Talk:Vivian: Difference between revisions

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{{FATALK}}
{{FATALK}}
Vivian is NOT a transgender. She is factually a female in Japan. Bedlam only bullies her for not being "feminine enough" meaning while Vivian is a woman, Bedlam and her sisters pick on her and her jokes weren’t meant to be taken seriously. Goombella literally heard from vivian that she’s a female but her sisters like to pick on her for not being feminine enough. So no: Vivian is not a male. She is not a transgender. She is biologically a female. End of story. Japan is the original and others aren’t. Accept the facts.
Vivian is NOT a transgender. She is factually a female in Japan. Bedlam only bullies her for not being "feminine enough" meaning while Vivian is a woman, Bedlam and her sisters pick on her and her jokes weren’t meant to be taken seriously. Goombella literally heard from vivian that she’s a female but her sisters like to pick on her for not being feminine enough. So no: Vivian is not a male. She is not a transgender. She is biologically a female. End of story. Japan is the original and others aren’t. Accept the facts.
== vivian's gender edition 647 ==
so the gender section has some problems
<blockquote>In the Japanese version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Vivian is depicted as a transgender woman.</blockquote>
yes, the character is transgender. she's a biological male who identifies as a woman. but the game doesn't actually treat her like that. she's routinely referred to as a male, both by other characters and by narration text
<blockquote>It is openly stated in Vivian's character description, which is translated as "One of the Shadow Trio, Vivian appears to be a girl but is really a boy." (in Japanese: 「カゲ三人組の一人だった　オンナのコのようで　ホントは　オトコのコ」). Additionally, Goombella's Tattle reads: "That's Vivian. Of the Shadow Trio, she's the youngest sister... er, brother." (in Japanese: 「『ビビアン』よ　カゲ三人組の一人で　いちばん下の妹　・・・じゃなくて　弟ね」)[1][2]. While Beldam uses the term "majotachi" (meaning a group of sorceresses) to refer to her, Marilyn and Vivian as a collective, she also objects to Vivian trying to call the collective 「カゲ三姉妹」 Kage Sanshimai, the "Three Shadow Sisters", correcting the name to the gender-neutral 「カゲ三人組」 Kage Sanningumi, the "Shadow Trio", reminding Vivian that she is an 「オトコ」 otoko, "boy", written in red katakana for emphasis[2].</blockquote>
the wiki acknowledges this, but the way the text is written makes it sound as if the game actually affirms vivian's gender identity at some unspecified point. i've never seen any evidence that this actually happens
<blockquote>However, in the end, Goombella's letter indicates that Vivian's choice to be identified as female is accepted by her sisters as part of their efforts to be nice to her after the events of the game[3][4].</blockquote>
in particular, this just seems to be totally made up. this is what goombella's letter actually says:
<blockquote>
bibian wa oneesan tachi no tokoro ni modorimashita<br>
''vivian has returned to her sisters' house''<br>
kage no joou ga taosaretu ima majorin tachi wa mou warusa wo suru ki wa nai you desu<br>
''now that the shadow queen has been defeated, it seems beldam and marilyn have no more desire to do evil''<br>
sore to majorin ga nidoto bibian wo ijimenai tte atashi ni yakusoku shite kuremashita<br>
''and beldam has promised me that she will never bully vivian again''<br>
kore kara wa shimai (?) sannin de nakayoku kurashite iku deshou<br>
''from now on, it seems they will live together happily as three sisters (?)''<br>
tama ni wa mario mo bibian ni aini itte agete ne<br>
''why don't you visit vivian once in a while too, mario?''
</blockquote>
as you can see, nowhere is it even implied that they're going to respect vivian's identity. in fact, there's nothing to imply that either the characters or the developers understand trans issues well enough to even know what that ''means''
<blockquote>
In her Super Paper Mario Catch Card, Vivian is described as 「キュートな　オトコのコ」, which is most likely meant to be interpreted as "cute otokonoko", a term for male cross-dressers in Japanese culture (「男の娘」, literally "male girl"), although there is ambiguity here since plain ｢男の子｣ otoko no ko, "male child", sounds the same, and the line itself is written in phonetic katakana script rather than kanji, which was likely done on purpose; either way, the emphasis is that she is cute, but also physically male[5].
</blockquote>
i disagree that "男の娘" is a more likely interpretation than "男の子". they're homophones, but 男の子 is a [https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%22%E7%94%B7%E3%81%AE%E5%AD%90%22 more] [https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%22%E7%94%B7%E3%81%AE%E5%A8%98%22 common] word than 男の娘 by several times.
