silly sanrio darkmilk doodles

today’s Valentine’s Day? Wow what a coincidence lol

was listening to a song and ended up drawing darkmilk as cats lol

Ok I’m going to rip off the bandage and talk about the age gap discourse surrounding DarkMilk

I’m going to preface this with a few disclaimers

1. The post is mainly going to center around Dark Choco as a character because there is (unsurprisingly) more to be said about Dark Choco Cookie from what I’ve gathered. (Edit: There was a lot more to be said.)

2. This post isn’t here to force you to change your interpretation or have your take away from this post as “I have to see Dark Choco as this age” or “DarkMilk’s age gap is [insert said range]”. Rather, it’s me presenting an interpretation with an analysis of the game. But nothing about their ages is explicitly confirmed or denied so I could be wrong. You could be wrong too. None of us are the writers.

3. Around half of this post relies on analyzing the Korean names of Dark Choco and Milk. As seen in my pinned post, I’m not Korean so I ran this post through with a mutual who is. That being said, that doesn’t mean this post is immediately 100% right so please correct this post if needed. (To the mutual in question, thank you so much for the help I really mean it.)

A while ago, I found a tweet and then a conversation under it between two users about young prince dark choco’s age based on his name is written in Korean: 어린 왕자.

It’s stated as such on the wiki for Cookie Run Ovenbreak (italicized because we’ll get to this in a bit) but here’s a screenshot in game

There’s two things to note with 어린 왕자

1) 어리다 means young but significantly so (as in the age of the person numerically is small, and thus they can be easily recognized as a child).

2) 어린 왕자 is apparently also the official Korean title for the book The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Named as such for the young boy dubbed as the little prince and also yeah I’ve never read this book… else I’d have a segment in this post in speculating why this is the case)

Out of curiosity (and also because I hate missing or getting info wrong), I checked the Cookie Run (for Ovenbreak) wiki to confirm that’s how Young Prince was written. And then I rewatched the CRK Dark Mode cutscenes.

Turns out they changed the way they refer to Young Prince Dark Choco: 어린 왕자 다크초코 쿠키-> 젊은 시절의 다크초코 쿠키

Notable changes are:

1) For starters, 젊은 시절의 다크초코 쿠키 directly translates to “Dark Choco Cookie of Youth”. Note that the word prince was added in the English localization and is not included in the original text.

2) 젊다 is a different word that also means young. Specifically, it refers to being young in thought or action. However, it’s not the same type of young (think like how you would treat a baby/toddler vs. how you’d treat an older teen. With a baby, they’ve just started living and thus know very little about how things and people work. It’s cute at times and annoying at other times. On the other hand, teenagers are still children but they’ve lived much longer than babies, so you expect them to be more mature/responsible than a 5 year old). Also unlike 어리다, 젊다 can be used to describe anyone that’s younger than you and doesn’t really suggest a certain age range because it depends on the speaker and the person they’re referring to.

The big question that can be taken away from this is:

1) Why the change from 어리다 -> 젊다 ?

Disclaimer: I’m not Devsisters so I can really only make guesses but here’s the take we ended up with.

The writers for CRK realized that using the word 어리다 ended up making Young Prince Dark Choco seem younger than he should be, and that 젊다 was a more reasonable choice to properly depict Dark Choco’s age.

Something interesting that was brought up in addition to this point while this section was being checked over is that 어린 왕자 다크초코 쿠키 makes Young Prince Dark Choco sound like he’s a naive little boy who doesn’t know anything about the world because he is too young while 젊은 시절의 다크초코 쿠키 makes him sound like he’s a proper aged man who went through lots of things to obtain many achievements.

I’d also like to point out that they also haven’t changed the way they refer to Young Prince Dark Choco in CROB. It’s still 어린 왕자 다크초코 쿠키 (and I took the screenshot yesterday as of writing this to double check). And both CRK and CROB are treated as mainline games (but probably alternate universes) that are no more canon than the other.

If you ask me what this possibly means, I really don’t have an answer LOL

“So if they aged Young Prince Dark Choco up in CRK, how much older is he supposed to be compared to? Is it possible they aged him up to be an adult?”

