8 hours ago, PoohandYuzu said:

Re line stickers, I was too happy to see the link first and have bought the coins before realising purchase-button is not available outside jp, silly me!  As I dont have friends in jp and somehow failed to buy stickers via the vpn way, is there any way for me to simply donate the coins even without getting the stickers?  Cos i dont want to waste them sitting there as i dont use Line much and wont purchase other items...  Thanks!

Which VPN are you using and are you using android/iphone? I have no issue with VPN. I can go thru the steps with you via PM (not sure posting here is alright) but I only familiar with android phone.

7 hours ago, rockstaryuzu said:

I want the knitting pattern for that scarf. 

I want the pattern for the model. 

2 hours ago, ZuCritter said:

I want the pattern for the model. 

Oh come now, we all want that, it's just a given.

9 часов назад, Henni147 сказал:

This season has tought me one thing:

 

Some skaters can get their points together.

Few can skate clean.

But only a very small club of skaters really needs music in the background.

I have the feeling that most skaters could mute or rotate their music and I wouldn't notice it. There is barely any connection to it.

When I watched the Universiade and the Juniors' FS today, I asked myself:

What is actually left from the program, when I erease all the jumps? Well. Not very much tbh.

 

If you decide to skate to a specific music piece, you have to translate the music into your body movements and the music has to "sound" through them.
When I watch Yuzu skating to Otonal, Javi to Malaguena or Jason to Love is a b*tch, I can "hear" the music through their bodies. I can see something else than just a random chain of elements, steps and turns. The choreo is made for that specific piece and only for that. I pray that this connection with the music won't be lost completely in future skating generations... for me that's the REAL heart of figure skating.

I was watching WC 2012 yesterday and generally got much more pleasure watching all skaters than I do now. It seems they were more concerned with the performance, the interpretation of the music back then. When the era of quads began for real, most guys seemed to give the performance up for more quads (with few precious exceptions), and the choreo very often was formal and uninteresting. But I have a feeling it is somewhat better this season, with the number of quads limited and all that.

BTW, I don't know much about the technical aspects, but the jumps of most of the top guys seemed higher and covering more distance than what I see today (and they were mostly triples, too). Is it just a false impression, or do many guys today tend to jump lower?

Many people have gotten stirrer spoons this weekend!

Those muddlers sure look fun .

10 hours ago, Henni147 said:

This season has tought me one thing:

 

Some skaters can get their points together.

Few can skate clean.

But only a very small club of skaters really needs music in the background.

I have the feeling that most skaters could mute or rotate their music and I wouldn't notice it. There is barely any connection to it.

When I watched the Universiade and the Juniors' FS today, I asked myself:

What is actually left from the program, when I erease all the jumps? Well. Not very much tbh.

 

If you decide to skate to a specific music piece, you have to translate the music into your body movements and the music has to "sound" through them.
When I watch Yuzu skating to Otonal, Javi to Malaguena or Jason to Love is a b*tch, I can "hear" the music through their bodies. I can see something else than just a random chain of elements, steps and turns. The choreo is made for that specific piece and only for that. I pray that this connection with the music won't be lost completely in future skating generations... for me that's the REAL heart of figure skating.

I thought Matteo Rizzo was pretty good...obviously not Yuzu-level, but still quite musical and enjoyable to watch.

 

Part of the problem is that not hitting your jumps, or even having subpar landings, does often break the connection with the music, even if they have good musicality and skating skills in general. A lot of lower level men just don't manage to hit their jumps because of the requirement to have quads to be competitive, and it messes with the artistic quality of the program. (And obviously there are those like Samarin who seemed to have focused all of their training on quads and little on performance quality.) But I think you also have to remember that these are lower level/developing skaters--it's a bit unfair to compare them to a mature Yuzuru Hanyu. Plus, I thought a number of the skaters at these two competitions were actually pretty impressive on the artistry front. I didn't watch the Junior men's FS, but I did watch the SP, and in my opinion a decent number of them skated quite beautifully there, especially considering they're juniors.

3 hours ago, Seorose said:

Many people have gotten stirrer spoons this weekend!

What did people have to do to get them? Just going by the picture it looks like they were something they had to mail away for.

4 hours ago, Shimmering said:

BTW, I don't know much about the technical aspects, but the jumps of most of the top guys seemed higher and covering more distance than what I see today (and they were mostly triples, too). Is it just a false impression, or do many guys today tend to jump lower?

