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pinkestmenace · 6 months

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Thoughts on Dark Meta Knight

A continuation of 'Thoughts on Shadow Kirby'. This is a long one!

TL;DR: I first talk about his relation to Taranza and Sectonia, then comes the fic I 'accidentally' wrote, then I talk about his (mirror) abilities and relation to Meta Knight (or rather, his inherited memories.)

Have you ever noticed how whenever people talk about the whole Dark Meta Knight/Dimension Mirror/Taranza/Corrupted Sectonia issue, it's always "Taranza must hate DMK so much!" and never "DMK must hate Taranza so much!" or even "Why did Joronia/Sectonia keep a magical mirror that clearly oozed bad vibes?" (Note: I'm neither saying Taranza is a poor uwu boy who did nothing wrong nor that he is evil incarnate. He didn't know DMK was in there nor that the mirror had lingering corruption. I am however saying he was a fool for stealing an important magical artifact! All three were hurt here.) I mean, come on. Sectonia is an individual with agency. You're telling me she just placidly accepted this whole situation and only gets to serve as an "Evil queen needs to die!" and "Woe is Taranza, his beloved is dead!" plot device? She could have been corrupted/replaced by her own reflection! Maybe she was as interested in studying DMK/this weird danger orb in 'her' mirror as he was in corrupting her.

That is, if he did corrupt her. Who's to say he wanted that? Or had the ability to, other than by speaking? We've heard nothing about him having corrupting magic. Besides, what would he gain from it? Sectonia could've already been somewhat unhinged before she got the mirror and this was just the beginning of a domino effect. Remember, the mirror you fight him in in Triple Deluxe seems to be the one that was in the middle of the Central Circle, not the entrance of the Mirror World. That's the one Dark Mind was hiding out in and judging by how destroyed it still looks inside it's also the most likely place for any corruption to linger. (Luckily for the other inhabitants, I'd say. Not so lucky for him or poor Shadow, who in DMK's absence was likely left alone to defend the Mirror World and therefore grew more agressive like we see him in other games. He had no allies and no choice but to learn to fight.) I think that Shadow spawned when Kirby first entered the mirror, but DMK was likely around at least a little longer than that, judging by how he seems to have a pretty good grasp on his abilities already.

So. Since Triple Deluxe is clearly inspired by fairy tales, (Consider the Dreamstalk/beanstalk, a palace in the sky and a wicked beauty-obsessed queen with a literal magic mirror!) why not spin a little tale of our own?

I want you to imagine being Dark Meta Knight for a moment.

Mirror, Mirror, From the Sky — Who's the Wickedest and Why?

Once upon a time a dark force secretly infested your world. Depending on how long you've been around, you either spawned as a flawed clone, or you got to feel yourself being corrupted. You may not even know who you are, other than what the wisps of your inherited memories and skills tell you. Either way, the heydays of good fortune, friends and fair weather are nothing but a burning memory to you.

Dark Mind, the force calls itself and it takes an interest in you, since it could use a strong henchman. Now you have this flaming eyeball breathing down your neck, playing at being your master and ordering you around. Tsch. Do you dance like a pathetic little puppet? Do you plead with it using the fancy words you find on your tongue, but did not learn yourself? Do you obey to save your own skin, or resist and risk having your mind broken and hollowed out further? Do you have it in you to become a double agent? You are a scared toddler who only just learned how to walk. You are a hardened knight who has no patience for this. The armour you wear shows traces of battles you haven't fought. You cling to it in preparation for what's to come.

It sends you to go remove some obstacles. A pink child and your own doppelganger. Fueled by bitter resentment and childish petulance you dare to bend your orders just slightly. Rather than rend the child into pieces, you refract him into four. Rather than sending your doppelganger back to his maker, you lock him in with yours and break the mirror to prevent his escape. (As well as Dark Mind's escape, that is.) Your master is angry. That's fine. You're already wrong and broken and don't give a crap.

Eventually the child and his refractions fix and enter the mirror and your master gives you an ultimatum. Twice it told you to get rid of the brat and twice you have failed! Now, to prove your loyalty you must put your life on the line. Beat the brat. At any cost. Surrender is not an option! You shed the veneer and take out your frustration on the child. But he's too strong. You can feel your body give out! You remember how to beg. "Master, please, I can't take any more!" It's no use. Its fiery gaze scorches you, it widens the cracks in your mind and forces you to continue, miserable marionette that you are.

You shatter and your consciousness fractures. Where did you go so wrong? Why did this have to happen to you? What will become of that strange charcoal child you saw stalking you? You want to go home. That home isn't yours. What does your counterpart think? Like the allegory of the prisoners and the shadows on the cave wall you don't know more than what little you can infer. His flickering gaze is unreadable. There is no cave. You are the shadow. You have no idea what philosophy is.

