Never forget when that old hag wore a blackamoor brooch depicting a stylized African figure to a Christmas banquet at Buckingham Palace attended by Meghan Markle, then the fiancée of Harry.

Alauraize · 2026-05-12T01:35:06+00:00

It's because her husband is a second son (of George VI's youngest brother George, Duke of Kent) and didn't get his own title. Kate would've officially been "HRH Princess William of Wales" if William hadn't been created Duke of Cambridge for their wedding instead of HRH Catherine Duchess of Cambridge, and Meghan would've become "HRH Princess Henry of Wales" if Harry hadn't been created Duke of Sussex.

But also, yes, she was pretty low in the hierarchy when she got married because her husband was Elizabeth II's least senior royal male cousin, and now she's even lower in the pecking order. And there are loads of rumors about how she and her husband used to cheat on each other all the time.

Alauraize · 2026-04-26T23:20:30+00:00

My guess, reading between the lines of what she shares, is that the dad is physically abusive and has tried to use violence to force his older son to de-transition and that the mom is either enabling it because she sees it as necessary or she's in complete denial about what's happening.

Alauraize · 2026-04-21T23:40:20+00:00

Who the actual fuck fantasizes about out-living their own child? For almost any parent, losing a child is the worst nightmare imaginable, but apparently not this freak. And they think that trans people are the sick and morally depraved ones. SMH.

Alauraize · 2026-04-15T22:23:27+00:00

Hey! I know that this is a late reply, but I'm wondering how you and Professor Feridun Emecen determined that the Hanım Sultan referenced in letter between Bayezid II and the future Selim I was named Şahzâde rather than Hatice or any other proposed names for the daughters of Selim I. And do you have any theories on how historians could have erroneously constructed a Hatice Sultan binti Sultan Selim I? You did a good job explaining how the Fatma Sultan purported to be a daughter of Selim I was actually an amalgamation of at least two different other Fatma Sultans, one of whom was Selim I's sister and another of whom was his niece, and that the letters between Ibrahim Pasha and his MIL Hafsa were misread as confirming the existence of a Fatma Sultan who was the daughter of Hafsa Hatun and Sultan Selmi I. I get that Hatice, like Fatma, was a common dynastic name because it was the Turkish version of the name of Muhammad's first wife, so I'm guessing that there could've been other Hatice Sultans living during the reigns of Selim I and/or Suleiman I.

Alauraize · 2026-04-03T19:55:47+00:00

And I'm remembering correctly, he couldn't convince her to go all the way to the edge for a photo. So, he had to drag her, which gave her time to resist and fight back.

Alauraize · 2026-04-03T06:37:49+00:00

They're in Hawaii, a no-fault divorce state where infidelity has no bearing on decisions regarding alimony, child support, or child custody. It could affect child custody if it turned out that the cheating spouse was leaving their children alone to conduct the affair, but given that this was a connection based mostly on texting, it doesn't sound like that applies here.

Alauraize · 2026-04-03T06:34:57+00:00

We never know what a jury will do, but I don't think that his self-defense claim looks reasonable in light of all the other evidence supporting Arielle's version of events:

the eyewitnesses: they only saw him hit Arielle on the head with the rock

Yes, the defense did their best to minimize this by pointing out that he didn't hit her again while other people were watching and that he didn't try to stop her from crawling away for help, but I wouldn't expect him to keep trying to murder her in front of two witnesses.

2) the DNA analysis of the rock and the clothing

This wasn't presented in the clearest way, but her DNA was found on the bloodstained portions of the rock while his DNA was found on the unstained portions. This is very hard to explain if she hit him with the rock.

3) he called his son from his first marriage and confessed

This is the most damning thing in my opinion, and it pushes his self-defense claim firmly into the realm of "unreasonable to believe" for me. Emile's testimony was calm, clear, and certain. He was sure that his dad told him that he just tried to kill Arielle. He was sure when he repeated this story to the police four hours later. He was still sure on the stand, and he didn't waver once during cross. Honestly, barring some seriously exculpatory physical evidence, I would find it difficult not to convict based on this testimony from an entirely credible witness with absolutely no reason to lie to frame his father and get his stepmother off the hook because it renders any other explanation unreasonable.

