#it's just that i can't get these godawful costumes out of my head

[dol--blathanna]

And then she used the bad outfits to wipe out half the universe

[magicaleggplant]

extremely belated montreal worlds impressions, part 2

part 1 (pairs and women recap)

finally finishing this a whole month after worlds... i'm traveling again over the next couple of weeks and i've barely recovered from montreal! anyways, here's the (very rushed) ice dance and men recap.

———————————–

ICE DANCE

...is a fake sport, but i enjoy the vibes? i don't know a lot about the technicalities of ice dance despite having watched it for many years, so it mostly comes down to whether i like a team or not. overall i enjoyed the event, the free dance more than the rhythm dance (there are only so many 80s RDs i can take...) there were a lot of enjoyable free dances, even in the early groups! i actually enjoyed them more than the final group, in a way. the podium in ice dance tends to be too predictable.

chock/bates: i've never had much of an opinion on this team. i liked them best when they were doing character pieces like the snake charmer fd, but i also found myself enjoying their rhythm dance at worlds. they skated it very well and it was fun and engaging. the free was a bit of a question mark... i thought they had a lot of interesting positions throughout, especially in the lifts and choreographic elements, but the whole program felt a bit disjointed to me. it was fine, it didn't leave much of an impression. the whole did not feel like more than the sum of the parts... their speed was also not the best.

gilles/poirier: i can't remember much from their rd except that piper's costume was amazing, i loved her holographic leggings. their free was a MOMENT, though. wuthering heights has been one of my favorite free dances all season, and it was so good to see it live in front of a home crowd. they are such good storytellers, and when their choreo hits, it really hits. i love when they do something unusual like this program - it doesn't always work, but in this case, it did. the placement of that curve lift was perfect. i will note, however, that they are also not particularly fast.

guignard/fabbri: nearly swore out loud when her dress caught on her skate right in front of me. that was a nerve-wracking few seconds until the end. their free dance was beautiful and suited them really well, i especially loved the choreo assisted jumps near the beginning. their skating skills are clean and precise. i just wish their rhythm dance didn't have such a godawful music cut. none of their RDs have suited them well in the last few seasons.

fear/gibson: no thoughts, head empty, vibes only. in all seriousness, i enjoyed their rhythm dance, it's fun and it's a great fit for them. i did not enjoy rocky. i would have loved it as an exhibition, but not as a competitive program. i can see how it's a crowd-pleaser, though. they were definitely popular with the audience.

lajoie/lagha: probably one of, if not the most popular team with the audience! they are one of the teams i'm most looking forward to seeing in the coming years. i became a fan when i saw them live at last season's skate canada. they skate big and fast, they have good skating skills and both programs were well-choreographed. their rd is a lot of fun - that's how you incorporate a theme and commit to it! i love how most of the dance moves are choreographed into the step sequences instead of stopping and posing. the fd music is a little one-note and i still prefer last season's white crow fd, but their skating quality makes up for it. i'm so glad they were still able to skate at worlds after marjorie's concussion earlier in the season.

carreira/ponomarenko: loved both of their programs, especially their fd. i never knew they could pull off drama so well. their growth in the last two seasons has been phenomenal. it was hilarious that the audience kept getting faked out by the music in the end and clapping before the program ended. i probably would've had them a place higher in the standings.

other notes:

i came out of worlds with an unexpected appreciation for lopareva/brissaud. i never paid much attention to them before, but their skating skills were impressive. i don't think the audience really "got" their rd, but props to them for choosing to do something different. the fd was a snooze, though.

i also enjoyed demougeot/le mercier's free dance. some really interesting choreo moments.

turkkila/versluis: enjoyed their free dance as well, it's a nice look on them.

lim/quan's fd was another Moment! i am super excited for this team and how far they've come in their first senior season. hannah's acting and expressions are god-tier... they need to work on speed and SS, but their fd was gorgeous and one of my favorites of the event.

felt so bad for the taschlers' fall in the rd. i think they were the fastest team in the whole ice dance event, it's so impressive how powerful their skating is. i have questions about their packaging sometimes but i really like this team, and i hope next season goes better for them.

orihara/pirinen's fd was another favorite of the event. they are both SO expressive and fun. in any other team, yuka would outshine her partner, but juho not only keeps up with her but complements her perfectly!

