Comments on: "...that unique Nintendo brand of faux progressivism."

"...that unique Nintendo brand of faux progressivism."

Fizz — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:19:20 -0800

Nintendo still won't make Link a girl, but they'll put him in a dress and call him 'Linkle'. [Kill Screen]

There's is no conceivable lore reason for why Link can't be reincarnated as a girl. As the Zelda Wiki states, Link is, "the name shared by the main protagonists of The Legend of Zelda series." There are many different reincarnations and iterations of the Link character, "each possessing the Spirit of the Hero, with some of them being blood related as well," but, most importantly, all Links are connected by the fact that they were "chosen by the Goddesses to protect the land from evil whenever deemed necessary."

Well, it looks like there must have been at least a few ladies who took Nintendo up on their generous offer to buy more Nintendo games if they bothered representing their gender. At the Nintendo Direct yesterday, the company announced that its female experiment would continue, revealing an "original character" named Linkle for the 3DS version of Hyrule Warriors Legends.

By: habeebtc

habeebtc — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:29:56 -0800

Stupid. It's not like the Japanese haven't flirted with the idea of a woman as the hero, and the man as the damsel in distress (see: witchcraftworks). Actually, a Zelda game where Zelda is a man and Link is a woman would probably draw a lot of gamers, just for being so different. I mean, with how they rewrite the world without any explanation of continuity, there's no reason at all not to make this game.

By: Drinky Die

Drinky Die — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:42:29 -0800

Oh, I thought they were actually just having a crossdressed character and thought that would be kind of neat in itself but it was talking about the Ms. Pacman thing.

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:42:48 -0800

I would really and genuinely love to read something that explores the nature of feminism in Japan. I feel like I've spent my entire life hearing about how Japan's culture is fundamentally fucked up towards women, but I'm frankly tired of only hearing about a culture through Anime fanboys and gamers. I would really really really be thankful for something that gives me an understanding of gender in Japanese culture that isn't just "lol tentacles." It would really help me understand the article in the OP, which is fascinating. I'm just too tempted to reduce the whole thing to a dismissive hand wave in the general direction of Japan, rather than really understand the culture, so if anyone can help me out, I'd love you forever.

By: Fizz

Fizz — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:47:18 -0800

I would really and genuinely love to read something that explores the nature of feminism in Japan. I did find these books referenced at the bottom of the wiki page for Feminism in Japan.

- Jan Bardsley. The Bluestockings of Japan: New Woman Essays and Fiction from Seito, 1911-16.Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, 2007. - Phyllis Birnbaum. Modern Girls, Shining Stars, the Skies of Tokyo. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. - Dina Lowy. The Japanese "New Woman": Images of Gender and Modernity. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2007. - Setsu Shigematsu, Scream from the Shadows: The Women's Liberation Movement in Japan. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.

I've not read any of these books, but they might be a good starting point. Hopefully some other MeFites can share their sources as well. Good luck.

By: idiopath

idiopath — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:47:43 -0800

obligatory link / zelda gender link (somewhat nsfw video).

By: Hoopo

Hoopo — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:52:39 -0800

I never even realized there was supposed to be more than one Link. I figured there were basically a bunch of one-offs visiting the same character but in different contexts, with no continuity. That said I've only played 5 Link games: Legend of Zelda, Adventures of Link, A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, and Twilight Princess. The characters seemed similar enough to me that I figured it was the same boy in all of them. If the actual cannon of the Zelda/Link games is that there's a whole bunch of different Links and it's almost a title rather than a name, then yeah, point taken. Nintendo has made games with female protagonists before (Metroid); not sure why this would be an issue for them if that's what the audience wants. Is there a backstory here? Has there been a big demand for making Link female?

By: delfin

delfin — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:54:38 -0800

EXCUUUUUUUUUUUSE ME I'M A PRINCESS

By: Fizz

Fizz — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:55:31 -0800

Nintendo has made games with female protagonists before (Metroid); not sure why this would be an issue for them if that's what the audience wants. Is there a backstory here? Has there been a big demand for making Link female? I'm a 12-year-old girl. Why don't the characters in my apps look like me? [Washington Post]

"These biases affect young girls like me. The lack of girl characters implies that girls are not equal to boys and they don't deserve characters that look like them. I am a girl; I prefer being a girl in these games. I do not want to pay to be a girl."