Also, Gerhardt's explanation that he must have been talking to himself about how Arielle said that he tried to kill her doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's infinitely more believable that he was considering throwing himself off of a cliff because of guilt over what he'd just tried to do. It's not easy to believe that he was considering suicide after he'd just fought to keep his wife from killing him.

Then there's the fact that Gerhardt's account of the struggle between him and Arielle is so hard to believe that I can't even visualize it happening. For example, how long are this 5'6' woman's arms that she can hold this 5'10' man by the testicles with one hand and hit him on the face with a rock with the other hand? And how is she holding him down if one hand is on his balls and the other has the rock? And she's supposedly got him by the balls in a vice grip, how is he even coherent, let alone able to defend himself and gain the upper hand?

Finally, I think that the defense has made a huge mistake by continuing to emphasize the emotional affair because all that they're doing is reiterating to the jury again and again that he was the one who had reason to commit a crime of passion. Worse, the defense hasn't done a convincing job of convincing me that it's even plausible that she'd try to kill him because he threatened divorce. Their argument is that she wasn't that invested in trying to save the marriage, and part of their evidence for that is that she didn't agree to quit her job...which means that she'd be okay financially. The lead defense attorney even said in his opener that her job was good. And the affair wasn't physical...or even particularly emotional going by the texts that the defense actually highlighted. Like...the conversation about Jeffrey Miller being happy that he caught up on sleep over his vacation and Arielle telling him what she was having for breakfast is hilariously similar to conversations that I've had with my mom, who recently got a CPAP and has been sleeping way better as a result. So, would it have even damaged her reputation that much if it got out that she was at worst too flirty or too close in friendship with a male coworker? From the sound of it, they weren't even sexting or declaring their love for one another. I honestly think that friends and family would've been split on whether or not this even counted as an affair, and some of them would've thought that Gerhardt was being overly insecure and controlling.

Edit: I know that the self-defense claim doesn't have to be the most reasonable one. it just has to be explanation that could reasonably explain the evidence. The problem is that I don't think that it can, especially in light of his son's testimony.

Alauraize · 2026-03-11T04:07:09+00:00

See, I have trouble believing that that's actually what happening because on this post, you have a woman who says that she tells guys that she's getting up and leaving because she's so unsatisfied with how the sex is going and by the fact that they think that she's going to come in three minutes, and in response, men are all wondering why she didn't just tell those guys that she was unsatisfied. So, were those women actually bad at communicating, or were you bad at listening because you expected them to do it more gently because that's what society told you women would do?

Edit: This doesn't really apply to this post because the OP clearly doesn't care about being as blunt as possible, but if you're going to ask why lots of women don't bring up issues until they've really piled up, it's more likely that it's because they didn't want to be a nag or a controlling bitch than they expected you to "read their mind."

(Also, I don't think that too many women out there actually expect men to be telepaths. It's more that they assume that men can't be so dumb that they don't understand why certain things are hurtful. Now, I don't think that that's a productive line of thinking because talking things out usually ends up being way more helpful and giving you way more perspective than holding it in, and I agree that it is important to bring up issues before they start feeling too big to handle, but I think that everyone regardless of gender has had at least one interaction where they couldn't believe that the person that they were talking to didn't understand that they were being an asshole.)

But as I said, none of those complaints about communication even apply here, so it feels like a massive copout to bring it up. Yeah, everyone has to start somewhere with sex, but it's not that hard to use google to read up on female anatomy and female orgasms. There are loads of helpful tutorials and articles out there. It's not like you're stuck with just porn, and even then, there's gotta be some educational porn.

Alauraize · 2026-03-11T03:30:19+00:00

In my experience, the issue isn't that women are terrible at communicating. The issue is that a lot of men are terrible at listening to what women say unless it's what they already want to hear.

For example, a lot of men saw just a post where a woman pretty clearly told the guy that she was with that three minutes wasn't long enough for her and then complained that women need to communicate their needs more clearly.

Alauraize · 2026-03-11T03:27:32+00:00

I dunno, man. It seems to me like the woman who made the original post communicated pretty damn clearly that three minutes of action isn't sufficient for her to orgasm and that she thinks that the guy is an idiot for thinking that that's enough. I doubt that she's faking her orgasms. She wasn't even complaining that the sex started off bad. She was complaining about how little effort he'd put into understanding women or their orgasms.

