We ended up on a bit of tangent the other day so here are some silly sayings to use for Time Balance Department and Timestream-related characters!
Curses/Exclamations:
"Gears grind me down." (God damn me.)
"Gears of the Great Machine!"
"By the hands of the First Clock!"
"Flow forbid." (God forbid.)
"Timestream's pockets..." / "You found this in the Timestream's pockets, didn't you?" (A curse meaning complete disaster, references Time Pockets from CROB)
“Director’s scissors!” (Mild curse.)
"Flow take it." (Mild curse/Can mean “I give up” in isolation.)
"Rust and springs." (For heaven's sake.)
General Sayings:
"Do I look like a standard cog to you?" (Do I look stupid to you?/Do I look like a civilian or non TBD agent?)
"That's not how the mechanism turns." (That's not how that works.)
"Skip a tooth." / ”I skipped a tooth in my calculations.” (Make a mistake.)
"You're wound too tight." (Stressed, anxious, etc)
“Let your gears cool.” (Calm down.)
"Clocked and counted." (Everything accounted for/Yes, it's done.)
"May your gears stay meshed." (A blessing, like good luck or travel safe.)
Insults:
"You must be really spinning some stripped gears in there." (Your braincells aren’t touching/you are not intelligent.)
"You sure all your gear teeth are touching?" (Are you insane?)
"I am beginning to suspect your maintenance schedule was neglected." (You sound ridiculous/What you’re saying makes no sense.)
“You skipped a century, huh?” (You weren’t paying attention/you are unintelligent.)
“Smooth-geared.” (Smooth-brained.)
“Right, and the Gold Kirin was caught.” (Incredulity, dis-belief.)
“Might as well hang a flag with your work.” (You’re acting like a time pirate.)
Field Agent Specific:
“Only a Time Manipulator could fix this.” (Complete disaster.)
“Looks like the Director’s work.” (Either amazing or terrible, depending on context.)
“We’ll need a fleet for that.” (Call back up.)
“Who let a cog-cat in here?” (Similar to “it looks like a tornado went off in here.”)
“A universal translator couldn’t fix that sentence.” (You make no sense.)
Historical Accuracy Division Specific:
“You look like a Beastborn in the Dark Flour War.” (You look out of place/lost.)
“Who tailored this century?” (Who approved this?)
“Don’t pull that thread.” (Do not investigate that.)
“That’s a tangled bobbin.” (Complicated and not knowing where to start.)
“Mind your seams.” (Keep your story straight.)
“Your seams are showing.” (I can tell you’re lying/your lie has holes.)
“Don’t unpick that.” (Leave it alone.)
“You’re missing your backstitch!” (You don’t know your fundamentals.)
“Your pattern is off.” / “The original pattern didn’t look like this.” (Your time fix is incorrect.)
“This timeline has too many patches.” (You’re fixing the problems instead of addressing the root cause.)
“I can see the repair work.” (Someone meddled in history here.)
“Cross-reference?” (Where did you get that?/Citation needed.)
Tell us if you can come up with anymore, or can think of some for the other divisions! :D We love worldbuilding languages
This was supposed to be an AU to fix the villains. You know, something simple and silly—give them motivations that don’t devolve into “attack everyone because villain gotta villain.”
Then we started noticing more.
As we dug into the lore to build our stories, we kept running into implications, inconsistencies, and details canon never expanded on. The kind that make you stop and go, hold on, what?
We tried to ignore them. Smooth them over. Work around them.
Then we sat down with the map.
The map looked back.
We took that personally.
So here we are.
Let us say this clearly: This is not a hate blog.
This game has brought us immense joy over the years—watching it evolve, anticipating updates, crafting theories we never shared, and then seeing some of them come true later. (The voices in the Soul Jams? Incredible.) We love this world, and we’ve done our best to follow its story as it grows.
This is a project to rebuild that world from the ground up and see what happens when you add biology, geography, psychology, and more to the core idea:
What if the fable of the Gingerbread Man became an entire world?
That’s the foundation Cookie Run is built on. We’re just making sure it holds
See you around as the castle is rebuilt.
If there’s something you want explored, come Poke The Builder.
If you’ve got broken lore or beloved pieces of canon, drop them off at Material Drop Off.
We can’t promise we’ll get to everything—but we’ll use what you bring to refine this cathedral into the glory it deserves.
Okay, this has been nagging at us a little bit, just a smidge.
