I completely agree with your Russian skating fam post! I was gonna ask what you thought of victor and chris's relationship as well? You mentioned it in your post and that you didn't want to get into it rn so you don't gotta answer if you don't want to of course!
sure! i only didn’t want to get into it there in order to avoid a tangent.
first, and i know i’ve already talked about this, but i definitely don’t think chris and victor were ever sexually involved. victor mentions neglecting “life and love for over 20 years” and he doesn’t seem at all like the sort of person to have one night stands or hookups and i just… don’t get that vibe from them at all.
which goes into my similar point: i don’t think they were ever even really friends.
there are a couple things that factor into this for me. i think that chris was, if anything, the closest thing to a friend that victor ever had. they shared podiums often, they would have seen each other at plenty of competitions, i do think they were friendly, but i think there were a lot of things putting a barrier onto their having a true friendship.
if anything, actually, i think chris saw their relationship as something much closer than victor ever did. the way victor talks about chris sounds a lot to me like an older brother or a TA looking down at a younger student. this makes sense, considering their relationship in the skating world! but listen to how victor talks about him. it’s very…. distant. above. “he’s sexy now, sure, but he was like a little boy running through the swiss meadows” or “oh chris you never change” it doesn’t sound to me like a friend would talk about him.
meanwhile, chris is out here saying things like “i thought you were like me” and “i can’t get motivated without you” and “oh yeah i figured that other than me you’d be the only person crazy enough to be out here in the winter” and “i was always so focused on victor i forgot to look behind me.” i think victor likes him. i think chris has a lot more emotional baggage wrapped up in victor than victor has in return, and they’re not as close as chris likes to think.
“i thought you were like me, living for life on the ice.” chris doesn’t… know victor? and part of that is because victor puts up a front for every person he meets and not out of malice, but bc he wants to be what other people want him to be. i think chris thinks of himself as the closest person to victor, the best person who could be his friend, but chris also thinks of victor as a rival and wants to drag him back to the ice in order to dethrone him. that’s not a friend.
even more simply, they really would have only ever seen each other a few times a year.
again, i think they genuinely like each other, they absolutely get along and respect each other, and i think chris is the closest thing to a friend that victor had, but i don’t think they were ever genuinely friends and certainly not at the level that’s usually assumed they were.