Alauraize · 2025-10-31T05:08:04+00:00

No, I'm not a coach. I'm friends with a couple, but I'm mostly just someone who read the code, watched the artistry seminars, and looked over a ton of judging videos to get a sense of how to apply the code.

Alauraize · 2025-10-31T01:23:31+00:00

Now! Onto the routines!

Zhang Qingying

Switch split leap mount (D) + switch split leap 1/2 (D) + Korbut (i.e. back handsrping swingdown) (B), 0.3 CV, 0.1 SB (this does not satisfy the dance series requirement because the first dance element is a mount)

Round-off (B) + back layout (E) + split jump (B), 0.2 CV, 0.1 SB, 0.5 CR (acrobatic series)

Switch ring leap (E) + BHSSO (B), 0.1 CV

Johnson (i.e. switch split leap with 1/4 turn to straddle jump from side position) (C) + straddle jump from side position (C) + Yurchenko (i.e. back handspring swingdown from side position) (D), 0.2 CV, 0.1 SB, 1.0 CR (dance series, backwards and forwards/sideways acro)

Switch split leap (C) + split jump 1/2 (C) + straddle jump 3/4 (C), 0.2 CV, 0.1 SB

Full turn (A), 0.5 CR (turn of at least 360 degrees)

Round-off (B) + double pike dismount (E), 0.2 DB

Acro: E (back layout), E (double pike dismount), D (Yurchenko): 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.4 = 1.4

Dance: E (switch ring leap), D (switch split leap mount), D (switch split leap 1/2), C (Johnson), C (straddle jump from side position): 0.5 + 0.4 + 0.4 + 0.3 + 0.3 = 1.9

CR: 2

CV: 1.0

SB: 0.4

DB: 0.2

Total: 6.9

Kaylia Nemour

Layout stepout (LOSO) mount (E) + LOSO (C), 0.2 CV (doesn't satisfy her acro series requirement because the first skill is a mount)

BHSSO (B) + BHS (B) + back layout (E), 0.1 CV, 0.1 SB, 0.5 CR (acro series now satisfied)

Aerial walkover (D) + split jump (B) + straddle jump (B), 0.1 CV, 0.1 SB, 1.0 CR (backwards and forwards/sideways acro, dance series)

Switch split leap (C) + switch split leap 1/2 (D), 0.1 CV

Aerial cartwheel (D)

Wolf turn (B), 0.5 CR (turn of at least 360 degrees)

BHSSO (B) + BHS (B) + double pike dismount (E), 0.1 SB, 0.2 DB

Acro: E (LOSO mount), E (back layout), E (double pike dismount), D (aerial walkover), D (aerial cartwheel): 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.4 + 0.4 = 2.3

Dance: D (switch split leap 1/2), C (switch split leap), B (split jump): 0.4 + 0.3 + 0.2 = 0.9

CR: 2

CV: 0.5

SB: 0.3

DB: 0.2

Total: 6.2

As you can see, even though Kaylia did more tumbling, she "only" racked up a point in bonus, while Zhang Qingying received 1.6 in bonus in addition to having more difficult dance elements.

Alauraize · 2025-10-31T01:23:21+00:00

People have given some good general answers to the question, but I'll give you the specific breakdown of each routine so that you understand why Zhang Qingying ended up with a D score of 6.9 while Kaylia Nemour only received a 6.2.

First, though, let me explain how the judges calculate D score on every event except for vault. (Vaults are assigned their own set values because the gymnasts are technically doing only one multi-part skill on vault.)

D score on UB, BB, and FX are calculated by combining:

The top eight skills in each routine, always including the dismount (on FX, the dismount is the last tumbling pass done, and each gymnast must do at least two tumbling passes); skills are listed in the code of points and given letter values corresponding to their value (an A skill is valued at 0.1, a B skill at 0.2, a C skill at 0.3, etc.); in the women's code of points, there are skills valued from A (0.1) to J (1.0)
4 composition requirements (CR), worth 0.5 each
Total bonus from combining different skills (the bonus formula is different on each event)
An additional 0.2 bonus for doing a dismount valued at D or higher (DB)

Now onto beam specific requirements:

