wow, seriously thank you all so much for the support you’ve shown this 😭 i never expected this silly little thing to receive so much attention, but i’m so glad it did. the insight some of you have brought to the conversation of her character and how she engages with the game thematically,, top notch stuff. i never would’ve considered a lot of this on my own. it’s really cool just scrolling through the replies and being able to see first hand the brilliance this game and its community has at times. if you don’t think i got something right, then im positive you’ll find a perspective you agree with somewhere here, its been a delight reading all your comments :)

edit: just wanted to clarify something, i see lily functionally like a CHILD. if you think otherwise, pop off queen. please refrain from commenting about how much you want her or whatever

I love the irony that Mrs. Gracie talked about how if you were a toy, your body would be soft and fluffy so you could hug yourself. And when she’s turned into a toy, she ends up as a hard plastic doll

The dynamic between Lily and the prototype is like a neglected daughter and a abusive father which is ironic given the fact she’s the adult and he’s the child 😭

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like Lily Lovebraid and Ms. Gracie is a whole Ship of Theseus situation.

Honestly, I really didn’t think I’d end up feeling as bad for Lily as I do now. She was a girl born from circumstances completely outside her control, from a woman who no longer existed. Ms. Gracie was as much of a monster as Harley Sawyer and the other scientists running the facility, as while the scientists robbed the children of their bodies, she tried robbing them of their minds. Notice how I said “tried” though, because while Gracie was mostly successful in making the kids lose their identities as humans, they still knew they weren’t just slaves to Playtime Co. Her condescending speech of making them believe that being a toy was their best and only outcome in life, only made the toys harbor a deep hatred for her. So it makes sense they’d hate Ms. Gracie far more than the scientists who stole their bodies, as their minds were the last piece of free will that the toys had. The toys had to pretend to be reconditioned in order to avoid further punishment and being sent to the bad toy box. After they pretended to be brainwashed, it was just a waiting game for the toys to get murderous payback on those who had wronged them and Ms. Gracie was at the top of that revenge list.

So, by the time the Hour of Joy event happened, you can see why the toys would waste no time hunting down Ms. Gracie. After all, it was her videos that aided the toys in becoming as enraged and hostile as they were (like Huggy Wuggy, Mommy Long Legs, Doey, etc.). When confronted by the toys, it’s obvious that Ms. Gracie clearly doesn’t believe any of the lessons that she was saying in her videos about the joys of being a toy. She was terrified of them and viewed them as little monsters rather than happy toys. It speaks volumes that even the Prototype was on board to turn Gracie into a toy and subject her to her own videos rather than just killing her. And as the Prototype has shown, he doesn’t hesitate to kill anyone associated with Playtime Co, regardless of whether they’re involved with the company's experiments or not. For example, he really wanted to kill Harley Sawyer for his role in turning the children into toys in the first place, but he only kept him alive because of his knowledge with the experiments. Ms. Gracie has no such use for the Prototype so you can tell he really wanted her to suffer for as long as possible for her psychological torture of the toys. So, just the knowledge alone that even the Prototype hates Ms. Gracie this much, despite likely not being subjected to her videos, should show how hated she was.

So while I believe that what happened to Ms. Gracie was horrifying, I don’t feel sorry for her as she brought that problem all on herself. However, then you have the whole aftermath of her punishment, as it ended up birthing Lily Lovebraid’s into existence. It’s one thing for a criminal to suffer for their crimes, but it’s a whole other story when an innocent person is punished for said crimes they didn’t commit. For starter’s unlike the other toys, Lily remained alone in the reconditioning room for far longer than the other toys, even after Ms. Gracie had ceased to exist. And worse, while all the toys (excluding Yarnaby) went through the same reconditioning process, they could at least recognize themselves as people and not just brainwashed toys to Playtime Co. Lily would be the exception to this as unlike the other experiments she really believes she has always been a toy and is proud of it. She doesn’t realize that her fate it supposed to be a horrifying punishment for the crimes that Ms. Gracie committed.

As a result, the original punishment for Ms. Gracie is void now, as she no longer exists at this point. Her original body and mind are gone; her vital organs were put into Lily and the non-essential parts were likely eaten by the toys. The toy’s original punishment for Lily went from “we want you to feel the same agony that we feel” to “we’re isolating you because we hate you, but we won’t tell you why”. From Lily’s perspective, she doesn’t know why this cruelty is being done to her, as she’s doing exactly as she’s been told by Ms. Gracie’s tapes. In fact, her only form of company since her creation was Ms. Gracie’s tapes, and she really cared a lot about Ms. Gracie and her lessons. She really believed that following all the rules to be a good toy would allow her to befriend and join the other toys around the factory. The sad irony is that Lily never realizes that Ms. Gracie, the woman whose tapes she was isolated with for more than a year, is also the reason she can never make friends.

