Hello everybody, my name is Alstroem and it's
pride month. Naturally, that means we get an excuse to gay things up around here and talk
about fun stuff. I decided to test out this sort of essay format so that I can talk about some
queer Nintendo characters. Don't consider this a video definitively covering ALL the potential
queer characters across Nintendo's many IPs, I'm only covering the ones that interest me.
If I miss any that you wanted to hear about, leave them in the comments I'm down
to get put on. And no, I'm not going over Fire Emblem cause I don't play those
games. Just to get that out of the way. So there are a couple of Mario Party videos
on my channel and in all of them I tend to play as Birdo, so we'll start with her first.
She made her debut in Super Mario Brothers 2 for the NES in 1988. Originally, she was
just a mini boss that would appear now and then. What was interesting, however, was
what the manual had to say about her. Quote: He thinks he is a girl and he spits eggs from
his mouth. He'd rather be called "birdetta." Now given that this is a character stated
to not identify with their assigned gender, this makes Birdo one of the earliest transgender
characters in video games. Birdo threw the first brick at Stonewall. Of course, however, she is
immediately misgendered and deadnamed. Yeah, kind of interesting how the manual points
out that Birdo is not her preferred name yet it's what stuck. Nintendo, being Nintendo, now
only refers to Birdo with she/her pronouns, and treats her as a female character, never
acknowledging her debut. You could argue trans erasure since Nintendo most likely treats
Birdo as cisgendered, but I choose to look at it as her being addressed the way she always
wanted to be. Guess she came around on the name. In 1994, Earthbound was released
for the Super Nintendo. More info here (show previous Mother videos). Naturally, a
game as off the wall and intricate as Earthbound was bound to dip its toes into LGBT
representation. In Onett, the hometown of Ness, there's a kid in the treehouse. Talk
to him, and he says the following: "You've grown since I last saw you.
You're beginning to look like a man. You're so cool! I\'85 I think I really
like you. Well, you know what I mean." Talk to him again, and all he says is: You know what I mean. Now, call me crazy, cause I am. I'm sorry he's gay
as hell. I was like maybe 10 or 11 when I first played Earthbound, and this dude lived in my head
rent free because I tried to imagine how I'd feel if a guy said that to me and it broke my brain. As
it turns out, my brain was easy to break in 2011. Now in this game there's another character
worth highlighting and one that is more commonly accepted by players
as being gay, that being Tony. One of the main characters, Jeff, has to flee his
boarding school to save Ness and Paula from\'85 well that (show cutscene of Ness and Paula being
jumped in Threed). His friend and roommate, Tony, follows him around school as he gathers supplies,
and has Jeff use him as a step stool so that he can jump over the gate and escape. Now let
me say for the record that two guys can show affection for one another in a totally platonic
context, no matter what annoying people online tell you. That said, some of Tony's dialogue
raises a few eyebrows, at least it did for me. An example is when the game tries to get the
player's name. This is done under the guise of Tony gathering players' names for a school
project. After you give your name, Tony says this: "Don't put my friend Jeff in any dangerous
situations, okay? I worry about him. I really do... Well, talk to you later. Jeff... I hope that
I can see you again when you're feeling up to it." This is followed up with Tony taking extra long
to hang up, just to talk to Jeff a little while longer. The coup de gr\'e2ce is at the ending of
the game. As our heroes begin to go their separate ways, each member receives a letter from their
loved ones. For Ness, it's his mother. For Paula, it's the children at the Polestar Preschool
where her mother teaches. For Jeff, it's Tony. The letter reads:
Dear Jeff, Everything's really going great here.
I wish I could have gone with you on your adventure, even just part of the way, but instead
I'm sitting here, waiting for you in Winters. I want to see you again as soon as possible.
I can't wait to see your cheerful face. I bet your glasses are dirty\'85 If
you come back, I'll clean them for you! Like I said, I'm waiting for you.
Yours truly, Tony
P.S. Don't show this letter to anyone! If you read the letter in front of Jeff, he simply
remarks that Tony has a "heart of gold." Now if you ask me, Tony is coded to be gay and in love
with Jeff, and the fact that Jeff's letter in the end comes from Tony makes me wish that when
they grow up Jeff reciprocates Tony's feelings and they live a happy gay life together. No,
I don't have a boyfriend, what gave it away? Fans just assumed Tony was gay but
it was pretty much confirmed when an interview with Marcus Lindbolm, one of
the directors for the game's translation, was released for the Radio 64
podcast. He says, flat out, that Tony was meant to be gay. While I wish the
game could've been more direct about it, even the subtext of it alone adds a layer to Jeff's
story that makes it really interesting to me. Jesus, that section was long. Keeping with
the Earthbound series, let's look at Mother 3 super quick. In the game, there's a group
of individuals referred to as the Magypsies. They're depicted as bearing masculine bodies
and features, yet dressing and presenting in a way that's feminine. The game makes it
clear that they're not humans in the way that the protagonists are, they're a magical
race of beings that are just, let's say, human adjacent. I've seen people online label
them as being trans. I'm not sure if I'd say they're intended to be trans or evocative of
drag, I see them as beings assimilating into the society of the humans in the game that have
little regard for gender norms and preconceptions. In any case, they're for sure camp and queer as
hell. I won't get into the nitty gritty of their role in the game since that'd require getting
into the whole story which would take forever. Just know that they're VERY important to the
story. Some people have speculated that one of the reasons why Mother 3 hasn't been ported to America
is because of them. Unfortunately, given that the game came out in 2006, it's not that much of a
stretch of the imagination but considering what Nintendo did this year, I'm willing to give them
the benefit of the doubt. More on that in a bit. Moving on, the next game I wanted to
highlight was Pokémon X and Y. Here, we have a trainer of particular
interest. In the Battle Maison, there's a trainer named Beauty Nova.
