Abstract
This chapter uses the video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the transnational online communities surrounding it as a case study to explore the intersections between configurations of queerness and disability. It discusses how fan artists and writers have created stories of the game’s protagonist negotiating trauma and disability through his queer relationships and friendships while envisioning a positive yet nuanced representations of a society in which difference is enthusiastically accepted. Through an analysis of the visual and narrative strategies employed in fancomics, this chapter argues that multilingual fannish conversations on social media are capable of constructing and normalizing progressive frameworks for how difference is portrayed and accommodated within global gaming cultures.
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Notes
- 1.
Diane Carr, “Ability, Disability and Dead Space,” The International Journal of Computer Game Research Vol. 4, No. 2 (2014). http://gamestudies.org/1402/articles/carr
- 2.
Shira Chess, Ready Player Two, p. 84.
- 3.
Ibid., 176.
- 4.
Christopher A. Paul, The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture Is the Worst (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), p. 10.
- 5.
Ibid., 138.
- 6.
Aubrey Anable, Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), p. 131.
- 7.
Sarah Gibbons, “Disability, Neurodiversity, and Inclusive Play: An Examination of the Social and Political Aspects of the Relationship Between Disability and Games,” Loading… The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association Vol. 9, No. 14 (2015), p. 35.
- 8.
Ibid., 29.
- 9.
See Jesse Singal, “Why the Video-Game Culture Wars Won’t Die.” New York Magazine, September 30, 2016. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/why-the-video-game-culture-wars-wont-die-two-years-later.html; Matt Lees, “What Gamergate Should Have Taught Us About the ‘Alt-Right.’”
- 10.
See Ib. Hunktears, “A Love Letter to Breath of the Wild’s Prince Sidon.” Fanbyte, February 20, 2019. https://www.fanbyte.com/features/a-love-letter-to-breath-of-the-wilds-prince-sidon/; Gita Jackson, “Breath of the Wild’s Shark Prince Is Getting A Lot of Love from Thirsty Zelda Fans.” Kotaku, March 13, 2017. https://kotaku.com/breath-of-the-wilds-shark-prince-is-getting-a-lot-of-lo-1793214067
- 11.
According to the review aggregator Metacritic, Breath of the Wild tied with Super Mario Odyssey as having the highest average rating of all video games released in 2017. According to Nintendo’s March 2019 financial report, Breath of the Wild sold roughly 12.77 million units, spurring demand for the Nintendo Switch console for which it was a launch title. See Metacritic, “Best Video Games for 2017.” Accessed July 1, 2019. https://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/year/all/filtered?sort=desc&year_selected=2017; Game Pressure, “Nintendo Reveals Impressive Sales of Switch and Zelda.” Posted April 25, 2019. https://www.gamepressure.com/newsroom/nintendo-reveals-impressive-sales-of-switch-and-zelda/zba73
- 12.
As of June 1, 2019, there were 861 works tagged with “Link/Prince Sidon” on the fanfiction hosting site Archive of Our Own. The top 100 works as sorted by hit count received well over 10,000 views and hundreds (and often thousands) of “kudos,” an indicator of positive audience engagement and feedback.
- 13.
The complete text is transcribed in the “Zelda’s Diary” entry on the Zeldapedia fandom wiki. The relevant section reads as follows: “A feeling I know all too well… For him, it has caused him to stop outwardly expressing his thoughts and feelings. I always believed him to be simply a gifted person who had never faced a day of hardship. How wrong I was… Everyone has struggles that go unseen by the world.” See Zeldapedia, “Zelda’s Diary.” Accessed July 1, 2019. https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Zelda%27s_Diary
- 14.
Ayako Kano, Acting Like a Woman in Modern Japan: Theater, Gender, and Nationalism (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. 58.
- 15.
Ibid., 59.
- 16.
Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 101.
- 17.
Henry Jenkins, “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004), pp. 118–130.
- 18.
Sarkeesian measures the percentage of games featured at the largest North American video game industry trade convention, Electronic Entertainment Expo (often abbreviated as “E3”), and finds that protagonists clearly indicated as human appeared in less than 10% of these games. In: Anita Sarkeesian, “Gender Breakdown of Games Showcased at E3 2015,” Feminist Frequency, June 22, 2015. https://feministfrequency.com/2015/06/22/gender-breakdown-of-games-showcased-at-e3-2015/. See also Colin Campbell, “The Number of Women Protagonists in E3 Games Still in Single Digits.” The Verge, June 22, 2018. https://www.polygon.com/e3/2018/6/14/17465102/women-protagonists-video-games-e3
- 19.
Bonnie Ruberg, Video Games Have Always Been Queer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), p. 209.
- 20.
Alexander Cho, “Queer Reverb: Tumblr, Affect, Time.” In Networked Affect, eds. Ken Hillis, Susanna Paasonen, and Michael Petit (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2015), pp. 43–57; Bruce J. Renninger, “‘Where I Can Be Myself, Where I Can Speak My Mind’: Networked Counterpublics in a Polymedia Environment,” New Media and Society Vol. 17 (2014), pp. 1513–29.
- 21.
Natalie Chew, “Tumblr as a Counterpublic Space for Fan Mobilization,” Transformative Works and Cultures Vol. 27 (2018).
- 22.
Paul Booth, Digital Fandom 2.0: New Media Studies (New York: Peter Lang, 2017), p. 8.
- 23.
Mark McLelland and James Welker, “An Introduction to ‘Boys Love’ in Japan.”
- 24.
