Magolor ❤ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
begguiling) wrote2019-07-10 11:35 am
begguiling) wrote2019-07-10 11:35 am
headcanon primer/things to know!
Kirby canon is vague about a lot of important things—often intentionally—but it also tends to be consistent in its implications and portrayals, and it packs in a lot of obscure lore that points in certain directions without coming out and saying things. I'm the kind of RPer who likes to play with these details as much as possible without contradicting canon anywhere, so in a lot of cases I just kind of have to pick a direction and go with it. This post is for me to slap down some notes on what directions I've personally chosen and show my work as to why; everything in here is my best effort at being Canon-Supported without being Explicit Canon. There are absolutely alternative readings to all of this, but here are mine so you know where I'm coming from!
☆ What species is Magolor and what does he even look like under his clothes?
In canon, we don't know! We've never seen any part of him that isn't that patch of his face that shows. In fandom, there are many different interpretations of what he looks like and what kind of creature he is—that he's a Halcandle Dee, a Dark Matter being like Gooey, related to Hyness, or something else entirely. But personally I play Magolor as being a type of Doomer because I feel the evidence is pretty compelling when you lay it out:
Basically, while he (presumably) lived for at least some time on Halcandra and he dresses in the same general fashion as the Halcandrans, he otherwise doesn't have anything in common with them physically or in terms of moveset and has much more in common with the various Doomers, which are also much more varied—and so it makes sense that Magolor may not look exactly like any of them, as none of them look exactly like each other either, whereas the Dees all look the same.
So with that in mind and because I also like doing what I want if it's not against actual canon, this is what I'm going with, in the absence of any more compelling evidence than that. Thank you to![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
rileyboi for the awesome commission!!
Assuming he is a species of Doomer, it implies some things about his backstory and appearance, along with some other information canon does give us and some things I decided to roll with because I'm mad with power and can't be stopped:
☆ What canon timeline am I taking him from?
Magolor shows up in a lot of canon properties with very weird canonicity and little explanation as to how they connect, whoops. Here are the games he's in that I'm treating as canon, in order, along with what happened between them:
☆ What non-canon timeline elements do I draw from in playing him?
:)
☆ How old is he and what's the deal with his birthday?
This is yet another thing we know literally nothing about—none of the characters have canon ages or even ranges of life experience, including Kirby himself, who is very inconsistently portrayed. I can pretty much go with whatever here. In terms of life stage, I assume he's an adult, but a young one: maybe the human equivalent of in his late 20s. I really just picked this because he doesn't come off as a child or teenager to me (and he has quite a lot of life experience under his belt) but neither does he come off as an older man, so, sure. In terms of chronological years, we have no idea what his species' lifespan is or how quickly they mature. It could be literally anything! Luckily, I have a good excuse for Magolor himself not to know, which is that he spent some time in the "dimension beyond time and space" and has no idea how long it was either objectively or subjectively. Not to mention all that interdimensional travel and different calendar systems between different planets gets really confusing! So, if asked, Magolor will not have an answer for this in terms of An Actual Age, taking some pressure off of me as a player, lol.
Birthdays in the Kirby universe are celebrated on the day the character's intro game first came out in Japan, so Magolor's birthday is October 27th! He is ICly aware of this because I can't resist a good opportunity for a birthday party in RP (who can, really). Since the entire situation around birthdays and other planets and dimensions and release dates and junk is kind of nonsensical, as I play it, he doesn't know his actual date of birth and celebrates this day because it's the day he met Kirby, which was a huge turning point in his life. Does Pop Star have "October"? Apparently!
☆ What species is Magolor and what does he even look like under his clothes?
In canon, we don't know! We've never seen any part of him that isn't that patch of his face that shows. In fandom, there are many different interpretations of what he looks like and what kind of creature he is—that he's a Halcandle Dee, a Dark Matter being like Gooey, related to Hyness, or something else entirely. But personally I play Magolor as being a type of Doomer because I feel the evidence is pretty compelling when you lay it out:
Basically, while he (presumably) lived for at least some time on Halcandra and he dresses in the same general fashion as the Halcandrans, he otherwise doesn't have anything in common with them physically or in terms of moveset and has much more in common with the various Doomers, which are also much more varied—and so it makes sense that Magolor may not look exactly like any of them, as none of them look exactly like each other either, whereas the Dees all look the same.
