I am unhappy with the official linking of the lore/universes of Kingdom and Witch's Castle. I feel like that causes a massive disruption to the entire canon that I am not sure is reconcilable.

I am unhappy with the overall abandonment of Cookie Run's original premise. I have been playing since the early days of Ovenbreak, almost 10 years ago now. This franchise used to thrive on Lovecraftian undertones. No, the gods do not love you; quite the opposite. You, your friends and family, your entire race and civilization's existence is a mistake and an affront. Your lives have no intrinsic meaning or value. At best, you are science experiments; at worst, you are food. The "good" gods simply ignore you, your prayers, your problems, for that is how little you matter to them; the honest ones actively root for and seeing your destruction. Regardless, their presence are a net negative and the cookies are better of without them.* THAT was what the witches were, once upon a time: borderline eldritch deities that found equal parts frustration and amusement in their foolish little rat utopia, if they ever bothered to acknowledge it at all. That is infinitely more interesting and impactful than what they've ultimately decided to do instead, which is reduce the witches to a bunch of quirky, conventionally attractive magicians who are mostly kind, just misunderstood and put in a bad spot

I am resentful of the apparent absolution/abdication of the witches' responsibility for what happened to the Beasts. No longer were they apparently self-absorbed, neglectful creators who made the Virtues to essentially be wish-granting machines devoid of individual worth or personhood, abandoned them to fates they did not ask for nor take upon themselves on their own will, and only returned when their little robots went rogue and summarily punished them without any reflection on the situation nor regret for their hand in it, however indirect (or, that's likely what those 4 Beasts think is the last point. The truth is even worse: they cared so little about them in comparison to their own goals, that they didn't even notice when the Virtues corrupted, nor did they return to fix anything. The one remaining Virtue was forced to sacrifice himself to a fate worse than death to stop his comrades). No, they were all lovely and never meant harm ever, they only disappeared because another witch betrayed them and turned them into cookies. That's it, that's the only reason they were gone. Poor, unfortunate ladies in poor, unfortunate circumstance. It completely undermines the reality of the Beasts' suffering, as it is now simply a result of an unforeseen tragedy as opposed to selfish but willful choices made by uncaring people.

This lore also completely undermines Dark Enchantress's entire philosophy and raison d'etre. She is doing what she is doing because she is convinced the witches are evil beings to whom the cookies are enslaved. What made her a compelling villain before all this was that she was right about that. She is horrible, she is selfish, she is endlessly cruel in her ambitions, but she is right. She was not operating on a lie, she saw the Lovecraftian truth of the world with her own eyes. She is crazy but they ARE out to get her, to get ALL of them. But now that is no longer true; now she, too, is simply the victim of a wrong place and time and nothing else. Bad witches are outliers and not supposed to be like that, good witches like the Firsts are the norm. So what's the reason behind anything Dark Enchantress does now? Now she IS operating on a lie, or at least a willful obfuscation of the whole truth. Now she IS just a crazy evil lady. Why would you take that fascinating edge away from her like this? From the whole, entire story?

To touch on the Beasts again, and I must preface this by saying everyone is entitled to imagine things however they want to and I'm not demanding everyone and everything bend to my will and interpret texts and relationships only as I personally dictate: I am disappointed in the fandom's seemingly immediate need to reduce First Milk to a stereotypical doting mother, and shove her and Shadow Milk into stereotypical mother/son roles. That is not his mother. That is his god. That is the omnipotent entity that granted him life and power, and can take it all away in the blink of an eye and make it as if he never existed in the first place. That aside, as far as Shadow Milk is concerned and aware, that woman is responsible for the destruction of his entire life, for cursing him with his life and old responsibilties in the first place, and for his eternal imprisonment. He would vehemently refuse to ever see or speak to her again at best. And he most certainly would not be content to allow Pure Vanilla to seek a MIL-esque relationship with her. That would be perceived as a betrayal for the ages and any recovery from or forgiveness for it would require a miracle. Again, I'm not begrudging anyone's right to depict them this way, I am only stating that I personally find it painfully saccharine and cliché, and reductive of the characters and their issues.

All of this - and I'm truly sorry for putting in this way, but I'm not sure how else to - only shows me that neither Devsis nor the fandom at large have the gumption to allow the witches to be genuinely evil people, or at the very least morally questionable. There's either a lack of imagination to explore the concept as it once was given to us*, or a lack of courage. I understand that this is ultimately a game for kids, but I don't feel like that means every sharp edge and rough surface needs to be sanded down this way. Let the witches be awful. Let the main villain hardly be any better, but still have a shockingly valid point about them. This story hit so much harder when that was its foundation. Now I barely know what it is.

Can we stop with the groupslop please. Please. There are a million groups of dragons, there's Timekeeper and the TBD, there are all the witches, there are the bug Beast concepts, there's that weird cluster of winged bitches or who or whatever the hell they're supposed to be. I'm so tired. We don't need all these characters. What is even happening anymore? This is hell, make it stop

those crk fans: yes pure vanilla wants to understand shadow milk and says verbatim "the more you understand the more there is to love", constantly sympathizes with him and gives him second chances, actively worries about both his physical and mental wellbeing and wants to provide an environment where he wont be lonely anymore, says that they are metaphorically inseparable, and wants to protect him (for some fucking reason), but he would NEVER EVER EVER love shadow milk even a little bit

Hear me out-

This is what Shadow Milk would look like reformed (as much as he can be, anyway). I'm a sucker for design changes when major character development is on the horizon. Although this scrapped concept was for Sage, the blending of jester/master of knowledge motifs feels like a whole other evolution. Finalized identity. "I'm a trickster, I'm a scriptwriter, I love discovering things both false and true, I need an audience to feel okay, I'll probably make more hilariously horrendous mistakes, there's no one I'd rather be... than me."