#i feel so bad for custard iii. the poor lad doesn't have any idea at all the kind of sacrifices that a king must make

[o-wyrmlight]

İ need to tell someone my headcannon of ehat i think pom showed cacao hnnmfmfn

So i think pom showed how much pain cacao has caused choco and what has happened to all the other ancients (maybe altering the stuff a bit). By that i mean (this is not my actual thoughts on what happened this is just how i think the vision showcased them)

not giving cacao enough love, kinda disowning him, how much his son suffered at the cookies of darkness, how the sword controlled him

And

How the ancients forgot who they were, struggled to live, acted as total opposites of their past selves while cacao didnt had to suffer that much but he still shutted himself down selfishly, couldn't even realize a traitor treating his soliders horribly

Chapter 14 Spoilers

I personally think that it runs deeper than that. I feel like the thing that Dark Cacao became was a manifestation of all bits and pieces of his repressed self, pulled up to the surface and dragged out into the open. I think that it's a little bit of everything all at once.

About how he fought so hard to protect all of cookiekind from the creatures waiting in the Licorice Sea. About how he failed to protect his own son from himself, all because he failed to love him enough. And perhaps Dark Choco wanted to cut him down for years before that--maybe. Maybe.

About how he failed his comrades on that fateful day of the Dark Flour War and retreated within the walls of his castle. About how he languished for years upon years in his grief, perhaps filled with shame and unable to face his people directly. Perhaps he felt like he betrayed them, betrayed their trust, even though he truly was dedicating all that he had left into the one certainty he could hold onto.

That the continent would one day fall if the Wall wasn't maintained.

About his paranoia, about his repressed rage--not toward Dark Choco, but at himself. About how much his son must have suffered because of him essentially abandoning him. About how much Dark Choco must have wandered alone.

About regret. About the pain of betrayal. About...

Hurt.

I think that what we see Dark Cacao transform into is... a very literal manifestation of nothing more than his pain. Even his ability is an echo of pain and hurt--cutting down a percentage of a cookie's health, making them completely unable to heal to full, temporarily.

I feel like Pomegranate took advantage of Dark Cacao--carefully, tentatively--allowing himself to explore some of that hurt buried beneath a mountain of regret, for the sake of expressing how he felt to his son. I feel like she saw him peek inside of the door and kicked it open, and it was too much for Dark Cacao to handle. And I think that hurt.

Grief, remorse, regret... it hurts. It really does. And there's a lot of it that Dark Cacao keeps buried deep. Because as the king of a kingdom of warriors dedicated to battle...

He isn't allowed to show that hurt. He has to be strong.