Also: Games with exclusively female heroes don't sell (because publishers don't support them)

There are so few games with exclusively female heroes, and those few games are given such a small marketing budget, do we even know how well a large-budget, marketed game with a female hero would perform? "We're still only looking at 24 games in that grouping that came out. We can tell that almost nobody does games with only a female protagonist. They're scarce. It just doesn't happen often. Therefore it's noteworthy when it does. It gets called out, it gets noticed by reviewers and press, and it's a conscious decision. That's something you can take away from this," Zatkin said. The problem also comes from marketing departments. There is a sense in the industry that games with female heroes won't sell.

By: timdiggerm

timdiggerm — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:58:48 -0800

Doesn't this qualify as demanding a foreign culture adopt your values?

By: Hoopo

Hoopo — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:00:15 -0800

(I'm familiar with the overall issues, I was referring more to some kind of Link-specific background. This is the first time I've seen an argument that Link should be female so I was wondering if this was A Thing With Link previously)

By: Sing Or Swim

Sing Or Swim — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:03:29 -0800

If they're trying to arrive at something that sounds ridiculous and will make no one happy, why stop at "Linkle"? Go all the way and call the male and female versions "Miz Linkle" and "Mister Linkle".

By: Aleyn

Aleyn — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:05:56 -0800

Doesn't this qualify as demanding a foreign culture adopt your values? Even if this is a valid argument (which I don't really think it is), the part where this argument falls apart is the part where Nintendo is trying to sell Zelda games to a North American market.

By: Fizz

Fizz — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:06:53 -0800

This is the first time I've seen an argument that Link should be female so I was wondering if this was A Thing With Link previously A little googling and I've found several articles where this is an issue that is discussed. I know that I have personally made comments to other Zelda gamers and fans that I would enjoy playing a game where Princess Zelda rescues Link. I mean, give her a sword, a horse, and let her lead her people to salvation. I'm ready to pay big money for that.

By: Ruki

Ruki — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:11:15 -0800

Samus Aran was so revolutionary, but she still ended the game in a bikini. It broke my heart to see how she's been rendered in later Metroid games. But more to the point, I don't want to see Link as female. I want to see Zelda rescuing the fucking kingdom.

By: lumensimus

lumensimus — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:15:22 -0800

Nintendo played with the idea of a Zelda reincarnation with agency in Wind Waker with Tetra, a notably bronze pirate queen who became absolutely lily-white and remarkably helpless when her Zeldaness manifested itself. She turns back in the end, apparently, but that was So. Weird.

By: sunset in snow country

sunset in snow country — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:16:36 -0800

Doesn't this qualify as demanding a foreign culture adopt your values? I dunno, with Japanese games (and Zelda specifically) having a huge global market, it seems more akin to everything Hollywood does to accommodate the Chinese market (i.e. dumb everything down so nothing gets lost in translation, hastily dub over dialogue in postproduction to remove references to evil Chinese commies, etc). Also, I'm not really so sure that not having female heroes is a Japanese "value"? From my limited knowledge, they seem to have a tradition of female-oriented geek media (magical girls, etc) in a way that the U.S. doesn't.

By: any portmanteau in a storm

any portmanteau in a storm — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:19:00 -0800

By: Ruki

Ruki — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:23:51 -0800

Or baby steps, even, and having Zelda be a playable character. For all the times she's been in another castle, Princess Peach is the best playable character in the Mario games. That float thing is way better than jumping high or running fast. I'll concede that my video game skills may have adapted to the traits of the most prominent female character available, though.

By: thecaddy

thecaddy — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:38:17 -0800

Ruki--No, Peach is the best. I'm a dude, and I always played with Peach (well, Princess Toadstool, in the parlance of the times) in SMB2. That float thing was super cool.

