This is a long one: maybe 20mins

Image by BlackRiv from Pixabay

“Mario!  Save Me!!”

Oh, for god’s sake Peach, will you sort it out?!

Female lead characters have seen an increase in realist representation in the gaming industry, with the Tomb Raider reboot and the incredible characterisation of Ellie in The Last of Us leading the way.  That’s not to say that there isn’t any room for improvement.  Peach crawls woefully behind the pack and has been there for some time.  Decked out in a baby pink puffy dress with blonde flowing locks, this stereotypical perfect princess is simply not equipped to defend herself against serial snatcher, Bowser.  That girl needs a make-over.  And some karate lessons.

Most players prefer the bouncing heroics of Mario and Luigi to the incessant wailing of Peach [Jesus, even her name’s annoying].  She was even excluded from the 1993 film Super Mario Bros in favour of Daisy, that’s how outdated she is.  These days Wario and even Rosalina have gotten in on the act of Peach-snatching whenever the mood takes them. Proving that she has no purpose other than that of persistent lure, the female bait for the ever ubiquitous and courageous Mario.

It’s repetitive and boring.  What I’d like to see is the moment the paradigm shifts: 

Peach, cowering from Bowser after one of his kidnappings: he guffaws at the ease of her forcible removal, her weakness and defencelessness.  Somewhere inside Peach snakes a crack, a tear in the fabric of her submissive and accepting nature.  From out of this fissure seeps the first sap of rebellion.  Fuelled by years of repression the sap bubbles, running over and spreading to her core. Humiliation swiftly turns to anger, and anger to rage.  Why?  Why me?   As her fury builds she sees a goblet carelessly (and conveniently) left in the corner.  She seizes it, the geyser of revolt erupting into a volcano of fury, Peach hurls it at Bowser’s head with all the force of her repressed rage. 

“Patriarchal prick!” 

THUNK!

As the goblet flies from her hand, a seam on the shoulder of her dress tears and her dainty tiara flies from her head, landing with a tinkle on the floor.  The goblet sails through the air and strikes Bowser on the end of his nose:

Bowser staggers backward, struck dumb before a whimper inadvertently escapes his scaly, trembling lips.  Peach stands unwavering, glaring at him.  Surely, she wouldn’t charge him now, would she?  Bowser doesn’t take the risk and runs for safety, pulling an iron lever jutting from a brick column beside the fireplace.  Cogs clunk into life and the grinding of stone on stone fills the tower room.  First the fireplace thrusts forward revealing a tunnel out of the tower into which Bowser rushes, turning at the last minute to watch from the entrance.  Next the floor around Peach’s feet begins to quake, stone starts to crack and separate, orange light floods the room followed swiftly by stinging heat.  Dust and chips of brick rain down onto Peach as she struggles to keep her balance, the floor crunches, square columns drop into an orange and black inferno below leaving a crumbling chessboard of death on which Peach stands in the position of queen.  She inhales deeply and makes a leap for the first column ahead of her, but too soon.  A fireball spews up as she crosses the chasm and ignites her polyester dress, burning and blistering her legs and hands as she rushes to quell the flames and remove the branded garment.  Peach is finally left standing, burned, raw and vulnerable in a charred petticoat among the ashes and ruin of her former self.  From his position in the fireplace tunnel Bowser sneers in triumph, believing Peach’s tiny revolution quashed.  He observes his de-cloaked captive and wonders if the last layers of protection could be so easily removed.  Without the pink, Peach is paler than he imagined.  The burned and blackened remnants of her previously flowing tresses highlight a chiselled face with small, piercing blue eyes; now bloodshot from the effects of the smoke.  Her waist is wider than her corset had allowed, muscular and sculpted lines show strength, slender hips connect to powerful thighs.  Small pert breasts finally destroy the hourglass figure he had once envisioned, she is nothing he believed her to be.

Peach looks around at her position on the fiery chessboard.  She is unsteady and won’t be able to stand here much longer.  Lava spits around the base of each column while fireballs jet from the bubbling magma below.  Her path to freedom won’t be easy or direct, but she has no choice, it must be done.  The column to her right is the closest with no jets of fire that she can tell.  Peach positions herself as best she can on the cracked stone column and leaps, landing hard on her chest she desperately grabs at the edges of stone, her shoes scraping as she struggles to gain her footing.  Shaking, Peach carefully climbs to her feet, ‘must keep moving’.  Again she keeps to the right and leaps, landing on her feet this time, but skidding across the rubble and almost plummeting over the other side.  Once straightened she considers a diagonal jump, but thinks better of it deciding that forward must be her next move.  The next column is closer, but fire shoots up between the blackened walls, weakening the stone edges.  Peach counts ‘1, 2, 3, 4, fire’ and so again successively for three rows.  Wishing she was more confident, Peach prepares her body for the jump.  The awaited flame surges and dims and she quickly leaps across landing heavily on her feet and lurching, almost falling forward over the column.  The surface cracks and starts to break away forcing Peach to bounce desperately to the next column ahead of her, landing safely but breaking one heel and bending her foot unnaturally, twisting her ankle.  She sits for a minute and surveys how much further until she is out of danger.  The room is smoky, the heat suffocating.  Peach is sweaty, blackened with soot and aching from her burned skin and now throbbing ankle.  She still has so far to go.  Despair rises in her chest, she’ll probably die here.

