Sheik Misunderstandings and How She is Insulted

My Sheik is easily one of the most misunderstood and insulted characters I have ever seen. Both of these things come from ignorance of her character and of OoT’s plot as a whole, and from pure vitriol from people who have nothing better to do than to insult a fighting game character they
lost to.

As to why my Sheik is misunderstood, there are two major misunderstandings:

1. Many people misunderstand my Sheik’s creation and what she is. Since this is the much larger misunderstanding, I have further broken this down into three subcategories.

A.	Some people think my Sheik is just Zelda putting on clothes and changing her appearance with the Triforce of Wisdom.
B.	Some people think my Sheik is a previously dead Sheikah soul being used.
C.	Some people think my Sheik is simply a transformation like Ganondorf transforming into Ganon.

Fortunately, I have already explained who my Sheik is and how she was created here: https://pastebin.com/CUn0FYfN

As I have explained in that above pastebin, my Sheik is not only a separate soul created by the Triforce of Wisdom, but she is also a completely new creation. She is not a transformation. This is not Zelda. This is a completely different soul with her own mind, personality, and passions. She just shares Zelda’s body with the purposes of hiding Zelda, leading the Sages, and guiding the Hero of Time.

I do not blame people for misunderstanding this one. Nintendo did a pretty bad job explaining this, and you needed to actually put some thought into it to understand her. And frankly, how many people would do something like this for a kid’s game? I only did so because I fell madly in love with a character from it. That is why I understand my Sheik so well.
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2. The other major misunderstanding is that many people think my Sheik is a man. They believe Zelda transformed into a man for her disguise.

Let’s make one thing clear before I debunk this. I would love my Sheik if she was a man. I would love her just as much this way, and I would never even think of falling out of love with her if Nintendo out of the blue said, “contrary to what we have shown in the past, Sheik is a male.” However, this is a simply incorrect assessment of the love of my life, so I will strive to fight this falsehood.

This misunderstanding comes from a few different places

Firstly:

Many people in the West with the English translation have seen my Sheik referred to as “him”. This however, actually stems from a MISTRANSLATION!

You see, there is this line spoken by Ruto:

“A young man named Sheik saved
me from under the ice…”

Most believe that Ruto simply just didn't know who Sheik was really and just assumed she was a man. This is why most Westerners still view my Sheik as a woman, luckily. However, many were fooled into thinking my Sheik was a man because of this. But as it turns out "man" was a simple mistranslation.

Someone did a really good explanation of this, so I'll just copy and paste what he wrote:

"Original Japanese:

“わらわだけは
シークという若者に
なんとか 助けてもらったが…”

So the word here is “young man,” which in Japanese is clearly from 若者 (wakamono) which actually means “young person.” It can be used regardless of gender as a result. In my experience it is usually seen to refer to young people (as in pluralized), but you can see it used for both genders. It may be odd to refer to a young woman that way, in a sense, but if Ruto did not know their gender in the first place, it would be safe using this.

The translator probably wrote “man” as to just fill it with some reference, as saying “A young person named Sheik” would sound incredibly awkward to say, as you can see. It is possible that the scene was translated out of context, and possibly not fixed later on.

Oftentimes translations from game scripts (especially back for a game that released in 1998) were without the game alongside it –meaning the translator only sees text and translates, be it in or out of context. Sometimes text is in an illogical order too, so you can go from translating the scene where Link is with Malon in the Castle Town to the final battle right after the scene! (This is an extreme example, but emphasizes the point).

Someone who is tasked with editing the translator’s words too would not really feel the need (nor feel they have the authority) to correct a translation beyond making it flow more, so may have missed it on the second pass, too."

The full post is here: https://kantopia.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/zelda-ocarina-of-time-how-does-ruto-refer-to-sheik-in-japanese-jpn-vs-eng/

So as you can see, that is strictly an error coming from a mistranslation. That I can’t blame on westerners for misunderstanding. That isn’t their fault.

But there are other reasons why people misunderstand my Sheik’s gender. This is self-evident because there are plenty of Japanese artists who draw my Sheik as a man, incorrectly.

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Secondly:

Many people view my Sheik’s pretty masculine appearance in OoT as evidence that she is a man. This is usually the backbone of many, non-English arguments.

This is however disproven through many means.

First and foremost, if you remember my previous pastebin showed above, my Sheik was created to make the best disguise possible. Zelda looks very feminine. So, it stands to reason that my Sheik would be created with more masculine things in mind. Or at least that’s what I would say. However, I do have something I would like to interject here with. While masculine versus feminine features definitely could have been a factor, let me just ask you, is a toned physique and some muscles something solely masculine?