??? days later you somehow wake up. You get your bearings. You're still in this ruined miniature dimension, but your master is gone. You're alone. Tsch. Figures the brat and your blue bastard of a counterpart would abandon you. What's wrong with them?! (What's wrong with you? Are you really that disposable? Maybe they didn't know you still had life left in you either. Did they mourn for you?) At least the mirror portal is right there. You'll go back to the Central Circle, find something to eat and then you'll plot your revenge against the world that failed to welcome you! You just have to step out...

...into a large bedroom. You look around. Fancy furnishings that would befit a palace. A breathtaking view of the rising sun, which drapes the room in purples and oranges. It hurts your eyes. You look down. A vanity? Where the Shards—

You don't get time to think before a piercing shriek rends the air. You look to your left and see a strange spider-like creature charging at you, wielding twin rapiers! You quickly leap out of the way and draw your own sword.

The woman stops in front of you, clad in a simple but refined silk nightgown, her four unoccupied hands balled into tight fists. She stares you down with her four front eyes. Is this spider as afraid of you as you are of her? She's Princess Joronia, you soon learn. She received the mirror as a gift.

She sympathises with you and offers you a cup of herbal tea to calm your nerves. You've never had tea, (not-you remembers the taste) but by the Mirror's mercy do you know you're thirsty! You accept it, if only to buy yourself time to figure out what's going on and come up with a way to escape with the mirror. The tea soothes you, although it has a strange aftertaste and Joronia's smile is gentle, if a bit too practised. Her gleaming upper eyes gaze patiently into yours. She doesn't drink. You're tired, so tired.

The next day you wake up inside the mirror and try to leave again. Joronia didn't seem so bad. Maybe you can convince her to let you return the mirror! You find it's been magically sealed.

"Oh, don't worry," says 'Joronia' through the glass, her eyes and smile just a little darker and haughtier than they were yesterday, "it's only a safety precaution until we get to know each other better." But months later she still hasn't let you leave with the mirror. Instead, she's been staring into it more and more, fussing endlessly over her make-up and increasingly ostentatious outfits. She laments to you as if you are nothing but a pet she can vent to freely. "Uhuhuhu~! Didn't I look simply unacceptable before? I just couldn't stand my dull reflection. Tell me how gorgeous I am! Then I might even feel generous enough to feed you."

You grow bitter. How trapped you are! Behind you is the ruined hellscape where you were broken and humiliated. In front of you is an increasingly deranged self-obsessed woman who you're forced to ingratiate yourself to for scraps. Tsch! You are caged and seething! The day you find the person who subjected you to this your sword will taste blood! Soon your vibe arsenic joins the maddening sulfuric stench that abhorrent eyeball left behind. Your mind and the mirror grow ever darker in a vicious cycle. It's been years. You yearn for sights you have only seen in dreams. You cannot die.

The reborn and remade Queen Sectonia doesn't care. She's too busy solidifying her power and enhancing her own grotesque beauty to pay attention to the machinations of naughty little strays. Your sharpened tongue pleases her just enough to spare you and coax out news of the outside world. You are her obedient pet. The keeper of her innermost secrets. More loyal than her advisor. You hone yourself and your blade when she's not looking.

So when Sectonia dies and the seal goes with her, you are ready. You don't care who's on the other side. You. Only. Want. REVENGE.

* * * * *

Headcanon time!

I see DMK as leaning into using his mirror abilities, not so much because he wants to prove himself superior to Meta Knight, but because that's something only HE can do. Something he 'earned', not inherited. He wants to be the best at something without needing help.

When he spawned he already knew how to speak, move and wield his sword. Or rather, the second he attempted to do any of these things he 'remembered' how to do them.

Wouldn't it be funny and tragic if so much of his life consists of discovering skills he didn't know he had, that belong to someone who isn't quite him? What surprises will his memory give him today? Amnesiac roulette.

Imagine: he's just idly fidgeting with a sheet of paper and looks down to see he's accidentally folded a perfect little origami crane. He crushes the crane. Tsch. Another skill he didn't earn! (Later he secretly learns to fold something Meta Knight hasn't folded before, just so he can say he made the skill his own. He will deny this.)

He didn't know he had the ability to mend his cape. Yet when he found needle and thread his hands traced the movements with practised ease. He refuses to mend his cape and claims it fits his rough-and-tough aesthetic. (He collects scraps and quilts a cozy blanket for his hideout. He claims to have found it in the trash.)

