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Warning: Random rambling ahead.
A friend of mine is beta reading my YoI fan fiction and in the second part (Love Aims At One Scope) she got really mad at Viktor. She's only seen the anime once, and when he makes a rather nasty, off-hand statement to an OC who is trying to make him feel better, she couldn't see it.
But here's the deal, Viktor isn't as clean as he seems. He is the epitome of a person who has no filter.
In the real world, a lot of people who say that about themselves use it as an excuse to be cruel. They put others down intentionally and enjoy it, and when that person has the audacity to tell them they're hurt, they claim they were only joking or gaslight the person in some other way.
Mind you, that is NOT how I see Viktor.
He's a great guy, he cares, he's affectionate, he can be incredibly kind and understanding - and sometimes he talks before he thinks through what effect his words will have. And that sentence in my fic - as bad as it is - I think is completely in character. I really contemplated changing that, or at least have him say something that isn't THAT bad, but it's something I can see. That sentence will stay.
I love Viktor. He's a wonderful human being. But he's also an incredibly flawed deuteragonist who hides his shortcomings behind his charms so well it works in the real world, apparently, not just within the universe.
My friend has since decided she has to watch it again for several reasons, and she'll keep a lookout for this. Currently, she has Viktor as much on a pedestal as Yuuri did, it seems. But for me his less-than-wonderful traits are what make writing him so amazing. It makes him feel real to me, and relatable, and even if I sometimes want to whack him with a wet towel (the original version in the anime and my own), I still think he's a walking green flag. Most of the time. When he actually uses his brain.