#scoring discourse

[myjunkisyuzuruhanyu]

Is there a way to watch a competition without caring for scoring? I try but can't accomplish. Not only Shoma but also my other favorites looks like they are victim of scoring all the time. I don't know if I enjoy the competition when especially younger skaters look heartbroken.

Unfortunately I have no solution to offer for this.

As my posts very much show that I am not able to not care for it either...

I think the only way to not care is to either have absolutely no clue on scoring and believe the judges know what they are doing (which was me at the start of following skating back in 2008-2012) or to just not have emotional attachement to any skater and neither is a thing I am capable of.

I think I kind of accomplished that feeling of not caring of scoring for ice dance and rhythmic gymnastics to a certain extent that I am not bugged that much with the scores. But that is only due to the fact that politics play an even greater part there and there is absolutely nothing in the capability of a skater to change this. In singles or pairs you at least have the BVs that if a skater does a higher BV their scores cannot be kept too low even if there are countless ways to still underscore skaters with UR calls or little GOEs, PCS etc...but even the nastiest scoring will not put someone with a terrible skate into first place and therefore there is still some sort of hope that the scoring may be correct or at least understandable...but well it isn't but hope dies last I guess...

I do think though even with all the lamenting about scoring most of the time the right skaters win the medals - not always, but most of the time. Like today I can lament about Shoma's scores but still the final placement is not a discussion for me.

This is may sound a bit harsh but I think it's the only way:

I can only advise that if you personally suffer emotionally too much from the scoring issues, you probably should take a step back from watching competitions. This is not our life, this is a hobby and it should be fun to watch. And even if we do care a lot for those skaters, these skaters don't know us, they aren't our friends and they don't gain anything from our suffering. I know it's hard to step away from something you love, but your own happiness isn't worth it tbh.

For the skaters the scoring issues are a totally different matter - it can destroy careers - but it's not in our hands to change the system and the skaters know better than anyone else how politics and judging goes. I think we as fans can make our voices heard by the ISU and skaters will feel the support by an audience, so we should not stop adressing issues and supporting the skaters but in the end we are just fans and it's also understandable that our opinions don't matter this much bc look how different the opinions about scoring and skaters are from different fan groups.

I think that as much as I personally feel involved into the skaters I like we should not forget that it's our life, our personal wellbeing we need to keep care of. Pls don't forget to live your own life and if skating doesn't bring you joy anymore, take a step back.

I can only say for myself that I do enjoy to watch competitions and as much as scoring often sucks and even if my lamenting is a lot and sometimes it's bringing me personally pain, but not as much as that it influences my daily life in any negative way. I do enjoy skating a lot, unfortunately it comes with a scoring...but that's also making it excited and interesting....

I already said too much again...but I hope that helps a tiny bit.

[enby-axels]

no way theyre gonna let this be the first sp to break 100 this season... god is dead

[anghraine]

Nothing like attempting basic division to sharpen my hatred of "everyone is mentally disabled in their own way :) don't let labels define you :) :)" anti psych posts

[fullscoreshenanigans]

Me whenever I remember the English dub canonically has Norman and Ray calling each other dumbasses. <3

[brutalhonesttruths]

whats the point of even having a pcs score if theres a <3pt margin between shoma, yuma, kevin, and ilia like why are we still pretending that pcs matter

[fallout-lou-begas]

In @ikroah #20, Julie Farkas had asked Agnes Sands and Cass to stop a dealer named Dixon from selling drugs to the Old Mormon Fort's rehab patients. When Agnes and Cass couldn't just convince Dixon to stop, a fight ensued in which Agnes and Cass killed Dixon. When they relay this information to Julie, Julie snaps at the two of them and expels them from the Old Mormon Fort.

(you can read the rest of the issue here)

Agnes and Cass argue that there was no way to stop Dixon besides killing him (debatable). Arcade Gannon, also present, chimes in and claims that an alternative option, such as paying Dixon off, would have stretched the Followers of the Apocalypse's thin budget and only encouraged even more bad actors to take advantage of the Followers' altruism. Still, by her own admission, Agnes was the one who escalated the initial confrontation.

Julie's reason for being angry, however, is that she quite simply did not hire Agnes and Cass as assassins. In her view, killing Dixon "for" the Followers of the Apocalypse not only was not what she asked them to do, but it mars the Followers' altruistic reputation. It is important to her that anybody can turn to them in their time of need. If you were her, would you want people coming to the Followers and asking you to kill somebody? Would you want people being afraid of coming to the Followers in case they do kill somebody? The last thing that she wants to do is contribute to even more instability and paranoia among the destitute people of Freeside. And yes, this differs from her characterization in the original game, so please only interpret this by the context that the comic provides.

It's a nuanced and complicated issue comprised of practical concerns, personal feelings, and regrettable mistakes that resulted in permanent consequences.

Which is why, since tumblr has introduced polls since this issue was published, we're having the most black and white binary poll possible:

[tsukana]

i think im really sad that im feeling bitter abt this bc like. despite the fact that ppl are saying oh yeah its purgatory its never fair. i have a bad taste in my mouth that for once it feels like its not bc of player action its partially to do with weird ruling by the admins on the event (re: the essentially. disregarding of the event points on elimination which i still kinda dont get why they couldnt just retally the points since they had the numbers?)

