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!
Yes! Lor’s always delighted when Kirby comes to visit. They’re curious and ask questions fairly often and, out of everyone except maybe MK and Magolor, probably have the least trouble following along when she gets into detail about how her stuff works. Also quickest to accept the whole Lor = boat mom situation, though usually he calls her Miss Lor or Magolor’s mom, when not just using her name at least. Out of the RtD squad they probably visit the most often, sometimes bringing Bandana Dee along, which she likes because, as much as she loves him, it’s nice to spend time with more folks than just Magolor without it being a huge group event. Kirby’s basically always welcome on board, with the only few exceptions being times when Lor wasn’t on Popstar to begin with, like during the events of Planet Robobot. She thinks they’re sweet all around, the only caveat to visits being that Magolor always has to go buy more food afterward because he only shops for himself and then tries to be a super cool awesome host— which involves providing snacks.
Kirby, in turn, thinks Lor is really cool and fun! He probably took the shortest time to adjust to Lor(and Magolor) sticking around, and didn’t really question the whole “this boat can talk” side of things for very long either. After all, you can’t spell friendship without ship, and if he had a nickel for every time he met a big talking machine powered by magic that he collected a bunch of scattered magical things to fix/summon, Lor would’ve granted the second of those nickels. She knows a whole lot and is happy to share, and doesn’t have the same tendency of dumbing things down or oversimplifying when he asks her a question like some others do, which he really appreciates. In his mind she occupies some spot between unofficial mom and friend’s mom. The closest thing to a point of conflict between them is just that Lor and Meta Knight don’t really get along for the most part, which can be a bit weird for Kirby because that’s their unofficial dad#2 and unofficial mom/friend’s mom. But he doesn’t hold it against either of them, it’s kinda just like when you’re a kid at a friend’s house and your parents start arguing and you’re just awkwardly standing there with your friend like ._.•-•
Finally. I present to you all Lor as a bug but with effort, as promised. You know when you put something near a bug and it immediately tries to climb on, like that mantis trying to climb onto an excavator? She is doing that I just don’t know how well I got that across. She want uppy
I think she would be a harmless beetle-esque thing roughly the size of a Syrian hamster with the durability of a diabolical ironclad beetle, which I highly recommend looking up if you don’t know how wack they are. She’d be somewhat good at swimming but flightless because no way in hell was I going to try to bullshit functional wings onto a design that already doesn’t make sense before bug-ification. What doesn’t change is the fact that she can’t see well. Probably bumps into things a lot, which makes the hard exoskeleton useful.
The claws are mostly for gripping surfaces and holding onto fruits— the pseudopods under her “emblem” would just be used to cut through the peel/skin/rind. The “wings” are mostly a defensive measure, able to be flared out quickly to make herself look at least somewhat noticeably larger than a hamster. Also to help her right herself if she gets flipped over. If the threat display doesn’t work and someone decides to hold her like burger or something she’d stridulate like a hissing cockroach, though it’d be like. Halfway between that and death’s head moth squeaking. Creacher.
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!
Sad… what if we all just have pats to normal Lor then. No animal traits required
She was built by (more or less) cat people, so I bet enjoyment of pats made its way into her systems to some degree, intentionally or not. Top 10 things that pair well with the “anything can purr” mentality, though that was Lor’s own doing(vibrating at a frequency that doesn’t shatter glass). Realistically this also applies to most other Starcutters as well, since they’re made to take after the folks around them— especially in terms of vocal/audible communication. Granted, in most cases it probably sounds less like purring and more like a mix between revving a car’s engine and distant rolling thunder, but close enough, right?
Anyways Magolor would totally not be jealous if someone started petting Lor instead of him because he is definitely not a catboy and does not like head pats or the like. Nuh uh. Nope. Not at all. (lie)
Hi I finally resumed working on a thing I started writing in April 2019! The hellsite won’t let me use the built-in ao3 share option and add tags on the same post so I’m going to try to post it normally.
The work itself has a slightly better summary; this is the 4th time I’m trying to make this post and I’m tired of retyping everything. But basically it’s about the early days of Magolor and Lor meeting and getting to know each other and figuring out what they’re going to do with themselves in their situations. Lor has to get used to living in a new era and in a place that is entirely different from where she came from, while Magolor has to cope with big regret and also Experiencing The Horrors. It takes place after the events of RtD and Magolor Epilogue, so it will have some spoilers, but warnings are given for stuff like that in the notes before each chapter.
Here is the link, I’d really appreciate if you checked it out and reblogged, commented, liked/left kudos, etc.
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.
Instead of continuing the theme of granting glimpses into the unsettling realities faced by hypothetical sapient spaceships, I’m gonna post about perspectives and expectations versus reality! Aka the headcanons I have about the legends and mythology surrounding Lor based on what little was known about her by people in the past, and then how the expectations those created set up those in-the-know-but-not-quite about Halcandran history for some good ol’ whiplash. And since this isn’t discussing The Horrors I’m also putting it in main tags. As a treat. This is totally not part of my agenda to spread boat mom propaganda to more people.
Most of the legends around Lor stem from the simple fact that they’re the ideas people get about her based on observations without context and a lack of concrete information. For example, it was years after she was buried beneath the Haldera Volcano that it became common knowledge that there were multiple Starcutters that all have the same appearance; her name was just learned first, and with all the warping and appearing wherever in the sky going on people just assumed it was one ship named Lor doing everything. Everything included sailing majestically through the sky with what seemed like twinkling starlight in her wake, regularly cutting holes in spacetime like it was nothing, and overall being mysterious and seemingly ethereal. As one of several exploratory research vessel, she also had ties to the discovery of new planets and territories and such for the Halcandran empire to take advantage of, places that supposedly held the potential to become paradises if properly developed.
