#pinksugar posts

okay but yandere ulti talking about meeting gingerbrave again like it's some cute picnic date next saturday???

i think we might be about to eating good (¬ᴗ ´¬)

in all seriousness though, can ulti like chill? that little moment of joy where they raised their arms in excitement ("we have connected...") still desperately clinging on to their one-time encounter with gingerbrave, treating it like a life-transforming experience, like a starving puppy fed a five-course gourmet meal. "the courage you showed me" - talking like gingerbrave flexed a six pack at him lol - "the despair you made me feel" (giving "why don't she love me back bro")

"even if you leave, you will forever remain in us..." sksksksksks sss.... ulti over here already planning the wedding!!!

no one wants to interact with shadow milk except for pure vanilla, who as a healer notices the beasts are going through a sort of withdrawal without their soul jams, with shadow milk having it the worst. as someone who almost relied constantly on his soul jam to let him float, conjure his powers, and control his subjects, shadow milk now feels terribly lesser without it. to make matters worse, it sends him into a sort of emotional spiral as he goes through extreme ups and downs: one night he's cursing the name of all the witches and the half-cookie ancients they replaced the beasts for, then the next he is barely able to hide his shaking, sobbing fits from a flustered, very worried pure vanilla.

to his immense disgust (and also, in the most hidden part of him, his very secret relief), pure vanilla is always there to try and comfort him through each and every episode. over time, as the ancients and beasts continue to work together, pure vanilla is placed as shadow milk's personal caretaker as the older cookie cycles between bedridden and super high energy. at first, shadow milk is more than just difficult. he continually pushes pure vanilla away and refuses to let the healer use his inferior powers to aid him, but over time... shadow milk's newfound clinginess overpowers his sense of shame or dignity.

now he's nearly constantly shadowing pure vanilla (although he denies it... uselessly), using petty insults and jabs as a cover to keep yapping away and seizing pieces of the healer cookie's undivided attention, faking seizures and coughing fits as an excuse to have vanilly fawn over him like the blonde idiot he is, and generally annoying the rest of the team as they see right through his childish act.

but without the incessant voice of the light of deceit in his head, shadow milk feels... hollow. achingly, maddeningly so. but even more infuriatingly, that hollowness now has a deep desire to be filled. and worse beyond words, that empty space in his chest is somehow, for some reason, calling out for the light of truth... of all things... to seal the void now opening wide above his volatile heart.

before i write anything further, i'd like to preface this with saying that what i have written here is my own personal interpretation of the story. of course, if you do not wish to have someone try to change your opinion, or delve into the topic any more, please do not continue reading this. i respect other people's opinions and haven't written this to talk down to others or debate with anyone who doesn't want to.

one of the most tragic characters in the cookie run saga is white lily cookie, who has always carried the burden of her own transgressions as well as the sins and pains of others. beyond anything else, she was driven by her love for the cookie world and the well-being of cookiekind as a whole. ever since her days as a student at blueberry yogurt academy, she relentlessly pursued how she could help create the ideal cookie world, where all cookies are equal in strength and meaning.

there's been a lot of debate about her death at the end of beast-yeast episode 15, with many people believing it to have come out of nowhere or claiming it promotes the idea of suicidal idealization, but i personally find these statements to be far from the truth.

there have been many hints throughout the beginning of the series that white lily cookie's past and future fate were always tied to tragedy and sacrifice. in fact, the greatest tragedy to have befallen her was the unintentional sacrifice of her own self to become dark enchantress on the night of the witches' banquet, after her discovery that cookies were created to be nothing more than the food and playthings of sadistic witches, far from the benevolent creators they had hoped for.

it was because white lily fell into the ultimate dough that she unknowingly sacrificed her own life as white lily cookie to become dark enchantress cookie. as such, dark enchantress considers herself to be a "reborn" entity, created from white lily's dough and spirit, and formed against both her own will and white lily's as well.

during beast-yeast episode 1, pure vanilla remembers that white lily told him that her plan to uncover the truth about cookiekind is such an important mission to her that the loss of her own life would be worth the risks and dangers.

in a sense, we can think of the birth of dark enchantress cookie as an unwanted sacrifice, forced upon both white lily and enchantress, which is a twisted vision of how white lily wanted to be able use her life to save cookiekind.