so yeah i don't know. i feel like people for some reason want vivian's story to have been some great empowering narrative for the trans community that got censored by noa, but... it's really not, and this is wishful thinking at best {{User:Twentytwofiftyseven/sig}} 20:07, 10 April 2016 (EDT)
For Goombella's letter the part where it says that "it seems they will live together happily as three sisters (?)" seems to have that slight implication of gender acceptance (if I recall correctly, didn't the Shadow Sirens correct 'Shadow Sisters' to 'Shadow Trio'?). But again, this was written by Goombella, not Vivian. For the gender identity, how would you rewrite it to prevent misleading writing? {{User:Bazooka Mario/sig}} 20:59, 11 April 2016 (EDT)
:i don't disagree that that is a possible interpretation, but i feel like it is kind of out of step with what the rest of the game was saying about her. like, if the writers intended to acknowledge her as a transgender character, i really don't think they would have said "''honto wa otoko no ko''" ("in reality [she] is a boy") in her profile on the menu screen
:regarding how to rephrase it, i'm not totally sure. i'm leery of the phrasing "Vivian is depicted as a transgender woman.". she certainly IS a transgender woman because she's a female-identified but biologically male person, but as far as i can tell the game never acknowledges that. now i haven't played the entire game through in japanese, so it's possible that there's a scene i don't know about where vivian's identity is affirmed. i doubt that, for all the reasons i've stated previously, but i'm not certain. what i ''can'' say for certain is that nothing the wiki cites justifies that position. i also think everything about the term 男の娘 (''otoko no ko'') ought to be excised. i really don't think there's any reason to imagine they meant this term rather than the more common homophone 男の子 (''otoko no ko''). especially considering that both ''otoko no ko'' and its female equivalent ''onna no ko'' are used together in vivian's original ttyd character profile
:also, there's something i forgot to mention in my previous post. the article treats it as an incongruity that beldam allows the shadow sirens to be referred to as "a group of sorceresses", but objects to "three shadow sisters". i think this is only incongruous in translation. ''majo tachi'' is the term translated by the wiki as "a group of sorceresses", but this translation is not completely precise. actually, it's more accurate to translate ''majo tachi'' as "a group conceptually headed by a witch". so the group can legitimately be described as ''majo tachi'' regardless of whether vivian is a sorceress, because its leader, beldam, is a witch {{User:Twentytwofiftyseven/sig}} 23:24, 12 April 2016 (EDT)
::I also think that's just one vague, unsupported line, but I'd imagine that's where the wiki romanticizing gender acceptance originated. You're right, the whole "in reality [she] is a boy" thing doesn't sound very accurate for a faithful depiction of a transgender character. I believe rather than saying "Vivian is depicted", we should add uncertainty to it such as "Vivian is depicted as a transgender woman, but the game never directly states it" or even "Vivian is strongly implied to be a transgender woman". I also agree, interpreting 「オトコのコ」 as 「男の娘」 (male cross-dresser) rather than the much more common 「男の子」 (male child) ''is'' an illogical stretch (the wiki even goes as far to emphasize by "most likely"), supported by its use in Vivian's original ''Thousand-Year Door'' profile. We can rewrite it to make a passing reference to the rarer 男の娘 but still strictly affirm and support 男の子.
::For the alleged inconsistency between Beldam's reaction to "group of sorceresses" and "three shadow sisters", I'll have to heed to what you said on the inconsistency that's a result of translation and interpretation. That is, we'll have to remove instances of that. {{User:Bazooka Mario/sig}} 00:56, 13 April 2016 (EDT)
