Last time I posted, I asked whether or not there are fake geek girls. In short, my argument was that yes, there are fake geek girls out there who pretend to be geeks for attention. It seems to be gaining at least some attention in the world of feminists and geeks alike, so I felt like giving my two cents about it. Now there's another issue that I've stumbled across, and that is the portrayal of women in video games. I'm going to be looking at Zelda today, as she is one of the main characters in one of my all-time favorite video game series.
I remember a while back, I saw on Facebook that a woman named Anita Sarkeesian was starting a KickStart (or whatever it's called) project to raise funds to do research on the way women are portrayed in video games. I at first supported it, thinking, "Hey, yeah. This chick probably has a point. Maybe some chicks are negatively depicted in video games." But after watching a video making a counterargument against the videos that Anita recently posted, I have to agree one hundred percent with that one.
The girl speaking in the video first talks about how Peach isn't a victim, but rather a hero in the way that she's a respected political figure. I really don't care much about Peach, as I'm not an avid Mario fan. I've played a couple of Mario Party games, but I'm just not a huge fan of the franchise. I was more interested in what she had to say about Zelda.
I'm not sure when exactly I got hooked on Zelda. I remember that when I was ten, I went to Oregon to see my grandparents and they had Minish Cap. I had no idea why. They just did. So my brother and I played that for a bit despite the fact that I had never heard of the game series before. I really liked it and was disappointed when we lost the game. (I believe we found it, but I'm not sure.) So I didn't really play much Zelda after that (I was more into Sonic Heroes anyway, so much so that I was writing fanfiction about it). Later on, though, after we got the Wii, my brother got Ocarina of Time, and not long after that, we got Twilight Princess (the first Zelda game I've beaten, which happened March 18th of last year). I can't remember when exactly I became a fan, so we'll just go with June 2006 when I was introduced to Minish Cap just to make things easier.
With that said, that's almost seven years of being a fan (minus a couple due to the fact that I didn't get to play any more). The entire time I sat there playing, I was either thinking, Wow, this is so awesome! I love this! or, Oh my gosh. This is so frustrating. How do I get past this part? You want to know what I wasn't thinking? Wow, how sexist of Nintendo to make Zelda this way!
Yet that seems to be the case with Anita Sarkeesian.
I'll be honest here. I haven't seen any of her videos yet. I'm planning on it, but I haven't seen any yet. So I'm not too familiar with her arguments or anything. But we know for a fact that Anita thinks that Zelda is a victim of male chauvinism due to the fact that she's seen as a damsel in distress.
Personally, I think that's a total insult to Zelda.
First of all, whom is the game series named after in the first place? Zelda. It is called The Legend of Zelda. Not The Legend of Link. It confused me at first, because though I knew Zelda was the princess, I wasn't exactly sure why it was named after her. I have my own opinions about it, but I won't get into that here. You can speculate if you want to. But that's what the title is. The Legend of Zelda. If Zelda didn't have any great value or importance, the games wouldn't be named after her.
Second of all, just... why? How has Zelda in any way been subjected to misogyny? Let's take a look at Ocarina of Time. Spoiler alert: after Link awakens after seven years to find Hyrule in a state of disrepair, Zelda disguises herself as Sheik to aid him in his quest to save the land. Not only that, but she is also the final Sage. Pure awesomeness right there.
Another example is Skyward Sword. I'm going to stop here, because we all know that Zelda is just so cool and I don't want to ramble too much, but look at it. I guess Anita could make a better argument for this game instead of Ocarina of Time, given that Zelda has been taken away to the Surface and Ghirahim finally gets his hands on her in the end so that he can use her soul to revive Demise. But come on. How is that fair to Zelda? First of all, Link's not just saving her. He's saving everyone on both the Surface and in Skyloft from Demise. Second of all, Zelda played a huge role in the game. Not just because Ghirahim needed her soul, but because she did certain things to help Link along the way. The best part? It turned out that Zelda was also the goddess Hylia. Now that is awesomeness.
So why are we so quick to jump to this conclusion that the makers of Zelda are total chauvinists? I'm not sure. It's beyond me. Zelda is a character loved and respected by many fans over the globe.
Here is the video that I watched for the counterargument to Anita's videos:
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