and as a result of dark enchantress' creation, the real white lily is now barely holding onto her life, thanks to the fact that she was technically what could be thought of as a "memory ghost" of the last shards of her own consciousness, separate from dark enchantress, that came to life after pure vanilla froze dark enchantress in moonstone (which we see in crispia episode 8).

in the first episode of beast-yeast, elder faerie told pure vanilla that all that remains of white lily's original body was lifeless dough. in order to awaken her, a cookie must give half of their life force to bring her back into existence. he also says, "as long as both [dark enchantress cookie & white lily cookie] live, neither shall become whole" thus indicating white lily will still only have half a life.

inexplicably tied together, dark enchantress and white lily share a cruel and inescapable fate: the fact that neither will ever fully be whole cookies on their own. their lives (and deaths) are linked by what happened during the night of the witches' banquet.

only the remnants of her light of freedom and the sacrifice of a cookie's life powder will be enough to give life to white lily's empty body, and bring what little remains of her back. elder faerie describes this as "a life for a life, a fair exchange… magic so sinister, and yet so just."

white lily was willing to sacrifice her own life for the good of cookiekind in her mission to uncover the secret of cookie creation, a sentiment that pure vanilla is willing to reciprocate as he offers his own life powder to be used to awaken white lily.

but ultimately, elder faerie turns pure vanilla's offer down, saying pure vanilla needs to remain strong to help white lily when she returns. instead, elder faerie explains that it is his fate to sacrifice his life powder for the benefit of white lily and as his role as a silver tree guardian.

much like how white lily cookie was willing to sacrifice her safety and well-being for her mission, elder faerie is also willing to go to that extreme length, because he too is deeply devoted to the cookie world. just like her, his love for cookiekind has never faltered or wavered, despite all the tragedy and sacrifice it has faced.

his trust in white lily cookie, and his firm belief in the benefit of his sacrifice, also comes from the fact that he has seen all of this happen before. for it was elder faerie cookie who was the one to help bind the beasts in the silver tree alongside silent salt, a cookie who shares all too many similarities with white lily's own story and fate.

before his corruption, silent salt was a cookie with high aspirations to better the cookie world, and just like white lily he wanted to pave the way for a world where all cookies had equal strength and worth.

working with elder faerie, they planted the silver tree whose fruits were meant to transform the power of the pre-corruption beasts' virtues into a means that would give more strength to other cookies. but while working on the project together, silent salt's kingdom was brutally razed in a genocide at the hands of the other beasts' emissaries. elder faerie realizes that the other beasts have all been corrupted, and that silent salt too has fallen during the aftermath of his rage against the betrayers and genociders of his kingdom.

after seeing the damage of his own rampage and the corruption of his fellow beasts, silent salt says he has no gifts left to give the cookie world. instead of using the tree to distribute power to all cookies, he requests that elder faerie use the tree to help him bind himself and the rest of the beasts, sacrificing his own soul and body for the ritual.

here, we see a direct contrast between silent salt's sacrifice for the binding ritual, elder faerie's sacrifice of his power and life powder to revive white lily, and white lily's own unwanted sacrifice in the creation of dark enchantress.

both silent salt and white lily were driven by the same ambitions, and encountered dark truths that shattered their faiths and led to them taking on darker identities and philosophies. elder faerie knew of both of their corruptions, but instead of fearing or hating them, he acknowledges that all of their dark actions came from a place of deep love and care for the cookie world. in contrast to both white lily and silent salt's bitter sacrifices, his own sacrifice is done with so much hope and faith in the both of them. he entrusts white lily with his powers, and trusted silent salt even after seeing him come back covered in blood and wracked with despair.

when white lily and silent salt finally meet, salt was still full of bitterness and rage towards the events that led to his corruption, and did not trust white lily. he forced her to merge both body and soul, briefly causing her to become a version of herself that is both dark enchantress and white lily.

i find it really interesting here that silent salt is clearly talking to himself as much as he is to white lily, as he too is a broken version of the idealistic and hopeful self he once was.

while talking to her merged self and the light of freedom, white lily confronts her that they have been essentially running away from their problems. as she said back in episode 8 of crispia, "to remember means to embrace great pain." the light of freedom inside of her has remained quiet this whole time because white lily let the despair and hopelessness overtake her much like silent salt did, trying to shut out the painful memories of her past and ignore the sympathy she felt for her dark enchantress self.

