#isn’t Rouxls still in my sideblog description even? I should change those sometime if I can find better out of context discord messages

[alangdorf]

Hi :) I finally made my Magolor conspiracy theory board! I know the text is small so I’m gonna write out a transcription plus all the stuff I couldn’t fit without making everything completely illegible. Be warned, this is gonna get long.

By the way, please don’t take this overly seriously; I’m just shaking thoughts out of my head. I used to be all “yeah Magolor is exactly the type of character I would like but I’m just not that crazy about him.” But then the Epilogue came along and we had a blackout where I barely had internet access for a couple days and these two things combined flipped a switch in my brain and I thought about/talked about nothing but Magolor for literally a week straight. And so here we are!

First off, a note about the Another Dimenion creatures (Doomers, Darpas, Deppas, Dippas, and Dupas). In Japanese, Sphere Doomers are called Sphere Lowpers – Lowper being the romaji spelling used in the files, although in Japanese it’s pronounced Rōpā (ろーぱー), and most likely originating from the English words “interloper” and/or “robber”. B and p are closely related in Japanese writing, both being a slight alteration of the consonant h (via diacritic marks called tenten [two little lines] and maru [a circle]), so は is ha, ば is ba, and ぱ is pa.

The other creatures are variations on Rōpā with different vowels in the first syllable (they’re actually called morae [singular: mora] instead of syllables though): Rāpā, Rēpā, Rīpā, and Rūpā. These are changed in English to match the fact that Doomer starts with D: Darpas, Dippas, and Dupas, according to the Magolor Epilogue song titled “VS Darpa-Dippa-Dupas”, and then Deppa for Rēpā as a logical extrapolation of that.

(Side note: since this game came out before Kirby localization teams were given a lot of guidance, the names in other languages for Doomers are alllllll over the place in terms of meaning. Sphere Chimera, Sphere Spook, Spectre Sphere, and my favorite is the Italian, “Fenix Sferix”, meaning Phoenix Sphere. For their translation of “VS Darpa-Dippa-Dupas” they went with the same play on the vowels, so it’s “VS Fanix-Finix-Funix”. But then?? What are their Deppas called???? Probably Fonix but it’s still funny lol)

Now is probably a good time to talk about Magolor’s name; get all the translation fun facts out of the way. In Japanese, his name is Mahoroa (まほろあ). “Mahō” is the word “magic” in Japanese, so the English version starting with “Mago”, derived from “magic”, is a good close translation. “Lor” and “roa” are both their respective language’s name for the Lor Starcutter, and are roughly equivalent in Japanese pronunciation. The devs have said in a Miiverse post that Magolor’s name was also partially derived from the Japanese word “Mahoroba” (まほろば), which is the name for the concept of a “far-off land full of bliss and peace” (per the Wikipedia page for Mahoroba), which could certainly be translated as “paradise” (note on that in a second). With ba and pa being almost the same letter, it makes me wonder if Mahoroba and Rōpā (まほろば and ろーぱー) are meant to be so similar as a cheeky wordplay thing. Mostly because I think it would be really funny if that was the case.

The aforementioned note which is about the meaning of “Magolor” in the language the Jamba speak: there is a pause screen in Star Allies that lists a bunch of translations for words in their language, most notable here being “Mafo = lie” and “Lor = paradise”. “Mafo” having a different third letter than “Mago” is hardly an issue; fo and ho are written the same in Japanese unless you’re being really pedantic about loanword spelling (ホ vs フォ), “Maho” being equivalent to “Mago” is already established, and Star Allies had a notoriously messy localization anyways, so I would hardly be surprised if they just forgot to change it to “Mago”.

Also, given the fact that Return to Dreamland Deluxe added a line for 100%ing the game that clarifies that Mags was lying about being from Halcandra but studied Ancient culture there for years and that this whole post posits the theory that he was originally some sort of Another Dimension creature like the Doomers and co. (Side note: in the context of whatever possible relationship the Doomers and Ancients used to have [Rampaging Doomers are implied by Sphere Doomers EX pause screen lore to be ancient Doomers and have the gear aesthetic and that could mean any number of things], and the limited individuality of the Doomers/Darpa-Deppa-Dippa-Dupas and their subservience to Grand Doomer, I see this less as cultural appropriation and more like uhhhh trans coding, kinda. Please don’t come at me about this; I often joke that Kit, my nickname, is short for Catboy Discourse but I don’t actually want to fight on the internet about this catboy), the fact that this pause screen is for a version of Unhooded Hyness from the SAME UPDATE that added Magolor to the game is so hysterical. Maggie rocks up to a fight with someone he’s never heard of (Hyness claims in his rant that the Ancients erased his sect from their history after the schism), they reveal themself to be an actual Ancient, and the game itself calls him a liar???!? Like dude you had at least one other outfit you could’ve worn today lol

