i don't know if this is common knowledge or not but i've seen no one else mention it and it haunts my nightmares so i'm going to yap about it:
extremely specific cookie game star symbolism
stars in this game, in general, are used to visually show that something is associated with magic. that is a very basic thing to do with the visuals. the interesting part is that the specific shape of the star matters. certain types of stars are associated with different aspects of the world and they are used in the character and environment design to show the connections between certain things
just to be clear, what i'm saying is that the meanings of the stars are used to strenghten or emphasise an aspect of the world or character that is already established in the story by also including it in the visuals. i am not claiming the shapes of stars can be reliably used to gain new information on the story
by the shape or type of a star i mean the number of points it has
4-point stars are the most basic ones and i don't have many examples of them being specifically used. these truly do just denote the general association with magic, they're used a lot as background elements and particle effects. the hall of enlightenment, for example, mostly features its specific 6-point stars, but also has a lot of small 4-point stars in the background
these are more interesting in how they relate to 8-point stars. i will come back to them, these two make more sense together
8-point stars are associated with a higher, more refined form of magic. for example, they're used as decorations in the backgrounds of the vanilla kingdom castle (the old vanilla kingdom being a place known for its advanced understanding and use of magic, as evidenced by its waffle bots and the way the cookies of the creme republic talk about it) and the golden cheese kingdom (also a place heavily associated with intricate magic because of the golden city). specifically, i think it's a form of magic closer to the witches' magic. in the vanilla kingdom, there's very prominent 8-point stars on the church windows. there's a few examples of the shapes of soul jams in the middle of 8-point stars
an 8-point star, if you think about it, is basically two 4-point stars layered on top of eachother (with one slightly rotated)
there are some interesting uses of 4- and 8-point stars to represent aspiration towards either literal better forms of magic or generally towards some higher ideal
the st. pastry order has some of the only actual uses of 4-point stars in designs and not just as background elements, in the background decorations and on their weapons, such as pastry cookie's crossbow. doughael's halo is also decorated with 4-point stars and shaped like a plate with 4 symmetrical decorations. this makes sense as the belief of the cult is that they will ultimately fulfill the witches' will (and they were trying to steal the soul jam in cookie odyseey, still no clue why that was, but still, trying to steal witch magic), while they view themselves as just cookies, lesser beings than the witches
stardust cookie, who is a failed attempt at creating moonlight cookie, the wizards' perfect cookie, has a star on his chest that is a 4-point star with 4 other lines behind it, drawn in a darker color, almost an 8-point star, but not quite there. (this is one of my favourite uses of 4- and 8-point stars and like half the reason i'm writing this post lol)
pure vanilla, in his regular form, has a 4-point star on his forehead. in his awakened design, it changes to an 8-point star
also, in pure vanilla's regular splash art, he's drawn reaching out toward an 8-point star. a big point of pure vanilla's character are his hopes and attempts of making the world better. his "truth", as he very nicely explains in his awakening speech, is this ideal of a better world. the star here is not him literally striving for a higher form of magic, but for this higher ideal (thought admittedly, he does seem to think knowing more magic would help him achieve this, which is why he's always helped white lily with her research, but we're getting off track). pure vanilla cookie gets funny metaphors because he is the main character and the writers love him
interestingly, there is also the rare 16-point star! by the same logic, a 16-point star is two 8-point stars layered on top of eachother, so 16-point stars represent even higher forms of magic, perhaps more than the cookies are supposed to ever be capable of-
the avatar of destiny's halo is a 16-point star. in the background of dark enchatress' splash art there are 16 witches in a circle (not exactly a star but with this many points we have to get a little creative). the symbol at the top of dark enchantress' baking magic instructions forms half of a 16-point star
the glow inside of pure vanilla's staff in his awakened design is also, interestingly, a 16-point star
6-point stars very specifically represent magic associated with knowledge. most obviously, the fount of knowledge himself has a 6-point star with a keyhole on his chest. while the spire of all knowledge barely has any stars, the spire of deceit has quite a few of those as well. the blueberry yogurt academy, as i mentioned previously with the hall of enlightenment, is filled with them. the city of wizards (which i will get to in a second) has all the different stars but the library is specifically decorated with 6-point stars
funnily enough though, they are sometimes also just… shadow milk cookie's stars. the association with knowledge is obviously there but a lot of the time they are used to reference either him personally or just the academy. again, most uses of them i can name are from him and his academy. the only stars that exist at all in the faerie kingdom are in the beast-yeast ep 2 level background and they're a bunch of 6-point stars that he added. in the vanilla kingdom castle there is a decoration on the floor of pure vanilla's soul jam surrounded by two 6-point stars (and one 4-point star that is a little harder to see). on pure vanilla's regular form splash art there's a floating 6-point star (which could be a reference to him or the academy, who's to say). in pure vanilla's awakened form background there's a whole lot of 6-point stars. (i wish i could think of more examples relating to white lily (all the pure vanilla ones, as funny as they are, are not because they're gay but because of narrative parallels with him. which white lily also has a lot of) but i guess her reference to the forbidden magic of the academy are his eyes in her gacha animation, not stars. sigh). 6-point stars are also associated with dream magic in the crunchy dreams story and in the city of wizards in general, which doesn't necesarrily relate to knowledge but it does make sense with shadow milk and his mind control and illusion magic