———————————–

MEN

this was the event i was most looking forward to at worlds, and it did not disappoint. as chaotic as i was expecting it to be, i did not anticipate that it would be quite that chaotic. men be menning, as always.

ilia: i wish it were otherwise, but his competitive performances were just not doing it for me. his weaker skating skills were very obvious live when compared to many other top men. i like his sp choreo but i feel like he's put less performance into it with every competition. it was disappointing to see how much he slowed down during the step sequence. (granted, he did have an undisclosed injury at worlds, so that could have been an exacerbating factor.) the free was...historic. i genuinely wish i felt something while watching it, because the audience was losing their shit with every jumping pass lol. and why shouldn't they! like...what the fuck! this is the most incredible jump drill the world has ever seen! who knows when or if he can replicate it again! ...but it's still a jump drill. (side note about how irrationally annoyed the choreo sequence makes me. it's just randomly tacked on the end, the music cut is so abrupt, it has nothing to do with the rest of the program, shae lynn why.) and then i watched him in the gala and he was like a completely different skater. complete 180. the difference was so stark, i could hardly believe it. he can perform! he was giving more in that teenage-angst-ridden exhibition than i've seen in all his competitive programs combined. i can only hope that he brings more of that energy to competition someday, because that's the kind of skating i want to see, that's a skater really connecting with the music and the audience.

yuma: i'm about to heap an embarrassing amount of superlatives on this kid. it was my first time seeing him live, and he was everything i'd hoped for. jumps light as a feather, running edges for days. (you should have heard my ungodly shriek when he landed his 4F in front of me! it looked so easy.) skating skills - sublime, every stroke effortless, excellent speed. but what i'm most impressed with is his artistic improvement this season. he's always been an incredible technician (and i have a lot of thoughts about how ilia is being branded as The Technician and yuma The Artist now, when in fact yuma's technique is just as good, only with lower base value, and his SS are far superior, but i digress) but he has really put in the work to become a better performer and fine-tune everything from his body movements to his interpretation of music. jokes about making me like imagine dragons aside, i think his sp helped him explore music and sharp movements that were out of his comfort zone. loved that step sequence. (the only criticism i have is that he needed more swagger. he needed some more of what adam was serving in his sp, a certain cockiness and suaveness. but yuma has always been a more introverted skater. i think that kind of expression is still difficult for him.) the free was simply glorious. i didn't think i would like yet another rain in your black eyes program, and i was side-eyeing lori nichol for giving yuma this music after she used it for sui/han. but yuma made it his own. there were so many beautiful moments perfectly timed to the music. (ina bauer! spiral! and the step sequence, ahhh) he was so close to being clean, there was an audible groan in the audience when he fell on the 3A, but then they cheered him on until the end, which was heartwarming. what an incredible comeback season from yuma. i'm so excited for his future, i think he has so much potential and many bright moments ahead. now i've written a goddamn novel already, but i haven't even mentioned werther yet. i'll just say that his exhibition is one of the most beautiful programs i've ever seen, competitive or otherwise, and it shows off everything good about yuma's skating. perfect. no notes.

adam: where the fuck do i even start. honestly...if i could only remember one moment from all of montreal worlds, it would be his free skate. it was THE skate of the event. the mounting excitement as he landed all his jumps. the way i said "oh my god" out loud as he set up for the backflip, then landed it in front of me. the audience in complete hysterics. i can't even describe what the arena was like after his free skate. it was. insane. it genuinely felt like there was electricity in the air. the screams were deafening. my heart was pounding. it took me an entire group of skaters to come down from that adrenaline high, lmao. meanwhile, adam sat there in the green room...for hours and hours...and then ended up getting bronze because why the fuck not lmao. it was kind of the perfect conclusion of a chaotic season and a chaotic worlds. yeah, that free skate was THE moment. on another note, i don't actually like his free that much from a choreo standpoint. i think he's one of the most expressive and unique skaters in the field today, and he can pull off a lot of benoit's weirdness, but this free just isn't one of my favorites. it's extremely memorable though, for sure. his sp, on the other hand, was a disaster, but i really appreciated how he kept performing despite the messy jumps. he skated the step sequence like the jump mistakes didn't even happen. that's the sign of a committed performer. i'm very excited to see what else adam has to bring in the future, though i hope he doesn't start throwing in backflips too often - they're only fun when they're infrequent and unexpected.

shoma: shoma has a particular way of moving that is so unique to him. where yuma's skating is springy and light, shoma's skating has weight. it's very difficult to describe, but i mean it in a good way. it's the way everything he does feels so deliberate. he has excellent upper body carriage and his movements really project out into the audience. his sp step sequence was a highlight. he has an innate musicality that is natural to him. truth be told, i haven't liked his programs as much since he moved to stephane, but it was good to see his skating live again. i don't know if shoma will retire soon or keep competing, but if that was his last competition, i'm glad to have seen it, jump issues aside. i first heard of him as a novice skater back when i was first becoming a skating fan. i've been through quite a few generations of skaters' retirements, at this point. still an odd feeling when it might be someone you first saw as a tiny child, though. i also enjoyed his exhibition, it was a different style for him.

i wrote way too much about the top 4, so i'm going to try to keep the rest of this short:

jason: i'm just glad he's still skating. the world needs more of him, for as long as he's willing to give it.

