Talk:Sheik

S/heik

Currently, the article noticeably tries to write around pronoun usage in a few places, and in other places, it's inconsistent. The former would be fine for a small-scale subject, but for someone as important and popular as Sheik, the writing comes across as a bit repetitive. It's also going to seep into other articles regarding Sheik, which will no doubt confuse future editors. That's why I think it's better to adopt a sort of characterization policy sooner rather than later. It's my assessment that there are about two optimal ways to handle it in an accurate fashion.

1) The key creators stance, which is closer to the Mario Wiki. Simply put, the viewpoint of Eiji Aonuma and Bill Trinen is that Sheik is a she, and their word shouldn't be ignored. The article will acknowledge that certain characters and statements confuse Sheik for a male, but will maintain overall that Sheik is officially female. To be honest, this is also my most preferred option since keeping it clean and simple in a unified manner will lead to less hassles in the long run, but I'm open to the alternative below.

2) The case-by-case stance, which is closer to the Zelda Wiki. The wiki will flip pronoun usage depending on what is most relevant to each appearance. This won't always be immediately obvious, so it will probably be messier than the above. To elaborate, Sheik is clearly referred to with feminine pronouns in the Super Smash Bros. series and Hyrule Warriors; to address Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, while the website uses a masculine pronoun, social media posts all use feminine pronouns as well as in the in-game tips, which makes the punchline of the guidance fairly blatant, in-character teasing at the expense of Pit and some players.

That leaves Ocarina of Time. In-game, it seems about even since Ruto offhandedly considers Sheik a young man in dialog yet Sheik has a voice clip reserved for Gerudo women. For our purposes, despite not being as nearly an authoritative source as series supervisors, I believe we should look to the official game guides (note that I'm overlooking Zelda Universe and Hyrule Historia for now). My findings are as follows: Nintendo Power's, Versus Books', and Prima's Ocarina of Time guides use masculine pronouns (the latter even calls Sheik a young man), as well as Prima's Nintendo 64 Game Secrets, 1999 Edition, and The Wind Waker guides (which cover Ocarina of Time), but BradyGAMES' Ocarina of Time guide uses either pronoun depending on the page and Nintendo Power's Collector's Edition guide and Prima's Ocarina of Time 3D guide use feminine pronouns. In light of this, we can amend the second approach into two methods of looking at it.

2a) Use the most recent usage. This gives the edge to Sheik being referred to with feminine pronouns regarding the Ocarina of Time appearance. If we do go the case-by-case route, this would be my preferred choice since Sheik's character profiles throughout the Super Smash Bros. series use feminine pronouns in the context of the original Ocarina of Time appearance, and this happens to align with that interpretation.

2b) Use the most common usage. This gives the edge to Sheik being referred to with masculine pronouns regarding the Ocarina of Time appearance. This is admittedly supported by a line apparently in Hyrule Historia, but the way it's phrased leads me to believe the writer had the manga adaptation in mind, which took artistic liberties with the source material (and the contents of the timeline section are openly presented as more of a set of loose guidelines rather than concrete rules).

To sum it up, the bottom line is as follows: #1 would universally refer to Sheik with feminine pronouns, 2a would only refer to the Ocarina of Time manga with masculine pronouns, and 2b would add the Ocarina of Time game to the aforementioned; regardless, all subsequent appearances will use feminine pronouns. Personally, I don't think Sheik as a character would really care about gender pronouns - so long as no one thinks the Survivor of the Sheikahs is the Princess of Hyrule, the disguise did its job - but, well, as an "English-language wiki", it just reads more naturally to use third-person pronouns instead of overusing the person's name. LTL (talk) 18:15, 1 May 2020 (MDT)

I admittedly have not read the manga, but from what I understand it's different enough we could consider Sheik male there but not the OoT game (after all, Nintendo EAD didn't exactly write the manga). I personally found the "trust what a fish says over what Nintendo says" to be pretty dumb anyways Basically, I'd say 2a would probably be the safest bet unless I'm misunderstanding how it was presented in the manga. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 20:26, 1 May 2020 (MDT)

I definitely think that (1) should be considered overall, although I added "he" in Zelda Ocarina of Time because it was assumed that Sheik was a male disguise. and him being Zelda was a major plot point/spoiler at the end, as all along we thought it was a different character from Zelda. While Smash Bros. highly popularized Zelda being Sheik, I still think we should "he" for Zelda Ocarina of Time. Aside from that, I think the rest should just be (1), the key creators stance, unless Sheik is referred to as a male "within the game itself", not external official sources. The later OOT guides calling Sheik a "her" might be because Melee made it known that Zelda and Sheik are the same character. What do you think?

Oh and even if we reach a final decision, we should list which official sources use which pronoun for each game section (maybe not including social media). Results May Vary (talk) 20:38, 1 May 2020 (MDT)

@Doc: So it sounds like your ideal implementation would essentially be #1 for the games and #2 for other media. That works. I guess the main takeaway about Ocarina of Time is that, in the manga, Sheik is more or less a different person since he doesn't really know who he is, whereas in the game, Sheik is perfectly aware but is concerned about hiding her identity and expressing herself minimally, if that makes sense. Considering other details are different such as Sheik working with Ganondorf at first, there are certainly enough departures to give it special treatment.

@RMV: Barring some major development like a completely separate version of Sheik, I think it would be pretty wonky to try to fit #1 & #2 together and come out with the results of 2b. My theory is that players who were exposed to the artwork first were predisposed into thinking Sheik was male. Take a look. The N64 graphics were too rough to make heads or tails of it; in comparison, while the 3DS model is closer to the artwork, it noticeably deviates by relaxing the muscle tone. Basically, the artwork does a better job into making you believe that Sheik isn't Zelda while the game does a better job into making Sheik look more androgynous, which is a trait carried over into most of Sheik's other character designs. In my experience, I played the game before seeing the artwork, so my initial thought was, "is that Impa?" I'm also fairly certain that Sheik's original design was drawn before Ocarina of Time's storyline was finalized. Regarding pronoun emphasis, I think it's actually redundant. Sure, the introduction can definitely bring up the fact that Ocarina of Time material is inconsistent, but when the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate website is the anomaly (which we'd also mention), it's quite a roundabout way of saying that Sheik is otherwise always depicted as female afterwards. I know some people would disagree, but I never really saw it as that important to this particular character, and if this happened to be a Japanese-language wiki, it would be a non-issue. LTL (talk) 09:07, 2 May 2020 (MDT)