So we're rewriting canon for our AU so we went back and watched the tutorial cutscenes again. We're not getting into Gacha or how it makes no sense in canon, but there are still some... oddities.
The Cookie Kingdom literally has a destroyed castle that you fix up. The Sugar Gnomes seemed like they were desperately waiting for a cookie to come back to the point that they give leadership to three kids they just met. The Sugar Gnomes have evolved (or perhaps were made) to melt if they get stressed enough. There is a crown in the ruins that was important (or maybe just interesting enough?) for a cakehound to steal it.
Now this would be odd enough but...
No one acknowledges that the kingdom used to be something else.
You'd think that if there is literally a ruined kingdom out in the middle of nowhere and these kids said that they had repurposed it and were living there, someone would say something, right?
Like we have more information on the Vanilla Kingdom, Golden City, and City of Wizards, and that first location was basically nuked off the map so badly that the continuity of time was breaking in its halls.
(Vanilla, how the hell did you un-irradiate the Vanilla Kingdom in *checks notes on update dates* LESS THAN A YEAR to the point that it was livable again??? That's the real miracle here.)
Why does no one know about this city?! Where is the history?! How did it fall?! Why are we ignoring an entire kingdom being in ruins?!
Okay, we're still getting into the update—we already have Timekeeper because Timekeeper has been one of our favourites for ages and they will be integral to this AU of ours—and we're not that far into the story, but uh... Shouldn't Shadow Milk be dead?
Like, he goes back in time to change the past. We are shown in the Save The Future update of Ovenbreak that if you change the past of a timeline, the timeline's future dissolves. Correct us if we are interpreting that wrong, but that was why the future version of Croissant who was the Director like... Thanos-snap dissolved out of existence, yeah?
So the second that he went back and started messing with stuff, that should have dissolved him and created a different version of him in the future. What happened to stop that from happening?
No we're not analysing to ignore our favourite cookies being tortured AGAIN that'd be ridiculous—
You know, our first post was going to be fixing cookie biology because canon can’t seem to decide whether cookies have organs or not. It’s… actually incredibly funny to see sources go cookies work because magic and then Silent Salt say, “The Cookie heart.” Picking a lane would be great, my guys.
So we opened the Cookie Run Kingdom wiki page on Cookies, the species. This was a mistake. Honestly we wanted to cry. We love the wiki, don’t get us wrong. Fantastic source of information. The reason we wanted to cry is because it’s a conglomerate of all of the information over the years, and Cookie Run is infamous for being inconsistent. All right, cool. Where to start?
We end up scrolling, and there’s a section called Divergences. Interesting, what’s in here? Well, the list goes as follows:
Fig and Nutmeg Tiger - sure, centaurs definitely are divergences
Candlelight - not sure how a being made of wax counts as a cookie, but sure
Goblin - has extra pronounced fangs, good for them I guess
Merfolk and Tearcrown residents - yep, merfolk definitely count on this list
Candy Diver - … that’s just a ghost with an attitude
Aurora Candy - we would argue this is not a cookie, but you do you, Devsisters, we’ll handle that later
Mercurial Knight - “though appearing to be of a standard Cookie body made of mercury-infused dough, can melt into liquid mercury at will (Cookies, Cookie Run: Kingdom Wiki)”
Choco Flounder - we’re just going to file this under Merfolk and call it a day because why?
Did you catch it? No, not the centaurs. Not the wax. Not the ghost. The mercury. Apparently Mercurial Knight has the ability to melt into liquid mercury at will. What?!
This dragged us down a bumpy ride that started in excuse me, why do you have that ability, sir??? and ended in why are the Witches even in this story right now??? Click below to keep reading as we show you through Alice’s rabbit hole to the truth of the invasive predators of Earthbread.
You might be wondering why Mercurial Knight’s ability to change into liquid mercury even matters. He is Mercurial Knight Cookie, after all. That’s kind of his thing.
Well, here’s the problem: technically, it shouldn’t be possible to begin with.
Let’s start from the beginning: Who is Mercurial Knight Cookie?
