#my gender is sheik

[gay-jesus-probably]

I like the general fandom trend to just take the plot of Hyrule Warriors as a loose guideline at best and just use the whole concept as a good excuse to get blorbos to interact across timelines, BUT I'm very disappointed that everyone is missing the comedic potential of a very specific squad of characters:

Young Link (aka Mask), who walks out of the nightmare of Majora's Mask and immediately gets portal kidnapped into a temporal war, takes one look at the whole mess and decides that you could not fucking pay him to admit to being the resident expert on Time Shenanigans. He introduces himself with the title of Hero of Termina, and definitely doesn't have any other ones, that would be crazy. Hero of Time? Never heard of him.

Tetra, who is a kickass pirate captain with zero patience for people trying to shove her into the Designated Princess role, and realizes immediately that Oh Fuck, this Hyrule has a lot of Ideas about how the Hero and the Princess are supposed to properly play their parts, the second they realize she's technically a Zelda they're gonna shove her in a goddamn dress and damsel her again, that's not happening. So she's definitely just a really cool pirate captain, nothing else going on here at all, definitely not the heir of the Hylian royal family in her time, that'd be crazy.

Ravio, who is literally just a palette swapped Link, meaning that the second his hood comes off, things are gonna get Awkward. There's no way in hell he's dealing with all that Hero baggage, that's Link work, so that giant bunny hood/mask is practically superglued to his head, and he's not taking it off for love or money.

Spirit Tracks Zelda, who is just in the Phantom Armour the whole time, and passing herself off as just a friendly ghost posessing a suit of armour to help the Hero of Spirits. Of course she isn't Princess Zelda, that's ridiculous, if she were a Zelda then people would start getting really weird about her technically being dead, and boy does that ever sound like a whole Thing she doesn't want to deal with, so she can't possibly be Zelda, she's just a nice ghost knight. Also, her teenage grandma is here, and that's kinda weird, so it's easier to just not admit to being royalty and avoid that awkward conversation.

Finally there's Sheik, who is not the Princess Zelda of the era straight up abandoning her war torn country for months at a time so she can risk her life in extreme cosplay for no clear reason, but is instead the actual Sheik from Ocarina of Time, who just beat Ganondorf like a month ago and is still trying to process what the fuck to do now. Also, he's been pretending to be a boy since he was ten, and is realizing there's a pretty good chance that he isn't pretending anymore, so that's a whole other can of worms. But for the last seven years of his life, being Princess Zelda meant certain death, so he's not really inclined to introduce himself like when in a new and stressful situation (not to mention he might actually just not be a girl named Zelda anymore), so he automatically introduces himself as just Sheik the spooky ninja man, and fuck he's in too deep to back out now, looks like he's committing to the bit. If you think you sense the Triforce of Wisdom on him, no you don't.

Cue shenanigans as the five of them attempt to hide that they're all actually kind of A Big Deal. The group motto is "Nobody says shit", which is usually delivered as a frantic hiss whenever someone slips up. Just the reunion between Sheik and Mask alone would be absolutely buckwild given how they parted, and how they're both frantically pretending to Not be involved with each other. For added hilarity and/or drama, Sheik gives his semi-bullshit cover story of having just been a friend of the Hero of Time, then runs into said Hero of Time and they both have to desperately pretend not to know each other, because if anyone picks up on the mountain of baggage between them then Mask is busted, and he won't hesitate to drag Sheik down with him out of sheer spite. Not to mention the weird balance of Sheik being used to this Link being a teenager that's actually a small child, and now has to adjust to Link who is a small child that's actually a teenager.

Also, i really feel like we're all missing out on the comedy potential of Ganondorf recognizing Young Link on sight and the two of them immediately launching into a grudge match with some extremely personal and specific insults on both sides. Meanwhile literally everybody else is just standing there watching, trying to process the fact that out of every single person that's been pulled out of time, Ganondorf only has personal beef with a literal nine year old.