By: thefoxgod

thefoxgod — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:38:29 -0800

Yeah, there are a ton of JRPGs for example with primarily or exclusively female protagonists. Some of those have other issues, but the simple "lead character(s) is(are) female" might actually be a better ratio in Japan (some/many of these games are Japan-only, however). Nintendo featured the girl character in Splatoon pretty prominently, but in general they have very little "new" IP or titles and keep retreading the same few characters in similar situations (to much success).

By: feckless fecal fear mongering

feckless fecal fear mongering — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:42:01 -0800

I would personally love to see a game where Princess Zelda rescues Link. I mean, give her a sword, a horse, and let her lead her people to salvation. Shut up and take my money.

By: Fizz

Fizz — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:42:03 -0800

I'm guessing much of it comes down to that argument of: "Don't mess with the classics." mentality of gaming. And I'm sure I've been guilty of this too. Why mess with a formula that works? Especially if that formula makes you ton of money. At least that is probably what some business executive is thinking. It would be nice to see some change though.

By: pwnguin

pwnguin — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:43:26 -0800

But more to the point, I don't want to see Link as female. I want to see Zelda rescuing the fucking kingdom Are you sure?

By: GhostintheMachine

GhostintheMachine — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:45:07 -0800

Doesn't this qualify as demanding a foreign culture adopt your values? Are you suggesting Japanese females don't play video games?

By: vogon_poet

vogon_poet — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:45:41 -0800

Nintendo played with the idea of a Zelda reincarnation with agency in Wind Waker with Tetra, a notably bronze pirate queen who became absolutely lily-white and remarkably helpless when her Zeldaness manifested itself. Well, she at least gets to take Link's bow-and-arrow and fight in the final boss battle (while wearing a pink dress). And then after it's over they go back to being pirates (and Tetra is suddenly tan again).

By: grobstein

grobstein — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:48:08 -0800

Speaking at a public symposium, a member of Parliament, Seiichi Ota, recently made light of reports of gang rapes at a Tokyo university. "Boys who commit group rape are in good shape," Mr. Ota said. "I think they are rather normal. Whoops, I shouldn't have said that." (The legislator's comments were carried in many Japanese newspapers.)

More, from a story on rape and rape prosecution in Japan, 2003. A Japanese friend, describing these remarks to me, I think said that Ota characterized declining rape statistics as a warning sign that young men are less energetic than they used to be. I don't have the resources to check this myself, though.

By: sparkletone

sparkletone — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:48:25 -0800

I thought they were actually just having a crossdressed character and thought that would be kind of neat in itself For what it's worth, in Tri-Force Heroes, one of the outfits he can don is Zelda's dress.

By: lucidium

lucidium — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:51:21 -0800

I'm the first to be annoyed at "oh that's easy, just click the computer button" lay pronouncements, but wouldn't it be (relatively) pretty trivial to make Link's gender optional? I mean, they mirrored the entirety of Twilight Princess on the Wii to make the controls feel natural to majority right handers, he's already pretty androgynous, and it's not like he has a lot of dialogue. You could practically do it by ctrl-f-ing "mah boy". I was half expecting Link to be a girl in the new game, so after seeing the internet reacting to the Direct with screams of "THEY DID IT", "RULE 63" and "WHAT IF ZELDA WAS A GIRL", it was pretty feeble to see it was actually a just a new character called Linkle.

By: thefoxgod

thefoxgod — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:51:29 -0800

Are you suggesting Japanese females don't play video games? Well, the question would really be what do Japanese women want from video games. There are lots of games that are intended to be aimed at women in Japan that seem to do quite well. Possibly there are more kinds that would be appreciated as well. But remember, a HUGE amount of Japanese games never make it to the West, so judging Japanese videogames only by exports won't give you a good picture of the state of gaming in Japan.

By: zixyer

zixyer — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:00:24 -0800

Zelda disguises herself as a (male) ninja in the last half of Ocarina of Time (spoiler alert for a ~20 year old game I guess). Just to add a little more context and not to diminish the writer's point, but Hyrule Warriors is made by an external developer and isn't considered a mainline Zelda game in any capacity (though it is published by Nintendo). I wasn't really thrilled with Linkle's design either and would like to see a Zelda game with a female main character or with the ability to choose Link's gender.

