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mrsluigivargasput your weary hand in mine (and i'll return the favor) (AO3 Link)
This title feels so pretentious, lmao. It looks like a song lyric but it isn't, to my knowledge; I just plucked phrases relating to hand-holding until the spoken rhythm of it sounded good.
Lethargy/Exhaustion
-This fill has no dialogue because when I wrote the first draft there was only one line of dialogue from Peach and I was like "oh maybe I don’t need dialogue actually."
-Mario suffers from a similar problem that Kamek does, in the sense he's fond of overworking himself. First of all he's the hero, so if he doesn’t keep moving then who else is going to? Also he's really determined to put up a front; he knows the effect he has on Toads and some of his other friends, where they see him and are instantly reassured. So if he shows any weakness then that compromises that image, and Mario doesn’t want to make the people counting on him worried. Also Peach is his friend, and he hates the thought of her in danger. So he's pushing himself extra hard to save her.
-In addition to the fact there's no dialogue this fic was also an interesting exercise of 'how many ways can I describe Mario being tired by showing, not telling'. So the things I kept in mind were that since Mario is tired he 1) is moving slowly 2) is losing time, and 3) really fucking wants to sleep. And it worked out!
-And to the above point of Mario putting on a façade - it's something that most people would buy, but Peach (and Luigi, and even Bowser and Kamek, to an extent) knows him too well to be convinced by it.
-Also, I mention the lava pools lining the room - that's from a few fills ago; Kamek managed to put them in after all!
Cold Sweats
-This fill also has no dialogue, for the same reasons as before. Also I think I misinterpreted the prompt; it might have been "cold sweat", not "cold sweats", so whoops. But! This possible misinterpretation is what gave me the idea to link all the fills together, because I was looking up what cold sweats actually were and apparently they and lethargy can happen just before someone faints, which is another prompt! From there, all the pieces fell into place~
-Kamek sealed the door with magic so Peach couldn’t escape while the final battle was happening. Peach has definitely proven herself to be squirrelly before, and they didn’t want to take any chances.
-I'm really proud of the line "…Mario's leading grip on her hand unwittingly became Peach's supportive one on his." It shows the progression of Mario's exhaustion in an interesting way, I think.
-And here's Peach not buying Mario's strong front. Also he doesn’t have gloves, because cold sweats occur on the hands and it felt weird to have Mario take off his gloves midway through their walk. It also inadvertently boosts the idea that Mario's so tired he doesn’t notice part of his outfit is missing.
-Someone in the comments pointed out that even though Peach wants Mario to rest, they should probably get the hell out of the fortress anyway for their own good, and that wasn’t something I'd thought of! But I agree with them; they'd be safer outside, especially with Mario so out of it.
-Peach tries to sneakily give opportunities for Mario to rest, but he knows if he stops he's going to pass out so he tries to keep moving, to Peach's frustration. I headcanon her to have healing magic, and usually her spells require both hands and/or physical contact with the other person. The scanning spell she wants needs both hands. Mario knows this, so he is constantly holding one of her hands. Peach has a suspicion he's doing it on purpose, and he absolutely is :P
-Also, more mentions of the lava pools Kamek made earlier! They're concentrated at the center of the fortress, because more people are there. So of course, it gets colder the closer to the entrance they get. But Mario's still sweating… :)
Syncope/Fainting
-I get to write Toadsworth again! And as a little bit more than comic relief this time! Although you can't tell by his first few lines. I was thinking of the way he was acting in Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door for how he acts in the beginning.
-Mario is still trying to pretend everything's okay; he was trying to last until they got back to the hotel in the city. Unfortunately, his body had other plans. I like how I wrote him passing out as a run-on sentence that just kind of ends - I remember seeing a similar technique in a DBZ fic a looong time ago. I think Gohan caught a glimpse of some super powerful eldritch horror god and was very afraid, and that method really conveyed the frantic and fearful energy. The rest of the paragraph is pretty satisfying too, imo. It slows things down so Mario passing out hits a bit harder.
-Originally I had a line where when Peach looks at Toadsworth all angry and with magic crackling in her eyes, Toadsworth was abruptly reminded of her mom. I couldn’t word that in without it being clunky and out of place, though, so it had to go. Like Kamek, I think Toadsworth also knew his charge's parents before they died when Peach was tiny.
-And yeah, Peach's healing magic uses at least a little bit of the energy of the person she's healing, so it's not going to help exhaustion. Toadsworth makes a little joke about his age because he knows everything's going to be okay in the end, but Peach is too wrapped up in her worry to share that sentiment.
-At some point when writing this set of fills, I realized that there was a lot of handholding happening. At first I was worried that it would be perceived as shippy, but then again that what the ampersand tag is for. Besides, platonic handholding is underrated. So I worked it into all these fills, hence the title also being about handholding.
