#and also her specifically bec i don't have nice art of her yet

[amngtheflowers]

Weight of the world

[freakattack]

How about favorite NON obscure Mario characters?

Entry-level mario characters? We're really scraping the bottom of the barrel now

ORBULON AND MONA (and their coworkers)

Truly what is there to say here. If you need an explanation for this then go look at my art blog and get out of my sight.

2. IGGY KOOPA (and his family)

As I mentioned in my yes-obscure mario characters list, i did grow up with a permanent koopaling residence in my brain. Iggy koopa was always the star of the show in my book but make no mistake, I love EVERY koopaling for their own individual merits, there is not a koopa kid I don't adore, if you like one koopaling you have to unconditionally love all of them or else they will kill you. Before warioware, this other dysfunctional squadron of jerks was my muse. Bowser and Bowser Jr. are included in this as well, but there is one specific member of the family I want to give a special shout out to:

3. KAMEK (their grandpa)

Kamek is maybe the best mario character there is. He's, and I don't use this term lightly, an icon. A trailblazer. A gay old wizard. He is bowser's overly-permissive yet loving father figure, and now bowser jr's (AND THE KOOPALINGS') overly-permissive yet loving grandpa. He is a family man. He is also the catalyst of the ultimate conflict in the mario series. Were it not for his poorly-planned exercise in paranoia decades ago, we may very well not have any mario games to play. So if you like any mario game, you have to say Thank You Kamek. Right now. Out loud.

4. WARIO

He's on this list twice because he's so nice. Wario is perhaps the most cruelly underrated character of all time. Nobody appreciates him for who he is or what he represents. I mean they do but not enough. Anyway, Wario is an inspiration. He is an asshole, yes, but he is not only unapologetic in his strangeness but also welcomes the strange into his life and doesn't let go. He is like a collector of gullible freaks, which is what I am. But he is also ride or die for them and a genuinely good friend when he's not scamming them. If Wario was the only person allowed to be mean to me I'd be OK with that.

Also, on a more meta level, I think that he embodies everything that mario can't do. Mario is the face of nintendo, the good guy, and thus he is palatable and measured in a way that falls in line with and is reflected by his games and their ever-important "brand identity". Wario, in-universe, is the heel, the cad, the knockoff mario, and he doesnt give two fucks about what people think of him. This characterization also applies to his games, which are rough around the edges, off-the-walls bonkers, and electrically creative. They are constantly innovative in a more unpolished and experimental way than I think mario dares to be, and most importantly they have the secret ingredient of Love. You can argue with me on that any way you want but if you think that an entire series of in-character diaries and blogs and staff profiles for every single Wario employee that are all funny and consistent with each other over several decades was nothing then I don't wanna hear it.

5. TEC-XX

Fanning myself. Moving on

6. BOWYER

I don't really have much to say except that he entered my life at a delicate developmental stage and promptly took a baseball bat to my brain. How the fuck was I to gloss over a deranged slobbering Thing squatting in the woods shooting everybody with arrows that he's yanking out of his skull and talking like a souped-up yoda. And then I have to kill him? Fuck off. He should have been in mario kart

7. VALENTINA

Also from mario RPG, the criminally underrated bastardess Valentina. In addition to having a baroque harpsichord leitmotif and being a walking Jimmy Buffett reference, Valentina is ALSO an evil advisor scamming a town populated entirely by village idiots, which is perhaps my favorite genre of character. I found out via the remake that apparently Dodo imprinted on her and thinks she's his mother, which actually sucks a lot because I always thought she was just his evil sexy boss. I still wish that was the case. But she is also a wretched slimeball to begin with and who am I to deny a girlboss her slime.

8. FRANCIS

I guess I should fucking put him here even though I don't like him. He is a reminder to us all that we need to calm down. And by we I mean me. He is also, barring Fracktail and none else, the greatest part of that entire game, in my unbiased opinion as a stinky bug-obsessed dogmatic Mario turbovirgin. Mario games will never match that level of hilarious vitriol for the worst parts of their audience ever again. They're not brave enough. But we are truly fortunate that they did. Because who else would readily admit that they go onto message boards to complain about games they've never played? Not me, I'd never do that

9. CACKLETTA + FAWFUL

I'm not separating them. Fawful is an amazing character but his climb to greatness could not have happened without Cackletta, the equally great and toothy villain. Look at her rocket-powered rocking chair. That's hilarious. Anyway, there isn't much glowing praise I can say about Fawful that hasn't already been said before, so what I instead will say is does anyone else remember when there was a movement of extremely passionate and confrontational people who insisted that Fawful's death was faked and that he can and will be announced in Mario Kart right now? We need to bring that energy back

10. SILLY KING BOO

I'm capping this list off with something insane that my fellow Francises are gonna wanna kill me for but I don't care. I am of the opinion that Silly King Boo is a separate entity from King Boo (real). He's just too silly. He's also worked beneath bowser as a minion rather than alongside him as a co-villain, which I think the real King Boo would scoff at. But Silly King Boo has to pay the bills somehow. As distinct from King Boo, Silly King Boo thinks little Boos are so cute, thinks Wario is scary as fuck, loves the opera, tolerates Petey Piranha, does not tolerate spicy foods, and is not actually a legally-recognized authority. Also, one time he got too drunk in a casino at Isle Delfino, but Mario was not there to fight him for that so he was just escorted out.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Attached is a grab bag of characters who deserve to be here but are not getting their own paragraph either because I have already written a lot about them in recent memory or because I don't feel like it. Here they are