#demons 19

[malinkymax]

Dèmoni (1985)

[bet-on-me-13]

Talia took a 20+ Year Undercover mission a while ago

So! Talia is the Daughter of Ra's Al Ghul, and has been alive and at his side for many years now. Decades even. She is well into her 100's, even though her physical Body looks like that of a 20 yr old.

And in all the years that she has lived, what's to say she didn't take a few years off as a vacation? Even Ra's must take a few years off every once in a while, leaving to spend time on some remote island he can relax on for once. So, one day in the Early 80's she decided to do the same.

But she wouldn't be completely relaxing, she would take the break to further the League's goals still. She decided to Dye her Hair, change her Name, get into an acceptable College, and study Lazarus Waters to their scientific limit. She decided to name if Ectoplasm, to avoid any unwanted attention.

And while there, she met a pair of men doing the exact same.

Jack and Vladimir were nice enough. Although their Research was more focused on Ghosts, or as she would call them, Pit Demons. They were convinced that Ectoplasm and Ghosts came from another Dimension, and if they could find a way to open a Dimension Gateway to this theoretical Ghost Zone, they could aquire Limitless Clean Energy (and maybe find a way to contain the Ghostly threat).

Over the years, Talia Maddie would fall for Jack. Eventually, even after she had completed her College Studies and Vlad had left contact with them, she decided to extend her Vacation to further study Ectoplasm with Jack. One thing led to another, and eventually she found herself pregnant. And then it happened again.

Jazzmine and Daniel were the cutest little babies. But she knew the danger they would be in if it was ever discovered that she was their Mother, so she trained them in everything she could so they could survive. She knew her time as Maddie Fenton was coming short, but she resolved to stay, at the very least until Jazz was an Adult.

She didn't account for Daniel becoming a Small Town Hero, but those were just the Trials of motherhood.

Then, the day came. She left a note on her bedside table explaining that she regretted what had to happen, and left in the middle of the night. It was better this way.

...

The year right after she returned, her Father forced her to have a Child with his most prospective Heir. The Bat, he called himself. Oh he was Charming, there was no denying that, but unfortunately she was still working through her feelings about Jack.

She treated her resulting child poorly because of that, and that she regreted it deeply. She loved him, honestly she did, but it was hard to look at him and not remember Daniel. Still, she persevered.

The day she once again had to give up her son for his protection was the hardest of her life.

But it was unavoidable. The Coup that had taken her Father's life had also fractured the Organization, anyone could have taken their shot at her Son as the rightful Heir. She needed to protect him as she took care of the Traitors.

...

Damian always knew he was the One True Heir. It was his defining character trait for his early years of life. Even though he had grown to be more than just that over recent years, he always felt like it was a key part of his identity.

Until now.

Because the BatComputer had just finished running a DNA Test on the Blood of a man who he had spotted on his Patrol the previous night.

A DNA Test that had come back, with results claiming that the man, who looked almost exactly like a younger male version of his Mother, was his Half Brother.

[pixiesnooze]

[halorvic]

[blazethecheeto]

no no guys hear me out. hear me out here. what if. what if thomas released the finale pt.1 on october 19. because not only is it the anniversary of the first episode, but it is a saturday this year, which is when he posts videos. and and and hear me out, tell me if i'm off my rockers here, this doesn't make sense but it does to me. it's the eighth anniversary of sanders sides, so if they introduce orange, there will be eight characters in the series, including thomas. sorry that made me sound too insane. but like think about it, it's a perfect day to release it! just my prediction.

[akiraidraws]

Ink Demonth Day 19: Hide

[coolcoolcoolbutwtf]

Part2 of incorrect quotes from this.

Trixter(Danny) walking: jingle jingle*

JJ (Tim): Why do you keep wearing that old costume still? It's so impractical I mean you have so many bells it's loud and distracting.

Trixter(Danny) who got Harley's old prototype costume and wasn't allowed to take the bells off in the beginning.Has now been wearing it to spit a regretting joker: *shrugs while smiling a pointy teethed cheshire cat smile.

