#THE gala program

[daegu-based-terrorist]

You have no idea what seeing two North Korean athletes skate in PyeongChang IN SOUTH KOREA as the flag appeared behind them did to my brain at 15

[magicaleggplant]

Ilia Malinin: Hope » 2024 World Championships

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Yuma Kagiyama: Werther » 2023 Grand Prix de France

[alwayshappyhoursomewhere]

Four Continents Championships 2024 Gala - Yuma Kagiyama

"Pourquoi me réveiller, ô souffle du printemps?" from Werther (choreo by Lori Nichol, Carolina Kostner) no commentary version

[veritphoto]

Yelim Kim — One Day I'll Fly Away EX at Four Continents 2022

[raininyourblackeyes]

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Kazuki’s exhibition at Worlds 2023 because figure skating peaked with this.

[harocat]

The top comment. They spilled.

[gala-xyzz]

i hate spanish i hate spanish i hate spanish i hate spanish i hate spanish i-

[decadentwerewolfstrawberry]

Want to know what's cool about watching figure skating? When you hear a song somebody skated to and you immediately shudder and get vivid images of their program

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

this week, in the spanish singing program operación triunfo, they sung escriurem, a song by catalan singer miki núñez - more specifically, they sung the version of the song he did with basque singer izaro, in catalan and euskera.

in operación triunfo it was sung by chiara, who is from menorca and thus speaks the menorquín dialect, very different from miki's barcelonese one (i don't speak catalan and still noticed the changes from the original to chiara's one); and martin, from the metropolitan area of bilbo (specifically getxo). for what i've seen people comment, his town doesn't really have many basque speakers, and his dialect is the one they learn at school, the most neutral one. izaro is from gipuzkoa (more specifically from mallabia) so i imagine they have different dialects as well, i haven't listened enough to the bilingual version to really get the differences but i'm sure a more trained ear will be able to do so!

anyways, here's them performing the song at the academy, unfortunately the gala performances are only uploaded to prime video:

[threewaysdivided]

Hobson Heckled into Historical Haute-Couture

Continuing the Dan Jones & Dragons gala parade with Hobson, the Flower Crowns' oft-harried Halfling Warlock (played by the ever-wholesome Dan Floyd). Is he trying to massage away the realisation that letting his literally-half-brained patron choose his gala attire might have been a mistake? Is Valse giving him a headache over something else entirely? Did he use Detect Magic in a room full of powerful items and accidentally flash-bang himself? Yes.

More Flower Crowns Gala Outfits: Morenthal | Gelnek

As always, design talk under the cut:

But before that, a short story: I've been following Dan's content on Youtube for... oh jeez, that sure is almost a decade now, both on his current New Frame Plus/Playframe channels and back when he was the primary founder and narrator for EC. His old games education videos helped me get one of my earliest jobs in project work and introduced me to a bunch of media production concepts (like scope management) that would go on to inform some of my own storytelling analysis posts. It was a startling little moment of artistic ouroboros to realise I was mentally running through key points from Dan's own Pose Design 101 video as I was drawing his DnD character. Never expected things to come full-circle like that, but if you're seeing this, Dan: here's to you 🫡 If you're not Dan and haven't already, do go check out his stuff - it's all super well-produced, informative, funny and he's just an overall stand-up guy.

Now: onto the tiny little nerd and his passé party attire

This was a really fun costuming challenge, with a bunch of interesting curveballs thrown in the mix. Unlike the rest of the Flower Crowns, Hobson didn't choose his own party outfit: it was picked out by his patron after Valse kibbitzed him into giving up and letting a heroism-obsessed Fey call the shots. Dan cited Valse as having the fashion sense of Stede Bonnet-as-depicted-in-OFMD, briefing a vaguely 19th century-style outfit that had frilled sleeves and 'would have looked gaudy even when it was in fashion a century earlier'.

Actually dating his outfit was the first challenge. D&D settings are kind of an anachronistic uchronia, with classic swords-and-sorcery fantasy campaigns potentially pulling inspiration points from anywhere across the Arthurian era up to pre-war modernity. Which leads to the question: how do you make something seem dated in a setting where most everything looks vaguely ye-olde-fantasy? The other challenge was that, IRL, the 19th century (i.e Victorian era) was when menswear started taking on a lot of the shapes that would eventually become modern suit and top-'n'-tails fashion. Since Trilby was already going to be wearing classic top-'n'-tails formalwear, I decided to set Hobson's style earlier in the 1800s-1820s and pull in some 18th century Stede Bonnet flourishes to visually set them apart. This article provided some great reference images, and once I hit on the figured silk waistcoat I knew I had a potential starting point.

