Female Link

2019character / fan artclassic

Published August 20, 2026

Female Link is a fan-adopted reinterpretation of the Legend of Zelda protagonist based on 1986 magazine artwork from Japan's Shonen Captain, which mistakenly drew Link as a woman. The images resurfaced on Twitter in March 2019 and were embraced by gamers who wanted a game starring the character.

zelda memesfan art memesgender discourse memesnintendo memesdelayed virality memes

Overview

Female Link is the nickname for a set of illustrations of a red-haired, woman-presenting version of Link from The Legend of Zelda, drawn by staff at the Japanese magazine Shonen Captain in 19861. The magazine's feature on the newly released NES game was packed with these depictions, apparently because the people writing it thought the player character was a woman2.

The art vanished into obscurity for more than three decades before Twitter rediscovered it in 2019, at which point fans latched onto the design and started asking Nintendo to actually make a game with her1. The look, long red hair, tunic, sword, has been treated as an unofficial alternate Link ever since3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Shonen Captain magazine (1986) / Twitter (viral spread 2019)
Key People
Unknown
Date
2019

The images come from a 1986 issue of Shonen Captain that covered the original Legend of Zelda for the Famicom2. Because the NES sprite for Link was tiny and androgynous, the magazine's staff seem to have simply assumed the hero was female and commissioned art to match, filling the feature with the mistaken depiction1.

The pictures resurfaced on March 29th, 2019, when Japanese '80s aesthetic blogger @kazzykazycom 4 posted scans of the magazine spread. The tweet pulled in more than 4,800 retweets and 10,000 likes within a week1.

How It Spread

Gaming site GoNintendo picked up the scans on April 2nd, 2019 and published a short article walking English-speaking readers through how the mix-up likely happened2. Their tweet linking the piece 3 pushed the images out to a much wider western audience and racked up thousands more retweets1.

Once the design was in front of gamers, jokes followed the pattern set by other 2018 to 2019 Nintendo gender-flip memes like Bowsette and Trans Luigi3. User @LouisatheLast 5 tweeted "Link is trans now" and trans users started claiming the character as their own, while others begged Nintendo to build an actual game around 1986 Female Link1.

The Daily Dot covered the wave on April 3rd, 2019, framing Female Link as a lost relic that had accidentally become a fresh fandom icon1. The design still gets recirculated whenever conversations about Linkle, gender-swapped Nintendo characters, or Zelda-versus-Link name confusion come up3.

How to Use This Meme

People typically share the original Shonen Captain scans as-is, often paired with captions asking Nintendo for a game starring this version of Link or joking that she is the "real" Zelda. Fan artists commonly redraw the design in modern styles, and the images are a common reference point in threads about gender-swapped Nintendo characters.

Frequently Asked Questions