Mario. Plumber. Hero. Super Mario to us commoners.
And of course his brother and compatriot, Luigi.
And......Wario. His weird anti-hero bizarro self.
Wait, don't click to another window!
Hear me out!
This shit is serious.
(I'm not even going to address Waluigi. That's a clown question, bro.)
What can a fictional pair of superhero plumbers, along with one of their exaggerated, treasure-hungry alter-egos, impart about the weird necessity of family?
Your parents and siblings, uncles, aunts and grandparents are a part of who you are. It's DNA, and what we are raised to value. I have a very small family, and I'm so grateful for the ways they have shaped me, both in how I am and who I am, if that makes any sense.
I got a strange and wonderful blend of my parents looks. My black-haired, green-eyed mother and my blond, brown-eyed father made me....a brown-haired, hazel-eyed person. I have my mother's desire to help, and my father's demand for excellence. My brother sharpened my wit, planted my interests, and reminds me to not tolerate bullshit when you don't have to.
The Mario/Wario/Luigi thing fascinates me because Mario and Luigi are brothers, best friends, partners in heroism. But there is still a rivalry. The franchise is still called "Super Mario Brothers" so Luigi is the operative second fiddle. Does every sibling feel like the Luigi to their cooler/smarter/better-accomplished Mario sibling? At some point, I'd say yes. So who the freak is Wario? I think he's a manifestation of the other side of family - the unabashedly competitive, aggressive, weird and unlovable parts of our family and ourselves that come out whether we like it or not.
To explain, there are parts of myself that I do NOT like at all, that come from the ones I love most. Namely, my mood swings. I have moments of rage, moments of Hulking out, that I'm just not proud of at all. It stems from trying to shield others from the fallout of my feelings, which bottle up when I can't (or choose not to) express myself.
You can't shake a soda without having it explode when it's opened.
So my temper, my rage, this inability to express feelings in a healthy manner...this is my Wario.
Last summer, my brother and I had kind of a mind-blowing experience, when we met relatives of our father that I didn't even know existed. My dad...well, I'll address him more at length further down the road, but his relationships with people are sometimes difficult. This family was so welcoming to us, inviting us for a beautiful dinner in their gorgeous home. We talked about their favorite art, documentaries they thought we should see, places they'd travelled and what they'd done there. My brother and I kept looking at each other like "Wait, are THESE people our family? Because they seem a lot like us." At the end of the evening, we parted with warm hugs, and well wishes. It was lovely. They are people I'd like to know. But I can't quite think of them as family. Family has gone the distance, seen the great and horrible. It's where I get my good and bad qualities from. Family is support, competition, and rivalry. Family is Mario. Luigi. And Wario.