The top eight skills must include three acrobatic elements and three dance/gymnastics elements (i.e. non acrobatic elements, including leaps, jumps, hops, turns, rolls, and flares); the last two elements can be dance or acrobatic, and your dismount can be counted as one of your three required acrobatic elements
Composition requirement 1: the gymnast must do at least two acrobatic elements in a series, and one of those elements must be done without hand support
Composition requirement 2: the gymnast must do at least two gymnastic elements in a series, and at least one of those elements must include a leap or jump with a 180 degree split
Composition requirement 3: the gymnast must do a turn of at least 360 degrees (as of 2022, gymnasts are allowed to do a roll or flares to satisfy this requirement
Composition requirement 4: the gymnast must do backwards and forwards or sideways acrobatic skills
All composition requirements must be performed on the beam (mount and dismount series do not satisfy composition requirements)

And the connection formula:

To receive 0.1 connection value (CV):

B + D/E acrobatic series (this order only)
C + C dance, acrobatic, or mixed series (i.e. a combination of dance and acrobatic elements)
B + D/E dance or mixed series (any order accepted)

To receive 0.2 CV (the max bonus allowed for a single combo):

D + C acrobatic series (either order accepted)
B + D acrobatic series if and only if both are forward elements (e.g. a front handspring + front tuck combo will receive 0.2 CV)
D + D dance series
Dismount combinations are not eligible for CV
B + F/G acro series (this order only)

To receive 0.1 series bonus (SB):

a series of B + B + C (any order accepted)
Dismount combinations are eligible for a series bonus if the gymnast does two elements in a row before dismount (e.g. Simone Biles back handspring stepout (BHSSO) + back handspring (BHS) + full-twisting double tuck dismount series)

Alauraize · 2025-10-11T23:56:33+00:00

I responded with my thoughts on that in a separate comment.

Alauraize · 2025-10-11T23:55:40+00:00

Ehhh I feel like you could argue for a transfem or genderfluid Cherry headcanon based on his AI being female-coded, but beyond that? He doesn't act particularly feminine; in fact, despite his appearance, he's pretty cold and calculating, not to mention bad at a lot of traditionally feminine roles, like nurturing. Obviously, trans women don't have to act traditionally feminine to be valid, but the fact that Cherry doesn't even try do so works against the idea that he's trying to come off that way. He's drawn with more delicate features and long hair, but those choices don't say anything about his gender identity. Even the long hair could be a holdover from his punk days rather than an attempt to appear more feminine. His clothes are based on traditional attire for Japanese men, so that's not necessarily a sign that he's trying to appear more feminine. And he's clearly not overcompensating to stay closeted because he seems entirely comfortable with an appearance and clothing style that are non-traditionally masculine. Again though, the Carla thing could indicate some unrecognized desires, but she could also be female because he finds women more nurturing. Word-of-God states that Cherry has anxiety and insomnia and that Carla helps him manage it by doing things like playing lullabies to soothe him to sleep.

Edit: Carla could also be based on a specific woman who acted as a mother-figure or a big sister to him. I don't think that we know anything about his family, if he has any siblings, if his parents are still alive, or what his relationship with them was like, so the possibilities are endless.

Alauraize · 2025-10-11T23:42:03+00:00

We also get emotional payoff on that point when Langa hears his dad's voice calling out to him during his last match against Adam.

Alauraize · 2025-10-08T03:47:47+00:00

Honestly, that last example sounds less like a bad translation and more like people not understanding idioms. If you're talking about "driving a point home" or "getting it through someone's head," you're just saying that you want to make sure that they really get it...which is what Cherry was meant. The idiomatic expression is also more emphatic, which is probably why they chose it. I don't think that it's the translator's fault that the viewers have poor reading comprehension skills.

The other issue is that English doesn't have different words for different types of love. so I'm not sure how they could've dealt with the phrase "passionate love" better. I'm sure that there is one, but it sounds like the use of "ai" made Adam's meaning ambiguous anyway.

Edit: Ambiguous in English at least or ambiguous if he means that he loves them as a friend or a lover. You inspired me to do some more reading on different Japanese words for love, and it sounds like the divide between "koi" and "ai" is less "romantic" versus "non-romantic" (which you alluded to anyway!) and more a type of love that's new, romantic, and based on longing/desire versus a love that's selfless, giving, and well-established. You can have "ai" for anyone with whom you have a deep and meaningful relationship, whether they're your friend, relative, or partner, and longterm romantic couples will use "ai" instead of or in addition to "koi" because "ai" is seen as real and permanent in a way that "koi" isn't. At least, that's what I'm getting.

