lilliferwashere

[lilliferwashere]

Thank you

sighs

[lilliferwashere]

idk why i haven't posted any of my cinderella boy art on here but. here. upon ye.

[lilliferwashere]

@inc0mple RIGHT BACK AT YOU UNO REVERSE GET LOVED IDIOT

what I think will happen if I message my mutuals

[lilliferwashere]

I’ve had this idea since season 1, but now that we’ve officially met Violet, I feel like I was truly able to channel her Diva Energy lol.

[lilliferwashere]

sometimes an e is important

[lilliferwashere]

[lilliferwashere]

@lorie-the-little-ghost's keysona!

[lilliferwashere]

SILVEEEEEEEEEER🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

[lilliferwashere]

Hello again!

POSTED this on the COMMUNITY and posting here too!

You guys i bet you were THIRSTY for DEACON.

Please. So HANDSOME 😏😏🫂

These were the base colores jeje🥹

Im sure Bronze had a great time doing the outfit. Look at the CHICKEN.

Also i never realized he had kinda BLUE EYES? HWLLO?

[lilliferwashere]

You guys probably Saw this post on the Cinderella boy COMMUNITY i just wanted to have It in my profile.

He the cutest and the Next one IS... DEACOON! BABY

[lilliferwashere]

Alright chat, the flip flop is free now, I CAN SHARE MY THEORY.

This started as a vague crack theory but it spiralled and now I have tangible evidence and a thought process and have spent the last week going INSANE but most of the theory rests on one stupid detail---namely, the brand of this mysterious keyholder's flip-flop---that I couldn't share until now.

This theory is---and hear me out---

Before he was a key, Buddy was actually a fictional storybook character turned real.

WARNING: Long, only vaguely coherent rambling and Inco going insane.

Okay I know you're like "wtf are you on about" so just. just. just hear me out pls

To understand this theory we need a little bit of context, which means talking about:

The Elephant Book

"The Elephant Book" is an unfinished comic that Punko worked on before Cinderella Boy or Stagtown. It is a story about two characters who learn the secrets of a hidden organization, called Artifax... secrets that have to do with beloved fictional characters who become real because of readers' love for them. I don't want to spoil too much of it, but I highly recommend giving it a read if you like theorizing about Cinderella Boy. You can get it on her store here as an eBook. It got cancelled before the plot could be fully realized, but here's the thing---Punko has said that The Elephant Book informs Cinderella Boy.

This in itself is intruiging, but what is most fascinating to me---and here is where the flip-flop comes in, LMAO---is one particular plot point.

Again, I don't want to give away too much of the Elephant Book because it's a fantastic story. However, it does feature one part about one book character in particular---Alice, from Alice in Wonderland.

A book character who attempted to enter the "real world" through a looking glass---through a mirror.

And if you take a look at this mysterious keyholder's flip-flop...

IT SAYS ALIC[E].

here me out im not insane here me out

This looks like just a normal brand to me, nothing that has any plot significance. So it's important to ask, why then was it included? Why would Punko include a fictional brand as detailing on a random item of clothing... unless maybe, it was a reference? A jaded, non-diegetic callback to another "Alice" from a different, dropped story...

This leads me to believe that this mystery keyholder was once a storybook character, and has since been greeted into the real world.

I don't know how, but one theory I have is that maybe, to avoid a hassle, Ex Libris may take book characters and turn them real with magic to use as henchmen.

HEAR ME OUT

These people would be untracable; they would have no documents or papers, and nobody from the real world would miss them.

Their memories could be erased or modified so that they do not realize this is their history. They could be amnesic, or remember a false previous life before working for Ex Libris.

They would be easier to control because of this. Ex Libris could manipulate them because they would have qualities that would stop them from fitting into normal life; Ex Libris would feel like the only place they "belonged".

If the keys and their magic exists---and we've seen Violet and Buddy have a spell page---why couldn't this magic be plausible?

Now hear me out even more: Buddy used to be one of them.

I HAVE REASONS.

1. Words n stuff

Weird that Buddy only has one name, or that it doesn't seem to match the other keys.

That's---an underwhelming first point. Uh. That's all. Food for thought.

OH AND ALSO, "Ex Libris" means "from the library of". Could be referring to people who work with them being LITERALLY from books.

2. Dialogue

Perhaps this statement is more literal than we thought. Perhaps in Buddy's "home book", he was a villainous character.

Almost like all three of those phrases apply to him.

3. THE MIRRORS GUYS THE MIRRORS OH MY GOD

Buddy has been seen with plenty of mirror symbolism. Particularly in Dreams by Night:

Reflections show story characters, we know this.

But also, when Buddy escapes through the mirror (like Alice through the looking glass, in The Elephant Book)...

THE GLASS IS CURVED.

But we saw the mirror, the mirror is flat. We know the dreams are supposed to be extremely symbollic...

So what if the mirror is meant to symbolize more of a portal, from one world---a fictional world---to a real one?

...okay thats all i have for now that was kinda underwhelming.

I PROMISE IM NOT INSANE I PROMISE IM MORE COHERENT WHEN IM NOT EXHAUSTED LIKE I AM RIGHT NOW

[lilliferwashere]

YO

Okay so thank you @kitkat-the-muffin for the brain worm you planted about Buddy and Snow-White. You are 100% on to something, and I’m gonna do a deep-dive into WHY.

(No fastpass spoilers below, so don’t worry!)