Ambulance
-Toadsworth is an old man, so he doesn’t really appreciate the loud siren noises XD
-And as mentioned a few fills ago, no one is used to seeing Mario vulnerable. So the EMT Toads stop short in surprise about it! Toadsworth gets them back on track, though.
-Peach took off her shoes partway down the mountain, because she was wearing heels and it wasn’t working out. She only did so once she was past all the snow, and she stuck to the grass beside the path, but her feet still got nicked by stray rocks and such, and she maybe even rolled an ankle on the way. Adrenaline hits different.
-The Toad ambulance is probably a bit on the smaller side, but also they need to be ready to take larger-than-average patients (tourists, mostly). The bed's still a bit small, though.
Sick on Vacation
-I liked writing the rhythm in the beginning, with Peach's wandering thoughts and Mario not waking up - until he does, in a rule of three type of thing. (I don’t know where the whole restaurant thought train came from, though. It's a bit silly ^_^;)
-Originally Peach wasn’t going to be quite so angry at Mario, but it just kind of happened. She doesn’t like seeing her friend hurt, especially not from his own doing. And Mario knows he fucked up, staring at the ceiling instead of at her.
Painkillers + "Get Back in Bed!"
-Of course Mario doesn’t like to stay in bed when he's sick. It's a pain point for Luigi, when he takes care of him at their house. One time Mario slipped out and went to go rescue Peach with a fever. He almost won against Bowser, too. I have a WIP about Bowser and co.'s reaction to that. I also reference something like that in Blizzard Blues. I haven't figured out if those are referring the same event. Probably not. It’s a problem. They're working on it.
-Again, Toadsworth has been at Peach's side since she was tiny. By consequence, he also has been around Mario (and Luigi), and thus knows a lot of things about them, like the fact that Mario hates to sit still.
-Mario had used up all the painkillers they'd packed to avoid his illness symptoms. He's also used to swallowing pills dry, because sometimes you just gotta do that, when you're in the middle of an adventure. He's already on Peach's bad side though, so he takes them with water this time.
-Toadsworth falls asleep because there's not enough space on the deck for Mario and Peach to have a conversation without him eavesdropping and butting in and I didn’t wanna write him anymore, lol.
-Mario hates seeing his friends hurt, so he's upset that one of his friends got hurt while he was passed out :( Even if Peach is being casual about it. As Peach points out though, if Mario had taken a rest when she told him to then the sequence of events that injured her feet wouldn’t have happened. Actions have consequences! It's definitely a work in progress, though, so hopefully one day Mario will slow his roll on pushing himself beyond his limits.
This title feels so pretentious, lmao. It looks like a song lyric but it isn't, to my knowledge; I just plucked phrases relating to hand-holding until the spoken rhythm of it sounded good.
Lethargy/Exhaustion
-This fill has no dialogue because when I wrote the first draft there was only one line of dialogue from Peach and I was like "oh maybe I don’t need dialogue actually."
-Mario suffers from a similar problem that Kamek does, in the sense he's fond of overworking himself. First of all he's the hero, so if he doesn’t keep moving then who else is going to? Also he's really determined to put up a front; he knows the effect he has on Toads and some of his other friends, where they see him and are instantly reassured. So if he shows any weakness then that compromises that image, and Mario doesn’t want to make the people counting on him worried. Also Peach is his friend, and he hates the thought of her in danger. So he's pushing himself extra hard to save her.
-In addition to the fact there's no dialogue this fic was also an interesting exercise of 'how many ways can I describe Mario being tired by showing, not telling'. So the things I kept in mind were that since Mario is tired he 1) is moving slowly 2) is losing time, and 3) really fucking wants to sleep. And it worked out!
-And to the above point of Mario putting on a façade - it's something that most people would buy, but Peach (and Luigi, and even Bowser and Kamek, to an extent) knows him too well to be convinced by it.
-Also, I mention the lava pools lining the room - that's from a few fills ago; Kamek managed to put them in after all!
Cold Sweats
-This fill also has no dialogue, for the same reasons as before. Also I think I misinterpreted the prompt; it might have been "cold sweat", not "cold sweats", so whoops. But! This possible misinterpretation is what gave me the idea to link all the fills together, because I was looking up what cold sweats actually were and apparently they and lethargy can happen just before someone faints, which is another prompt! From there, all the pieces fell into place~
-Kamek sealed the door with magic so Peach couldn’t escape while the final battle was happening. Peach has definitely proven herself to be squirrelly before, and they didn’t want to take any chances.
-I'm really proud of the line "…Mario's leading grip on her hand unwittingly became Peach's supportive one on his." It shows the progression of Mario's exhaustion in an interesting way, I think.
-And here's Peach not buying Mario's strong front. Also he doesn’t have gloves, because cold sweats occur on the hands and it felt weird to have Mario take off his gloves midway through their walk. It also inadvertently boosts the idea that Mario's so tired he doesn’t notice part of his outfit is missing.
