Head Canon Dump

I always liked the idea of placing the characters in their actual context - for Peach and Daisy I find this particularly interesting running on the assumption that they have spent their entire lives in the Mushroom Kingdom, and they are the result of a totally alien society to ours. Mario and Luigi of course have origins a little closer to home, discounting the events of Yoshi's Island - and I did a little thinking here. The SSBM trophy for Mario apparently says that he's 26 years old. I think that's pretty good, though I think most people would guess he was a bit older - besides the games would have to take place over at least half a decade at this point, right? There's just so many stories, and I'm pretty convinced that Mario and Luigi would have aged a bit by some of the later games (which exist in little to no particular order from what I can tell ) But anyways I decided that if there was a specific, notable time at which Mario (and Luigi) were aged 26, it might be the first SMB game - the first Mushroom War, when they first arrived to rescue Peach? Let's do that. But... when did that happen? By our timeline, I mean? A whole bunch of people would just say 1985, perhaps 1983 (in reference to the end of the Mario Bros. arcade game). I like to think '85 is accurate just because there's not much else to go off. I feel like it fits alright with the Bros' established characters because back when they were given a personalities in the 80's/90's, they were characterised as being, what? 20-30 already? So the cultural context and personality fits in there I reckon (at one particular point in the SMB3 cartoons I recall Mario actually appropriating lyrics from Blue Suede shoes? That's pretty vague but hell I'll reference it here if it supports my point). Anyways, 26 as of 1985 means being born way back in '59. Growing up in the 60's and 70's. As someone who regrettably did not live through that time, damn I'm interested to know what that's like!

Some of this ties into/is inevitably influenced by an old convo with my mate RazberryPie which can be found here comments.deviantart.com/1/3185… although I'll try and summarise important parts here anyway. Going back to this whole cultural context thing - Mario and Luigi are pretty well established to have been Italian by birth, we all know that, so now we know they grew up somewhere in Italy from '59 onward. I imagine that them as kids is a pretty raw concept that's irrelevant to this context: kids are kids in all times and places. Mario and Luigi would have been quite adventurous and physically active, methinks, and I feel like they practiced amateur parkour for, well, most of their lives - mostly because of the games, but also because Mario is adventurous and daring in nature, and that I really like the mental image of Luigi trying to talk him down from the roof of their house and ending up getting dragged along all around the place despite efforts to discourage his brother. So that's partly what the first pic is about, at which I placed them at 10 years or so of age. I'm impressed Mario has survived ten years if he's pulling these stunts.

Teenagers, anyone? I assumed they'd go to a public/state school basically because they're part of the working class - I looked up what high school uniforms looked like for state schools and was interested to take on that challenge when I discovered that apparently uniforms were fairly discouraged in Italy after WWII. The more you know. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_u… Anyways this meant I had to have a look at how people dressed in the 70's. Fashion is one of my biggest weaknesses and I feel like so much of the stuff I found on Google was way more actually dressed up than casual people could be bothered with. So I tried to keep it simple, used the classic colours and that's what happened (in retrospect should've given Mario brown pants to properly throw back to classic SMB). I know Luigi looks like an idiot, I'm sorry. He's wearing a sweater that's tucked into his pants and his pants are pulled halfway up his torso I don't even know what I was doing XD Also started playing with facial hair because I don't reckon they'd be old enough for full-out moustaches yet but hey, they're allowed to experiment and in reference to a point dear Razz made in that aforementioned conversation, it's likely that Mario had established his *ahem* iconic physique sometime before now, during school - to me that also makes sense because it's so incredibly difficult to lose weight as an adult that you've put on as a child, and that explains how Mario is still pretty chubby despite his regular exercise (that and it's more about diet than exercise, Mario can stay fit but he'd have to eat a lot less and a lot healthier to actually lose weight, I don't feel like it's gonna happen). Luigi on the other hand would be pretty thin here - it seems more likely that he put on his weight after he finished growing (as people do, since your required intake shifts hugely after you reach adulthood, and your opportunities for exercise drop down at about the same time that you stop walking to school and start driving a car to work instead) and Luigi's not exactly starved, but he doesn't seem to eat more than he needs to, so there's no actual reason for him to be the same weight here as when he's older. Oh, and that parkour thing continues here - I like to imagine that Mario found walking home from school boring and resorted to this sort of shenanigans to keep the trip interesting. Probably exhausted himself, collapsed when he got home and maybe used that as a means to avoid homework Luigi on the other hand actually plans on doing work when he gets home and might end up helping Mario with English (another off-to-the-side thing, since they were going into a trade I think that'd be the only class Mario particularly cared about his marks for, considering they both eventually move to America, I like to think that's been something of a long-term aspiration and probably is what got him through that class). They're about 16 here, last year of school before they leave to go get apprenticeships in plumbing.

Here's where the last pic fits in, then - starting out working. Four years on so they'd be 20 here - I'd say they'd have left their apprenticeship perhaps one or two years before this. I know nowadays an Australian apprenticeship takes like 4 years (couldn't find a lot of specific information on that one, sadly), but these guys are already outstanding in their field and would have been raised knowing the trade quite well and you can finish apprenticeships pretty quick if you can prove you're qualified to do the job. Had heaps of fun playing with Luigi's hair yet again - I added to that awful mullet and the front is brushed back to look shorter, but now he's sporting a muttonstache. Kind of inspired by the fact that I have a whole heap of trouble keeping his sideburns and moustache separate for how little horizontal space there is to work with on him Mario's basically got his normal hair but his sideburns are a tad longer - it's actually hard to fit any other kind of stylised facial hair on him for limited face-space, which would also be why he just had a bit of hair under his chin in the last pic - I can only really give him a chin strap, I guess I just didn't feel like it More generally I'm moving towards trying to give the bros curlier hair that's more rounded at the edges than I've drawn in the past - it looks better, makes it look more like the awful case of hat hair I'm sure they both have, and after drawing Mario with a Santa beard I think it probably fits their facial hair better by way of consistency (although Luigi doesn't seem to have as much curl in his 'stache, so maybe I should vary the bros a bit there). So yeah, this is just their life for a few more years until they hit the MK I guess.

EDIT: When I wrote all this up, I totally forgot about "Plumber's Academy" - that old SMBSS episode? That place was in Brooklyn, so I guess it's something worth considering, it doesn't seem implied that they were officially qualified prior to that event but maybe it was like an advanced plumbing course or something... maybe it was even the sort of work they needed to do in order to get into work in the sewer system that the Mario Bros. arcade game places them in - heck, they probably worked there a few years, sounds like a pretty stable job - '83 to '85, perhaps? Also the resolution to 'Plumber's Academy' might have been how they got that job in the first place, if you really wanna look at the cartoons as strict-ish canon.

/ramble

Hella long, sorry, I hope the fanon people like it ^^

Mario and Luigi (C) Nintendo