Lonk

About

Lonk, an intentional misspelling of “Link,” is a Nintendo Mii avatar based on the protagonist character from the video game series The Legend of Zelda. Lonk can be seen as a fan-made alter ego of the officially licensed character, in a similar fashion to other corrupted versions of iconic video game and cartoon characters like Sanic (Sonic the Hedgehog), Mayro (Mario) and Dolan (Donald Duck).

Origin

On November 30th, 2013, FunnyJunk^[5] user taintedangel posted a screenshot of a Nintendo Mii character dressed in a green outfit resembling Link from The Legend of Zelda, with a speech bubble identifying himself as “Lonk from Pennsylvania” (shown below).

Spread

On December 2nd, 2013, a Facebook^[3] page titled “Lonk from Pennsylvania” was launched. On December 29th, DeviantArtist piffposh reposted the screenshot of Lonk. On June 10th, 2014, Tumblr^[2] user alternlsdlm reblogged the Lonk from Pennsylvania screenshot, which garnered more than 90,300 notes in the next two months. On July 20th, Tumblr user iguanamouth^[4] posted the Lonk image, a screenshot of a Mii character based off Princess Peach from the Super Mario franchise identified as “Petch from Texas” and an illustration of the two characters (shown below). In the first month, the post received over 260,000 notes.

On July 23rd, the Hello Ask Lonk Tumblr^[7] blog was launched, featuring posts written from the perspective of the Lonk character. On July 25th, Redditor ianelinon submitted the Petch and Lonk screenshots to the /r/gaming^[1] subreddit, where it gathered upwards of 3,500 votes (89% upvoted) in three weeks. On July 29th, iguanamouth posted an illustration of a Nintendo Mii avatar named Dankey Kang, a misspelling of the gorilla video game character Donkey Kong (shown below).^[4] The following day, Redditor MBArceus submitted the illustration to the /r/gaming^[8] subreddit, where it gained over 3,400 votes (90% upvoted) in two weeks.