who was the founder of the blueberry yogurt academy?
(yes it's shadow milk cookie but it goes much deeper than that)
aka this is what my entire interpretation of shadow milk is based on
i like to call myself shadow milk cookie’s number 1 apologist and yet i haven’t really done my part in justifying his actions, so here is my not-so-little ramble where i will try to convince you that there is so much more to shadow milk than the facade of the insane jester who takes twisted pleasure in watching others’ pain, but also that there is so much more to shadow milk than the doomed-from-the-start fount of knowledge, fated to an existence of isolation and driven over the edge by overwhelming loneliness. because seeping through the cracks of this carefully crafted story is a brilliant and wise man, known for guiding cookies in understanding magic
[small but very important thing we need to establish from the beginning: the blueberry yogurt academy from crispia eps 7 and 8 is definitely implied to be more of an academy (as its name suggests) than a high school. from the way pure vanilla and white lily act and think in the time when they were attending it, to the role this part of their life plays in both of their characters and to various npcs we know to have worked there, this academy definitely acts more as a place for higher education and a proper research institution. if you wanna see more arguments on this matter there’s this rant i had a while ago, though, warning, rant is the appropriate word for it. adding more to this: in the way the lore was originally released, in the forgotten academy episode, pure vanilla and white lily just straight up had their regular sprites (you can see this in this recording of it from 2021 at 26:06)]
the blueberry yogurt academy is, in more ways than one, the starting point of the entire story. it is the place of white lily and pure vanilla’s first meeting, the place where they became friends, forming a relationship that will define the course of future events. it is the place where a moral argument has both of them questioning themselves and their values for the first time. the story of the academy builds two parallel narratives, one of which reveals the evolution of white lily’s ambitions and aspirations, with the other ending in dark enchantress cookie’s first appearance, making it a smaller, summarized version of the greater story. for white lily, the academy is also the place where she first forms her ideal of finding a way to make cookies less fragile. the very first form this ideal takes is her goal to bake a perfect cookie - a goal that ultimately entails her taking the soul of the first headmaster of the academy and putting it in a body she has baked for this purpose. as the perfect place for a curious soul like white lily to pursue such highly unconventional ideas, the academy encourages her to fully unleash that curiosity as a second, but equally important, driving force for her character, thus introducing two extremely important dimensions of this story, those being the individual ideals of making the world better in oposition with the personal desire to satisfy one’s curiosity. given just how many relevant ideas that will be expanded upon later the academy manages to introduce, but also just how much it gets brought up later with pure vanilla repeatedly mentioning it in beast yeast ep 1, the moonstone incident being presented on equal grounds with dark enchantress cookie in the past choices haunting white lily in beast-yeast ep 12, it getting framed as a crucial part of pure vanilla’s past in beast-yeast ep 7 (and also considering it is the only place in all of crispia that we find in a damaged state and, instead of leaving it at least with a promise of restoring it (like the cheese kingdom), or in a slightly more peaceful spiritual state (like the city of wizards), we simply damage it further by breaking the moonstone without the characters ever promising to come back), it definitely appears that the mysterious aspects of the academy are questionably being left hanging, unaddressed, forever to remain nothing more than unanswered questions. that is until the silver tree breaks and white lily finally manages to get the soul she opened the moonstone portal for in the first place - and he is a jester introducing himself as shadow milk cookie.
(as another thing that points to the importance of the academy may i remind everyone that the game allows you to play the beast-yeast story only after you have finished hall of enlightenment. i wonder why)
EDIT: this post was written before shadow milk's dominion of the beasts cutscene, when it was still an ongoing debate wether shadow milk was actually the first headmaster or not, so this next section is just me going over every little thing that implies that shadow milk is canonically the first headmaster. this fact was made obvious by shadow milk's dominion of the beasts cutscene so this whole section is a little pointless now. if anyone reading this wants to skip the proof and go straight to the part about how this identity of shadow milk's recontextualizes his character, i will put another line of pink text when this section is over
before i go any further i feel there is a small tangent topic we need to discuss, because i still see people debating it and acting like it’s just a theory, even though it has been alluded to in every way except by being outright stated in canon (even though i would say it got pretty close to it). it is the fact that shadow milk is undeniably the founder of the blueberry yogurt academy, in the text. i also want to mention that for this part i will merely expose the means through which this has been implied, without getting into how and why this matters to shadow milk as a character. the order i’ve written out the arguments in in the next part is from least to most conclusive one.
