Genuinely very good translation but for the non Welsh speakers I really cannot stress enough that the original Welsh is the most beautiful, intricate, woven tapestry of exquisite wordsmithing you'll ever read
-when he does the first big jump the announcers start screaming. I don't understand enough of what I'm looking at to get what about this is breaking records but the announcers screaming was a pretty big clue
-He's dancing to music from Succession????? I don't recognize all of it but some of it is definitely the theme from Succession. At one point the audience claps along to the music. And I'm not sure if it's out of support for the skater or because they like the song 🤣
-when he finishes he just lays down on the ice incredible
That first big jump is a Quadruple Axel. It's 4.5 rotations in the air (you take off forwards rather than backwards, which is the extra half rotation). Nobody else in the world can do this jump it's so hard. He is the first and only person to ever land it cleanly, much less consistently. He had to land it cleanly here to have any hope of winning the World Champion title.
Yes, he's skating to music from Succession! The audience is clapping in support because he was doing so well (also because it was hosted in Montreal and the audience was very supportive of all the skaters that evening).
He lays down on the ice because he just broke multiple world records. He landed all 6 types of quadruple jumps cleanly, which no one has ever done at all (again, because he's the only one that can do the quad Axel), much less in a single program like this. This was an insane feat of athletic ability! If you go watch the other guys who competed against him, Yuma Kagiyama was in second place by 20 fucking points, and Yuma skated with no falls. This is Micheal Phelps / Katie Ledecky levels of smashing the competition (sorry the only other sport I know is swimming).
Some other notes for everyone:
Ilia listed that first jump as a Triple Axel on the sheet you give to the judges, meaning that he wasn't committed to doing the Quad Axel. (Technically you're not committed to anything on the sheet but it's generally your "plan" for the program.) He also doesn't do a quad axel in the 6-minute warmup beforehand when he does go and do it in the program, so it was a complete toss-up as to whether he was going to go for it. It's incredible that he manages to land the jump so perfectly without warming it up first!
He was 3rd coming into this skate from the previous short program. (All skating competitions require you to skate 2 different programs, 1 short and 1 long.) In order to win the title, he was going to have to skate without any falls, especially because his one strong point is his jumps and other skaters are stronger in other areas. There are many, many skaters who fall on their quad jumps, even when they're just doing one. It is so fucking hard to do even one of the 6 types of quad jumps. And he just does all 6! In one program! Insanity!
He did a 4 Lutz - 3 Flip at the halfway point of his program. Almost no one puts a Flip on the end of their combos, it'll usually be a Salchow instead because it's much easier. The only other skater I can think of to put a Flip on the end of a combo is Shoma Uno (who was also at these championships but didn't have a good skate).
His last jumping pass was a combo that was supposed to be a 3 Lutz - 2 Axel. He decided, in the moment, to change the 2 Axel to a 3 Axel. Nobody else has ever attempted this, much less succeeded. It is orders of magnitude more difficult to do another rotation to the second jump in a combo, at the very end of a 4.5 minute sprint no less.
In short, this kid is wild, had the performance of a lifetime, and I had the blessed opportunity to witness it.
"So essentially what Star Wars to me was, a boy who is stuck at home and dreams of joining a war. And so it's like, let's tell a story of a girl who is stuck in a war and dreams of going home. It was like a mirror." - Gareth Edwards, 2023
I just had a truly horrible realization. I was talking about the worldbuilding in fma with someone the other day, and they mistakenly said it took place during the Victorian era, or Amestris’s equivilant to it.
I, being a lover of fashion history as well as an insufferable pedant, corrected them by saying that both the year(s) it takes place in as well as many of the technological and cultural influences seen in the world are actually more in line with the subsequent, much shorter era known as the…
sometimes i think about the history of coffee culture in islam and how it spread like it’s so funny
discovered by sufis who decided it was a miracle from Allah since it allowed them to stay up late into the night for night worship
miracle beans = UNLIMITED DHIKR
cue scholars debating for years about whether it’s haram or halal and if it should be classified as an ‘intoxicant’ or not
fast forward to 16th century ottoman empire, where a woman had the legal right to divorce her husband if he failed to provide her with enough coffee
europeans called it the “mohammaden gruel” or “devil’s drink” bc they believed it to be a “bitter invention of satan and his followers”
fast forward to pope clement viii finally giving in and tasting it to see what the hype is about and then stating: “This Satan’s drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it.”
pope clement viii then proceeds to BAPTIZE THE COFFEE BEANS
The plan is not for these three minotaurs to be together--each has their own section of labyrinth, increasing in scale as the story progresses. (The little single dome here will have stars on the ceiling for Baby Asterion.) But I thought it would be interesting to have them together for a moment, for once not the only one of themselves.
Theseus and the Minotaur will be on their way out of the last labyrinth, Theseus dragging him through outflung doors. I think, just barely visible inside the ceiling where he is being dragged out, there will be a couple more stars.
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