Bored? Hate everything you're seeing on Twitter dot com? Friend, sit down. Get some popcorn out. I have a gift for you, and it's drama. Messy drama. The messiest drama you haven't heard about.

Russian figure skaters fight like drag queens. STRAP IN

This is Eteri Tutberidze, a demon given human flesh. At the last Olympics, the silver and gold medalists in the ladies' event were both her students. She's one of less than a dozen top figure skating coaches in the world. She coaches the elite of the elite.

She gets incredible results. At the last Olympics, only one woman had ever landed a quad in competition. Eteri has had *four* girls land quads, some of them very difficult ones that few men do. Here are her girls sweeping the podium at the Grand Prix Final last season.

"How does she do it?" you're probably thinking.

Abuse. Restricted diets. Unhealthy, dangerous technique that fails as soon as girls' bodies turn into women's. Eteri has never had a student compete past the age of 18. They retire first.

The athletes weren't allowed to drink water at the Olympics, just wash out their mouths. Most men practice their hardest jumps carefully, a few at a time, because of the damage they do to your body. Eteri's girls jump them over and over until they're perfect.

She used to follow Olympic silver medalist Evgenia around on the ice saying, "Not good enough, not good enough," after every jump. She compared Olympic gold medalist Alina to Evgenia constantly, to push her harder.

Long story short: ETERI TUTBERIDZE IS A GOD DAMNED DEMON GIVEN HUMAN FLESH

About a month after the Olympics, Evgenia announced that she was moving to a new coach. It is pretty normal for top skaters to move. With Evgenia turning 18, she wanted to go to someone who knew how to coach adults.

Did Eteri take it like a professional? No.

She blew up. Threw a fit on Instagram. Called it a "betrayal." Evgenia responded with great grace. Eteri responded by leaking screenshots of her text history with Evgenia to the press. Note how she's got a cute emoji by Evgenia's name, like she loves her so much.

This was a harbinger of things to come.

The Evgenia drama all went down in the summer of 2018. Fast forward now to December 2019. Alina Zagitova, the reigning Olympic gold medalist, had a poor season. She struggled with jumps. Also, she's 18: the Eteri retirement age.

At the same time, she's being quickly surpassed by the new generation of Eteri's students, who all have quads or triple axels. They're untouchable points-wise. Eteri is good at minmaxing. Chief among them are the 3A: Anna Scherbakova, Alexandra Trusova, and Aliona Kostornaia.

The 2019 Grand Prix Final happens. If you watched Yuri on Ice, you get that. The 3A sweep the podium. Alina, reigning Olympic champ, ends in last place after a hard to watch free skate.

Right after that, before Russian nationals when the Worlds team would be chosen, Alina Zagitova announces she is taking a "break from competition."

ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE

A lot of people take this as Alina taking a "soft retirement." Other skaters have announced a "break" that turned permanent. Alina insists it's temporary.

Other bigwig Russian skaters are asked for their comments, and get lightly shady.

Plushenko, pictured here costumed as the jackass he is, suggests maybe Alina should get a new coach. Mishin, who always looks like that, wishes Alina success with grandbabies. WTF?! Tatiana Tarasova, who also always looks like that, says it's a shame Alina's career was so short.

And how does Eteri respond? Professionally? Of course not. She went on an Instagram tirade, coming after every single one of the people who commented. And Plushenko CLAPPED BACK

Alexei Yagudin calls everyone childish. Mishin says he wants to be left out of everyone throwing "chocolate jam" (i.e., shit) at each other. Someone asked Putin's press secretary if he had an opinion on the whole thing, and he said "I'm a fucking politician."

Tatiana Tarasova wins the whole affair by telling everyone to "Go to hell together, all of you." Eteri posts a sad poem on her Instagram, and no one understands what's going on.

After this, everything pretty much calms down.

Most of us forgot.

But not Evgeni Plushenko. Evgeni Plushenko never forgot.

Then a pandemic swept in, and Worlds was canceled. Everything went on hold while people scrambled to adjust their training.

Remember the 3A? Eteri's top girls, who swept the Grand Prix and were expected to sweep Worlds?

Well, we all woke up one morning to the news that her best jumper was moving coaches.

You'll NEVER GUESS WHICH

And that wasn't all. The very same day Trusova announced she was leaving, so did Sergei Dudakov, Eteri's jump coach. He's on the far right here. (I had to Google his name for this, because everyone just calls him "Hot Sergei")

Remember how Plushenko accused Eteri of being more of a manager than a coach, because she doesn't teach jumps? He was right. She doesn't. Hot Sergei teaches jumps. Hot Sergei is the man who makes the quads happen, and quads make the medals happen.

Plushenko has Hot Sergei.

Eteri must've had some PR person yell at her this time, because she didn't flip out. Just got a little frosty over on her Insta. She loses a few younger girls to Plushenko, mostly because they want to stay with Hot Sergei.

Eteri still has 2 out of the 3A. For now.

In particular, she has Aliona Kostornaia. Everyone loves Kosto. Most of Eteri's skaters lack artistry, but not Kosto. She's just a beauty to behold, and has a gorgeous triple axel. She's pretty universally considered Eteri's top skater, arguably the top lady in the world.

cue me, checking my phone when I wake up the other day, and SCREAMING! BLOODY! MURDER!

"omg did Eteri post on her Instagram"

bitch you know she posted on her Instagram

and took the opportunity to throw every student who's ever left her under the bus

btw, Julia would be Julia Lipnitskaia, who retired very, very young because of mental health issues and an eating disorder

WOW ETERI I WONDER WHERE SHE GOT MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES AND AN EATING DISORDER

Recap: Evgeni Plushenko now has 2/3 of the top Russian ladies, the jump coach who gets quads out of prepubescent girls, and the goodwill of the Russian people

Eteri Tutberidze has Anna Scherbakova, a handful of promising juniors, and the world's worst choreographer

I should briefly add that Evgeni Plushenko is also a garbage trash man and also doesn't actually coach his students, but anything that gives Eteri a bad day is at least a little nice to think about.

Someone's written up a lot of this on Reddit with links and more details if you're interested. There are...so many more details. All these people have unlocked social media accounts. https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/i1j1x6/figure_skating_in_soviet_russia_ice_skating/

I'm also tweeting memes about all this full time on my figure skating account @cursedaxel

here is a good one https://twitter.com/mad4skating/status/1289505873409085442?s=20

anyways, stream yuzuru hanyu https://twitter.com/umbrellaes/status/1188573918006779910?s=20

correction! all Russian men are named Sergei and I fucked up