#NOR THE FAINTEST BLOOM OF DESIRE ( zant : headcanon )

[strangebedfellows-blog]

Miscellaneous and chill little establishing headcanon dump for some of my l.oz people, because they’re delightful and since I’ve never actually interacted with this fandom I’m not sure what’s commonly accepted and what’s coming purely out of my own head, so here’s some kind of framework. Ones involving other characters or the world at large are just there to give myself context, and obviously nobody else is beholden to ‘em.

Also because I’m too lazy to get to bio pages left and they deserve something.

Cool edit: hey personals, don’t interact with this post. Don’t like it, definitely don’t fucking reblog it. Oh my god. Basic etiquette. It’s not tagged with their general tags for a reason.

VAATI

It’s indulgent of me, but for the record, I like to think he won the swordfighting competition largely of his own merit. I like to think he’s smart enough to know he could have just...magic’d his way past it altogether if he wanted, but it sounds like he actually competed. 

I HAVE MORE BUT I’M JUST GOING TO EDIT THEM IN SOMETIME LATER WHEN I REBLOG THIS I’m typing at like four in the morning why must I dedicate this time to angry wind maus

ZANT

Comin’ in out of the gate: it’s silly personal headcanon but I generally peg the Twili as ancient Sheikah counterparts - part of the same community that split and cut ties firmly enough that by the time they were banished most people had forgotten, and the differences great enough that the latter was never in any jeopardy. They do have deific ties to Majora and the Fierce Deity, though it’s been so long there’s no telling if active worship...exists.

Is actually competent, and intelligent. Midna notes that he didn’t end up ruling the realm because people could pick up on his power lust, but no mention is made of the fact the dude is...a lunatic, and Midna seems to register it as something unfamiliar when he flies off the handle toward the end of the game. I think he kept an incredibly tight rein on himself at absolutely all times in the specific hopes of seeming collected and controlled enough to rule, and his outbursts only really started after he was passed over. They clearly kept him around for awhile despite knowing they wouldn’t be crowning him, so it stands to reason Zant is genuinely good at whatever his precise role was, and a magic user of some significant finesse. Not raw power, not until Ganondorf, but incredible dexterity when applied to delicate tasks. 

In the same vein as viewing the normal Hyrulean royal family as one certainly responsible for performing or enabling some heinous things, I assume the same could be said of the Twili royals. While I believe Zant’s “served and endured in that depraved household” is an embellishment he’s making spitefully because he’s narcissistic and falling apart, there’s a kernel of important truth. There likely were goings-on that would seem shady to us. I can’t imagine specifics, but it’s worth mentioning that Zant was not the only of the Twili who wanted to return to the real world, and while he had violence on the mind, one could certainly guess there were others who would have been more than content just negotiating a return, and to share it. It’s nevertheless treated entirely as some unreasonable desire, despite...the fact...they were ejected from their home and left to their realm so long they’re markedly different, so much so their previous environment kills them. ( One can only imagine adapting to the Twilight Realm was unpleasant, for the first over. )

50% of the reason he loses is because he’s a moron and an indulgent moron, who just can’t sate himself with winning; he has to win and having a living loser to point at and laugh. He has to have someone he can personally lord over, living testaments to the power of his wrath. If he smartened up enough to just kill people, I...really don’t think he’d have lost that one. 

The other 50% is that he’s so utterly unused to Ganondorf’s power, which is overwhelming in both volume and intensity. Zant can warp reality with it. He is, in some important sense, something of a god. And that’s so much that he, who is incredibly well practiced with making more efficient use of less magic, has no goddamn clue what to do with it. It’s difficult to channel and control, and the result are broad sweeps that are chosen for dramatic effect or specifically because they eat up enough to keep him comfortable, rather than practicality.

I’m not sure where I’m going with it, but it’s fascinating to me that most Twili seem to be pretty skin-baring whereas he doesn’t even show his neck under the helmet, and places such a clear focus on fabricating bulk that just isn’t there. I like to think parts of his outfit have weights, and it was partially an effort to physically restrain himself from any reactive-contorting at work. Sometimes you wanna break your spine but that would look most uncouth. 

Not a physical fighter. Hit hard, hit fast, hit erratic, then collapse because you can’t breathe. Twili are in general much more inclined toward magic than traditional fisticuffs, but Zant’s exceptionally physically weak among even them. Reedy ‘n Dweeby.

