I'm making this post to talk about a relationship between Matcha and Butter Roll Cookie, as I feel it is very widely dismissed and unfairly hated. I'm not asking people to ship it (i personally don't even 'ship' them, i just like their dynamic and the lack of art with it really upsets me), but I also want to, hopefully, make more people open for considering their relationship. I ALSO can see where it can be uncomfortable for some people, so if you're the kind of person too set in their opinion, I ask you to move on or block me and not waste your own time here.
Summary:
Butter Roll Cookie and Matcha Cookie are foils made to enhance each other's characters, and it became especially clear after the drop of their costumes, which even inspired me to want to talk about it more. Matcha's 'imperfection' is what compels Butter Roll, who's perfect to a fault, they cannot communicate with each other sufficiently, and their respective flaws make them blind to each other's real intentions.
I want to start by talking about every character in isolation before I move to their relationship. The material that I will be using is ONLY the game material and main story material. I will not be considering promotion art or Wicked collab as canon (also I have no interest in playing the collab stuff for snippets of Matcha characterization I'll be so honest with you).
So, let's start with Matcha Cookie. A nuisance that wants to be perfect.
Tea plants that grow in the dark have no other option but to feed on the energy of darkness. Leaves from such a plant were supposed to grant incredible dark powers to Matcha Cookie, but whoever made her seems to have forgotten an essential ingredient, and it greatly affected her personality. Now she spends most of her time in darkness, thinking of sinister plans and giggling. Little is known about Matcha Cookie, but the greatest mystery is what exactly the missing ingredient was...
In her introductory story along with Butter Roll, the idea of Matcha as a character is very straightforward. She's a very bitter and mean spirited person. Whatever her missing ingredient is, I doubt it's actually what made her the way she is.
We can gather from her interaction with other characters that the Cookies of Darkness, save for Poison Mushroom and (arguably) Butter Roll, don't really respect her, if notice her at all. She roams the laboratory freely and has her own secret little room where she conducts her own tea experiments, trying to come up with a way to prove herself to others.
Why she is the way she is IS the bias others show towards her. Maybe she acted a little weird, maybe she was a little awkward freshly baked, but as a failed experiment in cookie creation, she was left as a background noise or a couple of spare hands to assist running the lab smoothly. No one really checks up on her, no one cares what she does and how she does it as long as she's not in the way. She's a messy nuisance, and that makes her act extremely desperate and pathetic sometimes.
The fact of the matter is, she is VERY concerned over what that "something" is missing in her. Why she was created, why it was tea leaves (my pet theory is that DE tried to create a being rivaling Millennial Tree, something that can sense the flow of life powder in the world, something that cannot crumble - but failed), and what makes her 'less' than other cookies.
Her entire character is built on the idea of an imperfect being, a page in the experiment report, but not just that- a being so fixated on her imperfection and bitterness over it she's barely tolerable. Her self esteem is in the gutters, every little thing sets her off, and this is exactly what stunts her own growth.
The time she manages to pull off something is when she's throwing a tantrum and is very upset - which is really not the source of magical powers you should be gathering from.
To sum it up, the points about Matcha we should keep in mind:
She's an imperfect cookie abandoned by her own creator
She's doing her own experiments and ponders the nature of her being quite a lot - but doesn't like when others point it out to her
She takes everything said in her direction in bad faith. And I mean Everything.
No matter what she does, it's stunted by her own self hatred and doubt, even when she's trying to hype herself up and put others down.
Now as we move to Butter Roll Cookie, I want to say that both of these characters read extremely autistic to me. And when we take that into account, we can also understand and enhance the core of their conflict - miscommunication and failure to read the other.
Butter Roll Cookie is a Mess and he doesn't want you to know.
One of Beast-Yeast's best-kept secrets is the mysterious Laboratorium. There, a team of passionate scientists conducts all sorts of peculiar experiments on the Cookie dough under the leadership of Director Butter Roll Cookie, a baker extraordinaire wielding an enormous whisk. Butter Roll Cookie regards his subordinates' mistakes as happy little accidents paving the way to future breakthroughs. There is no baking conundrum Butter Roll Cookie's expert hands cannot whip up a solution for! Under his rolling pin, meringues come out light as air and dough, smooth as silk, earning him an unquestionable authority. And yet, there is something bone-chilling about the way Butter Roll Cookie's smile vanishes from his face when he works his dough.
Butter Roll Cookie is a very simple character, while very mysterious. I genuinely do not think there's an underlying, sinister motive or facade he's holding up, trying to hide his secretly evil and malicious personality.
