gog i still can't get over minish cap vaati's Everything. He is So Fucking Stupid (affectionate)
Like. This guy's establishing character moment is, in order:
he's introduced as having won an entire tournament to get to touch a magic chest and get a cool sword, which was the prize for said tournament
turns around and does a goddamn evil soliloquy TEN FEET AWAY FROM THE GUARDS who were about to hand him his macguffin on a platter
(like this man fucks up his own horribly planned daylight heist because he cannot keep a lid on the dramatics for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES, IN PUBLIC)
(THE BAR WAS ON THE FLOOR VAATI, FUCKING GANONDORF PLAYS THE PIPE ORGAN FOR HIS OWN BOSS INTRO AND HE STILL KNOWS BETTER THAN THIS SHIT)
proceeds to fight the guards (it is, admittedly, a curbstomp for him, but it still clearly wasn't his plan, because otherwise why bother with the tournament)
gloats evilly
opens chest, unleashing a whole bunch of monsters
exposits out loud about Zelda's powers like a nerd while she is actively charging up her magic powers to kick his ass
RECOGNIZES and IDENTIFIES said magic as the special power carried by the female royal line
completely fails to recognize it as the light force he is currently trying to get his hands on (he spends like 99% of the game not figuring this out.)
petrifies her
(i have no idea if link could have deflected this spell if he had managed to get the right angle with his shield but i like to think somewhere there is a very short and very funny alternate timeline where it happens)
(more importantly: no part of vaati's original presumed plan would have involved doing this. he 100% created this situation for himself by being an dramatic idiot and picking a fight for no good reason.)
looks in the chest
there's no light force
considering his stated goals he might be as confused as you are about the monsters tbh
uhhh
evil laugh
teleports the fuck out
He then proceeds to spend the rest of the game trying to figure out where the light force is and ends up having to wait for Ezlo and Link to figure it out first because he was, as far as I can tell, GENUINELY stuck on this part. He fucking kidnaps and impersonates the King, not for access to Zelda, but to… send guards to go look for the Light Force, presumably because he was either running out of ideas or genuinely thought that would work.
None of the guards even had any idea what he was talking about. He's not even good at impersonating the King. He's already sent like twenty people to the dungeon by the time you get there and it hasn't even been a week. Somehow the game spins this as a cunning plan and clever manipulation or something.
(Meanwhile the guards are just. Poking around in random bushes and shit hoping to find the light force. One of them asks you what you think it might look like.)
Zelda is literally right next to the throne and Vaati does not figure it out until you find an actual honest-to-goodness LORE TABLET spelling out that the Light Force is Stored in the Zelda, at which point he's like "ahahaha you've done my work for me this was definitely my plan all along" and takes over the castle and throws a bunch of monsters at you to stall for time while he figures out how to extract the force from her. Somehow he still doesn't think to actually lock the fucking door.
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yeah i can’t stop thinking about the parallels between hearth and alex’s backstories… they were both born into a life that, under slightly different circumstances, would have offered them a lot of privilege. their families had a ton of money and a good social status, and hearth and alex were, in many ways, set up for success.
but there was a catalyst for each of them, something that ended up setting them up for failure instead - the way hearth’s father reacted to him being deaf and alex’s father reacted to her being trans. both of them, despite being born into a life that would have offered them plenty, ended up ostracized and shunned from their families. constantly ridiculed and criticized and blamed for something they couldn’t control and didn’t ask for, but in a better world should have been able to celebrate. hearth should have been able to celebrate his deafness and alex should have been able to celebrate her transness, but they were both robbed of that. they were robbed of their childhoods, growing up in toxic environments and spending their formative years being abused, all for some of the only people in their lives who understood them or cared about them to die.
and yet, each of them were able to cut ties and make their own way in the world. they both managed to build a better life from the ground up, bringing together a solid group of friends to spend the rest of their life (or afterlife) with. they were both taught to hate themselves, spent every day of their childhoods being mistreated by their fathers and told they were worthless, and yet in the end they both manage to undo all that and learn how to love themselves. they learn how to celebrate the very same parts of themselves that their fathers tried to stamp out, choosing instead to surround themselves by people who care about them.
additionally, they both embody the paradox of wanting to distance themselves from their parentage and yet simultaneously reclaim it. alex wants nothing to do with any of her parents, yet deliberately reclaims loki’s urnes snake symbol. hearth has no desire to be associated with his father or former life, but reclaims the rune of inheritance.
but in reclaiming their past, neither of them return to it. alex doesn't try to go back to her house after being kicked out. hearth accepts the othala rune in the end, but after his father is killed, never returns to alfheim again. they take what's theirs, leave, and never look back. so, both of their journeys ultimately involve leaving their former lives behind - giving up privilege, wealth, social status, and the acceptance of others in order to be themselves. becoming the people they want to be, rather than the people society and their fathers wanted them to be.
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