Female Link

About

Female Link refers to a piece of 1986 art from the Japanese magazine Shonen Captain that depicted Link from The Legend of Zelda as a woman. The reason for the cross-gender depiction is unknown, but after it was rediscovered and reposted to Twitter in March of 2019, Twitter users celebrated the interpretation and stated they would like to see a game with the character.

Origin

On March 29th, 2019, Twitter user @kazzykazcom^[1] posted pictures of a female Link as depicted in a 1986 issue of Shonen Captain. The tweet gained over 4,800 retweets and 10,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

GoNintendo^[2] wrote an article about the discovery on April 2nd and tweeted^[3] a link to the article (shown below, left), helping expose the character to western audiences. Twitter users such as @L_Vermi joked that the character was "Zelda," referencing a common mistake made by people unfamiliar with the series that Link is Zelda (shown below, right).

Others joked about the character in a similar way to recent Nintendo gender-bending memes like Trans Luigi and Bowsette. User @LouisaTheLast^[4] joked "Link is trans now," gaining over 110 retweets and 500 likes (shown below, left). User @thejoaum^[5] joked "Bowsette 2.0 is coming" (shown below, right). The jokes were covered by Daily Dot.^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References