:::on another note, i have looked back through the edit history, and it seems that the idea that beldam decided to respect vivian's gender identity is actually based on the spanish localisation. it was added [http://www.mariowiki.com/index.php?title=Vivian&action=historysubmit&diff=1327374&oldid=1312675 here], moved into the gender section [http://www.mariowiki.com/index.php?title=Vivian&action=historysubmit&diff=1420595&oldid=1420455 here], and re-attributed to the japanese script [http://www.mariowiki.com/index.php?title=Vivian&diff=next&oldid=1420597 here]. the relevant line is "Y le prometió a Bibiana que no volvería a tratarla tan mal.", which means "and she promised vivian that she would not treat her so badly again".  the issue is that the spanish script uses the word "tratarla" in reference to vivian, rather than its masculine equivalent "tratarlo". smashfan regarded this as a typo, but walkazo believed it was a deliberate attempt to show that beldam had switched from using masculine grammar to using feminine grammar when addressing vivian
:::i think this is probably the result of misunderstanding. when smashfan added the spanish dialogue, they for whatever reason chose to surround the word "tratarla" in «guillemets». guillemets are sometimes used as quotation marks in spanish, so doing that sort of made it look as if goombella meant to imply that beldam had actually used the word "tratarla" when making the promise to vivian. however, [https://youtu.be/Zb9X3FSpeR4?t=2146 no guillemets are used for this line in the game]. additionally, one would not use the word "tratarla", meaning "treat her" when making this promise directly to someone. one would instead say "tratarte", which means "treat you" and is gender neutral
:::i'm not 100% confident of my spanish though, so i would like to have someone more fluent comment on the accuracy of what i've said here. but regardless of whether the spanish line was a typo or a deliberate implication, the japanese line definitely does not include any equivalent. the only feminine term in that line is "shimai" (sisters) {{User:Twentytwofiftyseven/sig}} 07:36, 13 April 2016 (EDT)
::::Yes, as 22 pointed out, this is not Beldam talking directly at Vivian but rather Goombella saying Beldam promised not to treat Vivian so badly. I don't think this is a typo but it's Goombella talking and it doesn't mean Beldam referred to Vivian as female. Indeed, if Beldam were talking to Vivian, she would have used "tratarte", so from that line it's impossible to know how does Beldam refer to Vivian. I hope this answers the question. --{{User:Henry Tucayo Clay/sig}} 13:56, 13 April 2016 (EDT)
since nobody has commented for a while, i drafted some changes to the gender section. some notes:
*not sure about the pictures. i thought i should include some pictures, since the current version has one, but in practice they might just look stupid. the current picture is even stupider, though, because the line it depicts wasn't even an insult in the japanese version, much less a gendered one. if we do keep the pictures, they should probably be replaced with higher quality versions, because right now they're both just frames from youtube videos
*i don't have a source for the german version. i just asked gabumon about it, and he said he thinks he remembers it this way. http://www.mariowiki.net/wiki/Barbara seems to bear him out, though. i'm sure there's some german lp of the game that we can cite, though
*i datamined goom goom's japanese dialog after bones mentioned it in chat. i don't have a video of him saying that
*i don't have any information at all about how she's depicted in the korean version, because i don't know anyone who speaks korean or is likely to have played the game.
*i think those are the only 7 languages the game has officially been released in
*in the translations i tried to avoided using any gendered words except when the original script used them, because earlier i used the word "she" in a translation and nabber took it as something that was in the japanese script, but it wasn't. this is very hard because gendered words are much more common and more frequently obligatory in english than in japanese. as a consequence, some of the translations might sound slightly odd
{{User:Twentytwofiftyseven/sig}} 17:57, 18 April 2016 (EDT)
The OP here is right, the "transgender" bit is just fancruft that was being pushed by some freak somewhere on the internet. There was a similar rumor started about another minor Mario character (Birdo) which turned out to be bullshit as well and was never confirmed by Nintendo.
In the Japanese version, Vivian "identifies" as male, so the character is basically just an 'effimiante' male (aka a dandy, bishonen, etc) like Vega from Street Fighter; so this is really just like someone speculating the Vega in SF is "transgendered"; the fact that this trashy fancruft has been allowed to stay in the article is pretty pathetic, when it's pretty obvious that Nintendo themselves would deny it if it weren't for the fact that the Vivian character isn't notable enough for them to worry about.--[[User:Verita|Verita]] ([[User talk:Verita|talk]]) 01:42, 14 September 2017 (EDT)