Colour-wise, I stuck with the burgundy-and-gold palette the Dans gave Hobson in his official gala stream art, since those looked good together and matched up with Dan J's tendency to draw Hobson wearing greens/earth-tones and Valse in reds/jewel-tones. The combination is a lot more colourful and richly saturated than is typical for this style of Victorian-adjacent clothes, which felt appropriate for Valse's gaudy tastes.

Fabric-wise, I figured a fun way to gaudy things up even further would be to lean into the silks and satins that were fashionable at the time, but make all of his outfit shimmery rather than just a single feature piece. As a bonus, silk and satin clothes tend be hot, inelastic and have horribly itchy seams if worn unlined, which felt like exactly the kind of thing Valse's all-form-no-function sensibilities would inflict upon the small, long-suffering fellow. Both these fabrics also have a habit of behaving hideously and ripping themselves apart when worn wet, which makes this a great outfit to, say, accidentally fight an Aboleth in. Poor Hobson.

Some other details, just for fun: 1. Hobson's sketch layers include a drawing of his un-removable cursed left bracer. He's pulled the frilly, puffy sleeve over it but you might spot hints of the shape and the gem if you squint. 2. The reference waistcoat I used had floral embroidery on it. Had this actually been a Hobson outfit, I would have converted them to his garland flower (Forget-Me-Nots), but since it was a Valse pick I decided to make them Senaliesse chrysanthemums; a flower given out to friends of the Feywild's Summer Court as a sign of protection and favour. (It also adds extra layers to Pocket mistaking Hobson for a denizen of the Fey, which is fun).

Close crop on the details because I'm very happy with how they turned out:

[hellhouse]

worlds 2024 crowd

so we went to worlds! i never make posts but i needed to talk about this. i might make a post about the rest of the event somewhere else but i NEED to vent about the thing that pissed me off the most of the whole event - which wasn't even anything to do with the skating!

i've seen a million people talking about how amazing the crowd was and like. i don't know where they were or what their experiences were but mine was largely miserable.

i was in a fantastic seat (even tho it was not the seat we originally bought) but the section was full of, largely, the worst people i've ever had the misfortune to share an audience with. people distracting skaters, talking to them on the ice, disrespecting other people's spaces, talking loudly about irrelevant things during programs, WALKING BACK TO THEIR SEAT DURING A PROGRAM, saying blatantly racist shit about asian skaters, kicking people out of their seats during a program, calling security on people for seat hopping (without even trying to talk to the person first), threatening security for someone taking pictures... you name it, we had to deal with it.

like i generally avoid most fs fan spaces because people online are annoying as hell and i'm picky with who i follow/check for news. but the real life crowd? is so much fucking worse. it was just disheartening to feel like no one really respected the skaters on the ice.

i don't really have a point with this, but like... it was just so frustrating and such a bummer on the whole experience to have to put up with people who i felt weren't there to enjoy or support skating, but instead to be entitled pricks or catty assholes that made the vibes horrendous

[psychic-waffles]

KAZUKI HAND OVER THE GENDER

[wafflessquad]

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💎🚲 Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri skating to Brividi in the exhibition gala at the European Championship 2023 💎🚲

[leahthedreamer]

Kazuki Tomono EX What’s My Name? || Grand Prix de France 2022

[blessyouhawkeye]

Hi 👋 I realize u are writing a fic that is probably mostly just your untamed x skating headcanons, but,, do you have any particular untamed skating headcanons?? That u wanna share?

this is such a beautiful question anon you're my hero.

my big thing that i haven't gone into extensively is that all of the sects are their own skating club, and instead of cultivation styles its styles of figure skating. gusu lan and the cloud recesses skating club coach successful skaters like lwj and lxc because they're very focused on balance and control, whereas the jinlintai skaters who are very showy with no substance. lotus pier skating club is all about doing the impossible like the jiang sect which is why i firmly believe in a mdzs figure skating au wei wuxian would have been the first person to land a quad axel. (this fic actually started with that premise, but then ilia landed it irl and the wwx i was writing changed.)

i'm also firmly of the belief that wei wuxian would have the best exhibition gala skates. i'm thinking like kazuki tomono's current gala program where he brings a chair out on the ice and gets whatever team japan skaters are at that event to push him around like he's driving a car. that is soooo junior wwx getting jc and nhs to go along with his bullshit vibes i'm telling you.

this last thing is less of a headcanon and more just a fun fact i think all cql fans who like figure skating should be aware of, but ice dance pair shiyue wang and xinyu liu actually have an exhibition program choreographed to wuji from the ost! they're dressed as wangxian and incorporate the show's cultivation hand movements into the choreography, it fucks so hard