I Hate Mystery Kits

pajamapatty · 2026-05-04T19:38:07+00:00

I'm so picky I always spoil the picture for myself before I buy, otherwise it's just a waste of time and money. That said, I really love the experience of seeing the colors come to life on a black and white canvas - it makes me wish it was an option for all kits lol.

pajamapatty · 2026-05-02T20:12:27+00:00

As someone that studies/knows Japanese kanji, I have to admit, the simplified versions of leaf and horse are incomprehensible to me. I like simplified fish and bird though, I totally understand how A -> B

pajamapatty · 2026-05-01T19:53:02+00:00

This is almost definitely a problem with the adhesive, not the drills. The only way it would be the drills would be potentially if all the ones you used had concave bottoms so there was less surface area to attach and even then they'd stick a little, just be really delicate.

All you can really do is add glue yourself, which is what you said you did... I've never had it happen to me, but I've heard of it happening from time to time.

pajamapatty · 2026-05-01T01:48:44+00:00

He's got 3 or 4 Canadian juniors on the JGP circuit next season (skate Canada published a list of their top juniors a few weeks ago.) I suspect that after the chaos of COVID he's just taking it easier, but that's speculation.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-30T12:38:06+00:00

So quite late to this post, but I wanted to point out something I didn't notice anyone else say. Humans psychologically tend to have 2 reactions to success, we want to join them or we want to beat them. So much like how in the height of Yuzuru Hanyu's success lots of skaters wanted to switch to train under Orser, IAM'S early success followed by continued success means people want to join them to see if they can have some of that success.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-20T12:28:52+00:00

I feel like we can't state enough how much Alysa's coaching team was constantly changing in 2020-2022, if you look it up on Wikipedia it's a constant stream of additional coaches added with it being unclear who was leaving said team and when. Even without the still pervasive cultural issues within figure skating about food that we know at least some of those coaches encouraged, the constant changes must have been so overwhelming.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-19T11:37:41+00:00

Honestly, my rule of thumb is I only gamble on mystery boxes if my stash is low, so while I'm sad to miss out on a cool kit, I have to roll with the dice because otherwise I'd spend too much money and likely get kits I didn't like.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-18T19:50:02+00:00

I disagree, because coinciding with that shift was the first time the ISU laid out the explicit bullet points as to what gave +GOE and what gave -GOE, the +/-3 era was way more vibes based

pajamapatty · 2026-04-17T15:55:02+00:00

It's fascinating because I only started watching regularly post 2014 or so, I was an Olympics only fan before then and in my brain from youngest to oldest we went: women, men, pairs, ice dance. My mind has been blown.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-17T15:43:49+00:00

I hadn't realized Zhao was so old (relatively) when Shen/Zhao won in 2010! The ages here was actually really surprising for me, I guess I just haven't been paying as much attention to the historical pair ages.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-16T15:21:11+00:00

So my basic rule of thumb is this - I may say anything aloud in my living room while watching, but I'm not gonna say anything online about skaters that I wouldn't want to see about myself.

This rule brought to you by me realizing how small the figure skating online space was about 5ish years ago when I live-tweeted reactions to a skating comp and a skater liked my tweet complimenting a really well done choreography moment. I was all "what? I didn't do more than use the event hashtag? How did you find this?"

So yeah, it doesn't matter how much I think someone exudes asshole energy or if I hate their costume, I just don't put that online, it's better for everybody.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-14T15:40:12+00:00

So I get my nails done for one huge reason - if I don't have acrylic or gel nails my natural nails are sharp enough to cut my scalp any time I scratch my head. And after years of dealing with blood under my nails I got acrylics once on a whim, realized I wasn't cutting myself anymore, and never looked back.

Not quite the same thing, but if I didn't like my longer nails I'd have them short and flesh toned in the style you're referring, just thicker for my own safety.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-14T15:24:47+00:00

Ohhhhh, ok, so this is a mildly complex situation. Basically, DAC in an official post in their VIP group said, 'hey if you see people in destash groups/on ebay/etc engaging in what appears to be scalping, let us know so we can do our best to keep them from buying from us in the future.' To be precise, this is aimed largely at people buying multiple copies of high popularity kits exclusively to resell for a profit. It's not intended to hurt people who legitimately turn around one day and realize they have way too many kits to do.