In the beginning of the series, one of the first versions of Cinderella Chase jumps into is the original Brothers Grimm Cinderella, wherein the sisters cut off their toes/heels and are blinded by birds. Keeping that in mind, I figured Punko has a pretty good knowledge of fairytales (not to mention her stint as a hired Princess for parties, and “The Elephant Book,” which is very much aaaaall about fairytales and such). With this thought, I turned to my trusty book “Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales” for evidence and um.

Needless to say, I will be making references to several different fairytales from the book during this lmao

Appearance: hello, obvious, hair black as ebony skin white as snow. But also, in the fairytale “The White Bride and the Black Bride,” (horrible, I know) one of the sisters is turned “black as night and as ugly as sin” as punishment for her unkind words toward a stranger asking for directions kind of overkill imo but i digress. Who else do we know who was transformed to have skin “as black as night”???? And who also has a name that literally means “night” and “darkness” in Latin???? Yeah. Okay. Cool.

Also, the sister tries to assume the appearance of the sister who was gifted shiny gold clothes and a fair demeanor to trick others. Which is a fun parallel. Not so fun is the punishment she faces of being put in a barrel lined with nails and dragged around the kingdom by a horse, but this is the Brothers Grimm so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Mannerisms: in the tale “Snow-White and Rose-Red,” Snow-White is depicted as being introverted and preferring to read books as opposed to picking flowers and chasing butterflies like Rose-Red. At first glance, this sounds similar to him and Chase, right? Or even Nox and Silver, who literally has ROSE symbolism?

Additionally, there’s a tidbit I found that I feel like relates to the page Violet and Nox are using to (allegedly) siphon narratonin from Chase. The story of Snow-White and Rose-Red says “The children were so fond of each other that they always held each other by the hand when they went out together, and when Snow-White said, ‘We will not leave each other,’ Rose-Red answered, ‘Never, so long as we live,’ and their mother would add, ‘What one has she must share with the other.’ ”

Story: in the original tale of Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves, the poor girl was SEVEN YEARS OLD when the step-mother decided to kill her! Which is WILD, cuz like. Ma’am, that’s a child. Snow White was an innocent party who got dragged into this crazy power struggle and was almost killed 3 times by the Queen. When she finally succeeded, Snow White was placed in a coffin by the dwarves so that they could still see her cuz she didn’t seem dead, only dreaming.

(And in case you’re worried the prince kissed an actual child, don’t worry. That’s not in the og fairytale. The coffin slips while he’s moving it, and the bite of apple gets dislodged and she starts breathing again. Also it’s implied that years passed while she’s in a sort of stasis, so she’s not 7 anymore. Moving on)

We don’t know a whole lot about Buddy’s story, but I have a theory (I’ll explain at the end)

Symbolism: the Coffin! So! We all know about the glass coffin in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, but did you know that there is one story in the collection of Brothers Grimm fairytales, actually called “the Glass Coffin”? :D In it, a girl is cursed to sleep/be confined in a glass coffin until she agrees to marry an evil wizard who tricked her into thinking he was her friend. Classy, I know lol.

Now as we’ve learned, Buddy does not, as Chase says in the Greatus Hiatus, like to be put in “boxes.” How many times in the series has this poor boy been seen in a coffin? Twice. Which, sure, could be coincidence, but not likely cuz this is Punko we’re talking about lol.

ALSO! Interestingly enough, in both instances the coffins were locked shut from the outside in an effort to keep him stuck inside—meaning, he would fight to get out on his own if he could. (And no, I’m not even gonna touch the mirror symbolism cuz like. It’s there. A lot. We know this, but I feel like it definitely relates more to inco0’s theory and I can’t say that without spoilers for non-fastpassers so…)

Now, I hear you: “Holly, these are pretty cool parallels and all, but what does this even mean?”

Let me explain!

My theory is this: Nox was originally a member of Ex Libris (possibly against his will, but idk yet) and had a trusted friend, a “Rose-Red” if you will, that tricked and/or turned on him for his own gain and was involved in breaking the original villain key (or else getting Buddy to break it), directly leading to Buddy being confined and transformed into the second villain key as punishment, hence the number 2 slapped over the moon symbol on his back in Dreams By Night. Buddy 100% had something to do with cracking Silver, but I’m not sure if it was before or after he was transformed. This happening to him lines up with Grimm Fairytale logic I stated above, and leads him to where he is now: a key trying to become human again.

Lastly! When reading through Snow-White and Rose-Red, we come to the passage that led me down this very deep and extensive rabbit hole in the first place, and why I don’t believe Chase is “Rose-Red.”

HUH.

INTERESTING.

So what is this “precipice” that Buddy’s too close to?? What is it that, if he “had gone only a few paces further,” he would have FALLEN INTO THE DARKNESS???

TLDR; Buddy is very much Snow White, had a traitor “Rose-Red” friend, and his backstory is likely extremely Brothers Grimm adjacent and ties in beautifully with what we know about him thus far, and also @inc0mple is an theorist-enabler

[lilliferwashere]

A little sketch of a scene from Ch 5 of @spookieee28's Where the Sky Meets the Sea, which is like, GHIBLI tier cb fic if you haven't read it. It's so good, go read it.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62099299/chapters/162049510

[lilliferwashere]

mirror mirror in hands of Snow

where did dearest Buddy go?

[lilliferwashere]

My contribution to a little art collab thing!

[lilliferwashere]

forehead kiss. ✨

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Little forehead kiss for an art collab in the Patreon server!! I've grown very fond of drawing him like this, he's just a silly little fella 😭💖

[lilliferwashere]