Poll: Would we all be cool with a female Link?

[garcian67]

I would avoid using Sages to prove the connection between Divinity and Feminity. Sages seem to need a medium in order to use the power of the Goddesses (OOT: Medallions WW: Intruments TP: Mirror of Twilight, or Zelda herself), just like Link.

The sage arguments were weaker overall, which is why they were reasons 4-6, rather than 1-3.

That gender shouldn't play any role in the duties of being a Sage is emphasized pretty heavily. Although girls are the majority for OOT, there are none in TP. Makor is characterized as a guy and his predecessor was a guy as well. It's also established that until a Sage's duties are over they cannot marry.

Makor was indeed characterized as a guy, as was the deku tree in both wind waker and OoT, to me, this seems more to imply a strong connection between the earth itself and manhood. Supported by the presence of many other natural spirits all being male (valoo, Lord Jabu Jabu, all 4 spirits of light). This point is rather secondary, however, which is why I chose to ignore Makor. This can even be used as another argument for a male hero, (Hero in green garb. Green -> earth. Earth->male) but I chose to use the logical converse (sacred-female rather than profane->male) as I thought the evidence was stronger in that direction.

As another side point, the sages in Twilight Princess are only seen as statues and they are all old dead white dudes. Why I brought up the female sages was largely to show that not all sages are male, which would hurt the argument much more than some sages being female helps it.

The existence of girl Sages supports the idea that a girl could be Link, since they are limited to using objects to work with divine power, despite their femininity. I don't think it's enough support, since the Sages' traits are tied closer to Zelda's than Link's.

The existence and gender of the sages does not, directly, support a link of any gender. The sages are the guardians of the sacred realm, which makes them more casual observers to the cyclical struggle than actual participants. They do have a stronger connection to the divine than a normal citizen would, as their destiny is intertwined with that of the triforce, but they themselves aren't tools used directly by the goddesses (as the hero and Zelda are). The sages are servants to the hero and hylia, and in that capacity do not need to possess strong magical power on their own. The exception being Rauru.

It is important to note that all (iirc) of the sages claim descent from a past sage. In this case, and seeing there is a different distribution of genders depending on which game you look at, which may be taken as evidence of the duties of a sage being gender-independent, but the total number of sages, along with the elements they embody, has also changed throughout the series, so it is rather difficult to make a conclusion on this point.

I'd drop the 6th point as well. There are a lot of different types of magic in LoZ. The magic that Twinrova uses seems to be based off the ice and fire rod designs, which were made by Hylians. The magic Great Fairies and Zelda taps into is the divine stuff.

The 6th point is rather weak and I debated including it myself, it's probably about as strong as saying Link's Grandma in wind waker makes magic soup.

Off-Topic: Nice job making this thread into an interesting read. Olas too.

Thank you!

And, to Olas and everyone else, Thank you for the excellent discussion.

 

[Weaver]

I don't think there's anything lorewise that forbids the hero of time from being female.

 

[Vegosiux]

I dunno, would we all be cool with a male Lara Croft?

Oh wait, Uncharted. (Still a different franchise tho at least).

 

[NemotheElvenPanda]

I voted no because I'd much rather have Zelda be featured in a game of her own where she's saving Link this time, than just a Link with XX chromosomes. It's an interesting idea that I think should happen down the road, but giving more attention to the series' namesake would be much more interesting.