*BREAKS DOWN THE FUCKING DOOR*
SHADOW MILK COOKIE AND SILENT SALT COOKIE ARE NARRATIVE FOILS!!!!!!! THEY ARE MEANT TO BE DIRECT REFLECTIONS OF EACHOTHER, SPECIFICALLY IN HOW THEY VIEW THEIR RESPECTIVE CORRUPTIONS!!!!!!!!!!! AND I WILL PROVE IT TO YOU IN THIS ESSAY!!!!!!!!!!!!
The parallels between them are kinda hard to describe without just listing shit but bear with me- first of all, I think it's really important to note the way we're introduced to both of them, because the contrast is VERY strong. While he wasn't the first Beast to become playable, Shadow Milk was still the first Beast to get properly introduced, while Silent Salt was introduced last. So they're already book ending all of the Beast Yeast shit, but then there's ALSO the fact that Shadow Milk Cookie is introduced when the Beasts are escaping the Silver Tree, while Silent Salt's entire introduction is basically just the story of how they were trapped there in the first place. Shmilk is introduced first by breaking out of jail while Silent is introduced last by putting everyone in jail.
Jumping off of that, you can already tell from how they're introduced that they have VASTLY different oppinions on their time in the Silver Tree, and if that wasn't enough Shadow Milk literally screams about wanting the witches dead for putting him in there later on in I thiiiink episode 2? Quote "MAY THEY BURN IN THE OVEN", this bitch wants those motherfuckers to SUFFER. Honestly, I'd even go as far as to say Shmilk is the angriest out of all the Beasts about their imprisonment, given the fact that he's the only one to express any active rage about it. Shmilk and Silent Salt have complete opposite views on their time in the Silver Tree.
Now, putting a pin in the Silver Tree stuff, let's move on to another massive parallel between them- their corruptions. Like first of all, obviously Salt corrupted last and Shmilk is heavily implied to have corrupted first, so once again they're book ending the Beasts. But even further than that, the way they treat their corruption is VERY different. Silent Salt obviously fucking hates himself for it. He views himself as a failure, renaming himself out of shame and then coming to Elder Faerie in complete shambles and literally asking Elder to kill him. Then, he locks himself and the other Beasts in the Silver Tree, hoping that the 5 of them will just rot in there forever. When that doesn't work and they all escape, instead of doing. Anything, really. He locks himself up in a tomb in the hopes that no one will ever come looking for him. He's fucking MISERABLE. Meanwhile, Shmilk fucking LOVES being the villain. He plays himself up, he puts on little shows, he revels in causing chaos, and he completely buries any evidence of who he used to be, even from us the players. He is Shadow Milk Cookie, and you will fear his name!
The only thing Shmilk and Silent have in common post-corruption is that they constantly vilify themselves on purpose. While the other Beasts' actions mostly speak for themselves, Shadow Milk REALLY plays up the evil factor. He makes it clear that he is the bad guy, that he is not to be sympathized with. The only time he paints himself in a sympathetic light is during the puppet show he puts on about the Beasts getting trapped, which Imo is more evidence that he REALLY hated that fuckin tree but I digress. This purposeful vilification is why Pure Vanilla gets to him so fucking much, because PV is willing to completely ignore all of it and forgive him on account of being. Jesus. And Shmilk can't fuckin stand that.
Meanwhile, Silent Salt doesn't have a lot of in game evidence of this beyond the stories that got passed down about him, but his wiki makes it VERY clear that he views himself as beyond redemption. I mean look at this shit-
I have no clue WHY he's the only character with a customized wiki like this, but he is, and oooohhhhh boy does it say a lot about him. Oh boy. He does NOT want you looking any deeper into who he is or why he's like this, he wants to be viewed as lost cause. He does not want your sympathy. WHICH IS A LOT LIKE SHMILK!!!!
Overall, these two are clearly meant to intentionally parallel each other. They're not only the beginning and the end of the Beasts corruption, but also the beginning and the end of their imprisonment. They both make themselves out to be one dimensionally evil villains, just for very different reasons. They're both medieval themed. But what I find the MOST interesting about these parallels is how it ties in thematically with what tore the Beasts down in the first place; the fact that they were created to be just their job and nothing else.