Mercurial Knight Cookie was released on February 7th, 2024 for the second half of the Secrets of the Silver Kingdom update. He’s an Epic Charge cookie, and the general of the Silver Knights who defend the Silver Tree in the Silver Kingdom. (Which… technically isn’t a kingdom because there is no king, only a Guardian by the title of Elder, which may also just… be his name(?) possibly. Not to mention it’s called four separate names by canon materials depending on whether it’s feeling political, ecological, magical, or just particularly indecisive that day, but we don’t need to get into that rant right now. For the sake of everyone’s sanity, we are going with the Silver Kingdom for today—the name of the actual update—and moving on.) His ability is called Mercurial Knight’s Oath, and fun fact! It has an extra buff that triggers whenever Silverbell is in battle with him called Silver Knighthood that also affects Elder Faerie and White Lily. That’s… not exactly relevant to the discussion right now but we discovered this by reading the entry on his ability and thought it was cool, so… the more you know.
Now I’m sure we have some readers looking at this going, why are you telling me all the stats stuff? Why is this important? Because none of this is setting off any red flags.
A general.
A knight.
A strong Cookie.
Sure, maybe he’s a little odd, but there is a Space Doughnut running around with a cookie made of Stardust. Oddities are a dime a dozen here.
But when you start looking into his military title, what his ability does, and exactly what the Silver Knights actually are, you start… noticing things. Nothing much. Just little… inconsistencies that don’t quite line up. Details that make you pause. Answers to questions that were never asked to begin with… and make you wonder why they needed to be asked at all.
Let’s pause our look at Mercurial Knight Cookie for a second and go look at his knights, yeah?
Returning to the Cookie Run: Kingdom Wiki, you will find a beautiful page on the Silver Kingdom. Like, the wiki crew is legitimately impressive for collecting all of this and putting it up like this for people to read, and we do actually recommend reading it if you’re curious after this post. (Aside from the map. We’re not touching the canon map today. Not unless you want me to rant for three hours and end up throwing my favourite tea cup at the wall.) It’s even split up in helpful sections! Geography, landscape, history, culture, denizens, and known denizens! Is it a little sparse on information? Yeah, but it’s Cookie Run Kingdom. That’s not on the wiki makers, that’s on Devsisters. We’ll likely expand all of the known locations later to have their own ecology and cultures, but that’s not today’s goals.
We’re going to focus on the Culture section right now. It has three sub categories: Silver Tree, Silver Tree Knights (with its own sub category of Known Silver Tree Knights), and Faerie Library. Wonderful! We already have our work made easy for us! The wiki has this to say on the Silver Tree Knights:
“The Silver Tree Knights are an order of knights dedicated to preserving the seal of the Silver Tree and protecting its guardian, Elder Faerie Cookie. Cookies in this order can be blessed with Silver, trading their unique flavor for the strength to carry out their mission. A prime example of this sacrifice is Mercurial Knight Cookie, whose flavor and scent were traded for cold metal long ago. According to Mercurial Knight Cookie, all Silver Tree Knights eventually grow to "look one and the same," and yet, he and Silverbell Cookie are visually distinct from the hordes of identical Knights seen throughout the kingdom. The knights have most likely disbanded after the events of Beyond the Horizon as there is no longer reason to protect the now empty Silver Tree.”
… Right. Okay. So who here was aware that the Silver Tree was blessing its knights to eradicate their scent and flavour until they have nothing left but metal? Because that seems like something the Silver Kingdom updates kind of glossed over, yeah?
Let’s dissect this line by line.
The Order of the Silver Tree, or the Silver Tree Knights, are a group of trained individuals who serve the purpose of defending Elder Faerie Cookie, the Guardian of the Silver Seal Tree (as called in Beast-Yeast Chapter 12 - The Silence of Conviction by Silent Salt), and the actual Silver Seal Tree itself because the Beasts have gone insane and abandoned their virtues. Mhm. Kay. Normal thing to do. That’s fine.
Now the wiki says that cookies in this order can be blessed with Silver, trading the flavour in their dough for metallic strength. This specific word “can” will be disputed in a line or two, but we’re going to focus on the fact that this is acknowledged to be normal. Why? Do you understand the implications of this? Cookies are flavoured dough organisms with jam innards and soul matrices—a debate for another time—that find individualism and family jamlines through said flavour. And the Silver Tree removes that. Right. That means you are anatomically disassembling and reassembling each Silver Knight to remove all traces of the former recipe, whether it be Witch-made, Wizard-made, or Sugar Swan-descended (again, a topic for another time) and replace it with inedible Silver in such a way that not only does not destroy the cookie, but allows them to continue moving and functioning as if they were a normal cookie.
“But it’s magic!” I hear some of you crying out. “Magic does that!”
Yes, our dear readers. It is magic. That is not our concern here. The how is easy to explain. Where they got magic with these capabilities and why it is being used is not. But we can get into canon’s… lacklustre explanation in another post. Because yes, we do have thoughts on the matter.
