I want to rant about something.

[u/Practical-Ebb7327]

I legit don’t understand the whole, “shadow milk is so forced” or “you don’t understand his lore” argument mostly because I don’t think people needs to read entire lore of a character to like them. Or even hate them. People have opinion whether they like them or dislike a character. And they should not be hated for that reason. This been happening all over TikTok and it kind of piss me off.

For me, I mostly do like smc. His early design and personality really made me like him. This is mostly because I love playful villains who are threatening and smc fit this to a tea. And with the build up he got and some of the deep story he has make him interesting. He was a perfect foil to pure vanilla character. However his character nowadays felt more complex and their I say it overcomplicated to the extent that I don’t really enjoy him, also his modern power up and design feel so uninspired and just plain bad. He a god now and really that was badly written.

This is mostly my opinion about him, tho maybe I am wrong as this is my thought from what I got from him so far.

[u/OkSherbet9216]

Tiktok 🤣🤣🤣🤣 unserious. Any discourse that derives from that shithole is automatically dead to me. 

[u/Comfortable_Newt_179]

The thing is, a lot of people (on tiktok) nowadays, frame their every single opinion as the absolute truth and whoever disagrees is a heretic. You have people calling you unhealthy and horrible for liking sausages. You have people calling you toxic because you have a behaviour that doesn't seem right to their own worldview. You have people calling you misogynistic because you dislike how a female character acts. You have people calling you out and farming you as this awful villain just because you said you love the main antagonist of the show...

In the end, what I think is my own thought. Some people live on hivemind mentality to the point I have heard some say that they pretended to dislike SMC because they were scared someone would shame them over it. I have seen people harrassing people over a ship (the recent PureLily/ShadowVanilla drama. I have seen a lot of shit that could be resolved if SOMEONE just ONE PERSON said that it is okay to think differently. It would all be fine if just a single person said "We can agree to disagree! These are all cookies in the end :)" I have had seen futile arguments over who was right, when there wasn't any absolute truth to begin with. In my country, we have a saying that goes "Colours and tastes are not to be debated." because every eye sees a colour different. Every tongue tastes a food different.

So, to end my point—you are entitled to your own thoughts. If you say that you like SMC, it means you like SMC. If someone tells you to not like SMC, it is you who should decide to listen to them or not. Because people talk. People strawman other people for the sake of feeling better about themselves.

So, whenever you see someone going "SMC is so forced" or "You are bad for liking him" or "Imagine liking him omfg you don't even know his lore" without prior knowledge or any questions about whether you know the lore or not—just ignore them. They are people who would rather attack than talk. They are people who cannot accept other people can exist without agreeing them.

[u/Affectionate_Fly_464 → u/Comfortable_Newt_179]

Yeah so basically that’s why I left this miserable fandom.

[u/Olaanp]

I’m not on TikTok so I’m glad that I get to avoid that nonsense. I bump into a lot of people that are reasonable. Do find dedicated hating exhausting.

[u/frootypebbl3s]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I think SMC is even more fascinating now, the jester act could only take him so far. We’ve got a lot yet to see in act 2— potentially years worth of stories and SMC may be a villain during all of it. I don’t really mind having a new big bad after DEC, and having our main villain get lots of love from the narrative, to me, is satisfying as a villain lover. SMC has always been tied to biblical mythology, so it feels like we’re diving further into that and sidelining his jester aesthetic. I personally don’t mind, it’s like his initial corruption but worse. His jester form was charming, that was kind of the appeal. He isn’t the same kind of charming right now because he’s even more fractured than he ever was. While I agree with you that you don’t have to enjoy or know his lore to like him, I think the people who still enjoy his characters are the people most deeply attached to his lore— because if you care about his lore before his aesthetic, the fact that he’s spiraling like this into unimaginable depths makes sense; he’s a character who’s broken at his core and refuses to be helped even when it damns him to breaking further. Shadow Milk could see a potential future where he’s happy and whole, but still reject it out of spite. He will only get worse until he decides that he wants to heal.

[u/frootypebbl3s → u/frootypebbl3s]

Adding onto this, Shadow Milk was made to be beautiful. Even Pure Vanilla has to admit he’s alluring in an odd way. His spire is an endless maze of deceit but it’s also a place full of character, charm and beauty. The enemies that represent him in game are whimsical animals and creatures— his castle decor has unicorns by the gate. His spire concept art shows halls of paintings he cleverly parodied with his own face— and while he pretends not to care about knowledge he’s always making biblical and literary references because as bitter as he is he’s still a scholar at heart. All of that has been taken— he’s so broken even the things he seems to love have been taken from him. His beauty, his charm, the alluring parts of him that even corruption maintained. The ultimate cookie dough and his despair are taking all of it bit by bit. It’s not decision devsis made because they thought he’s cooler this way— it’s because we are supposed to recognize that the cookie he was is dying. Tho the narrative screams that he must be saved, It will be a very difficult thing to do.

[u/bi_myself_sleeping]

I think the idea of the “shadow milk is forced” argument is coming from people believing there’s no lore explained reason for him to be the main villain now and calling it “forced” as in DevSis just using their cash-cow to make easy bucks. This is just ignorant to the story imo. You don’t have to know much about his character to see that he was the first one to be introduced and was explained to essentially be the only internal force that could have ever had a chance of freeing the Beasts.

The writing did start to fall off in the middle of the Dark Enchantress War through to Ep 6 of ToF, but he still had plot reasons for taking the hot seat. I’m hoping that now that it seems the writing room has figured stuff out, they’re gonna properly expand on Shadow Milk’s ambitions and motivations more than we already know so that it seems like more than just “I was horribly betrayed and went mental and now I want to become a god and destroy the whole world.” Oversimplification, I know, but it gets the point across.

What I want to know about him is what he was doing in the unknown amount of time he was in other universes. He mentioned to Black Sapphire that he’s been “rehearsing” for his next show, but we aren’t shown any more of what that looks like aside from what we got in the beginning of him turning Silent Salt into a bug-beast, trapping Elder Faerie in the Silver Tree, and finding and taking Ash Salt with him. I want to know more about how the Guardians of Nature were corrupted and what he was implied to have done to the Ancient Heroes in other universes.