By: straight

straight — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:05:16 -0800

Am I the only one who follows the instructions and chooses a name for the protagonist when I play a Zelda game? Who's this "Link" character?

By: savetheclocktower

savetheclocktower — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:13:25 -0800

I agree with most of the comments so far — for instance, a game in which Zelda is the main character (as has been implied for years by the fucking title of the series) would be great. And "Linkle" is a dumb name. But I can't make sense of this article. The author says that Linkle is an example of the "Ms. Male Character" trope — identical to the main character except for some sort of marker of femininity. But in the next paragraph, she mocks the fact that Linkle has crossbows instead of a Master Sword, saying that of course Linkle doesn't get a Master Sword because Nintendo doesn't consider her a real Link. Which is it? It seems like, in the author's eyes, both the similarities and the differences between Linkle and Link reflect poorly on Nintendo.

By: lumensimus

lumensimus — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:18:01 -0800

Zelda disguises herself as a (male) ninja in the last half of Ocarina of Time And the scene is remarkably tense. I remember being pretty impressed and confused by that as a teenager.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:19:58 -0800

I have tracked news about and played a great deal of this game. This isn't really for or against Linkle (which I think we can all agree is a silly name), just providing context. First off, while certainly approved by them, Nintendo did not create Linkle, and Hyrule Warriors is absolutely not a mainline Zelda game. The Hyrule Warriors games are spinoffs of the Destiny Warriors series, made by Omega Force of Koei Tecmo, and the game takes more after that than Zelda. Here is an interesting fact about Hyrule Warriors. Excluding DLC, female characters outnumber male ones 9 to 7. (Including DLC, at the moment the count is an even 10-10, with one character, the Cucco, of uncertain gender. While basically a chicken with a rooster comb, this model is presented in-game as belonging to a "Mama Cucco," making its sexual characteristics are uncertain.*) In the main story two male and one female are unavailable, making the count 8 to 5. And during the main part of the game eight of your characters, Impa, Zelda, Shiek, Lana, Ruto, Agatha, Midna and Fi, are female, and only two are male, Link and Darunia. Five of the playable male characters are bad guys. And one of Link's "weapons" is actually the Great Fairy from Ocarina of Time, who you basically play as, a gigantic woman floating through the air with vines clinging to her naughty bits (who, entertainingly, keeps poor Link in a bottle most of the time). So, it's not a "real" Zelda game, but it is a game where, unusually for Zelda, you rarely play as Link, and in fact you are already going to be playing a female character far more often than not. By the time you seriously get into playing as Zant, Ghirahim, Ganondorf, Volga or Wizzro you've already sunk dozens of hours into this gigantic timesink, and few people will care beyond that point I think. This is not actually to say that Hyrule Warriors is tremendously progressive. In addition to the scantily-clad Great Fairy, one of the female characters, Cia, has a costume that is best described as stripperific, and her entire character is basically defined by an unhealthy fascination with Link. She's pretty much made of fanservice. Also, one of the DLC characters is little Midna, originally one of the most self-realized and awesome female characters in the whole series, but this time grown up and without much clothes. * Shiek is a strange case, appearing male but actually Zelda in disguise. The nature of the disguise magic Zelda is using has been left uncertain by the makers of the games. I have counted Shiek as female, but an argument could be made otherwise. ** I have to say, this, the day I considered the sexual characteristics, not only of videogame characters, but of videogame chickens, is a particularly low moment in my internet career.

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:20:12 -0800

(Meanwhile, "Link is a trans girl" was already such a meme in the trans gaming world that there's now a bunch of meta-jokes about this going around trans Tumblr, calling Linkle "the second girl Link" or being like "I'm so glad she finally came out!" and "I'm gonna call her Linkle in all the old games now too because otherwise that's deadnaming her" or whatever.)

