"…You Are All About To Perish, Do As You Wish! (I’m So Sorry…)“ Is One Of My Favorite

     "…You are all about to perish, do as you wish! (I’m so sorry…)“ is one of my favorite moments of Revenge of MK’s dialogue, it’s so damn rich. Cause Meta is obviously beyond stressed and furious with everything that’s happened and he just wants his closest crew to leave so he can deal with the shame alone by battling Kirby as his dreams literally nosedive into the sea. But his crew aren’t thinking of this as Meta Knight’s personal failure, to them it was a group effort they all failed at and should have a last hurrah together, which is incredibly sweet. The problem is just that things are hectic and Meta Knight is emotionally constipated AF, so his response just comes out as an IDFC, which he INSTANTLY regrets. Even with that horrible response his crew decide to go fight Kirby one last time out of nothing but pure respect for their leader. It’s only once they fail for the 3rd time they realize that he was right the first time and they leave him be.      It’s especially interesting contrasted with Revenge of the King and how Dedede treats his right hand man, Bandana Dee. By the time he asks Bandee to go fight he’s also just as stressed and cornered by failure as Meta Knight was, but here he openly shows his compassionate side. He doesn’t snap at Bandee for being scared to go out, he understands and spares him because he wants to take responsibility for Kirby. This is actually exactly what Meta Knight was trying to do, but the canyon of difference between how he and Dedede expressed these wishes is obvious. And because of this compassion poor Bandee is inspired to go fight Kirby, even if he was no where near as skilled and determined as the Meta-Knights were. They were immediately willing to put their lives on the line before Meta even said anything, but Dedede’s words and actions being able to invigorate a scared little dee into doing his best is really amazing.      I think this parallel shows a really wonderful dichotomy between the way these two approach leadership. Meta Knight is more calculated and organized - having led the building of a ship, assembly of an effective army, and staging of a coup - but he lacks good emotional communication skills. But even with that flaw his followers have a deep respect for him due to his skills and intellect, and I like to imagine they’ve become aware that deep down he does really care. Dedede is far less technically skilled in leadership - his army is untrained, he’s always on the defensive, and he’s shown panicking a lot when things don’t go right - but he is very charismatic and a lot more open than Meta. I think canonically its said that he got his army of waddle dees by feeding them which can be read as bribery, or you could read it as him being good at taking care of them and their needs. He’s depicted as lazy but that seems to just be the culture of the land, which means that Meta Knight was coming in and trying to rule people that he simply didn’t understand the lifestyle of because he couldn’t relate. But he clearly outclasses the King as someone capable of protecting the land through strength and action, its only Kirby’s meddling that ruins his takeover. They’ve both had their moments of poor judgement and selfishness, but I don’t think it’s meant to be that one of them is a good leader and the other isn’t, just that they had strengths and weaknesses they needed to work on. This is clear with Dedede who is now the same laid-back king he always was, but has stepped up to taking his role more seriously. And with Meta Knight you can infer from his friendlier nature he has learned to be less controlling and more respectful of Dreamland (though I really wish we saw him interact with his crew more :[ …).       Meta Knight and Dedede are such cool fleshed out characters for a series that could’ve been fine repeating the same “Meta is invading!”/“Dedede is stealing!” plot for every platforming adventure. And as the two biggest antihero-to-companion characters of the series I think it’s really fun they’ve built them up to be interesting foils of each other, all coalescing in the Sworn Partners plot in KF2 which is built on all these deliberate moments of parallel. God these characters are so good!