Trixter(Danny) before Tim "joining": *jingle jingle*

Joker in the distance screaming: why didn't I just burn that retched thing when I had the chance!?

The costume in question below.

[angelshizuka]

To think that the Stolas we know now and Stolitz almost weren't even a thing, because it wasn't the original plan when they made the pilot and was instead an idea Viv got when starting to work on s1, and she and Brandon liked the idea so much they decided to go through with for the actual show.

Stolas and Stolitz are my literal reasons for being into Helluva Boss, without it I probably wouldn't even be here. So, to say I'm happy with their decision is an understatement.

[mortdeheros]

L. Munir — Lazarus, Caravaggio —The Sacrifice of Isaac, Arthur Rimbaud — Ophelia, Dir. David Michôd — The King, Sabaa Tahir — A Torch Against the Night, Xooang Choi —The Wing, Raleigh Ritchie — Bloodsport, Karl Bryullov — The Last Day of Pompeii (detail), David Cronenberg— Consumed, Jesus is Scourged. —Chapel of Mount Aloysius College, Holyaches

I can’t even stomach being in the cathedral for more than a few hours at a time anymore. Like a churning deep in the helix of my dna rejects it. It’s part of me, this roiling rejection of lightness, as much as my dark hair and freckles, there is nothing I can do to comb it from my coat.

[lucifoge]

Caw caw..

[alshamswelnahr]

sanemi shinazugawa's variants

[pa-pa-patato]

This will never not be funny to me

Poor hat was so disappointed like so many of us

‘If someone wants to be a letter, be a cussing letter!’ Love it

I like to think every time an angel says something homophobic the demons side eyed then both in disgust and confusion “…..you preach about love and Kindness…..yet you deny that because it is not a man and a woman?……how dose this even make sense to you?”

[batsplat]

seen people talk about how marcs 2012 season was the reason the penalty point system was introduced (that made vale start from the back in 2015 which is admittedly absolutely absurdly funny) so here i am to ask my favorite motogp historian for thoughts (and prayers?) mostly about what exactly marc DID to make that happen (kinda funny also that he was branded a track terrorist from day 1 😭) and why they struck it in the mid 2010s?

okay so I'm gonna be lazy here and start out by just including what I put in the marc race recs post:

phillip island 2011 was the worst incident, and marc was criticised by motogp riders too, including valentino and casey. that one was like... it was just straight up dangerous and also incredibly stupid, I mean you're trying to get an extra lap in at the end of fp1 and are putting yourself and other riders in serious danger (definitely a case where you can argue that the penalty didn't go far enough and a race ban would have been warranted). marc can sometimes be pretty bullish in response to criticism while still going away and kinda realising what he'd done was a bad idea, quietly adjusting his behaviour... examples include this, where he had his team appeal the penalty, as well as of course 2018 argentina, where he talked down the 'mistakes' he'd made and said he'd done more wrong in the aleix than the valentino incident (which may be true, but it's the rhetorical equivalent of saying it's better to go up to someone's home and throw bricks through the windows than it is to set it on fire) - he is fairly good at learning from his mistakes, even when he doesn't always fully admit to them

that being said, of course he did continue getting himself involved in a fair bit of controversy during 2012. but it's worth pointing out that the penalty points system wasn't just a case of 'oh this kid is so bad, we've got to do something' - it was also a case of 'yeah this is being handled in a super inconsistent manner, actually'. like, there were times people felt marc should be penalised more, yes, but other times where they felt it was too much... it was just a bit all over the place. luckily, inconsistent stewarding is a problem they've managed to fix in the intervening twelve years, so we never hear about that stuff any more. let's just give a quick summary of the four biggest 2012 flashpoints:

qatar: marc runs luthi off-track in a deliberate and pretty dangerous way and gets a slap on the cooldown lap for his troubles, plus a reprimand from race direction

catalunya: towards the end of a race in which marc made several questionable moves, pol espargaro attempted to overtake marc who had just saved a fall - marc cuts across the track to rejoin the racing line and ends up colliding with pol. he was initially given a controversial penalty in the form of a minute added to his final time, before that was rescinded (which was unsuccessfully appealed by pol's team). see here for valentino and casey's reactions

