Nintendo Wants Us To Believe Mario & Peach Are Just "Good Friends"

Bullshit, Nintendo. I don't believe them for a second. Of course Mario and Peach are "more than friends". You don't spend your whole life being rescued by a wrenched-up Italian from the clutches of an evil power-hungry dinosaur and not once have the courtesy to slice off your handsome mustachioed savior a piece of tail. How pathetic are we supposed to think Mario is? He's obviously in love with her. We're supposed to believe that Princess Peach is gullible enough to get herself trapped in Bowser's castle 22 times in 40 years, but Mario has so little game that he hasn't one time been able to convince her to sleep with him? Of course they've had sex. I've literally seen it happen.

I really thought Nintendo would give us a more satisfying answer than that. I thought when @KirPinkFury asked the Nintendo Today app if Mario and Peach were romantic partners, that Nintendo would reply:

"Of course they are. Peach first blew Mario after her initial rescue in 1985 following the last level of the original Super Mario Bros. But before they went any further, Mario, always the gentleman, put a stop to things. Citing he did not want their first time to be Peach feeling like she owed him something. 

From there, Mario painted himself into a corner. Whenever he felt enough time had passed that Peach truly wanted to be with him for the lowly plumber he was, that dumb bitch got herself captured again, and the clock reset. 

It wasn't until 1992, when Peach was captured for the 5th time, that the graphics had became sharp enough that Peach's voluptuous figure was too much for Mario to resist. Mario concocted a plan in which he brought his brother Luigi to rescue Peach along with him in the geography-based PC game "Mario is Missing". 

In the final scene, Mario has Luigi kick Bowser over the edge of his castle. Through this loophole, where Luigi 'technically' was the one who finished off Bowser, Mario took Peach into the castle basement where they made sweet passionate love for the very first time. 

They have been in a loving relationship ever since."

But nope. Nintendo gave the coward's answer. 

Discourse surrounding the relationship status of fictional cartoon characters is one of my favorite things on the internet. Remember back in 2018 when Sesame Street writer Mark Saltzman addressed the status of Bert & Ernie's homosexual relationship during his AIDS interview? Literally. Mark sat down with someone from a media outlet called 'Queerty' for what started as a thought provoking interview on what it was like to be out during the AIDS epidemic. Then halfway through the interview, they slip a quick, "Are Bert & Ernie gay?" question in there. 

Saltzman gave a nice wholesome answer about how he did model them after him and his partner's relationship, because that was the best way he was able to contextualize them. Mark was a jokester like Ernie. His partner was grumpy and OCD like Bert. So he used aspects of his real life gay relationship as inspiration for his children's show. Make sense. So naturally, when the interview was published, here's the headline they went with…

And boom goes the dynamite. Bert & Ernie were confirmed gay. People celebrated in the streets. Other's lost their fucking minds and burned their children's Sesame Street pajamas right off their bodies. It was a whole ass thing (no pun intended). To the point that Sesame Street was forced to address Bert and Ernie's gay relationship in a tweet rebuffing what Mark Saltzman had said, assuring the world that Bert & Ernie were in fact NOT GAY.

But THEN, Sesame Street received so much backlash from un-gaying Bert & Ernie, they went back and deleted their retraction. So basically, Mark Saltzman and Sesame Street just lit a big gay orange and yellow fart then walked out of the room for the rest of the world to sit in. Fun times. That was news in September 2018. 

Good, hard hitting, extremely necessary stuff. Lot's of thoughtful discourse surrounding that one. 

Every time I see a creator of fictional movie, TV show, video game, etc. assign sexualities to their characters. Characters whose sexuality doesn't play the slightest role, or have any bearing on what happens in the context of the story. Like when J.K. Rowling randomly offered up in an interview that Dumbledore was gay. I'm glued to my computer screen. It always brings out the best of the internet. Sometimes I wish I had created a hit cartoon television series, just so 10 years after the fact I can tweet, "Timbo The Construction Dinosaur was actually trans", then sit back and watch the fireworks. 

Good stuff, Nintendo. You didn't really say anything, but you reminded me of the great "Are Bert & Ernie Gay?" debate of 2018. Low-key one of my favorite moments in internet history. Thank you for that.