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catsbythegreat Thinking about my figure skating fics: I’ve never paid attention to nationals before (aside from US nationals in 2014 and 2018) so I didn’t realize that Japanese Nationals had 29 men competing…which is a lot…that’s like 5 groups of people (Russia had 3 if I’m doing my math right.) That means the whole thing is 4+ hours long, and I never thought about where Chuuya would’ve been injured during that whole time.
In a lot of competitions the skaters who have the best results from previous competitions are in the final group, but for this one it’s a completely random draw. So in theory Chuuya could’ve been the first skater or the last one, but I had him skating right after Dazai. Which actually, luckily for my fic, isn’t impossible because in this year’s nationals, Shoma Uno, Keiji Tanaka, and Daisuke Takahashi all drew the same group (Group 4) and they are 3 of the 5/6 skaters from Japan who people have been watching internationally all season. A few people are also predicting that those three might make up the podium (or at least, Daisuke and Shoma will.)
This doesn’t change anything about the fic other than me thinking about where in a four hour competition would Chuuya injure himself. The only big injury I saw this season happened to the last skaters. If I had to pick, Chuuya probably would’ve fallen in the second half of the four hour time period, but not in the last group.
This also makes me think about what position Chuuya prefers to skate in. On the one hand, if you skate at the beginning of your group, you don’t have to go in after someone who had an amazing skate that throws you off. But then you have to wait to see if anyone manages to beat your score. If you go at the end, you know where you stand right away.
He probably prefers to skate later, but not directly after someone really good. So he would want to skate after Dazai but he wouldn’t want to be the next skater after Dazai. He wouldn’t mind being last as long as the person before him wasn’t amazing.
