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.
So... I re-ally don’t love The Corruption Theory because it always seemed to make Sectonia more tragic victim than anything else and ruins her agency and turns Dark Meta Knight into a motivation-less monster who makes flowers wilt with his sheer badness. But THIS...!
This is the first version of that theory I’ve read that I like! A lot, even! A selfish, secretive Sectonia keeping her interesting “pet” that came out of her gift and - with her natural vanity/obsession toward being the best leader she can be - drives an already unstable DMK to pour out his misery over finding himself in yet ANOTHER form of enslavement into the dimensional mirror, creating a dangerous feedback loop so the pernicious effects they have on each other only grow until they are both at their worst! (Joronia becoming Sectonia and DMK becoming someone ready to killify the next person who appraoches the mirror.) Yessss! This is actually very cool!