What Butter Roll Cookie IS, is a misunderstood scientist and a perfectionist - it became even clearer with the drop of their costumes (but i'll get to that). Cookie Run is not a very subtle story and is not subtle about it's characters at all. If Butter Roll was secretly evil, it would've been revealing in the same update or alluded to it later. But we didn't get that, and never will, because he's just a dude with special interest and twisted moral code.
In the story, he is continuously uplifting his staff. He's upbeat and optimistic, and if there's a facade to speak of, it is his self imposed perfectionism. He wants to be competent, he wants nothing more but to discover what the perfect cookie recipe is, no matter the cost. And if he cannot, if something isn't right, it's his fault. Because as far as we know, up until he was kidnapped, he worked completely alone.
It is implied that this drive and perfection might have been something that expelled him from the Academy he went to with Espresso Cookie. And for whatever reason, he doesn't want his old acquaintance (or maybe even old friend) following him, or wonder what he's up to these days. He omits admitting he was kidnapped. He doesn't want to be found.
I have no good place to mention it in this post, but both Matcha and Butter Roll have traits paralleling White Lily and Dark Enchantress (respectively), and maybe I'd make a post of its own on this topic, but so far here's just food for thought.
Another pitfall of his perfectionism is his dismissal of things that don't align with his goal or standard.
It makes him blind to opinions and things around him. He's prone to underestimating, unable to put himself in someone else's shoes, even when, from his perspective, he's being rational and kind. He's not intentionally hurting Matcha here, for example - he's stating a neutral fact (for him) without considering how Matcha (a cookie he's actually quite fond of and thinks he understands) can feel when he calls a dough monster an imperfect failure (something MATCHA considers herself).
The thing is, this entire interaction's context is even more so cleared out by these Butter Roll lines:
And now I want to move to discussing their relationship. Points to keep in mind about Butter Roll:
He's a scientist driven to understand the cookie nature, striving to recreate it authentically and perfectly (the way witches did)
He's oblivious to things unrelated to his special interest (cookies), he cannot emphasize with others
His perfectionism is the direct cause of his pitfalls as a person, and the source of his flaws
He's aware that he's weird, he accepts that people will not understand him, but he will keep going because he loves his job and he loves cookie that much (this could be why he was expelled from the Academy).
So... Aren't they just a pair shackled by others perceptions of them?
I'm not going to put the entire story here, you can read it over here. I do, however, want to discuss each costume separately a little bit.
For me, every costume can be used as an expansion of a character. They may not be canon story-wise, but they do help us look into every character's personality and even relationships a little more (and it's been excellently done by bxa legendary costumes!).
"Hey, don't touch that... I'll clean it for you... He... he..." Matcha Cookie is in charge of janitorial duties at the Grand Dust Hotel. You can see her scurrying back and forth through the hallways, brandishing her duster and smiling quite suspiciously. But what's even more suspicious is the fact that somehow the mess only increased in her wake... The nonchalant maid doesn't seem to care, though. as she keeps fussing around. Oh well, nobody's perfect!
We already established Matcha wants to be respected and noticed, but what stops her from achieving that is her extremely low self esteem. From that, her clumsiness and unpleasant personality makes it easy for others to claim her as absent-minded and uncaring. Because she's too stuck in her own pettiness!
"Welcome to the Grand Dust Hotel!" Any hotel begins with the porter's greeting, but this one is special. Dressed in an impeccable uniform without a wrinkle in sight, Butter Roll Cookie is the very image of a perfect porter. Porters from other hotels can only aspire to learn the way he greets guests and tirelessly hauls their baggage around. Yes, some do claim that there's something unnerving in the way he inspects the guests from afar-but obviously, it's only to memorize each and every detail-after all, the hotel has a reputation to uphold! "Customers first!"-such is his motto.
It is highlighted that Butter Roll will take any task and complete it graded A+. But his interest and demeanor is what makes his presence sometimes feel unnerving (he even fooled some people in this fandom), but what he really strives for is Perfection.
This extract from the story, however, is something that I think shines the light on what their relationship is like (important bits emboldened by me):
Her satisfaction didn't last long. All because of that annoyingly perfect Butter Roll Cookie.
"If it's too much on your own, you can always ask for help. You can even ask me! I can lend you a hand."
His voice was bright as ever. Butter Roll Cookie—the hotel porter admired by every employee! No matter how overwhelming the workload, he handled everything flawlessly without ever losing that gentle smile.
And look at him now, grinning like that...
Matcha Cookie grumbled.
"... Don't need it."
"I'm only offering because I care. I have the time to help you."
"I said... mind your own business..."
"You don't have to do everything perfectly all by yourself."
A Cookie who does everything perfectly telling others they don't need to be perfect...? Ha! What nonsense.
