For many, Link is gay or trans or both, and that’s a powerful thing

March 23, 2023 7:42 AM

Link is a gay icon, and Zelda fans know it [Polygon] “The Legend of Zelda’s beloved and iconic protagonist, Link, is tagged in more than 17,000 pieces of fanfiction on Archive of Our Own. Among those stories, more than 300 are tagged with “Trans Link,” and nearly 2,000 feature Link in a romantic relationship with Prince Sidon (or Ganondorf, for the enemies-to-lovers fans). AO3 may not be the only metric for how many Zelda fans interpret Link as gay and/or transgender, but it’s one of the biggest. This is no surprise, as fans have been speculating on Link’s gender and sexuality since at least 2009, though realistically he’s been on the minds of queer players since The Legend of Zelda was first released in Japan in 1986.”

“Nintendo has denied rumors that Link is queer. In a 2015 interview with Kotaku, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said Link is “not gay. He’s just an odd person.” However, though Aonuma shut down speculation about Link’s sexuality within the franchise canon, his statement also opened the door for further fan interpretation. Oddity has long been inextricably linked with queerness, even beyond the etymological connection. For decades, heteronormativity has forced queer people to exist on the fringes of society.”

posted by Fizz (30 comments total)

Link in The Breath of the Wild gave off huge non-binary vibes. They can say he's cis, but man it doesn't feel like it.
posted by gc at 7:53 AM on March 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

I never really played the Zelda games but I've been constantly exposed to them through co-habitants, and yeah, Link has always been coded more or less as non-binary / agender / neither femme nor masc, which seems to me to be part of their nigh universal appeal. Almost anyone can project themselves onto Link, because there's not much there there as an avatar. They look kind of cool, and kind of strange, but also seem to be accepted wherever they go, which is really just the perfect in-game representation of almost any player. It would be nice if you could change their skin tone though.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:59 AM on March 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

Breath of the Wild Link is so hot "sorry"
posted by grobstein at 8:00 AM on March 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

Breath of the Wild Link is so hot "sorry"

“Eeeeeeeee!”

Agreed.
posted by Fizz at 8:07 AM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

I haven’t played most of the games all the way through, but my secondhand exposure has had me see Link as genderfluid and pansexual, Zelda as pansexual with the occasional crossdressing for fun (that’s my Sheik theory and you can’t change my mind), and other characters just vibing their way.

(An associate thinks that Ganondorf is some flavor of pansexual with a huge hero fetish and a degradation kink, and sometimes pulls these plots in hopes of Link and Zelda showing up to beat him, and then they have a threesome.)
posted by mephron at 8:14 AM on March 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

not gay. He’s just an odd person

My grandma said the same thing about my uncle for years but we all knew better.
posted by dis_integration at 8:29 AM on March 23, 2023 [24 favorites]

I liked the article's analysis of BOTW's didn't-sit-with-me-well "dress in drag to access Gerudo Town" quest.

Only women are allowed within the town’s walls, so to speak to its leader and get what Link needs to fight Thunderblight Ganon, Link has to present as a woman. To get the right clothes, Link has to track down “a man who snuck into Gerudo Town.” The person he meets is wearing traditional Gerudo dress, but after he confirms her identity and then literally squints at her face and body, the dialogue prompt either allows him to compliment her beauty or declare that she’s actually a man. Essentially, the quest forces Link to “clock” a trans woman, which is often what precedes anti-trans violence.

This quest fails trans Zelda fans in major ways, but much like Aonuma’s denial that Link is gay, it also presents players with an opportunity. They can choose to queer the game after completing this quest by adding more femme clothes to Link’s wardrobe, which unlock in multiple colors once you enter the town, and donning them as often as they like.

posted by HeroZero at 8:44 AM on March 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

It makes me sad that Nintendo finally gave up and stopped letting the player choose the protagonist's name in Breath of the Wild. He's canonically "Link" now, when in every other Zelda game you could give the protagonist a masculine or feminine name (including "Zelda").

As someone who has chosen a name for the protagonist of these games for decades, calling him "Link" feels like I forgot to change my lock's combination and left it at 0000. It's like calling your dog "Dog", your cat "Cat", or your video game avatar, "Avatar".
posted by straight at 9:15 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

“Nintendo has denied rumors that Link is queer. In a 2015 interview with Kotaku, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said Link is “not gay. He’s just an odd person.”

Dude also said the same thing about Tingle. In the same interview, in the same year, by the same journalist. In an interview that doesn't mention link.
posted by pwnguin at 9:17 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bolson is also another character from Breath of the Wild that is clearly coded as gay/queer. I love Bolson and wish he had more presence in the game outside of helping you construct your home in Hateno Village. I wish Nintendo could let go of this kind of out-dated conservatism and stop reducing individuals to problematic and/or hateful stereotypes. But as the article digs into, it won't stop fans from embracing these characters in ways that are empowering and beautiful.
posted by Fizz at 9:34 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

I don't know anything about translating Japanese to English but if I were translating something that read literally as "an odd person" in say, French, I would probably translate that as "queer". Is it possible Eiji Aonuma is intending that meaning or would that not really make sense?
posted by Nec_variat_lux_fracta_colorem at 10:40 AM on March 23, 2023

Botw Link is my favorite non-binary fashion plate. The best outfit is the snowquill set from Rito village with the structured corset top, gorgeous feather hairpiece, kicky tail feather asymmetrical skirt with cozy snow boots. If that’s not enby swag I don’t know what is.

