Fans Think Nintendo Is Finally Confirming That Vivian, a Purple Ghost, Is Canonically Trans
Nintendo
With apologies to Modest Mouse, we’ve got some good news for people who love bad news: Nintendo’s upcoming remaster of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door apparently depicts transphobia — which could mean confirmation that fan-favorite ghost girl Vivian is finally, canonically, transgender.
Originally released on GameCube back in 2004, The Thousand-Year Door has long been lauded by fans as the pinnacle of the Paper Mario series, and one of the best games in the whole plumber-centric franchise. Details were scant when a remastered version of the title was first announced back in September, but a new preview in the Daily Mirror this week shed light on what we can expect from the spiffed-up rerelease. Solidly in the “pros” column, we have updated graphics and audio, all-new side characters (as detailed in another preview on Polygon), and… the return of a plot thread that hinges on some literally cartoonish transmisogyny.
That’s a weird thing to be happy about, huh? Maybe we should back up.
One of The Thousand-Year Door’s most enduring elements is its clever writing, which, as the Mirror noted, carries more complex and mature themes than many other Mario games. Fans are quick to praise its high-stakes plot, humor, and rich variety of party members, ranging from the femme fatale spoof Ms. Mowz to the drag queen-coded cloud spirit Madame Flurrie. But in a field of standout characters, Vivian — a cute little purple ghost with a striped hat — has long stood as a favorite for LGBTQ+ gamers, due to an element of her backstory that was cut in the game’s original English translation.
Vivian is a member of the Shadow Sirens, three ghosts who serve as secondary antagonists for much of the game. But her sisters, Beldam and Marilyn, regularly belittle and insult Vivian, eventually driving her to join Mario’s team. In the Japanese version of The Thousand-Year Door, Beldam and Marilyn’s hatred is rooted in transphobia: Vivian describes herself with feminine pronouns and says she is “proud to have become a woman,” but her sisters are outraged by this, insisting that she is a man and often threatening to punish her. That dialogue was cut from most localized releases of the game, including the English version, in which the Sirens reject Vivian simply because they believe Vivian thinks she’s prettier than they are.
It’s unsurprising that Nintendo opted to downplay this particular theme in 2004, especially as it drew on a culturally specific construction of gender that could easily be lost in its English translation. (Apart from the original Japanese version, versions of this backstory appeared only in Spanish, French, and Italian localizations, as The Gamer noted.) But a lot has changed in the 20 years since: Nintendo created the Switch console (which has proved appealing to queer switches), trans people are a hotter topic than ever before, and Beldam can once again imply that she wants to call Vivian a slur. In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in the Mirror’s video preview, Beldam refers to her group not as the Shadow Sirens or Sisters, but as “the Three Shadows — RELATION WITHHELD,” to which Vivian replies with a forlorn “Oh, okay…”
We’re saving all our Nectar for the hot vengeful goddess Nemesis.
This might seem like specious grounds on which to claim a character is trans alone, but the evidence is more legible in the context of what we already know about The Thousand-Year Door. Based on this dialogue, the source of Beldam’s anger has seemingly shifted away from Vivian’s looks and back to her place within the team, reflected by Beldam’s stubborn refusal to gender her trio at all. That’s not just transphobia, it’s degendering — and while we can’t necessarily assume that specific nuance was intentional on the part of the localization team, it’s fascinating to see a Mario game portray an uncomfortable reality that many trans people regularly experience.
LGBTQ+ gamers have been over the (paper) moon about this wrinkle since the Mirror’s preview dropped, marking the most positive reception to an act of bigotry since the Reddit-famous invention of trans-inclusive radical misogyny. Part of me won’t fully believe that Vivian is canonically trans until I see it for myself, so it’s a good thing the game drops less than a month from now, on May 23. The past two decades have seen major shifts in how trans and gender-nonconforming people are treated in pop culture around the world, with massive strides forward in how trans stories are told. But while we’ve expanded far beyond basic anti-bullying messages, the current spike in anti-LGBTQ+ hate means that stories about standing up to abusive intolerance are still just as necessary — and cathartic — as ever.
So go off, Beldam! Me and my two-dimensional found family can’t wait to finally shut you up, and prove what The Thousand-Year Door fans have known for years: the “G” in LGBTQ+ stands for “ghost.”
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