skeleton king

Surya Bonaly, world renowned French skater whose trademark move is her backflip, where she only lands on one blade in order to keep the move legal. She’s amazing!

Yoooooo

it always amuses me when I remember the ice skating community banned this phenomanal move because a black person literally had raised the bar and white people were too bitter to do better so they banned a move that would add progress to the sport.

and then she raised the bar again 

someone make this into a movie. fuck it, i’ll do it

ok ok so every time this post shows up on my dash, i get a little miffed because it presents this narrative that isn’t consistent with reality. it misrepresents surya’s career. first, there seems to be this implication that the isu banned the backflip because surya was the first skater to perform the backflip, and they didn’t like that because she’s black. 

i mean, surya did not pioneer the backflip. she herself stated that her coach suggested that she start doing backflips on ice because of a skater named norbert schramm who was performing them in europe at the time. scott cramer pulled off 10,032 backflips over the course of his career, and he retired seven years before surya even began competing. surya is THE FIRST AND ONLY skater in history to perform a backflip and land on one skate in competition, but the most important part of it wasn’t the feat itself but WHY SHE DID IT. 

and ok, the first person to successfully do a backflip on ice was skippy baxter in an ice show in the 1940s. there has only been one legal backflip performed in actual competition by terry kubicka in 1976. immediately after he pulled it off, the isu banned the move from competitions. please note that yes, terry kubicka was a white male figure skater. and for context, surya was born in 1973. i sincerely doubt that the isu was banning the backflip because of a THREE-YEAR-OLD. 

the isu had very good non-racism related reasons for banning the backflip because well, figure skating is fucking hard. i think we frequently underestimate just how difficult it is because of how easy they make it look. i mean top figure skaters are still working on consistently landing quad jumps in competition. it’s so easy to flub a jump and get injured, and it’s super common for skaters to spend huge chunks of the off season not training because they’ve injured themselves.

SO DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA JUST HOW FUCKING DANGEROUS IT WOULD BE IF BACKFLIPS WERE ALLOWED IN COMPETITIVE SKATING???? if you mess this move up, you’re not just going to break an ankle or fuck up your muscles, you’d break your neck on the ice. you could FUCKING DIE. and this is by no means the first or last move to get banned by the isu for being too dangerous. (the one that comes to mind is the head banger death spiral because seriously what a name).

the reason why this is just so upsetting to me is because i feel like you guys are really simplifying surya’s narrative. yes, surya was a FUCKING BADASS. LIKE HER FIRST SEASON IN SENIOR COMPETITIONS, SHE LANDED A BACKFLIP DURING PRACTICE RIGHT IN FRONT OF MIDORI ITO, THE FAVORITE FOR THE 1992 OLYMPICS. IN THE SAME COMPETITION, SHE BECAME THE ONLY WOMAN TO EVER ATTEMPT A QUAD TOE LOOP IN COMPETITION, and the first time anyone had even successfully pulled that off was a mere three years earlier. 

and yes, surya had to deal with A LOT of racism. because of her skin color and her build and her athleticism and her style, she didn’t fit into the “ice princess”. they pegged her as a rebel, and they treated her as such. the judges were constantly nitpicking her skating style and criticizing her artistry because she wasn’t this light and graceful skater that they thought female figure skaters should be. (black ballerinas suffer from the same plight). she was constantly pushing the boundaries, but she consistently got lower scores than her white counterparts. and despite that, she was A THREE-TIME WORLD SILVER MEDALIST, A FIVE-TIME EUROPEAN CHAMPION, AND A NINE-TIME FRENCH NATIONAL CHAMPION.

in the 1994 world championships, surya’s final score tied for first place with yuka sato’s. it came down to a tiebreaker vote, and the judges picked yuka because she fit in better with the ice princess image. surya knew why she the judges didnt pick her. during the awards ceremony, she refused to step onto the medals podium and took off the silver medal. she was crying, and the crowd was booing at her.

the 1998 olympics was going to be surya’s last hurrah. she knew that the 97-98 season would be her last. when the judges gave her a low score on her short program for surprise surprise racist reasons, she knew that there was no way that she could win. 

so surya decided to make a point. 

she hadn’t planned to do this from the start because she knew that the move was illegal and doing it could get her disqualified, but after seeing her short program score, surya basically on the spot decided to replace the triple in her free skate with the backflip landing on one skate. she hadn’t been training for this move specifically, she just pulled it off right then and there on the olympic stage. and while the backflip was banned for being too dangerous, another reason for it to be banned was because the skater would land on both skates, and jumps are always landed with one skate.

surya pulling off this banned move was basically her last FUCK YOU to the judges because they’d been screwing her over since the start of her career. she was challenging them by making a previously illegal move technically legal. the judges didn’t disqualify her, but they didn’t accept the move as legal either, and they deducted points from her score, so surya placed 10th overall. BUT THAT DIDNT MATTER. when surya finished her program, she turned her back on the judges (a huge no-no because it is highly disrespectful) because she didn’t care about their opinion at this point. SHE’D MADE HISTORY. their decision wouldn’t change that.

(surya performs the backflip at 3:28)

X  X  X  X  X  X

THESE NEW DETAILS MADE IT BETTER

I remember that move and that it was not allowed (I also remember the outfit because I thought she made it was the most beautiful in the world) but I did not know the context! Wow.

I learned some cool things about ice skating today!

what a talented young woman

im so blown away by the skill in that video & was holding my breath thru most of it bc she skates so fast & freely & its beautiful

CAN WE PLEASE JUST SEND KUBO-SENSEI A THANK YOU MESSAGE FOR YURI!!! ON ICE BECAUSE OF THIS. BLESSSSS.