The prime example of this Silver Blessing process is apparently Mercurial Knight Cookie. We just addressed that Mercurial Knight can melt into liquid mercury. No other Silver Knight can do this. Um… That’s not a small detail, and definitely has implications that might be best saved for a part two because this is already 1440 words long at that number and there is so much evidence packed into this post alone that it would be actively unjust to try and fit it all here in one post. But trust me, we have some lore to continue digging into on Mercurial Knight.
Keep in mind that nowhere in canon does it state that Elder Faerie does not also receive the Silver Blessing. An odd note for later.
This next line we are going to treat as what it is: a quote from a potentially unreliable primary source. “But why?” you may ask. “Mercurial Knight does say that.” Yep! He does! That’s the reason we’re treating it like this.
Quick sidebar: Primary sources are fantastic places to get information about an event, process, or anything else you are trying to research. They tend to be stuff like testimonies, witness accounts, and other sources that were there at the events. There’s still an issue with this: primary sources can lie or be incorrect. If Jack says he jumped the candlestick when he actually burned himself, then he is a primary source that has false information. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s a primary source. It just means that you need to check the source against other sources of information, like an art book (sometimes) or a text in-world.
Why is this important? Because the line in the excerpt directly states and acknowledges a contradiction: Mercurial Knight says eventually all Silver Knights grow to “look one and the same” but this is a direct violation of Mercurial Knight and Silverbell having both unique names and unique abilities. Either Mercurial Knight meant, “we all look like silver knights because the tree makes us silver and so we are one order,” or something is very specifically different about Mercurial Knight and Silverbell. Likely the latter, considering that Mercurial is able to, and I stress this again, melt into liquid mercury, which Silverbell is definitely not able to do.
Also this line implies that the Silver Blessing’s transmutation of flavour into metal might be a slow, gradual process over time? That… That doesn’t make us feel better, Devsisters. That’s actually worse.
The final line states that the Silver Knights have likely disbanded after the Silver Tree stops needing defending. This is actually evident in one of the 5th Anniversary gallery painting cutscenes for the Silver Kingdom where Mercurial Knight states that he’ll likely wander the land trying to defend people. We do not know where we would get the full quote for this right now so if anyone knows where we could verify this, we’d really appreciate it as we tried to go and find it in our game and couldn’t remember where the completed paintings were stored. But direct parallels to the Salt of Solidarity aside, that implies one thing: this Silver Blessing is not reversible once the process finishes. You are a Silver Knight permanently, no matter what. Were the Knights aware of this before they signed on? If so, why does this culture just normalise getting your identity removed? If not, that seems like something that should be in big red ink at the bottom of the contract, yeah?
That one passage is doing so much work. Just the one paragraph reveals systematic reconstruction of a cookie’s entire biology and social identity to guard this one tree. The psychological horror of that statement alone is wild. Isn’t this supposed to be a kids’ game?!
(Funny story: we ran this by some friends to make sure we weren’t crazy. They stared at us in horror before one of them pulled up a photo of Starlight Glimmer’s village in MLP:FiM and how she removed all of their cutie marks for equality. We laughed so hard realising the similarities between the Silver Tree’s knights and this village. Like… he isn’t wrong. I just don’t think the Silver Tree is so easily reversible.)
“But it’s the Wiki! Wikis can be wrong! Surely this isn’t canon,” we hear some of you protesting.
Well…
Mercurial Knight Cookie’s in-game description: “... Blessed by Silver, he cast aside his former flavor, scent, and memories (and mastered the sacred art of Amalgamation). … Perhaps the gravity of his mission has changed the very nature of his crispy Cookie dough.” His soul jam description: “It's seeped with silver till its deepest core, with the original color no where to be found.” (Yes, it is “no where.” We are choosing to blame the game’s proofreaders on that one.)
Yeah… Yeah no, this is canon. Which means we have plenty to dig into in future parts:
Why is the Silver Tree doing this?
What is the source of this magic?
How are Silent Salt and Elder Faerie involved? (And why their involvement alone is not enough for this to occur.)
What happened to Mercurial Knight?
What does this mean for Silverbell?
And if this was Witch magic… what does that mean for the Witches themselves?
But this is a good place to stop for today. We need tea and I’m already falling asleep at my typewriter.
We hope you’ll stop by again as we dig deeper into this beautifully fractured mess of canon and start rebuilding from the bottom up. Toodles!
