Aliya can throw away tea bags without dropping tea on floor! Also, she doesn't have a dishwasher.

I wouldn't be a true fan unless I took the opportunity to thoroughly go through Aliya's new ask.fm page (she has answered 757 questions in two days!!!). Because I'm nice, I thought I'd give you a summary of whats going on in the Russian side of crazy Aliya stanning.

So some of the things I learned:

• she fishes
• she thinks every sport is dangerous, except chess (go crazy chess fandom)
• when choosing a book, she reads first the title, then contents (exciting)
• her worst quality is being kind
• but she's also most proud of being kind
• she doesn't write poetry
• she eats after 6pm too
• she types fast with phone, but not on computer
• she doesn't look blogs (everyone sigh in relief)
• the point of "the master and margarita" is evil is not always bad
• you should ask the people she's kissed if she's a good kisser (duh)
• she likes to be called aliya, no diminutives
• it's not difficult for her to be a leader, she likes helping others
• she has talked to mannequins in a shop
• she takes criticism well and recognizes her own mistakes
• she didn't know that alligators eat their young and also isn't going to do so herself
• beliavsky is not gay
• her tattoo is for herself, the writing is a secret
• she sleeps on both sides of the bed
• she doesn't know which vault she'll do
• no red, white or purple balls on her christmas tree
• the difference in her weigh between now and competition season is 100000000 kg
• she doesn't listen to justin bieber or taylor swift
• she likes hunger games and has read it more than once
• the girls and guys have different dressing rooms and she hasn't spied on the guys
• she wants to go to dubai for vacation
• seda is sweet and kind
• nastia liukin speaks russian, but not perfectly
• she was never teased for her rare name
• she cooks a good omelet
• vika is her friend
• the best photograph of london is her hugging grebenkin after ub win
• her ability to dance on a 1-10 scale is -1
• she eats tangerines during winter
• there's chaos in her closet
• she doesn't care about her name being wrongly pronounced
• she doesn't like ears sticking out on a guy
• they can decide who they want to room with at Round Lake, but they stay in same rooms each camp
• her heart works without breaks and days off (sounds healthy)
• her knee still hurts
• she's never used a pay phone
• she communicates with gymnasts from other countries only on competitions
• her level of english out of 10 is 1
• she doesn't care about people drinking, unless it's constant
• she prefers l'one over metallica
• seda is tiny because her mother is tiny
• psychology over philosophy
• she has electric stove (yes, someone actually asked that :D)
• she can put used tea bag in the trash can without dropping tea on floor (yes, someone asked that too :D)
• she hates lying the most
• she doesn't have a selfie stick
• she'll probably stay working around sport in the future
• she's not musical
• she prefers parsley over dill
• she doesn't sing in the shower
• she prefers dry wine (like me, yay)
• she doesn't know how to fix a flat tire
• her key chain is a cow
• she likes chicken
• she doesn't know how to bake cakes
• she doesn't have a dishwasher (why do people ask these things?)
• she also posted this picture (but did not elaborate on what's going on):

Aliya verified the authenticity of this account via vk, so it's not one of the 100 fake ones out there.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Have a great Christmas and enjoy this collection of my homemade holiday themed stares :) 

You Worry Me, My Tsaritsa

My last post was about Vika's struggle after London and now I'm going to write about my tsaritsa, Aliya. She's been worrying me all year long and it looks like she's going to keep worrying me next year too. The Russian team administration treats her as a lock for Rio (at least from the outside). She's constantly doing publicity and interviews talking about the event and her plans for training, but Rio is 8 months away and she isn't actually training, and hasn't been for awhile now. I feel like the Russian team is either refusing to acknowledge this fact, or they have acknowledged it but are keeping it firmly under wraps. For publicity, financial or moral support for the team, I don't know. But the situation bothers me.

This year was such a roller coaster with her. Pulling out of competitions late last year because of her back. Getting a new coach and starting training again. Not being ready for Nationals or Euros. Coming back spectacularly for European Games, things looking great for Worlds. Stopping training again during Worlds preparation, no one knowing what was going on. Her saying that her back was too much again, the Rodionenkos insisting that she was ready for Worlds, but just excused from Russian Cup. Then not going to Worlds preparation camp, but still named to the team. The new knee injury and surgery. We could get a Russian telenovela out of that.

