Baby Mario & Blue Yoshi enjoying some swimming in the classic Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (Nintendo EAD, 1995) for Super Nintendo.

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Did i ever post my yoshis island au rambles and just not tag it/tags dont work or did i just leave it in my drafts this whole time 💩

its my sleepover so i get to pick the song

I've started playing SMW2: Yoshi's Island (thank you Switch for NSO libraries allowing me to discover classics without going broke).

Really love the game so far, it's very different from a classic Mario game and yet it still holds up solidly...

...And now the hardest part is to resist making headcanons about the various Yoshis of this game and their dynamics with baby Mario.

Or using what I'm learning to fuel my AU about the bros being raised by Yoshis.

HOWEVER! I embrace wholeheartedly and cherish viciously the idea that Kamek was made fun of for AGES by the entire Koopa Troop for failing to snatch properly two babies and only getting one of them. At least the rest of the Troop has the excuse of baby Mario being under the protection of a pack of wild dinosaurs, what's Kamek's excuse ? Couldn't even ambush a pacifist bird on his own!

No wonder Kamek holds a grudge against the bros for the rest of his life, especially against Mario! He thinks Luigi is so much nicer and more well-behaved than his infuriating brother, at least he doesn't make a fuss when kidnapped.

Then later Luigi goes on adventures with Mario and Kamek is OUTRAGED. Such a bad influence! What happened to the sweet baby he used to know!

okay, so...

i have a very loose theory that the bros were reverse-isekai'd as babies, or at least very young children.

first of all, the map in the trailer features yoshi's island. although it's depicted with more mountains than in smw2, it's still easily identifiable. considering there's also mushroom kingdom, dk mountain and bowser's castle on the map, all of which have been confirmed to be significant locations in the movie, it's safe to say yoshi's island's also gonna play a pretty major role in the film.

there's definitely other reasons why it could be significant that don't involve the yoshi's island lore, but considering this is a film about mario's origin story, i'm definitely not ruling out the possibility.

not to mention the pretty similar plotline of the bros being separated at the start of the film, and mario ending up in a place with friendly faces and luigi ending up in bowser's domain.

and if they did get transported to earth from an early age, it makes sense why mario at the very least didn't recognise mushroom kingdom. any memory of it may have been dismissed as his imagination or a dream.

listen. i do not trust chris pratt to convey the expected emotions that mario would feel if he met a yoshi and got a major sense of deja vu which triggers some form of flashback, but damn would it make me one happy bunny if it happened. bonus points if it's a yoshi who aided mario in yoshi's island and they recognise him.

wait so baby bowser was in smw2 so bowser is roughly the same age as mario n luigi..

favorite games of 2023 1. bomb rush cyberfunk (might as well be an official jsr sequel. plays even better). 2. street fighter vi (best sf since iii3. plus has a story and variety modes. incredible). 3. hi-fi rush (like jsr if it was a beat-em-up. two jsr-likes in one year hell yes). 4. super mario rpg rm (best you could ask for from a true-to-original remake). 5. world of horror (1.0 made it way more playable. perfect recreation horror tabletop). 6. mario wonder (best 2d mario since smw2. underrated, heartwarming online mp). 7. re4 rm (fixed 90% of my issues w original. ended an almost 20yo grudge). 8. pizza tower (wario4 2. super fun to play, but really it's all about the aesthetics). 9. starfield (listen. i know, okay? but honestly all b open worlds since esiii have been just mediocre. and this has a better theme and gameplay than the rest. funny glitches. get high and zone out to space skyrim bc who even cares). honorable mentions 1. dead cells return to castlevania (this dlc got me to give this game the attention it deserved. and i soon realized it was one of the best games of all time. just wow). 2. zelda totk (even tho it's 10x better than the orig, it's based on the most aggressively mid, overrated zelda we've ever had. that said, it's like botw's majoras mask. genuinely great, but it's honestly just dlc. and i don't want another botw ever again. 3. mario kart 8 deluxe dlc (the smash ultimate of mario kart. best mk since 64). 4. Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer (enough said). 5. outer wilds (not from 2023, but i only just played it. it's a very special game that absolutely deserves mentioning. go into this blind. no spoilers whatsoever).

"Castle" theme from SMW2: Yoshi's Island

Have you done the SMW2 castle thememe?

Not yet, but I can queue it.