 

Bigger/higher jumps are harder to control (like Misha/Yuzu/Boyang's 4Lz). The trend for jumps now seem to be going for a faster rotation + smaller jump size which seems to be easier to control. Plus with GOEs not being used properly, you could land a quad with high BV and still get high GOEs despite not ticking all the GOE boxes (one of which is good height and distance).

20 minutes ago, rockstaryuzu said:

What did people have to do to get them? Just going by the picture it looks like they were something they had to mail away for.

 

I think there was a twitter contest? Take a picture of your own Ghana hot choco concoction with their hashtag.

13 минут назад, kaeryth сказал:

 

Bigger/higher jumps are harder to control (like Misha/Yuzu/Boyang's 4Lz). The trend for jumps now seem to be going for a faster rotation + smaller jump size which seems to be easier to control. Plus with GOEs not being used properly, you could land a quad with high BV and still get high GOEs despite not ticking all the GOE boxes (one of which is good height and distance).

Thanks for explaining! I wonder if to land a quint one would need faster rotation or greater height (both?) And whether people are actually going to land any in, say the next ten years (I remember asking my mom when I was small why people didn't jump quads and she said probably the ice rink wasn't large enough for them to gain enough speed )

5 hours ago, shanshani said:

I thought Matteo Rizzo was pretty good...obviously not Yuzu-level, but still quite musical and enjoyable to watch.

I didn't watch the Junior men's FS, but I did watch the SP, and in my opinion a decent number of them skated quite beautifully there, especially considering they're juniors.

 

I agree that Matteo's FS is very entertaining, especially the second half. However, I do believe that you could get out a lot more of that Queen medley.

I remember Yuzu at the age of 16-17 (younger than many juniors yesterday!). He had the same arsenal of jumps as Matteo at the age of 20, but his performance level has been very high already. R&J1 in Nice was jawdropping despite the fall (or perhaps because of the fall?) As if his life depended on it. I miss that spirit with most skaters today.

#Footnote: don't get me wrong. I really celebrated Matteo's skates at Euros and the Universiade and will follow all of his performances in the future, but he still needs time to become a true master of his music and choreo. That's why I pray that all these youngsters stay competitive till the age of 25-30. The technical content might suffer a bit, I don't know, but the maturity and artistic abilities could reach the next level.

 

One of my absolute favorites this season is Kevin Aymoz. His programs are very innovative, unique and 100% passionate. He can sell them anytime even with mistakes. I have goosebumps after every performance.

Another skater who could have a great total package is Camden Pulkinen. His style reminds me a bit of Patrick Chan. But without a quad and desastrous freeskates it's a hopeless story I fear.

 

I'm not surprised at all that the overall quality of the short programs is much better than the freeskates. You have to consider:

SP: 3 jump elements in nearly 3 minutes

FS: 7 jump elements in 4 minutes

In the short you have a lot more time and energy resources to do something creative and exciting between the jumps. Plus: you can drop your jump nemesis (unless it's the Axel). In the free you have to survive every technical obstacle first and that restrains your performance massively...

If Yuzu wasn't bond to any rules and included the jumps the way he liked (number, type, frequency), I bet my Pooh plushy that Origin would be a performance for the ages at first attempt.

9 hours ago, shanshani said:

I thought Matteo Rizzo was pretty good...obviously not Yuzu-level, but still quite musical and enjoyable to watch.

 

Allow me to get for a bit... The first time I saw Matteo at the Olympics I didn't pay him much attention, but with the way he has developed (and with his recent FS showing at the Universiade) he came under my radar of skaters I keep my watch on, and I think I should continue to do so going forward .

Another musical skater I could think of is Donovan Carillo, who while hasn't gotten all the technical skills down yet, is already so engaging as a performer.

 

I don't really have more to add on this discussion but as has been pointed out, there are young skaters out there that still care about showing the best performance, which consists of attention to musicality and doing your best to show what the skate is about. (Obviously (most of) their performances (still) pale in comparison to current Yuzu's performance quality which just shows us how special is Yuzu in this regard  , but on their own they are quite good, and it will be interesting to see how they will develop further...)

Ten days count down 

 

inhale and exhale*

inhale and exhale*

is this true? haha

 

edit: seems like it. 

 

yuzu collecting elite fanboys and fangirls left and right

 

Coaches: His coach (brian), his rival's coach(raf), his idol's coach(mishin), his idol's rival's coach (tat)

 

Idols: his idol (plushenko), his idol's rival(yagudin)

 

ladies: miyahara, zhenya, zagitova, yulia, 

 

men: daniel, stephen, camden, tomoki, the whole team japan

 

novice: sasha and the sweeping boy(forgot his name)