Quote Originally Posted by Dire Moose View Post
So I have kind of vaguely danced around this one issue a lot because of how absurd it would sound, but I'm hitting a critical point in transition mentally and can't handle it anymore. There is one major thing tying me to being male that I just cannot get past. And it is tearing me apart.

I have been a huge fan of Legend of Zelda ever since my best friend got me Ocarina of Time for Christmas many years ago. I enjoyed the story, the gameplay, everything. But most of all, what I loved about this series was truly being able to see myself in the main character. Link and I do look very much alike, and the designers created the character as mainly a blank slate to fill in with your own personality. So I did. Link and I became more and more intertwined over time as I began seeing parallels to my life in the stories of the games, applying certain philosophical aspects of them to my own life, etc. I have even cosplaying Link at many conventions.

As I figured out more aspects of myself I simply integrated them into my version of Link. I realized I was probably mildly autistic? Well then Link must be mildly autistic too. After I came out as bisexual, I began viewing Link as bisexual as well.

This brings us to a rather obvious problem. I have now hit on the idea that I am transgender. And that I prefer being female over being male. And this is not something that I can treat like everything else. Applying that to Link is impossible as there is no "gender option" in the game. Link is clearly male. And to maintain the previously established connection, that would have to change. But it can't be changed. So therefore, I have no choice but to retain some identity as male, even if otherwise I'd rather not.

This must seem really silly to anyone reading this. After all, it's just a video game, right? And you can still be female and play a male character, right? Well, I tried that. Attempting to play while identifying and presenting female gave me such a sense of pain that I could feel it physically. It was as if something had been physically severed. Subsequent attempts led to me having to fight so hard to retain a sense of female identity that any enjoyment of the game was lost, and a sense of every bit of joy in it being gone, the experience being dead, and me just going through the motions. It seems it just isn't possible to have that kind of enjoyment as female because the connection is lost.

I have been dealing with the loss now by just not playing any of the games, but I look back and really wish I could play them, and feeling sad that I can't. Especially since life as female feels more vibrant, more exciting, and more joyful than life as male. There just is no way to integrate this one thing I really love into my identity as female, and it's driving me insane. I have been trying to think of any solution to this problem, even just find someone, anyone else who has gone through something similar, but no matter what I look for, it seems to me that nobody has ever had to deal with anything even remotely like this, ever.

So that's it. That's the one thing keeping me from jumping into transition. As stupid and silly as it may sound, it is very real and very frustrating to me. And I'm finally posting it here now because I'm getting to a point where I can't keep avoiding it anymore. Please let me know if there is anything that can be done or any way to deal with this.

A few other points:

Don't mention Linkle. She was a side character from one game that isn't even part of the series canon, and is thus irrelevant.

Don't point out that Link is androgynous. Androgynous and female are different things.
Which version or edition of Zelda are you playing?