Hi I’m Avanelle, but feel free to call me Av, Boat, Nova, Lor, or by my blog name. I use she/her and they/them pronouns, and am an asexual panromantic demigirl!
My main interest is Kirby, but I also love Portal, Pokémon, Shovel Knight, Just Shapes and Beats, Hollow Knight, and Minecraft. Also post about my own characters and headcanons from time to time, as well as art.
More info, some of which is important, in my pinned post!
To be clear: the Master Crown is into no one. There’s no such thing as a “we” or “us” with it in the end. It might act like there is for a little bit after making itself known, just to get its hosts to drop their guard— a golden artifact immense power that speaks in your mind and gives hints and suggestions as to what you should do isn’t necessarily a bad thing if it isn’t seeking to replace you in your own body or something like that. If it’s saying you’ll be doing something together, and you’re still ultimately calling the shots, well, why not enjoy the power it brings? You can do anything you want! Cursed doesn’t always mean evil, it just means there’s something more or less permanent and arcane in nature attached to it, so maybe this spooky cursed crown isn’t actually all that bad. Besides, it isn’t as if nobody has heard rumors about Galaxia or the Triple Star’s true natures, and the knight and rat both helped save the world to some degree(twice if you count the events of Star Allies).
Of course what it doesn’t inform its wearer is that the “we” and “us” are very temporary, and it isn’t going to be the Crown that takes the back seat when things change. Said change won’t be instantaneous, though; if it has its way it will be so gradual its host won’t be able to tell the difference. First it’s nothing, then it starts making suggestions, then inspires ideas, influences your actions, thinks your thoughts for you, controls your body… It’s not quite like a ferocious monster devouring the soul in one fell swoop, but more akin to a disease with no outward symptoms. A parasite. It spreads slowly, feeds, feigns being beneficial, makes the host feel powerful to distract them from the fact that they’re beginning to rot from the inside, feeds, conceals the fact that their very mind is not immune to the infection. If all goes to plan, its wearer will be reduced to a husk in both body and soul without questioning it or the being that gave them so much power.
In some ways it’s better to stay ignorant like that. Winning once it has you is all but impossible regardless of your awareness, and it punishes resistance. Not necessarily directly, but perhaps in the way a trap punishes a struggling animal; tightening the snare the more they try to pull away, spreading the glue the more they struggle, letting them paint cage bars with their own blood as they thrash about. It’s not ideal for either of you, though, hence seeking to give the host a false sense of security. Convince them they’re in a castle and they won’t question all the walls around them. That’s the closest thing to mercy it will ever grant, really; the choice between thinking you’re in a warm embrace and realizing you’re being strangled, choked, drowned.
Not every being is susceptible to it, though, but those rare few are outliers, and hardly ever something it would see as even an inconvenience, let alone a threat. It wants to rule alone with absolute power, and if it gets its way, anything that it can’t control or assimilate will simply be destroyed; if it can’t have them, nobody can, not even the individuals themselves. It has no desire for peers, like-minded or not. If anything those sorts are adversaries; if the goal is complete and utter control, there are no allies and there is no friendly competition. There is only those it has power over, and those it does not. Accepting an equal would mean relinquishing control.
Anyways all that is to say the Master Crown doesn’t care about milfs and would probably also hate Star Dream for wanting to kill all of the things it wants to assimilate and/or rule over. Thank for comig to my ted talk
stupid poop crown post got me thinking, what is your headcannon about Magolor’s experience with the crown anyways? or does the fic pretty much summarize it?
Love that “stupid poop crown post got me thinking” is a series of words that have been said now. Language is a weapon and in a collective sense we are simultaneously very good at using it and very unskilled with it.
Anyways, I’d say the fic doesn’t really summarize it much at all, aside from the few explicit details given about what happened. Part of what made it so unnerving and traumatic for Magolor is the simple fact that, during his power trip, he didn’t realize anything was wrong. There was no second voice in his head telling him what to do, there was no immediate forceful possession; the switch from his goal being taking over Halcandra to being world domination just felt natural— indistinguishable from any other time he’d changed his mind about something. The Crown was able to manipulate him so easily, convinced him that its desires were his own, gave no indication that it was anything more than a power source. Sure, his head hurt where it dug its claws in, and not being able to easily take it off was certainly not ideal, but that’s just bad artifact design, not an obvious sign of something more sinister lurking out of sight! If he had infinite power he could just make it not do that.