Tuxedo Mask becomes so much more compelling to me when played by a woman, sign me up, I am HERE for this.

That wink

breathes heavily

that wink

Lady Tuxedo Mask is the best Tuxedo Mask.

Scorpio King ♏️

Model: @thetreytaylor

Photographer: @chelseavphotography

Location: San Diego, CA

highly relevant to my polymer physics studies

@simple-pianist

this reminds me of @trufflesmushroom

There have been days when I needed to hear this, and so I’m sending this out to anyone who may need to hear it too!

v for vendetta is a film with a female protagonist that criticises capitalism, condemns pedophilia, encourages the viewers to question their governments, has a central plot about how LGBT people are condemned in right wing societies (more than three LGBT characters are in it) and was directed by a trans woman and her brother.

why has this become a fuckboy classic

because they mistake V for the protagonist and Evey as simply the viewpoint character, wilfully ignore the part of the plot about LGBT discrimination, and concentrate on how cool V is with his mask and his government-rebelling plots. 

What I find interesting is that - V is actually, imo, coded as trans, especially in the original graphic novel. Alan Moore claims that clues to identity of V ‘are all there’, which implies it might be a named character. If it was one, the only person matching would be Valerie, the woman whose journals V gives to Evey. Everything would match - Valerie was an actress, which would fit with both costume and tastes of V, and also why said letter was so important - and really, how the hell an occupant of a high-security concentration camp under constant observation had ability to write a letter, and also how a letter written on toiler paper would survive all these years, and burning down of Larkhill camp. (answer - by being written AFTER all these events).

Except, V appears to be male. Everyone is using male pronouns for him, in the movie he speaks in a masculine voice, and in the novel we do see a panel of his silhouette naked in Larkhill, and he definitely has a masculine physique.

But, if Valerie becoming V was metaphor for transition, that’d make sense.

That’s in addition to well, the fact that a lot of trans men begin their self-discovery as butch lesbians? It’d sure fit.

Why do I believe that theory? In addition to whole LGBT themes thing, and the letter thing, there’s one more reason. Well, I think this was skimmed by in the movie, but in the novel, we get a pretty solid clue. See, in the movie, exact nature of experiments performed on Larkhill inmates is kept rather dubious if I recall - we know they gave V abilities slightly above normal humans, but that’s it.

But in the novel, it’s more specific. So, what is the field of experiments that are being performed Larkhill concentration camp that they needed human specimen?

Hormone research.

V got strength to throw off chains of opression and fight back and yadda yadda, became a character who ticks off literally every single checkbox on definition of a superhero, including superpowers…

By literal fucking hormone therapy.

Administered to him, ironically, by the very oppressors.

From what I’ve read of Alan Moore’s stories, he doesn’t leave details up to a chance. Everything has a reason, and everything is interconnected with each other. And this, this doesn’t look like a bit of dark irony Alan Moore would pass up, since he loves that shit.

So, those are my reasons for this particular interpretation.

both the wachowskis are openly trans women now but yes 

headcanon accepted

filed under things i didnt know & things im glad to have learned

Adult Life™ is being excited when ur municipality finally agrees to exchange ur old garbage bin with a new one after years of arguing with them

listen it’s not about the garbage bin (well, it is, but), it’s about beating your opponent through patience and a consistent strategy. Take that Ivan from public services, who’s ‘’not liable for a replacement’’ now ahahaha 

do i hate my life? Absolutely. do i get to do that next to my new garbage bin every morning as i drink my coffee and yearn for the sweet release of death? You bet your ass

Here is my vine compilation! 

I laughed so hard I farted, and it pissed off my dog.

@firebvll

Reblog this picture of me holding a Family Size box of Honey Nut Cheerios? I’d really appreciate it.

How can I say no to such a great photo and such a polite request?

i will always support this post

@mooserattler back on my dash!

Why isn’t this at a million notes, yet, Dante???

I’m not sure. Hey lovely people who have taken me over half way to a cool million! If you’d like to reblog again, I’d love that, if not, I still love you, and hope you’re having a great day. I’m gonna go do some stand up tonight.

god come on we’re so close. this is like the only meaningful thing that this website could ever achieve

If this can make it before December is over something nice will have happened in 2016.

man im so glad this finally hit more than 1 mil notes

IG: @official.noodlez She hit every beat 👌🔥

So in my 3D class there’s another kid named Roy, which is my name.

Also in 3D class, we aren’t allowed to listen to music.

So I was talking to our professor and Roy walked by with earbuds in and the professor said “Roy, take those things out of your ears” and I took my hearing aids out of my ears and said “sorry”.

That is the greatest joke I have ever told and no one laughed and I honestly feel so under appreciated rn.

Honestly that joke made being deaf completely worth it and I am an unappreciated comedic genius of my time.

I’m beginning to wonder if people laughed but I just couldn’t hear them

i love love love stories like this

& this one in particular is so funny to me bc i am ALSO named roy

& i am also v hard of hearing

thank for sharing i laughed so hard

I guess I should be old and wrinkly at 29 as per the Sombra Age Discourse

First person: [singing The Worlds Greatest by R. Kelly beautifully] 

I am a mountain, I am a tall tree, whoa-ohh I am a swift wind Sweeping the country

[stops singing; chuckles] Why are you looking at me like that?

Second person: [laughing] Cause you’re so-

First person: Why are you looking at me like that-!

Second person: Cause I’m in love 

First person: Oh-!

[both laugh]

This is… too cute. This is too cute.