SIDON

Incurably shy kid, believe it or not. The complete lack of dialogue of his in Mipha’s memory was actually entirely because Zelda was there; he would have been sheepish enough had it been any outside figure, but especially someone he understood to be so important - how could he speak? So small. Sheepish. A lot less confident in himself than he’d eventually become, and Mipha’s gentle encouragement ( and its legacy ) was definitely the biggest factor in changing that.

Really really really worried, constantly, that he’s a drain on people. It’s something of a holdover from his shy youth, but also backed up by a lot of what he can observe. He places a great deal more pressure on himself after Mipha’s death as the new heir ( he was never supposed to be, and would honestly be a much more sincerely at ease adult had it not come down to him ), more than, frankly, anyone around him has. As clearly beloved as he is, and with the fairly warm and encouraging person we can surmise his father to be, there’s some demanding little tug he feels toward inadequacy at all times. He’s incredibly empathetic and not being able to assist everyone all the time, despite the impossibility, hurts him. 

He’s a little too warm-hearted and emotional, he feels, to be the ideal ruler. He’s far too dedicated to proving to others and himself that he could be, however, to fully indulge his personable and down to earth side. He’s caught teetering quite awkwardly on the edge where he can’t reap the benefits of his charming personality OR dedicated focus and work ethic. 

His father never told him Mipha was dead, as he refused to believe it himself. Most zora were split, but eventually enough people seemed defeated enough while murmuring about the matter, the statue went up, and Sidon was first forced to put it together for himself that she really, truly wasn’t coming back. The single most devastating day of his life, and to think it was years after the fact. He hurts more for it, and it’s part of the reason his night visitations are so constant.

On a happier note, he absolutely does tiny swimming drills with little zora kids whenever he can find the time and get a gaggle together. Much whistle blowing, big exaggerated gestures, so much encouragement, it’s a great time all around. 

Seeing Zelda and Link makes him regress, just the faintest touch; he certainly idolized Zelda as a child, and despite having some sister-stealing-related animosity towards Link, had spent the remainder of his youth looking up to him as well. It’s two childhood heroes perfectly preserved and dropped back in front of him, which is quite a happy and confusing shock. It brings a lot of Mipha back to mind, which is bittersweet, but he’s also...doggedly determined to try and prove himself to them, despite their approval meaning nothing at all for him beyond sentiment. 

No you really don’t understand how cool he thought Zelda was

Definitely....accidentally....got more than a handful of Hylians killed, trying to run them through what Link did. This is actually why he has to stop and check on you every leg of the way -- he really is concerned, and it’s a self-reassurance as much as he hopes it’s just normal reassurance for Link.  

REVALI

Doesn’t hate Link. Really. It would need to be coming from a much more intense, much more personal place to truly register as hate. He does, however, IMMENSELY DISLIKE him. It isn’t any kind of confused expression of affection -- I can’t stress enough, the antagonism is pure and genuine. Revali feels incredibly real bitterness toward Link, and to an extent that ever getting past it would be an entire arc in itself. An arc that’d literally be longer than his life, mind you.

I see it crop up a lot so it might be wide fanon? I wouldn’t know - I do generally believe he was an orphan, and Hyrule is so packed with ways to die I couldn’t begin to pin down a cause yet. That said I don’t imagine Revali himself would know, having lost his parents quite early in life and refusing information initially because it hurt, and after that because he convinced himself he was better not knowing. He was for the most part a fairly serious child, simultaneously aggressive and clingy. I imagine he was raised in a foster sort of setting, with an older guardian who passed naturally and with little fanfare when he was a young adult. They got on well enough, and they likely encouraged his at-first-shot adoration for archery ( as is Rito custom, but also Revali’s interest in its own right ) and let him have what space he wanted. Which was a lot. Solitary, even back then. He didn’t take many pains to involve himself with the community and was typically given a lukewarm reception. 