the first aspect that points you to draw some sort of connection between the academy as a place and shadow milk cookie is the overall look of the place, but especially the visual symbols present in its design. first and most obvious is the pillars with the milk crown motif at the bottom, resembling the bottom of the pillars from the spire of deceit. i am aware that across cookie run overall the milk motif is just generally used when dairy products are involved. however, cookie run kingdom has really only used it outside of shadow milk once with the design of milk cookie (who is not a character designed for kingdom nor relevant to the overall story of this game) and also in random game modes (like dairy island in the glorious voyage). so given that the only two instances relevant to the greater story where this visual motif has shown up are the academy and the spire, it is fair to assume this establishes a connection between them. another element that sticks out to me every time i look at the hall of enlightenment level design is the giant chess board. again, the only other place we see a giant chess board in the game is the spire of deceit in beast-yeast ep 8. and the way both of them are framed by the very similar color palettes and archways makes it seem like it’s not just a coincidence these are the only two places we see giant chess boards. the overall structure of the intertwining staircases of the academy that we manage to get a glimpse of in the level design of forgotten academy is eerily similar to the one of the endless stairways of the spire as well.
the symbol i have left for last is, of course, shadow milk’s iconic eyes, which, once he graciously reveals to us, in the first cutscene of beast-yeast ep 2, have been following us for a long time, you can’t help but look back and notice that he was, indeed, not lying. the eyes you can see in the academy pretty much everywhere: in the pavement of white lily and pure vanilla’s greenhouse, carved on top of every single bookshelf and, as expected, framing the portrait of none other than the founder of the academy himself. and i omitted all the eyes on the blueberries in the bushes and that is because, in concept art shown a while ago, shadow milk himself is seen surrounded by blueberries looking just like those ones. and although this is an idea they didn’t choose to fully lean into in the final design, you can still see it reflected in shadow milk’s staff, made up of a blueberry, held up by the milk and dairy motif, literally visually depicting the name “blueberry yogurt” (this is also interesting in the context that the staff seems to be shadow milk’s source of magic). all things considered, even though personally i subscribe to never considering something a mere coincidence or ignorance on the creators’ side when analyzing media, all these repeating symbols combined seem too many to be a coincidence.
[and if you will allow me to be a little subjective here for a second. after having downloaded the game back in february of this year because curiosity got the better of me and i just really wanted to find out why everyone loved this blue jester so much, when i was watching the lore and got to the hall of enlightenment one of my first thoughts was “why does the aesthetic of this look like that shadow milk cookie guy?” so i do genuinely believe that if even only on a subconscious level, there is something in the design of that place that just looks like shadow milk. like seriously get in the game and make him run around the academy he fits right in it’s a little funny]
and the fun part is shadow milk’s connection to the academy doesn’t end at them sharing some visual symbols. the way he welcomes pure vanilla to his spire is through the riddle bringing the academy both to our attention as the audience but also to white lily and pure vanilla’s attention. and other than this little allusion to this place at the very beginning of shadow milk’s show in eps 7 and 8, i think a very memorable moment from this arc, that i know has stuck with many people as a highlight of shadow milk’s play, is his masterpiece of a metaphor: the river of rebirth. the scene with the mystical river, deadly to anyone who sets foot in it unless they manage to embrace deceit, a reference to the river styx from greek mythology, but also to the roman river rubicon, is one that i’ve seen picked apart many times in regards to how it reflects experiences shadow milk may have lived, with the common consensus being that it somehow encapsulates a very important event in his life with irreversible consequences. but i have never really seen anyone question the river in itself, because put into a particular context it certainly becomes very interesting: the river of rebirth, in its full title the yogurt river of rebirth, appears to be a calm body of water with blueberries floating on its surface and with blueberries hanging on the vines above it. curious - the yogurt river, representative for a turning point in shadow milk’s identity, surrounded by blueberries.
