@ Christi Junior
2025-02-23 21:15:44
2ND QUARTERFINAL MATCH:
4th Seed Pyra (Xenoblade 2) VS 12th Seed Malon (Zelda: Ocarina of Time)
Pyra: 121 votes
Malon: 116 votes
This was the last truly great match of the regular tournament, and even enjoyed some controversy to spice up proceedings – indeed, the controversy began before the match had even begun, due to DRC’s federation woes forcing a change of venue. Baest (RIP) would end up hosting this match.
There were basically one of two ways I expected this match to go: in the first scenario, Pyra delivers another SFF beatdown to a fellow Nintendo girl, effectively neutralizing many of Malon’s greatest strengths (tradwife appeal, Milkers, red hair etc) and crushing her due to being the far more relevant girl, as well as higher up in the Nintendo hierarchy. In the other scenario, the Same Fanbase Factor actually ends up being a non-factor, and we end up with an extremely close match between two Elite girls. At that point, it’s anyone’s game.
Obviously, it was the second scenario that actually ended up playing out: Malon and Pyra started the match neck-and-neck, a 5-4 Malon lead turning into a 9-8 Pyra lead, then several tied scores before MALON attempted to pull away at 16-12, but Pyra quickly struck back and went for an early kill herself: 24-20, 28-22, 32-24, and finally her lead would peak at 34-25 and a 9-vote surplus. But of course, Malon had already come back from a 13-vote deficit against 2B, and she would show the same resilience here: the next 12 votes favored the farm girl 10-2, and suddenly she was only a single vote behind Pyra! Oh, and this was happening despite me and other Pyra fans bombarding the match thread with Pyra Propaganda. Did this OoT side character seriously possess more natural strength than Nintendo’s single most popular new Waifu?
Honestly, Malon’s strength this whole tournament just kept taking me by surprise, to the point where I gotta reconsider whether or not her supposed weaknesses even matter, or whether they even should be considered strengths. Take Malon’s limited characterization and story importance – you could actually consider that a strength, essentially making her a Blank Slate Waifu who gives you just enough to go on that you know she’s Quality, but who also leaves plenty of room for you to fill in the blanks to suit your own personal fantasy. A character as thoroughly fleshed out as Pyra doesn’t have that – and there’s also that old Waifu debate of whether or not the Waifu being canonically married makes her a worse or better pick. My take is that it makes her better, because it’s canonical proof that she’s Wife material (and in Pyra’s case, Mother material), but others will claim that it essentially makes you a cuck or a homewrecker for going after a taken woman. Malon meanwhile is not only NOT taken, but OoT Link is also much more of a (You) self-insert character than Rex (In OoT you could even still give Link your own name).
Either way, Pyra tried to resist Malon’s offensive, and did manage to go up 42-37, but soon enough Malon was again just one vote behind at 46-45, and then she’s successfully tied the match, at 46-46! The girls remain deadlocked for a while, with Malon even briefly taking the lead, but at the 100-vote mark the score was 51-49 in Pyra’s favor, and the fiery Blade babe seemed to have wrested back control of the match, eventually going up as much as 60-54 – but Malon AGAIN came back and before you knew it we had another tie, at 61-61. Again a period of stalemate followed (until a score of 66-66), before Pyra made another strong push, going up 75-67 and 78-71 only for Malon to AGAIN quickly erase that seemingly solid lead, with Pyra only being up 82-81 by the time I went to bed.
Until now it had obviously been a damn close match, but overall the clear trend had been that Pyra had the upper hand and that Malon had to fight as hard as she could just to keep up with the Aegis. However, that was during day time, with lots of match thread activity that overall favored Pyra pretty heavily. As the match thread became way less active the natural strength of the girls began playing a bigger role – and Malon had by now shown that she boasted more natural strength than Pyra. So sure enough, during the night Malon would not only manage to take the lead, but for the first time ever she would manage to maintain it despite Pyra’s ferocious counterattacks!
#BestVidyaGirlContest
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