Field Note #8: LGBTQ Representation in Zelda
- The Wolfess
- Jul 2, 2020
- 21 min read
Pride Month 2020 has been anything but normal. Covid-19 quarantine has us all locked in our homes (some without support or safety), Black Lives Matters protests across the globe are exposing and challenging systematic racism in all aspects of our lives, and other pressing concerns like global warming and an impending economic depression weigh heavily on our hearts. It has not has not felt like a time to celebrate. Indeed, we in the LGBTQIA+ community are acutely reminded that Stonewall was a riot started by black trans women. It was not a peace march with rainbow flags and dancing. Our community was being assaulted and killed (and still are—just look at the number trans people killed in hate crimes so far this year). We were fighting for our lives—just like the Black Lives Matter protesters are today. As we move forward, it’s important to never forget our roots.
As such, I debated doing a special field note to commemorate Pride Month. Perhaps now was not the right time for a cheery rainbow-colored article celebrating queerness in Zelda? Then it occurred to me that talking about queer representation in the Zelda series would not actually be a positive article to write—after all, I’m sure many reading this are asking “what queer representation?”. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like there are any queer characters in the series. When you do a little digging, however, you see a painful history of queer bating and queercoding that does not shine a positive light on our beloved series. I deeply love the Zelda series, anyone who knows me or has read the first seven field notes can attest to that, but even I can admit that the series has had a troubled history with diversity.
Before we dive in, I want to touch base on some concepts I have already referred to: queerbating and queer coding. There are better articles than this one that will define what these terms are and how they’re different. (Here are links to a few of them.) I highly recommend reading those for a more complete analysis from a couple different perspectives. The last one on SyFy Wire has an especially great historical breakdown. If you only read one of these articles, read that one. All of that said, here are definitions of each that will work for our purposes (cobbled together from different sources):
Queer coding: the subtextual portrayal of a queer character in the media whose identity is not explicitly confirmed within cannon. This concept refers to a character that exhibits what might be considered “queer traits” (i.e. effeminate presentations by male character or masculine ones by female characters) that are recognizable to the audience, but are never labeled or claimed by the content creator. Queer coded characters are often depicted as villains or somehow “wrong/ill”.
Queerbating: a marketing technique for the entertainment industry in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict/acknowledge, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ representation in order to attract LGBTQ consumers. Also, the new fad in which creators retroactively claim LGBTQ representation in their work without showing it in any concrete way.
Why is it important for us to understand these concepts before we discuss queerness in Zelda? Well, the Zelda series is rife with examples of both of these. I would like to go over examples of characters throughout the series who exhibit characteristics of either queer coding or queerbating in different ways, ending with a discussion of where the series can go from here in order to improve its LGBTQ representation.
Yuga
Let’s start off with the main antagonist in A Link Between Worlds: Yuga. Although specifically given male pronouns in the game text, when ALBW was first announced the gaming community assumed that Yuga was a female character. It was a combination of his feminine laugh, long red hair, and flashy makeup that seemed obviously feminine—just look at that brightly colored eyeshadow. However, when the game released we found out that Yuga is intended to be male. This is where the queer coding starts.
Yuga is flamboyant in his dress, makeup, and mannerisms. He is also shown to be physically small and weak (a primary trait in the harmful stereotypes meant to show that drag queens/gay men are not “real men”). It’s not just his physical traits, though—Yuga is artistic, he carries a rainbow-colored paint brush, he’s obsessed with making everything and everyone beautiful….do you see the stereotypes yet? These are common stereotypes associated with drag queens (and gay men in general on some points). Yes, Yuga is clearly queer coding for a drag queen. He’s also sadistic, evil, and mentally ill, which is the problem. The flaming negative stereotyping is bad enough, but adding his evil nature on top it makes the whole thing worse. This is a perfect example of traditional queer coding in media.
Ghirahim
Okay, let’s stop beating around bush after all these weeks and finally talk about the man of hour: Demon Lord Ghirahim. There are SO many problems with this character that I’m not even sure where to start. We could start with his thin frame, a point we touched on with Yuga and which the articles I linked above discuss in more depth. We could touch on his large earrings, his skin-tight body suit, and his feminine haircut, again typical of harmful gay male stereotypes. What about the feminine way he carries himself or his high-pitched laugh? Or how he continually talks about his “exquisite physique”? Just look at his pose in this official Nintendo-approved render of him from Hyrule Warriors and tell me the word “fabulous” doesn’t come to mind. Ghirahim is the embodiment of every gay stereotype I’ve ever seen.