[and fun little gameplay fact about this is that the background of the level with the river of rebirth itself mirrors the background of the levels crossing the river leading to the academy from forgotten academy]
and if so many purposeful choices tying shadow milk himself to the namesake of the academy have somehow not managed to convince you about shadow milk’s personal connection to that place, take a look at the title screens for beast-yeast eps 7 and 8
do you see him? in the left corner there? there’s no other portrait frames with anything in them in the whole illustration except for him. not the other forms of shadow milk or any other events - only that particular portrait. on the ep 7 one you have shadow milk, in front of pure vanilla, bowing to him, with the blueberry yogurt portrait right next to him. (another sidenote here is that blueberry yogurt is not just another one of the many forms shadow milk has taken throughout time. firstly because, if he was, surely they would’ve grouped him with them in the illustration from the spire featuring all of them or on the wheel on his splash art. or they would’ve also brought the many other forms of shadow milk to the loading screen alongside this portrait if they were of the same nature. he also doesn't share the “azure” part of the name that all of them seem to).
[also (and i’m not saying this one is intentional but it is a silly thought) forgotten academy and hall of enlightenment are crispia episodes numbered 7 and 8 and shadow milk’s beast-yeast episodes are also numbered 7 and 8. those are just his numbers okay]
[and another thing - and i promise this is the last tangent i will go on - the name of the guy the portrait is depicting is almost definitely blueberry yogurt cookie. the ice cream cone looking ornament around his neck with the cream and the blueberries is precisely the type of visual language choice cookie run designers would make in order to showcase the flavour of a cookie in its design. and this one’s name sure looks to have been blueberry yogurt (on the topic of general cookie design rules - interesting that the only place milk is brought up in shadow milk’s design is his blueberry staff). also naming an institution after the name of its founder or an important personality in its history is very very likely. so, from now on, mostly to make phrasing things easier, i will refer to shadow milk when talking about his position as the first headmaster simply as blueberry yogurt]
END OF SECTION OF ME BEING A CONSPIRACY THEORIST ABOUT SHAODW MILKS SECRET IDENTITIES
we’ve talked about the academy’s importance in the overall narrative, but also its questionably missing conclusion and we have also talked about shadow milk’s connection to that place seemingly promising both an elaboration on its mysterious nature but also only managing to raise more questions. before beginning to answer them, though, we must ask the last and most important question, arising from how shadow milk cookie himself is presented to us.
the very first thing we learn about shadow milk, before we even know his name or see his face, is that he was created to be the concept of knowledge. then we learn that he has somehow degraded from knowledge to deceit, a concept introduced to us as immoral and an inherent source of harm. and then the man himself comes on screen and he introduces himself as "playwright, poet, director, actor, clown and everyone's most beloved trickster". he puts on a puppet show with seemingly no other purpose than breaking the protagonists' trust in each other, painting the picture of a true villain, cleverly crafted from the idea that fiction is a title given to elaborate lies. then we witness him in his own realm, welcoming pure vanilla with a show carefully thought out with the true expertise of the master of lies, with the apparent goal to make him question his own values to the point of losing his identity. while the means shadow milk resorts to are nothing less than you would expect from the embodiment of deceit, the reasoning behind some of his choices remains unclear, until the end, when the pieces that have been laid out before us - from the barely contained sheer force of his emotions at mentions of his past as a divine emissary, to his insistence to keep pushing pure vanilla into playing his twisted games - fall into place and we uncover a bit of the mechanism inside of his mind. pure vanilla uses the idea of loneliness to describe the suffering inherent to shadow milk's position and purpose as a god, an entity and a concept, a purpose that could only isolate him from other people, but also from his own morals and values, and endlessly perpetuate his suffering, slowly turning his mind into the twisted and tangled mess the jester outwardly projects. and on its own that's an interesting story. i would even consider it a very nice story if the first time shadow milk comes on screen was when he introduced himself as a playwright, poet, director, actor, clown, or if his show for pure vanilla didn't prove some carefully considered profound ideas about the contradictory nature of knowledge, or if his perceived anger at the fount of knowledge wasn't calculated to only show at very certain points in time, or if the reasoning shown in the text for pushing pure vanilla into certain situations in the spire of deceit wasn't his purely scientific, genuine curiosity about the magic properties of the soul jam.