Anyway, Zelda as a franchise has an interesting relationship with gender. I think Breath of the Wild does a few things well in this regard, and then makes big flubs where it really counts for the majority of players. Anyone who goes into a Zelda game expecting some kind of revolutionary statement about gender is going to be disappointed, but I think it does reward the player with more nuance the more you speak to different characters and explore the details of the game.

Different facets of the fandom approach these details in wildly different ways. Some of us like to pontificate on how Gorons reproduce (I’m convinced they bud) and pretend that all the masculine pronouns they use are simply mistranslations of highly nuanced Goron micropronouns that all vaguely resolve to “bro”. Other folks get really into the whole thing with the male Gerudo and their Ganondorf stigma and write reams of fic about it. The nice thing is that there’s room for everyone. I’ve read some lovely fic about Link and Zelda both being trans and exchanging gendered clothing and whispering secret gendered endearments to each other. I’ve seen Beetle described as “looking exactly like three of my butchest ex girlfriends at once”. I’ve enjoyed fanart of giant fully grown extremely femme Mipha with short king Link having a great time. The range of interpretations and fun iterations is kind of endless. Some of this is probably because of Link’s deliberately crafted broad appeal. Nintendo isn’t going to push the canon anywhere close to the places fandom has been happily rolling around in for decades, but it will probably leave plenty of open ends to explore in the sequel and any further games.
posted by Mizu at 10:42 AM on March 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

Wait, Zelda is the boy, right?
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:57 AM on March 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

(Zelda is the princess, but that’s not an answer to your question.)
posted by Callisto Prime at 11:18 AM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

This is all interesting and unexpectedly thought provoking, but for right now can anyone answer a question for someone who is not into the fanfiction scene:

Do people ever write fanfic where they "straighten out" queer characters?
posted by keep_evolving at 11:19 AM on March 23, 2023

I thought the player character was Epona

Small aside, this reminds me of one of the worst couple fights I've ever witnessed. Back when I was in university I was with my gf from back then and we visited some friends (they were engaged) and Skyward Sword had just been released (2011). My one friend was playing through the tutorial and got to the point where you could name your horse and it defaults to Epona, but you had the option to edit/rename. He thought it would be funny to rename the horse his fiance's name.

She was out of the room when this decision of his was made and when she came back and saw that on the screen some minutes later, the hangout was abruptly ended. She wailed into him about how disrespectful it was, he said it was just a joke, she said, do you think I'm an animal and that you can ride me, and they went at it for a few minutes with some back and forth yelling and then it got quiet and weird. My then gf at the time and I quickly excused ourselves and got into the car and cringe-laughed our way home. Happy ending though, they're happily married, have a bunch of kids, so its all good. But yikes.
posted by Fizz at 11:34 AM on March 23, 2023 [18 favorites]

Do people ever write fanfic where they "straighten out" queer characters?

Oh my, yes. Not to the same degree as fics in the other direction, but yes.

The answer to any question about whether fan fic writers ever do any particular thing in their stories, no matter how confusing or off-putting it might be, is always, always, always “yes”.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 11:36 AM on March 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

Do people ever write fanfic where they "straighten out" queer characters?

In short, yes.

Some of the most interesting takes on this concept I’ve read were in Stargate Atlantis fandom, a show deeply steeped in military aggrandizement, masculinity, and the tail end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. So what happens if you “straighten out” a fandom-presumed queer character due to fictional alien shenanigans, giving them what they thought would solve the tension between their career, self image, and personal fulfillment, only to find out that it does no such thing?

Of course there’s plenty of less thoughtful fic out there about giving queer characters hetero relationships or having straight sex or whatever. Plenty of reader insert and roleplay type fic, in particular. But the truth is that we are so bereft of canonical queer characters that to do this is just statistically unlikely. There are tons of characters that the majority of a fandom just labels as queer so thoroughly that I forget they aren’t queer in the source material, but that doesn’t make any het fic written about them somehow wrong, or out of character.
posted by Mizu at 11:52 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

this reminds me of one of the worst couple fights I've ever witnessed.

Oh my god, Fizz. Incredible. I hope they had their wedding reception in a barn.