But the biggest problem with Ghirahim isn’t the physical ways he embodies queer coding or even the fact that he’s a villain. It’s the fact that he’s portrayed as a complete over-the-top psychopath (he talked about deafening Link with the sound of his own screams in my playthrough last Friday. Seriously.). It’s also the way that Nintendo has Ghirahim make unwanted physical advances on Link. The very first time you meet Ghirahim in the Skyview Temple, the Demon Lord suddenly disappears and reappears immediately behind Link. He advances on the hero, practically touching him as he whispers in his ear from behind about how he’s going to hurt Link, and then he flicks his tongue in the hero’s ear, causing Link to look disgusted and jump away.
This is not okay. I know that Nintendo is trying to convey how twisted and evil Ghirahim is. I know they are trying to make the player feel uncomfortable. But that doesn’t make this okay. They not only used queer coding to make Ghirahim feel flamingly gay based on his appearance, they then perpetuated one of the most disgusting and awful things that society sometimes thinks about gay folks: that we’re all sexual predators. It’s gross and wrong and unnecessary, and the fact that this game was released so many years ago and yet this hasn’t been called out publicly for how disgusting it is…well, that’s really telling about the state of queer representation in video games, isn’t it? That depicting a queer coded character as a sexual predator in order to convey how evil they are isn’t seen as a problem that we need to talk about.
All I can say is that I’m deeply disturbed by it to this day. If there’s any reason why Nintendo might not ever remake Skyward Sword, it’s not the controls or the low original sales numbers. Nintendo could fix the controls and the little complaints people had that caused it to not sell well (for the most part at least). And they would make a lot of money off of an HD remake on Switch. What they can’t ever fix is Ghirahim, and I’d like to believe that in 2020 they have come to a place where they realize how harmful and disgusting their depiction of him is. Perhaps they won’t remake Skyward Sword because a sense of moral consciousness made them realize what they did with Ghirahim was wrong.
Impa
Enough villains for now, though, right? The Zelda series also has plenty of non-villain characters who exhibit queer coding. Let’s take a look at my personal favorite: Impa in Skyward Sword. (I want to add that Hyrule Warriors ramps her queer energy up to 11! But that’s only Nintendo-approved, not Nintendo-made, so we won’t discuss her Hyrule Warriors incarnation here).
First let’s think about what your stereotypical lesbian might look like: Short hair for sure, partnered with masculine clothing, no makeup, and little to no jewelry. They do not wear feminine colors like pink or purple or baby blue. They are muscular for a woman, usually athletic, and work in a male-dominated field. Sometimes they are shows as having more masculine body types—broad shoulders, narrow hips, small cup size. Beyond these physical attributes, stereotypical lesbian women carry themselves in a more masculine way and sometimes have deeper voices. They are usually controlling of their more feminine counterpart and are sometimes shown as predatory (think: vampire seductress). There’s probably more, but this is a good place to start today.
Fun historical fact: before “lesbian” or even “homosexual” came to be common psychological terms, gay men and women were called “un-sexed” or “inverted”. Psychologists of the time believed that they were gay because they had “put off their natural sex” and become the opposite sex internally. This is clearly inaccurate and faded out of popularity in psychology when terms like “homosexual” came into vogue.
Now, let’s look take a look at this picture of Impa. Does she fit the appearance of a stereotypical lesbian? Definitely. Her hair is short except for a single braid in the front. She ties one link on the braid for every year she has lived in service to the Goddess Hylia (aww…). In fact, everything listed up there about physical attributes of stereotypical lesbians fits perfectly in relationship to this impa, including her body type and the voice actor’s deeper voice. She literally towers a couple feel taller than Zelda/Link and has large, wide hands.
Impa is also depicted as very controlling of the young Zelda, to a point where she has made it onto several “most annoying characters of all time” lists because “she thinks she can protect Zelda better than Link”. I’ve talked before about her low opinion of the Hero. We thankfully don’t see any hint of the “vampire lesbian” trope, but she is depicted as being older and more experienced than the innocent young Zelda, which is common of lesbian portrayals in literature from the era I mentioned above. She is also a warrior, which is a male-dominated medieval profession. In these ways she fits the psychological aspect of the stereotype as well.
