AUTHOR: Vandlyn
EDITOR: Hannah
CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS: death
Let’s talk about Mario.
He falls into dark and bottomless pits, catches on fire, drowns, gets eaten by ominous spiky fish, hit with a gopher’s hammer, smacked by a Boo, flattened by a Grindel, swallowed by a Piranha plant, hit by a runaway shell sent by Player 2, and dies dramatically when the time limit runs out.
However, no one can say that his work isn’t admirable. Somehow, despite failure after failure, he manages to defeat Bowser with Luigi and save Princess Peach. It may take one try…or six—but he still gets it done! But while he may be inspirational, we could never be him. We can’t jump ten feet into the air. We also don’t have green life-saving mushrooms.
Mario is one greedy guy, hoarding them all for himself.
But what if he only had one life and couldn’t come back? What if green mushrooms were just a scientific anomaly? Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach and when Mario, always the hero, dashes after their trail…a Goomba falls on his head (I’m sure that happens). Or maybe he makes it through the ocean, but he catches an awful cold. Or perhaps he gets a bad sunburn in the desert and dies from skin poisoning.
He dies and the bold red ‘Game Over’ burns on the screen.
He’s dead.
Silence. How loud it is. It hangs where he once stood and laughed, haunting the time worn corridors of the palace. Every breath, glance, touch is only fully recognized for its worth after it is already long gone.
Traces of him are found in the nicks of his hammers, the half eaten red mushroom left on the counter, and the worn blue overalls hanging in his closet. But moths ravage through his possessions and his footprints in the sand fade away as the world conspires to forget that he ever walked on its land. And soon he exists only in memories drunken with grief.
But, this is all hypothetical of course. Mario has his green mushrooms and coding to save him. He’ll always rise to see another heroic dawn and triumph.
He and his world don’t have to worry about Death’s final cold embrace.
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