She would only continue to have this false hope of making new friends even after the Prototype moved her into Sweet Street. While she got a much better living space compared to the small room she was in before, I think her new living space highlighted just how alone she really was. She now had a whole giant dollhouse and street dedicated to her, but no one at all to share it with, play with, or talk to. She’d have to come up with her own friends as inanimate toys to deal with her crippling loneliness and isolation. It’s telling that the inanimate companions that she’s attached to the most are a dead candy cat toy she uses to voice her negativity and the skeleton of Ms. Gracie whom she treats almost like a maternal figure of sorts for raising her. So is it any wonder she gets so excited at seeing the ex-employee first time? The ex-employee is one of the first living beings to show up in a decade, and Lily has good opinions of the employee as she knows the employee killed Doey, someone who Lily is heavily implied to deem as a bad toy. Something I didn’t notice is that she also barred off the entrance to her house so that we couldn’t escape, showing how desperate she is to have company. She also seemed happy to see Poppy arrive at her mansion, seeing it as her best chance to get the Prototype to come visit. It’s sad that she has to go to such lengths at all to get attention from someone who couldn’t care less about her existence, but isolation will do that to you. Even when Lily is successful in capturing the ex-employee, Poppy, and Kissy Missy, the Prototype doesn’t thank her nor even acknowledge her existence until he’s forced to from her chattering and in a hostile way.

And honestly, that’s what make’s Lily’s whole situation sad is that she was doomed to never make friends in that factory. The toys don’t hear Lily’s voice; they only hear Ms. Gracie’s voice, which they hate and fear. Even if the toys ignored Lily’s past as Ms. Gracie, the toys still wouldn’t like her because of the special privileges given to her. From the toy’s perspective, she gets a huge space fit with a giant dollhouse mansion all to herself and has food given to her by the Prototype himself. Lily’s appearance is also really clean and well taken care of compared to the other toys, who are more roughed up and damaged. She also really enjoys being a toy compared to the others who are in despair of their situations. Contrast that to another isolated toy like Miss Delight, who’s constantly starving, lives in a filthy, run-down schoolhouse, and had to live with the trauma of cannibalizing her own sisters just to survive. That’s basically just one of many horrifying situations that’s been occurring in the factory that Lily hasn’t witnessed nor does she have to fear being killed and eaten on the daily. Even the toys living in safe haven, who at least had a nice, tight-knit community, still had trouble searching for food and also had to live day to day fearing that the Prototype would kill them.

As sad as it may sound, the isolation she was already experiencing with her inanimate friends was the closest form of happiness she would ever experience. The Prototype was never going to let her leave her confinement, and even if he did the other toys would never befriend her. Not to mention it wouldn't matter because almost all of the toys at that point are feral monsters cannibalizing each other and don't care at all to form friendships. She also wouldn't have it any better in Safe Haven as the toys would recognize her as Ms. Gracie and would fear her. Doey in particular(Kevin's personality) would likely want Lily dead on sight if she were ever to seek refuge in Safe Haven. And that's not even going into The Prototypes other subordinates who also want nothing to do with her.

And I say all of this to say that this is why I find Lily to be such a tragic character. For her, the game was rigged from the start and all because of the very woman whose lessons she took to heart just for a chance to make friends with the other toys. It’s heartbreaking to see her lash out during her last moments before she meets her end. She finally met someone she believed she could trust, only for them (in her own mind) to completely destroy everything she was working towards even if it was actually the Prototype’s fault. Her final screams are heart-wrenching to hear cause it’s the sound of an innocent girl falling to her death in a world that she’s only ever known. Almost makes you wish she could’ve joined the ex-employees side so she could have had a chance to fight back against her tormentors, but by her own logic, had she done that she would’ve been a bad toy. With all this being said, I want to say this is a really great video and I hope you make more character analysis videos! This was a really fun character analysis video to watch!

TL;DR: "I feel bad for Lily for suffering at the hands of Ms. Gracie's crimes and her friendless situation. I really loved watching your video and hope to see  you make more videos like this!"

You can’t exactly blame the toys from not being able to dissociate her from Gracie. Just hearing her voice must reopen the trauma. Honestly, if the prototype haven’t isolated her, one of the toy would have likely snap and murdered her.

Something about Lily's death is that its morally ambiguous, because yes, you are killing Ms. Gracie.. But Ms. Gracie isn't the one in control, she's been pushed back as far as possible, so you're not just killing Ms. Gracie, you're killing both of them.

You’ve put a lot of my thoughts on Lily into words. The world needs more Lily Lovebraids analysis videos. She’s such a fascinating character and quickly became my favorite character in Poppy Playtime and one of my favorite character ever.