All in all, Impa’s Skyward Sword incarnation is a perfect example of lesbian queer coding. I would also argue that her Ocarina of Time incarnation fits as well for many of the same reasons, although she leans more toward the “butch lesbian” side of the stereotype than Skyward Sword Impa does. I personally love Impa, queer coding and all, but the problem with this popular lesbian stereotype is the exclusion of feminine women from the world’s mental picture of a lesbian. Fem lesbians get erased by this stereotype, and it would be great to see a more feminine queer character in a future Zelda game.
Sheik
You knew we were going to get to Sheik eventually right? On my goodness—the eternal debate that is Sheik’s gender. I dread getting into the history of this debate within the Zelda fandom, so I won’t here. I may come back to that in a future Field Note when we play through Ocarina of Time. For now, let’s review who Sheik is and the basics of the ongoing gender debate. Spoilers for a twenty-year-old game I guess?
When Link pulls the Master Sword in Ocarina of Time, he is sealed in the Sacred Realm for seven years. When he awakens, he meets someone described as “a young man” named Sheik. Sheik introduces himself as the last of the Sheikah and gives Link a cryptic clue about what the hero needs to do now that he’s awake. This mysterious character reappears throughout your adult adventure to give you helpful advice and warp songs. We even learn that Sheik saved Ruto from the ice that sealed the Zora people, and see in cut scenes that he is adept with a traditional Sheikah weapon, stealth, and martial arts.
The debate comes in when we learn at the end of the game that Sheik is actually Zelda in disguise. A lot of people wondered how it was possible—Sheik’s body type seems so different from Zelda’s, and even his eyes are a different color. Although the developers have gone on record saying that Sheik was Zelda and was female, the popular Ocarina of Time manga showed the princess using magic to physically turn her body into a male body and lock away her female mind behind a separate male persona. Although the mangas aren’t cannon, the Zelda Community at large has fiercely clung to this debate: was Sheik actually physically male or female? The answer to this debate doesn’t change the fact that there is major queer coding at work here.
Sheik is the first time that many of us ever saw a woman practicing chest binding in a videogame (or ever in my case). Chest binding is commonly practiced by trans men who have not had top surgery performed. There is a lot of other evidence in the game for things Zelda did to make herself more masculine, including hiding her face behind the sheikah wraps and taping her fingers so they would look bulkier. This practice of binding or augmenting your body to become closer to a desired gender (without surgery) will be familiar coding to the trans community.
This article from SyFy Wire does a great job of discussing this ongoing debate and its implications on real-world gender queerness and trans issues. The conclusion this author comes to is that there is no canonical evidence for the existence of a “magical gender surgery in Hyrule” (as they say), but that doesn’t negate the fact that Ocarina of Time Zelda is definitely comfortable in both male and female garb. For many young people, like the author of this article, Sheik was their first introduction to gender fluidity and transgender people and had a major impact on their development as a queer person.
Despite everything Sheik does when he is in his masculine persona, the princess seems equally comfortable with her hair down and in a pink dress. Some might call this problematic because the game erases her trans male identity when it’s no longer convenient, and that is a legitimate point. On the other hand, the Sheik/Zelda dichotomy speaks to a different portion of the queer community as well. This ability to switch at will between a masculine and feminine gender is called being “gender fluid” or “gender queer” in the LGBTQIA+ community, and it is possible that Zelda/Sheik falls in this category.
Despite all the debate and conflicting evidence, there is no way for us to confirm Zelda/Sheik’s preferred gender identity and pronoun usage. This lack of direct confirmation is exactly why Sheik/Zelda falls firmly under queer coded gender, problematic queer characters.
Fledge
Let’s close out the queer coding section of this article with what I’m hoping will be a simpler example: Fledge, Link’s timid classmate in Skyward Sword. So far we’ve covered queer coding in Zelda with examples of gay men as villains, drag queens as villains, lesbian women, and gender fluid people. Fledge is an example of non-evil gay coded character.
We first meet fledge struggling to lift a barrel. Fledge is shy and timid. He clasps his hands in front of himself when he speaks and often doesn’t look Link in the eye. The old lady in the cafeteria calls him a “skinny boy”, and we can see that he is built with a rather feminine frame—narrow shoulders, wide hips, and accentuated pink lips. He is also always blushing.
Although not a villain, Fledge definitely exhibits many characteristics of queer coding when we meet him. As I alluded to when we discussed Yuga, stereotypical gay characters are often depicted as meek and physically weak so they are “less manly” than the straight male characters around them. Fledge frequently calls himself cowardly and weak. I need not tell you by now that this is an incredibly inaccurate and harmful stereotype.