BECAUSE LIKE OKAY HEAR ME OUT!!!!!!! Shadow Milk Cookie is clearly DEEPLY affected by the way he was treated as the Fount. From what little we know about his backstory, the reason he corrupted is because cookies wouldn't listen to him. He failed at his job because nobody wanted to hear the truth, they only wanted sweet lies, and I think it's probably safe to say that people fuckin HATED him for the things he said. It's possible that the reason he corrupted first is that he was the only virtue nobody liked. All of the Beasts were screwed over from the start, but his position as the Fount of Knowledge, fittingly, made him the most likely to realize how inherently fucked their existences were.
Now, post-corruption, he's an absolute control freak. He's clearly trying to take the reigns of his life back, forge an identity for himself through any means necessary. Choosing a name for himself and making sure that everyone he encounters KNOWS IT. Controlling the narrative through lies and manipulation. Shapeshifting constantly. Taking his personhood by force. Nobody gets to choose who he is but him, not the other cookies, not his fellow Virtues, not even the witches. The need for control, to be his own person outside of the Fount of Knowledge, also makes his clear rage at being locked in that fuck ass tree make a LOT of sense! Because, from his perspective, he's been forced into a role he didn't want since his creation, and the minute he starts trying to find a place outside of that role, expressing his anger and resentment at being put in that position at all, he's locked in sensory deprivation hell for thousands of years and LITERALLY FUCKING REPLACED!!!!!!! It's another attempted blow at his personhood, another form of objectification. He's the only Beast to express clear, unbridled rage at their imprisonment because he's the only one expressly motivated by how awfully the virtues have been treated for their entire existence.
Can you tell I have a lot of feelings about Shadow Milk Cookie-
Anyway, let's look at Silent Salt now. The Salt of Solidarity had arguably the best job out of all the virtues. He was the only one who's job allowed him to be viewed as an actual person by the cookies around him. As the virtue of Solidarity, his job was literally to Show Solidarity to everyone, no matter who they were. You can't do that if you're supposed to be an untouchable god, it's just not possible. Because of this, he was the one to face the least amount of objectification while actively working as a Virtue, allowing him to have an overall positive view of his job that most of the others didn't get. But that doesn't mean he was completely free of of that objectification. Because not only does he still go by exclusively his job title like all the other virtues, but he also integrated his job so deeply into his personality that he had no idea how to live without it. He never actually viewed HIMSELF as an independent person. He doesn't think he needs to be. So, when the Virtue DehumanizationTM from other cookies catches up to him, painting him as a tyrant and taking away his support network, he doesn't have any sort of identity left. He loses everything, including himself. Only Silence remains.
Then, after his corruption, he's just. Completely given up. He's so horrified that he failed he asks his boyfriend to kill him where he stands. Taking on a new name not as a show of his personhood, but as a mark of shame. Shame that he failed his job, that he isn't the Salt of Solidarity anymore. Again, he's the only Beast to have his corrupted virtue in his name. He's an empty husk of a cookie, a walking corpse, and, as a final act of sacrifice, he seals both himself and the rest of the beasts away in the Silver Tree. He doesn't believe they deserve anything else, he thinks they deserve to suffer eternally for what they did, for their failure to serve cookie kind. The fact that the tree created new virtues in their place only solidifies the fact that he had no plans on ever letting himself or his former colleagues free. No plans to maybe, one day, get them all help. Find new purposes. In his mind, they were only their roles, and now that they can no longer perform those roles they're all as good as dead anyway.
All of this also makes him an amazing antagonist for White Lily btw. Like this essay isn't abt her but all of this is VERY thematically appropriate given her Dark Enchantress shit and I'm very excited to see where the story goes.
ANYWAY. When I write it all out like that, the parallels become REALLY obvious, don't they? But the real kicker here is that they both- directly or indirectly- tore the others goals and senses of self directly out from under them. Shadow Milk may not be aware of the full extent of the damage he did to Salt and the Kala Namak, but that doesn't change the fact that, thanks to Black Sapphire's presence, he was still the Beast with the most direct involvement in their downfall. Meanwhile Silent Salt, who viewed himself and the other virtues as nothing outside of their jobs, ripped Shadow Milk's independence and identity away from him, replacing him with a new virtue like you would a broken microwave. They caused eachothers worst nightmares to come true.
So uh. In conclusion. CookieRun's storytelling is fucking amazing. Shadow Milk and Silent Salt are narrative foils and you cannot convince me otherwise. And uh. These two make me physically ill. Okay bye-
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