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Otabek!

Yuuri Week, Day 2: Friends (and Family)

this is supposed to be part of something more but I kind of like it just like this 

(i’ll probably add the rest later)

Bonus:

₀: *ﾟ✲ฺﾟ*:₀: *ﾟ✲ฺﾟ*:₀ hnnghgnb some previews for the stickers that come with the yoi charms!!₀: *ﾟ✲ฺﾟ*:₀: *ﾟ✲ฺﾟ*:₀

aka things i never noticed before

yakov is still wearing his wedding ring when we first see him in the gpf finals!

(and yes, that’s his right hand, i know. in russia engagement/wedding rings are worn in your right hand [the same applies to yoiverse in general, as we can see from these fine examples])

but the next time we see him…

the ring…

is gone!

we know the gpf finals are in mid december and victor leaves for japan in mid april, so yakov and lilia’s divorce is very recent. i always imagined it happened years ago, but looks like i was way off.

which brings us to another thing

do you realize how shitty few months these must have been for yakov? first his wife of who-knows-how-many-decades files for divorce, then his star skater (who he probably pretty much thinks of as a son at this point) ditches him without a warning to answer an international bootycall. and let’s not even start with the mess that is the rest of his protégés… this man is in serious need of a holiday.

this makes a lot more sense now:

i always thought this comment and the cold shoulder yakov gives victor during the cup of china were just about taking jabs at the “i do what i want” part of victor’s personality, but now i can’t help but see this as yakov, the dude who’s taken victor under his wing for years, being genuinely hurt for being walked out on during such a hard time. and we thought he was just being grouchy.

and what does this say about victor as a character? could yakov’s divorce have influenced his decision to go to japan? who is yakov to victor, after all? 

we’ve been shown time and time again that victor trusts yakov implicitly:

he’s also one of the two (2) people besides yuri victor has expressed his love for physically:

many of victor’s actions as a coach mirror yakov’s:

and when they don’t, he wishes he’d gone to him for advice:

so there you have it: a coach, a dear friend, a role model, a father figure. these are the things yakov represents to victor. 

this matters because as the show kicks off, we have victor going through a motivation slump. skating no longer fulfills him. he’s lonely and has nothing or anyone outside of skating. it’s very clear he’s depressed. then the person he looks up to, the guy whose life victor can see ahead of him, loses his spouse (possibly due to a clash of personal and professional lives, as we know lilia is also a highly respected and sought-after choreographer). watching the divorce unfold from the sidelines must’ve added to victor’s feelings of discontent, fueling his hidden fear of ending up in the same situation, and in that way contributed to his decision of leaving competitive skating. they clearly didn’t have a proper conversation about it - victor did everything on his own terms, as in U-hauling His Ass Across The Globe Overnight To Pursue Life and Love, and even though we all enjoy the Extra™ of it all, it can’t have been easy for yakov to swallow.

i don’t think victor outright disregarded yakov’s feelings when he made his decision. he just reached the conclusion he urgently needed a change and that yakov would support him if he knew how bad his mental state was. he just forgot to, you know, use actual words to communicate exactly that. but then it’s victor, so what did we expect? my url says it all. no tact on my ridiculous son.

this offers me some comfort, though:

i mean look at his face. does this look like a coach who’s happy to get his #1 athlete back, or like a furious parent learning their child is about to make a stupid-ass decision? he might as well be saying, “ARE YOU AN IDIOT?! YOU’VE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER, WHAT THE SHIT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE COMING BACK? BITCH I WILL NOT HESITA-”

we died during yurio’s FS speech in ep 12 - when we learned he never wanted yuri to retire after all - and i think yakov’s reaction here is a strong parallel. yurio doesn’t want yuri to retire even if it means having one more challenging contender, and yakov doesn’t want victor to return to competition even if it means losing his greatest asset as a coach. these are two people who, against all pesonal interest, don’t want yuri and victor to make decisions that neglect their happiness.

The realization that Victor may have walked out on him during a very difficult time makes everything fall into place.  Yakov was hurt. And we know what our beloved Russians do when their feelings are hurt, right? Yeah.

They

turn into

pillars of salt and savagery.

And Victor, of course, likely know this best of all. It’s not ‘oh he’s just pissed off that I randomly dropped everything, he’ll come around’. It’s ‘I hurt him and he’s well within his right to have that reaction, I guess, though I had hoped that he’d have gotten over it by now’.

That gives a whole new way to look at him asking Yakov to be Yuuri’s coach for a day now. It’s always seems like it was ‘I know I hurt you but please if you care about me watch over him’ but it didn’t fully convince because Yakov’s actions prior didn’t suggest that he’d care, so Victor came out of it looking like a spoiled brat making unreasonable demands. And of course, Yakov suddenly caring afterwards makes him look like a rather weird kind of tsundere. Looking at Yakov’s actions from this new angle, however, and it now makes complete sense.

Also, when you look at it this way….

Their reactions to being dumped by someone they greatly value when they need them are remarkably similar, too.

Russian Son Totally Takes After Russian Dad, Yep.