Here is where I will take the opportunity to transition from discussing queer coding to discussing queerbating. Please refer to the definitions above for a reminder of how queerbating differs from queer coding.
Link x Fledge
In fan communities, pairing different characters together romantically is called “shipping”. People have shipped Fledge and Link together from the first moment that they speak in the hallway in Skyward Sword. Well, they at least believe that Fledge has a big crush on Link (whether or not it’s returned is a mystery).
The very first time that Link meets Fledge, the shy boy tells the hero-to-be that he wishes he could at least be there to cheer Link, specifically, on in the Wing Ceremony. Later, when Link is about to leave to go to the land below the clouds, Fledge makes a point to wait outside Link’s room to talk to him before he leaves. First Fledge comments on how good Link looks in his new clothes, and then he says that Link “really is something else” and talks about how amazing Link is. Finally, he gives Link a gift: a leather pouch that he has been making for him. It’s a tender moment, and the first of many such interactions.
Throughout your adventure, Fledge always remarks on how amazing Link is. Eventually Fledge even starts working out in secret at night so he can become stronger like Link. It sure seems like he’s doing an awful lot of self-change to impress a classmate who’s “just a friend”. With some help from our Hero in green, Fledge eventually becomes “super buff” and helps Link with target practice with his bow. If Link does really well, Fledge will give him a “symbol of their friendship”—a giant piece of his heart. Literally. It’s a piece of a heart container.
Looking over their interactions, you could say they are just good friends or that Fledge just really looks up to Link. Sure. Nothing about Fledge’s queer coding or the flirtatious underbelly of some of these interactions is canon. On the other hand, it’s easy to read this relationship as an underclassman who has a huge crush on the popular kid. He’s too shy to outright tell him that he likes him, so he finds other ways to help the popular kid and to tell the popular kid as subtly as possible how amazing Fledge thinks Link is. It’s a sweet story of a schoolboy crush. None of this is confirmable, though, so that puts this ship into the queerbating category.
Link x Shiek
Because of the debate around Sheik’s gender identity discussed above, this ship is an interesting one. This is probably one of the dominant Ocarina of Time Link ships of the late 90’s early 2000’s, right up alongside Zelda x Link and Malon x Link. One of the reasons that some fans were so adamant about Sheik being either a separate male character or Zelda actually having physically transformed herself into Sheik, like in the mangas, is that there is a lot of chemistry between the two characters (for a 1998 video game).
There is a very charged moment in the mangas when Link finds himself blushing while looking at Sheik in his male form. The hero asks himself “why am I getting all flustered?” After the hero walks away to clear his head and find some water, the magic transformation finally wears off after seven years. Sheik wakes up as Zelda in a female body again. But at the moment when Link is blushing and getting flustered Sheik was still male, and when he does turn back into Zelda Link looks in her eyes and tells her “I’m going to miss Sheik”. People shipped this gay pairing hard, and it was major fuel for the Zelda/Sheik debate back in the day.
But as obvious as the same-sex attraction between male Sheik and Link are in the mangas, they still aren’t canon, as I’ve said before. No worries, though, as players have found plenty of in-game evidence for a possible relationship as well. In the game, Sheik talks to Link about love growing over time and how Link “really does look like the legendary Hero of Time.” Link is always trying to get close to Sheik, only for the sly Sheikah to find some way to disappear every time. When Sheik is knocked over by the spirit in the well in Kakariko village, Link stands over his body and tries to defend him, only to get knocked out himself. When he wakes up, Sheik is knelt over him making sure that the hero is okay. Between the two sources, there has been enough chemistry there for people to love this pairing for over twenty years now. Still, as it’s not provable or canon it falls into the queerbaiting category.
Link x Sidon
The last of the queer Link pairings I’ll cover today, Sidon is the Prince of the Zoras in Breath of the Wild. He is known for being super positive and energetic, always commenting “I believe in you!” and “you’re amazing!” to Link. There is such clear mutual admiration and affection between the two men that people have started shipping them. Later in the game, during the Champion’s Ballad DLC, Sidon even remarks (almost to himself rather than Link) that if Mipha had lived then he and Link would be family. He seems very sad that this is not true, and I think that many fans agree. There is not as much evidence for this pairing in the canon, but it has enough of a queer fan following that I had to include it on this list.
Zelda x Impa
Skyward Sword is the Zelda game with the most obvious, canonized Zelda x Link pairing in the entire series. They obviously are in love and get married and found the Kingdom of Hyrule. Naturally, that means that my little queer self, despite being a Zelink fan since 1998, came out of Skyward Sword shipping Zelda and Impa. Seriously, I remember asking myself how in the world that happened?
