cooking, spicy and sweet, like dipping bread in pungent sauce as they traveled the back roads to reach the sea. It smells like a lifetime away.

Finally, mercifully, it goes to work. Anders spits a final time into the basin, then breathes easy at last.

“Incidentally...thank you for not running when I started coughing up suspicious colors.”

Ain shifts the blankets higher on their cooling bodies. “You tolerate my aching hip. We’re square.”

They lie together in the undemanding quiet, draped around one another, hands roaming without direction. Little by little, their menagerie settles back on the bed...Trifle and Mouse and Ser Stripeknickers, daughter of Ser Wyvernface, daughter of Ser Marmalade the Fat, son of Ser Perchbiter, son of the great and glorious Ser Pounce-a-Lot.

“The healer’s going to snipe at you, you know. She says the loose hair is going to aggravate your breathing.”

“Hm. Time to look for another healer.”

Ain watches him let one cat onto his bare stomach and scratch another between the ears. After a time, he kisses his shoulder, the borderline of his beard, and finally his lips. “I love you. Gods, how I love you...”

“I love you too,” Anders replies, exactly as he always has. As if the words are precious, clumsily stolen, and he wants to taste them before someone inevitably snatches them back. But Ain must be more transparent than usual tonight, because he doesn’t stay wistful for long. “And don’t give me those sorrowful eyes, Fearless Leader. I’ve told you before, you say it plenty.”

Three days after the end of Satinalia, Anders’ health takes a hard, sharp turn for the worst. Like he was waiting for one last unabashedly happy day...or just one last mug of that warm end-of-the-year wine he loves so dearly.

“Would you believe me if I told you this was alright?” he asks, when the act of walking to and from the bed tires him. “When I was an apprentice, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would live to see thirty years. The gallows, the sword, the rite...instead, I’m an old, awful wreck, and there are children who will have to be taught what a Circle was. I couldn’t begin to tell you how any of that happened.”

It’s meant for his comfort, Ain knows. For Anders’ sake alone, he can pretend it succeeds.

He sleeps most of the day away now, eats very little. Whenever he’s awake, however, he makes it a point to sit up and write. As his own failing body robs him of a little more each week, he’s managed to hold tight to this.

Years ago, he drafted a brief adieu to the mages who, for reasons he’s never quite understood, pen songs about him in taverns.  He takes it out now, revisits it often.

Now and again, smooths his hands over the words.

Never forget that the mage rebellion took place in a thousand small battles, most of them shrouded in shadow. Before Kirkwall, before the White Spire, before the Conclave. For every whisper you raise in memory of me, raise ten for the apostates who made a life for their children in secret corners of the world, for the women who camped outside of dungeon cells to defend one another against their jailers, and for the apprentices who chose a tower window over the templar brand. 

Freedom was never a privilege to be seized, but a profound and natural rightness that was always meant to be. The Maker's greatest gift to the mages was always themselves...the indomitable strength displayed by our people simply that fact, in its very purest of forms, holding constant and true.

I have been blessed to see it.

Live gloriously.

A beautiful day in late Eluviesta, the last of the filthy sheets of ice melting to the tentative grass beneath. Ain reads quietly by the window, contemplating making something with the leeks growing in the woods behind their home. Potato soup, maybe, or something with fish. When Anders calls him, his only thought is mild surprise that his partner has woken before noon.

Somehow, he never even considers. Not when he enters the room, and the air feels heavy...not when Anders takes his hand and kisses each knuckle, soothing rough ridges on scarred hands. Hilltops leapt. Horizons jumped.

“...I think I’m ready, love.”

In all their time together, Anders has never called him “love.” Not unless things are serious.

“...Are you sure? You really do look much better today. Do you want me to run for the healer? It could very well be the last of the cold weather wearing you down, I get it terribly myself --” 

Anders’ slow, patient palm on his cheek. An indulgent smile that turns his chest to ice. 

Ain exhales in slow, slow increments, hoping this will keep his voice steady. It does not. “I suppose...this is the part where I tell you I’ll be alright.”

“I wouldn’t make you do that. I doubt I could if this were the other way around...” Ain tries not to hear the way he breathes, the staggering effort. “Just...promise me you’ll get out into the sun? Feed the cats for me?”

When that, of all things, sets his eyes burning, Anders’ thumb stops tracing the curve of his tattoo and sets to swiping them as dry as can be hoped for. Ain swallows down the part of him that longs to shatter, and will. “...If the Countess gives me any lip, I’ll tell her Papa wouldn’t approve.”

“There you go.”

“I’ll tell her you’ll know. That you check in on us sometimes. ”

“I will be.” Ain thinks back to the look he’d carried about him when the False Calling had hit them, and all the times the melancholy had stolen the light from his eyes...that exhausted, battered, broken resignation. If nothing else, thank the gods that that look isn’t with him today. “...It was an odd one, but it was a good one. Wasn’t it? You and I, the whole ride...”

“The very best.”

When Anders settles back against the pillow with a deep, deep sigh of contentment -- as though it’s cold and raining outside, and he’s just learned he has nowhere to be -- Ain chances a moment of selfish, ugly hope. But the minutes drag on like the rises and falls of his chest that come slower and fewer between, and turn into hours. The sweet smelling spring breezes will turn cool with evening, and the shadows will lengthen and turn blue. When Anders speaks again, it will scarcely be a mutter, coming to him from miles away.  

“...Mmm...your hands are warm...”

There are a lifetime of things left to say between them, but that will do. Lips pressed to his palms, hoping the warmth will find him. The irony and the kindness of it won’t settle on Ain until much later.

For the second and last time, Anders leaves without saying goodbye.