I’ve said before I disliked Jayce making the choice to use the hexcore on Viktor as a narrative choice (separate from any feelings towards him as a person about it on an in-universe/watsonian level) because it simply would’ve been more interesting for me to have Viktor make the choice himself; having a choice made for him removes the potential for the way it happens to tell us anything about him as a person, and the narrative doesn’t even compensate us for that by having it even be about loss of agency/autonomy violation in any particularly interesting way (….even if the rest of this post kind of goes against that claim by outlining what I do find interesting along those lines actually).
That said, there is something very fucky/interesting/appealing to me about the fact that the way it happened felt less like the “autonomy violation because someone decided what they want for a person they claim to care about is more important than what the character claims to want for themselves” trope that makes me see red at either the character doing it or the writers depending on how it’s handled/framed, and more like “trying to respect someone’s wishes while working from an outdated model of what they are”. Viktor did actually want this at one point, Jayce was working from his notes. He changed his mind and Jayce knew that also, but it’s… more understandable than I’d expect it to be to me given my usual feelings about this trope (see “makes me see red” bit) that a single conversation had while someone was clearly in emotional crisis in which neither of you expected to be thrust straight into a much more urgent crisis and expected more time to check that he was sure about it, would not be strong enough certainty to update your model of what someone wants to include “let them die if it comes down to that” when you don’t have any ability to double check with them and you can’t exactly undo that if it turns out they didn’t really mean it. Not endorsing the thought process here, just saying “I get it more than I’d expect to”.
Compounding this is the fact that while Viktor is upset about it, the emotional reaction doesn’t primarily revolve around “this is an autonomy violation” in that he doesn’t so much seem to feel violated on a personal level as consider it wrong regardless of how it feels to him directly - which is why it made sense for him to change his mind so quickly on it once he saw benefits. Him not wanting it was a form of self denial/self punishment and while having a decision you made based on principles rather than on what you “truly” (terrible phrasing but “emotionally” doesn’t work any better here. “If you were considering only yourself”?) want be ignored is every bit as much an autonomy violation it is one that will register differently on an emotional level.
Anyways this was going to be the end of the post but then a new mutual went through a couple of my older viktorposts and reminded me of the existence of this one (thank youuuu) and the reblog is now a fun parallel of “enforcing the will of a model of a past version of you on the present version” versus “enforcing the explicit will of a future version of you on the present version” and. For all [gestures in the general direction of my many criticisms of the writing] I do have to say “guy with clear and defined internal sense of purpose who will only let people close if he can extend them a role in that plus guy outsourcing sense of purpose to first guy so hard he ends up repeatedly representing other versions of him he currently disagrees with to him” IS an extremely tasty dynamic to me.