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rambles about my messy af bowuigi yoshi's island au thing, at the "behest" of @maxium-defense-luigi i have more bits and bobs but tried to "summarize" the vague major points and failed 😭

Basically, it's yoshi's island's premise where kamek kidnaps baby luigi, but ends up taking him in as his ward. So now bowser and luigi grow up together and become each other's best friend.

But remember, kid mario and the yoshies are still looking for luigi. When they finally manage to defeat kamek, they take luigi with them, to "rescue" him. But, for the most part, what they've done is tear luigi away from the only family he's ever known.

And taken away Bowser's only friend.

From here, the story can somewhat fall in line with the movie premise. In that, the yoshies hide the human children away, sending them to a world where they better blend in. A world no one else seems to know of.

But kamek doesn't know that. He wages a war against the yoshies, razing their island in search of luigi. To no avail. He extends his search to other kingdoms, and Bowser grows up knowing only that luigi was taken from him—

—and that he /despises/ the boy in the red cap.

Moving forward in time to when bowser ascends to the throne, you can only imagine how someone like bowser only doubles the search efforts. He tears through kingdom to kingdom in search of luigi, and leaves destruction in his wake. He gains a reputation as a war monger, the world fears him, and he intends to keep it that way.

Until the day bowser's troops capture a human fumbling through the kingdom. Because bowser's hopes and dreams of a happy reunion with his invaluable friend are instantly dashed when luigi /doesn't remember him./ All Luigi seems to do is cower from bowser as if he were a dangerous beast, who won't let luigi go back home, and luigi /doesn't want to stay./

But bowser has gone his whole life looking for luigi, to have him by his side /always,/ and he won't let go without a fight.

Luigi seems real preoccupied with running back to some "Mario" guy, and lo and behold, bowser's scouts discover that the stubborn mushroom kingdom has also received a visitor.

A man in a /red cap./

The main timeline difference here is that in yoshis island, you rescue luigi relatively quickly. But in order for the au to work, the yoshies cant find and rescue luigi until he's been missing for like a few years. Oof.

Theres so many tropes i wanna cram into this thing likeee. I love to imagine that bowser has basically gastby'd luigi, ykno? Where luigi, like daisy, has almost become more of a concept than an actual person in bowser's head. And that luigi would just conveniently not care about bowser having terrorized numerous kingdoms for "luigi's" sake, and that he'd just /agree/ to stay with bowser forever and ever etc. even tho its completely unrealistic and frankly ridiculous

Ive made a short post about this before, where i wanted to explain that i would want to do these different phases of their lives as separate parts, so that I could focus on the different stages and their different tones without it seeming too disjointed for one story. Like i rly wanna dedicate a whole story just to kid bowuigi bc guh theyre so precious 😭

And clearly i want to cram beauty and the beast in there. I love the idea of bowser instantly crushing on now-adult luigi, but he can't make any progress bc bowser has also let himself degrade into the monster the world views him as.

Its also fun to consider this like, thing of how /kamek/ was the one who started this thing of marking the yoshies as mortal enemies of the koopas, moreso than any other kingdom or race. And so bowser grows up in a kingdom at war, and just kinda absorbs that mentality and those practices. It's kinda all he knows.

(It also just doesn't help that kid bowser was HELLA traumatized by having luigi kidnapped from his own home /right in front of him,/ as kamek hid them both together in a saferoom. Likewise, luigi is def fucked up from being kidnapped but whereas bowser explodes from all of his issues, luigi is a perfect embodiment of repressed/suppressed trauma. 🥲)

And remember, mario was basically raised a la tarzan by the yoshies (hell yeah feral jungle boy mario), and luigi is mario's brother. So now there's these two heavily feuding groups, and bowser goes and falls for someone he shouldn't associate with. Yes, it's romeo and juliet, dammit.

I have yet to watch howl's moving castle but (excuse me if im butchering your special interest 😭), i feel like this plot is also vaguely similar to that movie.

Its just fun. Like. Luigi's kidnapped as a baby by the bad guys, the good guys rescue him after like five years but it's basically kidnapping at this point, so whos in the right and whos in the wrong, etc

Ugh this is why i dont write this story lmao, im trying too hard 💀💀💀 this idea has clearly been rotting in my head too long and getting out of hand 😵‍💫

Backgrounds from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island

Harry Hedgehog from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island is Sonic!

A grunt would definitely ride a milde ngl