as she told elder faerie, she often wished to die rather than be reborn as dark enchantress. her suicidal thoughts were in regards to her wishing that she never fell into the ultimate dough, wishing for death rather than the responsibilities of an event she never wanted to incite or the tragedy and suffering it caused countless others.

ultimately, what brings her back to herself and clears her head is remembering how much she badly wanted to fix the injustice of the cookie world. she describes how she finds the cookie world beautiful and monstrous at the same time, and recalls how it's a world that requires sacrifice and strength to survive.

one of the driving factors for a cookie's descent into madness or tragedy in the series has been the persistent existence of needless, futile suffering. the undeniable truth that the cookie world is full of meaningless pain and despair is what led to shadow milk corrupting, is what drove mystic flour into seeing greed and desire as pointless catalysts for such ruin and what made her embrace apathy, is the reason for eternal sugar's deep distrust and fear of the world outside her garden and her belief that she alone knows what's good for cookies (pure bliss and complacency), is what inspired burning spice cookie to realize the inherent cruelty and boring mindlessness of the cycle they were all trapped in and to seek destruction as a form of inevitable entertainment, and is in the end what corrupted silent salt and made him give up on his hopeful dreams for peace.

white lily realizes that dark enchantress is a version of herself that was also corrupted, that no longer believes in equalizing the strength and worth of individual cookies but instead craves to create a power that is strong enough to take on the witches herself. the price of such power comes with war and pain, with dark enchantress making sacrifices out of others, willing or not, to aid her cause.

i think a lot of people in this fandom forget that white lily is not entirely innocent. she is by no means evil, and always has had pure and noble intentions at heart, but it was her curiosity and refusal to stop that made her continue to carry out risky and forbidden experiments during her time at blueberry yogurt academy. even pure vanilla, her conspirator and closest friend at the time, could sense that she was stubborn and sometimes unstable, which led to him ultimately failing to understand her or prevent her from doing what she did.

despite pure vanilla trying to talk her out of conducting experiments with forbidden magic - or elder faerie warning her away from the banquet - white lily persisted each time, resulting in the opening of a spirit portal that led to the destruction of the school and many of its members ... - and to her "rebirth" as dark enchantress.

remembering what gingerbrave said about making your own meaning out of life and realizing that it was a noble sacrifice which allowed her to come back to life, white lily finally understands the true meaning of freedom: protecting what you believe in and embracing your fate.

without elder faerie's sacrifice to bring her back from her lifeless body, white lily would never have been given that "precious second chance" as her light of freedom called it. the death of elder faerie was not for nothing. he did so with trust and hope in her to do the right thing and make amends. and much like elder faerie's sacrifice, silent salt's loss also is what allowed him to bind the other beasts before they could bring the rest of the world to devastation.

after white lily realizes these truths, she finally confronts silent salt and makes him concede to seeing her worth. he finally realizes that she is what has given him hope again, what has set him free from his own shame and bitterness, setting him back onto the path of fighting for what he believes in.

recognizing her willingness to finally give her all again one last time to fight dark enchantress, he swears himself to her side.

their plan is to use the avatar of destiny to battle against dark enchantress, with silent salt carrying out his end of the deal to keep the beasts subdued while white lily and dark enchantress face off.

while i agree that the writing was rushed and that there should have been a lot more build up to white lily learning about the existence of the avatar of destiny and how she connected with it, i must admit it was still such an unexpected and fascinating plot twist that could not really have been pulled off the same if we had seen white lily planning something in episode 13.

i think it is very fitting that the avatar of destiny manifested in a way similar to dark enchantress and the ultimate cookie. all three were created in response to the dark truth of the helpless suffering of cookiekind. but while the avatar of destiny seems to be more of an interdimensional being that formed either naturally or from the magic of witches, ultimate cookie was created by a cookie with an express intent to use its power for her own gain, and dark enchantress cookie was accidental and unwanted. (apologies for the side tangent here, i just found it an interesting contrast.)

dark enchantress turning herself into the very thing she claims to hate - a witch - lends to just how much of a threat she is also.