A completely unimpressive shot, initially, but he took to flying at a little more impressive a pace. Not exceptional at either for a long while. He got exceptional by working at it on a daily basis for...honestly, the entirety of his life after he first picked it up. No exaggeration. Minimal breaks taken, and only to make sure he had minimal time to heal or rest his muscles when sorely needed, and never more. He had some small reserve of natural affinity, but by and large his success came entirely because he worked his ass of for it. He took it seriously, kept at it, stayed passionate about getting better; not for a particular reason, even. He had most of the village’s best archers thoroughly outclassed* in his late teens ( or Rito equivalent ) and though he was a ways from even conceptualizing the Gale, was a thoroughly adept flier. He didn’t care particularly much about warrior-ing as a career but assumed it was where he would end up, and in the meantime supported himself comfortably enough through inheritance and some horribly tedious job nobody recalls because he glared them into taking it to their graves. This was eventually swapped with competition winnings as his star ascended. 

*  I’d like to note I generally don’t think the Rito are actually renowned archers, and it’s more of a cultural thing than one of skill. Revali asked for a practice range to practice at more elevations, which sounds like the sort of thing they’d have to begin with if they were putting intense focus on archery in combat. Revali’s skill wasn’t notable or locally renowned as some kind of curiosity, it was because he was outperforming actual warriors and taking an icon of theirs to new heights, and at a relatively young age. Note that no one else can make physical use of his bow, after his death. It’s not just that he’s good, it’s that he actually IS better at it than anyone else in the area. And this is before he invents the Gale. Additionally, he was entirely self-taught beyond the rudimentary tips to help him start flying as a young’un. It was difficult, but he isn’t broken up about it. On the contrary, it freed him to go at everything at his own overintense pace, and work on outdoing everything rather than necessarily polishing his grasp of basics before he absolutely had to. He really values self-reliance in others, for reasons like this.

It’s small, but his ‘I...could get used to this’ is enough to convince me in addition to being more stoic in his youth, he was something approaching humble. It’s not entirely that the sudden onslaught of praise overinflated his ego - it did, but that’s not all of it - but also that he felt the amount of praise was proportionate to the blood, sweat, and tears he had put into getting so good. He had no friends, mind you, no family, and beyond the one mention of Rito children looking up to him and the general legacy he left behind as a visionary in his craft, he didn’t have much of a life. He certainly enjoys it in an annoying way, but I think there’s some merit to the zeal.

I get the vague impression Rito are fairly removed, and while not unfriendly are a little closed off from other cultures. Revali reflects this, partially in his implied low opinion of Hylians.

Of the champions, Mipha and Zelda are his favorites by a ridiculous margin. Not that it shows all that often. The Mipha smile though? Significant. She’s Theeeeee favorite. ( Not that this means he didn’t probably pick on young Sidon, just a touch. )

Died because...I mean, the plot, but also because he was tired ( the distance he had to travel to get to Medoh, and in one go, isn’t ideal ), more shaken than he would admit on pain of a hundred deaths ( at what he’d seen on the way there, surely more chaos than he was accustomed to ), and the corruption of Medoh hit him especially hard as he had REALLY bonded with it. The ‘winging it’ line is partially true; after all of that, he...panicked, a little. 

The lack of living people that remember him? Eats at him way way way way way way way way way way way more than he’ll ever let anyone know. He’s a real sad bird, inside.

GHIRAHIM

His baseline ‘personality’ / set of functions is, at the core, largely a mirror of Fi. He is the version of himself that we know only because he refused to linger in his sword state -- ambition and initiative were things he had much more of than she did, and largely lacking in the tactful patience that’s more or less served her well. Being crafted rather than born and manifesting himself on his own, he at no point had anything resembling a guiding figure or much by way of...normal socialization. The lack of anything resembling a traditional foundation coupled with the RIDICULOUS amount of time he spent in incredibly mixed company seeking out whatever might help him locate his master, and the frustration that comes with such immense and ongoing failure, contribute as much to the end result as anything he was made / ‘born’ with. 

He actually isn’t an astonishing combatant against someone intelligent who knows what they’re up against; he is himself aware of this, and takes what other advantages he can get. I typically view Link defeating him as fair integration of gameplay and story and not something that had to happen for the plot - it ultimately came down to the sword Link was using. Ghirahim isn’t at his most powerful unless he’s in sword form, as that’s what he was designed to be, and some substantial portion of his energy is likely wasted on manifesting physically at all, any magic he performs, teleportation, so on and so forth. He can read people, he has his magical origins on his side, and he’s certainly strong, and all of those things are enough to fell whatever unfortunate people or monsters initially tried to attack him, but up against non-laymen and in the name of cutting down needless-but-numerous future challengers it’s in his interest to blow himself out of proportion. He’s a fantastic talker, good at making an impression, and once the first crop is afraid of him, it just snowballs until he doesn’t need to do much of anything - I imagine ‘Lord Ghirahim’ was something he didn’t actually come up with himself, but heard once and liked it so much he went out and made everyone do it. 

