#fun fact! this was actually the very first Mario-centric story idea I ever had

[peaches2217]

🥰 Saying 'I love you' without saying it (Brotherly Mario and Luigi moment!)

YEEEEEEEEEEES! BROTHERLY LOVE LET'S GO!

Freak

AO3 link!

~~~

Somewhere in Brooklyn, sometime ago...

Mario was a mess.

He held his head high, and the spark behind his one good eye told Luigi he considered himself victorious, but he hadn't come out of that fight cleanly in the slightest. His knuckles were split open in three places. His shirt was torn and the collar was stretched beyond what a good washing could save. Thankfully, all of his teeth were accounted for, but he still spit blood every few minutes thanks to a split lip and what was probably a nasty bite to the inside of his cheek.

The further he tended to those wounds, the more Luigi panicked.

"Oh man. Mom's gonna freak." He wiped his brother’s bloodied hands clean as gently as possible; Mario was careful not to show any signs of pain, but he couldn’t hide the trembling in his hands. “Wh— what are we gonna tell her?”

Mario didn’t answer right away. He kept his jaw tightly clenched until Luigi decided his skin was clean enough, easing up only when the younger twin reached for the bandages he’d purchased in haste from the nearest convenience store.

“We’ll tell her the truth,” he said. “Some low-life decided to pick on the wrong guy and I wasn’t gonna let him get away with it.”

He clenched his jaw again as Luigi went back to work, wrapping broken skin in cheap gauze. He wouldn’t have much use of his hands until their mother could patch him up more expertly, but that was okay for now, he decided.

With any luck, she wouldn’t pry. All she’d care about was lecturing him — Mario, mio figlio irascibile, use your words, not your fists! — and then grounding him for the next month or two. That would be ideal. She didn’t need to know the reasoning behind his latest (and, to date, most violent) scuffle. He wasn’t ready for her to know.

Staring down at Mario’s hands, comically stiff from an overabundance of wrappings, Luigi felt a telltale stinging behind his eyes. “You fight for the dumbest things sometimes.”

“I don’t think someone spreading rumors about you is a dumb thing to fight about.”

The stinging became uncomfortably pronounced. Luigi bit his lip and fished through the plastic bag by his side once more, grabbing the water bottle hidden beneath rubbing alcohol and ointment and bloodied tissues.

“...It’s not just a rumor, is it?”

Luigi’s breath hitched. It had been phrased as a question, yet Mario’s voice lacked curiosity or incredulity, laced with a strong but not harsh I knew it sort of tone. Suddenly he didn’t have the nerve to look at him. He simply handed the bottle over to him and wiped the condensation off on his shorts, doing his best not to give into the desire to curl up into a ball and roll away.

It was his own fault. Like many other pre-teens, Luigi had a diary. Most of what he wrote within its pages was common knowledge, or just his own attempts at working through his thoughts. Most of what was inside, Mario already knew. The one secret he kept from his twin brother was tucked into its faux-leather covers. He’d stupidly believed it would be safe there.

An hour after realizing it was missing from his school bag, that secret was plastered on the library bulletin. By lunchtime it was on everyone’s lips: Oh my God, that Luigi kid’s gay! Always knew there was something wrong with him.

And three minutes after the final bell, the one who outed him was pinned to the ground in the courtyard receiving the beating of a lifetime. Had Luigi not found the strength to pry him off, he was almost convinced Mario would have killed the guy.

“You’re a freak!” the battered bully had shouted at Mario, Luigi’s diary splayed open and speckled with blood beside him. “Just like that— that fucking queer you call a brother!”

Mario was hurt, and he was going to be in massive trouble, and it was all Luigi’s fault. All because he was too chicken to keep it internalized, all because he was the weakling that always needed his brother, all because he was a fucking queer and any and every other derogatory accusation that had been thrown his way today. He pulled his knees to his chest and hugged them tightly and focused all of his energy on not crying, not here, not now.

“Weegee… why didn’t you tell me?” Mario’s voice was oddly soft. Was he upset? Was he sympathetic? He had no reason to be sympathetic. Luigi sniffed.