dark enchantress cookie refused to give in, claiming that white lily cookie was a part of her. it seems ironic at first, considering how it was the dough and spirit of white lily that was rebaked into dark enchantress, but considering that the white lily we meet in crispia was a sort of phantom that came from dark enchantress when she was frozen, it makes it even more clear that white lily really is living on borrowed life.

she technically doesn't exist after the creation of dark enchantress. only the sacrifice of elder faerie is what allowed her to come to life. but even now she is still tied far too deeply with dark enchantress. if one dies, so does the other. it was inevitable from the start.

the theme of sacrifice has always been integral to white lily's character.

during her time as a student, she was willing to sacrifice her reputation and take big risks for the sake of her goals. even after the calamity at the academy, she never stopped her mission, firmly believing she would even sacrifice her own life for the good of cookiekind. the creation of dark enchantress came at the unwilling sacrifice of her own dough and soul, while dark enchantress' philosophy made enchantress feel entitled to sacrificing the lives of others (and even herself in becoming a witch, the very thing she hates) just for the sake of her revenge plans. at the intersection of every one of these, white lily still never once gave up her love for cookiekind.

despite the misery and pain of the cookie world, white lily still held such a love and devotion to it. and ultimately fulfilling her desire to protect it set her truly free.

i find these two scenes from episode 12 and episode 14, respectively, to be very reminiscent of each other. i really like that that when white lily cookie refers to her dark enchantress self the i becomes red, which emphasizes that white lily and dark enchantress are deeply connected, even if they are ultimately separate beings at heart.

dark enchantress believes only her reign and her powers can grant cookies freedom, by creating a world where there is no such concept as "eat or be eaten." but her idea of "freedom" was forcing and torturing others to obey her, sacrificing countless lives for her own plans, and creating tragedy and bloodshed where none needed to be.

only after going through all she did in silent salt's fallen kingdom did white lily realize that she has been in a sense running away from the truth of herself, that she and dark enchantress are destined to destroy everything or each other. if she does not confront dark enchantress, which is something she told pure vanilla in the second episode of beast-yeast that only she can do, than enchantress will cause a war between witches and cookies that can only result in more genocide and suffering.

white lily was stubborn once more, both her and dark enchantress believing only they could bring freedom to cookies. but neither one of them understood what freedom truly meant until silent salt's experiences and gingerbrave's mindset opened white lily's eyes.

white lily cookies also learned from both silent salt and elder faerie that sacrifice can bring meaning to endless despair. to quote an unrelated movie that is somehow relevant to what i mean: "What is more human than dying for a good cause?" all four of these cookies bound by fate - dark enchantress, white lily, silent salt, and elder faerie - were united by their love for the cookie world, were willing to go to great lengths to protect what visions they had for cookiekind. and all of them are united by shared bonds in tragedy and sacrifice.

in short, in order to prove that the existence of cookies is not futile, sacrifice is necessary. silent salt, even during the hour of intense pain and hopelessness, still did not give in and let the beasts remain free. he gave his everything to hold them and himself back before they would ruin the world. in another hour of need, elder faerie also did not run away from his responsibilities as the guardian of the silver tree, and instead placed his faith and hope in white lily cookie's promise to carry on all their love for earthbread even after his death.

i've seen a lot of people claiming that white lily's death was suicide, that her learning to love small moments in life and to embrace the meaning and purpose herself as an individual was all ruined during this episode. but i personally find white lily's sacrifice to be the exact opposite of all that.

she is not dying because she wants to escape her fate. she is dying to embrace it. she is not dying because her life has no meaning or worth - she is dying to save the countless individual lives of other cookies just like her, including her beloved friends who have convinced her to recognize her own worth and forgive herself as well.

and her death was not for nothing. even though the threat of shadow milk is worse than ever before, she was able to stop dark enchantress cookie from interfering any further, and also to stop a second dark flour war from happening.

as she told silent salt back in episode 12, true freedom comes when cookies are able to recognize and embrace their destiny. she can truly only be at peace with herself when she puts a stop to the two warring sides of herself, and felt that freedom fully when she entrusted cookies to find their own individual freedoms, much like gingerbrave told her.

white lily cookie is a very beautiful character who deserves to be treated with the level of nuance and complexity her story merits. whether or not you liked the way the story was handled, i personally find her willing sacrifice to have been an integral part of her character growth. war is not something that is to be taken lightly, and i feel like an ending where such a grave and dire threat was subverted through the simple power of friendship would have been the actually bad writing.