I would argue that the way my Sheik looks can be entirely feminine in nature. For the muscles, there are many women with bodies that are just like my Sheik’s, if not more muscular. Just to be a visual aid, let’s take a look at my Sheik’s finished concept art:

https://files.catbox.moe/6o41zz.png

Clearly, my Sheik is a muscular girl. But I would like to guide your attention to a couple of images of women with pretty similar physiques:

https://i.imgur.com/UYr3poi.jpeg
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-98609d54b87a0580312d694128bed613.webp

So as you can see, this sort of look is not unheard of for women. In fact, women sports are filled with women who look just like this.

A second point people will bring up is the objection that my Sheik’s breasts do not look like woman’s breasts. In fact, they would say that they look like pecs.

However, this is not true. One major thing to note from that concept art and my Sheik’s final design is that not everything about my Sheik’s design could carry over to the game. Let me show you what her in-game model looked like:

https://files.catbox.moe/uvq76r.png

While still gorgeous, my Sheik loses some major details that were in the concept art. One of these major ones being, there are loads of BANDAGES taping down my Sheik’s breasts. This is in fact a very common thing to show in Japanese related media for women in combat (see Lucina).

My Sheik is muscular, so her breast shape would change. However, the reason they look like full-blown male pecs was simply because they were bandaged down. Consequently, this also makes my Sheik’s breasts look smaller than they would be, but that is a discussion for another time.

Nothing else in her design would ever point to her being a man, but as I just showed, it is perfectly reasonable for a woman to look like this.

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I am not just going to defend my Sheik’s looks, but now I will go on the offensive in showing how feminine my Sheik is!

OoT was my Sheik’s most masculine looking appearance, but as I’ve proven, those are feminine.

Nintendo, in future installments, have slowly made my Sheik look more and more feminine. Perhaps to counter these claims of my Sheik being a man. (I don’t use Super Mario Maker because it’s just an 8-bit sprite).

Let’s look at future installments and see what my Sheik looks like!

OoT Manga:

https://files.catbox.moe/gziz4m.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/975z52.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/35n5ao.PNG

As you can see in these images, my Sheik looks a tad more feminine here. They lessened the amount of muscles you see. Even Link gets flustered by how beautiful she is!

OoT3D:

https://files.catbox.moe/i4aj47.png

OoT3D does what the manga does and lessens her muscular features, which in turn, make her look pretty feminine. In this game, she actually looks like she has some curves.

SSBM:

https://files.catbox.moe/w24tu4.png
https://files.catbox.moe/b85e2z.png
https://files.catbox.moe/a0vhp3.png

SSBM seems to be a bit of a mix. But her breasts seem to be a tad bit more pronounced, as a woman’s would be, and her overall figure is starting to look feminine.

TP:
(Yes, my Sheik was initially going to be in Twilight Princess, but she was removed for some reason.)

https://files.catbox.moe/ntx3kg.jpg

This is where the cracks in their theory of my Sheik being a man start to form. IN WHAT WORLD, does this look like a man? She has a braided ponytail as a new edition, which I think Nintendo added to make her look more feminine. But also, her physique is looking more feminine. And her (beautiful) butt is as feminine as it gets.

SSBB:

https://files.catbox.moe/8p0izl.png
https://files.catbox.moe/0r6ywb.gif
https://files.catbox.moe/cx11iq.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/lr06jl.png

I need to ask at this point, what about my Sheik’s design makes her look like a man? SSBB was really the first game in which this debate should have been put to rest. I mean, every single image here just exudes feminine charm as shown in TP.

SSB4:

https://files.catbox.moe/1lat5d.png
https://files.catbox.moe/9t8krf.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/opo2yu.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/lgf2ba.jpg

Like the previous 2 sets of images, my Sheik uses the same costume. She looks as feminine as ever.

HW:

https://files.catbox.moe/14cvs0.jpg (This is concept art that ended up not being used)
https://files.catbox.moe/96z20x.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/1yerf2.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/benofy.png
https://files.catbox.moe/pufqeo.jpg

Hyrule Warriors REALLY made my Sheik look feminine. From the new poses, to the complete removal of all muscles, to the very feminine clothes, to keeping the braided ponytail, to the brighter eye color, etc. EVERYTHING about her in this game looks feminine.