Only when he had been beaten a little over half to death did he notice it wasn’t just his own mind in his head, because he wanted to stop fighting and try to bargain, but his body wouldn’t listen. That was more or less the point where he realized something was very, very wrong, but the extent to which things were wrong wasn’t immediately obvious then. It was when it wrestled full control away from him that it became clear he’d fucked up immensely, but by that point it was too late for him to really fend it off; it caught him by complete surprise. All he could really do was just try to resist becoming yet another soul lost to it and hope to last long enough for his body that wasn’t really his own anymore to be incapacitated, but that hinged on the very people he’d used as pawns in his scheme being powerful enough to defeat the entity he’d unwittingly allowed to manifest.
Then of course you have the events of the Epilogue, where he was eventually greeted with the unfortunate discovery that the Crown had more or less survived and was seeking out another host. He’d been pretty scared it would try to possess him again, but in not being at full strength he was simultaneously too weak to have been able to maintain himself as a separate person and too weak to be of any interest to it. At that point it was simply operating based on what the strongest magic sources it could reach were so it could have an unbroken vessel once more. Its relation to the Crowned Doomer is very headcanon-y in that I see them as different forms of the same entity. The Master Crown is full of souls bound by corrupted soul magic, but souls in Another Dimension eventually become Doomers once enough magic binds to them, with the strength of the initially formed Doomer being decided by the strength of the soul(magic) they form from. They can become stronger by consuming other sources of magic, be it energy spheres or each other, but that’s a tangent. Point is, the Crown itself was very unstable at that point and briefly became a sort of Grand Doomer, but when Magolor brought forth the gem apple sapling, he basically handed it a very powerful source of magic that it could anchor itself to.
Thus it stabilized, turned the new host into a body more to its liking, set out to kill the one that had resisted it and survived, but was ultimately defeated* by the magic catboy. Except he kinda died of magic overexertion and his injuries afterwards, but also didn’t, and going through the portal to the Dream Kingdom therefore simultaneously did and didn’t happen. Basically, death and dreams in Another Dimension is fucking weird, and the circumstances of his death were such that he basically performed the world’s first recorded soul duplication glitch without actually knowing it. One him successfully went through the portal, which was born of his dream/desire of starting over in a new life where he could try again influenced by his knowledge and experiences, which created a branch of the timeline and the “real” Dream Kingdom. The other him ended up dying, but was found and guided by Morpho Knight, which would lead to him and Lor’s meeting as described in the fic.
*I just thought I’d have fun and emphasize this bit here for anyone keeping up with the fic, won’t elaborate on why though :) its a secret
Got very ramble-y there and probably off topic, but basically his experience with the Crown was traumatic in a different way than it is in his nightmares. What fucked him up was just that he didn’t even know it was there, he doesn’t know what thoughts were and weren’t his after he put it on, it was able to render him powerless in his own body so easily. It didn’t speak to him, it was manipulative in a manner that was so different and so much more sinister than the way another person might be. It scares him to think about it; he sees himself as someone who doesn’t fall for lies because he’s usually the liar. The Crown not only violently proved he wasn’t immune, it did so flawlessly while literally digging its talons into his head— it hurt him and yet he was willing to make excuses to keep wearing it, and he doesn’t know if those excuses were his own or it telling him what to think.
When you’ve built up your identity around knowing about ancient history and artifacts and thinking you’re a genius who can’t be lied to, and had built up your dreams around being powerful, there are few things that will shake you to your core quite like being made to see you didn’t know what you were getting into, were easily made to believe things you shouldn’t have, and could have your power stripped away by something you sought out for yourself.
I am very thankful for this website allowing me to indulge in delight at creatures (boats)
What is the Lor Starcutter?
-Alive in all ways except the cellular sense
-Utilizes energy and requires it to function successfully
-Capable of complex activities, likelocomotion, sight, speech, and decision making
-Participates in playbehavior
-Has wings
-Friend shaped
-Super duper cool and awesome all around
Conclusion: the Lor Starcutter is a Creature. Probably some kind of very large bug if one considers her oars to be analogous to legs, her lack of a skeleton in favor of a hard exterior, and the presence of wings. Wow!