The answer to these questions can be found on a specific post posted on March 25th, 2022 by @ gingerbrave_dev on instagram (and @ GingerBrave_Dev on twitter). Gingerbrave_dev is one of the official Cookie Run accounts.

It’s a collage of 4 pictures that depict Dark Choco Cookie growing up. The caption on both Instagram and Twitter is the same which reads as follows:

The important thing here is that Young Prince Dark Choco is *included* in this collage which is said by an official Cookie Run account to be a depiction of his childhood.

Meaning that it’s more likely that if there’s a possible cutoff for Young Prince Dark Choco’s age, the oldest Young Prince Dark Choco could be is 18. (The age range for adolescence, the last stage of child development, is between 13 - 18). But because they include Young Prince Dark Choco in this post, I personally think that Young Prince Dark Choco isn’t meant to be an adult overall.

(Ok quick edit: Adolescence is apparently the transitionary stage between childhood and adulthood but tbh I’m not sure if most people sit down and double check that every exact piece of info aligns with the correct word and definition when designing a character).

And that’s pretty much all I have on official statements and canon that directly (not really) talks about Young Prince Dark Choco’s age.

However, I want to shift the focus from discussing directly about what his age is to why I personally read Young Prince Dark Choco more as a teenager.

When I first saw Young Prince Dark Choco back in 2019, what stuck out to me was the stark contrast between this past version of Dark Choco and his current self. Young Prince Dark Choco is so much more hopeful and driven compared to his current self. He exudes a lot more confidence based on his lines and his main goal in CROB is to save his kingdom by gaining more power. We get the implications from how pessimistic current Dark Choco is that his own actions (obtaining the Strawberry Jam sword) leads to his kingdom’s downfall and he regrets those actions from his past.

For me, that was how I originally concluded he was a teenager. And honestly, I never really reflected about the actual reasoning until we started having this discourse 2 years later because the headcanon just seemed really natural to me.

Fast forward to January/February 2021 with the release of Cookie Run Kingdom, which ended up giving us a lot more lore on Dark Choco. There are two things that are relevant to my proposition of Dark Choco being a teenager.

1) The CRK Artbook

First released during the game’s release, it contains concept art of the world building and the characters (playable characters at the start of the game + ancients + legendaries), who get their own page or two to themselves.

I’m pulling this image off the internet because the one thing that stands out to me and that is also relevant to what we’re talking about is that the current Dark Choco presents more similarly to when he was a child (they’re both quiet and hold serious expressions on their faces).

Meaning that Young Prince Dark Choco is confirmed to not be Dark Choco’s original personality (for lack of better words. I don’t know how to word this better). And seeing Dark Choco and Dark Cacao standing next to each other, you can see how much they resemble each other. Like father, like son.

So the question is: why is Young Prince Dark Choco’s demeanor completely different from when he was younger?

Personally, I think the answer is much more simple than one might think: Young prince Dark Choco was a teenager. More specifically (and this is how I’ll segueway into the next section), Young Prince Dark Choco was an earnest teenager prince who began to question and challenge the traditions/structure of the Dark Cacao Kingdom and of his father.

2) Dark Choco, Dark Cacao, and the Generational Divide that Drives Them Apart

The release of Dark Mode would bring both a lot more long-awaited lore for Dark Choco, and also Dark Cacao Cookie, who piqued people’s interest especially since he is Dark Choco’s father.

The most significant moments happen through the magic-induced flashbacks Dark Choco is forced to relive through, where Young Prince Dark Choco interacts with multiple people. This includes his Dark Cacao, who is the only person to have two separate flashbacks.

The first flashback is a conversation between Dark Choco and Dark Cacao which will be posted below:

What Dark Choco says here stands out to me: “Our Kingdom is in need of change…! We can’t keep hiding behind our walls!

The Dark Cacao Kingdom’s walls is a major subject of Chapters 13 and 14, as one of the main conflicts in that chapter is between the people and Dark Cacao. The villagers outside the kingdom’s walls have been struggling with food shortages and attacks from wild animals. They’ve been trying to contact the king for help but Affogato intercepts and closes the door on them before they can. Meanwhile, most of the resources are being used on maintaining the kingdom’s walls, which causes a change in the portion of the food Dark Cacao’s subjects are receiving. Affogato takes advantages of this to try to cause dissent among Dark Cacao’s court, which was his original plan until the Cookies of Darkness show up.

