this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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Can someone make the progressive/liberal case for Ocarina of Time?
I love the game and don't really care either way, but it does kind of feel pretty standard save the princess fantasy.
Classic Zelda games always twist the save the princess trope a little bit because Zelda is rarely only a damsel in distress, she's a ruler with magical powers and who acts in ways that affect the story. Sometimes she can even be a pirate lord or an assassin. Not saying it's feminist, but less stupid than, like, Mario I guess
Oh, definitely. Zelda is far from a helpless damsel, but idk if OoT or some of the other games are all that progressive either.
She's probably at her most pivotal in the most recent big Zelda game, TotK, imo.
The princess plays a man for the majority of the game, though it’s not even like they’re trans. As soon as it’s revealed it’s her, she goes right back to a dress
I think that there are other angles to look at Sheik as besides it ("it" being the act of taking up a masculine persona) just not being trans representation. I generally think stories where women pretend to be men to accomplish some aim (e.g. military enlistment) have a progressive bent because the fundamental conceit of them is that society puts women in a dehumanized position as being less capable than men, as "imitating men" when they try to act as human beings, so by hiding their sex they circumvent the obstacle of this bigotry and disprove its basis by accomplishing whatever they are trying to accomplish "as a man."
While the persona of Sheik wasn't made of this purpose in a direct in-universe sense, I would argue that it at least serves it on a more meta level by showing the player someone who is highly competent to judge on their own merits before they are revealed to be Zelda.