By: lucidium

lucidium — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:22:04 -0800

> Am I the only one who follows the instructions and chooses a name for the protagonist when I play a Zelda game? On paper, I like customisation, but I'll take any game where the main character has a set appearance as a pass for also accepting the default name. It took me over an hour and a half to start Fire Emblem: Awakening, and only about five minutes of that was involved in picking the avatar.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:24:58 -0800

do we even know how well a large-budget, marketed game with a female hero would perform Why yes we do, we have Tomb Raider, it sold tons.

By: Ruki

Ruki — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:29:38 -0800

Do we even know how well a large-budget, marketed game with a female hero who isn't hyper-sexualized would perform?

By: feckless fecal fear mongering

feckless fecal fear mongering — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:30:24 -0800

I'm not sure that hypersexualized Lara Croft is the best way to demonstrate that female-main-character games can do well. Use that as an argument and game devs will just go "Cool, make a character with improbable body parts and we'll make millions." Not solving the problem is what I'm saying.

By: feckless fecal fear mongering

feckless fecal fear mongering — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:32:55 -0800

jinx

By: JHarris

JHarris — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:33:44 -0800

Granted, Ruki. The sad thing about Lara Croft is that I don't remember the first game playing up the sexiness that much. I think it was II and III where they made a big deal of that stuff, and from there it became pretty much inseparable from the series, although I haven't played the later games so I can't give a good answer.

By: yueliang

yueliang — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:35:26 -0800

Honestly, I never wanted to play Legend of Zelda because I always thought that it was Princess Zelda rescuing Link, or it was Princess Link rescuing Zelda. When I learned that both was wrong, I was fed up with the male-dominated gaming world and left. I was 12. :( This is oldhat stuff, Nintendo (and the rest of the gaming industry) get your shit together!

By: neckro23

neckro23 — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:35:58 -0800

Do we even know how well a large-budget, marketed game with a female hero who isn't hyper-sexualized would perform? Why yes we do, we have Tomb Raider (2013), it sold tons.

By: Ryvar

Ryvar — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:38:04 -0800

The 2013 reboot (and presumably in the sequel "Rise of the Tomb Raider" that came out last week - been too busy with Fallout 4 personally to try it just yet) Lara Croft is not only nearly devoid of any sexuality, but deliberately realistically proportioned. Probably the best non-optionally-female lead in a videogame since Jade in Beyond Good & Evil. JHarris' example was perfectly correct (and for the record: the Playstation-era Tomb Raider 1 was nowhere near as bad as the sequels, but was definitely a product of its time, as they say).

By: grobstein

grobstein — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:44:25 -0800

Do we even know how well a large-budget, marketed game with a female hero who isn't hyper-sexualized would perform? I think there are probably many examples, but Mirror's Edge leapt to my mind. I think it may have been a sales disappointment...? But it was a bold, beautiful (and expensively made) game, on top of that a Bechdel-test passer, and a game where all the best story moments were about how much the protagonist and her sister cared about each other. (Funny thing about the story, which was I think done by a Real Writer -- the big themes were kind of silly IMO, and most of the plot. But the relationship between Faith and her sister I just really bought, and I thought it was really touching.)

By: grobstein

grobstein — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:47:10 -0800

Should have said, I think there are other examples. There probably aren't many examples.

By: Ryvar

Ryvar — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:54:04 -0800

Mirror's Edge was written by Rhianna Pratchett (yes, Terry's daughter), who also wrote the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot along with Susan O'Connor, and last week's sequel. I don't think much of the writing of Mirror's Edge (exception for the relationship with her sister, yeah), but the Tomb Raider reboot is exceptional even if the nature of the big bad is a bit silly in a worst-excesses-of-Uncharted way. I particularly appreciated that the supporting cast had strong examples of both likeable and unlikeable male and female characters. It's also, for people who are into design, an example of how to do a classic Ubisoft-style node-based open world correctly.

By: Hamusutaa

Hamusutaa — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:54:16 -0800

Oh hey, no one linked Aaron' Diaz's take on this yet.

By: Ruki

Ruki — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:56:45 -0800

So, I just looked up the 2013 Tomb Raider. There's an attempted rape scene? If so, it still doesn't count.