Anyways, I have some loose appearance similarities to point out between Magolor and the Doomers and co. His ears are shaped, striped (his hood is at least, though I know it’s more similar to Hyness’ ears), positioned, and even move similarly to the top two projectiles on a Deppa. The ears do have more jiggle physics now, unlike the Deppa projectiles, but they’re often portrayed as horns instead of ears in his boss forms (and concept art but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything for current Mags) anyways. Also, Dupas’ feet are a little strange. With the way that they move back and forth unrelated to how the Dupa actually moves and the way that they can stand upside down, it definitely could be that those appendages are disconnected similar to Magolor’s hands and the Dupas actually move by floating around. Admittedly they’re not the same color yellow and this one is a vague connection at best, though the Dupas are also slightly egg-shaped like Magolor. Oh, and in Magolor Epilogue his projectiles and the Rampaging Doomers’ projectiles look almost exactly the same to me. I could also point out the fact that Magolor’s 2nd phase/Soul form has a large mouth like the Doomers, Deppas, and Dupas, though it doesn’t look very similar. Girl what is that thing. Why do you look like W.D. Gaster.

A slightly stronger connection is the eyes. Flat yellow eyes (upright ovals with variations for expression in this case) aren’t that uncommon on Kirby creatures, but a lot of notable examples, such as Hyness, the other Jambas, and Wester, have their eyes on a black background, likely to symbolize shadowed, glowing eyes. In Hyness’ case at the very least, this is proven by his unhooded appearance. Magolor, on the other hand, has his on a brown background, which, as indicated by his visible ear in the Epilogue, is just his skin color. (Meta Knight is similar in this regard, but he has his own whole thing going on species-wise, and his eyes were white when not shadowed until like Brawl anyways which just supports my point.) It being a solid color, and comparatively a dull one at that, is dissimilar to the Doomers, though it makes sense with his design to not make it too busy. Also a couple of the Doomer types have different eye colors, but that’s also clearly for the purposes of making a good palette.

My favorite evidence, however, that links Magolor to the Doomers is his first phase boss theme, Welcome Your New Overlord (née Under My Control). I think it’s so similar to Another Dimension (the song that plays in the rift segments before each Doomer fight) and VS Sphere Doomer (context self-explanatory) that they were intentionally written in the same style. (Grand Doomer is also somewhat similar, but to a lesser extent in my opinion.) All these songs have synth chords through most (less in Grand Doomer) of them that, well. I didn’t take enough music theory to be able to identify chords more complex than triads, but I would describe them as “dissonant” or “jazzy”, and they step around to different keys relatively frequently (Oops, just realized I wrote “chord structure” instead of “chord progression” on the board, oh well. It’s probably non-functional harmony anyway but either way, I just meant this). They also have very similar rhythms, playing the same chords multiple times in a row, often falling on offbeats (again, Grand Doomer is the outlier here). Pre-final boss themes in Kirby are often written to be complex and disorienting, but the way that these songs are similar is specific enough that I think it’s reasonable to assume it was on purpose. Also can I just say how much I love Welcome Your New Overlord? Amazing song.

Overall, the trick to all Kirby lore is trying to judge whether things are done by the developers for the purposes of gameplay and game experience or for the purposes of canon lore, and I’m not gonna make a judgement call on this one, but I really like it as a headcanon at the very least. A couple more related headcanons about Magolor for reading this far: Not sure whether I think that Mags named the Lor after himself or himself after the Lor, but I think for the “Mago” part, he either named himself after the Ancient word for “lie” on purpose as an inside joke for only himself (not knowing the Jamba were still around to call him on it) or he named himself after the Ancient word for “magic” and it just so happens to be either a homonym or synonym for the word “lie”, possibly because of negative opinions toward the Jamba. Possibly both options, even. Also I think the reason he talks Like That, at least in English (in Japanese he just uses katakana instead of hiragana a lot, which, katakana is usually used for foreign words so it gives a “foreigner” feeling), is because he’s a very studious and book-smart foreign language learner, but unfortunately the first native speaker of Kirby’s language he met was Marx (there’s a well established fan theory that he has met Marx before based on his dialogue that he knows someone who knows Kirby) and he internalized entirely too many of his speech patterns. On purpose. Mini speech headcanons: At Merry Magoland he either addresses to the patrons as “parkgoers”, “paying customers” (he doesn’t charge admission but he got used to saying it at the Shoppe and thought it would be funny to continue saying it in an inappropriate situation; it does make some people freak out thinking they were supposed to buy a ticket), or “gamers”. Also during the beginning of Return to Dream Land he laid the flattery on a bit thick with calling the main group “kind strangers” and “my saviors” and he still calls them that sometimes after they’re friends for real just to be annoying.

Thank you for reading!