What’s revealed about why Dark Cacao spends so much time and resources on maintaining the kingdom’s walls is that the walls serve as a safeguard against the Licorice monsters in the Licorice Sea from overtaking the land and eventually the entire world. We get to see a great example of this as Licorice Cookie summons a gigantic Licorice Monster that proceeds to break down a significant portion of the walls.

So from what we read in chapters 13 and 14, we can conclude that the walls is very necessary in protecting the Dark Cacao Kingdom and the Licorice Monsters are nothing to be laughed at. They’re formidable enemies.

It’s very likely from the way that the walls are Dark Cacao’s #1 priority rather than directly addressing whatever is happening with the villages outside the walls that Dark Cacao probably has had previous firsthand experience with the Licorice Monsters and consider them that much of a serious threat.

From the way Young Prince Dark Choco talks to Dark Cacao in the flashback, it sounds like he doesn’t share the same perspective as Dark Cacao.

This is why I think Young Prince Dark Choco being a teenager is a major factor into this difference of perspective.

The thing about teenagers is that during that stage of life, they are going through a lot or at least they think they’re going through a lot because that’s when puberty starts to kick in and the hormones start jumping over the place.

They start questioning their identity. Who they are, what they want to be, what their role is in society. They’re trying to figure out how to be their own person.

They can start questioning the rules. Why am I doing [insert here] ? Why doesn’t Mom and Dad let me do this and that? Why do I have to do this? And because of this, they can become defiant and challenge authority and even what they previously just accepted as fact.

Because of this, teenagers take risks and can make bad or stupid decisions all the time. They end up clashing more with their parents because their parents recognize that their kid will regret what they’re doing later due to the consequences their kid will have to face (and possibly even due to firsthand experience when they themselves were teenagers).

I think all of this applies to this particular flashback.

a) Questioning

Young Prince Dark Choco argues that the kingdom, and by extension, the way Dark Cacao runs it needs to change. He describes kingdom’s walls not as defense, but as a means to hide, which frames the amount of time that the people of the Dark Cacao Kingdom have been living behind as a sign of fear/cowardice. This is also in response to Dark Cacao telling him that he’s still young and has a lot to learn. The flashback seems to throw us, the reader, right into the middle of the conversation without any previous context but with Dark Choco’s response, I think the conversation they were having is overall related to Young Prince Dark Choco’s response.

b) Identity

Something to keep in mind that every person is unique and how they grow up is largely influenced by their environment (the family and friends around them, their socioeconomic status, etc).

Young Prince Dark Choco is not your average human being Cookie. He is the son of Dark Cacao, who is the one of the most powerful cookies in the entire cast outside of the legendaries and the dragons, a warrior known for his abnormal strength (the sword he uses takes 3 regular cookies to carry it) and heroic deeds (like splitting the White and Black Dragon which is treated like a legendary tale), and due to all of the previous, an esteemed king beloved by all of his subjects.

By being the son of Dark Cacao and therefore, the prince of the Dark Cacao Kingdom, Young Prince Dark Choco had a whole legacy to live up to. And although we know Young Prince Dark Choco ends up not being able to live to that legacy due to the Strawberry Jam Sword, we do know from other characters that Dark Choco at that time was doing really well.

Note that if Caramel Arrow, the First Watcher, says that Dark Choco Cookie taught her how to use the bow, then that means that he is most likely also exemplary not with just swordsmanship but also archery as well.

Also don’t forget about how Dark Choco saves the Milk Village from a pack of cream wolves, which leaves a great impression on the Milk Cookie we know.

For the most part, I think Young Prince Dark Choco cares about the people and the kingdom he lives in. He seems very earnest in wanting to help his kingdom from what can be seen in his costume lines in CROB.

But I also think there’s one more underlying possibility behind Young Prince Dark Choco’s character: Young Prince Dark Choco wants to be a hero like his own father because he wants his father’s approval.

In Chapter 14. Dark Choco and Dark Cacao have a very heated conversation right before they try to kill each other. In this conversation, Dark Choco talks about the grievances he’s held against his father over the many years since he was banished. One of the grievances that he mentions is about how he wishes his father cared about him more.

