Too afraid of change, huh? I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

Imagine you had, say...a piece of old furniture that belonged to your great grandparent, and it was very special to them, and to your mother or father who decided to pass it down to you. Imagine you also cared about this because it was sentimental and part of your childhood; it reminds you of your grandparent/great grandparent, and it's beautiful on its own anyway. Now let's have someone try and pressure you into repainting it. Wouldn't it feel a little wrong that they're suggesting such a thing, even though they have no say in the matter?

Or what if, in a situation a little closer to this one, the writer's of a TV show suddenly decided to change the gender of the main character. They give a reason for it, so it makes sense in-show, but the character looks different, acts different, and people treat them different. You can just stop watching, of course, pretend the show ended right before it happened. But people all over the place are mentioning the change, talking about how great it is, and saying you're just too scared to accept it.

Now let's say your favorite video game series gave an option for changing the main character into a nothing avatar so you can make them look like you. The other characters would treat them different, and they wouldn't act the same. What if Mario was turned into a girl? He has no personality, not really; he's just an avatar, right? Let's make him a girl, and give him blue hair, and change his outfit so it looks all flowery.

If Link was made into a changeable avatar, the creators of the game would be forced to alter the way he/she is treated in-game by the other characters. They would have to treat him neutrally, without much emotion, and the little quirk where a character here and there acts flirtatious with him would be gone. I've only played five games so far, but multiple times the fact that he's a dude has played a key part in how he's treated - in fact, in Twilight Princess if he was a girl he'd have to be a freakishly strong girl to get past the part with the Gorons. In Ocarina, Ruto would probably have to be made into a non-character in order to have her do what she did, since a lot of her was based around being subtly flirtatious and demanding that Link, as a man, be gentlemanly and carry her around and such.

Link might not seem to have much of a character, but really he does, even if it's more subtle than the rest. And even if you don't care about that, again, it makes it so the other characters can't be as much...well, characters. Regardless of whether you choose to look like the original, default Link.

And thus concludes my ramble.