A collection of sparkly gay things that are not figure skating costumes.
Gotta finish the last stage of my grading, so the Gay Figure Skating Costume Awards might have to wait until tomorrow night. Ugh, that is all I want to be writing now, trust me. OTOH, I got all my winter ficathon fics in. Early on yuletide for the second year in a row! Apparently I have learned time management or something.
National figure skating championships are busting out all over Europe, and I am particularly excited to see that Florent Amodio won French Nats - in an admittedly Joubert-free field, but beating out Preaubert and Ponsero for the second Olympic slot. Perhaps even more awesome was Michal Brezina's defeat of Verner at Czech Nationals. Tiny adorable future of figure skating FTW.
In other extremely gaymo sporting news, my hometown team won the Japanese men's synchronized gymnastics championships.
Elsewhere on YouTube, Benji and Lacey Schwimmer dancing together at the iHollywood dance festival. Travis Wall and Joshua Allen were there too, but the Schwimmers were the real standout for me. I've never seen a West Coast Swing slow dance, and their piece was beautiful, intricate, and moving. And to one of my favorite songs.
Speaking of SYTYCOMG? Have some Adam Lambert/Jakob Karr rumors. Will I be writing fic? Heh. Twist my arm.
There has been a lot of blah blah about how this was the "worst jury vote ever" and Russell was totally robbed and the jury were sentimental morons who voted based on their hearts rather than their minds. And despite the fact that nobody except fox1013 reads my LJ for Survivor bitching, I feel the need to get this off my chest.
Natalie White played a better game than Russell Hantz.
I have been watching this stupid fucking show since 2000. At the time, I was studying game theory in college. My professor actually used the final three immunity challenge from the show's first season as an example of optimal social play. We admired Richard Hatch's gameplay as mathematicians. We made probability matrices to demonstrate that Hatch was awesome. My math minor is kind of in the dust now, but I still watch the show with that eye.
One of the things that social mathematicians know is, there is no such thing as a human, interpersonal game that is purely strategic. Russell Hantz tried to play the game of Survivor as if it was such: as if others' emotions were irrelevant. He got very far doing this by playing very aggressively; by making it very difficult for anyone to have a conversation without him around; and finding immunity idols without clues. I think he could have done better: he caved to others' elimination whims too often, and he was too openly arrogant and smarmy. The very best Survivor players (see: Rob Cesternino, Todd Herzog, Parvati Shallow) have been great salespeople: they convinced their enemies that ridiculous moves were in their best interest. Russell very seldom accomplished that - not with people who were already hostile to him, and not with any particularly ballsy moves. He did not, for instance, convince any ice cream boys to give up their immunity idols. He was good, but he was not insanely fucking good.
And the reason he was not insanely fucking good? He is too much of a sociopath to understand how people really work. You can get to a certain point on the power ladder via fear, which is what he did. Natalie, on the other hand, is a professional saleswoman. As she stated in the final tribal council - to the immense appreciation and respect of the jury - her strategy was to seem so nonthreatening that Russell would never target her. Meanwhile, many of the big moves attributed to Russell - getting Liz out before the merge, getting Ben out just after, generally getting Galu to eat its own tail - were largely Natalie's ground-level social busy work. Rewatch the footage. Russell was the one saying, "Here's the deal," but Natalie was the one making the friends and gaining the trust that allowed for it.
It's not that Natalie was "nice." It was that she made everyone think she liked them. In some cases, she actually did like them - that's how she earned Brett Clouser's vote. The players that stand out as truly great for me have all had that gift: they've convinced most of their competitors that whatever happened, they still loved them and bore them no ill will. Charming your way to the top is more difficult and less certain than killing your way to the top. And as someone during the final tribal (wasn't taking notes!) said, in the real-world games of American life, there is never a situation where killing is preferable to charming. As a culture, we think the killing strategy is kind of cool, but we value smoothness.
Natalie did one other thing that Russell didn't manage, and it's a big one. Russell made a big deal out of how he had "outwitted and outplayed" his competitors. He did so - except for Natalie. He assumed right off the bat that she was a dumb young Southern blonde, and he never made a real attempt to determine what her weaknesses were. He assumed that she was weak because she was stupid (only not!) and female (only wtf you asshole!) and never went beyond that as a matter of strategy. Natalie, not burdened by such retro prejudices, took the time to figure out that Russell's Achilles heel was his disdain for others. She knew he thought he was smarter than her, and she let him think that. She used it. She totally played him, and outplayed him. And she earned her million bucks.