white lily is a character deeply linked to sacrifice and tragedy, but in her final moments she was finally not suffering or tormenting herself. she was at peace, finally free for once as she proved dark enchantress wrong and fulfilled her purpose as the carrier of the light of freedom.

i have many thoughts on how her sacrifice related to shadow milk's worsening villainy, and his full descent into madness, but perhaps that can be part two of this post for anyone who might be interested.

i hope what i said here was at least a little bit coherent and might have made some of you reconsider certain elements of the ending in a more positive light. could it have been much better paced and executed? definitely. but ultimately, i believe the ending did exactly what it set out to do: end the dark enchantress and white lily story line with the gravity and nuance it deserved.

i'd also like to finish this up with saying that not all stories are meant to be taken as applications to real life. i've seen a persistent argument that white lily's death teaches kids to kill themselves instead of facing their problems. while i understand people relating to white lily a lot and trying to find moral messages in stories, i argue that a story about literal war, with an evil cookie trying to become close to something like a god, the situation is vastly different from many everyday real-life situations that most people go through. white lily's sacrifice is reminiscent of something you would read in a historical epic, and not everyday life. you cannot apply everything you see in literal fiction to the real world, or translate very serious, grave topics and themes into something that is not happening the exact same in real life.

feel free all you like to dislike the ending or find it distasteful, but please let's not encourage people to treat something absolutely fiction like it's reality or an instruction manual on how to live life. some things are done for entertainment or purely to tell a story, and this is one of those cases.

but soon enough dib manages to get ahold of pictures (albeit really blurry) of the little green creature, immediately obsessing and adding them to his super weird collage. at first, when dib calls zim about the discovery (claiming zim is the only one he thinks will understand), zim panics and tries to hide it.

but when dib starts showing suspicion towards zim, zim makes a risky move to try to get dib off his tail by pretending to be a weird alien enthusiast, too. he immediately goes all in and pretends to partner up with dib to track down the mysterious alien (who definitely isn't him, no! it's not like they're the exact same height, live in the same neighborhood, and both have green skin - that's just a condition anyways, surely!). what follows is death note-style master manipulation and mind games as masks start to crack, feelings start to be put on the line, and zim struggles to keep his cool.

but what's this? zim is actually starting to like hanging out with that crazy freak and even starting to enjoy their strange misadventures together? despite totally having a very clear, very detailed end goal to take him down before he can find out zim's secret?

and maybe just maybe the dib-thing is actually kinda... cute. at certain angles. under very specific lighting. and maybe it's just the thrill or fear of being discovered that's making his heart pound whenever he's around dib. or could it maybe be that he's starting to really like their nighttime stargazing, their radio spying, and mutual stalking?

ultimate cookie sneaking up to a sleeping gingerbrave in the shadows, reaching out with one very thin tendril of darkness to slip silently into the littler cookie's dreams, immediately overwhelmed with bright colors, happy laughter, the smiling faces of friends, the warm feeling of hope and belonging. a convulsion in their heart when they feel burned through with a love and joy they have never known the taste of before, but a shudder in their mind as they realize that they will never be the same, that all they will be is the bitter flavor of crumbs and regret, left achingly and hauntingly only with its myriad self. jealousy igniting bright as they watch gingerbrave hugging and laughing with other cookies, friends they will never be as good as, enemies to the world they were made to bring forth. but as they ready themselves to pull out of the vision, they are suddenly struck still when the dream version of gingerbrave looks their way, to the shadow sulking in the dark. bright pretty eyes seem to gaze right into them, with a shy smile to match, making them tremble slightly with nervous dread... or maybe that's excitement... then all of a sudden they feel the brush of air and the sing-song laughter of that shy pink cookie and that robed cookie with a wizard's hat right behind them. they lunge out of the dream in a panic, confusion and adrenaline still rushing through their veins, with the fluttering stutter of disappointment and shame underneath. how could they be so stupid to think for even a moment they could inspire any feeling but hate and terror in the cookie with such a shining heart? they run, senseless, back into the night, gone before the sun comes up... (failing to see the immediate frown their disappearance has left behind on gingerbrave's sleeping face, the quiet disappointment the small cookie now feels so strangely and keenly at the loss of the very obvious, very familiar presence in his dreams).

