Golden Cheese Cookie, The Beast Of Abundance.

Golden Cheese Cookie, The Beast of abundance.

And coming up for a beast concept for the ancients, Golden Cheese Cookie has to be one of the easiest to do so. This is because her virtue can easily be twisted into something dangerous, since it's so heavily associated with greed. However, just because there's an obvious answer doesn't mean we have to go for it.

Golden cheese is known for spoiling her subjects, so You could push it to an extreme. Maybe she locks her subjects away in their own personal paradise regardless of their protests, seeing them more as objects than people.

Golden Cheese arrives fashionably late as the final ancient in this collection! In this AU her name is Opulent Cheese Cookie, and like Dark Cacao before her she was difficult to get nailed down. But I'm glad she came out alright.

With her finished, I can now say that the beasts are complete. Now I 'll have the difficult challenge of trying to work out new designs for characters that technically don't exist yet. Silent Salt is going to run me over like a tractor. Expect some time for that to start, though. As always, transparents and alts below! Thank you all so much for the support for this project!

Love these baked babies!❤️💙🧡💛

Mystic Flour and Cultural Confusion: part 2

I'm going to assume you've already read part 1 and just move on from where I was. How about we start with One of the very first things we see in “The Awakening of White Apathy” update, The Ivory Pagoda itself! (Sorry for the awful image quality, This is the best I could get.)

...Except…What is a pagoda?

Well according to Merriam-Webster it's "a tower in eastern Asia usually with roofs curving upward at the division of each of several stories and erected as a temple or memorial" which is accompanied by this illustration.

Question answered, right? Answered, but not elaborated. There are many cultures in Asia So even though it could be assumed to be Chinese-inspired it doesn't guarantee it.

The next place to look is good old Wikipedia, which actually has a lot more detail for us. It references exact places and even mentions that pagodas aren't always used for Buddhism (didn't know that), But that's not what's important right now.

Have you noticed that many of the Pagoda designs don't really match Cookie Run: Kingdom? Yeah, you could easily say it's for the sake of gameplay, but I think there's actually a purposeful design to it. Looking on the Cookie Run Kingdom fandom wiki and looking up the origins of Buddhism, I found something kind of interesting. Buddhism has been around for a looooong time and seems to originate from India if my research is correct.

But what does this have to do with the design of the ivory pagoda?

Boom! Indian pagoda!

Pagodas in India tend to have a lot more variation with their designs, some being made out of multiple buildings or looking more like castles. Perfect for say…a map for stages.

Okay cool, kind of proved that it's not all chinese-inspired...Now what? The point of this mini post series...thing? It's inspire people to look at other cultures and a discourage those shaming others for looking. A lot of people only see the final product, but they never think about the hours of research put in to make sure a culture is accurately depicted. A lot of people in the West are very quick to just label Eastern culture as "Asian", which dumbs down the complexities of Eastern society.

Another reason why I made this post is simply the prove that Dev sisters there's no ways follow a single culture to the letter, which is why some people make it confused.

Well stranger, I hope You're well rested and enjoyed my rambles, hopefully you learned something new today.

Hey Howdy, it's Tau! (From the past, Oooooo~.) I'm a person with a lot going on in their head and will probably have a lot of chaos going on here. To make sure you all get out alive, I've made this handy dandy post of do's and don'ts. (Follow the rules and you might just keep your limbs!)

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[Content warning, please read.]

This Tumblr may contain subject matter some viewers may find disturbing. These themes may not be on every post and will be given the appropriate warnings for particularly strong content, please carefully read over The list of themes to see if this Tumblr is right for you to follow or reblog.

May contain:

Violence 

Suggestive themes 

Strong language

Themes of abuse 

Existentialism 

Gore 

Mental illness 

Does NOT contain:

Pornographic imagery/material 

If you believe any of the subject matter listed above may be too much for you, then you may want to reconsider interacting with this blog.

Other subjects may be added or subtracted from this list as time passes.

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[Franchise association~✮]

This section tells you what fandoms/franchises You might see on this blog, some more than others. These are the main franchises I talk about/make content for when I'm not doing original stuff, The list will change from time to time.

Cookie Run: Kingdom 

Castle Crashers

Reverse: 1999

Terraria

Them's fightin herds

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[✦What I do here✦]

This block is One of the places I used to express myself in creative ways, such as: 

Drawing 

Animation/animatics 

Editing

Writing 

Character designing 

Character analyzing

Voice acting 

Singing and so on 

This Tumblr will more likely be centered on writing and drawing, But don't be surprised if that changes on occasion.

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Please do not attempt to harass or intimidate any users associated with this blog. This Tumblr is meant to attempt to help creatives with their process, which may require critiquing when appropriate. Remember to be respectful and that people are allowed to choose what they do with information. Under no circumstances is targeted harassment appropriate or encouraged.

Disability Writing Guides

Collecting all of these in one convenient place! If you have any requests, questions, comments, and especially concerns about what/how I’m writing these, please let me know!

Writing Chronic Pain

Writing Deaf Characters

Writing Disability and the Idea of Cure

Writing Wheelchair Users

General Disability Etiquette for Writers

Overused Disability Tropes

Writing Blind/Low Vision Characters

Writing Facial Difference

Writing Seizures

Writing Visible vs. Invisible Disabilities

Writing Disability and Eugenics

Asks!

Yuuuus~ We love exploring The symbolism and cultural inspiration of sentient cookies, keep slaying. 💅💅💅

THEORY: PEACH BLOSSOM COOKIE and Dark Cacao's relation to Journey to the West

Okay okay, so hear me out. Peach Blossom Cookie is based on the Chinese Goddess Xiwangmu.

