| “ | Mario, I will follow you to the end, I swear it! I feel bad for the princess, but that queen must fall before us! And when she does, you and I can... Well, anyway, let's take this fight to her! | „ |
| ~ Vivian |
Vivian is a major character in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. She is the youngest member of the Shadow Sirens, alongside Beldam and Marilyn, up until she had enough of their abusive behavior and defects to Mario's side.
What Makes Her an Ensemble Dark Horse?[]
- Vivian is loved for how exceptionally cute she is and even Goombella mentions in both her field and battle Tattles how adorable she is and admits that she might be cuter than her, even though she hates to admit this.
- Besides her cute ghostly design, Vivian is also nice and sweet, unlike her sisters, which shows she has no interest into being evil. She gives the Shadow Sirens a cute nickname in Chapter 2 before their battle, and wonders if it is a bad idea to kill Mario and his partners.
- Her best role in the game is Chapter 4, where she finally quits working with her sisters and decides to join Mario's group after he helped her first.
- Fans also love the fact that Vivian managed to be an effective sympathetic character and her being constantly used as a scapegoat by Beldam for the Shadow Sirens' misfortunes and how she reacts to this treatment had won over many fans who just wanted to give her a hug.
- She has garnered enough popularity that she, alongside Doopliss, were requested for their reappearance in future Paper Mario installments, though she made a cameo appearance in Super Paper Mario as a Catch Card won in the Duel of 100 in Sammer's Kingdom and being among the merchandise Francis in Chapter 3, collects alongside the rest of the partners. There was even an unused sprite that indicated that Vivian and the rest of Mario's previous partners were supposed to appear, but were removed, much to the disappointment of many fans, who consider the Pixl partners to be their inferior replacements.
- Vivian is also notable for having so little in common with Lady Bow despite them both being ghosts since they both have differing personalities and backstories, that no one considered Vivian to be a Bow clone, like some of Mario's other partners.
- She is considered to be one of the best partners to use in the game and find her abilities to be useful and can attack enemies from the back instead of being restricted to being in the front with Shade Fist, use Veil to allow Mario to avoid powerful attacks, like Gloomtail's Megabreath and the Shadow Queen's Dark Wave, and can attack multiple enemies with Fiery Jinx, and Infatuate to confuse enemies into attacking each other or not attacking at all.
- Vivian's status as a Trans-Woman is also loved by fans, especially as the English release of The Thousand Year Door remake reconfirmed her status as a Transgender character after the original GameCube release omitted such details and solely referred to her as a Cis-Woman.
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 Ensemble Dark Horses
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