I’ve been really into Cookie Run Kingdom recently. My terrible curse is that at any given time I must filter everything I do through whatever my mind decides I MUST be thinking about, so let’s talk about Self Made Boys in relation to Cookie Run! Another silly blogpost in the spirit of early April. I say self made boys because I much prefer the characters in SMB to those in TGG and I have much more fun thinking about them.

First and foremost. This is Sparkling Cookie, who is primarily a party host. Is this not the most Jay Gatsby looking piece of dough you’ve ever seen in your life. His description in game is as follows.

“This is the day! You have received an invitation to the famous Sparkling Party. Sparkling Cookie greets you personally with a dazzling smile and offers a glass of Sparkling Juice. All the guests are fascinated with his impeccable manners and looks: his boyish rolled up sleeves and bouncy bubble hair. It is going to be the best holiday party ever!“

I mean wow. Gatsby! Even aside from the looks.The blonde hair and sparkles are a must, of course, but notice also his green eyes. Ah, yes, like none other than the green light we all know and love. In terms of Self-Made Boys, there is even an alternate costume for Sparkling Cookie where he is wearing all pink and looking lovely, much like Jay’s pink shirt he wears while playing golf with Daisy, Jordan, Tom, and Nick. On the note of costumes, I find the masquerade one so utterly adorable, but it may actually be a bit too over the top for Jay. Sparkling Cookie keeps it modest other than that, though, so he’s still a good comparison.

Sparkling Cookie was the primary inspiration for this post, because I saw him and was a bit struck by just how Gatsby-esque he is. There aren’t really any cookies that particularly remind me of the other characters. I imagine if Jay were to play this game he would be really into the decoration aspect, where Nick would likely be more into the battle and optimization aspects. I could totally picture SMB Daisy and Gatsby making Nick optimize their cookie kingdoms’ resource production so that they could have enough to decorate however they please. I don’t think Jordan would play the game, because it has ridiculous in-app purchases and is a total time sink. Nick would probably not want to play at first, but I could see Jay downloading it and Nick getting into it when he finds out how bad Jay is at the optimization. They probably would share a save file, actually, because Nick wouldn’t decorate his own kingdom and it’d drive Jay mad. Maybe next week I’ll have a more serious post for you, but maybe not… I think this is just as fun and worthwhile, though. Lots of interest to be had in picturing characters in mundane situations, since it usually means they are characterized well enough that it is easy to picture them outside of their regular universe.

That’s what I think makes games like Undertale so relevant even so far after their release. The potential for fan made alternate universes that spawns from the characters being so strongly defined means the fans can think about the characters well beyond their initial parameters, which keeps the fandom alive for much longer. Undertale is pretty well known specifically FOR its AUs, actually. I do believe it is what popularized the fandom trend of creating character swap and “evil” AUs.