A Link Between Genders: Trans Joy and the Legend of Zelda
By Linda Codega
“It is inevitable all of us will see something of ourselves within Link,” says Keroblin, a Zelda fan who first remembers playing Phantom Hourglass in 2007, and identifies as transmasculine and agender. “We’re an active participant even [when] we can’t make narrative decisions, because we get to decide who Link is. It is easy to discover yourself and your gender through a character like this, and to make trans readings, as the lack of traditional gender roles creates, maybe for the first time you’ve seen, a world where all you have to be is kind and brave.”
Today, Nintendo released Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom; the sequel to 2017’s Breath of the Wild. Both games (and really, all the games in the Zelda franchise) follow a young man named Link who is tasked with rescuing the kingdom of Hyrule from a great evil. Breath of the Wild was an incredibly beautiful, poignant game, full of emotional stories and sidequests; it ushered in an era of exciting new open-world gameplay for the Zelda franchise. Breath of the Wild quickly became a bestseller and later won Game of the Year at the Game Awards. And now, gamers are returning to its version of Hyrule. But some of them have changed.