(Note: There’s been issues with the ENG dub for Ch 13 and 14 where the localization makes Dark Choco come off as harsher and more insensitive (so to speak) even if it’s not accurate to the original text.

For the first screenshot, a more accurate translation would be “Ever since I was little, you didn’t give me anything sweet and treated me harshly. We were not even close as father and son like other people.”

Second screenshot is fine.)

This is later acknowledged by Dark Cacao himself as who says after they finish their heated conversation, fight, and finish their sword fight with Dark Cacao defeating Dark Choco: “It is clear as day now… My life’s greatest regret is that I never gave you enough… love”. (And this acknowledgment and really the confrontations leading up to the acknowledgment is the key to Dark Choco finally being able to break away from the sword, but that’s an analysis for another day).

There’s also these illustrations from the art book that stand out to me in this regard (and also makes me depressed). The first illustration showcases young Dark Choco walking behind his father and in his shadow. It actually gets redrawn in a different perspective in the collage of Dark Choco’s childhood I showed earlier, where it adds the detail of young Dark Choco tugging at Dark Cacao’s cloak. In the second illustration, Dark Choco is holding onto the Strawberry Jam sword and staring down at Dark Cacao, who is seated and bent over.

The thing that stays consistent is that Dark Cacao’s back is turned towards him, and I think this represents both this distance in their relationship and Dark Choco’s inability to ever connect with Dark Cacao very well.

I think the combination of his accomplishments during this part of his life and his desire to be closer to his father and gain his approval causes Dark Choco to start both overestimating his abilities and coming to the wrong conclusions. And I don’t necessarily mean this as “Dark Choco became arrogant” because even Dark Cacao says it himself: “What a bright and responsible child he was… Kind, humble…”

But I do believe the reason Young Prince Dark Choco’s costume lines in CROB and the monologue Dark Choco gives after he decides to quit working for Dark Enchantress talks about power and how he was looking for it is because Young Prince Dark Choco wrongly assumed that the kingdom’s problems were a result of not having enough power and then concluded that he could solve those issues if he found a way to become more powerful.

And with what I talked about earlier about how Dark Cacao most likely considers the Licorice Monsters a serious threat that can’t instead just be simply dealt and done with, there’s a chance that Dark Choco not only overestimates his own abilities but also underestimates how powerful and dangerous the Licorice Monsters are because he’s likely never had any firsthand experience with them in his lifetime unlike Dark Cacao.

And my guess is that Dark Cacao noticed this and tried to advise Dark Choco against this conclusion, and that’s what at the root of the first flashback between Young Prince Dark Choco and Dark Cacao.

3) Defiance

Unfortunately, the last two sections I’ve just talked about ends up leading to what we know ends up happening to Dark Choco. He does not listen to Dark Cacao. He finds the Strawberry Jam Sword, believing that it’ll give him the power he needs to solve his problems. Instead he falls prey to what the sword whispers to him, and this results in slashing his father in the chest. This results in Dark Cacao banishing Dark Choco from entering the Dark Cacao Kingdom.

TDLR for this section: The difference in the years of experience between Dark Choco and Dark Cacao causes a major clash between them on how to tackle the Dark Cacao Kingdom’s current issues. Out of both an earnest desire to help the Kingdom he grew up in and the people he grew up with and cares about and a desire to gain his father’s approval by striving to be the type of hero his father is, Dark Choco looks for the Strawberry Sword and falls victim to its powers, which heavily damages the relationship between father and son all the way until Chapter 14 of CRK.

You’ve probably reached this part still absorbing a bunch of information and speculation I’ve thrown at you. Unfortunately, I still have to talk about Milk so yes the post somehow still isn’t over. Luckily or unluckily (depending on how you interpret it), there’s a lot less stuff I can really say about his age, and there won’t be a very extensive character analysis like there is with Dark Choco because Milk Cookie does not have nearly the amount of lore or dedicated writing as Dark Choco does.

Milk in the Dark Mode flashbacks in CRK is referred to as 우유 일족의 어린 쿠키 which translates to Young Cookie of the Milk Tribe. As you can see, the word 어리다 is used to refer to Milk, indicating that Milk Cookie was definitely a child. He’s nowhere close to being an adult.