==Attacks and Stats==
==Attacks and Stats==

Revision as of 19:39, January 12, 2020

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Vivian is NOT a transgender. She is factually a female in Japan. Bedlam only bullies her for not being "feminine enough" meaning while Vivian is a woman, Bedlam and her sisters pick on her and her jokes weren’t meant to be taken seriously. Goombella literally heard from vivian that she’s a female but her sisters like to pick on her for not being feminine enough. So no: Vivian is not a male. She is not a transgender. She is biologically a female. End of story. Japan is the original and others aren’t. Accept the facts.

Attacks and Stats

Suggestion to homogenize that table with the tables of the other party members?

http://www.mariowiki.com/Ms._Mowz#Attacks_and_Stats

http://www.mariowiki.com/Koops#Attacks_and_stats

http://www.mariowiki.com/Goombella#Attacks_and_stats

Vivian's table uses asterisks, an explanation, and (an arguable) opinion. All of that could be taken out.

——01:35, 13 June 2016 (EDT)——

Actually, I think the other party members' tables can use some adjustment. The hitpoints should be in a separate table since they don't relate to the attacks strongly. Otherwise, I applied the changes. Icon showing how many lives Mario has left. From Super Mario 64 DS. It's me, Mario! (Talk / Stalk) 21:50, 13 June 2016 (EDT)

Trivia for Vivian's name in Spanish

Vivian's name in Spanish is "Bibiana", but the common translation for the name is "Viviana". Nevertheless I found out that there's a Spanish transgender woman called Bibiana Fernández. Could the translation also be a reference to irl Bibiana? Do you think it may be relevant enough to put it in the "Names in other languages" section? --Agc96 (talk) 12:04, 29 January 2017 (EST)

It depends on how common that name is and how significant this person is. BabyLuigiFire.png Ray Trace(T|C) 12:41, 29 January 2017 (EST)
It's not relevant, since the character was never transgender in the Japanese version, and likely wasn't even literally a male in that version either (referring to a woman as a man is a cultural insult in Japan); this was all basically debunked and was never confirmed as official by Nintendo, only a handful of internet weirdos and pervs seem to want to call the character "transgender", so this should be completely removed from the article as defamation towards Nintendo, the fact that the false "transgender" references are allowed to stay is a disgrace and if I was Nintendo, I'd sue.--Verita (talk) 02:28, 14 September 2017 (EDT)

Article contains false information/fancruff regarding "transgender"

The Japanese version of the game does not state that the Vivian character is "transgender", it merely states that he is a "effeminate man" (aka a dandy, bishonen, etc). The "transgender" cruft is just original research devoid of facts; it would be like stating the Vega from Street Fighter is "transgendered" just because he displays some effiminate tendencies.

It's pretty obvious that this has never officially been confirmed by Nintendo and really just originates from some rumors and fancruft started by some internet weirdos, so it should probably be removed as defamatory.--Verita (talk) 01:38, 14 September 2017 (EDT)

Also, for what it's worth, it's not even clear that Vivian was literally referred to as a man in the Japanese version to begin with; Beldam referring to a woman (Vivian) as a man in Japanese is culturally considered an insult, and the other in-game references are possibly just a continuation of this in-joke:

http://brokenbase.com/post/76043788098/is-vivian-from-paper-mario-transgender

Unless Nintendo has an official statement on it somewhere, this rubbish should be removed, since no one other than a handful of weirdos with too much time on their hands are trying to perpetuate this anyway; if I were Nintendo, I'd be suing for defamation that this is stated as some confirmed fact:

--Verita (talk) 02:18, 14 September 2017 (EDT)

