Rethinking Sexism in Zelda: Is Link a Nice Guy™?

One of my first posts during my Feminist Gamers days was a review of gender roles and sexism in the Zelda Video Game series. With the recent news sparking a new round of discussion about Nice Guys™ (including the Penny Arcade debacle), I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about the relationship between Link and Zelda in the context of this ugliness.
As someone who has been a part of the online gaming community for some time now, I can tell you that it’s often been a popular refrain in the gaming community that Link, the Hero of Time, the keeper of the Triforce of Courage, goes through hell and back again and again for Zelda and she doesn’t even put out.
Now, the online gaming community only manages to out-perform its misogyny with its unoriginality. And I could dig up some examples of this but frankly I’m lazy and I’m writing this on a bit of a time table so you’ll just have to trust me on this: inevitably in a discussion about the relationship between Link and Zelda, you’ll get some braying jackass thinking he’s terribly clever for pointing out that Link probably has a pretty serious case of the blueballs right about now.

And rather than run over a fresh pile of gamer community compost, I’d rather just meditate on this a bit more.
Right off the bat, this belies the gamer community’s myopia regarding the rewards system. After all, if there is a lead male in the game, and a lead female in the game, and the lead male is in any way shape or form rescuing the lead female (even if she steps up to the plate and helps him out by shooting arrows at the bad guy while he heads in with the sword), then the only reward that can be conceptualized for completing the game and defeating the boss is the woman signing herself over to the hero for whatever purposes (and there can be only one) that he may have in mind for her. The idea that there could be a non-romantic, non-sexual reward system for this particular scenario would seem to blow the minds of these gamers more than finding out that the badass space bounty hunter is really a chick under all that armor.
The relationship between Zelda (Wisdom) and Link (Courage) is very well established as one of friendship. And while Japanese translations may differ on this, I somehow doubt it. And not as “I like you but as a friend” friendship, but of genuine, I-would-go-to-the-ends-of-the-earth-for-you friendship. At no point, when Zelda describes her relationship with Link, do we catch a glimpse of him heaving a little sigh, or frowning a bit and furrowing his brows. And while Link is pretty much a mute in all the games (he’s sort of like Hello Kitty with a sword and a hookshot), you’d think that the dude who has the divine source of courage embedded within him would be able to muster up a “that’s all well and good but can I take you out for a drink now that Gannon’s got my sword in his head?”
So no, Link is not some icon for Nice Guys™ everywhere. When he slays monsters and solves deadly dungeon puzzles, it’s not with the expectation that Zelda will put out, he does it because he’s a hero, because they’re friends, and because the dark lord with the divine source of power is an evil dude who has to be stopped.
It’s not like The Legend of Zelda series is some souped-up feminist powerhouse title. There’s still plenty of regressive crap to sort out, but I can’t help but notice that it’s one of the more popular adventure titles for women, and I wonder if the lack of entitlement on the part of the main character has something to do with that.