Unlike with Dark Choco, there really aren’t any other details in his backstory that really suggest a certain age range. The most prominent characteristics about Milk Cookie is that he is strongly attached to his beliefs, and within those beliefs is the belief that Dark Choco is an infallible hero that stems from what happened in the past. The root of that belief is admiration, and admiration… isn’t an age-specific trait. You can look up to many types of people and have role models at any point of your life.

I think really the one thing that does get indicated is that Milk is undeniably younger than Dark Choco.

The first image is the concept art for Milk Cookie that was released around Milk Cookie’s release (I assume. I didn’t see this until 2-3 years later). The second image is from the background of Milk’s doctor costume’s gacha art in CROB.

I think that stands out to me the most is that after staring at it, both of these share a pretty similar height gap between them. However, the second photo makes both of them seem taller especially Milk because of Dark Choco’s legs, which are almost half of his body, gets cut off by the photo. The first image also makes Dark Choco seem a lot bigger because of how it’s sketched out (the shoulder pads and cloak end up making Dark Choco look a lot bigger than he actually is in general LOL).

If you asked me to try to gauge the age gap between these two photos, the only thing I’d tell you really is that there’s no way it’s a 10-15 year age gap; height gap is way too short for that. But I can’t tell you a definitive guess because I’m going to be honest: Cookie Run does not do a great job telling you the ages of characters and just leaves it up to the reader to interpret themselves. There’s not really a standard for what a teenager looks like in Cookie Run, and I feel like that’s the reason why people in this fandom really sort characters into either children or adults. It’s because of this that I also think that nobody in the fandom really knows how to determine that themselves, or else I wouldn’t have written a whole analysis on why I think it’s actually reasonable to see Dark Choco as a teenager in this post. (And there’s also a few other characters that have also gone through age discourse but I don’t want to even touch that right now at all LOL).

(Edit at 12:22 pm because I feel like I need to add this: It’s not the fandom’s fault for not being able to determine ages. It’s solely on Devsisters alone because if the writers aren’t clear, then it’s much harder for the fandom to agree upon anything.)

I also think that realistically you can’t really… come up with an infallible standard for how tall a person is supposed to be at a certain age because people grow up differently depending on multiple factors. People of the same age group aren’t all the same height or weight in real life.

And it’s even more difficult to tell literally anything if the writers refuse to actually confirm anything clearly and instead use vague descriptive terms.

That being said, I can’t actually point at you and say you’re wrong because of what age gap you give to Milk and Dark Choco because as I said in the beginning of this post, I don’t know anything. I also think it does go both ways though, and less people should stop acting like their interpretation has been completely canonized.

But at the end of the day, we’ll keep reading the same stories from the same franchise and interpret how we want to. I HC DarkMilk with a two year age gap. You don’t have to agree (and I bet a lot of people don’t LOL). And that’s okay.

If you ask me whether I’ll make another post talking about this topic, the answer is an absolute resounding no because I think this is the most in-depth I could possibly be about this topic to the point this is definitely my longest post ever. I don’t think there is anything else I can say.

If you liked this analysis, you don’t need to do anything. If you’re extremely tired from reading this, this is the most understandable reaction to this post, and I hope you have a good day.

honestly I think the fandom makes assumptions with darkmilk that aren’t necessarily true

(and I’m now mostly saying this because I have been in other fandoms where I have encountered literally the same type of pairing as darkmilk and more people there are literally accepting so at this now I’m slowly dying inside for all the mental spirals I’ve gone through over the past two years)

I think darkmilk suffers from milk having 0 relevancy whatsoever so they haven’t bothered to actually write him as a full fledged character and just has the one quirk of “oh he really wants to find dark choco and he is very much a big fan.” So I think that’s why people end up making assumptions about milk cookie, especially about that one character trait, that isn’t very accurate

(ex. milk cookie would stalk dark choco cookie <- kind of bonkers when his original goal in CROB was to find dark choco cookie but after meeting Mala Sauce and finding out what’s happening, he’s the one to propose to help Mala Sauce while Purple Yam only wants to focus on finding Dark Choco. Meaning Milk was very willing to sidetrack to help someone )

This also applies to Darkmilk as well. One of the biggest assumptions is that Milk would not be able to let the past be the past, and Dark Choco would be really uncomfortable with Milk due to this (and that of his association to the past).