I just feel like we're all really sleeping on the potential for Shenanigans here. The whole thing is an absurd mess, why not have some fun with it?

[chambers003]

oot/mm link is so fucked up like.

you are a 10 year old child, living with other children, and you are different from them. you don’t know how.

you are a child, and you have found other children, supposedly like you.

you watch as your newest friend is torn from you, leaving only an ocarina and knowledge of a sword behind.

you pull the sword from its pedestal and the world goes white.

when you awaken, you are a child in a 17 year old’s body, and the world has turned to ruin in your absence.

you are a child in an adult’s body, yet you begin your quest to defeat the evil that took your friend from you.

you have gotten used to being in a 17 year old’s body, but the first friend you made in your new world has just sent you back to relive the childhood he believes was stolen from you, without even asking your permission. he does not know you’ve gotten used to this life.

you remember your previous life, in this new one. he would not have known.

you are 9 years old. you are an adult in a child’s body.

you face a demon puppeting a child’s body.

you have three days until the moon crashes. the moon crashes. you play a tune, and you have three days until the moon crashes.

you try not to think of yourself when you look at the skull kid, wearing the mask of the demon controlling them.

you try not to think of them when you tear the souls from others and craft them into masks. the agony of donning them is enough.

you do not know how old you are. you are 9 years old. you do not know how many times you have lived three days. you are not 9 years old.

you hold the power of a god in your hands.

you wear the power of a god on your face. you are a god in a child’s body.

you do not know what you are.

[everyone-is-queer]

Genderfluid flag color picked from Zelda and Sheik (Melee)

[determinedowl23]

been into smash bros for 3 years and have FINALLY found a youtuber use he/him for sheik

on behalf of trans people thank you jacobalpharad

[kagoutiss]

yea ganon might wanna destroy everything, take over the world, etc, but at least he's not a bigot as he sits with his family of women and dubiously gendered child

yeah while also wearing his beautiful long hair and winged eyeliner and black nail polish and being totally decked out in topaz jewelry and having a perfect hourglass figure in his younger years. like say what u want about ganondorf but him and zelda are both iconic for being so transgender about the timeskip

[cookie-waffle]

Why do people keep acting like botw/totok zelink is a proship or something it’s so weird.

They’re the same age, they mutually respect each other, they’re close friends who trust each other deeply, so???? what is the issue here????

If I gotta see one more person claim it’s problematic because they headcanon them as siblings, or because it’s somehow homophobic to not ship Link with a dude, I’m gonna explode.

[prettyboykatsuki]

peak gender

[animangalover-writes]

Zelda: I need more gender.

Link: Here you can have mine.

[drawingpotatopenguin]

A little lad from @parksrway BotW AU! I love him so much he just gives me happiness

The sheikah outfit was not cooperating with me so I put him a cute little dress but I kept his color scheme, close enough right?

[iskotaa]

Easily the coolest character to come out of the late-90s.

[galahadenough]

Sheik: Link. I am Princess Zelda Link: …wtf happened. I’m big —— the last notes of the Minuet of Forest fade…

Sheik: btw. I’m Zelda Link: running past on a loop, disappearing and reappearing as he tests out the warp song on repeat Sheik: … Sheik: …next time —— on the shores of Lake Hylia

Sheik: I’m princess Zelda Link breaks off his thousand-yard stare long enough to start shaking water out of his ears —— Sheik: fuck this digs out a dusty box, whips out a musty dress, lipstick, hairbrush, etc. goes to Temple of Time Sheik Zelda, using an odd falsetto: Link. I am Pr- Fwoop- enter crystal/magic prison, stage right Link: mouth hanging open, pointing in shock Sheik: fuck

[lokh]

jesus. i regret clicking on that

[figofswords]

I graduated college! In celebration, here's a Sheik and Ganon drawing I may or may not get around to finishing.

