Tattle
In the subsequent battle against the Three Shadows, Goombella can use her Tattle ability on Vivian. With Tattle, Goombella looks up bosses and enemies in a guidebook to provide some information about them. In the 2004 game’s Tattle log, Goombella hesitantly calls Vivian 弟 “younger brother”: 「『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 」“That’s Vivian. Of the Shadow Trio, she’s the youngest sister… er, brother.” If Vivian is a trans woman, as the preceding scene implies, this is very insulting. If she is instead a crossdressing man, it would be less so. This establishes the pattern of Vivian’s portrayal in the original script where she is often identified as the latter.
In the fan patch, Griscuit rewrites the Tattle so that Goombella is more supportive of Vivian: “According to the book, she’s the youngest brother of the trio. …Wait, what?! She looks like the youngest sister to me!” While still preserving the structure of the Japanese Tattle, this version draws attention to the fact that the book, rather than our friend Goombella, is identifying Vivian as the youngest brother.
In every version of the Japanese and English scripts, whether she calls Vivian the youngest sister or youngest brother, Goombella then goes on to ramble about how Vivian is very cute, possibly cuter than her. In both Japanese and English, the 2024 release removes the line about Vivian being the “youngest brother” and moves directly to Goombella commenting on how cute Vivian is.
Interestingly, Goombella’s lines about Vivian’s cuteness were slightly tweaked between the 2004 and 2024 releases in both Japanese and English. In the 2004 Japanese script, Goombella ends her comments about Vivian’s cuteness with, 「やだっ…あたしったら なにを かんがえているのかしら」“No way… What am I thinking?” The particle ったらindicates this is frustrated in tone. The English script is more or less the same: “…Uh… What am I thinking?” The original could be read as Goombella wondering why she is comparing her attractiveness to someone she has just identified as a man. But I am probably not the only player who read the line as suggesting Goombella is attracted to Vivian. Whether to remove Goombella being transphobic or Goombella being bisexual, the 2024 remake replaces this line with,「やだっ…あたしったら アキモチ やいているのかしら」I think this means something like, “No way… Feeling second-rate is burning me up!” Conveying the same sense, the 2024 English script has Goombella conclude, “Wow. I think I might be jealous.”