By: thefoxgod

thefoxgod — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 18:02:20 -0800

There's an attempted rape scene? No. Some dev made a weird reference about that in an interview but no such scene exists in the game. The first game is about her going from being a normal grad student to adventurer due to being shipwrecked on an island of crazy people. The second game she is even more confident/etc due to surviving the first game.

By: thefoxgod

thefoxgod — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 18:04:30 -0800

In general Square Enix has been publishing a lot of female-lead-only games in the last couple years (Multiple Tomb Raider games, FFXIII-3, Life is Strange, Drakengard 3).

By: i_have_a_computer

i_have_a_computer — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 18:12:09 -0800

Nintendo is extremely conservative when it comes to their long time franchises. And I don't think the gaming media gives them much choice. When Nintendo released their next big Super Mario franchise game for the Wii in 2007, Super Mario Galaxy, they did something unimaginable: they included a very real, heartfelt, and especially sad story to the game, told in the form of a beautifully illustrated children's storybook. Unheard of for a Nintendo Super Mario game. As a player, you don't have to engage in that storyline, but if you venture into that room it will hit you like a sack of bricks to the side of your head. It's just not what you expect when you play a Nintendo Mario game. Predictably, the gaming media loved the game but hated the unexpected storyline; "The worst part of the game" most of the reviews said. Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo guru, later said that it was wrong to put a storyline in that game. I, on the other hand, think that game is the greatest thing Nintendo has ever done precisely because of the story. Regardless, I don't expect big gaming companies, Nintendo included, to break much ground socially or progressively.

By: straight

straight — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 18:23:50 -0800

The protagonist in the original version of the FPS Unreal was female and not sexualized.

By: Ruki

Ruki — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 18:31:42 -0800

I watched the scene in question, and I disagree that there is no undertone of sexual violence. I even showed it to Mr Ruki, and he agreed with me. And this is from someone who answered "titties" when I asked him about the first thing that came to mind when I said Tomb Raider. But this is getting to be a derail, so I'll just bow out of this thread now. Thanks for the other suggestions, though.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 18:42:34 -0800

Do we even know how well a large-budget, marketed game with a female hero who isn't hyper-sexualized would perform? Portal.

By: lucidium

lucidium — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 18:52:20 -0800

Wow, people didn't like Rosalina's story? That thing was practically a post facto formative experience for me.

By: vibratory manner of working

vibratory manner of working — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 19:40:34 -0800

Linkle's transition timeline

By: feckless fecal fear mongering

feckless fecal fear mongering — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 20:03:22 -0800

Portal And, arguably, two heroines in the sequel.

By: zinful

zinful — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 20:06:11 -0800

By: JHarris

JHarris — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 20:30:44 -0800

(I should have typed, Hyrule Warriors is a spinoff of Dynasty Warriors, not "Destiny Warriors." Bah!)

By: straight

straight — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 20:52:40 -0800

There's also the dad who hacked the Wind Waker rom so all the text in the game refers to Link as a girl.

By: corb

corb — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 20:53:54 -0800

There is no rape scene, and fuck whoever said there was, I spent that entire game dreading something that never happens. The 2013 Tomb Raider is fucking awesome and not hyper sexualized at all.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 22:05:43 -0800

Wind Waker isn't a ROM, it's an ISO, but other than that yes, that's terrific.

By: anastasiav

anastasiav — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 22:27:04 -0800

Do we even know how well a large-budget, marketed game with a female hero who isn't hyper-sexualized would perform? I was going to come in and say Kirby, because pretty much every child we know between the age of 7 and 12 refers to Kirby as "her". I was honestly pretty shocked to see the male pronoun used throughout the wiki article, although I now know that Kirby is voiced by a woman in the anime. FWIW, neither my son nor his friends (both genders) seem to care about Kirby's gender. Kirby is roughly as popular among his set as Yoshi is (note that they can both inhale things), which is about one tier down from Mario. Whether the kids think Kirby is a girl because the character is pink, I cannot say, but it seems to be just an accepted fact among my son's friends that Kirby is a girl and that's not a big deal at all.

By: atoxyl

atoxyl — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 23:41:03 -0800

That's pretty interesting about Kirby - for me the character was always colored by what I'd consider a fairly strongly male name.