I could go over every scene and word between them that lends myself to believing there was something going on between Hylia’s incarnation and her guardian, Impa, but we’ll probably touch on those as we go along in this series. We’ve already talked about Impa’s queer coding, and I will admit that Impa/Zelda’s best game as a couple is Hyrule Warriors (which, again, is not canon). But I will recount one pivotal moment in Skyward Sword that encapsulates the essence of the chemistry between these two characters.
Late in the game, after Link is finally able to temper the Master Sword and travel back in time, Zelda starts explaining everything to him. As Link is the player character, you would think that the camera would stay with these two the whole time, right? But it doesn’t. Right as Zelda tells Link who she really is, the camera backs far away from them to focus on Impa in the doorway watching them talk. As Zelda recounts what really happened to her on the day that the tornado whisked her away, the camera focuses in on Impa’s face. She listens for a minute, her expression impassive, and then she drops her head in a kind of deep sadness. She slowly turns and walks away from the couple, segregating herself alone in the depths of the sealed temple.
Now, we can easily suspect that the camera does this because Impa knows what Zelda is going to do and doesn’t want to watch it happen. Even so, if you read the articles from earlier you will know that a common queerbaiting tactic is to use shots and camera angles that are normally reserved for romantic moments. The camera work in this scene struck me the moment I saw it. Impa deeply cares for Zelda. She has risked everything for her. Now, Zelda needs to do something that won’t be undone for a thousand years or more, and the sheikah guardian can’t bring herself to watch it happen.
There is something heartbreaking in this moment. If Impa didn’t love Zelda, if she was just doing her duty this whole time, then she wouldn’t have a problem watching the girl do something that they both know is her destiny. But if she does love her, then it makes sense that she would have to walk away in order to maintain her composure and not rush in to stop it from happening. The camera work in this scene suggests much, and they didn’t have to put that in there. Not including this moment wouldn’t have lessened the power of the scene or Impa’s character at all. It’s a great example of how cinematography can be used to suggest emotional connections without outright showing the relationship, thereby making this ship a perfect example of queerbaiting.
Zelda x Midna
Finally, we come to a common lesbian ship that actually does outright show moments of physical and emotional tenderness between two female characters. Zelda and Midna in Twilight Princess are one of the most commonly shipped queer pairings in the entire series. This is mostly because of a few cutscenes that the two share toward the end of the game.
The first one is toward the beginning of the final battle. Ganondorf’s essence has seeped into Zelda’s body so he can possess her. Midna, the imp who travels with Link, flies up and holds her hand as if she is going to physically claw the evil king out of the princess. You see her struggle with herself. On the one hand, her hatred for Ganondorf burns inside her. On the other hand, she clearly feels something for this hylian princess. The tender side of her heart wins, and she sighs in sadness and defeat. Instead of clawing at Zelda’s face, she rests her hand gently on Zelda’s cheek, cradling her.
When Zelda finally regains her own body, Midna tries to apologize for everything, only to be quieted by the hylian princess. Zelda tells her “It’s okay, Midna. Your soul and mine were as one for a time. Such suffering you have endured…”. That might, honestly, be one of the most romantic lines in the whole series—queer or not. Admittedly, it isn’t a series well-known for romance, but still.
At the end of the game, we get to see Midna in her true form. Despite having spent most of her time in the world of Light with Link, the twilight princess reserves most of her final words for Princess Zelda. Zelda, too, has something she needs to say to Midna. She tells Midna that she believes it was the design of the gods that they should meet, and that light and shadow can’t exist without each other. They were two sides of the same coin. In response, Midna tells her that if everyone in Hyrule are like its princess then they were going to be okay—clearly trying to comfort the hylian princess while not confronting her own emotions.
To emphasize their deep spiritual and emotional connection, the camera pans close on Zelda’s face when Midna walks toward the mirror just to show that they are so connected that Zelda’s hair floats in Midna’s direction (despite their being no wind in the air). Then Midna shatters the mirror, and both Link and Zelda are visibly shocked. It’s another heartbreaking queer moment, and there is so much going on from a queer perspective. As I said earlier, it’s one of the most well-supported queer ships in the whole series, but it’s also not confirmable or canonized—so, it falls under queerbaiting.
