A tale from the 2000s (English version)

I am quite aware that the present work shall betray, a lot, both my age and the time period in which I grew up, and quite likely both those older and younger than me shalll not comprehend the magic which was inherent to this period, but I’d be repressing a quite colorful (and nostalgic) page in a very ungrateful way if I didn’t bring it to public with the affection it deserves. “But why?”, maybe you’re asking. Well! For the time, it’s a surprise…

Very well then. We shall go back in time quite a lot, to a time in which he who’s writing for you didn’t even write at all – at that time, I was nothing but a mere child, lonely and quite overweight, having fun with video games and exploring the no man’s land that was the Internet during the 2000s. My readings were, at most, limited to comic books and the “Harry Potter” saga (which, I won’t deny, were also huge influences on their own way), and most of my fun consisted in searching for stories about my favorite fictional characters (those so-called fanfics) and Flash animations – even though my English was yet to reach the peak it eventually did and I couldn’t understand 9 of 10 I watched, if I stumbled across any video game character (particularly that famous duo of Italian plumbers, good old friends of mine) or any other established character in uncharacteristic scenarios, I’d sure click it to watch. Be aware: since YouTube didn’t exist yet, my favorite places to hang out were the pioneers Newgrounds and Video Game Director’s Cuts.

I remember I spent much more time on the latter, since it had more animations with characters I could recognize and for generally being more elaborate and of a greater quality, made by a single person: Randy Solem, whose name I never forgot after all these years, even though for two decades I had lost some of my interest in returning to it. Mr. Solem could never be forgotten anyway, as of all his animations, one of them was responsible for initiating my career…

Yes – that was the surprise I had to communicate to my kind readers, and that will certainly shake the perception that, for a long time, I’ve tried to display about myself: the first “book” I ever wrote, simply for the mere pleasure of doing it and for being so impressed, was a fanfic inspired by the animation that is, maybe, Mr. Solem’s most famous one, “The rise of the Mushroom Kingdom”, based on the games of the aforementioned plumbers – if I recall correctly, I was only 11 years old.

Yet again, I’m obligated to apologize to my older readers who didn’t grow up under the blessings of the 16-bit games era, but I shall do the best I can in order to at least try to make myself clear. The “Super Mario” series is well known for its light fantasy themes and its settings in fairy tale realms with fantastical and mostly magical creatures, characterized by simple plots of good against evil. “The rise of the Mushroom Kingdom”, on its turn, has a plot with much more complex themes which were quite different from what I was used to see in my adored games. Their iconic protagonist, Mario, is cruelly murdered(!), leading the entire titular Mushroom Kingdom (where most of the games in the series are set) to wage war against their usual foes, the Koopas. The battle scenes are visceral and cinematic – blood and guts aren’t spared, even though the more gruesome moments are balanced by lighter moments of humor and even some tear-jerking drama: right during the first minutes in which dear Mario is dead and buried, I’d think impossible for anyone not to be touched, and empathize with those pixelated characters rearranged to perform different actions – at least that was what I thought when I watched everything for the first time, nearly 20 years ago. Actually, I still do, as after watching everything again, despite a certain strangeness, I was able to remind how that animation was so important to me.

I never met, or spoke to, Mr. Solem, who unfortunately passed away in 2012 – but it would be shameful not to thank him for presenting me with such a great childhood and inspiring my first-ever written work, which is today being kept under the care of very good hands. (Thanks for the fish, Jane!) He who writes, between a novelization of an animated fanfic and a verse novel in Onegin stanza, had to walk for quite a bit… After all, the longest journeys always begin with a single, tiny step. (And at the end of the day, I’m prouder of my childish manuscript than of my actual published debut novella.) Not just me – maybe Mr. Solem has inspired many other people in different ways with his animations, and perhaps presumptuously talking on the behalf of all millennials, we hope he rests in peace, being sure that the 2000s wouldn’t have the same essence they had, and which we miss so much, without his funny animations.

(São Carlos, 16 July 2024)