the beautiful thing about yuri on ice is no matter how crack-ish a fan work can be, it will still not be out of place because of how extra and over-dramatic victor is. it’s nearly impossible to have crack that is too ridiculous when chihoko exists
Summary: @domesticvictuuriweek, Day 3, Prompt: Friends
It’s not that Victor is jealous of Phichit. He isn’t. No, really, he’s not. He’s been over the whole jealousy thing since Yuuri had assured him of his steadfast and undying devotion by publicly stripping his clothes off in front of all of their friends (including Phichit) and joining him for the most invigorating morning stretch of his life atop Hasetsu Castle. It was certainly a wake-up call to him, who had thought he’d known everything there was to know about Yuuri up until that point, but there was no reason to be jealous of Chihoko after t—
“—for the last time, Vitya, there was never any Chihoko—”
Viktor Nikiforov: 5 years straight world champion, graceful skating, beautiful af, hottest bachelor on earth, quad flip, probs have black card, infinite money
Also Viktor Nikiforov: gets jealous over a mythical japanese tiger carp fish and gotta flex butt naked on a castle to prove to his fiance that he's better than the said fish
I've seen people describe the "Overcome Chihoko" story in a number of ways--Victor being Extra, crackfic, something written purely for laughs, and so forth. And yes, I think all of those things are true, to a certain extent, but I'm not sure we appreciate exactly how lovely of an instance of crackfic this is.
More below the cut.
First, let's talk about Victor being Extra. In some senses, I think fandom can sometimes be a little overboard as to how Extra Victor can be. In other senses, I think that fandom is sometimes not...overboard enough as to Victor's Extraness.
Here's the thing about Victor: You don't get to be the five-time world champion by being very good at judging rational and appropriate responses to things. Five-time world champions don't tell themselves, "Well, I skated my best and that's all that matters." Five-time world champions don't tell themselves, "I guess that's as good as I'm ever gonna get on that jump, I'm not going to try for a higher grade of execution." Five-time world champions are people who do not know how to accept the concept of "good enough." They are more aware of their errors--and what they do wrong--then what they do right.
(This is true in general with competent individuals: No matter what your natural talent level, you are never perfect off the bat. The person who ends up being the best is not always the person who is most naturally talented. It's often the person who knows when they're not doing it right, and corrects mistakes. The ability to detect errors means you know how to improve. People who get to the level of perfection are more likely to hold themselves to a standard of perfection, and see every deviation from it, than to hold themselves to a standard of pretty good, and be delighted for every time that standard is exceeded. This is something that is true of both Yuuri and Victor; the two just handle mistakes differently. It's true of other people at the very top--check out Yuzuru Hanyu sometime, who also has this trait, although I think not the same way as Yuuri or Victor. Yuzuru Hanyu has a notebook where he details every jump he makes, and whether it's successful or not. After programs that are objectively stellar by any standards, but which fall short of his own, he gets angry and upset with himself. He doesn't know what "good enough" means, and that's why he is never just good enough.)
But back to Victor's extra-ness. Sometimes I see people have Victor act Extra in ways that don't line up with increasing competence. These are not instances of Victor striving; they're instances of Victor just being a dumbass for the sake of dumbassery. This is the farthest thing from the truth. Victor's extra-ness asserts itself in a surfeit of competence, holding himself to an impossible standard and reaching it again and again. Victor is aware of all his flaws, and he actively works to get better. He almost certainly has flaws that he's not been able to push past a certain level--in most cases, for super-competent people, their ability to discern errors exceeds their capability levels--and those things probably rankle.
Victor is not a dumbass. Victor is a freaking genius.
So let's talk about Chihoko-gate. It starts because Yuuri tells Victor that he's not as limber as Shachihoko. Yuuri is drunk at the time, and Victor hears him saying "Chihoko," and thinks that Chihoko is a person.
This takes place post-Victor's return to the ice. We don't know how he did. We do know that he was competing against Yuuri and Yurio, both of whom are more flexible than he is. Victor knows this. He's almost certainly tried to design his routines to take advantage of his differing strengths, but he also knows that he can't do some of the things that Yuuri and Yurio can do. He also knows that Yuuri fell for him in the first place because of his skating, and even if he's able to beat Yuuri and Yurio on other aspects of skating, part of him knows that they're better than him.
And now here is Yuuri, teasing him about yet another person who is better than him. An ex. And this hits Victor right in his feelings. Yes, he's extra, and yes, he tries to be the best, and no, even if he knows rationally that it's okay to not be the best at everything, Victor did not get to where he is by telling himself it was okay to not be the best. Yuuri's teasing hits him right in his insecurity.
So, stuff happens, and Yuuri wakes up wearing Victor's underpants and with the words "Overcome Chihoko" written on his back.
