Posted by @jasonmarsden on his account. That’s definitely #YoungJustice voice director Jamie Thomason with Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti. #YoungJusticeOutsiders #Hype
Hello girls/guys, apologize for suddenly going MIA this past weekend - I was out of town and didn’t bring my laptop with me. I’ve got tons of questions sitting in my inbox about the men’s event (as well as leftovers about the ladies’), which I’ll try to get to in the next couple of days. First, though, in this post I’d like to put together some general thoughts regarding our beloved Yuzu.
What Happened
The margin of 22.45 points between Nathan and Yuzu sounds awful on paper, but it could be accounted for in a fairly straightforward manner using the 2 jumping mistakes that Yuzu had: the popped 4S in the SP and the UR 4S in the LP. If Yuzu had landed those 2 Salchows properly, all else being equal, he could have won. That’s not my crazy Hanyu fan persona talking, it’s math.
His (relatively) clean OtonalSP was awarded 110.53 at Rostelecom Cup so that mistake in the SP in Saitama cost him upward of 15 points - 14 of which was because of the missing element itself, and the rest because of the reduction in PCS it induced (and I’d be the first to admit that it should’ve cost him even more had the judges strictly followed the ISU recommendation on PCS for programs containing a serious error).
His clean 4S in the LP at GP Helsinki was awarded 13.44 points, so the UR in Saitama cost him about 7.5 points.
(at least) 15.00 + 7.5 = 22.5, which is enough to cover the margin and allow Yuzu to win, and that’s before we account for the fact that a cleaner LP would’ve easily netted him more than 95.84 in PCS.
I’m not throwing these numbers out here to kick off a game of what-ifs. I’m doing this only to show you that the hot take of “Yuzu couldn’t have won even if he had skated cleanly” is bullshit. You don’t have to swallow it from anyone, not even Yuzu himself.
Do I think that the margin of victory should’ve been narrower than 22.45? Yes, I unequivocally do, not because I think Yuzu was underscored (I do not think so) but because I can poke a bunch of holes in the scores Nathan got. +4/+5 for his quads/3As were excessive, mainly because he didn’t have much in the way of creative entries, his landings were still a pain point because of the lack of flow, and while the size of his jumps on average was acceptable, it wasn’t outstanding. His LP ChSq was still blink-and-you-miss-it. His edgework and control have improved this past year, but were still not enough to justify +4/+5 on his StSq and +9 for his SS. His transition or lack thereof (and that’s not only my opinion but reportedly his coach’s too) should’ve resulted in a TR score well below 9. The list goes on.
What We Can Do
Trigger Warning: the stuff you’re about to read is not rosy.
A few people have been asking me what we, as fans, could do to let the ISU know what we think of their arbitrary judging practice. My answer is: we can make as much noise as we have time for on social media and we can reach out to them directly. For the latter purpose, yes, they have a Contact Us page on their official website. Select Figure Skating from the dropdown list and unleash on them your choice message. Only remember, if you will, to keep your arguments logical and your tone civilized. Much more likely than not, they’d go silent for weeks before replying to you with a polite little piece of mail saying your concern has been duly noted and will be looked into. (Why do I know that? Because I sent them just such a message after the disaster that was the score Mao received for her free skate at Sochi 5 years ago.)
I would advise you to keep trying and at the same time I would advise you not to have your hope up that it will do much good. Sporting governing bodies for the most part are not known for either their responsiveness or their tendency to eventually honoring fans’ wishes. Accountability and transparency are concepts as foreign to them as a double Axel is to Yuzuru Hanyu. It took, for example, an FBI investigation and brazen corruption in the realm of hundreds of millions of dollars for some changes to be done to FIFA. Considering the scale of the ISU and its weight on the public’s mind relative to FIFA, I can’t imagine any such drastic thing is going to happen to it anytime soon. In fact, the last time a major change was introduced to figure skating was 15 years ago with the establishment of the Code of Points, and back then it took an Olympic-scale scandal involving blatant misconduct to bring about the changes. What happened in Saitama last week was nowhere near as grave (at least I haven’t seen any evidence of anything more nefarious than your garden variety judging biases / irrationality) so to hope that we could leverage it to change the ISU’s way forward is close to magical thinking.
