After Railfan and The Red-Headed Menace attended a “Legend
of Zelda” concert (a symphony playing music from the game series) through
various backroads the discussion ended up about Link’s (“Legend”’s hero) sexual
orientation.
“Link has to be at least bi,” said the RHM. “In the second game, there were these young
women characters standing in front of houses saying “Your life points are
down. I can help you restore them.” Then the Link and a woman would go into the
house and the screen would go black and when Link reappeared his life points
would be back.”
“Prostitution in video games,” I gasped, laughing so hard I
could barely get the words out.
“They weren’t charging him anything.”
“So they were just easy.”**
“Yeah, pretty much.”
It was at this point Railfan said “I cannot believe we are
talking about this. Can we change the
subject please?” I have to admit that,
as much fun as I was having, I understood his point of view. Discussing the sexual orientation of a
collection of pixels on a screen just seems so… wrong.
*God knows I have enough of them in this family.
**Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
Sex and sexuality are open and widely-discussed themes in video games, though. (Prostitution is as well.) Characters across the GLBT spectrum are becoming much more common these days.
ReplyDeleteI think this may also be a case of me being influenced by my age and the typical American prudishness about sex.
DeleteI did not know that. Thinking about it, that makes sense, although I always think of Legend of Zelda (which I admit I have only played a little) as being more, I don't know, innocent than others? Of course, this is a case of me talking about something I really do not know all that much about -- the game I have the most experience is MarioKart.
ReplyDelete