#I also have a spm WIP with a long beginning all about how much the events of the RPGs are affecting Peach's mental state

[heloflor]

Random Mario headcanon: while Peach does have powerful magic, she actually doesn’t know how to use it, at least not by herself. Basically to use her magic she needs to trigger a “spark” of sorts, but has no idea how to do so and as a result can’t use it unless someone else triggers that spark for her.

Explaining how it works in the games’ canon and giving some more details on my Toadstool magic hcs (spoilers for pretty much all the RPGs + Showtime’s ending; 1k words below):

- In Paper Mario 64, Kammy calls Peach’s action “wishes from normal people”, meaning she’s not using any particular magic.

- In Thousand Years Door, she uses healing magic upon regaining some control from the Shadow Queen. Considering the Shadow Queen is using magic, possibly Peach’s magic, it means Peach could have been able to access it in the moment.

- In Mario and Luigi Partners in Time, the Cobalt Star could have been the one with the magic to imprison Elder Princess Shroob, or it triggered Peach’s magic. Though the fact Peach can summon stars at the end kinda shows she can use magic on her own.

- In Bowser’s Inside Story and Dream Team, Peach only uses magic when Starlow is using her own magic as well, meaning Starlow could be the one triggering hers.

- Ok I’ll be honest I can’t explain it for Super Mario RPG other than “she’s not actually using magic” or “Geno is a spirit of the stars so his presence would unlock her powers”, though in that second case it doesn’t even fully work since the whole point of the team looking for stars is that wishes can’t be granted anymore.

- In Showtime, Peach’s magic ribbon comes from Stella, same for the outfits. Her Radiant transformation also comes from the hopes and dreams of the Theets fused with Sparkles and Stella. I could also see Stella triggering Peach’s magic in the case of the ribbon + Radiant.

- In Super Princess Peach, you could imagine that the Vibe Scepter is basically letting out “particles” of emotions in the air, and when one touches someone, it affects them. For Peach, her magic would protect her by absorbing those particles, but it also causes her magic to accumulate them.

Because of that, whenever she feels a strong emotion, all those particles her magic gathered get released at once, thus giving her those powers. So the powers wouldn’t come from her using her magic willingly, instead her magic does its own thing and she has to realize it and work around it.

As a result, she can control when the powers get triggered by keeping calm as much as possible and thinking of happy/sad/angering things when needed (or other methods like pinching herself to cry or asking Perry to insult her to get angry, dumb funny things like that).

This could also explain why there’s a timer that then needs to be refilled when using emotions or even why emotional enemies don’t get powers like she does but instead just move faster or in a different pattern, as they would have less emotions in them since the first particle that touches them would influence them.

- In case it needs to be said, everyone in the sports games have special abilities so I don’t consider those to be her using magic.

So yeah, while there are obviously instances of her using healing magic that negates this idea, it still holds up to an extent. And it’s especially interesting to headcanon when you consider how many RPG villains know how to exploit her magic for themselves (Cackletta, Fawful, the Shadow Queen, Antasma tried before turning to Bowser, I like to think the Chaos Heart was born from an exchange of two widely different magics with the wedding being the ritual needed to create the heart specifically).

Going deeper into this idea, I hc that in the past all Toads had magic but the Royal Family eventually discouraged everyone from using it aside from them. History books would say it’s to protect the population, the truth is that the Monarchy wanted that power for themselves and/or were afraid of the people taking over the throne if they can be more powerful than them (especially since I hc that it’s common for rulers to marry citizens, as long as said citizen is able to handle the work that goes with becoming royalty; this is also why each kingdom still has a ruler the same species as them after centuries of those kingdoms existing).

There would still be some Toads who kept their magic (like the doctor from Bowser’s Inside Story) but they would be incredibly rare on top of trying to keep it a secret just in case them having it is forbidden as there would be no written law saying what is and isn’t allowed on that front.

As such, the knowledge of how to use these powers is told from parent to child, with sometimes another person being given the info in case the rulers die before their heir is of age to learn. In Peach’s case, her parents’ death was a complete surprise, meaning no-one had that knowledge.

So for the longest time, she didn’t even think she had magic. And when the RPGs happened, she would’ve tried to use it herself but can’t find the thing triggering its use, taking a while to come to terms with the fact that she could never use it by herself, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be a hero in a different way.

And for those asking why doesn’t she use a Koopa wand, this goes into this idea of the Chaos Heart being born from mixing Koopa and Toadstool magic. She’s afraid that trying to learn the Koopa ways of using magic might cause another catastrophe, which it probably would.

Last small thing, outside of angst the main reason for this headcanon is to justify both Peach never using magic outside of RPGs and the fact she goes from being able to yeet Bowser out the window in one game to being completely helpless against two paratroopas holding her in the very next game of the same series. Basically it’s to explain the inconsistencies with it.

It can also justify the Mushroom Kingdom not falling into the hands of Koopas, Goombas etc before Mario and Luigi were around despite Toads being unable to defend themselves in the present time (basically the Toadstool family was able to use their magic to boost the strength of their army, which Peach can’t do).

#Super Mario #Princess Peach #Flor talks #long post #this has been sitting in my folders for a while but I wanted to play Mario RPG first to have something to say about it #I also have a spm WIP with a long beginning all about how much the events of the RPGs are affecting Peach's mental state #and how her inability to use magic coupled with all those villains capturing her for it take a huge toll on her #(god I need to edit and post my Mario fics already some of those have been sitting in my folders for almost a year now) #yes I know technically Peach could ask one of the Toads who still have their magic to teach her #but I like the idea of her having this power that's unreachable outside of specific conditions