David Goldberg, Dennis Looney, and Natalia Lusin, “Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2013.” Modern Language Association of America (2015). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED569204.pdf
- 25.
This series of zines was later collected into the graphic memoir Dumb: Living Without a Voice and published by Fantagraphics Books in August 2018.
- 26.
Jay Dolmage and Dale Jacobs, “Mutable Articulations: Disability Rhetorics and the Comics Medium.” In Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives, eds. Chris Foss, Jonathan W. Gray, and Zach Whalen (New York: Palgrave, 2016), p. 18.
- 27.
This comic can be accessed on Tumblr at https://blackeraser.tumblr.com/post/172100299363/goddess-statue-why-always-him-dont-u-want-a
- 28.
This comic can be accessed on Tumblr at https://blackeraser.tumblr.com/post/171757715658/eeeh-i-forget-to-post-here-o-im-more-active-on
- 29.
Following the official English translation of the text in Breath of the Wild, I use masculine pronouns for Link in this sentence even though it described him presenting as female. It should be noted, however, that many fans view Link as gender fluid and use “they/them” pronouns to refer to the character. Other fans view Link as transgender or genderqueer and use appropriate pronouns. Because Link does not address the issue in the game either through direct speech or in the notes he records in his Sheikah Slate, a plausible argument can be made for all of these interpretations of Link’s gender, and it is not the purpose of this essay to advocate for or argue against any given interpretation.
- 30.
This comic can be accessed on Tumblr at https://mjoyart.tumblr.com/post/182314972102
- 31.
Alison Piepmeier, Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism (New York: NYU Press, 2009), p. 112.
References
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Booth, Paul. 2017. Digital Fandom 2.0: New Media Studies. New York: Peter Lang.
Campbell, Colin. 2018. The Number of Women Protagonists in E3 Games Still in Single Digits. The Verge, June 22. https://www.polygon.com/e3/2018/6/14/17465102/women-protagonists-video-games-e3
Carr, Diane. 2014. Ability, Disability and Dead Space. The International Journal of Computer Game Research 14 (2). http://gamestudies.org/1402/articles/carr
Chess, Shira. 2017. Ready Player Two: Women Gamers and Designated Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Chew, Natalie. 2018. Tumblr as a Counterpublic Space for Fan Mobilization. Transformative Works and Cultures 27.
Cho, Alexander. 2015. Queer Reverb: Tumblr, Affect, Time. In Networked Affect, ed. Ken Hillis, Susanna Paasonen, and Michael Petit, 43–57. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Dolmage, Jay, and Dale Jacobs. 2016. Mutable Articulations: Disability Rhetorics and the Comics Medium. In Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives, ed. Chris Foss, Jonathan W. Gray, and Zach Whalen, 14–28. New York: Palgrave.
Game Pressure. 2019. Nintendo Reveals Impressive Sales of Switch and Zelda. Posted April 25, 2019. https://www.gamepressure.com/newsroom/nintendo-reveals-impressive-sales-of-switch-and-zelda/zba73
Gibbons, Sarah. 2015. Disability, Neurodiversity, and Inclusive Play: An Examination of the Social and Political Aspects of the Relationship Between Disability and Games. Loading… The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association 9 (14): 25–39.
Goldberg, David, Dennis Looney, and Natalia Lusin. 2015. Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2013. Modern Language Association of America. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED569204.pdf
Hunktears, Ib. 2019. A Love Letter to Breath of the Wild’s Prince Sidon. Fanbyte, February 20. https://www.fanbyte.com/features/a-love-letter-to-breath-of-the-wilds-prince-sidon/
Jackson, Gita. 2017. Breath of the Wild’s Shark Prince Is Getting a Lot of Love from Thirsty Zelda Fans. Kotaku, March 13. https://kotaku.com/breath-of-the-wilds-shark-prince-is-getting-a-lot-of-lo-1793214067
Jenkins, Henry. 2004. Game Design as Narrative Architecture. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 118–130. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Kano, Ayako. 2001. Acting Like a Woman in Modern Japan: Theater, Gender, and Nationalism. New York: Palgrave.
McLelland, Mark, and James Welker. 2015. An Introduction to ‘Boys Love’ in Japan. In Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker, 3–20. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.
Metacritic. Best Video Games for 2017. https://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/year/all/filtered?sort=desc&year_selected=2017. Accessed 1 July 2019.
Paul, Christopher A. 2018. The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture Is the Worst. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Piepmeier, Alison. 2009. Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism. New York: New York University Press.
Renninger, Bruce J. 2014. ‘Where I Can Be Myself, Where I Can Speak My Mind’: Networked Counterpublics in a Polymedia Environment. New Media and Society 17: 1513–1529.
Robertson, Jennifer. 1998. Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ruberg, Bonnie. 2019. Video Games Have Always Been Queer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Sarkeesian, Anita. 2015. Gender Breakdown of Games Showcased at E3 2015. Feminist Frequency, June 22. https://feministfrequency.com/2015/06/22/gender-breakdown-of-games-showcased-at-e3-2015/
Singal, Jesse. 2016. Why the Video-Game Culture Wars Won’t Die. New York Magazine, September 30. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/why-the-video-game-culture-wars-wont-die-two-years-later.html
Zeldapedia. Zelda’s Diary. https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Zelda%27s_Diary. Accessed 1 July 2019.
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Hemmann, K. (2020). Link Is Not Silent: Queer Disability Positivity in Fan Readings of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In: Manga Cultures and the Female Gaze. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18095-9_6
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