“Guess I didn’t want you thinking I was a freak, too,” he confessed. Mario and Luigi against the big, wide world. It had always been that way. He couldn’t stomach the thought of that changing, of Mario seeing him differently, of losing him for it. He would have kept this under wraps his whole life if it ensured that never came to pass.

An arm wrapped around him suddenly, and Mario pulled him in, jostling him almost painfully.

“Oh, give me a break, Lu,” he said. “You know who’s a real freak? Mrs. Loriey. She’s got a whole shrine set up to Robert De Niro in her supply closet! Photoshops herself into pictures with him! She’s probably shopped his face onto pictures of naked guys, let’s be real.”

“Mario!” The thought was shocking yet plausible enough that Luigi couldn’t help but laugh. Mario made a victorious noise and jostled him again.

“Or literally anyone who gets a kick out of putting other people down,” he continued, his voice getting lower as he spoke. “You know how desperate for attention people like that have to be? Imagine always thinking ‘How can I ruin some schmuck’s day so I can feel all high ‘n’ mighty?’ People like that aren’t just freaks, they’re losers, plain and simple.”

Luigi nodded, and though the first of his tears began escaping, his smile stayed strong. “So you don’t… think I’m a freak?” He chanced a glance sideways, where he found Mario smiling at him. The skin around his black eye was pale and wet where he’d held the water bottle to it and his split lip made his smile look awkward and crooked, but he knew well enough that it was genuine.

“Nah. But you know what you are?” he asked, squeezing Luigi’s shoulder. “You’re my bro. And I’ll always have your back, okay?”

He reached his other arm around to pull Luigi into a proper hug, and Luigi returned it without hesitation, sniffling and willing his tears to slow.

It had always been them against the world, and that wasn’t changing anytime soon. As far as bad days went, he decided that this one wasn’t so bad after all.

[monsters-conquer-the-world]

10 Games

For Jack’s 10th birthday, Will got him a RetroPie.  Pretty cool, especially since it’s so easy to just dump a zillion games in there and let the kid go nuts.  But that’s a one-way ticked to analysis paralysis, so Will had a a super sick idea.  He asked me and Jess and some other friends to put together a list of 10 must-play classic/retro games and write a little bit about why we chose them.  As someone who loves video games and writing and lists, I was ALL ‘BOUT THAT.  

Now that Jack’s birthday has come and gone, I can share all the junk I wrote about these ten games that mean so much to me!  Check it out:

I love this idea.  I know the initial prompt was just "pick your favorites" but I couldn't help but impose a bunch of additional caveats. I know where this list is headed (and I have a pretty good idea of what games will pop up on the other lists)!  I could have easily listed off 10 Super NES games or 10 N64 games, but I wanted to hit a variety of consoles and franchises.  I would have liked to have hit a variety of genres and studios too, but I can't lie: I love platformers, and I love games by Nintendo.  It was challenging but rewarding to shave this list down to ten--a lot of old favorites and recent discoveries couldn't fit on the list, leaving these few.  The ones I've always treasured, the ones that stuck with me, the ones I memorized the music and sound effects to, starring the characters I love, exploring the worlds I wanted to live in.  Maybe you'll dig 'em too.