shadow milk cookie gets his own special stars because 1) he's been haunting the narrative since the literal release of the game and we need an easy way to invoke him and 2) the writers have just always really really loved him
a funny little thing, which could mean nothing but i always like bringing it up, is that the first headmaster of the academy (who is shadow milk, it's canon at this point) also has a star on his chest in the same spot as the fount of knowledge, however, it is not the same. first off it doesn't have the keyhole but it is also slightly turned around! the fount of knowledge has it with the axis of symmetry horizontal while the headmaster has it vertical. it might be nothing but, considering that 6-point stars generally represent knowledge and taken together with the soul jam being turned upside down to show that what it represents has changed, i think it's cute that he also changed the rotation of the star to show that his understanding of knowledge has changed. blueberry yogurt my beloved
hey. hey if that paragraph confused you you should go read puf's blueberry yogurt post it's. it's really good. don't look at the length
an interesting use of these, which is kind of my conspiracy theory but i think it's neat, is in the background illustration in beast-yeast ep 11 after white lily breaks the tomb. i may be imagining it but i think the hole in the wall here is shaped like a 6-point star
if i am not just insane, this is interesting because 6-point stars represent knowledge and are associated with the academy, and beast-yeast 11 and 12 are to a large extent about white lily's relationship to her curiosity which goes back to the academy and in a lot of ways parallels shadow milk's knowledge (i'm sorry if that made no sense i am not normal about these two cookies in particular. can you tell by how much i wrote about the academy stars)
by the same logic as 4-, 8- and 16-point stars, shouldn't there also be two 6-point stars stacked on top of eachother? 12-point stars?
at the moment of writing this, which is literally one day before the first episode of the timeline of fate comes out, there is exactly one use of a 12-point star that i can name. in shadow milk's splash art background, the thing surrounding his soul jam is a crooked 12-point star (only half of it is ever visible in the actual game). the implications of this are very interesting, if an 8-point star is a higher form of a 4-point star, does this crooked 12-point star indicate some sort of attempt to make a higher form of the magic represented by 6-point stars? this also looks very similar to the symbol at the top of dark enchantress' baking magic paper. what crimes against nature has my man attempted?
i feel the need to mention at the point of writing this, literally one day before timekeeper cookie gets added to crk, because timekeeper may very well change this. they're almost certainly meant to parallel shadow milk in some way as well and their whole aesthetic is clocks, which famously are circles with 12 points on them (and shadow milk has always had some connection with clocks and time magic, it is mentioned a few times that time in the spire of deceit doesn't flow normally). even more interestingly though, the teasers have mostly been depicting them with 24 hour clocks, which, if we count them as stars, would be one step above the 12-point star and equivalent to a 16-point star. but the clocks could also just not fit into this at all and just be clocks, who's to say until tomorrow
5-point stars are pretty much exclusive to the city of wizards. in my personal opinion the reason these are used at all is because moonlight cookie's design had already been made for ovenbreak before they came up with all this star symbolism. wizard cookie has 5-point stars on his hat because, it's in his name he's a wizard too!! and he has read a lot about and admires the wizards
the city of wizards is fun, actually, because, as i said, it has all the different stars. this makes sense, the wizards did study all types of magic. the wizards are also said to be trying to recreate the magic of "the twelve archmages" which probably refers to the first witches, so the 4- and 8-point stars make sense. the knowledge stars being here obviously also make sense. the city of wizards also just has a lot of funny stars that don't really show up anywhere else, like the 3-dimensional ones
another honorable mention is the creme republic, which also has all the different types of stars used at random, but for pretty much the opposite reason. in cookie odyssey, clotted cream wants to take the soul jams because he thinks he knows what should be done with them but, despite his genuine good intentions and the fact that it create something good in the end, he is missing a lot of context. in the same way, the creme republic cookies like to think they're so amazing because they come from the vanilla kingdom when really they're not that great and, to the audience, come across as having no idea what the rest of the world is like. the way they use stars also shows this: they've taken the stars from the vanilla kingdom but don't actually know their meanings
also, as previously mentioned, the faerie kingdom has no stars (until shadow milk adds his own), which is about as weird and out of place, for a place so magical and so closely associated with the witches, as everything else about the faerie kingdom
these are my funny little observations about the cookie game stars. i will also say that this doesn't quite apply all the time (like, shining glitter cookie has a 6-point star in her hair, that one has no relation to knowledge or the academy, they just happened to draw a sparkle like that. there's a few other examples like this) but it does 90% of the time and for most things actually related to the main story. i hope you will now join me in counting the points of all stars you see in this game. it will drive you insane. my brain has started automatically counting on any star shape i see in any context. send help