"Defamation?" How is it "defamation" if a character can be reasonably interpreted from explicit dialog to be transgender, to say they're transgender? I'm transgender, and I don't know what all the fuss you're going over is about. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 03:42, 14 September 2017 (EDT)
The entire explanation for the content is up above. Hello, I'm Time Turner. 09:13, 14 September 2017 (EDT)
Sorry, I kind of overreacted with my response given how much internet flaming has been raised over stuff like this, and it was excessive. My personal opinion is that Nintendo should officially confirm this before shoehorning it into the article, or else it would be just like stating that Vega from Street Fighter is "gay or transgender" just based on speculation.--Verita (talk) 17:01, 14 September 2017 (EDT)
FYI, unless you really have something to counter this point, bringing this stuff up is usually fruitless and actually goes against our courtesy policy. Honestly, just best to avoid it. If Nintendo says something about this in the future, someone will make a note of it. Alex95sig1.pngAlex95sig2.png 17:04, 14 September 2017 (EDT)
Well the "sources" in the article are just Youtube videos, and article I read (that I linked above) from another fan says he is unsure whether or not the game was literally saying Vivian is a man, or whether it was just an insult from Beldam; I'm not fluent in Japanese so I'm not sure; I just find it annoying that some folks are so obsessed with speculating on the 'sex lives' of minor video game characters from 10 years ago, I think the article should at least state that Nintendo's never officially confirmed anything rather than stating it as an 'offical fact' (e.x. there are fan theories that Vega in SF is gay, but since Capcom never confirmed it I don't think a SF article should state it as fact). But but fine, it's not worth arguing or insulting folks about.--Verita (talk) 17:08, 14 September 2017 (EDT)
Sorry, but you're completely wrong on this: the first reference of the article is an essay written by Francesca Di Marco, one of the Italian translators of the game, which was then a Lecturer in Japanese Language and Modern History of Japan at the University of Perugia. In that essay she translated the sentences of the dialogue between Vivian and Beldam correctly and clearly stated what was the localization policy at the time, as well as the reasoning behind the Italian localization of said dialogue. By the way, transgenderism is explictily mentioned in said essay. So, there's that, more official than this you will hardly find, really.--Mister Wu (talk) 19:23, 14 September 2017 (EDT)

Proposed rewrite of the "Gender" section

Let me precede by saying that, yes, I'm aware that this is a controversial concept that has been heavily discussed on this page in the past. But controversy of a subject should not get in the way of the wiki's factual accuracy. The text as currently written describes Vivian as transgender in the Japanese version of the game, a classification that shows a lack of understanding of subtle aspects of Japanese culture. Vivian is intended to be a otoko no ko, a Japanese concept with no real Western equivalent (concepts like "cross-dresser" or "drag queen" are related but not identical). This is a male who dresses and sometimes acts like a girl, but still fully considers themselves to be male. It's effectively an extension of the modern Japanese fascination with the concept of kawaii (which is often translated as cute but again has no real Western equivalent).

Anyway, I've written a proposed rewrite of the "Gender" section of Vivian's page here (For convenience, citations have been removed. In the final version on the page, the citations should be retained in the same places they are now). This integrates the term otoko no ko more fully into the text while still acknowledging that the Italian localization team opted to present the concept as transgenderism. In addition to this rewrite, I feel that information on Vivian's gender identity/lifestyle choices should be removed from the intro paragraph (in other words, cut the last sentence of the intro). It's really more of a trivia point and shouldn't be one of the first things the reader is told about the character. For comparison, Birdo's article, which has far more complex issues related to gender, does not mention the subject at all in the article's intro.

