In yesterday’s Smash Bros Ultimate Direct, Nintendo revealed a pretty huge care package of information. Simon and Richter Belmont from the Castlevania series will be joining the Smash Bros Ultimate roster, and Nintendo has effectively turned the Switch into a portable music player with the Smash Bros Ultimate music updates. Moreover, we learned that Donkey Kong antagonist King K Rool will also premiere as a new fighter… and people are awfully thirsty for that big-bellied crocodile boy.
After the announcement, logging onto Twitter and browsing the “King K Rool” mentions became a journey into sordid sexual arousal. User @skullmandible remarked that “Between bowser and King K Rool it’s a real lizard daddy extravaganza,” while @unkn0wn_gh0st stated in regard to King K Rool’s inclusion in Smash Bros Ultimate that “Bowser has some competition for most fuckable character in that game.” The list goes on, with a significant number of Tweeters expressing joy over the plump and juicy exterior of the crocodilian monarch, like fellow games journalism site Let’s Play Video Games, who simply tweeted, “Damn that gator is thicc.”
Why is this? As with some of the examples you can see, it’s a phenomenon likely similar to the collective horniness for Bowser — both he and King K Rool sport stocky physiques and adopt authoritative stances and mannerisms, a pair of qualities that are part of what many feel appealing in the “Daddy” archetype. Many online, in fact, directly referred to King K Rool as their “Daddy,” and it’s not just a form of attraction limited to the Daddy Dom/Little Girl kink that is often, not always fairly, the subject of ridicule and disgust among some online commenters. “Daddy” kink is also quite a popular phenomenon in the queer community, which also plays a factor in this King K Rool randiness that we’re seeing.
King K Rool is not a human being — he’s an anthropomorphic, reptilian creature. Bowser, too, is not human. But much like how many villains and antagonists in old movies were queer-coded in an archaic attempt to instill some revulsion in audiences, monsters and creatures are made in the same way. This sense of “otherness” is what many queer people find deeply relatable about these characters.
We saw this phenomenon with The Shape of Water, Guillermo Del Toro’s monster romance movie about a deaf woman who falls in love with a fish humanoid inspired by The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Countless queer people, despite the film’s “heterosexual” romance, grew attached to the narrative because of that appreciation of the “other.”
Perhaps a rather more straightforward subject of the thirsting is that, given the relative size of King K Rool in comparison to an average person, it’s not unthinkable to assume that proportions scale up in every sense of the word. As Twitter user @oujamon said, albeit a comical attribution towards IGN, “King K Rool has a dick triple the size of Bowser.” User @sexyspacedude themselves said something similar, evoking a popular adage whose use may extend into the literal: “Sakurai wanted to add a fighter who embodied the new trend “big dick energy” so he added King K Rool.”
And you know what? I get it. I’m queer, and I understand “otherness” as a factor in attraction. To an extent I also appreciate the protection that many must feel who engage as a subordinate in Daddy kink – and don’t get me started on the allure of the crocodile king’s big dick energy. In short; Twitter, I understand. You really want to f*ck King K Rool, you have every reason to. And I really want to f*ck King K Rool, too.