So let me tell you what will, in all likelihood, happen next season. Provided that he continues landing his quads regularly enough, Nathan’s PCS is not going to go down from 94-95, on the contrary it will go on to increase since he’s now a 2-time World champion and generally speaking the number or World titles one has tend to correlate positively with one’s PCS. He has no reason to regress on the base value of his layout either, so a back-to-back clean Nathan is going to score in the 320+ range. You don’t have to like it and it’s completely within your rights to be mad about it / keep writing to the ISU about it, but unless and until any material change is forthcoming, you’ve got to accept that as the baseline of your expectation.
Which brings me to the next and last section of this wall of text:
What Yuzu Can Do
If there’s anything I’m sure of about Yuzu’s personality, it’s that he is not prone to mere wishfulness, he’s a man of action and he loves to win. I’m also 100% certain that he is capable of logically coming to terms with the reality of the competitive landscape as I’ve described above and of figuring out an action plan for next season.
So if I were Yuzu, I’d reckon that I cannot rely on my PCS alone to carry me to titles so in order to stay ahead of the field I’d need to up my TES. Now, if the last week in Saitama has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t rely on getting decisively higher GOEs either. So what do I do? The natural conclusion is that I need to increase my BV, which means adding more quads, which, under the revised Zayak rule, means adding more variety of quads (with the way the new SOV scales according to an element’s BV, doing this would help maximizing my GOE potential too). Hence, you heard Yuzu’s take that next season he needs to aim for 4A, 4Lz, and possibly 4F. Some people have asked if I thought Yuzu was just being reckless when he stated that - I don’t think so, I believe he’s smart enough to have thought about it and arrived at the logical conclusion.
As a side note, I also believe Yuzu is smart and self-aware enough to, once the disappointment has cooled off, understand that it’s not because he’s lacking something or he didn’t work hard enough or his skating somehow had gotten worse, it’s just, matter-of-factly, how the system currently works and thus there are extra steps involved in regaining his World title.
I guess what I’m trying to say with this extremely very long note is, yes, it was disappointing, yes, the magnitude of the loss, on paper at least, was hard to swallow, and yes, things could have turned out differently had Yuzu been injury-free and able to compete in his top form, but don’t let all that frustration make you forget to appreciate the miracle he conjured (normal people don’t just take half a season off because of a serious injury and then come back to win a Silver medal at Worlds) or to celebrate the fact that he’s staying and he’s still hungry for success. If Yuzu himself can continue loving this sport enough and being hopeful enough to stay, you should be able to do the same without giving way to bitterness - that, I think, is the least of what we can do for him. After all, if, as Yuzu said, he is coming home, we’d need to be there to warmly welcome him back, right?
Hi! I’m Jura online, but I also go by my name – Hao – or my handle @alienturnipp. I am a Vietnamese artist based in Canada, currently working full-time as a Graphic & Web Designer but also dipping my hands into other creative projects. On Tumblr, you will probably see me posting a lot of Dragon Age fan work and personal art as well :”D
Many of my art inspirations come from western dark fantasy, but I’m slowly reconciling my artistic expression with my own culture through various means. Designing Vietnamese clothes in high fantasy settings has a special place in my heart, and I hope to learn and grow in the future.
Nice to meet you, Jura! She has picked out some of her artwork to share with you all here.
Check out more of Jura’s art over at her Tumblr @alienturnipp!
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We are highlighting some of Tumblr’s talented artists of Asian descent all month as part of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! Check them out here.
Take action to honor the Uvalde elementary school victims.
The death toll continues to climb from a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Last year, over 1500 children and teenagers were killed by guns in the US. Enough is enough. Gun control legislation is needed to end senseless gun violence in America.
[ID: a banner-style graphic featuring light blue details over a dark blue background. Tiled floral designs decorate the borders of the banner, and the border is separated from the rest of the image but a rectangular border with inverted rounded corners that feature a small floral design as well. A faint mandala made of rounded lines decorates the middle of the image, behind the centred text. Text reads, in light blue: “Interact-IF presents: Asian & Pacific Islander Heritage Month”. /end ID]
May is Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month!
During the next following weeks, we will feature interviews of Asian and Pacific Islander creators. Discussing their inspirations for their projects and experience as IF creators, we want to shed a light on their journey.
Here are our month’s featured authors, please check out their works and join us in supporting them.
Nacre, Author of Joint Venture.
