nika @dzielnika - Tumblr Blog

heated rivalry is so bad i decided to drop it and maladaptive daydream about a lesbian version set in the bolshoi ballet instead

personally i think toxic yuri in figure skating has so much potential with real life analogues for eyes to see and all but they have to make it about inappropriate yaoi student/coach boring relationships everytime for some reason.

theskatingarchive

Юлия Липницкая Yulia Lipnitskaya (RUS)

2014 Olympic Winter Games Team Event Free Skate (141.51, PB)

pinkstarsabove

Call me a purist, a traditionalist, whatever. But there were truly not enough war horses on the last group of both men and women.

Give me a well choreographed, well cut Winter over any Dune or voice over program any day.

Yuzuru’s Chopin, Shoma’s Winter, Zhenya’s Anna Karenina, Mao’s Rachmaninoff, Javi’s Don Quixote, Kolyada’s Mozart, Yulia’s Schindler List, you’ll always be famous

starloving-186

crazy to think that yulia lipnitskaya is only a year older than amber but hit her career peak back in 2014 while ambers hitting hers now. longevity in skating is possible if ur not undergoing a shocking training regimen.

figureskatingpenguin

Figure Skating Profile #9: Yulia Lipnitskaya

For one brief moment, Yulia Lipnitskaya was arguably the most famous skater in the world. Then 15 years old, Lipnitskaya became known as "The Little Girl in Red" after her Olympic rendition of her free skate program "Schindler's List". The artistically poignant performance, which touched the hearts of viewers all around the world, included even the film's own director Steven Spielberg among its fans—in a letter he had written to Lipnitskaya, Spielberg shared: "I am writing to tell you how moved I was by your gold medal performance... [...] You brought such dignity in your remembrance of the Holocaust through your soulfully inspired routine."

Aside from becoming Russia's youngest Olympic gold medalist following her results at the figure skating team event in Sochi, Lipnitskaya counts a World silver medal, a European title, and a silver GPF medal among her crowning achievements. Ultimately, however, Lipnitskaya managed a tumultuous career after her Olympic season, battling injury and anorexia until her retirement at the age of 19. She now works as a coach in Evgeni Plushenko's skating academy, Angels of Plushenko.

Featured program: "Schindler's List" from the 2014 Sochi Olympics (Team Event), FS

frenchly-anxious

I've been... upset about ladies figure skating for a long time now.

Tutberidze's school and how they treated their young skaters left such a bad taste in my mouth that I couldn't bring myself to keep watching ladies figure skating. Frankly, after the disaster that was the Olympic 2022 (and everything before that, really), I was fairly certain I wouldn't go back to it. I haven't watched any competition since, not even in the other categories.

So I don't know what led me to watch tonight's event.

When I tuned in late in the event, it was to a skater I didn't know. Which is not that surprising, since I didn't know who was the favorite for tonight, or even who kept competing and who retired in the last 4 years. She was nice, attempted a quad but missed. What I was drawn to was her hands and arms; the way they moved constantly, mezmerizing dance that is usually almost forgotten by the other skaters. It's the kind of thing that made me fall in love with Yulia Lipnitskaya's skating, then Evgenia Medvedeva's. It brought a pang of bitterness, only intensified by the last spin — it was such a Yulia spin— and then I saw her coach. This man, still here and still doing the same bullshit. I hate them for teaching me to love something so pretty but that is built on so much violence and abuse. At least I got to appreciate his dejected face when they didn't place on the podium.

It gave me some peace to watch the Japanese skaters, jumping and dancing with ease, not overdoing it on dangerous jump sequences and being the top dogs anyway. I remember thinking, maybe the ladies figure skating had already started healing itself.

Then Alysa Liu took the ice. I had watched the video of her short program earlier and I had been very pleased with it. I had liked her early in her career, despite how similar she looked to the young Russian athletes, with the quads, the quick rise in the ranking— And then she retired at 16. I remember a sigh of relief and the thought of "Good for her!" because now there was no risk of watching her crash and burn. Seeing her come back on her own terms years later, healthy and happy, was probably what brought me back to this event. I wanted it to feel like watching Jason Brown: you know he most likely won't win, since he doesn't have all the fancy quads, but he is delightful to watch, has enough artistry to shame all the other skaters and a longevity on the senior level most could only dream of.

I didn't care if Alysa Liu didn't win; I just wanted to watch something enjoyable.

And boy. She skated like this was a party. Sassy but in control, efficient and careful. Free. Every twist and turn was saying "I'm doing this for the love of skating." Her body was the one of a woman, not some impossibly lean and unhealthy body that I kept seeing in competition back then. Her jumps were impressive and her technique brilliant, but there was no desperate reach for overly difficult jumps to try and go higher and higher. She didn't care about anything other than having fun. And the crowd was right there with her.

[record scratching] I suddenly very much cared for Alysa Liu winning that gold medal.

Because this is exactly what figure skating should be: healthy and carefree. I watched her and her fellow skaters hyping each other, laughing and crying together, supporting each other despite them being from different countries and it being the fucking Olympics. As the French commentators were saying, watching her skate didn't even make you feel tense or worried. At the last 2 Winter Olympics, everything was tension, worry, and then somehow even the gold medalist couldn't really be fucking happy. I left both feeling disgusted by how it turned out for those girls, and disgusting for having been there to watch it like I was supporting such a thing.

She won that gold medal and I could have weeped.

I'm not sure if I'll go back to figure skating or not after this. But THIS is everything I had wish on those Russian skaters I had cheered then cried for: a figure skating world that was safe, healthy, encouraging and hopeful.

lifefaults

I love these two my TRUSAKOVA heart !!!!

manzanas-y-granadas

every lesbian and bisexual of my generation was so deeply affected by the queerbaiting of pitch perfect that now we all are willing to watch one of the trashiest tv series, so bad that it's good, just for the pleasure of seeing brittany snow kissing another woman

ariadne-mouse

An aspect of The Hunting Wives show that is interesting to me is how quickly the protagonist, a white liberal (closeted) queer woman, assimilates into white conservative high society and values with only a token protest. She's alarmed at first about the NRA fundraiser but within no time at all she's joining hunts and has purchased her own gun; she tells her husband's boss his political speech was racist but flash forward and she's in the "in crowd" of the Hunting Wives who support those views and she's giving Margo advice to help her against political dirt digging. If it hadn't been for the murder charge she'd probably have kept right on jamming in her new environment, not speaking up, fitting in, driven by her desperation for connection and acceptance. To be clear this is a narrative feature, not a bug; it's what enables the story to happen. The show is full of messy, hypocritical, awful people, and that's part of what makes it popcorn-worthy. It's just. Wow, girl, that happened fast. You can cite all the factors that nudged her along but the theme of assimilation when it benefits her is the same.

ninnysstuff

Big’s into cigarettes

ray-vnn

Remember when Nate told Andy that lately it seemed like her answer for everything was that she didn't have a choice and that she didn't make decisions for herself?

And then when Miranda told her that she could see beyond what people wanted and needed and choose for herself?

Yeah.