So with that in mind and because I also like doing what I want if it's not against actual canon, this is what I'm going with, in the absence of any more compelling evidence than that. Thank you to
Assuming he is a species of Doomer, it implies some things about his backstory and appearance, along with some other information canon does give us and some things I decided to roll with because I'm mad with power and can't be stopped:
- He's actually from Another Dimension originally, not Halcandra, and ended up on Halcandra by slipping through one of the rifts between them. (The wiki claims that Halcandra is in Another Dimension, but this wasn't at all the impression I got from the game; it's in another dimension from Pop Star but not Another Dimension.)
- He dresses the way he does to pass among the Halcandran natives and protect himself from the harsh Halcandran environment.
- He lived on Halcandra for quite a while among the natives, excavating/repairing(/stealing) the Lor Starcutter and doing research on the Master Crown and other artifacts of the Ancients, and considers it his "homeworld" more than Another Dimension is, though frankly he's not fond of either place.
- The things on his head are actually ears and not horns, spikes, or part of his hood; he can move them at will, so they kind of have to be. I'm just going to say they're the same brown as the rest of his skin.
- He doesn't have fur, but he has one of those Doomery tufts of feathers on top. (I know he has a line implying he has hair, but it's in the context of such an obvious lie that I don't think it's meant to be taken seriously, lol.)
- Kirby & co. probably have figured out what he is by now after swapping spit with him in Star Allies, but he still somewhat compulsively hides his mouth. It doesn't match his cute image! It's not actually a huge deal for him, though, and he won't be that bothered if and when people see it.
☆ What canon timeline am I taking him from?
Magolor shows up in a lot of canon properties with very weird canonicity and little explanation as to how they connect, whoops. Here are the games he's in that I'm treating as canon, in order, along with what happened between them:
- Return to Dream Land is a given: this was his intro game where he was the main antagonist, and is unquestionably part of the canon timeline.
- At the end of RtDL, he kind of . . . dies, but officially, he was "sent to a dimension beyond time and space." There is no explanation as to how he escaped this fate. In fact, the writers have come out and said basically "lol who knows weird huh?" Since I have to work with some explanation, I'm assuming he was picked up after mumble amount of time by the Lor Starcutter, which fits with canon as well as anything else: the Lor can travel between dimensions, it's an artificial intelligence with a mind of its own, and the next time he's seen, he's been reunited with it. As for how much time he spent in that dimension, since it's "beyond space and time," even he doesn't know. It could have been minutes or thousands of years. It's mindfucky and he tries not to dwell on it.
- Kirby's Dream Collection is an anthology disc, but has a sub"plot" that features Magolor and fits into the canon timeline, and seems to be treated as canon in interviews, so I assume it really happened.
- Word of God is that Magolor went on from there to travel the universe building other theme parks on other planets, including the one in Dedede's Drum Dash, so this is where that happened.
- Next is Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, which is not a canon game and takes place in an alternate universe—however, there are all kinds of implications throughout the game, Star Allies, and meta materials (like Twitter) that the Magolor in this game is the main timeline Magolor. For one thing, darkweb found reference to a Japanese magazine interview that states this, though we can't find the interview itself yet, so take it with a grain of salt. But the fact that he has gem apples in Star Allies, switches to his normal blue clothing late in the game, and constantly makes bad jokes referencing his past actions, all imply that he's the same version and remembers RtDL. Other meta commentary only makes sense if you assume they're the same person: Shopkeeper Magolor considers October 27th (the release date of RtDL) his own birthday and considers CROWNED his own theme song, among other things. As for how this is possible . . . I just blame the Lor again. Having a magical spaceship that can canonly jump between parallel dimensions is the best explanation anyone could ever ask for.
- As a note, since Super Kirby Clash is just a remake of the above, I don't count it as a different canon event that happens elsewhere in the timeline, though I may revisit this sometime; I know the novels do consider it a distinct sequel.