NES

Super Mario Bros. 3

I had spent some quality time with our Atari 2600 well before we ever had an NES in the house. I have fond memories of playing but not really understanding Pac-Man, Haunted House, and the bleak nuclear apocalypse masterpiece Missile Command.  But the first game I really wrapped my head around was Super Mario Bros. (and Duck Hunt, but that's not as relevant!).  Mario and Luigi's multi-screen adventures under a friendly blue sky expanded my concept of what a video game could even be--plus it was super fun, and Rochelle and I could both play it together! Super Mario Bros. 2 was technically more impressive, but so weird (and flanked by so many similar games) that it didn't rock my world like Mario 1 did (though I of course have a huge soft spot for it anyway).   Then Super Mario Bros. 3 came along and Mario had learned how to fly.  It was bigger, more beautiful, and stuffed to the brim with secrets and surprises! It was so exciting even Mom and Dad would play it with us.  Super Mario World is maybe the bigger, better, beautifuler game (and you can ride a FREAKING DINOSAUR), but I'll never forget the day I woke up to find my dad and sister playing this in the living room because we finally owned it.  It was too good to just keep renting! Kid Icarus

I didn't catch Kid Icarus the first time around.  I didn't even play it until high school, but I was inspired to track it down because of my love for Greek mythology and the Metroid series.  Kid Icarus takes place in a world heavily inspired by (but still distinctly different from) the swords, sandals, and sorcery epics of ancient Greece!  It's considered a "sister game" to the original Metroid, released around the same time by the same team, and the game shares a lot of the core elements that make Metroid so unique and awesome: eerily lonely, dangerous worlds to explore, a challenging beginning, player-empowering character growth, and a focus on exploring vast, often vertically-scrolling worlds with satisfying run'n'gun'n'jump gameplay. Kid Icarus borrows all the best stuff from Metroid, but tempers it with a slate of unique design choices: instead of one sprawling world, KI is split into discrete levels.  The first world is an ascent out of Hades with vertically oriented levels, the second world is a horizontal trek across the surface world, the third is another vertical ascent into the sky, and the finale is a horizontal, forced-scrolling shoot-em-up to reclaim the heavens!  Every fourth level is a sprawling, maze-like, Metroid-ish dungeon, capped off with a frantic boss fight!  Plus, Eggplant Wizards, credit cards, and RPG-style character upgrades!  They don't make 'em like this anymore!! Duck Tales

It's not as groundbreaking as Super Mario Bros. 1 or as innovative as Super Mario Bros. 3, but that doesn't change the fact that Duck Tales could possibly be my favorite NES platformer of all time. You don't need to know anything about or even like the original cartoon (or the comic books that birthed it) to appreciate the challenging charms of this hop'n'bop classic.  Duck Tales only has a handful of levels, but they're huge, full of hidden treasures, packed with alternate paths, swiss cheesed with secret passageways, and just gorgeous translations of Disney's lush cartoon worlds.   Getting to choose your own path through Duck Tales' roster of big beautiful worlds is reminiscent of the Mega Man games (also by Capcom). What really sets Duck Tales apart is controlling Scrooge.  He's spry for a septuagenarian billionaire, but his real talents lie in swinging and pogo-sticking off his cane!  It's delightful cartoon nonsense, but if you get the hang of it, it's also incredibly satisfying, allowing you to make some wild, death-defying maneuvers.  If you dig this and find yourself hungering for more bounce-centric gameplay, Shovel Knight takes Scrooge's cane, turns it into a shovel, and builds a deeply satisfying modern classic around it.  Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze finally gives Cranky a chance to shine as a playable character, and he straight-up jock's Scrooge's style, cane and all.  It rules.

Super NES

Yoshi's Island

The first thing you'll notice about Yoshi's Island is that it looks like it was drawn with crayons, markers, and colored pencils!  The second thing you'll notice is that Mario is a freaking baby!  It's an odd premise, but it all comes together in perhaps the best sidescroller ever made.  With Mario mustache-less and diaper-clad, this game puts you directly in control of Yoshi, and he is a joy to play as.  Hovering to extend his jump power, turning enemies into eggs and chucking them, and butt-stomping are Yoshi's primary tools of the trade, and they mix things up nicely.  This doesn't feel like "just another Mario," but it also feels right at home in the Mario pantheon. Beyond the Yosh-man's most basic maneuvers, there are some wild power-ups that turn Yoshi into a helicopter, a train that zips along in the background, a mole-tank, and more, plus special areas where Baby Mario gets superpowers and runs up walls and stuff!  Yoshi's Island is another magical micro-world, jam-packed with extremely clever and fun level design and very possibly the biggest and best boss fights of all time.   Ya gotta play this one.

