The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time’s Sheik Is Nothing Without Their Androgyny

As a transgender woman and someone who doesn’t conform to their birth gender, there are a handful of characters throughout video games who I treat with a certain level of reverence. During my "firmly still in the closet" teen years, I found myself fascinated with Guilty Gear’s Bridget, as they blurred the lines between masculine and feminine long before their queer identity would be cemented into canon. Vivian from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door proved equally impactful thanks to a personal arc that reinforced the woman she wanted to be and always had been. Though neither explicitly stated their queer narrative intentions, my growing mind subconsciously read between the lines, regardless: Both offered quiet forms of queer representation that, decades later, still rings true. The same compelling allure can be attributed to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s Sheik, a character I was first exposed to in Super Smash Bros. Melee, in which you could perform a simple button prompt to transform Zelda into Sheik and suddenly have an entirely new appearance and moveset at your disposal. I didn’t know it at the time, but seeing a cute Princess completely subvert their identity in re…