alas, before shadow milk gets to introduce himself to us as the deceiving playwright, he gets to converse with pure vanilla, in the first cutscene of beast-yeast ep 2, when he gets to reaffirm his identity for the first time after hundreds of years of imprisonment. and he chooses to do so by first stating "i govern all truth and deceit of this world" and then asking "what do you know about about truth?" only to answer himself with the conclusive line "what you mistake for the power of truth is but a cute, tiny droplet in my limitless ocean of knowledge". he governs all truth and deceit, which makes truth equivalent to deceit. but truth is also nothing more than a droplet in the limitless ocean of knowledge. which can only mean one thing: deceit, which he places on the same position as truth, is "but a cute tiny droplet in [his] limitless ocean of knowledge". shadow milk establishes from the very first cutscene he gets to show up in that to him both the ideas of truth, but also of deceit, are nothing more than very limiting ways to view a concept as large and magnificent as knowledge. and philosophically speaking he is correct, as diving knowledge into truth and deceit implies that knowledge is simply made up of a collection of objectively true facts - which already raises the question of how can you know that any fact is objectively true when everything you know is limited to your personal perception - and this alone is complicating things beyond the division into facts and not facts, so yes, truths and lies are only a teeny tiny part of it all (if you want me to get into the specifics of shadow milk and knowledge from a philosophical point of view please ask because this is not that post).
to get back to our nice story about the guy driven to insanity by his position as nothing more than an entity. it very nicely incorporates ideas about the dehumanization he went through and explains some of the behaviour of the jester whose mind seems to make no sense, but it fails to explain shadow milk's actions precisely in the moments when he is proving his intricate understanding of the concept of knowledge and when he is showing just how intertwined his identity is to this understanding. it doesn't explain why he chooses to tell the story of peter and the wolf without changing the moral, it doesn't explain why when he is talking about the fount of knowledge he is equally disgusted by the cookies looking to the fount of knowledge for answers as he is by the ones just choosing lies instead, it doesn't explain why he still embodies the curiosity characteristic to someone who values knowledge above all, it doesn't explain why beast-yeast eps 7 and 8 straight up reference immanuel kant's ideas relating to knowledge. and thus, we have arrived at our last question: in the story about the worshipped entity who degrades into the evil manipulator after ages of being treated as less than a person, where does the knowledge fit in?
and this question about how the knowledge fits into that picture is not talking about what particular outside event could've somehow affected him enough to break him, but rather about what he thinks about and how he understands this concept that was so relevant for defining the identity given to him. and how has his perception of this concept interacted with the way he thinks and how has it shaped his identity. (i also want to point out that in questioning how knowledge as a concept has affected shadow milk cookie’s perceptions of the world and of himself, we should not also discuss the concept of truth as he was created to be knowledge not truth, and his life was dictated by knowledge, not truth, until presumably after he was imprisoned when what used to be his power was, indeed, reshaped to be truth)
one place characterized by curiosity and that could be described to value knowledge above everything else is the type of institution established for study and research. an academy. what's strange about blueberry yogurt is that he does not resemble either the fount of knowledge or the master of deceit. what he shares with the fount of knowledge is the goal. the general objective to spread knowledge. much like the fount of knowledge, blueberry yogurt intends to provide a means for cookies to answer their questions, to inspire cookies to seek out knowledge. based on the very similar nature of this goal it is very easy to assume the academy is nothing more than a simple part of the fount of knowledge's activity. however, when we start to look deeper into it, just like with the story of the suffering jester, there are a considerable number of things that simply don't line up. beside blueberry yogurt's perceived fondness of chess and life-sized chessboards resembling the master of deceit's own appreciation for the game, there is another visual element that defines blueberry yogurt's image from the portrait: the one singular closed eye. in the story itself, this particular manner of artistically depicting a cookie's state of mind by one singular closed eye across their face is entirely unique to the portrait of blueberry yogurt. however, in beast-yeast ep 7, there is the cutscene named "pure vanilla cookie's memory II", in which pure vanilla describes a painting of the fount of knowledge surrounded by cookies seeking his guidance, but also by cookies rejecting it and turning to deceit instead. though this painting is not shown in the story itself, pure vanilla's description seems to be pointing to the illustration from shadow milk's gacha animation, where, just as pure vanilla describes, we see the cookies looking up to the fount of knowledge and later we see some of them turning to deceit. and they're visually depicted to be dancing on a chessboard, with one singular eye closed. this establishes a certain connection between the corrupted version of knowledge, from after the fount of knowledge abandoned his purpose, and the surviving image of blueberry yogurt. if the academy really was just a part of the fount of knowledge's activity, surely the most prominent symbol on the singular picture of him, hung up in the academy to represent his legacy, wouldn't also be one representing deceit.