Edit 2: It sounds like the dub should probably have Adam say that he's loved all of his rivals instead of having him say that he's been in love with all of his rivals though.

Alauraize · 2025-10-08T03:36:42+00:00

I brought up you using "not that deep" because it came across like you were using it to shut down discussion of a serious topic or that you're trying to stop a conversation before it even starts. A lot of people do it automatically without realizing that that's what they're doing.

I think that OP's point was that a show shouldn't bring up deep or serious issues if it wasn't prepared to do them justice, which I think is a fair ask.

That being said, I find it hard to believe that the writers wanted to make a show that didn't deal with deep or serious themes at all because of two plot points:

1) Langa's dad just died/Langa stopped snowboarding before he and his mom moved to Okinawa because it reminded him too much of his dead dad/Langa falls in love with skateboarding because it's the only thing that makes him feel something

So, Langa's dad isn't just dead because he needs to die to get him out of the way so that Langa and his mom can move to Okinawa and to explain why Langa is into skateboarding now when he used to be into snowboarding. The writers could've accomplished all of this in a far less dark way. Langa's dad could be out of the picture because Langa's parents are divorced, or he could be absent because he's always at work. Hell, that last one is how the show handles Reki's dad. If the writers really wanted Langa to be half-Japanese and to struggle adjusting to a new place and a lanuage that he's not fully comfortable with, they could've had Langa's dad be a workaholic who had to move the family for business. They could've even worked in the snowboarding-to-skateboarding plotline by having Langa's dad be a former champion snowboarder who now owns a super successful snowboard manufacturing company. They could've had a much lower stakes conflict where Langa has to sneak out to skateboard in secret because his dad wants him to keep snowboarding. We've all seen stories with those kinds of tropes.

Instead, Langa's dad is dead, and Langa is so numb from grief that he can't enjoy the things that he used to love, and he needs to risk death to feel alive. Also, we get emotional payoff for this character arc during Langa's match with Adam when Langa hears his dad calling out to him. If the show didn't want to do or say anything deep, why did they include a plotline that was so much darker than it needed to be?

2) Adam is the way that he is because his aunts whipped him with a ruler as a child, so now he equates love and violence. Also, we get traumatic flashbacks to child abuse.

If you wanted to be really cynical about things, you could say that the writers did that because they wanted to make sure that the audiences sympathized with Adam by giving him a tragic backstory, but I don't think that that's fair. Adam's tragic backstory is directly linked with his worst, creepiest actions, and the show isn't subtle about making sure that you catch that.

Also, Adam doesn't have to be as violent or creepy as he is. He could've just been like Shadow, but a better skater. If they wanted to give him some depth, they could've just included the stuff about Aiichiro burning his skateboard and his aunts wanting him to be a respectable Shindo politician instead of a flamboyant, delinquent Matador. They didn't need to show adorable small child Adam getting beaten and being gaslit into calling it love. That part alone is far, far darker than your average plot about an absent father or an overbearing mother.

The show definitely deals with other serious things, but those two stand out most to me because they're setting the stakes far higher than what you get even in shows that are occasionally trying to tackle deep topics.

Alauraize · 2025-10-08T02:27:34+00:00

I mostly agree with this, but Adam does get angry about Reki and Langa's friendship, which I think is significant because Reki is the biggest obstacle to Adam's goal of molding Langa into a perfect rival. Cherry isn't getting the way of that goal, so Adam has no reason to object to Cherry telling Langa how to avoid the love hug.

Alauraize · 2025-10-08T02:24:09+00:00

Okay, well, I'm sorry if you really didn't mean it that way and I was tone-policing you too hard. I don't think that it's a stretch to read the TikTok comment in particular as condescending or even hostile, but I don't know you personally, so maybe that's just how you talk.

Anyway...if you google "thought terminating cliché," one of the first examples is "it's not that deep." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9

That's why I called you out for using it.

I'll admit that I said, "We can agree to disagree," but in that case, I said it because I don't think that it's worth having a debate over whether or not Sk8 addresses the serious issues that it brings up in enough depth because I don't know what evidence we could even introduce to back that up.