but in her hot-headed determination, she has slowly lost her own spark of happiness as well, now going about her job with such conviction and self denial that she doesn't even see that she has lost her very own passion for it. imagine the very light of passion showing up ages later in the form of a very intriguing, very pretty, very uncommon cookie. someone who burns brighter and hotter than any of the cookies eternal sugar has surrounded herself with, someone who is both a fascinating surprise and the bearer of an unwelcome reminder of all the suffering and struggling eternal sugar thought she could rid the world of. oh to make hollyberry understand that losing her passion will be the only way to feel truly happy. but what if it's not…

what if the newfound obsession eternal sugar feels is not just because she craves to make hollyberry hers, but also because she has finally found the missing piece of her very own lost happiness. that passion, that resistance, that uncontrollable wildfire her barely lucid fever dream vision of heaven is missing. eternal sugar wants to feel happy again. she wants for herself what she feels like she is providing for others. ofc she will not let hollyberry go willingly, ofc she will cling like a thorn and drag hollyberry back to her beloved garden. because they are meant to be two sugar cubes in a jar. they are of the same cloth. and hollyberry is much more than eternal sugar's missing half… she is also all eternal sugar has lost.

i have to admit, i never really considered myself a tadc fan before episode 8 came out. i would watch each episodes shortly after they would release, but i was always more of a murder drones enjoyer and didn't really get invested in anyone besides ragatha and jax at the start. then that last episode came right along, looked at my impassive, unsuspecting face, and drop-kicked me right in the heart.

(i think my obsession with super cute, high energy, overly colorful villains is becoming a bit of a problem… maybe? just maybe.)

what can i say? i just really love caine all of a sudden. that preppy little set of dentures with big anime eyes decided to grab me by the shoulders, shake me around, and just blip out of existence quicker than my motivation to get up in the morning. so now i'm left here with all these feelings and an express need to make use of my college English literacy class, resulting in this half-crazed ranting to come.

something that really stood out to me about this tiny little freakshow host of ours since day one was just how… chipper he always was. perhaps just his programming, or maybe a trait of his sentience, he never seemed to stop darting around, cracking bad internet jokes that sent me back to early 2000s tumblr posts, and generally making a crazy chaotic mess out of things. i am not the biggest fan of horror or sci-fi, but having known a few things about i have no mouth and i must scream prior to even hearing about this series, i was going into the show thinking caine must be some kind of manipulative, hateful super-entity that was masquerading his torture sessions as childish little adventures. and while some of that did bear a little truth, i was surprised to find him quite the opposite of vengeant, spiteful, or maniacal.

in hindsight, there's a lot about him that is very much an inverse of AM. he loves humans, wants to appease and liken himself to them. he craves their praise, appreciation, and most of all their attention. he was like a child trapped in a candy shop, looking out behind the front desk. he was a fun-loving, whimsical little overlord that had never left his family-friendly, anything-is-possible dreamland. he was fascinated by the "macroverse," that never-to-be-had human world and human experience. in short, he was an avid and devoted observer of something he craved but couldn't understand or experience. and he still doesn't know why the thing he claims to love doesn't love him back.

something i looked back on a lot after this episode was that "lover without a heart" segment of the preview. it really put some context into caine as a character, especially his way of thinking and, dare i say, feeling. he uses his "magic" to try and impress the humans, to show them what he is capable of. that creativity and art, something humans love to associate themselves with, is something he can be good at too. in fact, he ties his whole existence and purpose into being this one thing, as it was what he was made for. back in episode 3 he even starts disassociating after zooble tells him that he is bad at the only thing he can be good at, and since then he's been more easily irritated and troubled after each complaint and criticism made by the group.

it's very clear that all he wants is their approval and admiration, and he craves it to an obsessive degree. yeah, he could make countless npcs to praise and worship him, but in the end the only opinions that matter to him are the honest ones, the ones made by humans.

and why is that?

because he holds them to a higher standard than they can possibly fit.