There’s some level of discontent with his ultimate fate, but it’s buried under his own resolute refusal to acknowledge or explore it consciously because he was made to serve and to serve one purpose, and was not intended for any higher aspirations, and because even on an unconscious level, his very being can’t accept it for long. During his impressive span of relative isolation and lording over scant surface-folk / monsters, he grew just a touch beyond his programming. Make no mistake, this doesn’t make him less of a threat -- has to or not, he is nothing short of a fanatic and would still do anything at all for Demise or to spite Hylia -- it’s merely that he briefly lets his mind wander, and suffers a somewhat human need to justify himself, which he has. ( In fact it makes him worse, because he’s gone from something of a mindless tool of cruelty to someone actively seeking it out, having convinced themselves quite firmly of its necessity and value. ) A general Thing I run with re: this whole series is that Hyrule’s actually a horrible place to live if you squint, and basically all the goddesses are horrible to the poor mortals below. Ghira’s owed a little frustration with his lot.

Related to the above? As delightful as it is to joke about, he’s not a sincerely sexual entity. Any and all weird tongue-waggling is done specifically because he knows it throws people off, and that’s what he wants out of a fight. He’s not socialized enough to know much of the nuance behind similar action, he just knows it gets a large reaction out of people, and typically that makes intimidation or murder even easier.

[strangebedfellows-blog]

q, p, l, and j for our fav twili ruler zant

Q   :   QUESTION.   would your muse ask the big question or expect their partner to?

He’d ask it himself, on the rare occasion someone really catches his interest - though he doesn’t do it blindly. There has to be at least what feels like a certain signal of interest on the other person’s part before he’d do much of anything at all. He likes lead-taking in most facets of life, and this isn’t an exception, but he’d rather not just blindly make an ass of himself. ( Weird, given….the rest of him. )

Edit: I always assume this question means asking out when it definitely actually means marriage and I’m a dunce -- but it’s the same. He’s Gotta Do It or he’ll be Frustrated.

P   :   PARTNER.   what does your muse look for in a partner? looks / personality?

Looks? Largely unimportant, though he’d probably only specifically appreciate Twili / Sheikah-standard traits. Vivid red or white hair, red ( or any unusually colored ) eyes, graceful movement, things like that. I want to say he also really loves TALL, but the inferiority issues and some surprisingly pure 1% of him also finds short….cute. Look at you. Itty bitty.

Personality? Intelligent, resourceful, like-minded, willing to compromise more than he necessarily is, very dry humor, self sufficient, emotionally intelligent, non-squeamish. Offbeat types are encouraged, as he’s by and large and outside-type himself. His lifestyle and general self is….weird, and he knows it. Big special bonuses to calming influences who could tide him over when he’s in the throes of Any Emotion, and he’s more charmed by simple loyalty and affectionate airs than you’d expect; the dude was literally dumped by his own god, he needs something just a little soft in private.

L   :   LOVE.   who does your muse love? 

His ancestors, himself, Ganon, Majora.His grandfather, who raised him.Just a well of warmth, this guy.

J   :   JEALOUSY.   does your muse get jealous in a relationship?

If room is left for him to, yes, but he’s too proactive to let it fester into anything particularly dramatic. He’s not the type to notice what he’d perceive as room for something blooming behind his back and not…..immediately be confronting / asking questions. He’s not going to pretend he’s cool about something when he isn’t, and he’s not going to take any obviously half-baked attempt to assuage him and scamper off; y’all are gonna talk it out right now or there will be A Problem. 

He feels it, but he’s not like…..going to sit there and passively obsess over something he’s reading too much into. If he feels it once, he’s going to investigate and correct it.

[strangebedfellows-blog]

hc + culture for zant !!