This combination of things, and the fact that such beliefs were not corrected for a very long time, led to Lor essentially becoming mythologized into an arcane, divine vessel with a heart and soul of its own that either served as the ferry to Paradise or could lead people there. And as many myths tend to do, things spun out from there, with some also deciding she must be able to don dark and royal colors and rain down divine punishment on the wicked, others saying she is the physical form taken by an angel or spirit of sorts, and a handful believing she is not merely the way to Paradise but actually holds it within. Many believed some combination of these ideas, even if they didn’t actually witness any of the things that inspired them. While at first in a sense they were drawing all the wrong conclusions, in a twist of fate spending a lot of time(as in almost 30,000 years) underground above the heart of Halcandra’s natural magic and below what may have been the most concentrated collection of soul magic ever… Well, it did have some impacts on her magic after a while that perhaps give some of those concepts more merit than they once had.
Of course that doesn’t change the fact that she is not actually some heavenly being of Paradise with godly powers beyond mortal comprehension. She’s a magical spaceship that was stuck in a rock for the vast majority of her existence and nearly forgotten about, who got taken for some teen’s takeover plan fated to go very wrong, crashed and broke, got fixed, crashed again twice being attacked by dragons under different circumstances, and woke up right as shit was hitting the fan. After all that confusion and the joy of saving herself and a bunch of strangers from the void like 3 minutes after awaking from what was possibly the record longest boat coma, she had to come to terms with everyone she ever knew being long dead and gone, the only place she really knew being entirely different and unsafe to return to, and the fact that she didn’t have anyone to go through this with. That was until some fuckin teenage catboy Minecraft spawned in the living room on the brink of death, apparently knew her for whatever reason, and was probably her best bet of finding out what the hap had fuckened while she was away. The medical part of that got figured out but afterwards the two took a while to get everything straight.
See, Magolor thought she just wasn’t talking to him the whole time on purpose; he had no idea her AI wasn’t activated so the person aspect of her literally wasn’t present. Lor in turn had absolutely no context for what she’d been involved in and was super confused how this Small Child(aka short teenager) knew anything about her because last time she was awake was thousands of years ago. The reveal that he’d pretty much taken her unconscious body for a joyride was… Interesting, for the both of them, as was the period of sorting out other miscellaneous but important things. For example, how to interact with someone who is also a something that you hyperfixated on for a long time without seeming weird, or how to gently explain to someone that at least a third of what they thought they knew about you wasn’t true. There were also more introspective things that needed to be thought out, like their respective flavors of coming to terms with everything you ever knew having been taken away and changed. In the same vein, Magolor had to find out how to cope with no longer having his family to live with, while Lor was left figuring out what she was going to do with no purpose to serve or duties to perform for someone else.
Of course they thankfully kinda solved each others’ “fuck what now” problems because the egg came to understand the hype behind found family while the boat decided to spend her new life looking after her new son. The two must’ve had that kind of connection to one another for a reason, right? Magolor really needed someone else with an ounce of responsibility to help him stay on the right path, and also make sure he doesn’t have an accident related to adhd and homemade bombs. Lor needed someone she could look after to have that sense of purpose for her existence again, and to a degree she also wanted someone to be there who could help her adjust to an era entirely foreign to her. Some might say she’s become a guardian angel for him, but she personally prefers the title of adoptive mom. Both because it’s more accurate to their relationship and because she wants him to experience consequences and learn from them rather than simply shielding him from everything the world tosses his way. Oh and because they are prone to mutual fucking around and finding out, impulsive decisions, and getting on Meta Knight’s nerves.
Speaking of which, he was probably even more surprised by Lor than Magolor, if only because he had mostly read things depicting her as mysterious, unbelievably powerful, and willing to do what needed to be done to bring reckoning to evildoers. In other words his expectations were decidedly not for her to turn out to be this curious and somewhat lighthearted computer lady who will happily harbor a traitor and spend time becoming well-versed in modern internet culture. Already not the most respectable combination of traits, in his eyes, and that was before their clashing views of authority became obvious. They got on better terms after Lor found out what exactly went down that led to the circumstances of her waking up, but saying they see totally eye to eye now would be wrong for more reasons than just their height difference and the fact that ships don’t have eyes. Also he’s mad that he doesn’t have the fastest and most advanced airship in Dreamland anymore but he just doesn’t say it. He doesn’t say a lot of things he feels towards her and Magolor, really. It’s for the better.
Anyways the moral of the story is that how history is written doesn’t always reflect the truth! For example someone capable of rending spacetime with ease is not necessarily a godlike entity. They might even like giving people head pats. Or making their voice sound like Moonbase Alpha or Hatsune Miku. Or gaming
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.
Magolor should stick googly eyes on Lor’s starboard
Lor thinks he should stick googly eyes on her emblem but he keeps putting them on her dome instead, which gives her 2 little teeny blind spots. This is mildly annoying even if it is more accurate to where she would hypothetically have eyes if Starcutters were creatures rather than constructs. As revenge she adds a dot to the end of every sign with a number on it so that the numbering isn’t consistent, leading to rooms labeled like 1 2. 3 4 5 which causes him an equal amount of minor frustration. Family fun time(threat)
Magolor would brag about his genius and brilliance and all that in the Star Allies group chat while having his head stuck in a jar and then get absolutely epic owned by Lor posting CCTV footage of him bragging in the chat with a jar on his head captioned “>Stage 1: denial” and then neither of them would explain how he got his head stuck in a jar(it was a cookie jar and he dropped it on himself while trying to dump remaining crumbs into his mouth like a little gremlin)
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