So far, this article and the ones I’ve linked to have focused on more nonconstructive and negative forms of “queer representation” in the Zelda series. I’d like to refer you to one more video by the Game Theorist on youtube. It’s a quick watch, and what I really love about this is the dramatic shift in tone halfway through the video. For the first half of the video, this guy gives a pretty cringe-worthy analysis of drag in videogames. Halfway through, the tone shifts as he discusses how his research into queer representation in video games brought him to a sobering realization and a change of opinion. He instead discusses the widespread negative representation of queer folk in video games throughout videogame history. This is useful to us as it’s a great breakdown that puts the Zelda games discussed above into context. By comparison, the examples shown in this field note don’t seem so bad—but it’s clear that we have a long way to go.
This brings me to the final point I want to touch on before the end of this article. It’s been a few years since the video above was created. In that time, more positive queer representation and creative, “out” characters have been created. Even the most recent Zelda game, Breath of the Wild, has a couple characters who are examples of positive queer representation in the Zelda Series. I wanted to touch on them briefly, as it’s important to see that the series is making some positive strides.
Bolson
Bolson is the owner of a construction company that operates out of Hateno Village. You interact with him through a few different side quests, and he can always be found hanging out in front of your house in Hateno. Based on his voice, his mannerisms, and his clothing choices, it’s obvious from the beginning of your interactions with him that he is definitely not straight. Although he fits some of the aforementioned stereotypes, he’s also more well-rounded than other male queer characters on this list. He is a highly successful business owner and works in construction, a very manly profession that required a lot of physical strength and endurance. He also sports a sizable beard. This, finally, is a gay character who is actually realistic.
Later in the game, Bolson attends a wedding that you helped to set up. Outside your house after the wedding, he tells you that he was inspired by the wedding and has decided to pass his construction company along to someone else so he can go “find himself a spouse”. Now, the game has had no issues having character talk about their husbands or wives, and the word “spouse” is not really used elsewhere in it. So it really sticks out here, and he says it a couple times—he’s going to go find himself a spouse. Using a gender-neutral term for a same sex love interest (like “spouse” or “partner”) is common in the queer community. I think in Bolson’s case, it’s being used a thinly veiled way to say that he’s going to go try to find a husband. I wish Nintendo would just let him outright say “husband” or “boyfriend”, but Bolson is a big step in the right direction.
Vilia
Outside Gerudo City, the local merchants whisper about a “man” who has figured out how to get into the female-only town to sell things. After some hunting to find this person, we meet someone dressed in a traditional Gerudo outfit on top of the Kara Kara Bazaar named Vilia. Vilia introduces herself as a woman, and throughout the conversation she continually uses female pronouns even though you can tell that she was born male. Even though the merchants say that Vilia dresses this way to sneak into Gerudo City, we never see her travel between the two cities and there is already a popular store in Gerudo City who sells the same product she does. Their claims are completely unfounded.
I also like the interactions that Link and Vilia have. If Link is rude enough to ask Vilia if she’s really a man, she gets very offended and mad at the player, insisting on her correct gender. Link then apologizes and uses female pronouns for the rest of the conversation. After Vilia helps Link get his own Gerudo outfit on, she flirts with him a bit, which Link seems to enjoy, then says “If you’re free to grab something to eat sometime, keep me in mind…”.
There are so many things that I love about Vilia. First, she’s clearly and unapologetically transgender. Second, Nintendo not only honors her chosen pronouns, they even give the opportunity for the player to misgender her, be reprimanded for it, and correct their behavior. Finally, Nintendo allows Vilia to have consensual chemistry with Link. She tells him how beautiful he looks, which makes Link blush and act happily bashful, and then she asks him out. This whole thing feels like a genuine interaction, not like some joke, and I love that. It would be better if there was no premise of “a man found a way to sneak into Gerudo City” at all, but it’s still huge progress to have an out Trans character in a Zelda game.
To me, Vilia and Bolton are signs of hope for the future of queer representation in the Zelda series. They aren’t perfect examples. They’re not completely “out of the closet” and there are still some problems with how they are used. Still, they don’t fit into the old stereotypical molds that the other examples on this list did, and they are steps toward a positive, more inclusive future for the Zelda series. The next step would be to continue to include positive queer representation and to allow them to be open about it. I would be so here for a confirmed lesbian couple in the next game, or to get to see Bolton’s new boyfriend. Other series like Fortnight and The Last of Us Part 2 already have open and out queer characters, among others. It’s time for Nintendo to join the rest of the world on the right side of history.
What is your favorite queer ship in the Zelda series? What do you think about the future of queer representation in Zelda or in the video game industry in general? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll see you next week!
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