this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
266 points (86.7% liked)

News

23448 readers
2797 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 142 points 6 months ago (2 children)

For those who didn't read the article, the game is already released, it's the Paper Mario Thousand Year Door remake. In the Japanese text of the original gamecube release, Vivian was a trans character. The English localisation of the Gamecube release cut out all references to her being trans.

The article is saying the Switch remake's English translation now contains the cut dialogue that fleshes out Vivians backstory.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

that's so fugly. gotta love it when stuff gets not lost, but thrown out in translation because some snobby corporate idiotfucker is too condescending to tell you the truth. How many other times has that happened in the last three thousand years, I wonder rhetorically.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'd like to take a moment so sit right there while we discuss most of the history of anime localization.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Some things, like honorifics, dont translate well to English.

For example, the -chan, -sama, -kun etc suffixes are super annoying when the English voice actors try to use them.

They're fine in the English subtitles against the Japanese audio though

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

All of this is true, but I think what I was replying to was more concerned with censorship and rewriting things to fit a more Puritan or at least prudish outlook on the world.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

In the original Japanese translation, Vivian is referred to as an otokonoko (which also can mean just "boy") and the game often uses otoko (man) and otoutou (little brother) to refer to them - so the intention was most likely to paint them more as a crossdresser.
English localisation completely removed all traces of these, just makin Vivian a girl.
And now the remake, for both languages, makes Vivian explicitly trans.

Wouldn't be the first two decades old Japanese game that had to rethink crossdressing/trans characters in their remakes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Bridget is another one. At least they got a better ending than the real life counterpart.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I feel it's worth noting that everyone calling you he/him or "little brother" or "man" doesn't make you not a girl. She's referred to in game as オトコノコ (otokonoko), which is written ambiguously like that so it can either be 男の子 meaning boy or 男の娘 literally meaning "male daughter". When she's referred to as 'man', she feels insulted, and she uses feminine first-person pronouns and calls herself one of "three sisters."

Saying she's "just a crossdresser" is a possible interpretation, but not one that is clear and unassailable. In translation, she's either just a girl, explicitly trans, or somewhat ambiguous more like the original Japanese, so the people publishing the game don't seem to think of her as just a crossdresser.

All that to say, she's been trans for a while, even explicitly, it's just happening in the English version of the game now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I feel it’s worth noting that everyone calling you he/him or “little brother” or “man” doesn’t make you not a girl.

Obviously, but when the narration and descriptions use those as well, it gives it more importance than just having other characters misgender them in conversation.

男の娘 literally meaning “male daughter”

Which is the otokonoko I linked to. If the term was used today it would be much more ambiguous, but the game came out in 2004 when that term was essentially only used for" crossdressers" in Japan - what I guess we'd these days call femboys - and basically never for trans people. That meaning came almost two decades later, and some would even argue that it shouldn't be used for them at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

when the narration and descriptions use those as well, it gives it more importance than just having other characters misgender them in conversation.

Maybe, but it could also just be the nature of the culture at the time to talk about trans people that way. "A boy who thinks he's a girl" is just, by our current understanding, a transphobic description of a trans girl.

the game came out in 2004 when that term was essentially only used for" crossdressers" in Japan - what I guess we'd these days call femboys - and basically never for trans people.

I'm not close enough to say with any authority that it was or wasn't, but the use of that word, even in third person narrative descriptions of her, doesn't really sound like "they're definitely just a crossdresser" so much as someone euphemistically describing a trans girl. Especially when the character herself references herself as a girl. That right there is really the most important part.

By all means don't just trust the word of a random girl on the Internet, but there ya go