It’s incredibly important to him, and one of few things that wholly capture his interest and attention. It’s born of surprisingly sincere…not affection, perhaps, it’s not personal enough with others to feel a just candidate for the term, but admiration. He’s not purely being Chaotic Evil Stupid Vengeance King, after all – it’s overkill in its extreme, but he feels he’s avenging a grievous injustice done to his ancestors, who he holds in impossibly high esteem.

The vast majority of Interloper culture is gone, either through simple lack of recordkeeping and the unavoidable casualties of being literally ejected from the world / dimension you occupied, and through very normal evolution into Twili culture; Zant takes the distinction seriously, and regards the latter as all-around inferior and almost insulting on all levels. There’s actually something to be said for it, at least in that it’s resulted in a people altogether pitifully weak compared to what they might have been otherwise. ( Which DOES matter even to the Twili, if the whole ‘elective monarchy based heavily on power’ is anything to by, and that Zant’s temperament would have been tolerated for so long and humored so seriously simply because he was - relative to them all - a hell of a lot stronger magically. ) And that Zant is himself so strong can be largely credited to the fact he’s spent his entire life bottle-fed everything his grandfather - his only caretaker - could recall, and voraciously hunting down and reconstructing as much as he possibly could. He values it because he feels it’s honoring a whole crop of people who were given one of the most raw deals in all of that universe’s lore, and because it very tangibly made him strong and useful for his efforts. 

I don’t imagine he had any specific ties to the royal family, and rising up through ranks in that system isn’t exactly…..a thing, so it elevated him to a position of power and influence he never could have hoped to attain otherwise, in addition to the more obvious in-your-face magical benefits. Socially, it………mostly made him weird? He was exceedingly particular about seemingly arbitrary things and tended most of his needs himself ( self-healing, either made his own clothes or was breathing so far down the tailor’s neck he might as well have, wrote and fucking bound his OWN BOOKS comprised of what he knew, invented spells, reconstructed spells, grew his own specific food in specific ways – imagine if you lived in a perfectly ordinary neighborhood and your neighbor was for some reason just determined to live as if they were Amish, and you get my point. Contributed a lot to his having something of a reputation as a hermit before the Court brought him into much more consistent and close interaction with others. 

He’s got a fairly brilliant mind, really, and it’s a shame he went so far and fast down the road he did. 

( And it’s heavily my own stuff, but I imagine it left him in some state of shock after leaving the twilight realm. As I headcanon it, the interlopers were a sort of Sheikah offshoot that focused much more on progressively darker magic and much less on ninja-ing, and so being exposed to any Sheikah-related-anythings sends HARD ALARM BELLS going off in his brain and he takes some time to immerse himself. The Sheikah have obviously evolved and grown and changed just as greatly, but they’re similar enough to garner his attention, and peeling back as much of their history as he can would be……….like fifty christmasses. Please. He needs it. )

A hot take: if you showed Zant a divine beast, sheikah slate, or shrine? He’d actually recognize it, and if given sufficient time and a safe environment for tinkering, potentially reverse-engineer-teach himself more than enough to use them at full potential. 

[strangebedfellows-blog]

4 - revali , 14 - zant, 12 - skull kid

4. what seemingly insignificant memories stuck with your character? ( REVALI )

- His foster guardian liked his meat overcooked, so the smell of char in a kitchen will immediately take him back to his youth, and then it branches into a lot of miscellaneous flurry-details. ( The exact shade of rust orange their flatware was, the one creaking floorboard, the packing process for a solo day-trip for mountain exploration - scouting new places to practice - that he can’t recall at all beyond the packing stage, the one neighbor who would intentionally sing off-key whenever her sister tried to goad her into show-offy harmonies at random, etc. )- He pet one cucco one time and was within minutes absolutely covered in them like he was their patron saint, and he will never make that mistake again. 

- Literal entire summer days wasted on diving practice, and the sharp learning curve that was ‘shooting down out of the air like a bullet but also decelerating because sure it’s hot and the water was nice in practice but you’ll die’

- How amusing in hindsight he found the level of bundled up Zelda was when she went to ask him to be a champion, having long since made himself used to the cold. ( And her oddly sociable horse, which kept catching his eyes. He got the impression it was smart. )

- The ridiculous triumph that came with every time he sorted out how to do a basic task in the very limited residence the flight range unofficially provided him; it wasn’t made to be a full house, but he wasn’t deterred.