also a fun detail related to this i can mention is that white lily does straight up say, in the last "memories of two friends" cutscene, "the academy never intended to teach us the truth" which is so silly. so you're saying it's not the truth huh? then what is it? the deceit? the portrait sure seems to be implying that. (again, even though there are many details and pieces pointing more prominently to the master of deceit than to the fount of knowledge, at the core of it is still knowledge, not deceit.)
another argument i want to quickly mention is that the founder of the academy seems to be strongly alluded to having had a name. the moment when the beasts gain their names has been shown, most obviously in the two dominion of the beasts stories that we have so far, but also in both burning spice’s and eternal sugar's beast-yeast episodes, to coincide with the moment they abandon their purpose. this would imply that by the time he made the academy he can't have still been the fount of knowledge because he already had a name. i know that to some people pointing to the connection between how the game usually uses visual language and the simple fact that they would not have just told us the name of the academy (and coloured it in orange the first time they mention it, which is what they do with important information) if it wasn't somehow very important in itself doesn't mean much, which is why i am not leaning on this argument to prove that the academy was not founded by the fount of knowledge, but i do consider it a relevant enough point to be kept in mind.
considering blueberry yogurt's goal in life being all about knowledge and him making up as much a part of shadow milk's identity as the fount of knowledge and the master of deceit, without really being included in either of those two periods of his life, and pairing it with the missing element from the story most obviously forming around shadow milk, the one about the suffering of the fount of knowledge turning him into the evil jester, being precisely his knowledge, the pieces start to fall into place as this third identity of his seems to line up perfectly with the characteristics we couldn't previously explain. what kind of person would show simple curiosity at the magical properties of soul jam (magic is science in this universe), starting to analytically question the effects it has in the way shadow milk's thoughts from beast-yeast ep 8 reveal to us he does, or have such a profound, philosophical understanding of a vast and complex concept like knowledge that shows itself in the way they think through life, or be an appreciator of the arts on the deep, almost personal, level shadow milk is when he loudly proclaims them as a valuable part of knowledge through his jester act, if not an intellectual, an academic, someone remembered for contributing to bringing up an institution of knowledge. blueberry yogurt cookie.
my point visually depicted:
shadow milk having fully been an intellectual, preoccupying himself with the arts and sciences and pursuing the goal of spreading knowledge in a manner implied, by the associations with deceit, to have been fundamentally different from the fount of knowledge, of his own free will, leaving behind a legacy not of a disagreeable prophet spreading unpleasant truths, but of a "brilliant and wise" man who "taught cookies how to use magic", begs us to wonder how and why would this man with so few problems compared to the fount of knowledge turn to committing the crimes shadow milk allegedly has done or to associating his identity with the deceit he seems to think is nothing more than a limited view of the all encompassing knowledge he has been willingly dedicating himself to up until this point.