Just out of curiosity why do you write the Lor how you do? Very young-sounding regardless of being “old as balls”, immature at times, not really befitting of an ancient revered being like is common in fanon
The short answer is “I saw Lor as her own person before it was cool and I wanted to run with it as far as I could because it’s fun and contrasts with how I write Nova”
The longer answer is that I love playing with the idea of some of the things we’re told about characters not necessarily being the reality, especially when only loosely implied or stated by unreliable or potentially biased sources. I think a lot of folks do actually, but the fandom generally seem to do it with Galacta Knight a whole lot more than other characters. Even before Star Allies you had interpretations based on the idea of GK not actually being evil, just feared by those in power for no reason other than their sheer strength, in spite of the very first in-game glimpse we ever see of them showing them on a pile of rubble with what was probably fire in the background. I could also get into some interpretations I’ve seen of Elfilis that paint them as a victim acting in self-defense, but… Well, that’s something I find to be less “interpreting things in a way that might not be expected but offers interesting story opportunities” and more “taking things in a direction that contradicts the spirits of the character and the story at the expense of both”. So instead of unpacking that suitcase I’m duct taping it to a cinderblock and dropping it from low orbit into the ocean.
When it comes to Lor, there’s so little we actually know about her that’s concrete or easy to directly infer. We know she’s a magical ship made by the Ancients who was later excavated from the Haldera volcano, capable of traveling through space and time and able to speak when she wants to. It can be inferred she has good intentions(saved the whole gang and Landia at the end of the game, played a part in Star Allies if you count the dream friends) and a forgiving nature(see updated True Arena Magolor Soul fight). Depending on how far one goes to make inferences, there’s also the fact that she decides to playhang out at Magoland, and, if her small(literal) appearance in Star Allies is actually a thing and not just because regularly yeeting a big ol’ spaceship on the screen would make the Switch cry, participates to a degree. Lastly, her name means “paradise” in Jambadran.
That might seem like a lot, but it really isn’t. We don’t know much about who exactly the Ancients were, if that refers to just one people group or something more akin to a generation or people in a particular era, and how long ago they even existed. We don’t know why she ended up in the volcano, how long she was there, or even how old she is. We don’t know anything about her personality or character beyond the actions she’s taken on her own, neither of which offer much insight beyond “she wouldn’t abandon a bunch of people in the void in favor of escaping more quickly” and “she will still speak to someone who has wronged her before, even if she didn’t at first”. Given that none of those things happened until the climax of RtD, we don’t know if she was even awake during the bulk of the events in the game; if she wasn’t awake it explains why things happened the way they did, if she was awake that raises the question of why she allowed herself to crash and why she went along with Magolor in spite of his less than honest intentions.
And then there is the language bit. We don’t know what exactly is meant by the detail that “Lor = Paradise” in the context of the series. It could be literal, or it could be that her name literally should be translated as Paradise or Paradise Starcutter or the like. It could also be symbolic of how the Jambadrans/Hyness have been living in and longing for the past for an untold length of time, given that lor is incredibly similar to lore, which embodies traditions and history and such regarding a group and is generally treated as truth/fact for that group. Essentially, given their shared ties to the ancients, it could be a coincidence arising from Hyness pretty much missing “the good old days” before he and his people were banished, with lor moreso referencing history itself rather than some sort of paradise. It could be a coincidence entirely, as we don’t know if the ones who actually created Lor and the Jambadrans were the same people, originated from the same group, or used the same language— for all we know this could actually be a case of false cognates. It could even be a good ol’ red herring that actually doesn’t mean anything substantial lore-wise and is just there to drive people nuts trying to make connections or find a deeper meaning while ties are being set up under the surface.
With all that in mind, I thought it would be really fun to base my interpretation around the fact that the information we’ve been given is so vague that she could be entirely different from what one may expect.
•Being super old doesn’t mean someone has no sense of whimsy or joy to be found or fun to be had, and Lor spent what could very well be a huge portion of her existence underground rather than living her life— why not have her behave like someone making up for lost time and missed opportunities for happiness?
•She’s a piece of advanced magical technology and yet some of that was dedicated to hosting several games, neon signs, and doing backflips, so who’s to say that she can’t be a little weird or even borderline silly at times?
•Since I interpret her as an AI, which often operate based on pattern recognition and the like, I thought it would be really funny and not necessarily unrealistic for her to like memes because, let’s face it, 99% of them are just pattern recognition games.