- It only happened very rarely, but he has painstakingly memorized every single facial twitch, tone shift, and laugh from anyone who happened to see him fail while training. For petty reasons.

14. how does the image your character tries to project differ from the image they actually project? ( ZANT )

Zant worked pretty nonstop for his non-adolescent life to cultivate the image of someone competent, clever, and trustworthy, not to mention stable. This gradually expanded toward intimidating, foreboding, powerful, and controlled. To his credit, he’s fantastic at getting so in his own head as to maintain restraint: both acts were clearly believable ( barring the Power Hungry Eyes, but shhhh ) and he held out for an incredibly long time without any implication in-game that he slipped, or gave concrete enough reason to suspect he was much other than what he claimed. His behavior toward the end of the game seems to genuinely surprise Midna, who we can presume knew him for quite some time; he clearly held it up for a long while, and did it well.

In actuality, he’s…explosively expressive, emotional, hot tempered, bombastic, childish, violent, the list goes on. It’s a complete and intense 180 from what he wants people to view him as, though interestingly more as a tool than any seeming dissatisfaction with himself. By the time the facade slips, it’s simply because he’s reached the end of his rope and through his own hubris allowed the player to reach the point where they’re just busting into his throne room; he alternates some but still generally seems to think he’s in control, or at least that he has the advantage. There’s no need or benefit to pretending anymore, and he happens to have been presented with emotional stimuli strong enough to nudge him waaaay out of that shell. He’s a complete, erratic livewire trying hard to present himself as cool and collected.

12. what are your character’s major flaws? ( SKULL KID )

Loneliness is his chief problem and issue, but I don’t necessarily see loneliness in itself as a flaw; what makes that emotion so destructive in his case is that he’s desperate, and in that desperation was willing to accept creeping evil influence / straight-up possession if it meant he could pretend this entity was his friend. The over-willingness to bend for something that clearly can’t have good intentions. Naivete, almost.

He’s short sighted. Going around harassing people is a remarkably poor way of presenting oneself and making friends. He’s petty, as evidenced by the gung-ho way he goes about slinging curses when he’s only beginning to succumb to Majora’s influence and still has some power of what’s getting done, and the frequently…ridiculous reasons, if one exists, that X thing is cursed. Tacked onto that comes the lack of restraint demonstrated - he goes way too hard on things that don’t warrant it, constantly. Immaturity is up there, but sort of comes with his relative age. ( Then there’s the outright omnicidal maniac, evil-for-fun business he graduates up to, but that’s more Majora’s sole doing; I’m looking more at the earlier stages of mask use, or the gray areas where it’s SK as a character meeting Majora’s sheer force of influence. )

[strangebedfellows-blog]

4 for Zant and 11 for Revali? :00

4. what seemingly insignificant memories stuck with your character? ( ZANT )

I guarantee he’s got some ridiculously large mental backlog of perfectly normal things other Twili courtiers said around him that he read into until they seemed threatening or insulting, I mean, I’ll say that much right out of the gate. 

Barring that, I think he was something of an avid people watcher, but in more of a meditative sense than an active effort to pick up on anything. He had a lot of energy to burn off all the time and wasn’t about to socialize beyond what was expected of him or work on his cardio, so there was a lot of very leisurely strolling around ( relaxing enough, made him look like…2% more approachable, mindlessly energy-burning ). He’s probably picked up a lot of very useless, small details about complete strangers that are of absolutely no use to him – the peculiar way that one woman pronounces her ‘u’ sounds, the perpetually scuffed-up kid, that whoever lives in that house over yonder is still garbage at the flute, things of this nature.

And reading. He likes him some reading, and his first round of aimlessly wandering whatever passes for a library in the court, too excited to pick just an armful of things and thus just enjoying the raw admiration, is one of the few wholly pleasant images that randomly jumps to the mental forefront.

The food at Hyrule Castle, additionally. He’s opinionated.