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong-Quest

I know I just talked about Yoshi's Island maybe being the best platformer of all time, but Donkey Kong Country 2 is right behind it, nipping at its heels.  DKC2 has a wildly different aesthetic, dropping you into beautifully computer-rendered pirate shipwrecks, janky-but-glitzy night time carnival rides, endless bramble patches, a skyscraper-sized beehive, haunted forests, and more!  They're not just beautiful to look at, but beautiful to listen to, because DKC2 features one of the all-time greatest video game soundtracks.  Maybe the greatest.  But this game ain't just another pretty face!

DKC2, like Super Mario Bros. 3 and Duck Tales, is stuffed to the gills with tricky little secrets and hidden areas and surprises.  This game doesn't just have secret levels, it has a secret WORLD.  This game doesn't just have a secret world, it has an entire secret ENDING.  The classically solid platforming is accompanied by a wealth of mine cart challenges, awesome animal buddies, mini-games, and enough level design variety to keep you coming back for every last hidden treasure.  

Super Metroid

Super Metroid doesn't just have secrets, it has mysteries.  This was the first game to ever actually scare me. The first one to ever creep me out.  And that just made me want to play it even more.  It feels lonely and dangerous.  Unlike the games earlier on this list, it is one HUGE and continuous world.  It is a world of incomprehensible alien horrors, ancient moldering ruins, and high-tech space-faring bio-terrorists.  This world, named Zebes, is a world where the sky continuously rains acid and almost every living thing inhabiting it wants to kill you.  Good thing you're Samus Aran, the toughest, smartest bounty hunter to ever clean up Space Pirate scum!

Samus explores this acid-drenched nightmare planet by running, gunning, and jumping... but also by solving puzzles and thinking her way out of traps.  With each power up she gets a little stronger, and can find her way deeper into this gnashing alien hellscape.  It's a game that is sadly beautiful just as often as it is ghoulish.  The story, simple and sketched-in as it is, is also deeper and more moving than you will ever expect. The boss fights are as massive, memorable, and epic as the ones in Yoshi's Island, but about a thousand times more intense and frightening.  The music perfectly sets the dark, burbling mood of each region of Zebes, and by the end of the game you will feel like the most powerful hero in the galaxy.  This mix of sci-fi, horror, and adventure isn't just a must-play, it's a life-changer.

Gameboy Color

Wario Land II

I love the Mario series, but I'm also absolutely crazy about Wario.  He's a fat, greedy, chaotic, prideful, disgusting, bull-headed oaf.  He's the polar opposite of Mario... and that's why I love him!  He's not exactly a villain, but he's a definitely a troublemaker, and it is hilariously fun to walk (or stumble!) a mile or three in his shoes.  The game before this, Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land is a ton of fun (as is Super Mario Land 2 before it!), but Wario Land II is the first one that truly feels like a Wario game.  What makes this game so different?  Wario can't be killed!

You read that right, there's (almost) no way to actually "die" in this game!  No way to lose lives.  That might sound too easy, or boring, or both, but it's not!  Wario might be unkillable, but all KINDS of bad stuff can and WILL still happen to him.  A LOT.  He'll get flattened, set on fire, trapped in bubbles, fattened up, frozen, drunk, zombified, and more!  And here's the kicker: those wacky conditions are required to solve the puzzles and challenges of each level!  On top of that ingenious and perfectly wacky set of game mechanics, the story branches off in wildly different directions: you'll blow up the annoying alarm clock in your castle, play street basketball against a giant bunny, be nice to a chicken, visit Atlantis, race through a weird world of mouths, noses, and eyes, and more!  There are multiple endings, multiple hidden exits, and multiple secret treasures and minigames to find and conquer.  Almost all of the Wario Land and Wario Ware games are oddball masterpieces, but WLII is the perfect balance of weird, smart, funny, and challenging.

Nintendo 64

Super Mario 64

This is it.  This is the game.  In 1996, when I was in sixth grade, Super Mario 64 was the only thing I cared about.  I begged and wished and hoped for a Nintendo 64 that Christmas, but it didn't come.  I was crushed.  Occasionally I was able to rent an N64 and Super Mario 64, and I'd lose whole days to this magical, miraculous game.  When I couldn't rent it, I'd bug my classmates about it endlessly.  "What level are you on?  What's that level like?  What stars can you get?  What secrets have you found?"  They'd answer a few of my ravenous, bug-eyed questions before getting uncomfortable and leaving to do something else.  What was the big deal? Why was I (and still am) so obsessed?

