So since the topic of Victor and his characterization came up today, I have a few thoughts on the subject I’d like to share.
Let me start by saying that I’ve read a lot of Victuuri fic. A lot of it. Mostly canonverse fic, because I’m pretty meh on AUs and it takes a pretty special AU to woo me away from canon and canon divergence. As such, I’m intimately familiar with how the YOI fandom tends to write Victor in a canon setting in particular. And I feel like a lot of the time… we miss the mark. Rather drastically, as a matter of fact.
What do I mean by that?
Simple: I think a lot of the way the fandom portrays Victor is still heavily influenced by first impressions.
This is true of many characters in many fandoms. I’ve been around the block a time or twenty and seen a lot of fanon characterizations, both good and bad, and I’ve seen this pattern repeat over and over. First impressions are a big deal, both with fictional characters and with real people, and it can be hard to let go of that. And that’s not always a bad thing, sometimes the impression a character makes on a fandom after two or three episodes is perfectly accurate. And sometimes it’s not, and writing based heavily on first impressions without taking subsequent characterization into account ends up being very flawed and out of character.
And then there’s Victor. And the thing about Victor is that, with the way the narrative of YOI is structured, in the first quarter of the show, we as the audience are deliberately led to believe false things about Victor. It’s all part of the setup for the big twist, it’s all part of the surprise. We’re intentionally being directed to make assumptions about him, without any real evidence that those assumptions are accurate to his character. Almost none of what we “know” about Victor based on the first quarter of the series is really accurate— especially because the vast majority of it is coming from other people talking about Victor, and not from Victor himself.
Here’s what is “revealed” about Victor based on the first three episodes:
- he’s selfish (according to Yakov)
- he’s impulsive (revealed by Victor’s
seeminglysudden decision to coach Yuuri)- he no longer feels he can surprise his audience, and this may be part of why he left skating (according to Yuri)
- he’s forgetful (according to Yuri and also himself)
- he’s a desirable bachelor “playboy type” (according to Minako and Nishigori)
And as we later learn, all of these things are untrue to some degree, except possibly the forgetfulness thing, which I’ll come back to in a moment. So let’s take a look at these “facts” about Victor, shall we?
We were looking at Viktor from an unreliable point of view as well, Yuuri didn’t know him personally before he came to Japan and forgot about the whole banquet as well. He was quite an enigma to not only the characters but to the audience as well.
He was a workaholic, who, while not explicitly stated, was heavily implied to have depression. We only knew Viktor from people who never even spoke to him before or weren’t as close to Viktor to have him confine in them. ( As irarual said)
In the first episode, I got this serious formal vibe from Viktor before seeing the ending of the episode the first time around. His life before going to Japan was working and changing himself to please the audience even since he began skating, his attitude may have deterred many potential partners in general. He wasn’t genuinely happy when you compare his smile after receiving the gold medal at the World’s Championship to the ending where he sees Yuuri running towards him. His life revolved around skating.
The portrayals of Viktor as someone who was reckless when he was young, perhaps just losing inspiration after wasting most of his life skating; or having close friendship with Chris are actually interesting and quite amazing.
Although I guess there’s a lack of fics that depict Viktor being a workaholic who finds that there’s something more then skating in his life.
I’m not great at writing any type of analysis about characters, but I did want to say something about Viktor.