• Welcome to ZD Forums! You must create an account and log in to see and participate in the Shoutbox chat on this main index page.

Ocarina of Time Sheik: He or She?

Sheik: He or She?

  • He

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • She

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Undecided

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • This question is too awkward for me

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    0

snakeoiltanker

Wake Up!
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
Location
Ohio
Also if you remember right, it was Link that led Ganon to the door of time, Zelda probably figured this out, so hiding her identity from Link was not so much out of disrespect, but to protect herself, cuz if even Link didnt know who Sheik was, then ganon would most likely not find out either. from what i can tell Impa is the only one in Hyrule that Knew the true identity of Sheik! It was a Ruse to protect herself and Link so that the Mission had a chance to be completed!
 

Japas

Indigo-Go's Bassist
Joined
Mar 8, 2013
Location
Connecticut
Sheik's Gender

To start off, I'm not sure if this is in the right forum, but I'm assuming that it should go into the World of Zelda instead of Zelda Theory since this is no longer a discussion of a theory.

This year I decided to play through all the Zelda games in the official timeline order and to 100% them all. As such, I'm using the walkthroughs on this site so that I can 100% the games as fast as I can during 2014.

I've been playing Minish Cap as it's the second game in the official timeline and when I opened Zelda Dungeon I saw it. It being the official confirmation of Sheik's gender. On one hand I'm so very pleased because now I don't have to stumble into discussions on Sheik's gender, because I always find those long drawn out and intense. But on the other hand I'm... amused, in a way.

When I first beat Ocarina of Time for the first time I was twelve and in seventh grade. As most people know, twelve year olds are pretty emotional people, and I was starting to fall into my depression and I developed a crush on Sheik. When Sheik was revealed to be Zelda I was shocked; I spent months questioning my sexuality. But the truth is I should have been questioning why I had a crush on a video game character.

Something that made me believe Sheik to be male is that the facial structure was more male as well as the body type. This was not much to base on seeing as the game was from the 90s and the graphics weren't so good back then.


When I get past the initial shock of finding out Sheik's official gender, I got a bit confused. After I got older I came to believe that since Zelda is a sage, she had some form of magic where she would be able to transform herself into the male Sheikah, Sheik.

But another thing that I realized as I grew older was "When has there been a male Sheikah?" Before the official timeline came out, I never thought of where anything fell into place, but I always assumed that Twilight Princess was in the same timeline as Ocarina of Time.

When it came down to it, I acknowledged that the three games that had Sheikah were
  • Ocarina of Time
  • Twilight Princess
  • Skyward Sword

The Sheikah that we are shown are
  • OoT - Sheik and Impa
  • TP - Impaz
  • SS - Impa

If you play all three games, when you get to Skyward Sword you might look back to the two other games with Sheikah you will realize that almost all the Sheikah are female, except for one. The one that isn't female is later confirmed to be a female.


So I guess what I'm going about in asking is
  • Did you always believe Sheik to be female?
  • Were you shocked by this confirmation?
  • What were your beliefs about Sheik when you first played Ocarina of Time?
 
Last edited:

Dio

~ It's me, Dio!~
Joined
Jul 6, 2011
Location
England
Gender
Absolute unit
•Did you always believe Sheik to be female? Yes I did, because of the voice, I did not know it was even supposed to be a male disguise.
•Were you shocked by this confirmation? No, I have known Sheik was Zelda since I finished OOT, I was probably 6 at the time.
•What were your beliefs about Sheik when you first played Ocarina of Time? I was 4, she was just another character that helped me, I never knew she was pretending to be male because of the voice, as I said.
 

mαrkαsscoρ

Mr. SidleInYourDMs
Joined
May 5, 2012
Location
American Wasteland
-i had a feeling but i remember not being entirely positive,sheik just seemed sorta...feminine
-i guess a bit,at least that part of me who believed it may have been a boy
-she's not NEARLY as cool or involved as i though she would have been,at least from how i imagined her to be while playing Melee
 

Azure Sage

March onward forever...
Staff member
ZD Legend
Comm. Coordinator
From the moment I laid eyes on Sheik, I assumed she was female. In fact, I was confused when Ruto referred to Sheik as a male because I thought she was female. When Sheik revealed herself to be Zelda, I was kinda surprised, but at the same time I sort of had a feeling it was her all along.