in order to explain how blueberry yogurt connects to the jester we see shadow milk as in the present, we need to address another element present in the visuals associated with shadow milk, possibly the central motif when it comes to his character's aesthetics - the eyes. the master of deceit is covered in eyes, from his hair, to his tailcoat, to even the blueberry on his staff forming a pupil and resembling an eye. as expected, the fount of knowledge couldn't be more different. from being depicted with his eyes closed on the statues made of him, to the eyes of the cookies looking up to the fount of knowledge being altogether replaced with the shape of the soul jam, to the near total absence of eyes in the projection of the spire of all knowledge before it turns into the spire of deceit in beast-yeast ep 7. once again, blueberry yogurt shares the abundance of eyes, all throughout the place bearing his name, with the master of deceit - there's eyes in the academy in many of the decorations and furniture, on nearly every blueberry in the bushes and, most importantly, there is an eye on top of the frame of the portrait of yours truly, blueberry yogurt. probably the most telling use of the eye, which reveals the way shadow milk perceives the world (and his knowledge, because after all what is knowledge if not a way to describe the world and is the only way to interact with the world not getting to know it - so knowledge is a reflection of the world and vice versa) is the soul jam on the jester also being an eye and the same soul jam on the fount of knowledge being the top of a key. the connection between knowledge and the key (and the many keyholes present in the design of the spire of knowledge) is centered around the idea that knowledge is somehow locked and only the one holding the key can unlock it. the implication of this view of knowledge is that those seeking it are limited to the pieces that have already been unlocked for them. contrary to being part of a key, the soul jam later turns into an eye, after shadow milk abandons his purpose as the fount of knowledge. the eye proposes a different view of knowledge. eyes are, symbolically, the means though which we get to know the world, so using them to represent the instrument used to gain knowledge is not an unexpected association at all. they do become rather interesting, though, when placed in opposition to the key as a way to unlock knowledge and especially as the soul jam transforming from one symbol to another is seen as a sign of revolt against what the fount of knowledge stood for. if the key proposes the idea that the only way to access knowledge is having to ask the one who posses it to unlock it, the eye perceives knowledge to be present in all things, all one having to do in order to access it being to look.
shadow milk's understanding of knowledge is fundamentally different from what knowledge was defined as and constrained to when the role of the fount of knowledge was created. in shadow milk's view, seeing knowledge as something to be unlocked is not only extremely restricting in terms of one's possibility to access it, but also in how it limits knowledge itself to what already exists behind that lock. and this is why shadow milk himself felt trapped in that role - because his perception of knowledge greatly exceeded the way this purpose had defined it and so did he. so where did he go from here? the one other role he has played: he spread knowledge, but relying on eyes this time. the portrait of blueberry yogurt, the man who, much like the fount of knowledge, dedicated himself to allowing cookies to explore the realm of knowledge, is framed by the symbol of his revolt - the eye. blueberry yogurt, not only through the symbol he uses, but also through the very thing he created for this scope - an academy - is allowing cookies to engage with knowledge in ways that are much less limiting, but also by his own, chosen means, on his own terms, free of his divinely-assigned purpose. an academy, a university, an institute for research is not merely a place for one to simply acquire information, but a way to discover how to reach that information or find new ways to explain things already thought to be known - as i've previously mentioned white lily said "the academy never intended to teach us the truth", indeed, it intended to teach you how to forge your own path in discovering your own truth (not metaphorically or spiritually, but literally, advanced studies in a field are meant to give you a means to add your own, new contributions to that field). a problem arises when this much broader approach to knowledge shadow milk adopts and fully dedicates himself to implies encouraging people to actually use their own eyes to access knowledge, instead of just waiting for the one with the key to unlock it. because, if the fount of knowledge, upon being requested an answer, instead of giving it out like he's supposed to, simply refuses and sends you to find your own, unique, answer, would he not be called purposefully deceitful for it?
what does deceit mean? it means purposefully misleading someone into believing something incorrect. but when knowledge is a much, much bigger concept than a division between what is correct and what is not, a concept so complex that two contradicting ideas can be true at the same time, is the one pushing you to explore precisely the contradicting nature of this "limitless ocean", encouraging you to find different ways from the ones known as correct to describe the same concept, not misleading? and when he's dedicated so much of himself for it, is he not doing it on purpose? is he not trying to ruin the beautiful collection of facts that has been wrongly labeled as knowledge with falsities? - so deceit is a fundamental misunderstanding of what knowledge is to shadow milk. deceit is what his efforts to expand what is understood by knowledge have been misinterpreted for: an ill-intended attempt at ruining knowledge.
