Author's Preface

In December 2023, I finished Tougher than the Rest, which is a modern-universe interpretation of the Super Mario Brothers, set mostly in New York City, February to December 2014. Over the course of roughly two years, I was fortunate to have gained a following on FanFiction and AO3. Due to its success, I announced a sequel to commence publication in Spring 2024.

One of the challenges issued by my readers was for the next story to begin in 2021. Originally, I had conceived of the plotline to take place in 2019, mainly to avoid the difficulties posed by the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-present). As one can note in the comments on AO3, as well as those said to me in real life, many readers are in fact eager for a tale or, at the very least, a discussion, of the early events of March-May 2020.

Although I am not in the habit of backing down from a challenge, I do recognize the enormous risk of writing an in-universe story during a period of time in which very few, if anyone, went unaffected. I wrote about mass trauma in Tougher than the Rest(September 11, 2001 and the Afghanistan/Iraq Wars), so dealing with difficult subject matter is not foreign to me. But like the saying goes, to do it well takes time and distance – in the case of the first story, thirteen years (and twenty years for writer and reader). On one hand, not addressing 2020 leaves us with questions that would seem too insurmountable or believable, mostly about how the characters have changed and survived. On the other hand, because of so many differing experiences, stories, and, regrettably, conspiracy theories, one runs the risk of making the story a lecture or testimonial. It's hard because we're all witnesses in some way. That being said, this leads to another point: these characters "tell" me what they want written.

Thus, I am making this story an "aside," if you will. It'll be a short story designed to bridge that gap, with little expectation that the reader will have read it to understand the 2021-era sequel. I may allude to this backstory, but it will not be significant, in case readers would prefer to avoid the subject of the pandemic.

Because this will be a shorter story, I will publish this on both AO3 and FF. However, the 2021 story will be printed exclusively on AO3.

Given the difficult content herein, I want to address a few "ground rules" with respect to the history/setting:

1. I am going to tell the story from the point-of-view of how people reacted to the events of early 2020 in New York and the West Coast. So there will be a lot of information that is outdated or outright wrong. It's important to understand that an omniscient narrator does not always equate to historical accuracy.

2. Because I don't want this to turn into a conspiracy theory bank, I am going to be as historically faithful as possible. There will be some artistic license, but I am not going to editorialize. I am going to show what is and what was.

Now, a few points for readers who may not have read Tougher than the Rest:

3. While it is helpful to have read Tougher than the Rest, it is not essential. I realize it's quite long, so I am doing my best to make certain references clear with added context.

4. This is a modern universe story, so there won't be any medicinal mushrooms or power-ups, unfortunately. Yoshi, Birdo, Bowser, Miles, etc., have all been characterized into human form. Furthermore, geographical places have been changed, as the Mushroom Kingdom and Sarasaland do not exist in real life. Peach is a princess of sorts – a descendant of Franco-Italian aristocrats. With respect to Daisy, she is a noble, as well, albeit in a different sense: in Jewish culture, the "nobles" are the priests or kohanim; her surname is Abravanel, which is known to be kohanic among the Sephardim (Iberian/North African/Mediterranean Jews).

5. I made a few crucial changes to the canon, notably that Mario and Luigi are eight years apart in age and their surname is Masciarelli. You can read my explanation for this in the preface to Tougher than the Rest. In this story, they're 41 and 33 respectively. Peach is a year younger than Mario (40) and Daisy is four years younger than Luigi (29/30).

6. If you have seen the recent Super Mario Bros movie, Mario and Luigi's parents are alive and their uncles are named Tony and Arthur. I had begun writing Tougher than the Rest prior to the film's release and did not actually screen it until September 2023. Instead, I based my story's canon on the Super Mario Super Show of the late-1980s and early-1990s, in which Uncle Tony and an unnamed uncle existed, but we only saw the brothers' mother and aunts. Additionally, I had to ask myself why first-generation (unmarried) Italian American plumbers weren't living with their genitori. Thus, in my story's universe, their parents (named Mario and Gabriella) are deceased, and there are three living uncles: Uncle Tony Benevento, who's married to Aunt Maria (née Masciarelli), Uncle Joe (Giuseppe) Masciarelli, who's married to Lucia (née Bianchi; a variant of the name Luigina, who's one of the aunts on SMSS), and Uncle Salvatore Rigassi, who is their maternal uncle and unmarried. Mario and Luigi also have multiple first and second cousins, per SMSS.

7. Romantic pairings: I tend to respect canon whenever possible, so the main couples are Mario/Peach and Luigi/Daisy. There are LGBT+ couples and characters in this universe, but again, they are canonical to the game (e.g., Yoshi/Birdo) or, if they are semi-original characters, canonical to the first story.

8. Finally, the obligatory legal statement that I do not and will never own these characters. They belong to Nintendo and Sega. Salvatore Rigassi is technically my character, although he feels so much part of the series that Nintendo might as well own him. I'm not doing this for profit; my day job pays the bills adequately.