Five years have passed since Eric died in the hands of the Agency. All this time you’ve been on the run with your brother’s murderers on your heels.
One day, during a mission on your own, you meet some mysterious strangers who intervene with your plans.
Although they turn out to be old friends with your brother, you’re not sure whether you can trust them. Nevertheless you share the same goal: earning back your freedom by taking down the Agency.
You play as an ex-agent trying to solve the murder of your brother while you are hiding from your former employers who, unfortunately, want to see you dead too.
Nacre is also the author of Morning Star, a dark fantasy game where you play as Lucifer. You can play that demo here.
Ze, one of authors of Chronicles of Tal’Dun: The Remainder
(VN)
This is a story of two magi, Vyn and Ilar, who find themselves trapped in a collapsing tower with their only hope for salvation being a difficult ritual. Or at least that is what Ilar tells you. The thing is - you don’t remember anything, and Ilar’s story makes less and less sense the closer you are to the ritual. Are they hiding things to protect you from the bitter truth, or are they deceiving you for some more nefarious reason?
Guide Vyn’s actions to death and beyond and uncover Ilar’s truth. Are they your colleague, lover or something completely different? Read between the lines of what they are telling you, explore your surroundings for clues and use hands-on deduction to break the viscious circle and set them free.
Read more about Chronicles of Tal’Dun: The Remainderhere.
Will the once-great Cargill Coyotes succeed in reclaiming the NCAA Div I championship title for the first time since the 90s? Will you succeed in making a name for yourself, both on and off the tennis court? And perhaps more importantly…how much are you willing to sacrifice in pursuit of these dreams?
Start at the bottom as a newly-recruited freshman at Cargill university, and claw your way to the championships. Forge lifelong friendships, pursue budding romances, attend classes, and rush term papers -or party- till the sun comes up.
You were supposed to be a sacrifice but instead of dying, you find yourself being the new vessel of an old Eldritch Horror who offers you power that no other could have for a little taste of freedom. Unfortunately for you, your captors had other plans for you and decided to utilise your newly given abilities as their own personal puppet.
After being sent out to hunt down a traitor of The Court of Night, a series of unfortunate events sends you off the intended path and onto another where you then find yourself fighting an evil greater than the ones you know.
Will you remain a puppet of The Court or will you cut the strings that tie you to them?
Zico is also the author of Exurgo. a fantasy project where you play as a newly awaken immortal being. For more information, click here.
Mouse and Ram, authors of Beau Ideals
Merchants stare up and out, some advertising their goods, yelling, others perched, confident that the outward quality of their wares is enough to draw customers in: rubble arranged on tables, mageware scattered in between with display lights illuminating milky crystals; the fruit of their ventures into the Expanse, the hope that it was worth their sacrifice. It all passes in a blur and I feel the press of time. One of these items will be worth the risk of stealing. It will be my last act as a free citizen before disappearing into the Southern Expanse.
A low-level criminal on the run for the crime of the century, the end of your journey approaches as you arrive in Lau Lyssa, the Kingdom’s southernmost city. Resigned to your fate of living as a fugitive in the wilds of the Southern Expanse, you know you only have so much time before word of your misdeed sweeps the land.
Once upon a time, a prince avenged his father’s death. If only he could have foreseen his own.
The year is 2021—or maybe 1602? Hamlet the Younger has just tragically died and Fortinbras the Younger, King of Norway and newly-conquered Denmark, has a lot of cleaning up to do. Elsinore: After Hamlet is a text-based interactive fiction exploration of William Shakespeare’s Hamletas a plague text and a reckoning of Asian American identity during these trying times. Also contains bad puns and glowing text.
You are the Messenger. Your job is to deliver messages. Get in, get out. Simple, really.
Now, it’s time to put your life on the line to deliver the most important and dangerous message yet. A bad omen has driven the lands into a frenzy, and the Prophecy foretells that the Chosen One needs to be found and awoken to bring peace back to the lands.
Embark on a quest to seek the Chosen One to help restore balance to the world, or witness the world succumb to chaos and catastrophe..
As children, an accident between you and your friend Ryan changed the course of your life forever. Since then, you have transversed the boundary of life and death: your waking moments are haunted by memories of the living and the remnants of the deceased.
