This au is set pre-corruption, though it begins slowly. Knowledge is beloved by all, seen and treated as though he were a divine deity. While he may not want their worship, he cannot find it in himself to deny their gifts and affection. All he can do is return what they give him the only way he knows how, through knowledge.
He teaches them right and wrong, he teaches them the way of words, consequences and long-term results. He teaches them during day and plans what to teach them next at night. They continue and they continue and they continue, asking for more and more and more. And what can Knowledge do but obey?
His friends tell him to stop. They tell him to rest, that he can say ‘no more’. He does not have the heart to do that, yet he is so, so tired.
“Tell me, my creators, any god who will listen, tell me what I can do? What I should do?”
And his pleas are answered in the form of gold. Gold gears, splitting rifts, the eternal ticking of time. Time and her. She who appeared before him with her spinning eyes, and makes him fall. He descends, with no way of stopping, his thoughts fracturing under the countless lives he should not know, he cannot know for his mind cannot handle this everything.
He falls and he awakes, The Five Virtues The Five Beasts dammed to the hell that is a silver prison his friends surrounding him in worry. He cannot answer their calls, he cannot recall which him is this timeline’s him. Is he Shadow Milk Cookie? Is he Knowledge? Is he fated to corrupt under the weight of his own ingredients, under the weight of the cookies he thought loved him back?
How can he save his friends, if he cannot even keep the shards of his own self together?
At some point in the timeline, TK kidnaps SMC and forces him to work in the TBD :D PV will join him one day >:3
Croissant:
TK: :)
Croissant: that's the beast of deceit
TK: Yes
Croissant: What- What did you do to him? Why is he yellow? He looks traumatised
TK: he needed to be in the TBD colour palette
also, I've thought up three more AUs since I last made that list lmao. System Error, My Student, and Practice Makes Perfect
Alright, Script Writer is next! Anyone who likes Isekai will enjoy this AU.
Shadow Milk Cookie is the author of a novel who wants nothing more than to give every character in his story a happy ending, unfortunately, that is not a realistic choice due to how stories tend to be perceived. So he ends up writing a typical "hero beats villain story".
He rants to his friends about his frustrations, and they tell him to write a non-canon version of the story. So, he goes to sleep contemplating that idea.
Then he wakes up as the antagonist of his novel, and he must find a way to change the ending or else he will be sealed away for eternity in an abyss! Not only does he have to prevent his own terrible fate, but this is his chance to prevent the fate of all the other minor villains. His chance of giving all the characters the happy ending he couldn't give them as a writer.
Though, to do that, perhaps he has to stop looking at the world as a 'story' first...
Woo! Phantasmagoria! Shadow Milk Cookie :D (also known as Phantas when it comes to AUs)
It may be messy, but I've spent too long trying to come up with a design for jester man over here. Let's just embrace the chaos SMC style. This is also the guy who designed Pure Vanilla and Wind Archer's outfits by the way. He does not like his hair.
Phantasmagoria Eternal Sugar has a fun little ability including soulstones! (Story wise that is).
You know how when you fully ascend characters, their soulstones then become mileage? Eternal Sugar can steal soulstones from cookies and turn that mileage into energy to give herself a temporary physical form/power up. Though the effort really isn’t worth the pay off so she doesn’t do it often.
You’ll go to buy soulstones only to realise all your mileage has been stolen lol. She needs some sleep before she goes stealing souls 😌
This one was requested first by @dijetsky so here it is :3
This AU starts when Shadow Milk Cookie realises that he is slowly corrupting and that he has to do something about it. Using his knowledge of cookies and the souljam, he makes an elaborate plan. When the time comes, he separates the corruption from his souljam, leaving it and himself separated. He gives it to one of his familiars, the Avatar of Destiny, and seals it away so that even once corrupted, he would not have access to the Souljam of Truth.
Centuries later, the seal would come undone and the familiar would wake up in a vessel, gifted to it by Shadow Milk Cookie. It wakes up within an academy, where it, he, is taken in by the confused professors and headmaster. The Avatar of Destiny, now known as Pure Vanilla Cookie, would have to learn how to be a Cookie, and how to navigate this new life he...never really expected.