Here is the point where I have to pause and apologize. My Japanese is not great. I have not been studying nearly long enough to be remotely good at things. Nonetheless, I'm going to be referencing the actual line written on Yuuri's back in Japanese, and telling you what I think of it, and why I think it, because despite my crapitude at Japanese, I don't think the points I'm making here are subtle or wrong. If someone who is better at Japanese than me disagrees please tell me. I'm happy to edit.
I spent forty minutes searching Twitter for multiple sources on this. So here is what Yuuri has written on his back in Japanese: 「ちほこを越える」
Or, in roumaji, Chihoko o koeru.
And here's the thing: those words are definitely Chihoko - direct object marking particle - verb to overcome or exceed in non-past tense.
In English, when we leave off the actor in a sentence, and say things like "Stop him" or "Fight me" we're using the imperative.
Like I said, my Japanese is not great. It is nonetheless good enough to distinguish between basic verb forms. So I am 100% certain that this is not the imperative form of the verb. I'm also 100% certain that it's not the volitional form of the verb (think, for instance, "let's eat!"). Instead, it's the non-past tense (think "[someone] eats" or "[someone] will eat").
So what the hell is this? Well, it depends on the topic of the sentence. In Japanese, this can be omitted when it's clear, or when the person writing it is dead drunk. (I'm aware that Victor was writing in Cyrillic, but the words he wrote in Cyrillic were only spoken in Japanese, so that's all we have to work from.)
From Victor's future actions, I'm going to take a guess that what Victor meant by this incredibly cryptic non-actor-specifying note is that he was going to go overcome Chihoko. Chihoko is more limber than Victor? Ha. Victor will show them all. Victor will show the entire world how awesome he is.
So he goes and climbs up Hasetsu Castle and starts stretching, because damnit, he's not going to let anyone outdo him. Along the way, presumably, he starts to sober up. And while Victor is Extra, and Victor is not entirely rational, he's rational enough to know that Yuuri chose him. Right around this time is probably when he announces that Chihoko may be Yuuri's past, but Victor is his now.
So Yuuri eventually this out. When he finds Victor, Victor demands to know if he's better than Chihoko, and Yuuri's response is, who the hell is Chihoko? I could search the world and nobody would be better than you.
Now let's pause. In the version of this story where it's nothing more than a simple crackfic done for laughs, this is a simple drunken misunderstanding that escalates to ridiculous proportions because of fanservice, and it ends with everyone naked ha ha ha, Victor is so extra.
But I don't think you get to be the best without being deeply insecure (and oh, I could talk for years about this). You learn to hide your insecurities, yes, because you learn from painful experience that it's a dick move to tell everyone who is worse than you how bad you actually are. But people who are secure in all ways very rarely push themselves beyond the edge of ability.
And this is why this is not pure crackfic. In the pure crackfic version of this story, Yuuri finds Victor naked and says, "Victor, you know I only want you, please come down. You're being ridiculous." And eventually, Victor finally understands that he's being ridiculous and Yuuri loves him and he comes down.
But this is not the pure crackfic version. Behind the simple drunken misunderstanding is an actual real emotional issue. The drunken misunderstanding just brought it to life. The issue is this: Victor feels insecure about Yuuri.
You know what wouldn't help Victor feel more secure about Yuuri? Being told that he's ridiculous and needs to tone himself down to be acceptable. The pure crackfic version is one that only pays attention to the drunken misunderstanding, and doesn't try to do anything about--or even exacerbates--the real emotion behind it all.
Instead, Yuuri strips and joins Victor on the roof, because he loves Victor as he is, because being extra means that sometimes extra shit happens. If Yuuri can help Victor feel secure in him, why not strip in front of friends, family, and an impending camera crew?
In other words, Yuuri meets Victor where he is. And I can't imagine anything more utterly romantic than that.
Obviously, I’ve done a whole mass of interpolation of emotions here, but... I don’t think I’m entirely wrong. And I very much think that Yamamoto and Kubo understand how hard world-class geniuses are on themselves. I’m sure they do it to themselves, too.
I have a lot more to say about why this gives me hope for the movie and season 2, but this post is already long enough. Some other time.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/POSTED!
Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Characters: Victor Nikiforov, Katsuki Yuuri, Phichit Chulanont, Christophe Giacometti, others - Character
Additional Tags: Overcome Chihoko, Chihokogate, Humor, Fluff, slight angst, Victor has skills, this is way past overdue, Phichit and Chris are BROTP, Emil is a darling, Sha Chihoko: the Mystery
Summary:
Victor did not know who Sha Chihoko was, but he was not about to be outdone by them!
summary: “So, uh.” Viktor looks a little uncomfortable, and not in the least because his junk is pressed onto the sunbaked tiles of a Japanese castle roof, “what exactly did you mean by Chihoko?”
Victor (after meeting Yuuri at the Banquet): Boy, you got me helpless~ Look into your eyes and the sky's the limit, I'm helpless~ Down for the count and I'm drowning in 'em.
Victor (post-Chihokogate): let future historians wonder how Victor reacted when you broke his heaarrrrt. You have torn it all apart, I'm watching it buuuurrrrrn