- Finally another straightforward answer: he most recently appears in Star Allies, another indisputably canon game. Phew.
☆ What non-canon timeline elements do I draw from in playing him?
- Magolor as a character gets a lot of canon that isn't actually "canon," because he's very popular with the fanbase and one of the more verbal characters in the games, with a personality that's easy to exploit for advertisement or fan interaction. I'm talking here about things like official IC tweets and game guides, and silly canon artwork. These things obviously can't be counted as canon in the sense that I don't consider them as actually having "happened"—e.g. Magolor has never actually used Twitter, lol. (Outside of crack memes.) But because the characterization in them is incredibly consistent and never contradicts the games canon, I do draw on it to supplement what he's given in the games and help flesh out his personality: so, e.g., while Magolor has never used Twitter in for-real-canon, we know he's the kind of person who would be good at appealing to his fans and mugging for Likes and Retweets if he did, which both adds something to his personality and is cohesive with the already-canon trait of being a shameless attention-seeking salesperson. Stuff like that!
- Along those same lines, there have been several merchandise campaigns recently that have taken place around IC events that are dubiously canon: these events also don't contradict any strict game information, but they're also meta campaigns, and whether or not they "really happened" in-universe is up for debate. I handle them pretty loosely right now, leaving the question open and avoiding referring to them as literal incidents in his history. But these too are full of characterization tidbits, largely regarding his economic endeavors, shady dealings, and product manufacturing skills, and the team seems to take great care to make them all consistently IC (and extremely entertaining), so I take the personality and lore bits from them seriously enough.
- The light novels: Magolor appears in two light novels, one of which is a novelization of Team Kirby Clash Deluxe and one of which is an original sequel to RtDL (and Triple Deluxe, and other games). The novels are also very, very well-characterized and very good about building on the canon personality without contradicting anything. I don't treat them as Actual Canon for a few reasons, mainly them being very difficult to access and complicating the canon timeline. The events would very much change canonmate relationships, which would be unfair to do to a canonmate who probably can't access the book, and I'm not sure where I'd slot them in as having happened, and the TKCD novel is just enough of an original take on the game that they're not fully compatible versions. But because they're well-written and again fit perfectly with the games characterization, I do draw on them some too in playing Magolor. I don't pull anything that goes against how he acts in the games, but then again, I can't actually think of anything that happens in the books that does that. They're good books!
- ftr, there are multiple manga, and while I obviously have icons from them, I don't generally draw on them in my play: both manga I have iconned here actually portray Magolor pretty OOCly. But hey, we get stuff like this out of them:
:)
☆ How old is he and what's the deal with his birthday?
This is yet another thing we know literally nothing about—none of the characters have canon ages or even ranges of life experience, including Kirby himself, who is very inconsistently portrayed. I can pretty much go with whatever here. In terms of life stage, I assume he's an adult, but a young one: maybe the human equivalent of in his late 20s. I really just picked this because he doesn't come off as a child or teenager to me (and he has quite a lot of life experience under his belt) but neither does he come off as an older man, so, sure. In terms of chronological years, we have no idea what his species' lifespan is or how quickly they mature. It could be literally anything! Luckily, I have a good excuse for Magolor himself not to know, which is that he spent some time in the "dimension beyond time and space" and has no idea how long it was either objectively or subjectively. Not to mention all that interdimensional travel and different calendar systems between different planets gets really confusing! So, if asked, Magolor will not have an answer for this in terms of An Actual Age, taking some pressure off of me as a player, lol.
Birthdays in the Kirby universe are celebrated on the day the character's intro game first came out in Japan, so Magolor's birthday is October 27th! He is ICly aware of this because I can't resist a good opportunity for a birthday party in RP (who can, really). Since the entire situation around birthdays and other planets and dimensions and release dates and junk is kind of nonsensical, as I play it, he doesn't know his actual date of birth and celebrates this day because it's the day he met Kirby, which was a huge turning point in his life. Does Pop Star have "October"? Apparently!