This was actually for a pulp art assignment in one of my classes. The idea here was, since Zelda is sort of a quintessential damsel, to picture what it might look like on her end of things apart from just sitting around waiting to be rescued. In particular, this drawing is a reimagining of this 1992 illustration from the Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series: The Legend of Zelda (via History of Hyrule) with a Sheik/Zelda inspired by the Ocarina of Time manga. In general I have really deeply mixed feelings about the manga adaptations (tp especially (¬_¬)) but I'm OBSESSED with the idea of Sheik as a double agent under Ganon - seriously, what were they doing for seven years? Writing spoken word poetry about the flow of time? Transing their gender? anyways.

[sheikzine]

Happy Sheik Day! 🩷

mod yams speaking here! this will be our final post on the account, unless unforeseen circumstances arise. i just wanted to personally thank everyone who was with me on this journey over the last year

as some of you may know, this was my first time modding a zine, let alone being the head mod of one. there were a lot of things i needed to figure out along the way, and in all honesty, im just grateful this project was a success

every mod was invaluable, but i wanted to personally thank our writing mod kellen for being the Spreadsheet Master (in his words) and for putting up with my nagging. get yourself a man like kellen who is organized to a fault and can work a spreadsheet like nobodys business

to the contributors, i wanted to thank you all for giving this zine a shot. whilst smaller in scale (and thus less likely to fail), our mod team was otherwise inexperienced. yet you all valiantly took on the task and cooperated with us until the very end. im thankful to each and every one of you for putting in your all and for being patient with us during the production time. if you ever need any help, please feel free to reach out to me! ive got your back

to those who bought the zine: thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for supporting the project. whether you were there from the start, or found out about it on the last day, your support made it possible for us to donate to a good cause, one that especially means a lot to me. while the contributors were the ones who voted on the charity to donate to, i cant deny that my fingers were crossed, hoping wed donate to a trans organization. sheik was, and is, a huge part of me embracing my own gender identity, and im so glad we could give back to that cause

and with that, this chapter is closed. if youve read this far, thank you once again. this whole message was full of sap, but my feelings are genuine. i couldnt have done this without each and every one of you!

while sheik lurks in the shadows, his soul burns brighter than the sun. may you all carry that same passion with you throughout your own personal journeys. with love, mod yams 🍠💖

[kagoutiss]

Hi, I have come and seen the undercover sheik au, and I must ask if Sheik owns a gender or not. Also someone let Sheik sleep in, they clearly need it.

hi thank u so much for this question!!! so at this point i tend to think of Sheik’s gender as just being sometimes a girl and sometimes a boy? and sometimes both? not necessarily in the sense that he’s a girl as zelda and a boy as sheik, but rather she sometimes perceives herself as a girl and sometimes as a boy, regardless of whether he’s disguised at the time or not. so maybe she would be bigender if i had to pick a word for it, but i don’t think Sheik really tries to put a name to it, with all the other stuff he has on his mind :’-)

for pronoun stuff, i think sheik mostly would use he/she, since that’s what she’s used to hearing. impa generally refers to sheik with she/her, and ganondorf refers to sheik with he/him. sheik tends to refer to himself with he/she somewhat interchangeably in his head, but in conversation, she will generally stick with one or the other depending on who she’s with. if that makes sense lol

and yeah he deserves to sleep past noon…….unfortunately Impa and Ganondorf are both early birds, so almost every day is tired grumpy teenager day for poor Sheik :’-D

[pumpkinsouppe]

Here's my interpretations of all the OOT sages!! I have closeups of each sage and my thoughts behind their headcanon design changes below ^_^ (im alsooooo thinking of selling these as stickers if i ever figure out my silhouette)

Zelda

I headcanon Zelda is half Hylian half Sheikah with Impa being their aunt (mother’s sister, mother being full Sheikah and died when Zelda was young)

I also hc Zelda/Sheik as either transmasc or gender fluid depending on the interpretation of OOT I’m using, in this art Zelda is gender fluid and since I’m talking about sheik and Zelda a lot here I’ll just use they/them

