#GrowingUpUgly
When guys in middle school would get dared by their friends to ask you out and see if you say yes as a joke
How about growingupugly and then turning out sort of okay looking but you don’t know for sure because your self esteem is shot and you’re convinced you look awful?
#GrowingUpUgly Being so wholly convinced of your hideousness that as an adult you now literally cannot even imagine that someone would pay you a compliment and mean it; the only conceivable thing that could be happening is that they’re either a) taking the piss like the boys in school used to or b) so repulsed by you that they feel sorry for you and are telling you you’re pretty because they think you need to hear it.
Hurts how true this is though
I don’t know if this helps, but I’d like to say it anyway just in case it does.
None of you were ugly.
The other day I found a class picture from fourth grade and I looked everyone in it, and then I saw the “ugly girl” – the one people constantly harassed, whose desk kids would pretend was contaminated, the one kids would invent complex songs about just to voice their disgust toward her.
And she looked like a normal little girl.
She looked no different than the rest of the class.
She was never ugly. And I know that you may be thinking to yourself “but I WAS ugly” – I just want you to consider for a moment that maybe you weren’t.
Maybe you were tormented by your peers for no reason except that they were experimenting with and learning the rules of callous human cruelty that would define the rest of their lives – and recognizing this, the adults who should have protected you, let it happen. Cruelty and social shaming – the foundations of how human beings police their society is learned and it is practiced.
Since I’ve become an adult, I don’t recall ever seeing an “ugly” kid. Kids are all just strange-looking works in progress that the artist seems to have abandoned intending to finish them later.
I want you to think about our racist and unhealthy “standards of beauty”. Are any of the things that society fixates on as “ugly” truly ugly? No. We take things that are beautiful and we associate them with ugliness and badness and coarseness – to control them – to batter the will of the already oppressed down to the point where they think the abuse they receive is justified.
The children who demeaned you were learning to crush the human spirit to the point where the target internalizes all that hate and keeps hating themselves even when the bullies are no longer there. Those children were learning the sadism that defines our social hierarchy – we live in a culture where success is achieved through exploiting others.
No one deserves to be treated that way. LGBT children shouldn’t grow up ashamed of themselves. Black children shouldn’t grow up thinking white children are inherently prettier.
You were not ugly. You were told you were ugly so that people could have an “excuse” to target you, to ostracize you, to other you, and to abuse you.
An “ugly child” wouldn’t know they were ugly until someone TOLD them they were. They don’t grow up ugly, they grow up emotionally abused.
And still if you feel that you were the exception and you were objectively and unquestionably so ugly as a child that everyone noticed – even if you feel you are still that ugly now…
That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve love. It doesn’t mean you won’t find love, and trust and happiness.
You are worthy of respect. You have worth. You have value.
And if the rest of the world doesn’t seem to notice your worth – look at the evil and vile things the world does value and count yourself lucky not to be among that number.
There are people who will see your worth. There are people who will look at you and not see “ugliness” – they will see a friend, a mentor, a hero and even, yes, a lover.
If no one else says it today, and even if you can’t say it yourself, I would like to tell you that you are not ugly. That you were not ugly. That you did nothing wrong. That you did not deserve to be treated the way that you have been and that you deserve happiness and love and respect. And you will find it.
I was about to reblog this and add at the end that I thought I was the ugly kid but I looked back at pictures of myself and was like “I was never ugly????” And also kids suck. Thanks for the addition, poster before me.
Unreliable narrator is so damn fascinating (I have an obsession w/ perception vs reality), and Yuuri is probably the best example I’ve ever seen in my life. As such, all of our main characters (that being Yuuri, Victor, and Yuri) end up being a bit different than the original assumption, but the biggest change in our perception is probably Victor. And that’s one reason why I love him so much; the way his personality and intentions slowly reveal themselves over the course of the story is fantastically executed.
The banquet reveal is genius, and I’ve probably said that before but I’m saying it again goddammit. I will never stop marveling at the fact that we had literally no context for Victor’s actions for the majority of the show and that one little detail blew away everything we thought we knew about Victor, and suddenly it was so obvious why Victor behaved the way he did.
Why this was his reaction to the video:
I actually got this foreboding feeling in my stomach the first time I saw the episode. I had watched the show for a max of 20 minutes and I was already like “DONT YOU HURT YUURI YOU BASTARD HES BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH” and now I know that the face is more like “you little shit, you keep me hanging for actual months and then you do this??? Playing with my heart??? Not making it to Worlds with that kind of skill??” And then more quietly “I’m still going to Japan tho"
Why he made this face before he got up:
I didn’t pay mind to it at first but after ep10 I was like,, hold up and I realized that poor Vitya looks absolutely terrified. He’s so fucking nervous. Victor’s psyching himself up and I don’t think the crooning of Yuuri’s name in a sec was fully intentional on his part?? Like he’s practically vibrating with excitement and it wouldn’t shock me if, while trying to hold in excited squealing and shouting etc etc, he used that energy to sing this boy’s name.