As is tradition in my household, all horses in games in which you can name them are named Brian. So I hope neither of us date a Brian, or at least that this theoretical Brian is okay with a certain very specific subset of really dumb jokes. Apologies to any Brians reading this thread.
posted by Mizu at 11:56 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

a video game character wearing a bra and trousers with a sparkly veil should be able to claim androgyny as easily as a fat model wearing a flannel shirt and short-shorts, but neither presentation should be the only definition of the term

Ah, I like that. It's like when Old Navy briefly had a "gender neutral" section, which was entirely baggy sweatsuits. Yes, that is gender neutral, but so are ballgowns if you have the right tailor.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:16 PM on March 23, 2023

> (Zelda is the princess, but that’s not an answer to your question.)

I dunno I think Zelda is the boy
posted by dis_integration at 12:33 PM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

He thought it would be funny to rename the horse his fiance's name.

I'm in three tabletop roleplaying game groups. The two players in those groups with whom I have played the longest have been playing with me since 1996; the player with whom I've played for the shortest amount of time has been gaming with me for a little over a year now.

One of the players, Connor, is someone with whom I've been gaming since 2010 and a little while ago I had the realization that that I still think of him as being a new friend, despite our having been friends who have weekly meetups for over a decade now. I spent some time reflecting on what it is that I use as the dividing line between old friends and new friends and eventually came to the conclusion that it was down to the following:

An old friend is anyone after whom I ever renamed a Final Fantasy character, a new friend is anyone who never provided a name to one of my Final Fantasy characters.

It's worth noting that the last Final Fantasy game I played was FFIX twenty years ago*, so basically anyone I met after 2003 is a "new friend" for me.

This game did result in the in-game marriage of the characters who I had named for two of my friends; one of those friends was thrilled to learn this and the other less so.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 12:43 PM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Zelda is the boy link: a quote from Nintendo founder Hideo Kojima himself

I threw off the cardboard box I was hiding under at this... now I'm out and alarms are going off. fml
posted by k3ninho at 12:46 PM on March 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

For some reason, I always thought of Link as a girl when I was growing up.
Figures.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 1:01 PM on March 23, 2023

Do people ever write fanfic where they "straighten out" queer characters?

What queer characters?

I kid, I kid ... but I also kind of don't. There just aren't that many canonically queer characters to start with. And even then, many of the queer characters who do exist are comedy sidekicks.

There are more queer characters now, but in my 20+ years in fandom, I might have run across this only a handful of times. I don't think the lack of canonically queer characters explains all of it; I think homophobia also plays a role here, as the type of straight fan who would want to write a queer character into a heterosexual romance is probably less likely to find a queer character attractive or interesting in the first place.

All that said, you can find examples if you look for them, since basically anything you can imagine has been written (unless it's a story for that one rarepair that you seem to be the only fan of).
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:15 PM on March 23, 2023

So what does all this have to do with transportation in the Lower Mainland?
posted by irrelephant at 1:42 PM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

I don't know anything about translating Japanese to English but if I were translating something that read literally as "an odd person" in say, French, I would probably translate that as "queer". Is it possible Eiji Aonuma is intending that meaning or would that not really make sense?
posted by Nec_variat_lux_fracta_colorem

in a nutshell, no, Japanese doesn't really use "queer" in that sort of way, so the odds are very good that he did just mean it in the sense of "weird" or "strange" rather than capital-q Queer
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:30 PM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I’d posit he’s even making a sly point about the character design, how being “an odd person” becomes the “link” you have to the game.

The oddities are more like anti-details; they sand off the clean edges a bit, but they don’t do it uniformly. The end result is not a blank canvas per se, it’s an abstracted work of player intent. Zelda(Link) starts as a collection of 3d models and movements, but there’s a player-shaped hole in the center. I think the character design oddities are meant to encourage the player to relate with their in-game avatar in a more artful or meaningful way.

In interviews, Nintendo’s creative teams have often talked about their approach to Zelda games, how they design every aspect of the games around a set of interconnected and complementary player experiences —traversing, talking to NPCs, combat, cutscenes, camera quests, etc…— every experience puts the player front and center, every experience builds on the child-like power fantasy that lies at the heart of every Zelda game.

It’s a really neat way to enhance the immersion for the player. When done well, it’s better than fancy graphics or cutscenes with voiced dialogue. I realized this as I was recollecting my own experiences. For me, Link to the Past still feels just as immersive and exciting as Breath of the Wild. I think it’s because I always find a hook into Zelda/Link. I become the hero of Hyrule. When this happens, the game comes alive.

So it doesn’t surprise me that people can see a heroic or intriguing aspect of themselves in this “odd person”. I think that’s wonderful, even if the folks at Nintendo are being willfully naive about it.
posted by Doleful Creature at 3:22 AM on March 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm no gamer but occasionally discussions on games and gaming really draw me in, this is all fantastic.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:03 AM on March 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

So what happens if you “straighten out” a fandom-presumed queer character due to fictional alien shenanigans, giving them what they thought would solve the tension between their career, self image, and personal fulfillment, only to find out that it does no such thing?

Spoiler alert: John goes back to banging Rodney even though Jason Momoa is STANDING RIGHT THERE.
posted by praemunire at 9:00 AM on March 24, 2023 [3 favorites]