lukas: very fun, i enjoyed him quite a bit.

deniss: finally! a clean short! more of that and fewer quad attempts, please.

kao: ugh. the collective wince in the arena on those falls... i wanted him to skate a clean attack on titan so badly, i love that program for him. he's very talented and INSANELY fast (cannot stress this enough, his speed is mind-blowing) but still lacking in control, and his performance skills need work as well. i hope this worlds was a good learning experience for him.

nikolaj: he's...so tall lmao. amazing lines. good musicality. terrible spins. looking forward to his improvement.

junhwan: the way i put my hands to my face as he fell on the 3A right in front of me... i just hope next season is healthier for him. he's a very, very quality skater and he deserves better.

don't talk to me about boyang

last but not least, shoutout to donovan for those incredible personal best skates! he still needs a lot of work on his SS and speed, but i really hope his jump consistency keeps improving.

———————————–

all in all, worlds was just...a tornado of emotions. some bad, most good. it was my first time seeing the world championships live, and i'm really glad i had the experience. for anyone thinking of going to worlds in the future, please be aware that the days are LONG. i skipped all the practices and some earlier groups of the short programs in order to explore the city, and i was still completely wiped out after every day of competition. it took me several weeks to recover, lol. thanks montreal! i definitely won't forget that week.

[baelatargaryen]

☕️ any hot d hot takes?

i'm guessing this is meant to be hotd, as in house of the dragon? this might get long btw!

not really a big fan of the trying to equalise both sides thing. i should clarify quickly that what i mean by that is i'm just not gonna buy into the idea that both sides are equally at fault for the war here. beyond that, i actually like making the characters sympathetic in their own ways regardless of which "side" they're on, but i think the writers themselves can't agree on what they're trying to do with them.

by which i mean: you get the writers saying they want the characters to be morally grey, and well-rounded etc, but instead they've flattened some characters imo into either caricatures or just made them pretty one-sided instead of two-dimensional (notably, i would argue aegon to some extent for the first, and daemon, otto, and even corlys for the second)

not really a fan of how the show has somehow managed to make virtually every single female character (rhaenyra, alicent, and rhaenys) lack any ambition and that any drive is instead put on them by the men in their lives (otto, daemon, corlys)

i'm very tired of got adding rape/sexual assault as well as other gratuitous gore for shock value where it's not needed and where in fact it wasn't in the original text. i think grrm has a problem with his depiction of rape/sa, not in the least how young girls seem to be his target group for writing such things, so adding it where it wasn't in the og text just adds more on top of what is already too much, imo.

^examples of said gratuitousness: how cole kills joffrey by smashing his head to a pulp (which is just. nonsensical), viserys having aemma cut open against her consent and without anaesthesia, alicent being a child bride, larys assaulting alicent, aegon watching children fighting pits, aegon masturbating out of a window, etc. some of these could have worked under certain circumstances, some of these should never have been there, in sum they just make up a pattern

re; alicent and rhaenyra. i'm not sure how i fully feel, but i appreciate them aging rhaenyra up for sure. i think the closer dynamic between the two is actually fine, even if it's not canonical in the books. my bigger concern tbh is how aging alicent down (even though she could have reasonably been 18, for example and the relationship still work), has had a knock-on effect in regards to her story and the themes of the show, and i'm not always a fan of how they chose to portray that tbh. i much prefer alicent's characterisation in episodes 6/7/8 which i wish the show had leaned into more, where she becomes the kinda character you love to hate.

the costumes are godawful as is the colouring/lighting. i watched the show on my laptop and i actually messed around with the settings on my laptop so that it was much brighter, esp for driftmark which would otherwise have been impossible to watch given the artificial darkening put over the entire episode.

my only other opinion is that i would enjoy the fandom space and show a lot more if it wasn't for the fact that fandom spaces have turned into selectively cherry-picking media to fit their own fanon ideals of a character. that being said, there's also a difference between that and people genuinely trying to critique either the writing or point out a disparity between how one character is treated versus another in the fandom.

send me a ☕️ and a topic and i’ll talk about how i feel about it

[sternerstufftoys]

Hooray! Hooray! It’s a Harley-Harley-Day!

Did you know that there are toys out there that don't turn into cars? I didn't.

I don't like it.

Still, it could be a lot worse. Hello there Harley Quinn.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't aware of superheroes in popular culture, and Batman has a large part to play with that, despite the fact that I was never really in to the concept at any point in my childhood. Perhaps it's more a case of superhero concepts being utterly saturated into wider culture, that they had, by the 1980s, lost a lot of the mystery and intrigue that they once had had. He-Man had an alter ego, so it couldn't have been weird to see Bruce Wayne have one. Hong Kong Phooey was around to send up both costumed vigilantes and the 70s martial arts craze. Hell, the Transformers disguised themselves as mild-mannered F-15s, so a guy wearing a mask to fight crime wasn't enough to turn my head. Not even the Tim Burton films were all that interesting to me aged 5-10.

