hihi.. im a big fan of your works and your characterization of smc and i was just wondering if you would ever breakdown your view of his character like an analysis! its a weird request but ive always been wanting to hear your general understanding of him not as a character but as a person
greetings! I was initially gonna ignore this as it didn't fall under my usual requests, however, thank you for your compliments! I love shadow milk cookie a lot and the way he is written by devsisters, albeit I have grown a bit reluctant to write him after episode 8 as I feel I might be mischaracterizing him.
to me, shadow milk cookie's actions are mostly derived from his desire to be understood.
however, I do not believe he is only motivated by the desire to be understood; his actions are also derived from his desire to gain control.
He seeks validation not out of insecurity, but as a means to absolve himself of responsibility. If someone can justify his actions, then his isolation is not his fault—it is the world's failure to understand him. His cruelty is both a test and a performance; by provoking hatred or fear, he ensures that others respond in a way that reinforces his worldview (treating others horribly so he can be treated terribly back) Whether they despise him or cower before him, he bends them to his will, using their reactions as both proof of his power and fuel for his own twisted sadistic amusement. for him, there is no respect that comes with being understood.
And this is where I'd like to bring up the relationship betwene him and truthless recluse, or so, corrupted pure vanilla for it plays a lot of part in his character.
The reason why Shadow Milk Cookie did not kill him as what most of the beast cookies did to the ancients is also from his desire to be understood.
Shadow Milk Cookie is not content with mere ruin and his appetite demands something far more exquisite. To unseat the Truthless Recluse from grace was an indulgence, a meticulous orchestration of despair, yet even as his victim lay in the wreckage of his own unspooled faith, it was not enough. Dissatisfaction lingers, a quiet yet insistent dissonance. And so, he prods, he teases, he dismantles, pressing against every last remnant of defiance with a sadist’s precision, savoring the gradual erosion of resistance. Only when the Recluse surrenders—not merely in body, but in the marrow of his being—does Shadow Milk Cookie begin to entertain the notion of “us.” It is not affection but possession, not camaraderie but consumption. The moment of true capitulation comes when the Recluse accepts the obliteration of choice, when he understands that he has no destiny, that his life is not his own, that he is owned. And though Shadow Milk Cookie treasures him, it is not in the way one cherishes a person. No, the Recluse is an artifact, a masterpiece of ruin, an object molded by his hands—beautiful in its defilement, valuable only in its submission.
And this is also why Shadow Milk Cookie cannot abide the thought of being deceived—not by the Truthless Recluse, not by the very thing he has sculpted from ruin. That the Recluse might hold some secret, some flicker of will not yet extinguished, is an insult to the meticulous artistry of his destruction. After all, he was made to be remade, stripped of destiny and rewritten as something less. To Shadow Milk Cookie, he is not a counterpart, not even a disciple, but a possession, a thing molded to fit within the perfect architecture of his dominion. Understanding is a need that gnaws at him, but not in the way of ordinary souls who seek connection. No, Shadow Milk Cookie’s hunger for understanding is a hunger for control. He does not crave an equal, does not desire recognition from something separate from himself. He wants a mirror, a reflection that does not distort, a mind that does not exist beyond the confines of his own design. Until Pure Vanilla has been stripped of even the capacity to deceive, he will never be seen as anything more than an echo, a lesser fragment of the whole.
That was his weakness. That was the fracture beneath all his grandeur, the flaw that made him incapable of taking Pure Vanilla’s hand when it was offered. He could weave illusions as intricate as constellations, construct labyrinths of deception so vast that even their maker might forget the exit—but truth was something he could not stomach. To accept Pure Vanilla back would mean acknowledging that he, too, was flawed. That he was not some immutable force, not a being beyond imperfection, but fallible, weak, capable of error. And that was unthinkable. He clung to the notion that he was something greater, something sculpted by the witches as a divine instrument, a creation set apart from the common masses of Cookies who stumbled through existence in their fragile ignorance. To admit weakness would be to shatter that distinction, to strip away the layers of self-fashioned divinity and reveal the raw, trembling reality beneath: that he was no different from those he manipulated, that he was just as bound by the cruel absurdity of fate as the rest of them. And so he rejected truth. He rejected Pure Vanilla. Because to accept either would mean confronting what he truly was—and that, more than anything, was a reality he refused to face.
Regarding his past, I do believe I have written my understanding of it already in the request in which the reader was a previous yandere; Shadow Milk Cookie’s fall was not a moment, but a slow unraveling, a quiet, insidious corruption born from the realization that truth was irrelevant. He had once spoken to enlighten, to illuminate, to guide, but he came to understand that it did not matter what he said—people would listen regardless. They did not crave truth; they craved *him*, his voice, his presence, the way his words could shape the world into something easier to swallow. They did not seek understanding but comfort, clinging to his wisdom not as an answer but as an escape. And so, piece by piece, he lost belief in his own purpose. He had long struggled with being misunderstood, not as a person but as a symbol, an idol for the desperate to worship without truly seeing him. But instead of seeking to reclaim himself, he turned outward, lashing against the world that had failed him. If no one cared for truth, then he would make truth meaningless. If his words were only ever a salve for the weak, then he would twist them into weapons. It was a self-destruction turned outward, a choice to rot not in solitude but in dominion, to bring ruin as proof of his own suffering. This is what set him and Pure Vanilla apart. They both knew what it was to be unseen, to have their existence reshaped by the expectations of others. But where Pure Vanilla chose to heal, to extend kindness even in the face of his own pain, Shadow Milk Cookie chose cruelty. And though his descent is understandable, even tragic, he is no gentle victim of fate. He is vicious, theatrical in his sadism, delighting in the slow, deliberate unraveling of others—because if he must suffer, then so must they.