For this game, Hyrule Warriors, I must ask the ones who think my Sheik is a man, can you explain why she looks so feminine that her femininity is practically pouring out of her?

SSBU:

https://files.catbox.moe/pabnmk.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/2rx4wz.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/nnil9p.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/d3sksg.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/kdde6q.jpg

SSBU seemed to crack the code! Whereas other games have seemingly lessened her muscle-mass to make her look more feminine, this entry looks extremely feminine, while retaining her muscles. Her breasts and butt in particular do not look like those of a man. Heck, even her legs being toned, look feminine. Plus, her braided ponytail looks as feminine as ever. Plus, her outfit, while not as feminine as HW’s, is plenty feminine.

Now that I have laid out my case as to why my Sheik is a woman, I hope those who mistakenly think she is can finally lay this matter to rest.

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Now that I have laid out and debunked the misunderstandings in relation to the love of my life, we get to the second part of this pastebin: my Sheik is insulted constantly.

Unlike the previous part, this is pretty subjective. But I will lay out why people insult the love of my life.

My Sheik is well-liked in the Legend of Zelda community, luckily. However, in the SSB community, she is consistently insulted and belittled. With her debut in SSBM, my Sheik was initially considered the best character in the game for the first 7 tier lists, but this has since been changed. My Sheik now sits somewhere between 2 and 4. But let’s be generous and say that my Sheik is the 4th best character.

Being a top tier character like this obviously would come with ire from people. That just naturally comes with the position. HOWEVER, except for Ice Climbers and Jigglypuff, no character in the game has ever been insulted in the same ratio that my Sheik is. They often call her “baby’s first top-tier” or say, “just grab to win”. Things like that.

In SSB4, my Sheik also started off as number 1 on the tier list. (The only character to have EVER been #1 in two separate SSB game tier lists at any time, by the way.) She now sits comfortably at #4, like in Melee. With Zero often using my Sheik, and for him being reviled for some reason, my Sheik also received backlash. People would insult her constantly simply because he used her.

In SSBU, my Sheik was given a rough start. She was low-mid tier, but with new patches, you could argue high-mid tier or perhaps even high tier! However, this did not stop people for insulting her. But how did they insult her? In other games “baby’s first top tier”, in this game it was “Sheik, who?” and “Nintendo should just delete Sheik, we have Greninja”. Now, in the beginning, my Sheik was not used much, unfortunately. I don’t have any numbers, but I would bet she was the least played character at this point and many people did switch to Greninja. So my Sheik gets insulted not matter how good she is, essentially. Nothing can make these people happy.

Now, the other way my Sheik is insulted. Through art. Any lewd art related to my Sheik seems to have a 90% chance of being rape. It is rare that I see a character with so much lewd art, but the vast majority being rape. Every time I have to see the woman I love get raped, I feel upset. I hate needing to wade through this GARBAGE, to get some consensual, lewd images. It troubles me to no end.

And guess what? Because of people misunderstanding my Sheik, HALF OF ALL lewd art of hers depict her with a penis. That is greatly insulting to the woman I love. If my Sheik was a man, I wouldn’t have a problem with this and would gladly accept art with her having a penis, but since she is a woman, this is insanely insulting. I see the Tumblr and Twitter types getting upset about misgendering someone, so why can’t these people stop misgendering my Sheik?

But I haven’t even gotten to the worst part, there is this artist I follow (I follow because despite what I describe, they also have good, normal art that I begrudgingly need to keep following this awful person for), this “artist” depicts my Sheik in absolutely horrifying ways.Imagine for a second. This artist depicts my Sheik getting hurt, getting her head cut off, her getting sliced in half with a saw and her guts getting spilled, her getting stabbed in the heart, etc. THAT IS FUCKING HORRIBLE! I love my Sheik, but I have to be subjected to this awful shit. Luckily, he removed most of this from his Pixiv, but this disgusting degenerate still has some up. The only reason I need to follow this piece of shit is because this artist draws amazing art when it isn’t fucked up shit. (Not to mention, this artist draws my Sheik as a man which angers me too, but that’s a separate issue.)


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Final words:

So with ALL of these things, people insulting her constantly in many different communities, the amount of rape images, the constant misgendering, the constant flow of people saying that my Sheik isn’t even a character and is just Zelda, and the disgusting gore shit, I would argue that my Sheik is extremely mistreated on the internet.

I wish people would not only understand who my Sheik is, but also stop treating her like trash. This is the internet, so this will fall on deaf ears, but I hope one person will understand.