Everyone Is Talking About Alucard Saying "God Shits In My Dinner Once Again" But Remember That Trevor

Everyone is talking about Alucard saying "God shits in my dinner once again" but remember that Trevor never said it in his company as far as we know so they really do just share the same braincell and every time it hits a corner Alucard continues his downward spiral.

Sypha and Trevor traveling through Wallachia:

You know what the most frustrating thing about the vegans throwing a fit over my “Humans aren’t Parasites” post is?  I really wasn’t trying to make a point about animal agriculture. Honestly, the example about subsistence hunting isn’t the main point. That post was actually inspired by thoughts I’ve been having about the National Park system and environmentalist groups.

See, I LOVE the National Parks. I always have a pass. I got to multiple parks a year. I LOVE them, and always viewed them as this unambiguously GOOD thing. Like, the best thing America has done. 

BUT, I just finished reading this book called “I am the Grand Canyon” all about the native Havasupai people and their fight to gain back their rights to the lands above the canyon rim. Historically, they spent the summer months farming in the canyon, and then the winter months hunter-gathering up above the rim. When their reservation was made though, they lost basically all rights to the rim land (They had limited grazing rights to some of it, but it was renewed year to year and always threatened, and it was a whole thing), leading to a century long fight to get it back. 

And in that book there are a couple of really poignant anecdotes- one man talks about how park rangers would come harass them if they tried to collect pinon nuts too close to park land- worried that they would take too many pinon nuts that the squirrels wanted. Despite the fact that the Havasupai had harvested pinon nuts for thousands and thousands of years without ever…like…starving the squirrels. 

There’s another anecdote of them seeing the park rangers hauling away the bodies of dozens of deer- killed in the park because of overpopulation- while the Havasupai had been banned from hunting. (Making them more and more reliant on government aid just to survive the winter months.) 

They talk about how they would traditionally carve out these natural cisterns above the rim to catch rainwater, and how all the animals benefitted from this, but it was difficult to maintain those cisterns when their “ownership” of the land was so disputed. 

So here you have examples of when people are forcibly separated from their ecosystem and how it hurts both those people and the ecosystem. 

And then when the Havasupai finally got legislation before Congress to give them ownership of the rim land back- their biggest opponent was the Parks system and the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club (a big conservation group here in the US) ran a huge smear campaign against these people on the belief that any humans owning this land other than the park system (which aims at conservation, even while developing for recreation) was unacceptable. 

And it all got me thinking about how, as much as I love the National Parks, there are times when its insistence that nature be left “untouched” (except, ya know, for recreation) can actually harm both the native people who have traditionally been part of those ecosystems AND potentially the ecosystems themselves. And I just think there’s a lot of nuance there about recognizing that there are ways for us to be in balance with nature, and that our environmentalism should respect that and push for sustainability over preserving “pristine” human-less landscapes. Removing ourselves from nature isn’t the answer. 

But apparently the idea that subsistence hunting might actually not be a moral catastrophe really set the vegans off.  Woopie. 

On Minako and Yuuri

So…

I know a lot of people are trying to dissect Viktor and Yuuri and the dynamics of their coaching relationship. (It’s really hard though since there are literally no boundaries between them as student/coach, fiancés/lovers.)

But anyways: let’s talk about the single most underrated teacher/student relationship in the series.

The easy route to go with these characters is to parallel them with Yurio/Lilia. Both Lilia and Minako are celebrated dancers (they probably knew each other or of each other) and both are extraordinarily influential in their students’ skating styles. Yurio’s FS isn’t possible without Lilia’s ballet-boot-camp. We joke about how Yuuri’s dance mastery—and subsequent banquet shenanigans—is all because of Minako? 

What sets him apart as a skater?

His ridiculously high PCS scores? That’s Minako’s lasting influence—she trained Yuuri as a dancer, probably made sure he was as skilled in it as he possibly could be, and as a skater he made up the score gap with his artistry. Even notoriously hard to impress Yurio is intrigued by Yuuri’s step sequences—the figure skating component more “dance-like” than anything else.

But let’s go to the Scene that Keeps on Giving

1) We get Viktor and Minako in a room together. Please people, keep imagining them talking with each other. They are in many ways, very, very similar and very, very much in awe of Yuuri. If Viktor is an unending source of romantic love, Minako is basically his second mother, and an unending source of familial love. They are both Yuuri’s eccentric teachers.  They both are prodigies in their given fields.

(That pretty statue we see in Minako’s studio? That’s a Prix Benois and it’s the highest dance-award you can get. On that note… 

Hell: if Minako is in her 50s, she was most probably, in-universe, The First Asian Woman to Win All her Prizes. She was probably, in-universe, The First Asian Woman to Dance Principle in X, Y, Z Ballet Company Abroad.

I know homophobia is handwaved in the Yuri on Ice universe, and to a lesser extent, racism. But Phichit and Otabek are always pointed out as trailblazers. When you see them crying or proud because they’ve done something for their country that no one else has? Minako’s been there, done that, and still hasn’t aged.

Goddamn.) 

But going back to Viktor and Minako… Just think of all that underlying tension. Minako is all “Take advantage, Yuuri” to Yuuri’s face but you can bet she’s somewhat leery of Viktor. Because she’s heard the stories. If Yuuri’s idol-worship is keeping him from realizing how creepy Viktor’s arrival is… I’m imagining the good people of Hasetsu are all… “So this Viktor guy just shows up naked, unannounced, and he says he’s teaching Yuuri.” 

?????????????

(”Skating?”

“Yup.”

“Really?”

“Hand me another drink ji-san. He kept staring at my boy’s ass for all two hours of our ballet class.”)

Minako would probably be the first person to cut Viktor if he doesn’t make good on his coaching Yuuri promise.

2) The scene is used to establish that Yuuri is a genius of hard work.

(This distinction probably only means anything to Minako and Viktor, who most likely both worked their asses off but had the sheer talent to boost them up to living legend status.)

but: Here’s Where This Becomes The Most Enlightening Scene Ever

3) 

To unpack this:

Minako is low-key telling Viktor: “Yes, Yuuri gets anxious. It’s not just a competition thing. He’s been anxious his entire life. This is his coping mechanism.” 

And then: *bam* “I usually go along with him.”

Can we just?

Imagine baby Yuuri, who probably has used up all his spoons for the day, and then there’s his teacher Minako, who notices and goes all “Okay, what do you need? You need to skate? Ok. Let’s tell your parents, I’ll go with you, and I’ll stay with you.”

No questions asked, she’s just there.

Like—she’s either dancing with him or just watching him ice skate for however long it’ll take the anxiety attack to go away. 

The fuck.

For the entirety of his childhood, Yuuri has had this one woman support system of “You need to skate/dance right now? Kay, let me just find my coat, off we go Yuuri!” Can you imagine? How many hours? How many times a week? And she’d just go with him. 

Minako is the ideal teacher: She saw what Yuuri needed and gave it to him.

Bonus: She wasn’t at the GPF where Yuuri failed. She didn’t fly into Russia for the Rostelecom Cup where he was alone for the second half. You can imagine that before Viktor arrived, Minako was the person most likely to help Yuuri during an anxiety attack.