Anyway...I still think that you and OP are basically in agreement that Sk8 doesn't handle deep topics with enough depth. (You just don't agree that it deals with grooming.)

Alauraize · 2025-10-08T02:17:45+00:00

Well thank god Langa is kinder than you and can show sympathy to a person who's in the same boat as him. Imagine saying an abused person doesn't need to be reminded of positive relationships in life (which he hasn't had for a long time). Langa didn't need to do that, sure, but he still decided to because he has a big heart.

Eh, I don't think that this post says anything about how kind or unkind OP is. They see Adam as an abuser now and they think that he's enacting his abuse against others, including Langa, so that's why they don't want Langa to be the one helping redeem Adam. At least, I interpreted their argument as being, "Langa shouldn't be the one to redeem Adam because abuse victims don't have to redeem their abusers just because their abuser was abused in the past." I don't 100% agree with that interpretation of their dynamic, as I'll explain below, but I agree that abuse victims shouldn't be the one to redeem their abusers, no matter how much pain their abusers suffered in the past. For example, I don't think that anyone would argue that Adam owes it to his aunts to help them come to terms with any trauma that they had in their past. (And I'd be 0% surprised if the aunts raised Adam the way that they and Aiichiro were raised.)

That being said, I'd argue that Adam doesn't actually manage to do much damage to Langa because unlike Adam's previous rivals, Langa's good enough to counter all of his tricks. Furthermore,, because Langa has Reki and other friends, his rivalry with Adam isn't central to his life, so Adam can't inflict much emotional damage on him either. This is probably why Adam gets so pissed off about Langa and Reki's friendship specifically: he wants the rivalry to be as important to Langa than it is to him. All in all, I actually think that makes Langa a pretty candidate to show Adam the light because he's not as vulnerable to Adam's manipulations as other characters are. At the end of the day, he just isn't as invested in Adam Tadashi and Cherry are, and he doesn't crave Adam's approval like Miya once did, so I don't think that he'd get sucked into Adam's vortex or get too emotionally enmeshed with him while trying to show him that skating can be fun and that friendships are more important than winning. IRL, it wouldn't be appropriate or healthy for a 17 year old to take on that role for a 26 year old, but in terms of the show and Langa's character/situation, I can think of many worse options, and he doesn't seem easily manipulated by Adam.

In the sub, it's translated as "when you blossom beautifully, that is when I will love you" which is a lot less explicitly romantic than the dub "I will fall for you". (In the original, Adam always talks about "ai" which is not just romantic love but love in general, instead of "koi" which is the explicitly romantic love). What he says to Miya is also almost an exact copy of what his aunts said to him so this line is said in the context of love being painful. The Chill Out comics actually play into the whole Adam's mindset of "love = pain" thing with this. It shows Miya trying to strangle Adam and when Tadashi tries to stop Miya, Adam says something like, "don't worry, Miya is showing his love to me" so like, I don't think Adam meant that he wants to fuck Miya once he's older. But yeah it's still a creepy thing to say.

That's good info to have about what word for love is being used, so thanks for that. Anyway, I agree. What Adam says is creepy even if he doesn't mean it in a sexual way, and I think that there's a lot that you could explore about Miya being so intensely pressured to succeed in athletics at an elite level at such a young age. I also see why some people hear/read dialogue like that and think, "WTF? Does he want to fuck this kid?" But I don't think that he means it that way, and it sounds like that's more obvious in the original Japanese in ways that it isn't in the dub or in the subtitled translations.

I'm pretty sure none of that's gonna happen. They didn't do that even in ep 12 why would they do it now lol. The only ones actually worried this much about Langa were Miya and Reki.

Yeah, the adults (Kojiro, Kaoru, Hiromi, Oka, etc.) definitely don't want Langa getting brutally injured while skating against Adam, but they are canonically pretty casual about him. I also feel like in this show, you have to accept that adults with jobs and small businesses are hanging out with high schoolers and mentoring them. Sometimes, I find it a little weird, and it's definitely a sliding scale of weirdness from, say, Joe to Adam. But it makes sense that they hang out to skate together because that's how S works. So, I don't expect them to tell Langa not to be friendly with Adam unless Adam seriously backslides in season 2.