Why he saw the video and thought ‘coach’:
My actual first thought was “you fuckin presumptuous asshole. Greeting people naked. Assuming you’re good enough to train someone outta the blue. Why u see someone doing you’re routine and ur like ‘OBVIOUSLY this person wants to be blessed with my guiding presence’ just like wtf dude” and boy was I Wrong™
The flirtatiousness, of course, and why he was such a prick??
Now I can’t stop laughing at this face HES SO FUCKIN PISSED. This is the “u aint shit” smile. he’s like “BITCH YOU BROUGHT ME HERE. FIRST THING YOU DO IS SCREAM IN MY FACE AND THEN RUN OFF. EXPECT TO BE COACHED AND NOT EVEN IN TOP FORM. WHO ARE YOU besides the love of my life"
Eros, of course, makes sense, and why after Yuuri was like "katsudon=eros” Victor then drank till dawn the next day
Poor thing omg
Oh, and my favorite, why he actually cried when Yuuri rejected sleeping with him:
I thought he was being over dramatic and that it was a joke!!! But no!!! Victor Nikiforov is actually crying alone on his first night in Japan, sleeping on a futon after the boy he’d been dreaming about and given up his whole life and career as he knew it for to be with rejected him unapologetically!!!! I wanna be dead
That’s the fun part tho; there was no way we could be interpreted Victor’s actions as anything different! How drastically differently we’ve come to view Victor really gets me. We needed that final piece of the puzzle to see how romantic, lovesick, sweet, affectionate, caring, and really truly afraid of Yuuri’s rejection Victor actually is. Not to mention his tendency towards depression.
Victor is teasing, silly, affectionate, heart on his sleeve, yet so restrained in what he shows others from years upon years of dealing with the public and press. He relishes in new and surprising experiences but likes to have an overall plan. I don’t think he would randomly change jumps and sequences so naturally while performing as Yuuri does, just to see someone else’s reaction, or at least not as often. And again, we know now that his coming to Japan wasn’t fully spur-of-the-moment–he’s been thinking about it for so long by that point. Victor just needed one last push to go track down Yuuri.
Victor isn’t affectionate with everyone, but only with certain people. Seriously, he only touches 3 people throughout the whole show: Yuuri, Yuri, and Yakov (you can probably guess who he’s the most physical with out of those 3). Poor baby must be so damn touch starved! No wonder he’s all over Yuuri; he’s craving romantic affection. Well, depending on your interpretation of Victor’s past he’s rather starved for genuine affection. My own theory is that he’s had many an odd sexual encounter in the past, but Yuuri is his first serious romantic relationship. He’s clingy and action-oriented and kinda doesn’t know how to act. That’s okay tho, Yuuri doesn’t know how this works either.
Victor started out as being so cold and lonely; the only place he felt he could find any semblance of living or love was on the ice, but he felt he had to work alone to be able to survive. Yuuri and Victor are a lot alike in that way; they both loathe to accept help and turn inward to try and deal with issues. This obviously doesn’t always work, and sometimes you need a little help. They both had to learn through each other that that isn’t shameful or wrong–they can rely on others if need be for assistance.
This is a super nice edition to the show, considering that a major theme of anxiety is shame around one’s own abilities and weaknesses. To see a model of growth like that is really fantastic.
(oh!! what I think is super interesting about these shots is that you can’t see Victor’s eyes. When you can’t see a character’s eyes, it implies hidden feelings or motive)
Asshole
Etc etc
And he turned out to be:
Supportive
Affectionate
Emotionally clueless
Silly
Lonely
Afraid of rejection
(someone wrote a fantastic little meta about Victor during the ring exchange, read it here!)
Starved for love, affection, and life
And so, so infatuated with, lovesick for, and soon enough deeply in love with Yuuri Katsuki
(This post really had no purpose…its just me talking about how much I love Victor Nikiforov)
I love how tentatively Viktor approached Yuuri during the Sochi banquet. Look at how many shots it took for this boy to get to Yuuri.
I find this to be especially precious given how Viktor already got rejected by Yuuri earlier that evening.
For all of his being a celebrity, Viktor does not strike me as the kind of person who can easily brush off another person’s dislike of him. Hell, he made a career out of pleasing everyone, and while I don’t think he would cry over another person’s opinion of him, neither does he seem like someone who could just easily dismiss it or not be hurt. I mean look at this face:
His reservations about approaching the fascinating Japanese boy were therefore perfectly understandable. We can even clearly see that he kept his distance for a bit at first.
But like a moth to a flame,
this precious boy
can’t seem to help himself.
And for a while it doesn’t seem like Yuuri even noticed him there?
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