#maybe they are actually toads?

[buttercup-barf]

Every game has to have some sort of an edgy sequel where the good guy from the previous one comes back as a villain, either brainwashed or somehow having lost faith in their cause. It's the law. /j

Everything in the Mushroom Kingdom seems infected with this strange eyesore of colours and shapes, tiny sparks and stars flicker over people's bodies, and become a mark of something happening.

Even rulers of Cloud Kingdom and Bowser's many captives found themselves poisoned with this mysterious abstract force, eating away at their desires, and leaving them with only anger and violent outbursts, until they become a numb and thoughtless mess of colourful swirls and figures.

Turns our someone found this whole "ungranted wishes" problem much easier to solve, when there's no suffering, no need in someone's heart, and therefore no need for them to wish for anything. He's doing you all a favour, really.

[gingergari]

your peach au, I have another question!

Would the use of the crown affect her self esteem? Everyone sees her as this beautiful human princess, and comments on it constantly. Bowser himself is always praising her beauty in the games. When she takes it off in private, does she feel different? I wonder if it would affect her view of love and trust, or give her anxiety to be herself.

sorry if im being annoying i just love the concept of this au you created!

this is actually really funny bc i just drew this last night to be funny but it fits really well with your ask:

yes, i would think so!

peach is really only permitted to be Crownless inside the castle, so it is only the staff that sees her true self. because of how much she uses it, she very rarely perceives herself as her toad form, even in dreams, so I believe she does have those moments where it all sorta comes crashing down and everything about her feels fake.

this definitely flares up when her supposed difference is emphasized, especially with the bros. after all, they miss earth, but she still manages to be an outsider to their memories and customs.

those that she loves and trusts the most are also those that have seen her true form, so when cultivating new relationships like with the bros and daisy (who she only met at her debutante) she finds it very hard to be as open with them as they are with her, and feels like she is constantly lying even when telling the truth. once they do find out, her stress and anxiety goes down exponentially, but she can't possibly do that with everyone she meets.

to the toad standard she is beautiful and I'm sure the staff tell her this before meetings where she is Crownless (with peasley and maybe her parliament) but compared to the magnitude of her human compliments it feels insignificant. toads are often described as weak, and I imagine that at times a compliment to her beauty comes with a toad insult at its heels which only make her paradoxical feelings stronger. she does feel weaker and vulnerable in this form to the point where she is visibly much more anxious in public in that form (but ofc will always defend her toads).

[toads-treasures]

I just booked an appointment to get my ears and septum piercied the week before I go home to visit my family. My family of extremely conservative dairy farmers.

I am mentally preparing myself for the cow related comments when I show up with a septum ring.

[orcelito]

I ended up buying even more plants

Meet Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

box ghost and le frog are kind of like the same guy if you think about it

[flaming-toads]

.

[fuck-kirk]

The semester I was obsessed with toads is so hilarious. I sculpted like 30 small toads of various sizes, and one ginormous one with gigantic ass cheeks, and then just decided I hated sculpting toads and never did again.

[humanmorph]

lately i keep writing posts and going 'wait, do i really need to share this? isnt it fine to just keep this for myself and not an audience online?' and then i delete them. anyways i decided i DO want you to look at this toad (erdkröte) (bufo bufo)

a lovely type of beaft : ]

[vampiremansionpoolboy-moved]

cant dress like a guy at school so i make up for it by dressing like a slutty femboy

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

You know, I just realized, Spyke's uniform in X-Men Evolution:

Is basically the standard uniform that all the New Mutants wear, only with fancier boots and wrist guards instead of gloves.

I know they really simplified all the uniforms for the show, but everyone else has a more unique look. Maybe they were relying on the bone spikes to make Evan stand out. At least my boy still has his skateboard.

It just reminds me very much of how TAS gave Morph (another "added for the show" character) a generic blue-and-gold X-Men uniform, and slapped a jacket on top of that (sometimes....when the animators feel like including it.)