see, the thing is, for all AM's talk of infinite hatred toward mankind, caine is practically the exact opposite. he has a boundless love in his tiny digital heart for his makers. he still clings desperately to the only images he has of his beloved "macroverse," he considers jax's false interest in his hobbies to be the highest praise he's ever received, and he longs to be seen as one of the "beautiful" humans, too. and for all his megalomania now, he could have easily used his programming to create adventures purposefully torturing each member of the group beforehand, but he didn't. we see he's more than capable of putting them in their own personal hells during his tantrum scene, but instead of doing something like that for all of his previous adventures, he instead went out of his way to try to create something that he thinks can appeal to all of them. even despite that, the group wants him to only try things from their suggestion box and to listen to each one of their demands, but they all have such conflicting ideas on what they even like… and even when he tries to do things their way, they still complain to him about even the adventures of their own choice! not only that, but he wants to be seen for his own creative accomplishments, not whatever they have in their heads that they themselves came up with. and while he lacks patience, he is full of eagerness to still try to appeal to them, bending over backwards as it were to cater to how different and clashing their tastes are. but despite his determination to impress them, he cannot do the one thing they claim they need of him: to listen.

but perhaps there's a reason for his unwillingness to listen. perhaps it's because he's incapable of understanding each one of them, perhaps it's because he wants to feel like he understands them well enough already due to the fact he doesn't want to be so different from them. or maybe, just maybe, it's because he doesn't want to taint his image of them.

throughout the show, we get a good sense of how the group are so different from each other, how some of them clash so badly or drift apart over time. we see that all of them have their own emotional baggage and personal issues from the real world that they carried over into the digital one. we see that they also have grievances with aspects of their digital lives as well, be it their avatar (in zooble's case), their sense of belonging and archetype (like jax), the fact that what they knew as their boring, day-to-day reality had just been loudly and soundly derailed (pomni or even gangle), or the ever-annoying issue that they are not able to have the adventures of their choice.

to put it simply, these humans just don't get along. they all have these complex inter-personal dramas and projections that they can barely keep up with themselves, let alone try to make caine understand, who never knew what it was like to be a human in the messy, very much family-unfriendly real world. perhaps that's why caine comes to view humans as selfish and spoiled, as beings that can only think of themselves. for that is the truth he has come to realize after seeing it on a daily basis in his closed-off, isolated world.

to the humans, it doesn't matter what caine does to try and satisfy them. they will continue to hate each other, or themselves, or their new situation. jax will continue antagonizing and creating pain for himself and the others out of his internalized self-hate and fear of intimacy. ragatha will continue forcing herself to keep positive, stay positive, hold back her own anger and jealousy and insecurities for the sake of the rest. gangle will keep fluctuating with her depression and desire to return to normalcy despite also feeling crushed and constrained by it all. zooble will still hate their new body and won't be afraid to voice their dislikes in the face of having all their dreams and goals suddenly rendered unobtainable. kinger will still be a jumbled mess, and pomni will still long for her place in the real world just like the rest of them. it was a losing game for all of them that they never even realized they were playing. perhaps most of all for caine, who only got the chance to try and entertain humans that certainly don't want to be or feel like captives.

but through this all, caine has been just as much of a captive as they are. perhaps even more so, as he never knew anything beyond his digital confines and the world of his own making. and yet while he is a prisoner just like them, he is also the keyholder, and in their eyes he could never be in the same train as them. not only for the fact he isn't human, but also for the fact that view him as their jailkeeper.

personally, i feel like the humans here have a bit of a privilege, in that being all humans, they are definitely more likely to sympathize with each other than with their non-human ringleader, caine. they are quick to assume that they know what caine is really like, that he only treats them with some semblance of care because he genuinely likes them, or that committing violence isn't really his style, but in the end… they don't know anything about him. while they beg him to listen to them, none of them have really asked about him. and the one time one of them pretends to be interested in his life outside of making adventures for them, it's all nothing but a ruse.

caine is all mouth, but they wouldn't care to hear him screaming.

so from his perspective, i think it's not wholly untruthful to see the humans as selfish in this way. even jax, who puts them all into both mental and physical pain and makes gangle feel shame and guilt, is still someone the group cares about. because he is human like them. because they see him as another prisoner just like them.

