Careful readers of this site may have noticed that I bear a particular fondness for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. My brother and I once spent an entire summer trying to complete the entire game (I was, and remain, a real stickler for side quests) in our recently-flooded basement instead of going outside in the fresh air and sunshine like your sister; I’m serious, go outside. To this day the smell of mildew and the sound of an industrial-strength fan transports me back to the first time I saw Link step out of the Temple of Time to find that seven years had passed and Re-Deads had overrun Hyrule Castle Town.

And if there’s one thing I love as much as Ocarina of Time (besides, I guess, Majora’s Mask), it’s hot queer babes in biker shorts and gender ambiguity. I tend to fall asleep during Very Serious Conversations about Video Games™, so I’m pretty much going to focus on the masculine-of-center hotties and trans/genderqueer readings of various characters and give all possible Unfortunate Implications (“But why do the Gerudos even need a king and shouldn’t Ruto be more independent and I think Malon lacks agency…”) a miss entirely. It’s such a great game for gays, lesbians and queermoppets of all stripes. Here’s a primer for those of you who might need a little push before picking up your old N64 controller.

Impa

One of the first important characters you meet outside of Kokiri forest, Impa is a butch vision in bike shorts. She’s Zelda’s bodyguard-slash-lesbian-babysitter and a member of the semi-legendary race of royal protectors known as the Sheikah (she’s also how I used to picture Winter Celchu, Leia’s childhood bodyguard, when I was really into Star Wars EU, but that’s not really important right now).

“But what makes Impa a lesbian?” BIKE SHORTS. Look at her. Look at her.

Those bike shorts (and those practical-yet-kinky boots) tell you everything you need to know about Impa. Her girlfriend’s a vegan chef; Impa’s not vegetarian herself but has enormous respect for that particularly lifestyle choice. They met at Dinah Shore weekend. She works part-time at a bike repair shop and goes trail running three times a week with a bunch of guys she used to work with when she was in Plastics. She’s really centered and makes her own bread and her friends often ask her to act as a babysitter when they take shrooms. She’s old-school, like still belongs to lesbian listservs and goes to Indigo Girls concerts kind of old-school.

“Wow, that’s really gay.” Shut up, I’m not finished yet. We’re going to get gayer before the Triforce is restored.

Nabooru

“First of all, let me introduce myself. I’m Nabooru of the Gerudo. I’m a lone wolf thief. But don’t get me wrong! Though we’re both thieves, I’m completely different from Ganondorf.”

Any woman who refers to herself as a “lone wolf thief” has my immediate attention. A female Raffles? Yes, please. She has a band of outlaws loyal only to her that she commands from a lonely desert outpost and her one goal is to steal the Silver Gauntlets, which grant their wearer incredible strength, so you know she’d be able to bridal-carry you over Zora Falls on your honeymoon to Lake Hylia.

Unfortunately, Nabooru gets kidnapped by a pair of twin witches (awesome) before she can steal the gauntlets for herself; they turn her into an Iron Knuckle (awesome) and force her to fight Link (awesome), who finds her to be one of the most formidable mini-bosses in the game (AWESOME). Her speed and stamina are insane, even for an Iron Knuckle, which is really saying something. The final (this is in no way final) verdict (I can’t actually make any kind of official ruling, so “verdict” is the entirely wrong word to use here, also sexuality is a continuum) on her orientation is this: she’s super-strong and super-bisexual. You can’t pin Nabooru down. She idly comments on Link’s handsomeness in his adult form, but doesn’t seem too bothered about being trapped in the Spirit Realm with Ruto and Impa, either. I mean, check out this significant Look between the two of them after Ganondorf is defeated:

Darunia might as well not exist. Plus, look at how many rings Nabooru is wearing. Have you ever known a woman who wears lots of simple rings to be straight? Case closed.

The Gerudos

This scene never, ever fails to make me laugh. Link has to rescue four hapless carpenters who’ve been imprisoned in the Gerudo fortress (the way the carpenters run off after he’s freed them, by the way, is the cutest, clumsiest run I have ever seen in my life). The Gerudo are an all-female race of misandrist pirates and thieves who produce a single male citizen every 100 years. Once Link defeats four Gerudo warriors in hand-to-hand combat, their leader makes him an honorary woman and accepts him as a member of their organization.

“I used to think that all men, besides the great Ganondorf, were useless…but now that I’ve seen you, I don’t think so anymore!”

You could argue that it’s a little sexist that the single male citizen becomes king (and that in this instance becomes Ganondorf, King of Evil and destroyer of Hyrule), but A of all, that’s boring and predictable of you, and B of all, Ganondorf doesn’t seem to have any actual power on display in Gerudo Fortress. No Gerudo warriors patrol Castle Town or protect his throne from Link’s attack. They just…keep being thieves in the desert. Ganondorf does his thing, and the Gerudo do theirs: riding horses, shooting arrows, kidnapping men, and stealing whatever’s not nailed down.

The Great Fairies

“The Great Fairies.” If you’re not picking up what Shigeru Miyamoto is putting down at this point, this may not be the game for you. The Great Fairies are beautiful drag queens who hide in fountains deep below the surface of the earth, only to leap up screaming with laughter every time a good-looking boy wanders in in order to shower him with glitter and gifts.

Sheik

The easiest way to waste an afternoon (if you’re as into gender studies as you are late-90s action-adventure games, I guess) is to wade through the various fights about Sheik’s “real” gender online. I am prepared to settle that question once and for all, right now:

Q: What is Sheik’s gender?
A: Ace bandages, bangs, and a hearty dose of roundhouse kicks, that’s what Sheik’s gender is.

Sheik is hot as shit and confusing like a motherfucker. Remember that episode of Boy Meets World where Rider Strong dressed up like a girl (“Chick Like Me“) and you found yourself with a head full of questions as you tried to fall asleep that night? That feeling was Sheik. The first time Link and Sheik meet, time itself seems to stop:

Is Sheik Zelda in disguise, and therefore a tomboy? Yes.

Is Sheik Zelda’s butch lesbian form — the Hylian equivalent of Shane? Yes.

Is Sheik Zelda utterly transformed into a male counterpart, and a trans hero? Yes.

Is Sheik the red-eyed antithesis of the gender binary, as fluid and as free as the water in the Zora Kingdom? Hell yes. Sheik’s gender is time-traveling bard. Sheik’s gender is shoulder muscles. Sheik’s gender is my hair’s falling across my eyes but I’m too busy playing the harp and fighting blood spirits to worry about that right now.

Sheik is the Great Confuser. By the time xie’s finished explaining the concept of the Hero of Time to you, you’re dazedly whispering at the screen, “I don’t know what gender you are, or what gender even is anymore, but I’ll learn whatever songs you have to teach me.”