[chipped-chimera]

Just outing myself as a Solas hater ahead of time but like, a hater in the way I think he's funny. He's just funny to me. Egg man. Baldy. Baldy bald man with the long face. Condescending hedgehog-personality man. I want to play his cranium like a drum. He delights me.

My inquisitor got along with him fine just, not BFFs. Or Fs even just 'co-workers' kind of vibe. She (as a human mage) felt a bit belittled by the dude and did not appreciate. As for me personally he's fine he's just ... not for me? In personality or face.

Anyway that's the heads up, but y'all can continue enjoying the egg man, please enjoy the return of your blorbo.

[the-crimson]

(Gonna preface this by saying the admins are doing a great job and this event will be a learning curve for them but they aren’t perfect)

If I’m being honest, I think presenting the team scores as percentages is the worst way they could do it especially with how vague the rules for gaining points are.

The rules being more vague would be fine if all the teams saw exactly how many points they were getting for every task they completed. Just having a number that starts at zero and increases with kills and completed tasks and decreases with deaths would be so much better because the players could figure out how the scoring works via trial and error. With the percentages, it’s nearly impossible to tell because completing a contract quest can give you between .5 and 5% increase depending on a bunch of other unknown factors the players have no control over.

I doubt they would change it but I genuinely think keeping track of the team’s scores through a percentage is the worst and most inconsistent method that they could use with how vague the rules around gaining points are.

Either they need to clarify how gaining points works - especially the contract quests - or get rid of the percentage system and add a numerical system or something that can tell the players exactly how many points they have.

A compromise they could do would be to keep the percentage counter and ADD a numerical counter for the given team so each team can know how many points they have in addition to how they fair against the other teams via percentage.

Either way, something needs to change cuz rn it’s just frustrating watching the streamers playing a game without knowing the rules. (The rules are way to vague I know they gave us rules but they are no way near specific enough to be useful)

[stainlesssteellocust]

The Entities from Worm would fit neatly into the Laundry Files cosmology and are also far more detailed and bizarre than the ‘superheroes’ that showed up in Annihilation Score, that would be neat

Also I’m pretty sure Jack Slash’s sabotage power would work on vampires

hell it might work on everyone

[myjunkisyuzuruhanyu]

Shoma's NHK 2023 free skate and what skaters had to say about his skating and scoring:

I personally think it's interesting to see what actual skaters had to say about Shoma's skating and scores. Because they know better than any "couch judges" or fans how hard and difficult it is what skaters do on the ice and they can appreciate with better understanding of the technical aspects of skating and with experience in their own careers how judging works and what's going on politically and personally behind the scenes. If not skaters than who knows better how crucial judging decisions are.

An incomplete list of some skaters opinions on NHK and Shoma's scoring and calls on the quads:

Ashley Wagner and Adam Rippon and guest Sarah Hughes (not the Olympic champion) in the "The Runthrough " podcast Episode 22 (summary done by @RutrumusM (twt) here )

Michail Savitsky (German junior ice dancer) at Anything GOEs Yt podcast NHK Trophy 2023 recap here

Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir on the Peacock/NBC commentary (audio snippet here)

Keiji Tanaka saying to Shoma that his 4Lo was "pristine clean" (i add the source when I find it in the realms of twt sorry)

I didn't listen to the podcasts in full yet so I won't share the full comments but the sentiment is that the scoring and some tech calls of Shoma were questionable or putting it more "neutral" can at least be seen differently.

Some additional posts related to recent discussions about jumps and scoring:

Elizaveta Tuktamysheva on Shoma's jumps in her blogpost on Russian media translated by @ RutrumusM (twt) translation here

A Japanese article didn't criticize the scoring specifically, but adressed - as far as automatic translation is any use - the strictness of the event compared to other GP events and question the equality in judgement in scoring. Source (I added this because it's rare for Jmedia to release something sort of critical on scoring.)

Of course these are all just opinions and none of them or us is a technical controller or do have a monopol on having the "right" opinion but I think it still speaks for itself if other skaters speak in favor of Shoma compared to what some "couch analysts" say.

[enby-axels]

lol the judging in pairs sp was a joke

[coffee-at-annies]

I am not checked in to the discourse but I remembered why the name Zach Hymen is familiar.

That there’s one of like 6 Jewish players in the league. Oh that feels bad. Like it’s understandable why accusing a Jewish player of nepotism feels like conspiracy thought right? I don’t have to spell it out right? Right?

[rubywolf0201]

Remember back when BUCCHIGIRI?! was airing, there were numerous hate towards Arajin and to some extent Matakara so much to the point that ppl wished death on a teen who is annoying or in the case of Matakara, blamed him for being manipulated by an evil force that has the upper hand on him and said evil force gaslight him by using his childhood trauma if he doesn’t follow his order?

I remember.

[marklikely]

the grand irony of it all is that i was fully about to give saltburn a second chance but the defense squad did such a bad job selling it that now im transitioning to a full time hater

[kylejsugarman]

i love hereditary so so much. my whole family saw that movie in theaters on fathers day and then went to firehouse subs right after and we didnt have shit to say to each other!!