Ths week's rerelease of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on the Nintendo Switch restores dialogue from the original Japanese version confirming the character Vivian is transgender. The Japanese version of the original game for GameCube included Vivian herself declaring she’s trans, saying to Mario about her and her siblings, “Truth is it took me a while to realize I was their sister… not their brother. Now their usual feels heavier.” She was also consistently misgendered by other characters and even her own character description in the original dialogue. In the 2002 English release, all gendered references to Vivian were removed.
Courtesy of Nitendo
Now, with the re-release for the Switch, Vivian’s true self has been restored: Vivian once again confirms that she is trans. Better yet, dialogue has been added to affirm her identity, and the misgendering once rampant throughout the game has been removed. In celebration of the progress made in trans representation in video games, here are 5 more trans characters we think got it right.
Courtesy of Dontnod Entertainment
Tyler Ronan is one of the two main characters in Tell Me Why, a narrative adventure game released by Dontnod Entertainment in 2020. The game follows Tyler, a trans man, and his identical twin sister Alyson, as the telepathically connected pair investigate their mother’s death in their rural Alaskan hometown. Tell Me Why was the first Triple AAA game to have a playable trans protagonist, and was also groundbreaking for having a trans character played by a trans voice actor, August Black. The game also won Gayming Magazine’s Authentic Representation Award, as well as Outstanding Video Game from GLAAD.
Courtesy of Naughty Dog
The Last of Us Part II is the 2020 sequel to the hit action-adventure game from developer Naughty Dog The Last of Us. TLOU II picks up five years after the original ended, during which time main character Ellie meets Lev, a trans boy. Some had mixed feelings about the inclusion of Lev’s deadname in the game and his plotline involving plenty of trauma (to be fair, whose isn't in this series?), but were still excited to see a trans character in a Triple AAA game. Lev’s voice acting, motion capture, and model were done by trans actor Ian Alexander. As season 2 of The Last of Us television show has started filming, many have called for Ian Alexander to be cast as Lev, including Alexander himself.
Courtesy of Nintendo
Okay, so there’s been speculation around Birdo being trans since the release of Super Mario Bros. 2, where the manual states that she is a man who “thinks he is a girl” who prefers the name “Birdetta.” Nintendo has not done much more to confirm or deny Birdo’s trans womanhood, but many LGBTQMario fans take her inclusion very seriously. To all that I have to say 1) Women with traditionally masculine names are hot and 2) You can’t tell me Birdo isn’t trans because she and Yoshi are so obviously T4T.
Courtesy of Veritable Joy
ValiDate: Struggling Singles in Your Area is a 2022 romantic visual novel and debut game from developer Veritable Joy. ValiDate was made by and for LGBTQ+ People of Color, and the game has plenty of excellent trans representation, but Emhari stands out for being representation that mixed race trans people do not get very often. Emhari is a half South African, half Qatari bigender trans woman and single mother of two, and represents not only trans Black and Arab experience, but also trans people who have not medically transitioned. ValiDate was nominated by Gayming Magazine for their Authentic Representation Award 2023, and head developer Dani Lalonders was featured on GLAAD’s Webby Award-winning web series Changemakers’ second season.
Courtesy of Maddy Makes Games
Celeste is a 2018 platformer from indie developer Maddy Makes Games about a young woman named Madeline and her journey up Celeste Mountain. The game has received high praise for its portrayal of mental health issues, and is considered a foundational and canonical trans game, enough so to spark memes about it. Creator Maddy Thorson has said, “Celeste players famously knew that the game was a trans story before I did.” Madeline is not recognized as trans in the base game, the 2019 Farewell DLC confirms with a shot of Madeline’s room with a trans flag, a prescription pill bottle, and a picture of Madeline as a child with very short hair. Thorson confirmed Madeline’s transness and her own in a 2020 blog post.