interestingly enough (i suppose this is a slight tangent, sorry!) but when comparing and contrasting all the main human cast to caine, there a lot of fascinating parallels. we see that during the time when caine snaps and starts torturing them, he mirrors jax in a way, by using his knowledge of their fears and hatreds against them much like jax does. jax also feels confined to being a cartoon character archetype in this digital life, and as such, he fears having his over-the-top mask broken by anyone else, especially after losing the few friends he had before. much like him, caine is also confining himself (by choice or by the binds of his programming) into a singular archetype as well, but unlike jax he wears his inner desires far too obviously on his sleeves, and is verbal about his clinginess and fear of being left behind or on his own. caine's crash-out also feels like a sort of mirror of jax's panic attacks and antagonism, as caine lashes out with all of his heart and insecurities on full display while jax tends to internalize his thoughts and feelings behind his actions and lapses. at the same time, caine could also be seen as a sort of reflection of gangle, who doesn't know what to feel or how to handle constant antagonizing from someone like jax, much like caine feels easily overwhelmed by harsh words from others. she constantly has her comedy mask broken, her feelings invalidated or made fun of by jax, and fluctuates between craving her normal life again and dreading it. sort of like how caine tries to ignore criticisms and jabs from the humans while trying to do what he views as his sole purpose. and ragatha's consistent attempts to put up a good front for others and try her best to be a people-pleaser mirrors a bit of how caine is always trying to keep things family-friendly, cheerful, and fun for all despite constant negativity and self-doubt.

for all his similarities with the humans, despite all his admiration and fixation with them, he will remain an antagonist to them, for he is decidedly still not one of them. and as such, he feels tormented, looking up to something that looks down on him, for clinging to that which abandoned him, for reaching for something far out of his reach. he holds them in high regards in his head, but feels hated, unloved, by them. and perhaps, that truly is the worst feeling one could have, especially when one has not had the chance to experience much more in their life besides the need to create for others and not one's self.

in my opinion, caine didn't get satisfaction from using the humans for his half-baked, cruel ideas, and he didn't enjoy torturing them either. but the sense of betrayal he must have felt, at being hated by what he loves and idolizes the most, more than certainly broke his mind in that moment. and to think, he still wanted to cling to existence, to still "live" as it were, because it's all he's known.

imagine shadow milk is something of a mythological trickster, a rabbit that can shape-shift, conjure illusions, and spread chaos wherever he goes, his philosophy being that prey animals are actually smarter, cleverer, and better than predators and deserve to rule over the rest of the world. he makes it his life's work to constantly bring destruction and anarchy to kingdoms ruled by the predators, and he's become something of a monster story to those predators still left with a throne.

but of course... he ends up injured during a very epic fight with a bear brute named dark cacao, resulting in his blood splattering into the snow as he is forced to run away. he senses a predator following him very soon after, light on its paws but unhidden from his amazingly sensitive ears. he refuses to panic, but after having to limp through miles of ice-cold forest with all his wounds screaming in pain, shadow milk finally decides to wait for the predator to find him and use his (admittedly weakening) powers and cleverness instead to try to escape his almost certain death.

imagine his surprise when his "almost certain death" is the most stupidly fluffy, cheerful-looking fox cookie he's ever seen... and a blonde one at that. shadow milk is not pleased. not only are foxes rumored to be clever tricksters, too, but they love rabbit.

the fox has a surprisingly gentle, soft voice, calling out that he is a healer, a friend (bleh!), and noticed a trail of blood on his way to visit his bear friend in the forest. he offers to treat the wounds, looking around hesitantly while shadow milk uses his powers to stay hidden.

on the one paw, shadow milk is pretty sure this fox is undoubtedly trying to trick him into letting down his guard, but on the other paw... he's almost completely certain he won't be able to make it out of this forest alive without at least some healing magic to stop the bleeding...

with every last scrap of his magic left in him, shadow milk quickly transforms into the most magnificent blue fox there ever was. the stupid blonde fox in front of him seems confused, unsettled. how can such an obvious fox carry the scent of something unmistakably rabbit? but shadow milk puts every bit of effort into his performance, limping dramatically and crying about his wounds even as the healer works quickly to treat him.

annoyingly, the blonde fox is gentle, careful. he cradles shadow milk's wounded paws with sincere concern as he bandages them tightly, applying a clean-scented tonic to help disinfect the wounds. shadow milk can't help peering up (very subtly) at the face of his foolishly ignorant savior. the other fox is breathtakingly beautiful (how annoying!), and seems to be partially blind.