He comes across a book in a language he has never seen before. He can read it! The contents make little sense to him. He tries writing, but discovers his handedness is opposite to Meta Knight's. Ink smudges his left glove as he adjusts. (It shouldn't matter. He's ambidextrous! Try as he might, he still cannot draw or write with his right hand.)

Infodump about memory function incoming! (TL;DR: there are several types of memories, some about life events, some about sensations or skills.) I hope I can explain this correctly using an example.

Imagine you're going for a stroll in the park. You don't have to think consciously about every movement you make because you already know how to walk. You decide where to go and your brain handles the details automatically. (Procedural memory. This is what let him immediately move and fight.)

You spot someone walking a dog. Your brain goes: "Dog!!!" You don't have to analyse every feature of the animal to know this because the holistic concept of "Dog" in your brain immediately lights up and couples it to the language part of you to remember the correct name. (Semantic memory. This let him recognise the world and understand speech.)

You consider petting it. Your hand experiences the ghost of fur underneath. It just stopped raining, so your nose anticipates the wet dog smell as well. (Sensory memory. He gets whiffs of sensations and tastes he hasn't experienced himself.)

You approach the dog. Suddenly you realise you've seen this dog before! It was last week and when you pet it wrong it snapped at you. You remembered a specific event. (Episodic memory. He didn't get this one and therefore doesn't remember Meta Knight's life. He has to puzzle out what his 'original' is like from the other remembered scraps he got.)

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desultory-novice · 8 months

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What are a few theories you have to say in regards to the Mirror World?

[Edit: Wow, this ask was well timed! Happy KatAM release!]

M-Mirror World... :shivers: ... I mean, n-no! Why would I be scared talk about the mirror world?! That's r-ridiculous! :knows that everyone else already has much better mirror HC than me:

Err, in truth though, I do get a little nervous when asked about the mirror world because I really never paid that much attention to it at the time?! It just seemed like a cutesy gimmick for a game and I guess I didn't see the massive potential many other fans saw in it.

When it showed up again in TDX, I was like "Ohhhh! ...Huh." and when DMK returned for Star Allies, I was like "...I guess we're sticking with this now?!" (Speaking of, I was really ambivalent on DMK at the time but have since adopted the edgy boy as one of my blorbos mostly because everyone else seems to kind of hate him/have nothing interesting for him except to have him swear even more than MK -purportedly does? And well, Dess loves an underdog!)

Anyway, I've said it once and I'll say it again (and again and again until I finally finish drawing "Through a Mirror Darkly", the prequel to "Unspoken") I think Dark Meta Knight was a double agent...!

I think he was "working" for Dark Mind only to the degree necessary to overthrow him. Why else would he split Kirby into four equally powerful selves when Necrodeus proved it was indeed possible to simply weaken the powerful, pink, and puffy?! Because come on, he's Meta Knight's shadow given form! Why does that instantly mean he has to be significantly dumber than Meta Knight?! Why can't he be as clever and farsighted as the champion fighter?

Remember how Meta is very subtly implied to have trained Kirby to face off against Nightmare during Adventure? I hold that DMK was doing the same thing, having given up on training his verse's own Kirby. DMK being a secret dark hero would certainly make sense as to why Kirby handily invites him to join the hero party in Star Allies!

(As for why he attacks Dedede out of nowhere, well, I believe he probably has... complex feelings regarding his own Dedede(1))

Err, sorry, I know this wasn't specifically about DMK... Let's talk about the Mirror World in general! It's very... hmm. It's very...unknown?

Trying to piece together (haha...) the mirror world based on the information we have now feels like trying to count sands of grain in a jar from a distance. Or trying to correctly guess the Ancient's backstory as revealed in Star Allies using only what we know in RtDL.

I think, by the time Kumazaki and the team are ready to return to it, we're going to be pretty shocked by what we find out! But as long as we're not interested in correctly guessing something (...that HAL themselves probably don't know EVERYTHING about) but simply want to bandy ideas back and forth about what we know...

I myself am most interested in a) it's timeline b) the logic behind Mirror World residents c) how/if does it stand on it's own?

If the Dimension Mirror is an Ancient Artifact, and it has all the signs of one, so I don't see any reason it shouldn't be (I even speculated once the mirror's wings could be based on Elfy) then it is OLD. Pre-fall of Halcandra old. In which case, the Mirror Dimension should be at least that old, right? But what even IS "the mirror dimension?"

Because Amaz(e)ing Mirror showed us a series of multiple interconnected worlds, linked by much smaller mirrors. And let's think about the name for a second: "The Dimension Mirror." Why would the Ancients create something that just makes ONE dimension? And the dimension in question is one where everything kinda sucks??? That... doesn't make any logical sense.