motegi: marc 'torpedoed' kallio in saturday morning practise, riding into his side while kallio was on the racing line headed into a turn and causing kallio to highside... which he was not penalised for. some responses to the incident below

valencia: marc attempted to overtake corsi in friday practise, causing him to crash. this time, race direction handed out a back-of-the-grid penalty

it's a subtle distinction but an important one so I'll just stress it again: the stated aim of the penalty points wasn't to hold back aggressive riders like marc but to attempt to reduce inconsistency, which had been exposed in part due to how differently these marc incidents were handled. what marc did was create several high profile controversies, in each case prompting some level of frustration with how race direction handled the whole thing. obviously, there were other non-marc-related stewarding controversies, but it is inarguable that he was a significant factor in causing a revamp of the system

by the way, here's valentino's criticism of marc after the valencia incident:

here's a quick explanation of how the penalty points worked:

and, you know, for what it's worth marc did calm down in motogp... he certainly became better at operating in the grey area of the rules, approaching his racing in a manner his competitors didn't always appreciate but was certainly a lot harder to penalise. though there were also incidents that of course people felt marc should be penalised for - say after jerez 2013, jorge did kinda go 'okay but surely you can at least give a few penalty points for this, isn't this what they're for'. but it's not like there was unanimous agreement on that, see the immediate responses of some of the riders:

(bradley smith saying that jorge's last serious race was motegi 2005 - the one he got the race ban for - is a bit of an insane stance to take and doesn't really match up to reality, but it did make me laugh so that's something. of course the general point that during the alien era most of them were avoiding doing much actual racing isn't exactly wrong but. still)

not to make this a riding standards post, but this is the underlying tension when you're trying to decide how to regulate the sport... jerez was the first serious test that system faced - and it's one where race direction ended up calling it a pure racing incident. which is a tough call! I talked about it a bit in the sete post and what his stance was on the jerez 2005 incident, where he feels like this isn't a contact sport and shouldn't be adjudicated as such. it's a fundamental philosophical difference that became very relevant again when marc showed up fresh from his controversial moto2 campaign and woke up the entire class with his own particular brand of racing. from a write-up of the jerez 2013 race:

(motegi 2008 not motegi 2010, which is something I remember because casey's pass also allowed valentino to immediately swoop on through. should be noted that casey may have apologised but he did not give the position back to dani lol. also motegi 2010 is pretty memorable if we're talking about hard racing. fair to say that valentino demonstrated he did not share the approach of his fellow aliens when battling jorge)

and more on the shift marc brought about:

this is the thing, right - a big part of understanding that time period is concerning yourself with what came just before. the general feeling (unsurprisingly not shared by casey, jorge or dani) was that the series desperately needed some new life breathed into it, that the racing had become stale and sterile and far too predictable... there were several factors that contributed to this, from the beloathed 800cc bikes that were only replaced in 2012, to the approach of those three aliens and how adept they'd become at racking up wins by dominating out front, to how valentino (generally considered the most 'exciting' racer of the lot) had taken himself out of the competitive picture... I mean, in all honesty the racing is still not great in 2013 compared to the rossi heyday (it had gotten better by the very end of the 2010s), but of course there's a lot more energy to it than the years before. which meant the sport as a whole was in a tricky place where they both had to be seen to be constraining marc, stopping him from being an active danger to himself and others, while also kind of... letting him loose. a little bit of controversy is hardly a bad thing, after all - love him or hate him, everyone had a take, and that's the kind of thing that's obviously healthy for a sport

marc did get two penalty points that year for ignoring yellow flags in silverstone and crashing in the same place as cal crutchlow had just gone down:

(for obvious reasons, 'ignoring yellow flags' is extremely dangerous, but there's no reason to believe he wasn't being honest here)

he was also given another penalty point for the contact that caused dani's crash in aragon, taking him perilously close to that back-of-the-grid penalty:

and that was basically their position - it's a warning. broadly they wanted him to not completely revamp his approach, but just apply a little more discretion, exercise his judgement. a little more caution, a little more restraint. it's still fundamentally a different philosophy of racing than the one that had been espoused for several years by the other aliens save for valentino - but marc could get to a place where he was engaging in hard racing that generally toed the line without crossing it. a little more detail on the aragon incident and marc's approach to racing in the context of the time period from this write-up:

this is the issue, right, marc was riding on just the right line of acceptable that race direction would not have in any way been justified in slapping out race bans - though you can certainly argue that in some cases, you could have handed out more penalty points, which would then have meant he would have faced more 'real' consequences. in any case, they couldn't actually 'teach him a lesson', because he'd already more or less learned it... if the lesson is 'hard racing and contact is fine, just don't overdo it'. which of course, not everyone would agree with. the odd memorable exception aside, throughout marc's premier class career he's been very aware of that line, and has taken care to avoid bringing the wrath of race direction upon himself too severely

the penalty points thing and sepang 2015... well, first of all let's quickly bring in what the actual ruling was:

honestly, I imagine that if they didn't have a penalty points system, they would've figured out a different way to penalise him, and might have slapped him with a back-of-the-grid penalty anyway. not in a 'oh the fim had it out for valentino rossi!!!!' way, more that they did need to be seen doing something. the penalty points felt like a fairly elegant way of giving a penalty that wasn't that harsh and wasn't making any judgement calls over whether valentino deliberately kicked marc, while also in an indirect way ensuring that valentino would suffer consequences. and yes, it is a nice bit of dramatic irony - but the piece says it, the penalty "had to be severe enough for rossi to feel truly punished". the penalty points happened to be the tool they had available and perhaps with a different set of rules, valentino would have been handed a slightly different flavour of punishment. but really, this is more 'fun historical coincidence' than something that massively changed the events that played out

of course, it was a controversial decision that few people felt 100% comfortable with. on the one hand, if you believe that valentino kicked marc, then you probably would have wanted him to be disqualified - three measly penalty points does not feel enough in that situation. on the other, if you believe that valentino engaged aggressively with marc but without deliberately trying to make him crash, then a back-of-the-grid penalty that essentially decided the outcome of the championship before the final race even started is a tough pill to swallow. (of course there's also a position somewhere in between where valentino didn't literally kick marc but did attempt to run him off track, which would make the penalty 'about right'.) of course, the championship standings should ideally not determine what sort of penalties are being handed out - but equally, it's something that did limit the intrigue going into the race, and over something that felt quite arbitrary. the other penalty point he'd gotten to rack up the four total was about a qualifying incident in misano - which either feels like a silly thing to determine the ultimate outcome of the championship, or instead is a demonstration of how the cumulative nature of the points system is supposed to work. but yes, it did get a lot of criticism in the aftermath, with concerns over whether future title fights could end up being defanged as an indirect consequence of relatively minor incidents earlier in the season

and of course, the penalty points were eventually scrapped in early 2017. here's a bit more on that decision:

basically, sepang 2015 was a contributing factor to broader changes in how motogp was regulated, which down the line had the knock-on effect of getting rid of that penalty system entirely. rightly or wrongly, race direction felt like they had better tools available to penalise riders and this system was now redundant. anyway [insert another lazy gag about how the switch to a stewards panel has completely failed in eliminating controversy from stewarding] [insert pithy closing line] [press post]

[kikyocaps]

[scribblesouturname]

“NO ONE KNOWS THEM BETTER THAN I DO!!!!” and then they babyify grian for all their yhs fan content?? screaming. crying. i have a rant of this that i WILL share the next time i come across someone making grian out to be the saint of yhs bc one of the MANY points of yhs is that all three of the main characters are supposed to be like,,, stupid teenage boys!! and overall BAD people!!! GRRR GROWL BARK!! stop DEMONIZING sam STOP IT!!! ppl who demonize sam rlly don’t understand mental illness lol.

[popcornkwantum]

Swiftli week, day 1 (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*.✧

Birthday / sleepover / movie night

All demons are very cat behaviour to me