The two of you diverged; Ryan began attending elite private academy, and you summarily moved across the country. A phone call years later between the two of ends with you promising to come visit her, a throwaway sentence you thought to be nothing more than a platitude.
Following six months of radio silence, you sense her death before the search team even finds her body. And suddenly, the phone call may have been part of something a lot larger.
Swept up in a whirlwind of the horrific inheritance she left behind for you to uncover, the more you investigate, the deeper the lies and secrets go. A reckless desperation to break the fate that threatened to overtake the both of you had led Ryan down a path of no return. The same path you now find yourself on.
DEMURELA is a dark fantasy interactive fiction. You, a former witch, now a night-hunter (people prefer to call you The Seeker) are seeking revenge for your dead lover, and your dead father, along with your siblings, from the millennial old eidolon who has been after the witches of your blood line for centuries.
Along the way, you find the lives at stake because of your journey. Will you protect them or let them fall as collateral damage? What makes you think you have the power of choice when you land in thr capital city of Demurela? The capital visited only by the most superior of the courts? The capital where The Undead Queen and The Lupine Leader dominate?
What will you choose to do when the rulers’ adopted child nears to be the collateral damage of your rage? Will you protect the little one while fulfilling your oath, or will you give into the feeling of the world being nothing but selfish?
a decade ago, 20 children and 6 staff members were shot and killed in the tragic sandy hook elementary school shooting. today, a decade later, 14 children and 1 teacher had their lives taken at robb elementary school in texas. it’s been a decade, and there has been nothing done to prevent this from ever happening again. may they all rest in peace.
the south texas blood and tissue center are in critical need of blood donations following this horrific mass shooting. you can visit their website to find a donation location.
so i made this post a while ago talking about the fact i was forced to pay extra tuition fees after taking extended bereavement leave, and I’m still in a lot of debt because of it.
im doing the absolute bare minimum of activity to avoid spending money, but it just keeps getting worse because my bank is charging me overdraft fees. im starting to get desperate.
anything you can spare will earn you my undying gratitude.
Update: I caught Covid and it has been absolutely devastating. I was already ill before, and now I struggle to walk up the stairs.
I’m hopefully looking to get a wheelchair, but they are, incredibly expensive. I know I’ve already asked for so much financial aid, but there’s no way I can afford one on my own. So if anyone can spare anything towards that goal, it would be so greatly appreciated.
This is a masterpost of places to throw your money at to support Palestine. I’m gonna try and keep this updated as much as I can.
***Please note, donating does not mean you should stop boosting Palestinian voices. Spreading awareness is JUST AS IMPORTANT as sending money since misinformation is one of the Zionist movement’s most dangerous tools.***
*** If you have any additional recognized and trustworthy places to donate, please either reply or send me an ask or DM and I will update this list! ***
In addition, Palestinians (both in Palestine and diaspora) can feel free to leave your paypals / ko-fi’s / cashapps / venmo…. whichever you want in the replies.
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to commission @xfreischutz to make a card for my Inquisitor, Astraia Lavellan. The final result was more than worth the wait! Frei paid so much attention to details and had creative interpretations of my ideas, managing to take my massive amount of information about my character and distill it down into a wonderful image.
They were a pleasure to work with and I am so glad that I commissioned them. ♥
Today, May 15th 2022, is the 74th Nakba Day. It is a day for rememberance, mourning, and resistance for Palestinians
Non Palestinians, please use this day to be loud about your solidarity with us. Today more than other days please use your platforms and your voices to amplify the voices of Palestinians and condemn Israel on every platform you can… Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
Seek out Palestinian journalists and activists who are talking about Israel’s crimes. People like Mohammed El Kurd and Muna El Kurd, Eye On Palestine, Abier Khatib, Mariam Barghouti…
Supporting Palestinian journalists and activists is especially vital in the wake of Shireen Abu Akleh’s assassination at the hands of the occupation forces just days earlier.
Please check out the BDS website for resources. There are webinars and online rallies and ways you can protest online from your own home. And try to learn more about the different kinds and of boycotts you can take part in, as well as how and why these boycotts are important. The site also has lists of things you can easily boycott including action plans.
DecolonizePalestine is another amazing resource. If you don’t know much about the crisis in Palestine, please educate yourself so you can educate others.
If you’re able to protest in person, this post wonderfully put together by @soullsword also has information on Nakba Day protests all around the world.