I’m not really here to debunk the first half because truth be told, I don’t know what Darkmilk’s dynamic would be like. I don’t know how Milk would react. None of us do. And it’s kind of the #1 thing I hate the most because people tend to just… assume darkmilk has to turn out completely awful no matter what even when nothing has happened at all. And it’s frustrating to me because 1) I feel like my thoughts and my voice and my story gets completely shut down (and it’s even worse because I honestly don’t think I agree with most people in this fandom about them anyways sooo…)

1.5) that assumption has been used for the past two years for people to hate on the pairing and honestly after I’ve kind of drifted away from cookie run and found other pairings like darkmilk? I’m just tired.

However, I am going to debunk “Dark Choco would be really uncomfortable with Milk” because the game actually kind of says otherwise through the Young Prince Ch 14 portrait (probably the best thing and only thing I’ll get because at this rate I’ll be dead before I get anything else)

Here’s the entire conversation between Dark Choco and Milk Cookie for reference as you read but here’s a recap to segueway into my point: Milk and Dark Choco are in front of the portrait. Milk starts talking about how the portrait inspired Milk to be the type of person and at the end of it, he calls Dark Choco a hero. In response, Dark Choco tells Milk he’s not a hero but also proceeds to thank him.

I’ve already written an analysis on this cutscene already and why Dark Choco responds the way he does but there’s something I realized and was reminded of when I found a different follow up analysis (that I’ll link a bit later) which is that actually this conversation between Dark Choco and Milk goes much better than what I or probably anyone else expected.

My initial expectation was that oh Dark Choco would have probably just said nothing or he would actually express clear discomfort from being around Milk. That’s what I was reminded of.

However, I realized while I was rereading that the last time Dark Choco has technically seen Milk was through a flashback during that Dark Mode scene. He was forced to rewatch his past memories and relive him slashing his father through Pomegranate’s magic. And because of that, he had a mental breakdown (more specifically it triggered his PTSD).

The most realistic expectation and conclusion based on what the game has provided us up to the release of Ch. 14 would be Dark Choco shouldn’t have even been standing in that room not just because Milk is there but because the Young Prince Portrait is hanged up on the wall and he’s standing in that very room. And don’t try to tell me “Oh what if Milk dragged him-“ Dark Choco wouldn’t be a pushover over his own trauma just because some guy he saved whatever amount of years ago really wanted to see it. He doesn’t hesitate to say how it is (and you can see that by how he immediately corrects milk when Milk calls him a hero.)

But if he wouldn’t want to or wouldn’t be comfortable in that very room, why is he there now with Milk? My answer to this which is more of a theory is that this portrait conversation takes place at an unknown time in the future where Dark Choco had already started to heal and most likely was able to make peace with however amounts of his past.

A point in time where Dark Choco willingly makes the choice to stand in front of the portrait and acknowledge that it still exists. The portrait still exists. The past can’t be erased but they have healed and can now acknowledge it without breaking down. I think the same thing goes for being in the same room as Milk. Remembering how he saved Milk was part of the flashbacks in Dark Mode. So realistically if he wasn’t ready, Dark Choco would just be avoiding him and probably wouldn’t have visited this room in the first place.

But yet there he is in the same room as Milk. Looking at the same portrait of himself with Milk and talking about it with him. The energy in the room is awkward and tbh that’s probably expected but if Dark Choco had truly been uncomfortable with Milk he would have left the room already and he certainly wouldn’t have thanked him for what Milk said.

I don’t actually know how to end this post. I’ll just throw in that Milk could be like 5x worse with his admiration but he’s not and he’s also *mild* when put next to the other two non cookie run pairings that’s been in my head recently and yet both of those pairings literally get development with them acknowledging aspects of their relationship and what they want out of it while *also still exhibiting the same intense admiration*. And they’ve been more accepted by their fandoms than darkmilk so like… I’ll just stare at my ceiling

the fact that they have matching super epic costumes and they’re wearing the other’s usual hairstyle gives me enormous joy

silly edit I made in a minute (like 3 hours ago)

[doodle] 🧸

trip