J. Gynoid

Since Prof Havholm has been talking about the SNL skit where the Trekkies treat Shatner like Capt. Kirk at a convention in our discussion of media and reality, I thought I’d add into our discussion a figure I’ve been seeing a lot of recently, because I am a bit of a Zelda hound. And that’s Tingle.

Tingle is a 35-year-old Hylian (read: human) who thinks he’s a fairy. And he’s really kind of pathetic. “Tingle is a subtle jab at some of the nuts that fell from the Great Deku Tree of fandom,” states an excellent essay at ZeldaUniverse (I suggest you read it in full; it’s not long).

Not everyone is happy with Tingle’s presence in the Zelda games: there’s even an online “Die, Tingle, Die” campaign. This in itself, to me, signals an unhealthy obsession.

I just think it’s really interesting, though, that the makers of the Zelda games decided to put Tingle in. In my mind, Tingle is a signal to players *against* immersing themselves too much in the game, something that we described as a goal of players in class.

Thoughts? Kooloo-limpah.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.