"I don't need your help! And my job is... is really important, okay? Way harder than yours! Yeah... Yeah!"
"Ha ha! Alright, alright. I just wondered if cleaning the rooms was still difficult for you."
"NOT AT ALL! And... and stop assuming I need help!"
"Oh?"
"Jumping to conclusions like that... that's not worrying! I don't need that from you!"
"... Ha ha, sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I'll get going!"
One of the hotel porters watched Matcha Cookie storm off and spoke to Butter Roll Cookie.
"Are you alright?"
"Hm? Ah, it's the first time I've seen Matcha Cookie get that angry... I was a bit surprised."
Butter Roll Cookie nodded with his usual bright smile, recalling Matcha Cookie's outburst. Was she really the type to snap like that?
Well... surprising, sure, but nothing to dwell on. The only thing he needed to focus on right now was... work. Butter Roll Cookie patted the employee's shoulder.
"Anyway... I'm fine, so let's get back to welcoming guests, shall we?"
As we can see, none of them are right in this scenario. Matcha is not doing her job diligently and refuses help, while Butter Roll assumes things about her that are wrong, and taken aback when his perception of her is broken. This goes in parallel with their bits in the laboratorium story:
Butter Roll Cookie is convinced that Matcha shares his passion for cookies and is too humble to admit her own discoveries to others, and what that ingredient she misses is. The reason to this perception from him we can assume in their kingdom interaction:
He doesn't force her, he doesn't invade her, he's just very overbearing and annoying.
But tumblr user Spire of Deceit, what about THIS Butter Roll line?
Well, that's a neutral statement once again fueled by his own special interest, which is highlighted by the way he looks at cookies weirdly, but he hasn't directly done anything to her.
All her grievances with him stem from something she doesn't have - having her shit together. He is being extremely insensitive and unable to read the room, which is only amplified by how much she hates herself.
So, let's comb through everything above.
Matcha Cookie and Butter Roll Cookie missed that opportunity of mutual understanding. Arguably, it was never going to happen:
1. Matcha wants to be perceived, she wants her efforts to be appreciated, but she doesn't want anyone else to be better than her, and that's what she focuses on more than her own doings.
Butter Roll just fundamentally pisses her off because he seems so ideal. It's almost like he was MADE to piss her off and shove it in her face how useless and pathetic she is. To no real fault of his! She started that conversation about the ingredients with him!
2. Butter Roll is unable to look past his personal standards and his work. For him, cookies are so incredibly fascinating, the fact they're living beings with feelings seems to fly over his head. And when he got a glimpse of possibility someone else shared his passion (Matcha, Dark Enchantress), he's ecstatic.
He's nagging her not because he wants to make her feel bad, but because he sees her as his research partner. He thinks she's being humble, and her outbursts come as a surprise to him - because he didn't think she was the kind of person to get angry!
3. They will never see eye to eye. Her outbursts are what puts him down to Earth, and what he dismisses, because it breaks his idea of "perfect".
If someone like Matcha, imperfect yet persisting and curious, is angry, and let's herself be angry, and be destructive, what does it mean for him, someone who's been so confident in his convictions? What else is he wrong about? Maybe that's why no one wants to work with him? What other flaws and imperfections are there to him? Maybe that's why he's been doing everything alone for so long?
And for Matcha, how could she accept help from someone so impeccably pure and bright? How can she trust someone who's always smiling isn't just going to laugh at her, not take her seriously? How is she to let this Mr Perfect outdo her?
They were made as characters that mirror each other. Matcha is an old character, but Butter Roll was released and introduced into the story along with her, and it's one of the oldest tricks in CRK's books they often do to connect characters together on some level. They did it with Affogato and Caramel Arrow before. Whether you like it or not, you're SUPPOSED to compare these characters.
I'm not good at finishing long posts like this, and there are a LOT of things i had to omit or forgot, but I hope I made it as comprehensive as possible. Maybe I'm stating the obvious, or maybe I'm just rehashing points that are clear from just the images and text I provided, but even if I did, I really wanted to talk about them in length for a while. If you read it all I bow to you, friend.
One-sided matcharoll where butter roll is kinda fascinated with her and has a bit of a crush but is in denial so he doesn't hit on her or anything. And matcha is just sitting there like ".....what is his problem???"
I tried to recreate it as accurately as possible. Honestly? I'm impressed with the results (the French Exit one was my favorite btw hehe)
Ah, and a little funny fact: if you invert the colors of the Who Really Cares? one, you'll get orange/yellow and green, which is their respective colors 💚🧡
I also posted on bluesky too! Any support is appreciated there (≧▽≦)
