For nearly 10 years now I've had a headcanon for the Mario universe/ mushroom kingdom that spurned from a singular question. It was senior year of college, I was ridiculously high in the way that a 21 year old gets unintentionally, and playing my roommate's copy of mario kart 8 for the wii u. suddenly, a question hits me: how the hell does the mushroom kingdom afford this track upkeep. even conservatively in the base game of mario kart 8, there are something like 30+ tracks, 3/4 of which are quite complicated, with like olympics level investment in the venues. In a place with few apparent industries, with what seems to be a tiny royal core ruling over what seems to be peasantry.
So here's what i think:
- Mario kart/other sports games show the mushroom kingdom at peace, in contrast to the mainline games where the kingdom is (in most of them) in civil war, or very occasionally at war with another entity. The kingdom is multi-ethnic, with a historical divide between the urban, wealthier toad population that the kingdom originally ruled, and a goomba/koopa/shy guy/birdo underclass that are both most of the total population but also completely unrepresented in the government
- The Toadstool royal family is analogous to the Saudi royal family, spending a lot of money on the enrichment of the royals themselves complete with LIV Golf esque attempts to launder their reputation via fancy sports. However, to make it even more ridiculous, they dont spend their money on already popular professional athletes that may exist in, say, new donk city: they just play all the sports themselves, for the most part, and the only non-royals there for a long time either come from very high society and/or are essentially courtesans. A substantial amount of the tax money the Kingdom takes in is spent on this high activity and leisure.
- think about what koopas and goombas are doing during mario games. they're citizens of the mushroom kingdom, yes? but while in the sports games they're in the audience (or part of the teams themselves with strikers,) in the mainline games they seem to be mostly against mario. my question is: is it conscription or is it
memorexan actual popular uprising that's attracted a slimy head in bowser (more on him in a sec) but has popular support across a variety of diverse but nominally independent militias/resistance groups that share a general loathing for the toadstool royal family. I find the latter to be far more interesting, so its what i subscribe to. Its like how the french resistance had both communist parts of it and conservative parts of it and liberal parts, too, each independent but also sort of coordinating. - Bowser is like a trump analogue (this is not a new observation; trump was the inspiration for bowser in the original live action super mario bros movie). Due to being on the races hes on tv and everything, rough edges shaved off, you mostly just see him as a "controversial" driver, but like trump on the apprentice the bad shit is on the cutting room floor. He's a sexist slimeball whose main private motivation, consistently, is marrying the princess. but he doesn't need to do that to gain popular appeal, does he? He can, with the media profile he's been granted, can go to the mostly poor koopas and goombas and whatnot and make a potent revolutionary case: you all know these royal assholes and their millionaire friends waste all this money on sports events that are also the only thing on for some reason. And nobody who gets you actually listens, or cares, do they now? you don't see your tax coins coming back to you? well guess what. Me, bowser? I'm, like, the one guy in both worlds. The guy who can get rid of these fuckers once and for all. Now, remember--this is a lie by bowser, to an extent: his true goal is mostly to satisfy his id, get the girl, all that. integrate himself into the royal family via marriage, ingratiate himself to the toads that way. But they dont need to know that yet. The goombas and all, he needs them now, and he can portray himself simultaneously as an insider and an outsider.
- wario is a yevgeny prigozhin type, who went from being the royal family's diamond/gold supplier via cheap shy guy labor (see wario's gold mine, mario kart wii) who also basically expands into every other business. i can totally see wario expanding into defense contracting, with his company/warioware in general is like the mushroom kingdom's general dynamics. all that millitary tech bowsers henchmen seem to have has to come from somewhere, right? The royal family et al finds him inelegant, but he's able to buy his way into racing like a real formula one driver. Waluigi is his quiet husband.
- mario, too, is a kind of oligarch, but via a different route than wario. He was a plumber, who the princess hired, and then liked, so kept hiring. Then bowser took over for the first time, mario was in the right place at the right time given the pipe problem that was happening simultaneously, and suddenly him and his brother/business partner luigi are national heroes to royalists. moshe dayan types.
- its not just tax dollars keeping the mushroom kingdom afloat. when personally ransacking the kingdom mario doesn't just kill more combatants than he leaves alone, he pillages what little money is lying around. If he kills a goomba and that goomba's carrying cash? mario or luigi (or sometimes, in a very crusades-reminscent gesture, Princess Toadstool herself) will take all the cash they're carrying. This pillaged gold ends up--you guessed it--going right back towards golf and tennis and racing and soccer and so much more