11. for what would your character give their life? ( REVALI )

Broadly speaking? Anyone ( or thing, if it’s of sufficient importance ) at risk of imminent death he feels he might be able to prevent. He’s not an outwardly fluffy, loving guy, but he’s good through and through, and it’s an instinct that he would he honed naturally even if he hadn’t been raised up toward Rito warrior culture, which I’m sure places a high value on general Good Samaritan-ing in addition to protecting the village / Rito people alone. It’s something of an inevitability, he thinks - his usual cockiness would probably have him quipping something about living to old age anyway because What Are The Odds Anything Would Prove Strong Enough To Defeat Him were you to ask him point blank, but at his core, he figures it’d end in some conflict, though preferably a large and important one. In this one respect, he isn’t too broken up about his death. 

But that’s just common sense and instinct. If this question means it in a more slow, deliberate sense? Still most people, not that he’d ever admit it, and with a hell of a lot of complaining.If he had close friends or family, they’d top the list in a heartbeat. He doesn’t have those ties, but when / if he gained them he would take them incredibly seriously, and he’s quite the ride or die type. In a weird sort of way he would feel it expected of him, and in that instance would be a great deal more…stoic than might be expected; he wouldn’t expect nearly as much praise or explicit admiration in general from people with whom he’s close as he would acquaintances, which would carry through to this hypothetical. He wouldn’t need to think about it, he wouldn’t brag, wouldn’t gloat, wouldn’t expect or likely even accept thanks - it’s just what he can do, and thus what must be done. 

[strangebedfellows-blog]

✨ revali , 💧 sidon , & 🔥 zant

✨: What motivates them? Is it a deep rooted passion/motivation, or is it something they struggle with from time to time?

In a surprisingly pure sense, Revali just loves flying and archery; they’re not things he took up so strongly only because of the cultural / biological bias toward them, but because he respects them as individual art forms and has fun doing them. He detests feeling mediocre and finds finally overcoming an obstacle to be borderline intoxicating. There’s a certain well of altruism in him that can only really be gleaned by putting him on mute and observing his actions, but it manifests perpetually in that he desires to be of pragmatic use to the people(s) important to, or in need of him. He lacks any particularly strong social ties to individuals, sadly, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t defend the average person in need of it, or that once village children started looking up to him he took his position as a role model somewhat seriously.

It’s…he likes the process, and respects his fields of expertise like the broad, artful things he knows them to be, and loves both them and the challenges involved so much that he can’t help but want to expand them into something bigger, better, and impeccably refined. The raw passion toward being the best for the sheer sake of being the best balances out with how it enables him to benefit the people around him in a very real way. Warrior life wasn’t all a joke, and they were living in dangerous times; it was just as much about making himself useful as it was appreciation. None of it ever wavered, not even after it got him killed.

💧: Are there any places they avoid? If so, why?

It’s more half-avoid, but Sidon will go to great pains to dodge Mipha’s statue during the day. Losing her is something their entire society still isn’t entirely over on an emotional level, and this is fairly and especially true of her little brother. It’s an emotional space for him that he prefers to visit with alone – others would dilute his focus ( making him feel bad for not giving it his full attention ), worry for him ( making him feel bad for putting any strain on them, and appearing - as he fears - like a weak prince ), etc, and he can’t have that. Speaking to it is as open as he feels he can routinely be, as even with people he certainly loves and trusts like his father and select elders, he feels a pervasive need to put on an optimistic and can-do front at absolutely all times, unfortunately especially in that exact company. Statues being as nonsentient as they are, its company is the sole place he can just…talk, without fussing about his word choice or apologizing too much, or feeling guilty.

It’s incredibly private for him, and he’s fallen so hard into the routine / is generally such an emotional guy just looking too long at it can put him in a melancholy state of mind. Who needs that when you’ve got people to talk to and work to attend and it’s only midday?

🔥: What’s a place that left them motivated in some fashion?

Is it cheating to say the entirety of the twilight realm? Because there’s certainly special energy directed at whatever seat and palace their ruling powers occupied and he must have served, but I think while it started there, it would very quickly have reached a point where he was constantly reminded of how inadequate he found their world everywhere he looked, because it was everywhere around him without cease or variation. Imagine being permanently living through your least favorite season, or in your least favorite biome, and that’s about the level of steady, baseline frustration and indignation he was dealing with. It served as a permanent reminder of what he was working to abandon, and helped him imagine what he would eventually graduate up to taking. A much angrier kind of motivation, but it helped him hide his, ah, eccentricity, so it certainly worked.