The leap from Super Nintendo to Nintendo 64 was like the leap from console and computer games to virtual reality.  But instead of short, funny minigames, it is a huge, sprawling world where anything seems possible.  A magical, secret garden full of surprises, wonder, challenges, and secrets.  Where the sun always shines in a cloudless sky... except when you plunge into the death-defying Bowser levels or the inappropriately terrifying Big Boo's Haunt.  Oh Mario can definitely fly in this one like he did in Super Mario Bros. 3, but just the simple act of running around in circles and jumping through 3D space felt like a joyous miracle... one that puts 2-dimensional flight to shame.  Each world (accessed by jumping INTO paintings in Princess Peach's sprawling but empty castle) is colorful, full of possibility, and chock full of distinct personality.  Adventuring through 3D space for the first time ever was incredible on its own, but doing it in such richly detailed, lovingly crafted worlds made me want to play there forever.  I still do. 

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Take everything I just said about Super Mario 64 and multiply it by ten!  Well, sort of.  Ocarina of Time took the lessons learned from Super Mario 64 and applied them to the dungeon-crawling, puzzle-solving Legend of Zelda series.  The result was an incredibly groundbreaking game that I cherished almost as zealously as Super Mario 64.  I don't think it's aged as well, but I don't care.  Ocarina of Time is a grand story, spanning seven years (!!!) and the entire fantastical country of Hyrule.  As Link, you jump forward and back through time, meet strange and wonderful new friends, discover hidden kingdoms, face the blood-soaked evil of Hyrule's past, save its future, outwit cunning puzzles and traps, steal and ride a magnificent horse, challenge towering, Super Metroid-style end bosses, wield magical weapons, break hearts, play beautiful music, and go fishing.  It's an entire, epic fantasy life in one little cartridge. 

This was the first Zelda game I ever spent SERIOUS time with, and the fact that it plays like a fantasy-fueled hybrid of Super Mario 64 and Super Metroid means I've lost entire days to it.  I've played it start to finish at least 8 or 9 times.  It never gets boring. Like Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time invented how we make and play 3D games.  This was the first 3D game where you could lock onto enemies and points of interest, plus a bevy of other camera controls that come standard in 3D games now (or at least they did for about a decade after Ocarina's release). The story is surprisingly cinematic and even gripping at times.  You'll want to live in this world.  You'll be sad when you see the end credits.  Not because of the ending itself, but because there's no more game for you to play... until you start it all over again on the next save file.  

Star Fox 64

Star Fox 64 was a life-changing event for me, just like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time.  So is Star Fox 64 a slow-paced, exploration heavy adventure into beautiful and fantastical solitude like those other two games?  N O P E.  It's a guns-blazin', fast action, dogfightin', barrel rollin', rock'em sock'em intergalactic action epic in supersonic spaceships!  Piloted by talking animals!  That actually talk!  YES!

Instead of the wide-open freedom of Super Mario 64 and  Ocarina of TIme, Star Fox 64 either puts you on (invisible) rails in a forced-scrolling attack run or in a contained 3D arena.  Here's the kicker though, the levels are all so perfectly designed and the action is so expertly paced that you never feel restricted.  You're too busy racking up kill combos, saving your wingmen, and navigating through flying, burning space debris and buildings and asteroids and terrain to think about what you can't do.  And even on rails, Star Fox 64 gives you ways to explore!  Most levels have multiple exits and there are a whole mess of different, branching paths through the entire, war-torn Lylat system.  The game is designed to be played start to finish in a single sitting, but experimenting with repeat playthroughs is the only way to experience everything this laser-blazing action classic has to offer.  On top of all that, it's got a great story, iconic, meme-worthy dialogue, and an absolutely banging soundtrack.  It might not have changed the face of interactive entertainment like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, but it delivered the ultimate shoot'em up space adventure.