•We don’t know the circumstances of why she was shoved in the volcano, but we DO know the ancients seem to have a track record of getting rid of people they don’t like or feel they can’t control; after that I thought it’d be really cool to play with the shared traits of computers and angels, as well as the idea that what makes a fallen angel/equivalent could very well depend on the god/power they serve. So, she has a good heart and doesn’t mean any harm, and that ultimately conflicted with some of the ambitions and ideas held by those who created her, until eventually they tried to dispose of her, regardless of the way others revered her.
•Imagine spending a not small amount of time waiting for this powerful, ancient, surely wise being to speak to you, not knowing what you’re hoping for but hoping anyways. Eagerly awaiting this interaction, each and every day wondering if that would be when you hear their voice for the first time, thinking about the sort of knowledge or perspective you might gain. Now imagine that being calling you things like “egg wizard”, “little peach boy”, “just a little creacher”, etc, or telling you to “go clean your room or you’ll get your gamer rights revoked”, or saying “poggers” or “cool beans” or “cringe fail”. Would that not arguably be the funniest fucking turn of events after everything that happened? Imagine spending months of your life planning this big journey to steal an ancient artifact with the help of a ship rumored to have a mind of its own and everything eventually culminates in her calling you stinky because you were depressed and going through it after dying and stuff and weren’t taking your little catboy sand baths
[lor voice] im at merry magoland n my sterns 2 big 2 fit in da seats on ride. ahhhhhh (dats me yellin)
Imagine helping your magical cat egg son achieve his dreams of creating the most awesome epic pog theme park ever by assisting with a lot of the calculations and planning and technical aspects beyond simply designing and engineering the stuff. And then after it’s been open for a little while you go to see what it’s like and he didn’t even make an attraction you can fit in so you just have to float awkwardly off to the side of the main entrance and splash in a fountain and attract a crowd by existing because a bunch of people thought you were super cool and wanted to gather around you and ask questions or get their picture taken and ok maybe it isn’t so bad. Oh wait, never fucking mind because you were not given advance warning that some of the souvenirs visitors can get make sounds that happen to include the cries of the interdimensional beings that would love nothing more than to rip you open and eat your spherical equivalent of blood that you need to live. Absolutely not excellent first ever theme park visit. At least initially
Duality of Merry Magoland ancient blue machines from Halcandra: taking cool pictures with Lor vs dees having a situation of “Get out of the fucking tank” “You’re not my dad” with Metal General.
Assorted screenshots of my thoughts/ideas and a doodle related to RtDD. Contains minor to major spoilers, which will be under a readmore. However for folks in the tags who don’t want spoilers, I do have a shitpost regarding the giant boot items/puzzles so this post isn’t a total nothing burger for you.
Anyways now for the bulk of what I was too impatient not to post. Again, spoilers for new content!
First and foremost, I wish everyone who ever called me weird or said I was reaching with my headcanons regarding Lor being sapient and not solely just under the control of Magolor or whatever powers that be a very GET FUCKED FOREVER. BOAT PLAY BEHAVIOR REAL.
Next, Magolor’s win animation in Samurai Kirby took me out for a solid 10 minutes and I was compelled to make this.
I also had another thought regarding things with Lor in Magoland. Specifically boat experiences mask noise jumpscare.
And while I am gonna wait a bit longer before saying anything about [the horrors](including the alternative joke name I thought of for them), I did make this doodle based on a recent catcrumb post and my experience in the poor little meow meow mode.
And then finally here is me being extremely normal about a mask. Did I immediately notice all the inconsistencies with this design when compared to previous in-game appearances Nova has had? Yes. Did that make me not happy to see them again acknowledged as a character in spite of only being tangentially relevant to this game due to special obscure dialogue from Magolor? Absolutely not, I didn’t name 99% of my accounts places after Nova for nothing. Love that cat clock. My brain rot is terminal
I do plan on posting some actual headcanon-y stuff soon(particularly regarding Doomers and a certain headpiece), but it’ll be once the game has been out for longer to reduce the odds of people being spoiled by mistake. That stuff will be shared on my sideblog dedicated to such things, @nova-starcutter. You’ll never guess just by the name of the blog what kinds of headcanons I tend to think about most.
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