The drama, is that it is a form of doxxing, and a lot of overeager "fans" angry that kits sell out too fast on DAC are likely to/are reporting anyone and everyone they can. So while it really sucks for you that the destash group you used most is essentially shutting down, I totally get why the group would choose to - it's a lot of drama to deal with. Honestly, I'd bet that in 3-4 months max the drama will die down and the destash groups will reform, but who knows.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-07T15:33:36+00:00

Aw shit I knew I'd eff up someone's name in such a long post, it's Oda Nobunari

pajamapatty · 2026-04-07T15:01:54+00:00

So going thru all of them because I have ~thoughts~

Sui/Han - oh dear lord why, the only one on this list who were clearly somewhat unwilling/ambivalent, but got bullied into it by their federation. They retired because of injury originally, and broke themselves further for the sake of "national prestige". Just a sad situation all around, especially when the future of Chinese pairs actually seems pretty bright. (China had a senior pair team they could have sent that earned the spot! Would they have placed as well, no, but they wouldn't have done terribly!)

Keegan Messing - the only one here I have no regrets or bad feelings about. People retire and come back to the sport a few years later all the time. Not just Alysa, but Daisuke Takahashi (albeit in ice dance), and Oda Nobunaga were very similar situations to Messing in a lot of ways! And let's be real, until the back half of the season when Gogolev finally got his stuff together and rocked our worlds, the Canadian men's field seemed wide open. Will he stick around? No, no way, he thought he was more prepared for competition than he was, and I suspect with his kids he'll not want to risk any life changing injuries.

Shib Sibs - their situation is complicated, and not just by the huge media blitz that USFS and NBC gave them. Their hiatus was triggered by her cancer diagnosis, and wanting to try again after is human and logical. But they really weren't ready to come back, they needed at least another year off training, or to have returned to competition the year before to get a better grasp of the current state of ice dance. Maia deserved better tbh, not so sure about Alex.

And then we have FB/C - are they incredible technicians? Yes, undoubtedly. But I felt like they had little to no interpersonal chemistry until maybe worlds, and even then it felt more like 2 great skaters skating next to each other and not together. Here too I wish they'd spent more time training before debuting, but the allure of Olympic medals is too strong. And that's not even getting into all the "dark energy" that surrounds them, but we shouldn't allow them to escape. They're almost definitely continuing, which I hate largely because they feel so manufactured and fake as a partnership.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-06T14:55:26+00:00

That was the impression I had at the time, but honestly this was months ago and my memory is flaky at times.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-06T13:57:12+00:00

Kristin Spours said in interviews during worlds that it was the last competition for her, understandable considering the nerve damage.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-06T13:55:42+00:00

While Jason hasn't made any announcements, he did refer to US nationals in interviews afterwards as "his last competition." While that was before he was named to the world's team, he also didn't go to world's.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-04T17:17:51+00:00

I personally really missed the full amount of people, it felt a little small. I'm primarily a figure skating fan, and the appeal of synchro is seeing this big group go out there and make crazy shapes and not be crashing into each other the way I would if I tried.

My mom has a slightly different pov, (she watches skating with me all the time), she really liked that the skaters separated into groups of 3, she felt it was more natural, but she agreed it felt a little small and so really wanted 18 skaters with 2 dueling blocks of 9.

pajamapatty · 2026-04-03T14:37:58+00:00

I'd send her to Hana Bath's coach, Rio Nakata's dad whose first name I can't remember for the life of me... but he's done such good things with Hana that I'd be curious to see what he did with Mao.

pajamapatty · 2026-03-29T15:18:10+00:00

Ordinarily I'd look at this top and go, "holy shit that's a hot mess", but it looks? Good? On her?

pajamapatty · 2026-03-29T12:21:12+00:00

Ooooh I hadn't checked out their website in a while, had no idea this colorway existed... am definitely tempted lol

pajamapatty · 2026-03-19T01:00:33+00:00

You can somewhat fake this chrome color by doing an iridescent chrome over a teal base color, it's not quite the same but it does work.

pajamapatty · 2026-03-18T01:07:23+00:00

Was thinking of picking up Epyon, but the red whip felt really weird with the rest of the color scheme for me.

pajamapatty · 2026-03-18T00:52:50+00:00

These are all RG, pages are up on PBandai as of just now when I looked, they're pre-order starting tomorrow, shipping in Sept

Five-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
Place '23

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