User:1337star/Work
Personal work page/sandbox.
Current task(s): Suggested revision to Vivian's page
Gender
In the Japanese version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Vivian is an otoko no ko, a Japanese concept roughly comparable to the Western concept of a cross-dresser or drag queen. Other characters, as well as narrative text, describe Vivian using masculine terms such as otoko "man", and otōto "little brother". However, Vivian initially describes the Shadow Sirens as san shimai "three sisters", and routinely uses the feminine first person pronoun atai. In Super Paper Mario, Vivian's Catch Card explicitly describes her using the term otoko no ko.
In the English and German localizations of the game, all masculine descriptions of Vivian are removed, and she is referred to with exclusively female pronouns. Consequently, the nature of some of Beldam's insults towards Vivian was altered, as they originally focused on her masculinity. Other localized versions of the game retain aspects of the otoko no ko portrayal with some localizations, such as the Italian version, going further and making the character fully transgender.