I'll start by how I got to this conclusion. The entirety of the Dark Cacao storyline so far has had a lot of Journey to the West elements to it.

Stormbringer Cookie's legendary costume: Splitter of the Seas for example. Inside the video trailer advertising the costume, there is a scene showing the Heaven Splitter glowing underwater. This is a scene highly reminiscent of the Golden-banded staff Ruyi Jingu Bang, a treasure of Ao Guang, the dragon king of the Eastern Seas.  The staff would eventually come under the ownership of Sun Wukong, and upon finding its true master, the staff would flow. This can be seen happening in the image below.

Not only that, but Stormbringer's costume also has a dragon scale-like texture on it referencing Ao Guang, and she also wears a golden headband much like Sun Wukong.

Continuing on with this theme of Journey to the West, the mountain in the Beastraid parallels Wuxing Mountain, which is the mountain Buddha traps Sun Wukong underneath. The Mountain is also known as the Five Elements Mountain or the Five Finger Mountain, another piece of evidence pointing to the similarities between Journey to the West and Buddha since the Beastraid attacks mainly using hands.

With the connection to the mountain and Journey to the West secured, I can move on to Peach Blossom Cookie. The first hints of Peach Blossom Cookie's inspiration were the peach tree and the peach tree surrounding him. In Journey to the West, there is one type of peach that is heavily involved in the story, called the Peaches of Immortality.

In Chinese Taoist folklore, the Goddess Xiwangmu lived in her palace on the mythological Mount Kunlun, where she was said to have grown an orchard of peach trees that bore peaches every three thousand years. The peaches, once ripened, would bestow immortality and longevity on any human who ate them. The third type especially has a striking similarity to Dark Cacao and Mystic Flour's SoulJams. "The third variety is the most extraordinary. These Peaches of Immortality have purple streaks and their stones are a pale yellow. They ripen only every 9,000 years and whoever eats them lives eternally and enjoys a rank equal to that of the Sun and the Moon (which are actual living beings in Chinese mythology)."

In the story of Journey to the West, Sun Wukong was asked to guard the immortal peaches. Instead, he ate them all himself and continued to create chaos. As punishment, he was imprisoned for 500 years under the Five Finger Mountain. This helps connect the peach trees on the Beastraid mountain with the story. Peach Blossom's skill is also called "Heavenly Fruit", again suggesting the similarities.

Now to focus on the Goddess Xiwangmu herself. She was the one in charge of the Immortal Peaches and was known as the Queen Mother of the West. Coincidentally enough, The Flour Peak of Transcendence is also located at the bottom west of Beastyeast.

In multiple old artworks of the Goddess Xiwangmu, she is depicted to share a very close semblance to Peach Blossom Cookie. Such as the colouring, and even the hair bun, which has been replaced by a literal peach.

Another feature that suggests that Peach Blossom may be of divine nature is the floating ribbon he wears, which is called a Pibo, or Pei. These were most commonly worn by women and are often used in media to showcase that a character has a high amount of spiritual energy. Stormbringer, Mystic Flour, and one of the five characters shown playing Go (A Chinese strategy board game for two players in which the aim is to capture more territory than the opponent by fencing off empty space) all wear a pibo showcasing their powerful status.

(Also, since I'm talking about them, they are likely the Wufang Shangdi, the "Five Regions' Highest Deities" or "Highest Deities of the Five Regions". They can also be known as the "Five Colour Deities", as each is known for a specific colour representing them. The Bluegreen Deity, The Yellow Deity, The Black Deity, The Red Deity and The White Deity. Each has an animal form that is the dragon corresponding to their colour.)

The Goddess Xiwangmu was also the only deity in the Chinese Pantheon with the ability to talk directly to humans, using her peach tree as a link between Earth and Heaven. However, she did not speak to just any human.

She would speak exclusively to Chinese Emperors in order to give them the Mandate of Heaven and teach them the secrets of immortality. The Mandate of Heaven was considered the emperor’s divine right to rule. The first emperor to claim the Mandate of Heaven was Emperor Shun of Shanxi, and it is said that on the day he was crowned, five planets had aligned. Though in most of her interactions with the mortal kings, they would always fail her tests and remain mortal.

This can be seen within the newest Cookierun Trailer where Dark Cacao encounters Peach Blossom Cookie at the peach tree and he offers him a place to sate his hunger.

It should also be noted that Xiwangmu lives at Mount Kunlun, which is one of the longest mountain chains in Asia and extends more than 3,000 kilometres. Dark Cacao wonders about "How many steps" he has climbed and is shown to be exhausted, which suggests that he has walked a very long way.

Taking another close look at the scene, there are three birds settled around the small pond. The twelfth chapter of the famous Chinese text Shanhai Jing, or the "Classic of Mountain and Seas", describe Xiwangmu with three birds:

'She is the controller of the Grindstone and the Five Shards constellations of the heavens. Xiwangmu rests on a stool and wears an ornament on her head. She holds a staff. In the south, there are three birds from which Xiwangmu takes her nourishment. They are found to the north of the Kunlun mountains.'

However, Xiwangmu was also thought to have been a demonic figure who caused disease, floods, and other major disasters. The opinion of her began to change around the time of the Tang Dynasty, and following this shift, she was seen as a repentant, benevolent goddess. Whether or not Devsis will include this aspect of her in Peach Blossom Cookie is unclear, especially with the interactions between Cloud Haetae Cookie and the Pale Ailment.

(And here's an image of Emperor Shun, doesn't that hat look familiar?)

Dark Cacao's newly awakened title as the "Dragon Lord" is interesting too, as it ties back to Stormbringer and the origin of the Ruyi Jingu Bang (which parallels the Heaven Splitter which had been used to split the Black and White dragon into two. The two dragons are now apparently helping Dark Cacao.)