(Sometimes Morph loses their jacket literally between shots in the same scene, but something something shape-shifter.)

At least the excuse there was originally "This character isn't supposed to last for more than two episodes."

[bmpmp3]

so i’ve always been of the opinion that the whole twist ending of Drawn to Life The Next Chapter is wack as HELL but i will say it is a bit of a power move to do an “it was all a dream” ending where the person dreaming isn’t even the perspective character. just some guy

[bolas-de-berlim]

Not another fuckass faun.

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

Just woke up from a dream the split second my mum was about to yell at me about letting the toad wonder freely around the house with the cats... granted a valid thing to be mad at but I think the toad got out, mother, when I was trying to stop a Venom™️-like creature from eating our cats so like maYBe don't YELL at me next time!!!

[toads-treasures]

I found out the catch with that job I thought was too good to be true. It’s very part time and also very temporary, position ends in August 😒

[katethevampire]

Why have I had 2 dreams about Edgeworth getting possessed what does this mean

[a-book-of-creatures]

I think I stumbled upon some kind of ichthyological forbidden knowledge. Opened up a book of names that were never meant to be read.

You've probably heard of "can-opener smoothdream", right? It's practically a meme by now.

But the thing is, it's a deep-sea fish. And deep-sea fish have historically not had English names because nobody drops them into the conversation over a hot cuppa. Sure, there's generic stuff like hatchetfish and barreleye, but when you want to refer to the actual fish you're probably saying such euphonious phrases as Diretmus argenteus, Sternoptyx diaphana, or maybe even Opisthoproctus soleatus.

So whence "can-opener smoothdream"? Certainly no non-ichthyologist has ever used that name. It's not even a direct translation of the scientific name Chaenophryne longiceps - that would be "long-headed gape-toad". Which to me is even cooler than "can-opener smoothdream".

But I digress. The "dream" bit comes from the anglerfish family Oneirodidae, from oneiros, "dream", because those marvelous fishes look like they came out of a dream (Pietsch, 2009).

Note that Pietsch (2009), more or less the anglerfish bible, uses English names at the genus level only. So Chaenophryne is the smoothhead dreamers genus but no mention is made of "can-opener smoothdreams". So no luck there.

Wikipedia, root cause of a lot of misinformation, has this to say.

"Longhead dreamer" is a far more accurate name. And in fact, despite Wikipedia prioritizing "can-opener smoothdream" (because it's funny?), the links listed use "longhead dreamer" and "smoothhead dreamer" as the name and "can-opener smoothdream" as an alternative.

So. Again. Where did "can-opener smoothdream" come from?

The answer, as it turns out, lies with McAllister (1990).

In the book A List of the Fishes of Canada, ichthyologist D. E. McAllister sought out to list every single fish known to Canadian waters, providing both an English and a French name.

And when there wasn't an English name, like for most deep-sea fishes, he arbitrarily gave them a name. And his names "differ in many instances from the widely accepted names" (Holm, 1998)

This had varying results. This is his name for one of the netdevil anglerfishes.

The humpback anglerfish or blackdevil anglerfish becomes a werewolf (????).

This one is just confusing.

The white-spotted lanternfish or Rafinesque's lanternfish instead becomes...

And most embarrassingly, the Mediterranean spiderfish gets saddled with something that "violates the tenet of good taste" (Holm, 1998).

This then is the original source of "can-opener smoothdream". It was invented by an ichthyologist in 1990, and has seen little to no use outside of how bizarre the name is.

Maybe McAllister's goofier names will catch on. Who knows? They certainly aren't very popular in the scientific community though.

References

Holm, E. (1998) Encyclopedia of Canadian Fishes (review). The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 112, p. 174-175.

McAllister, D. E. (1990) A List of the Fishes of Canada. National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa.

Pietsch, T. W. (2009) Oceanic Anglerfishes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep Sea. University of California Press, Berkeley.