National figure skating championships are busting out all over Europe, and I am particularly excited to see that Florent Amodio won French Nats - in an admittedly Joubert-free field, but beating out Preaubert and Ponsero for the second Olympic slot. Perhaps even more awesome was Michal Brezina's defeat of Verner at Czech Nationals. Tiny adorable future of figure skating FTW.
In other extremely gaymo sporting news, my hometown team won the Japanese men's synchronized gymnastics championships.
Elsewhere on YouTube, Benji and Lacey Schwimmer dancing together at the iHollywood dance festival. Travis Wall and Joshua Allen were there too, but the Schwimmers were the real standout for me. I've never seen a West Coast Swing slow dance, and their piece was beautiful, intricate, and moving. And to one of my favorite songs.
Speaking of SYTYCOMG? Have some Adam Lambert/Jakob Karr rumors. Will I be writing fic? Heh. Twist my arm.
There has been a lot of blah blah about how this was the "worst jury vote ever" and Russell was totally robbed and the jury were sentimental morons who voted based on their hearts rather than their minds. And despite the fact that nobody except fox1013 reads my LJ for Survivor bitching, I feel the need to get this off my chest.
Natalie White played a better game than Russell Hantz.
I have been watching this stupid fucking show since 2000. At the time, I was studying game theory in college. My professor actually used the final three immunity challenge from the show's first season as an example of optimal social play. We admired Richard Hatch's gameplay as mathematicians. We made probability matrices to demonstrate that Hatch was awesome. My math minor is kind of in the dust now, but I still watch the show with that eye.
One of the things that social mathematicians know is, there is no such thing as a human, interpersonal game that is purely strategic. Russell Hantz tried to play the game of Survivor as if it was such: as if others' emotions were irrelevant. He got very far doing this by playing very aggressively; by making it very difficult for anyone to have a conversation without him around; and finding immunity idols without clues. I think he could have done better: he caved to others' elimination whims too often, and he was too openly arrogant and smarmy. The very best Survivor players (see: Rob Cesternino, Todd Herzog, Parvati Shallow) have been great salespeople: they convinced their enemies that ridiculous moves were in their best interest. Russell very seldom accomplished that - not with people who were already hostile to him, and not with any particularly ballsy moves. He did not, for instance, convince any ice cream boys to give up their immunity idols. He was good, but he was not insanely fucking good.
And the reason he was not insanely fucking good? He is too much of a sociopath to understand how people really work. You can get to a certain point on the power ladder via fear, which is what he did. Natalie, on the other hand, is a professional saleswoman. As she stated in the final tribal council - to the immense appreciation and respect of the jury - her strategy was to seem so nonthreatening that Russell would never target her. Meanwhile, many of the big moves attributed to Russell - getting Liz out before the merge, getting Ben out just after, generally getting Galu to eat its own tail - were largely Natalie's ground-level social busy work. Rewatch the footage. Russell was the one saying, "Here's the deal," but Natalie was the one making the friends and gaining the trust that allowed for it.
It's not that Natalie was "nice." It was that she made everyone think she liked them. In some cases, she actually did like them - that's how she earned Brett Clouser's vote. The players that stand out as truly great for me have all had that gift: they've convinced most of their competitors that whatever happened, they still loved them and bore them no ill will. Charming your way to the top is more difficult and less certain than killing your way to the top. And as someone during the final tribal (wasn't taking notes!) said, in the real-world games of American life, there is never a situation where killing is preferable to charming. As a culture, we think the killing strategy is kind of cool, but we value smoothness.
Natalie did one other thing that Russell didn't manage, and it's a big one. Russell made a big deal out of how he had "outwitted and outplayed" his competitors. He did so - except for Natalie. He assumed right off the bat that she was a dumb young Southern blonde, and he never made a real attempt to determine what her weaknesses were. He assumed that she was weak because she was stupid (only not!) and female (only wtf you asshole!) and never went beyond that as a matter of strategy. Natalie, not burdened by such retro prejudices, took the time to figure out that Russell's Achilles heel was his disdain for others. She knew he thought he was smarter than her, and she let him think that. She used it. She totally played him, and outplayed him. And she earned her million bucks.