Oh, and that awkward family reunion later at BeastYeast. He's not too sure how he's going to explain that to White Lily.
Why would be like thé dynamics between PV and SM in the future ?
KASBDAKB I LOVE THIS QUESTION.
Okay okay, so it all began last year during symphony practice. We're playing a song and it's called Phantasmagoria. Our conductor gets us to search for what it means.
Phantasmagoria: a sequence of real or imaginary images like that seen in a dream.
Ever since then, I've just loved the name, and I wanted to used it for something. Originally I wanted to use it for an Undertale AU, but I ended up never making anything official for that AU so that went down the drain. Then I made this AU, and Phantasmagoria fit perfectly with how Shadow Milk Cookie's manipulation feels to Pure Vanilla Cookie.
I think I mentioned before that to Pure Vanilla Cookie, it feels like a dream where he's lucid enough to be aware that it's a dream, but not lucid enough to act out in it. He's aware that he's being controlled, that his thoughts, actions, and emotions, aren't all his. But he's not aware enough to do anything about it. Like a weird, hazy dream.
Hence, the AU name :D
And for PV and SM's future dynamic? Best friend/Hostage Situation??? It's complicated, since all of PV's actions aren't really his, and SM's actions are also slowly being influenced by the consequences of possession and soul fusion. But I suppose the best way to say it would be eventual reluctant understanding yet still distrust. Pure Vanilla is physically unable to hate Shadow Milk though, and Shadow Milk is...fond? Of Pure Vanilla.
More Pre-Corruption!Shadow Milk Cookie from the Phantasmagoria AU! This drawing is specifically for an AU swap prompt, where I swap AUs with @fluffshi-wxffle/@blueshadowdad, so here's Phanta as a dad with baby Majesty :D
Edit: i forgot to give him his monocle. This man is working half blind-
WOO! Adding in Majesty from my Au, Phantasmagoria! I also added in My Shadow and Me!Pure Vanilla by @raptor1312, since their device is unavailable lol ^^
The PV army grows!
...those images are getting compressed, fast lmfao-
Finally getting around to do this! You remember that one old Tumblr trend where you had an original poster draw a character in a transparent background, and then more people would reblog to add their character in it as well and form a chain?
Well, I decided we're doing just that with our Shadow Milk/Pure Vanilla AUs! If you are someone with an AU that features PV/SM, feel free to add onto the image! It is transparent, so you can add them in any space!
Phantasmagoria's Silver Tree is genuinely, one of Shadow Milk Cookie's only fears. He'll joke and laugh about it, but when he gained control over Pure Vanilla, the very first thing he did was cut that things down. He didn't taunt White Lily and Elder Faerie, he didn't even make a show about it. He went straight to the tree and destroyed it.
This is because of how the tree functions in the AU. It's quite literally an abyss. There's no ghost body to float around in the darkness, or eyes staring back at him. Inside the silver tree, you don't exist. You can't feel your body. No matter how much you move, you can't sense that you are. You can't see, you can't tell if you're blinked, you can't tell if you're breathing. Is he breathing? Does he even need to breathe anymore? No smell, no sight, no touch. Nothing to hear either, other than his drowned thoughts. No matter how much one screamed or begged to be freed, promised they'd change, cried about how he never wanted this and had tried to change this, there would be no change. He won't even hear his own voice, he can't tell if he's been talking at all. Every second there felt like hours, felt like days, like years, and yet only a second. There was no time at all, just eternal nothingness.
Eventually, he'd question if he existed in the first place. Is he dead? Was he stuck here forever? He can imagine scenarios all he wants, with a mental version of himself playing with puppets and acting out how his freedom would turn out, but how long before he forgets what he looked like himself? What he sounded like? He can't even remember what his friends looked like anymore. Just him and the void. No, not him, It's just the void.
Sometimes he'd hear things, see things. Of a continent he no longer recognises, of people, of heroes he's never heard of before. But they always seem so far away, he can understand them yet can't at the same time in a headache-inducing, eldritch way. Yet he continues, because it's better than not being at all.
Shadow Milk Cookie can be as evil as he wants now that he's freed. But first, he just wants to exist again.