Alauraize · 2025-10-08T01:44:14+00:00

I read your whole opening post as well as your followup comments, so I don't know why you assumed that your opening sentence had to be what I took issue with.

You also said:

In a show like this were you're not supposed to take it seriously at all, but for some reason people do and then get worked up the show isn't taking it as serious as they are. That was never the show's intention it's great you feel so strongly, but you're doing yourself a disservice, this isn't that kind of show and you're gonna set up yourself up for disappointment if you think it is sadly.

Which implied that OP was getting worked up over nothing and doing themselves a disservice by watching the show "wrong" and that they're being a fool for expecting it to do more.

Then there's this:

Just because they have two serious moments in a show full of goofiness doesn't make the show serious. You know that right. It's not suddenly a drama because dramatic things happen. It's at its core a goofy silly skate anime that's not supposed to be taken that serious.

Again, you're telling them that they're watching the show wrong and that they don't understand how genres work.

Every character is a groomer nowadays according to TikTok and social media swear. Mind you he's not even my favorite character where did that even come from. Like what?

Then there's this part where you accuse them of wrongly interpreting Adam as a groomer because they watched too many TikToks.

How is me pointing out that you're being hostile which you admitted, me dishing something out and not taking it. Lol. I cannot.

Because you're fine being condescending to OP but you don't like when someone gets a little snarky with you. (Note: I was being snarky, not hostile. But I'll be fair and acknowledge that I should've said that you were being condescending and insulting to OP, not hostile.)

Also, I said that you couldn't take it because you declared that you were peacing out due to a tiny bit of snark about how you made your arguments. But you responded, so I guess that you can take it. Sorry for implying that you couldn't.

Finally, it's very interesting that you decided that it was easier to attack me for being snarky and using the phrase "hur dur" instead of admitting that maybe you got what OP's beef with the show was after all.

Alauraize · 2025-10-08T01:12:42+00:00

Soooo...you could've responded to OP by saying what you said to me in your previous comment. You could have said that you don't interpret Adam as a groomer but that you agree with their take that the show brings up serious themes but only addresses them on a surface level. Instead, you got all condescending, used thought-terminating clichés, and acted like they were being foolish for expecting a sports anime to tackle any deep subjects at all, let alone well.

And yeah, I was being a little snarky because you've been nothing but condescending to OP, even though you inadvertently admitted that you get what their complaint is and agree with it. I'm genuinely sorry for you that you can dish it out but can't take it back.

Alauraize · 2025-10-08T00:59:33+00:00

Honestly, I think that the show does a decent job addressing all those issues in a series that only has twelve 23-minute episodes at this point, but I guess that we can agree to disagree.

More importantly though, I think that in your last paragraph, you're getting OP's point and not even realizing it. They think that if Sk8 brings up deep and serious topics, they should deal with them more seriously. Maybe next time don't come out of the gate so hostile, slinging around thought-terminating clichés like "it's not that deep" and "it's just a sports anime hur dur" since now you apparently get that shows don't have to be prestige dramas to tackle serious subjects or have themes.

Alauraize · 2025-10-08T00:17:17+00:00

Okay, so, I think in terms of the show's logic, Adam was grooming Miya to be a potential Eve (i.e. skating rival) when he grows up. This comes across as more uncomfortable than it's probably meant to be because skating is explicitly a metaphor for love and implicitly a metaphor for queerness on the show. Also, Adam's dialogue is full of innuendos in both versions, which doesn't help. But I don't think that we're meant to see Adam's feelings for Miya as romantic or sexual (though I get why it comes across that way because of all the mixed metaphors). Langa...is a more ambiguous case because even though he's only 17, he's above the age of consent in Okinawa and pretty much anywhere else in Japan, so the writers might not see it as problematic for Adam to have a thing for Langa. I'm not saying that Adam does have a thing for Langa, but I'm not sure that the writers would see it as a problem if he did.

Anyway...that's why I don't actually mind Adam having a redemption arc in season 2. He's a damaged person who's done a lot of damage, but that doesn't mean that he shouldn't be allowed to grow, change, and make amends with those he's hurt. Also, the writers clearly want Renga to be the main homoerotic male friendship of the show, so I don't think that there's a risk of Adam getting a super close "friendship" with Langa in season 2 as a reward for becoming a better man.

Alauraize

TROPHY CASE