But Batman: The Animated Series? Oh, that was something else entirely. While it handily piggybacked off the popularity of Burton's films, BTAS owed more to the sheer brilliance of WB Animation during the 1990s. Taz-mania, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs of course, the criminally underrated Freakazoid (which took loving potshots at BTAS itself), all parts of a golden age of animation that those of us old enough to remember should consider ourselves lucky to have experienced. A golden age that afforded WB the freedom to break from the norm and use their resources to create a kids cartoon with a serious tone, deep, thoughtful stories, an easily-recognised visual tone with its art-deco retro-futurism, and crucially, not just created to sell toys.

Yes, I'm aware of the irony of mentioning that in a toy review. Harley Quinn then. Among many near-perfect moves by the show was to introduce a permanent sidekick for the Joker, an equally-deranged woman who idolised her boss and could be more or less counted on for her loyalty to Mistah J. And that was pretty much all Harley was to begin with. The series would go on to explore what a relationship with a psychotic criminal would be like - one-sided and often abusive, but Harley was always going to be on Joker's side, and indeed, a sidekick. Now, nearly 30 years on, Harley has become almost an icon of surviving abuse, of moving on, of rejecting toxic relationships, and defining oneself on their own terms. And for being repeatedly shipped with Poison Ivy.

I suppose that's why this figure feels a little out of place. A modern(ish) toy that represents Harley in her original form, and designed for the adult collector - the interchangeable hands, heads and complete lack of accessories is testament enough to that. But it's those same adults, the ones who have carried Harley from the early 90s to the current day, who are responsible for her myriad changes as a character. The fans that sympathised with her abusive past, who loudly supported every step she took away from the Joker, the DC writers and artists who listened and followed the trends and allowed Harley to breathe free as her own character on her own terms, even the shippers that desperately wanted to see her kiss a green lady... and then given this toy as a reminder of how much smaller Harley was back in 1993.

It doesn't help that as toys, this entire series is somewhat lacking. I've mentioned with Transformers the idea of figures being articulated but not poseable, and ho boy does Harley fit this bill. Every joint is there, but the range of motion is poor, especially in her legs. She can't bend her hips far, her knees won't fold in properly, and it only barely matters anyway because good luck getting her to stand on those dinky little feet.

Yup, screen-accurate to a fault, these figures. For Batman this means being basically an upturned triangle, but for pretty much every female character until Amanda Waller was introduced half a decade later, they might as well be stick figures with boobs and bums stuck on. And giant heads to muck up the balance even further. It's a relief then that the screen accuracy is so damn good.

Yeah, forgive me. While I do love the fact that Harley is by now a predominantly emancipated character, I do still love this design. I know it's become symbolic of the Joker's hold over her, I know, I know. I know we're looking at a thoroughly damaged and abused woman here. But it's still a great design. Shut up. And the heads are downright hilarious, being a sultry purring face and a wide-eyed goofball. I'd prefer if she came with a mallet and hands to grip it, but let's be honest, she'd only fall over again, wouldn't she?

I like Harley Quinn. I like that she's become defined by her ability to change, in a genre which so often traps characters and refuses to let them grow. I like that she's found fans who find her empowering. I like that she is such a fun character that Margot Robbie essentially pushed for the new Birds of Prey film because she loved playing Harley so much she didn't want the godawful Suicide Squad to be her only credit as the character. I kinda like this figure as well, but not for those reasons, more in spite of them. She looks kinda nice I guess.

[stromuprisahat]

#ok i will try to stop being mean about TWN i swear #it's just that i can't get these godawful costumes out of my head #like ok i don't get book accuracy i don't get yennefer treated fairly i don't get a good edge of the world i don't even get good aguaras #can i AT LEAST get good costumes???? #then lucinda broke into my house spat in my face and said no #and i know i'm being mean but it just sucks that the direction of the costumes and the style of the designer is one that i ABSOLUTELY HATE #and to top it all off there's no real cohesion with the outfits and the world #or even the outfits and the characters themselves #lucinda's interpretations and justifications behind the costumes is just one that i don't particularly like #like if there was good reasoning behind them but they weren't executed well then i wouldn't be as disappointed #or if the reasoning was stupid but the costumes actually looked good (or good enough to not completely break my immersion) #that would be at least something #but I get NEITHER #also shout out to two outfits that didn't make the cut: #the stupid fucking bright purple cloak while yennefer is on the run (does not fit in with the practicality of the narrative or character) #and the leaf/constellation (?) dress in 203 that looks like it's five seconds away from slipping off and flashing us all #it's a nice dress in isolation but for me at least really doesn't work with what's happening in the scene narratively or for yen's character

And then she used the bad outfits to wipe out half the universe