Now while I personally think Sheik is female, I don't really care what other people think her gender is. The guy in the Hyrule Warriors direct referred to Sheik as a female, but that's a non-canon game so I don't really count it. As far as I know, Sheik's official gender hasn't actually been confirmed (note that I haven't read the Hyrule Historia so I have no idea if it covers that in there). I would say let people think Sheik's gender is whatever they want it to be. It honestly doesn't matter that much.
 

Mamono101

生きることは痛みを知ること。
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Nov 17, 2011
Location
The Makai
(I'm going to slightly reorder you questions so I can answer them without repeating myself too much.)

  1. What were your beliefs about Sheik when you first played Ocarina of Time?

    When I first played through OoT, I thought that Sheik was male. Not knowing that Sheik is the Princess in disguise, to me there was no clear evidence to the contrary.

  2. Did you always believe Sheik to be female?

    Since playing OoT back in...2003/4 and completing it, I have always fallen on the side of "Sheik is female" for the simple reason that Sheik is Zelda. I do not believe for one second that Sheik was meant to be anything other than Zelda dressed up to look like a male, in order to hide herself from Ganondorf.

  3. Were you shocked by this confirmation?

    As I already thought of Sheik as a woman, it came as no surprise.

I came across the notion that some people believe Sheik to be male a little while back and was stunned at how anyone, after playing the games, could still think that. I even went as far as blogging my thoughts about it in one of my early blogs. I ran across an essay about this topic on dA and was shocked at all the baseless claims that were made in order to prove that Sheik was male. I did my own digging into the argument as I wanted to hear what both sides of it were saying, and I ended up on a website that some fan had created with the sole purpose to show that Sheik was female. At this point in time, I was already of the idea that Sheik was a woman and this website only helped to confirm what I was already thinking.

To end with, I'm just going to leave the link to that website: Sheik's Gender
 
Last edited:

43ForceGems

Quid est veritas, Claudia
Joined
Feb 9, 2010
Location
Magicant
I never understood the debates... Sheik is not a person. Sheik is a fake person created as an alias by Zelda... If I dressed up in drag and pretended to be a girl, would I actually become a girl? No... But the alias I'm portraying is supposed to be a girl. So if you ask what gender Sheik is... it makes no sense, because Zelda is Sheik... and Zelda's a girl... so Sheik's a girl... I always knew that and it never made any sense to me why anyone thought anything otherwise
 
Joined
Sep 23, 2013
Location
United States
Even back when OOT first came out, I knew immediately that Sheik is female. I guess it's just due to her body type that gave it away, so I'm probably one of the few that knew about her actual gender even before the reveal at the end of the game. To this day, I still think that Sheik's female. It's not a huge surprise for me.
 

Hanyou

didn't build that
My first impression of Shiek was that "he" was androgynous. There was always something off about his character design, and his voice and movements struck me as quite effeminate.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out Zelda was Sheik, but Sheik's gender wasn't really on my mind at the time.

I was far more surprised years later when I learned that some people thought Sheik was male. Everything in the game points towards Sheik being a mostly superficial disguise, not an entirely different character. I'm still confused as to why there was ever a controversy.
 

r2d93

Hero of the Stars
Joined
Nov 10, 2011
Location
Lost Woods
Well my first introduction to Sheik was actually in Super Smash Bros Melee and then I just thought it was a totally different person. Like Zelda's guardian or something. But this was just my young mind making up crap. Idk how but I found out before I even played OoT that Sheik was actually Zelda in disguise. And from then on even after playing the game I always thought it was just Zelda in a costume, I didn't think Sheik was actually a male
 

Shroom

The Artist Formally Known as Deku Shroom™
Joined
Jan 21, 2011
Gender
Fun Guy
When I first played OoT, I was pretty young and didn't really have a total grasp on the whole disguise thing. I actually thought Sheik was supposed to be a girl from the start due to "his" effeminate body shape and voice, but would get a bit confused when Sheik was referred to a man. I put it together before the end of the game though, but it's still a pretty neat bit that they added.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top Bottom