By: Pyrogenesis

Pyrogenesis — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 04:16:24 -0800

FemShep is the true Shep.

By: Jalliah

Jalliah — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 05:10:17 -0800

There is no rape scene, and fuck whoever said there was, I spent that entire game dreading something that never happens. The 2013 Tomb Raider is fucking awesome and not hyper sexualized at all. This was my experience. I avoided the reboot for ages because of past Tomb Raiders and reading about this scene. Finally ran out of things I was interested in playing and it was on sale so I thought what the hey I'll give it a go. Couldn't put the game down, new Lara rocks and I was so happy I didn't have to wear that stupid boob outfit. Only thing I didn't like was the apprehension about 'the scene'. I got most of the way through the game before I checked and found out that I had missed it and exactly what I missed which was nothing like it was made out to be. I'm hoping the new one will treat Lara the same way the last one did. If it ones a one off I will be super disappointed because it did make Lara into a female hero character that I found myself relating to on a broader and deeper character level. That has barely happened in my gaming life so far.

By: Fizz

Fizz — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 05:16:55 -0800

I'm hoping the new one will treat Lara the same way the last one did. If it ones a one off I will be super disappointed because it did make Lara into a female hero character that I found myself relating to on a broader and deeper character level. That has barely happened in my gaming life so far. Not to get too off track the Zelda convo, but I'm about 3/4 through the game and Lara is still as strong, passionate, & intelligent as she was made out to be in the 2013 reboot. This one has more focus on family and her character feels stronger in many ways, more sure of herself in various situations. It is sad that we are so impressed by this type of characterization in a game. It should be the norm. I hope more developers pay attention to how the fans have reacted.

By: GrapeApiary

GrapeApiary — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 06:23:28 -0800

Link is the hero role in these games, but there isn't anything requiring that Link be male or Zelda female. Why not have Link default to the player's Mii, or at least give the option of using your Mii instead? That way it covers gender as well as colour. Zelda can be randomly generated each game as either male or female too. I don't know how difficult this would be from a coding standpoint, but it seems to be the best answer. Just slap a green hat and tunic on your Mii and be on your way.

By: Panjandrum

Panjandrum — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 07:15:23 -0800

The sad thing about Lara Croft is that I don't remember the first game playing up the sexiness that much Maybe we grew up in alternate realities, but I recall the giant, heaving pixel-bosom of Lara Croft was absolutely a selling point in the first game. Sexualization was built into the games from the start. I mean, even though it wasn't official, TR1 was the game that gave us "Nude Raider." Re-boot Lara is substantially different, and undoubtedly suffers fewer back problems. I still have a nagging feeling that she was able to slip in the backdoor onto the protagonist stage using that past horndog nostalgia. I'm just not sure a major studio would greenlight a "female Indiana Jones" for a $100 million project were it not for the original (smaller) developers opting for a female character model. Far easier for them to simply plug in Dark Haired Man with Stubble, Model #4.

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 10:34:10 -0800

I love this trans Linkle retcon so goddamn much. It's such a good representation of how the internet, for all its missteps and horrible garbage, is a great platform for people to collectively rewrite crappy cultural/corporate narratives. Like, I'm totally convinced and now am no longer quite so grumpy about Nintendo fucking this up because there are young people on the Internet who changed that narrative to be something really awesome! Yeah, the Trans Girl Link collective-headcanon thing was sort of a fascinating phenomenon even before this latest twist. Because, like, it was well enough established in some corners of the internet that you could riff on it without having to explain "Ok, so imagine that Link is trans. Now...." etc etc. You could just refer to Link and people would take it for granted (within trans gamer twitter/tumblr — admittedly not a huge community) that you were talking about a trans character. Which was so very cool, not just for trans representation, but also as an example of people making their own myths and stories about a commercial character, and establishing those stories so firmly they actually displaced the canon in a particular community. I wish I knew where the meme came from. I mean, I can guess, at least in broad strokes — lots of kids did read Link as female (or mixed up Link and Zelda); and the experience of reading Link as female, and then being Told That You're Wrong by all your friends, is a pretty handy metaphor for the experience of reading yourself as female and then being Told That You're Wrong etc.* But I wish I knew more about how it spread and became as twitter/tumblr-subculturally-ubiquitous as it did, because it's probably a really cool story. *I did the same thing with Big Bird as a kid — was convinced he was meant to be female, and actually got really angry when someone tried to correct me — and at this point it takes effort for me to watch classic Sesame Street without reading Big Bird as a trans girl. It just fits too well with my experience of the character.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 13:10:43 -0800