Combined Zelda’s design with Sheik’s to make it more believable that they’re the same person this includes:

A skin color closer to Sheik’s concept art

Heterochromia, which is why sheik was hiding one of their eyes (and Zelda was forced to wear contacts or use magic to hide being half Sheikah post civil war)

Hylian pointed ears, another characteristic sheik had to hide (more info under Impa’s notes)

Lighter blond hair to be closer to Sheikah white hair

Sheik’s eye shape and eyebrows

Textured long hair, sheik would have a braid like in smash bros

Not pictured but if sheik is broad shouldered and muscular, then so is Zelda!!!!

Big forehead Zelda truther

Impa

Shares some traits with Zelda since I hc them as being related such as similar nose shape, eye shape, and skin tone

Textured hair styled into locs, tied into a short ponytail

Sheikah pointed ears, since Sheik hides their ears I thought it would be fun to have another different characteristic between the human races such as differing ear shapes. If Sheik showed their ears it would be a giveaway that they are not fully Sheikah

The rest is basically the same

Rauru

Rauru is perfect as he is all I did was give him spots on his skin to give him more accurate skin of an older person

Saria

So one thing I hc about Saria is that she was Link’s caretaker/mother figure in OOT so my main goal was to make her look childlike but have a more mature face

So I gave her rounder cheeks and made her smaller compared to everyone else and gave her larger eyes and a button nose but I also gave her some lines around her eyes to suggest age, I also gave her thinner eyebrows similar to a kid

I changed her eyes to brown bc I’m tired of all these blue eyed characters, there’s a severe drought of brown eyed characters in tloz

I gave her freckles

Her ears are also pointed upwards. I think the great deku tree did his best to make the kokiri look Hylian especially for link’s sake but he couldn’t get the ears right and they turned a little more animal-like since they live in the middle of the forest and are used to animals than humans. So kokiri look identical to Hylian children except the one difference is their ears being a different shape

Everything else is basically the same

Ruto

RUTOOOOOO ‼️‼️‼️‼️💕💕💕💕💕💕💕‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️💕💕💕💕

Her size is much larger bc why are all the royal male zora 20 stories high but not the female zora, she would be almost as tall as Darunia at this age

I changed her eyes to be like all the other zora, it’s weird all the other zora have full color eyes yet she has human eyes 😭😭 you can tell the Zelda team was terrified about being called monster fuckers by committing fully to making Ruto have all the same traits as other zora

I also gave her freckles and added more spots on her to give her more texture and bc I love the way the Majora’s mask zora look

I haven’t drawn her body so I don’t have itemized changes but I’d make a couple more changes, other than that she’s perfect. Only smaller changes were made to just make her more zora-like than the design the devs used bc they were scared of idek what. Women can be beasts and monsters!!!! Cowards

Nabooru

Nabooru had the most changes besides Zelda but technically Zelda was a mash of two designs rather than fixing all of the issues with Nabooru’s design

My goal was to make her look like an actual person rather than a caricature such as changing her over exaggerated nose to be a hooked nose, removing the white on her lips, etc. If there is anything I need to change about my new design for her please let me know, I want to keep her recognizable without using the harmful designs the devs gave her

I gave her a darker skin color and gave her moles

I toned her red hair so that it looks more natural

I haven't fully decided on her clothes but considering she's in the desert i gave her long sleeves esp bc the area you find her in has crazy sandstorms

I'm still deciding if i keep her yellow eyes or not, i like their contrast and how it matches her eyeshadow but also I want more brown eyed characters

Darunia

The one big change about Darunia is making him more animal like by giving him more of a snout and a dog-like nose. I don't like how Gorons are designed in games like twilight princess and the white lips they have in majora's mask so my main goal was for him to just seem more animalistic and non-human

i also added lighter color around his nose area to suggest age similar to a dog

nothing else changes other than that