But on with my thoughts about Aliya and 2016.

Vika My Princessa - I have had and still keep having so many feels for ya

A little something for Throwback Thursday. I'm about to start playing the new expansion pack for Sims 4, so you'll probably never see me again.
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In a recent interview Viktoria Komova described the last few years as the hardest of her life. An endless cycle of training, getting injured and not competing. She lost the passion to train and quit several times, fought with Gennady Yelfimov, her coach since childhood, and broke off the partnership returning home to Voronezh. Her return to training and Round Lake happened after the head of the Russian team, Andrei Rodionenko, called and told her to return right away. I don't know what they discussed or how he got her to agree (maybe it was first just because her team needed her, maybe there was something more to it), but she returned, started training and eventually made up with Yelfimov.

She returned to competition this year successfully (at least in my mind), performing AA in European Games at Baku and winning a World title on uneven bars after an otherwise inconsistent competition in Glasgow. If she stays healthy (yeah right...), she'll have her former difficulty back by Rio. She's shown she can fight, now all she needs is confidence in herself.

After seeing the interview, I remembered a piece I wrote about Vika last year. She was in the middle of the funk she discussed during the interview and I was pretty pessimistic about her chances of return to competition. And I just thought it would be interesting to see what I wrote back then now that we know how this year went. There's also a link to the post on RRG that I was referencing.

when there’s a bunch of people standing in line but you’re aliya mustafina

So what's going on in this picture?
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“when the coach tells you and your team to get a bars dismount worth more than a D but you already have one that’s actually named after you”

“when the head of the team tells press that you’re as good as done but you win more medals at the olympics than any other gymnast”

"when only one of you is an olympic champion and it's you"

"when everyone's a walking corpse but you have an appointment with the german miracle doctors"

"when you're named to the olympic team even though you're not even training"

"when you have a surprise dentist appointment but you've been flossing"

“when you’re at potions class and the teacher tells everyone to make an antidote but you have a bezoar”

My petition for Seda to get her act together

A quick foreword: I wrote this post right after Worlds (and didn't publish it then because of reasons that I have since forgotten, the reason actually might be that I just forgot to publish it and now forgot that I forgot if you can keep up), so the emotions come through just a little bit strong maybe. :P
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I took forever to decide on a title for this some of the options were:

• Why Seda WHY? 
• Why do I even bother with this shit
• If actually bother to write a post for you, you can stay on the beam, deal?
• Enough with the young angst, grow up and be the champion I know you can be
• *insert any song with "i believe" in the lyrics*
• To quote the rich bitches on Laguna Beach: Dunzo
• Not done with you but done with your drama
• *insert every bad word in your vocabulary*
• Please, Seda, PLEASE!
• *uncontrollable sobbing*

Can you feel my frustration combined with partly irrational wild hope and air desperation? I should bottle that up, it would be the perfect wine or perfume for... I don't know, blind dates? Bachelor/ette parties?
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But this post is about Seda Tutkhalyan. Russian gymnast, new senior this year, born in 1999. And one of my personal faves and future hopes for Russia. Because Russia needs some hope. They were actually quite deep this year, but that had a lot to do with the returners from last quad, and they won't stick around forever. There are plenty of excellent juniors, but about 97% of Russian great junior talent doesn't hold up in senior level. But I'm hoping Seda will, even if it looks like... well, what it looked like at Worlds.

Gymnastics and Zombie Attacks!

Long time and no posts, I knew this would happen. But last night I received an anonymous ask that inquired my plans for a zombie attack and I WAS PREPARED. Yes. So I decided to record my battle plan here too.

Here's the original ask:

What would happen if Aliya and Catalina were both leaders of armies and had to death-stare each other down to rule the world? And if you had to fight zombies and the floor was lava, who would you put on the beam with a laser-gun? (I say Carlotta Ferlito.)

My answer to the death stare question and a detailed plan on how to fight zombies in a lava and balance beam situation is after the break.