Maybe we grew up in alternate realities, but I recall the giant, heaving pixel-bosom of Lara Croft was absolutely a selling point in the first game. Sexualization was built into the games from the start. I mean, even though it wasn't official, TR1 was the game that gave us "Nude Raider." Those words, "even though it wasn't official," those are important. The corporate will towards sexualizing Lara began with Tomb Raider II, or at least that's the story. I was on the Mario 64 side of the fence back then, and there were no rumors of Nude Mario codes.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 13:11:48 -0800

Just slap a green hat and tunic on your Mii and be on your way. May I introduce you to the underrated Wii-U game Nintendo Land?

By: littlesq

littlesq — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 13:54:01 -0800

My best friend of 15 years is female and one of the biggest fans of the Zelda series out of anyone I know. She's spent a lot of money on the Zelda series (merch, etc) and on Nintendo products in general (I'm also female and have played all the Zelda games and have been a life-long gamer). I'm pretty sure we aren't the only two females out there who are willing to spend money on something that would be different!

By: anastasiav

anastasiav — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 14:07:21 -0800

That's pretty interesting about Kirby - for me the character was always colored by what I'd consider a fairly strongly male name. My son's classroom includes both a boy and a girl named Madison and there are both a boy and girl Riley in his grade also. I think names (particularly a name like "kirby") ceased to have genders for elementary aged kids some time back.

By: littlesq

littlesq — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 14:14:56 -0800

Also, the name Linkle is like the naming equivalent of Yaddle. (I like Linka though)

By: steady-state strawberry

steady-state strawberry — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 14:29:09 -0800

My son's classroom includes both a boy and a girl named Madison and there are both a boy and girl Riley in his grade also. I think names (particularly a name like "kirby") ceased to have genders for elementary aged kids some time back. A quick Google doesn't pull up the name for it, but there's a well-known pattern in which male names androgenize and rapidly become exclusively female (see, e.g., "Ashley" or "Beverly"). If a name stops being gendered, I suspect it's a matter of time before it becomes female. It's possible that more obscure names are more prone to this, but it's hard for me to say.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 17:29:40 -0800

(I like Linka though) The weird thing about that is, since Japanese doesn't distinguish between L and R, it'd be the same as Rinka, which is the name for those little fire circles that menace you in the last area of Metroid. This also means that Linkle is the same as Rinkle. Which might make sense, if it means she's a "new wrinkle" on the formula. Huh, I think I just discovered why that's the character's name....

By: grobstein

grobstein — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 18:11:03 -0800

Probably sounds better in Japanese, too. Rinkuru, three-ish syllables, doesn't rhyme with "tinkle," ...

By: JHarris

JHarris — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 18:44:13 -0800

I don't think the Japanese name would add a third syllable, conversion to kana generally doesn't add a syllable unless there's a trailing consonant that isn't an N. I think, that is. So, Link becomes Ri-n-ku, but Linkle becomes Ri-n-ke... Wait, maybe you're right? Man it's been a long time since college Japanese.

By: lucidium

lucidium — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 19:02:19 -0800

Looks like she is indeed リンクル / Rinkuru, though I don't know for certain where that page is taken from.

By: straight

straight — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 21:42:43 -0800

Wind Waker isn't a ROM, it's an ISO, but other than that yes, that's terrific. When I started typing that comment I was misremembering it as Ocarina of Time which the dad had hacked.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 22:18:42 -0800

Ah, yep. Thanks for info lucidium!

By: sparkletone

sparkletone — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 15:13:05 -0800

Maddy Myers' piece on this is, as usual, thoughtful and well-written.