First of all: if you’re here, thank you so much. I have not felt like a real comics creator in a very long time, and getting back into creating consistently has felt a lot like coming home.
On top of not having made consistent sequential work in a long time, I haven’t made fan art (and, by virtue of the medium I work in, fan fiction) in a long time. Even while hiding behind the veil of a multi-billion-dollar franchise made by one of the most recognizable media companies on earth, I still feel quite vulnerable putting this online. I’m out of practice, and this is kind of weird.
So, I thank you for signing up to read this, and I hope you stick with me through the rest of its release.
ORIGINAL PREFACE (AUGUST 2026):
Even as I’m making this, I’m still not sure if I’m the right person for this story.
Like so many others, I got my brain fried at an early age by Nintendo’s 2006 release The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I was enraptured by its moody, atmospheric storytelling, and have been a lifelong fan since.
I absolutely love Zelda. I also recognize that is often extremely racist.
Since their inception, the Gerudo people of the Zelda universe have been an orientalist caricature of South Asian and SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) peoples. Even in their most charitable depictions, they are little more than a race of belly-dancing warrior women: sexy, violent, and just mysterious enough to invite the fantasy of conquest. Its crown jewel is the series’ recurring villain, Ganondorf: a Big, Scary, Evil Brown Man whose animal thirst for power encroaches on the noble kingdom of Hyrule (and therefore must be stopped) in game after game.
I probably take this more personally than I should. The last of my family to live in Southwest Asia were my great-grandparents, who left as refugees. What little racism I’ve experienced is greatly overshadowed by the ways I benefit from white privilege as a mostly-white guy. My claim to the common cultural heritage that also spawned the Gerudo is shaky at best. But Zelda’s orientalism is a blind spot in its critical reception, and as long as I have the understanding to bring attention to it, I feel like I have to.
In service of that effort, the concept of Ganondorf as a boy king—anxious and uncertain but eager to do the right thing for his people—has been bouncing around in my head for the better part of a decade. I’m glad to be sharing this, and I hope you enjoy this work.
-Joey
