Was going through some posts I never made and found a silly theory about Bowser Junior that probably doesn’t make any sense and has a lot of holes in it but here it is anyway —
For context, I read a lore thing for a fic I've been reading and they mentioned that most people in the Mario 'verse are delivered via storks, while those in the Metro Kingdom (humans) have kids the way we do. I've been attached to the idea of Koopas having eggs, too, partly because of some fics I wrote, lmao.
Also I read this fic a while back that had Kammy acting strangely demure and subservient to Bowser after he'd gotten the Star Rod. It was super interesting and I'm not sure the effect was intentional or not, but the idea of the Star Rod already either granting Bowser's wishes subconsciously or manipulating the world around him in uncanny ways to grant his conscious wishes is really cool. The Star Rod's an object! It doesn’t have any morality!
So I'm thinking…no one really…holds the Star Rod in the game. This might be a byproduct of the sprite limitations and such, but in the beginning it's on a pedestal, and Mario and Eldstar hold it above their heads in the 'you got an item' pose. But also, Mario would be subconsciously wishing to save Peach, and Eldstar probably knows enough about the subconscious wish-granting to keep it from going off (because he's one of the Honorable Star Spirits, you know?). But Bowser — Bowser's grasping it in a fist. He's probably holding that thing the entire game, granting whatever minor wishes cross his mind.
The two wishes that the Star Spirits cite as reasons why Bowser's wishes are selfish and not grantable are "I want Peach to like me" and "I want to trounce Mario". Bowser spends the first forced-loss battle versus said plumber to 'trounce him'. For the former, though…like I kinda get why the Star Spirits wouldn’t grant something like that, Kammy's personality being warped in that one fic being an example (and for uniformity's sake, they probably don’t grant, say, a 'I wish my mom liked me' whispered by a 5-year-old huddled under their windowsill in the dead of night. Or maybe they do, and they're biased against Bowser. Which…is a bit of a different discussion lmao).
But anyway, "I want Peach to like me" sounds like a wish borne from loneliness, if anything. I've seen plenty of interpretations as to why Bowser kidnaps Peach, and this sentiment definitely slots into at least two of them. So with how cavalier the Star Rod could be in its wish granting methods, maybe…it could see that underlying wish and grant it in its own way? Like with an egg, perhaps? Maybe this is why Junior looks like Bowser so much, because the Star Rod couldn’t be bothered to add extra genes, and it was hanging out with Bowser for a couple of weeks straight, anyway.
I think that it took a while for the wish to fulfill, because the Star Spirits aren't there to facilitate it, so after the Star Spirits went back home they look over one day and there's just an egg sitting there. I wonder if the Star Spirits are involved with the stork deliveries? It wouldn’t be a stretch to have babies be Gifts from the Stars — that feels like it would slot into the culture pretty well. Which would mean that Bowser's due for a stork delivery!
EXCEPT
This is mostly based on this post, but the Star Spirits look at this egg that's appeared in front of them and are like "wait a minute. This egg came from a Bowser-wish. Bowser's not allowed to have his wishes granted; we blacklisted him from the entire process. What tf do we do with this." In the end, their decision is to keep it, and not give it to Bowser, because he's not allowed to have his wishes granted. So they just kind of…stash the egg somewhere. Probably the same place where the babies hang out before they're delivered. Maybe as long as it's there it's in stasis and doesn’t hatch.
And then somehow, Bowser finds out. Maybe he has an inkling and goes poking around or maybe Kamek has a spy up there that flags it for them or maybe Geno hears about it through the Star Road grapevine and is like, "look I'm still mad at Bowser about the stealing-the-Star-Rod thing but this is kinda fucked up, right? Like this is weird and fucked up?" and sends him a dream message about it or something.
Either way after Bowser has a little bit of an internal crisis about being a new dad, he's storming Star Haven again in short order, because he's done it once so he can do it again. And he makes them hand over the egg, and then he torches the place a little, and then he fucks off, and by the time he returns Kamek's baby-proofed the entire castle. And then all there's left to do is wait for the egg to hatch. :D
But yeah, my silly theory/idea in not so many words is that the Star Rod decided to chip away at a subconscious wish to not be so lonely that it gleaned from being around Bowser so much during the events of Paper Mario 64, and granted in the form of an egg that would hatch to be Bowser Junior. I dunno I think it would make for a really good bedtime story that Junior would constantly ask to be told when he's young, because why wouldn't he want to hear about how his dad loved him so much that he literally invaded the distant and near-legendary Haven of the Stars for him? The embellishments and dramatization would go crazy and you know it!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