Thoughts on the accuracy of my proposed revision compared to what is currently on the page? -- 1337star (Mailbox SP) 13:41, August 21, 2019 (EDT)

I'd suggest integrating your findings with what is written in this article, as it fully reports the reasons why the choices about the various localization were made. Keep in mind that the term otoko no ko was used in Super Paper Mario, at the time the material they had could not be used to unambiguously infer that Vivian was an otoko no ko.--Mister Wu (talk) 20:29, August 21, 2019 (EDT)
I skimmed that article but opted to ignore it as I'm not sure how we've come to the conclusion that the Francesca di Marco who wrote that article is the same as the one who worked on TTYD. It is a rather common Italian name from what I understand. Even if she is, I think she could really only be used as a reliable source on the thoughts of the Italian localization team, not the American team or the intentions of the original Japanese writers.
Nonetheless, what do you think of Version 2? It integrates comments from that page while I think making it more clear it represents a decision from the Italian localizers and not the original intended portrayal of the character (if nothing else, the show of defiance against her sisters is at odds with her portrayal in the rest of the game). However, I personally would not be comfortable using this over Version 1 unless it can be more concretely shown that that article was written by the same di Marco that worked on TTYD. I also implemented the references from the original page into both proposed versions. -- 1337star (Mailbox SP) 10:38, August 22, 2019 (EDT)
Looking at this resume, you can see that she is indeed her who translated Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (1998-2008 Localization Specialist in Japanese-Italian and English-Italian for Square-Enix, Nintendo, Pokémon Company, Codemasters, SCEE) and who wrote that article (2005–2009 SOAS PhD History of Modern Japan). Furthermore, while that article is indeed about localizations, your claim that it was exclusively related to the Italian localization is also incorrect, as you can see from this excerpt:

The game was rated as suitable for those aged 3 and over in Japan, and it aimed to obtain the same rating in the US and Europe. After having noticed the problem, localizers changed the original text in an attempt to maintain a ‘Japanese flavor’ (an unusual inclination towards sexual references and a captivating intercourse among the three sisters) whilst avoiding mention of transgenderism.

Therefore, you now should take that article into account when talking about localizations, while of course in terms of what the actual Japanese text says, we need to rely on the original text, and as LinkTheLefty (talk) pointed out, there's some ambiguity that we can't solve right now.--Mister Wu (talk) 18:35, August 24, 2019 (EDT)

The phrase otoko no ko (オトコのコ) is also used right in Vivian's party member description: 「カゲ三人組の一人だった　オンナのコのようで　ホントは　オトコのコ」 (and in Super Paper Mario as well). The katakana makes the meaning ambiguous - a quick search shows that Japanese websites go with either the kanji for otokonoko (男の娘) or boy (男の子), so I feel like the only way to really know what was meant for sure is to check an official guide or find a developer interview. The Italian translation article stating "In the original Japanese version of the game, it appears that Vivian is transgender." and further changing up the script to actually be more overt in the Italian version (e.g. “That’s true, you are two sisters… But I am a woman too now, and I’m proud to have turned into a woman!” was a direct statement that simply did not exist in the original text and is a case where the English version was closer in tone) can easily lead one to think it was localized into a concept more recognizable to a western audience, or at least to remove the ambiguity. However, if Vivian is intended to be an otokonoko, I should point something out: in the scene where Vivian gets the name of their group wrong, instead of "Shadow Beauties" (in the English version) Vivian refers to them as the 「三姉妹っ」 (Three Sisters) - and then later, during the ending, Goombella (whose Tattle concludes that Vivian is the group's younger brother) makes a confused reference to this line in her letter: 「これからは　姉妹（？）3人で　なかよく　くらしていくでしょう」 (From now on, the three sisters(?) will live peacefully.), though that question mark makes it inconclusive. Additionally, Clyde Mandelin seems to think that Vivian is supposed to be transgender and connects the use of the pronoun atai, but he makes the mistake of using Flea from Chrono Trigger as another example (in that game, he gets offended at being called a woman, so it's made clear immediately that's not exactly the case). So overall, with current knowledge, I believe the game's meaning of otoko no ko was intentionally designed to be ambiguous. LinkTheLefty (talk) 12:02, August 22, 2019 (EDT)

Edited my proposed rewrite to take into account your points. I've also reduced it to a single version again since the Italian text alone is enough to support that Vivian is intended to be transgender in that version of the game. -- 1337star (Mailbox SP) 12:40, August 22, 2019 (EDT)
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