I think the original purpose behind the creation of the Dimension Mirror was to, quite simply, make a portal. The Mirror could have been the predecessor to the Lor Starcutter even! A kind of "stargate." Using it, you can see into MULTIPLE different dimensions, and potentially travel to the ones you wish to using smaller gate like mirrors scattered all over the place. (2)

But, like everything they built, the Dimension Mirror was a two-edged sword. And there came si~de effe~cts! We generally know that the Mirror Residents are like "worse" version of the people we've seen so far. So just imagine that everyone who traveled through the Dimension Mirror to get to some other dimension... left a copy of themselves behind? Similar to one of the more grisly theories on how matter transportation might be possible: that the best you could do would be to perfectly clone/replicate someone in a different position, all their memories intact, while quietly destroying the original as they :cough: teleport. BAM! "You" have now been transported!

With that in mind, the more it is used, the more copies are created, and thus... the birth of the Mirror World? It's certainly possible!

Why are they "evil" though? Well... that could be the "side effect" of wicked power developed off of the suffering of baby chinchillas or it could be that they aren't really all that "evil" to begin with.

Again, I argue that Dark Meta Knight is not really evil Meta Knight at all. (You can write the "corruption theory" for the purposes of fanfic or fan ideas or whatever but I WILL tear my hair out if you try to convince me/you believe it 100% based on evidence in game.) I think Dark Meta Knight is simply Meta Knight unleashed.

Shadow Kirby was considered worthy of being the "hero" of the Mirror Dimension. Bloody King Dedede is kind of a jerk but so was regular Dedede in the past. Plus, going by the stomach in the mouth thing, King Bloody seems to still be possessed by Dark Matter so we can't really know what he's like on a good day!

And then there are critters like King Golem, who is almost unmistakably Whispy Woods just built out of bricks and stone.

So, Mirror Residents simply misunderstood? I'd wager so.

But where is it and why does it persist? Those are all good questions that I don't have the answer to. I might have theories down the line... Are there mirror versions of the rest of the Star Allies? I suppose there could be, if any of them hopped through the mirror/got a really close look at it at any point! Do the people created by the Dimension Mirror truly "exist independently" at this point?

I... I don't know. To be honest, I think one really just has to work with the story that is the most interesting to them. Like... going by my theory above, the first Mirror Dream Lander would be DMK, the second would be Shadow Kirby, and the third would be Bloody Dedede, right? Or... is it?

In Dess's Unspoken-verse, Shadow Dedede has been around long before the days of Triple Deluxe and even before Amazing Mirror began. (Although that does make sense, given the Dark Matter thing would place his existence around at least Dream Land 2) So... Did King Dedede see the mirror BEFORE Triple Deluxe or are there Mirror versions of everyone already? Honestly, because the mirror seems positioned in the sky over Popstar, you could say that anyone who's taken a walk on a sunny day has a mirror duplicate out there!

But Magolor implied on Twitter he wouldn't have a mirror duplicate?! Is he just making a joke about his own wickedness/two-facedness? Did HE actually come from the mirror dimension originally or did he already kill (?!) his own mirror counterpart?!

TLDR, I have NO idea. But I think that until HAL comes back with more info N number of years down the line, it's fine to engage in writing whatever mirror HC suit you and continue to come up with fun and interesting mirror versions of the rest of the cast.

Speaking of, I still need to make my Mirror Marx + Magolor...

...

PS: Oh yeah, and are they all MADE of mirrors?! DMK sure seems to be but honestly, what does that even mean for them?! And how was he permanently scarred? Did the piece of mirror that got broken off when Meta Knight attacked him become lost sometime between that and the end of his fight with the Kirbys?!

...Mysteries...

(1) The way I ship Meta Knight x Dedede - when I ship it - is entirely under the table. No hugs, no kisses, no confessions, no ceremonies. They don't even admit to "loving" each other in that way. They are just "very important" (tm) to each other. Yadda-yadda-sworn-partners-yadda. But, because I'm me and I enthusiastically love tragedy, I like to imagine that Shadow Dedede and Dark Meta Knight were in love in exactly the way Meta Knight and Dedede weren't.

Keyword "were." Also "tragedy." You can figure out the rest I'm sure. ^_-

(2) So you notice how those portal mirror things kinda sorta vaguely resemble the goal doors? What are the chances that eventually, the Ancients DID figure out portal technology w/o evil twin side-effects and Popstar's goal doors are exactly that?!

#Kirby #Kirby series #Dark Meta Knight #Shadow Dedede #Mirror World Kirby #ShadowDedeDMK mention #H-how do you even that pairing name??

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