but if deceit is nothing more than a misunderstanding of what shadow milk was actually trying to do - one he was severely punished for, however - then why does the master of deceit in the form he presents himself to us in the story exist? to answer this question we must go back to the moment the master of deceit was born, the moment shadow milk embraced deceit, when he drowned in the river of rebirth. when he drowned in the blueberry yogurt river. the blueberry yogurt river of rebirth is perhaps the most straightforward metaphor out of the many artistic devices shadow milk uses throughout his appearances. the river in itself is literally made out of yogurt and blueberries, much like a cookie whose flavor are blueberries and yogurt, and shadow milk describes his experience of adopting deceit as a choice between drowning in this metaphorical river, or giving in and becoming the master of deceit. this life, goal, ideal, ideas and identity he has built for himself will drown, will kill him - as it literally has because he has been punished, killed with a giant fork, for merely abandoning his purpose -, and will do again, unless he becomes the deceit he has been judged as. what is captivating about the river is that he equates becoming the deceit with death - hence why it is the river of rebirth - because before he can become the master of deceit, before he can be "reborn", he has to abandon his knowledge as in to "die" (he's a dramatic little guy okay leave him alone).
as a whole, shadow milk's performance as the jester, the master of deceit, is, among other things, an artistic act both hiding his suffering under the cold-heartedness of this villain and simultaneously putting it on display through the lines and attitudes characteristic for an intellectual he slips into his evil monologues.
where this suffering is most obvious is in the music that plays all throughout episodes 7 and 8. the musical motif present in almost all the songs in the soundtrack of these episodes is one i've seen people refer to in more than one way, usually calling it either pure vanilla or white lily's motif because of its appearance in their theme "memories of two friends" and the times it is played as a reference to their early interactions. but very rarely have i seen it referred to in relation to where it first ever plays: the theme for "world 7. forgotten academy". variations of the main motif of the musical theme of the academy, of blueberry yogurt's academy, are present in almost every song relating to shadow milk from beast-yeast eps 7 and 8. (there's even a reference to the academy theme at some point in "in the palm of deceit"). yes, this motif has been used before to represent pure vanilla's feelings and some of its uses in this arc undoubtedly have that purpose as well (guys is it gay to share the same musical motif - no because white lily also shares it), but it is also in the music of moments where shadow milk's feelings are way more likely to be the ones in question than pure vanilla's. for instance the music on episode 8 ("beast yeast 8. beacon of truth") itself: why is it a mismatch of the academy motif and not just "greatest show on earthbread", the well-known shadow milk music? i think the most memorable use of the academy motif in relation to shadow milk is after his "victory" in the cutscene "true corruption" when, during the moments when the master of deceit is happiest, the music playing in the background, titled "behold! the world of lies", has such a sad and hopeless variation of the main part of the academy theme that you can just feel shadow milk's suffering.
from the profound level of understanding shadow milk shows for his knowledge, to how much more he has done for this concept than simply what was asked of him, to the way he associates abandoning it with his own death, to the way it even shows up in his music, shadow milk cookie cares so much - he cares so much about the knowledge which has come to incorporate everything his life is worth living for. he cares so much for others understanding it, appreciating it and exploring it to the level that he does and he is suffering after the freedom to choose to dedicate himself to his knowledge, and with it his own identity, a freedom that other cookies inherently have, but that he has worked hard for and has successfully obtained, is unfairly taken away from him. and blueberry yogurt is the only means through which we can understand how shadow milk related to the concept his whole identity is tied to and he is also the image of shadow milk being free to choose his goals, how he defines them, his identity, his name. which makes this hidden part of shadow milk the crucial element in telling the tragic story of the fount of knowledge who was, indeed, crushed under the weight of its purpose, but who pieced himself back together, fully living up to the characterization of "brilliant and wise" - for it all to be taken from him by one little cookie's spell.
i would like to say thank you to the two people who have actually finished reading this and also. if you think there's anything that contradicts everything i've said here please please please throw it at me and discuss with me because there's so many things i didn't even get to mention in this post and i really like yapping about shadow milk cookie (who would've guessed that)