-Someone in the comments pointed out that even though Peach wants Mario to rest, they should probably get the hell out of the fortress anyway for their own good, and that wasn’t something I'd thought of! But I agree with them; they'd be safer outside, especially with Mario so out of it.
-Peach tries to sneakily give opportunities for Mario to rest, but he knows if he stops he's going to pass out so he tries to keep moving, to Peach's frustration. I headcanon her to have healing magic, and usually her spells require both hands and/or physical contact with the other person. The scanning spell she wants needs both hands. Mario knows this, so he is constantly holding one of her hands. Peach has a suspicion he's doing it on purpose, and he absolutely is :P
-Also, more mentions of the lava pools Kamek made earlier! They're concentrated at the center of the fortress, because more people are there. So of course, it gets colder the closer to the entrance they get. But Mario's still sweating… :)
Syncope/Fainting
-I get to write Toadsworth again! And as a little bit more than comic relief this time! Although you can't tell by his first few lines. I was thinking of the way he was acting in Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door for how he acts in the beginning.
-Mario is still trying to pretend everything's okay; he was trying to last until they got back to the hotel in the city. Unfortunately, his body had other plans. I like how I wrote him passing out as a run-on sentence that just kind of ends - I remember seeing a similar technique in a DBZ fic a looong time ago. I think Gohan caught a glimpse of some super powerful eldritch horror god and was very afraid, and that method really conveyed the frantic and fearful energy. The rest of the paragraph is pretty satisfying too, imo. It slows things down so Mario passing out hits a bit harder.
-Originally I had a line where when Peach looks at Toadsworth all angry and with magic crackling in her eyes, Toadsworth was abruptly reminded of her mom. I couldn’t word that in without it being clunky and out of place, though, so it had to go. Like Kamek, I think Toadsworth also knew his charge's parents before they died when Peach was tiny.
-And yeah, Peach's healing magic uses at least a little bit of the energy of the person she's healing, so it's not going to help exhaustion. Toadsworth makes a little joke about his age because he knows everything's going to be okay in the end, but Peach is too wrapped up in her worry to share that sentiment.
-At some point when writing this set of fills, I realized that there was a lot of handholding happening. At first I was worried that it would be perceived as shippy, but then again that what the ampersand tag is for. Besides, platonic handholding is underrated. So I worked it into all these fills, hence the title also being about handholding.
Ambulance
-Toadsworth is an old man, so he doesn’t really appreciate the loud siren noises XD
-And as mentioned a few fills ago, no one is used to seeing Mario vulnerable. So the EMT Toads stop short in surprise about it! Toadsworth gets them back on track, though.
-Peach took off her shoes partway down the mountain, because she was wearing heels and it wasn’t working out. She only did so once she was past all the snow, and she stuck to the grass beside the path, but her feet still got nicked by stray rocks and such, and she maybe even rolled an ankle on the way. Adrenaline hits different.
-The Toad ambulance is probably a bit on the smaller side, but also they need to be ready to take larger-than-average patients (tourists, mostly). The bed's still a bit small, though.
Sick on Vacation
-I liked writing the rhythm in the beginning, with Peach's wandering thoughts and Mario not waking up - until he does, in a rule of three type of thing. (I don’t know where the whole restaurant thought train came from, though. It's a bit silly ^_^;)
-Originally Peach wasn’t going to be quite so angry at Mario, but it just kind of happened. She doesn’t like seeing her friend hurt, especially not from his own doing. And Mario knows he fucked up, staring at the ceiling instead of at her.
Painkillers + "Get Back in Bed!"
-Of course Mario doesn’t like to stay in bed when he's sick. It's a pain point for Luigi, when he takes care of him at their house. One time Mario slipped out and went to go rescue Peach with a fever. He almost won against Bowser, too. I have a WIP about Bowser and co.'s reaction to that. I also reference something like that in Blizzard Blues. I haven't figured out if those are referring the same event. Probably not. It’s a problem. They're working on it.
-Again, Toadsworth has been at Peach's side since she was tiny. By consequence, he also has been around Mario (and Luigi), and thus knows a lot of things about them, like the fact that Mario hates to sit still.
-Mario had used up all the painkillers they'd packed to avoid his illness symptoms. He's also used to swallowing pills dry, because sometimes you just gotta do that, when you're in the middle of an adventure. He's already on Peach's bad side though, so he takes them with water this time.
-Toadsworth falls asleep because there's not enough space on the deck for Mario and Peach to have a conversation without him eavesdropping and butting in and I didn’t wanna write him anymore, lol.
-Mario hates seeing his friends hurt, so he's upset that one of his friends got hurt while he was passed out :( Even if Peach is being casual about it. As Peach points out though, if Mario had taken a rest when she told him to then the sequence of events that injured her feet wouldn’t have happened. Actions have consequences! It's definitely a work in progress, though, so hopefully one day Mario will slow his roll on pushing himself beyond his limits.
