One of the Many (If Not the Greatest) Hero's Journeys in Cookie Run Kingdom

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In 2021, the hit game Cookie Run Kingdom emerged onto the play stores. Being the 2nd instalment in the Cookie Run franchise, it became crazy popular for its unique battle rpg, its characters, and most importantly: its story. The lore within CRK goes pretty wild if you ask me. The main story literally goes from chasing a cake hound that stole a crown, to awakening the gods of chaos and destruction. While following the main story, you also get to participate in side stories that follow certain characters and it allows you to learn about them and how they tie into the main lore. For this blog post, I will be diving into one of these character stories and the hero’s journey found within it. For those familiar with the game, this story takes place in the world of beast-yeast, a section of the game where you dive into the stories of the 5 ancient cookies and the beasts. For context, the ancient cookies are some of the most powerful cookies in the game. The beasts are even more powerful than the ancients, and they are the opposites of the ancients. The beasts were the original ancients, and the original owners of their soul jam. However, they corrupted into villainy, and their soul jam was stripped from them when they were sealed away, and used to bake the (new) ancient cookies. For the ones I’m going over today, Pure Vanilla Cookie (ancient) represents truth while Shadow Milk Cookie (beast) represents deceit. In their 2 episodes of beast-yeast, they dance a twisted waltz, as Shadow Milk Cookie attempts to take back his soul jam while Pure Vanilla Cookie tries not to fall into the hands of deceit and lose himself. *This blog post contains spoilers for CRK beast-yeast episodes 7&8, read at your own risk **I will be referring to them as PVC and SMC to save your eyes ***I will not be going over PVC’s entire backstory, as if I were to do that we would be here a while :3 just note that before this episode he had an initial confrontation with SMC that introduced him to the possibilities of his soul jam when SMC was released from the silver tree

The start of beast-yeast begins with the call to adventure: PVC, Gingerbrave and friends come to the conclusion that they have to venture out to the spire of knowledge in order to learn more about PVC’s soul jam. The refusal of this call happens when uncertainty falls upon PVC before he leaves for his journey. He worries over the possible confrontation with SMC, and the possibility of losing his soul jam. However, a supernatural aid appears to PVC when the light of truth that lies deep inside of PVC acts as the supernatural aid here, providing a guide for PVC on his journey. Now that the journey has started, he can cross the first threshold. A cookie named Apple Fairy Cookie offers her help to the group in order to locate and navigate the spire, and they start their journey to make it there. Once they make it to the spire, they finally enter the belly of the whale and begin their mission to reach the top. The spire however is a quite large and difficult place to navigate. In order to reach the top of the spire, PVC and others must venture through the spire, commencing the road of trials, defeating beasts and working their way upwards in hopes of gaining knowledge about his soul jam.

As they venture upwards, Apple Fairy Cookie goes along with them, guiding them to the top. While there isn't exactly a "meeting with the goddess" step in the hero's journey, I can best to connect this part to PVC being confronted by memories of his past as they make their way up the spire. Temptation also doesn't doesn’t exactly happen here, it happens a bit later. Having reached the top of the spire, they are confronted by SMC and Apple Fairy Cookie reveals herself to be Candy Apple Cookie. Here, SMC reveals the truths about his lies to PVC (atonement with the father). At the apotheosis of this story, having learned about all of the lies that SMC fed him playing as the light of truth, he transforms into the Truthless Recluse, and seemingly turns to the side of deceit. After becoming the Truthless Recluse, SMC plays all sorts of games of truth and deceit with him, all with hopes of taking back his soul jam. All of these being a form of temptation, to make SMC give it up and really be one on his side. After playing with him for one final time, SMC manages to swipe the soul jam from PVC, allowing him to become the most powerful and achieving his own ultimate boon.

Having done this, PVC has one last confrontation with the light of truth, the real one. Here he realizes the truth about him and SMC, and has an awakening to his true self. Here he reveals to SMC that he was the one who fell into the hands of deceit, as PVC tricked him into thinking that he joined his side (rescue from without). Having been awakened to his true self, he is now able to access and master the other-realm, a place full of trickery that only SMC was able to wield control over. With this newfound power, he is able to defeat SMC. After defeating SMC, SMC flees with Candy Apple Cookie and Black Sapphire Cooke. Because the spire no longer has its host/domain, it begins to crumble, and the cookies have to escape. With SMC being defeated and fleeing with Candy Apple Cookie and Black Sapphire Cookie, the newly awakened PVC along with Gingerbrave and others can return back to the kingdom with their newfound knowledge on his soul jam.