WinForPooh

I'm giggling at Brian image training a layback IB while talking to Yuzu. Goddangit, this is going to be amazing. I cannot wait. I cannot cannot cannot wait. ACI GET HERE QUICK!

Where's the off-jacket stuff, huh? We all know he gets down to business after taking his jacket off. Where's the footage, huh?!?!

HAHAHA He's going to make ISU's new judging system and new candy +4s look so absolutely inadequate. Hahahaha*sobs* That is incredible. This boy. He's incredible.

I've been trying to put Yuzu sex bomb out into the universe for a long time now. Damn you, Brian! *shakes fist*

Guys I opened my eyes at five in the morning and saw this, and I'm so happy because I love Nijinsky. Yuzu and Shae will have some up with something that pays tribute to that step sequence but makes it his own anyway. And now I'm sure Japanese media have 4A footage that THEY WILL SHOW US IN TEN YEARS.

Our lord trollzuru is either going to pull off the biggest trolling of all or bless us with abundance. One or the other.

Could it be? Could it really be?????!!!!

Wheeee We get Harry Mattick and the Doddses and Julian and Donovan! And Junhwan and Jason, of course. And finally, Yuzu's programme reveal, our beloved troll.

Don't forget Nastya Tarakanova. She's got ways to go to build up her stamina again but it seems like she's progressed a lot from the summer to be able to jump triples and handle that step sequence at all. I'm definitely keeping my fingers crossed for her.

O/T under spoiler Ballet is not a sport, I think, because it developed as an art form and not as a competitive sporting discipline. Skating did develop as a competitive sporting discipline where compulsory figures was an important part of scoring, and ice dancers are the athletes who would be the best at that particular, not very spectacular, segment of the sport that is figure skating. But compulsory figures didn't have an audience and ice dance does. The scoring system might be very different, but there is a scoring system, and going by the technical handbook things that were recently released, ice dance has a far more objective and clearly described system of deductions and bonuses for features. It's not nearly as subjective as 'very good height and distance with great flow gets about 50% more points than BV' like in the singles and pairs skating technical manual. We might have laughed at the stick figures but they're very clear and set down very specific conditions that need to be met to get a level on a feature or a bonus or deduction on it. Back to ballet, if enough ballet dancers decided to make a governing body and sat and figured out how to score it as a competitive sport and then started a campaign to have it be considered a sport, then at some point down the line, it could very well become a sport. But that would be a radical deviation from its very long and established history, so it would take a lot of changes, starting with perception among people within ballet. Or any other athletic pursuit that's currently considered an art form, not a sport.

Yuzu is special. He made a lot of people like me go from 'Oh that looks so lovely, must take a lot of skill' kind of genuine appreciation of skaters to 'Oh. Oh I see, that is what figure skating is meant to be' kind of epiphany. Yuzu at his best really is the embodiment of the highest ideals of this sport. That is an almost impossible achievement in a sport where the perfect skate is (IMO) supposed to combine technique and artistry so well that you can't separate the two. It is like watching magic happen when he does it. How strong and kind and compassionate and perfectly adorable he is off ice came later but it sure doesn't hurt.

There's a lady in red - actually, a couple of ladies in red, but one wears glasses - right in the front row, behind Yuzu during the final spin. During the entire performance, she sits with her hands clasped, her poker face on, and during the final spin, she just lets it all out. Every time I watch that skate, I relate so hard.

I'm tempted to watch everything all over again to be able to make a better informed decision. Guys, we've been sitting here and waiting for media day for almost a whole month now. The emotional upheaval is real. Give us media day, I beg of you, Trollzuru!

Has this been posted? It looks different from before and so effortless!

I remember the ones that came before that one, my feels include panic.

One of my favourite -3Lo combos ever. Though Mao did a few great ones, too. (ETA: Irina Slutskaya did a lot of 3S-3Lo combos, sometimes badly URed but when she did get the rotation, it was great. She did 3S-3Lo-2T, too. Not my favourite version of it but still pretty cool.)

Anybody else wanna do a Skate Canada marathon to adjust our expectations for first pancake? It's been so long since we've had new programmes and competitions to look forward to and they're coming after the impossibly incredible Olympic performances, I feel like I need to remind myself of what we usually get in the beginning of the season.

I wonder if that's missing the word 'asleep'. Fell 'asleep' when I was jogging. I'd believe it.

It might actually be better all around for Brian not to be there all the time with Zhenya tbh. Eteri seems to have declared war on Brian in particular, maybe things will be a little less fraught if he's not there when Zhenya is skating. Media would make it a big sideshow, too. Tracy is so calm and unflappable and seems so serene most of the time, she'd probably be a good person to have there.

But also a lot of the anonymous question-answer type blogs and social media stuff have more 'yeah well he's not all that great, he's not the best at everything' submissions than usual in the last week or so. Mostly, looks like people are pointing and laughing at the salty nincompoops saying all that.

They won't shut up. I think some of them hope that if they say it often enough, it'll become true. Or people will think it's true. But as long as Yuzu is skating and the videos of him skating are out there, they will only look stupider and stupider. It is nice of them to expose themselves as biased numpties so blatantly.

Just hearing those parts of H&L is enough to choke me up good. Also, I am absolutely LOVING all the salty, salty people who, I'm sure, have been particularly pickled by the fact that these are now the absolute records of an era. There's been a little burst of blatant liars popping up here and there to pull out assfax (facts faxed straight from the ass) about Yuzu. They know they're lying, we know they're lying, everybody knows they're lying, and the fact that they're bitter enough to put their utterly biased idiocy out there means that they're truly suffering. I love that they're suffering enough that they can't help but burst out in gibberish that makes them look like utter dumbasses.

.... His programmes are going to be *ahem* corny? NOT SORRY!

I know, right, I'm just telling myself very sternly that I don't have her nice, obedient hair, and I don't have her bone structure. She looks so great though!

I know, I like that. I was prepared for the full ice princess crowning thing this season, but she's doing something different. If only Mai had done that too.