Upon entering battle, she states: I've recently remade my life completely!
I've been reborn as a Beauty at last! Once you defeat her, she says this: Yes, a mere half year ago I was a Black Belt!
Quite the transformation, wouldn't you say? For those out of the loop, "beauty" and
"black belt" are referring to different trainer classes. This is important to point out,
because she claims she used to be a Black Belt. Black Belts are exclusively male trainers, as
their female counterparts are labeled as Battle Girls. So, by way of semantics, this
trainer worked her way into being trans, whether or not she was intended to be. Sad that
one of the few if not only openly queer characters in the Pokémon games is an NPC that's
THIS tucked away, but hey we take those. Going to a decade before Pokémon X and Y, I want
to now get into Paper Mario: The Thousand Year door. This game originally came out in 2004
for the GameCube and was recently remastered for the Switch, inspiring this
video. In the game, Mario gains several colorful and complex party members.
Most interesting among them is Vivian.\'a0 Vivian starts out in the game as a member of
the Shadow Sirens along with her sisters Marilyn and Beldam. Throughout the game, Beldam is very
verbally abusive and manipulative towards Vivian, and she ultimately ends up defecting to team
Mario in Chapter 4. Now among the instances of Beldam berating Vivian, chief among them is
one particular interaction in Boggly Woods. As the sisters introduce themselves to Mario, Vivian addresses them as the
Shadow Beauties. Beldam flips shit and corrects Vivian that their name is
in fact the Shadow Sirens. She then remarks: I don't see three beauties! I see two, but
then there's you, and you're PLUG-UGLY! What's interesting is that in the
Japanese version, Beldam (roughly) says: We're the sisters. Aren't you a man? There are other instances in the game where
Vivian's gender is brought into question like with Goombella's description of her showing
her confusion on the topic. Now, obviously, it being 2004 America, any and all traces of this
plotline of Vivian's story was wiped completely clean. One could claim the "man" comment
in the Japanese version is just an insult and not indicative of Vivian's gender
situation. Yet, other translations stayed true to the original version and seem to indicate
otherwise. Notably, the Spanish version states: This former member of the Shadow Trio
looks like a girl, but is actually a boy. When it was announced that the game was going
to be remastered for the Switch in 2024, die hard fans were curious if there would
be any changes regarding Vivian. Well, the game was released and we got our answer. In the Boggly Woods, they're now
going as the Three Shadows with Vivian mistakenly referring to them as the
Three Shadow Sisters. Vivian then says: It's just, it makes me really happy
when you call me your sister... Then, in Chapter 4, once she joins up with Mario, she confides with him, stating:
Truth is, it took me a while to realize I was their sister\'85 not their brother.
Now their usual bullying feels heavier. So, it seems Nintendo of America had a change of
heart and kept true to the original version of Vivian's story, which I'm really happy about. By
principle, Vivian being transgender makes her just that much more interesting, but Beldam's apparent
transphobia is the reason why she is so hateful to Vivian. Going off the 2004 American version,
it just comes off like she hates Vivian for no tangible reason. It clarifies the motives and
makes the story feel more complete in my opinion. So now that we've covered the queer Nintendo
characters that I personally have interest in, let's try to reach some sort of
conclusion to justify my rambling. When it comes to consuming media, I tend
to put more energy towards something that I feel is creating art within the realms
of queerness. Ask me what my favorite Tyler, the Creator album is and I'm going to say Flower
Boy. Ask what my favorite anime is and I'm going to tell you episode 24 of Evangelion. As a gay
man, I find art that highlights queer stories to be more engaging because it\'a0 resonates with
me on an emotional level. And trust me when I say I'm far from the only one. That feeling, that
euphoric feeling of feeling like your art is relating to you is why people are so adamant about
diverse representation in media, it can make a world of difference to someone to see themselves
represented in the media that they watch or the games that they play. Trust, I would've killed
to have had a show like Heartstopper when I was in high school. And even still, I've yet
to find a video game that scratches the same itch that Heartstopper does, you know? Just like
a nice, wholesome, slice-of-life type of vibe. I find the characters I talked about today to
be very cool and fun. I'm glad that Vivian gets to have her true story told and I hope it's
a sign of things to come from Nintendo when it comes to queer characters. It's nice that
for the most part, the internet is really warm to the idea of Vivian being trans, as opposed
to a certain kind of gamer that, I don't know, melts down at pronouns being acknowledged in
Starfield. Cheers to all my fellow queers, keep taking up space cause I live for those tears.
