There is an argument that keeps happening¹. A franchise/medium/etc gets a black character/protagonist after years of white ones, or a female character/protagonist after years of male ones, or maybe the character is gay or disabled or any of a dozen other categories. The same argument breaks out. It goes like: "this new minority character conforms too much to minority stereotype!". Or sometimes it is actually the opposite: "this new minority character is not representative enough of minority!", like the writers were so worried about conforming to stereotypes they overcorrected. Often, the people making this argument (either version) are totally right.
But it is the wrong argument.
It is the wrong argument because the problem is rarely actually that the character is a stereotype or isn't an archetype. The real problem is that the character is the only one. Imagine if there were two black characters, or female characters, or whatever. Imagine if one out of every ten of your characters was gay and one out of every three hundred of your characters was trans, like in the real world. Imagine if half your characters were female! Suddenly you don't have one character who every single member of minority group has to project themselves and every single feeling they have about their own community onto.
This is so obvious! This is how every minority-created piece of media averts the problem. But corporate media is so bad at this.
Unfortunately my very basic observation here is not actionable, because when you've had a streak of [only white, only male, only kyriarchy normative] characters, one character kinda has to be the first, and by the time you've decided to break your streak it is too late to retroactively stick in a few others. But, don't worry, corporate media CEOs inexplicably reading Cohost! You can still solve the problem, by adding more and more varied characters in the future.
And this is why Nintendo should fix the "should Zelda have a sword?" problem by having the next BOTW game be set 20 years after TOTK and star Link's daughter, who he has been raising alone in a cabin in the woods to be a feral commando girl while Link, himself, matured into a hot Beard Dad like Hugh Jackman in Logan. If Nintendo is not going to let BOTW!Link be trans, then the only remaining way for Nintendo to prove they are not transphobic is to develop Cis Link in a way that I, a trans person, personally find hot. Thanks for reading my post
¹ Context if you didn't see what I'm subchosting:
The Nintendo corporation has made twenty-seven video games in the Legend of Zelda series. These games always star a sword-wielding youth named Link and almost always feature Princess Zelda being rescued after being kidnapped or otherwise imperiled. Across the series Zelda is sometimes more, sometimes less empowered and sometimes more, sometimes less helpful to the quest, but she is never, ever a playable character.
For game number twenty-eight they are making "Echoes of Wisdom", a game based on the Links Awakening 2019 engine where Zelda is playable and Zelda rescues Link. In keeping with the character representations from ancillary media, Zelda does not have a per-se "weapon" and instead uses magic. The gameplay is accordingly slower, and more resembles a series of puzzles than it does "combat". Reactions seem generally positive, but there was a low-energy internet argument going all last month, with some people bothered that Zelda does not get to swing a cool sword like Link does and other people happy that Nintendo is varying their formula for once. (IMO it does seem like a refreshing mixup for a formula Nintendo has maybe repeated a couple times too often).