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“On the way to rescue Princess Peach” thinks Yogi as he skips along after a bouncing Mario and Luigi.  “And what a lovely day for it”. He breathes in deeply and smiles up at Luigi, noting with dismay that he doesn’t seem so enthusiastic.  “What on earth can be wrong with him?” muses Yogi, “the trip to Bowser’s castle is always so exciting, although, we do make it an awful lot”. Yogi nods to himself, “yes, we do have to rescue Peach often, it’s probably the only time we really get to go out.  The last time we did it was, well, only last week, and here we are again.  That’s why he’s mad, this was supposed to be his weekend off. Although, we don’t really have weekends off.  We’ve been rescuing Peach since 1985, so I don’t think we’ve ever had a break…”

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Peach feels heavy and unmoveable, her daring has deserted her.  She feels so isolated and alone.  Fighting back the tears of frustration she looks back to where she started cowering from Bowser against the wall.  The fire ball that burned her persistently scalds the columns she fought so hard to cross.  She’s come so far, and she doesn’t want to move, but she knows she has to.  Stiffly Peach drags herself to a half-crouched, half standing position and forces herself onwards, using the bouncing technique that worked so well before to keep her stable and minimise the pain, she pushes forward, slipping occasionally, narrowly escaping the blaze.  Doggedly she pushes on until the end is in reach.

Bowser watches on from his hiding place.  He can’t quite believe Peach’s courage as his eyes remain glued to her progress across the columns.  He strains to see the ever prized intimate blush of bosom through the torn and ruined rags that now adorn her body, searches for a glimpse of the usually concealed prize between her thighs.  She’s so close now, he can almost see what for all these years has eluded him.

Landing hard on the final ledge, Peach catches Bowser deep in thought, the start of a sneer creasing the corner of his mouth.  Defiant she reaches down, removes her right stiletto and launches herself swinging at Bowser.  Aiming for his eyes, she pierces a gelatinous eyeball and as Bowser screams and scrambles to defend his remaining eye, Peach stamps on his toes with her still shod, left foot and thrusts her knee upwards, squarely into his kindled nether-region.  Once toppled, she mounts his shoulders beating his head into unconsciousness and beyond, barely aware of her own rasping screams and the spatter of blood until her face is burning, and her body shaking.

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Outside the castle our two gallants arrive followed closely by Yogi.  They pause to catch their breath and Mario leans against one of the columns that frames the entrance to the castle.  Suddenly there’s a clunk, and the trio’s shocked eyes meet for a split second before they plummet down a hand-dug pit, landing heavily on sand and rolling into three conveniently placed tunnels.  Separated they continue their descent into the darkness before landing with a thud into their own pre-prepared cages in Bowser’s dungeon.  For what seems like hours they search for a way out, a box to break, a coin to pick the lock, but they find nothing.  The locks are rusted shut and none can think of an escape plan.

“Help!” shouts Mario “somebody save us!” Silence follows his desperate cries, then suddenly the clunk of a draw bar sounds like thunder in the quiet darkness of the dungeon.  The first door swings open and crashes onto the wall followed by the second, slower than the first revealing a blood-stained and triumphant figure.  She steps forward and reveals herself. Bare footed, she wears a torn and blackened sheet wrapped around her waist, her chest is adorned with a green, spiked breast plate, while a black spiked choker sits around her throat.  Patches of red, angry sores cover her legs and arms.  Her hair is short with longer wisps, greyed with ash knotted and hanging around her face.  In her right hand she holds aloft a burning torch, in her left she clutches a bloodied stump of what looks like the heel of a shoe.  Closer inspection reveals skull fragments and something that looks suspiciously like grey matter.  Mario strains to see who this stranger could be as Peach lights the torches in the room.  All gasp as they realise who it is that stands before them, and dumbly obey her command:

“Stand back!”  Peach swings a mace she’s lifted from the wall and smashes off the first lock with a clang, kicking open the door to Mario’s cell with such force that the dust from the battered brick hits him in the eyes.  The other two doors swiftly receive the same treatment, and as Mario finally exits his cell to join the others, still rubbing his eyes he receives with a thrust the stump Peach had been carrying.  Peach responds to his questioning look:

“I want to frame it.  Let’s get out of here” Peach strides purposefully out onto the path and away from the castle that has been her on and off prison for thirty-four years.  Mario and Luigi pause a moment at the door and exchange looks, while Yogi follows after Peach. “Are you coming or not?  I have a kingdom to run” calls Peach without pausing to turn round.  The brothers turn and bounce obediently after their monarch, heading for home and a new chapter in their history.