Veveco

Bearded Yuzuru doesn't look bad at all to me.... But it's simply not Yuzuru. My brain doesn't even process that it's supposed to be the same person.

From this perspective, Yuzu's axel is really something... (not recent footage but worth a look)

Yuzu : killing us all with the right mix of softness & dignity Also Yuzu : waiting for the very last post of his *cough* beauty *cough* blog to talk about (inner) beauty. I'll miss this silly blog

But as we've seen from the Chinese judge at WC, popular support doesn't necessarily reflect on scoring. Can't take any risk.

But... but... but... my offer of Céline Dion was already turned down. What other Canadian-mainstream-accessible-to-western-audience-and-#notflat music can we pick from? Justin Bieber? (OK, I'll stop being a troll now. Even I couldn't live with that...)

How about that disturbing US flag costume + skating on a Michael Buble music + registering to a Russian university? (Sorry UK, you're not influential enough to get Zuzu) Do we have all bases covered that way?

Yuzuru has too much integrity for this sport Don't mind me, I'm a bit salty today.

I really can't unsee them. He's got such gorgeous lines in the white outfit of course, but the monstrosity of the ruffles is just too much and spoils it.

It's time to bring this back:

Considering the absurdity of recent comments from certain skaters and FS influencers/journalists, I am very grateful for Yuzu's non-problematic and pointless blog. We need a touch of soothing "boredom" in our life.

The funny thing is that I'd expect people who benefit from the system to claim that judges are correct. At least pretend that their own score is right to legitimize results. But if all is subjective, how is a judge's "opinion" supposed to be any more relevant than that of a random watcher? This is just depressing...

Maybe that was his master plan all along so media would leave him alone a bit after this

Thank you Max. Seriously, I don't get how Eric Radford can say that with a straight face. Well, write. You know what I mean. That is literally the equivalent of saying that judging is a big farce and that is absolutely normal. Hum, sure. I guess he'll fit just fine with the ISU.

I know the debate is a recurring one but.... White xylitol.

Another blog-related one

New game for kuyashii Fanyus

If this is true, it's starting to sound a lot like the Nassar case. USA gymnastics' response was appalling to say the least and failed their athletes in the worst way. I wish USFS would learn from their mistakes, but I don't have much hope given their response so far. Urg, what a mess.

Now - how do we infiltrate the western markets?

I have no idea about traditional skating standards, but in dance there is a clear distinction between posture and the angle of the body. Good posture is more about the connection between head, shoulder, upper back/torso and hip placement to each other. The body should be "open", not slouched/turned in or arched. You can have a perfect posture with a torso at an angle or even parallel to the ground though. You don't have to be vertical all the time (in fact if you do, you are waaaay too stiff - like I tend to be ). So this talk about "balletic posture" always confuses me quite a bit. Either standards of posture are different in skating (are they?) or some of these commentaries by so-called experts are just misleading. In my humble opinion, Yuzuru's posture is pretty fine. If I want to nitpick, he could raise his chin a bit more, but that's about it as far as I am concerned.

Let's be honest: health is the closest thing to beauty that Yuzu will talk about in his "beauty" blog so sleep it is today. (Then again he could be reading the dictionary and we'd still follow it avidly )

How about Céline Dion?

Hey, don't ask me either. I'm about as Western as possible and I was enthralled by Olympic Seimei

Yes, the article is about the old "scandal". My understanding from the Twitter comments (because I also refuse to listen to that TSL episode) is that Inman (who was the guest of the episode) said that Yuzu uses "bland music" by "Western standards", Seimei included. And so Western audiences would find his skates boring and not understand why he got high scores. Or something like that. And so Iron Klaus drew a parallel from when Inman lobbied against Plushenko back then. Basically, arguing that the guy is known for strong biases and has no shame whatsoever lobbying against certain skaters, like Yuzu now.

"Have your Fernandez day"

Pretty good one, thanks for sharing. I also hadn't seen it before But this below will forever remain the superior koi dance for me. The hip movements. The dramatic narration. Nobu. Everything is so extra.