Something I really loved about Lily is how she explores both of the adult and kid perspective. As Ms. Gracie, she spoke of being soft and ideals of eternal youth and never dying, which was the secret Harley and the scientists were trying to find out through their experiments. And as Lily, she’s left angry and lonely wondering what she did wrong, what she did to deserve this, the same questions the orphans probably thought when they were transformed into toys, with Lily being broken by her own adult self’s words and cruelty.  

What’s even more tragic is her journal shows her imagining Ms. Gracie agreeing with her, of being the only one who gets and understands her in a world where all the other toys look at her like she’s a bad toy… but the fat Ms. Gracie’s final moments before Lily is born is her trying to dismiss Lily’s existence to retain her sense of self shows that the only person Lily thinks would understand her, her own ‘old self’, would probably despise her if she was still there within Lily.

It's really ironic how feelings like being soft and animal-like is the exact opposite of what Gracie becomes.

Thing is… Ms Gracie faced her karma when the other toys came knocking. She was torn apart, and forced to go through the same procedure she once championed, to manipulate the children who were turned into toys. She was forced into extensive isolation and starvation. Ms Gracie was thoroughly exterminated from her own mind. She was gone. Justice was already served.

All that remained, Lily, was essentially by all extents a completely new person. She fully succumbed to her own brainwashing, to the point that she was relegated to existing genuinely as just a toy. To Lily, that IS who she is, and it’s ALWAYS who she has been. Deep deep deep down there may still be fleeting memories of her life as Ms Gracie, but that actively gets shut out by the toy who likely believes her own memories are a form of psychosis. So she pours all her negativity into her Candy Cat “friend”, as a coping mechanism.

At the end of the day she was a tragic lost toy who couldn’t understand why everyone hated her so badly. So she clung to the only person who found use for her. Unfortunately for her, it was another person who loathed her very existence… but at least this time, he also showed her dignity by entrusting her to assist him. This clearly meant the world to someone who had been isolated, starved, ostracized, hunted, and attacked for many years (pretty much Lily’s whole life). Despite The Prototype still planning on eliminating her eventually, and regularly treating her like garbage, all that mattered to her was that he saw something in her… and she was going to fight for that, because it was the only form of kindness she had ever known as Lily. Which is heartbreaking.

"If I can't go to a Better Place, then neither can you!"
Maybe what she wanted most of all was to leave her isolation and live in paradise with the Prototype.

In my opinion, the best punishment for Mrs. Gracie would have been almost identical to the canon version, but stopping the brainwashing before her true self faded into oblivion. That way, she would remember her sins, and then the prototype would keep her as a slave, threatening that at the slightest mistake or if she disobeyed any of his orders, he would abandon her to her fate and let the toys do whatever they wanted with her.

And he also tells her that if he ever gets bored with her, he will also give her that fate.

Then we would see a Mrs. Grace experiencing the hell she deserves, constantly worried about being perfect and not losing her usefulness to save her own life.

What’s interesting about the way she treats the protagonist as if they’re a toy. It’s almost like she forgot humans even existed. She may even believe the skeleton in her bed is a toy too. To her, everything is just a toy, and being a good toy is what you should aspire to be. She fears the Bad Toy Box, which she doesn’t even use, and she’s forgotten what it really is. Whether the toys that go in are still alive is debatable but it sounds like it’s a painful place to be in. It’s possible they would grind up the toys to extract the Poppy Gel and try again with a new toy. This may explain why so many died. The bodies we see in the entrance to The Shelf may be husks that already had their Poppy Gel extracted.

When she catches the protagonist her method of dealing with them is stabbing them, with there being no trip to the Bad Toy Box. This implies she sees the Bad Toy Box like humans see the concept of Hell: the place you don’t want to be but will go to if you’re bad. To her, the Prototype is her ticket to toy Heaven, the “Better Place” she desperately yearns for. This adds a dynamic to 1006’s god complex. The Outimals even refer to him as The Judge, which is a role that gods tend to play when dealing with the dead. If Lily was allowed to leave her dollhouse she would certainly join Catnap’s cult. The sad thing is Catnap actually wanted to protect the orphans since he was once an orphan, while his “god” is experimenting on them.

The only reason I feel a little bad for Lily is because she isn’t Ms. Gracie. Yes, what was once that awful woman is in her body but Lily’s personality has completely overwritten who Ms. Gracie was.

Ms. Gracie is by all means dead, both in body and mind.

So Lily is being punished for something she can’t even remember anymore. That’s not exactly fair.

One aspect I really enjoy about her character---or rather, her circumstance---is that she's not really the only one acting like a child, because just like all the other toys, Lily IS just a child. But to see that, to separate the monster from the girl, to let go of the sins of the father, and to view her as her own person? That takes maturity, that takes emotional growth, and that takes perspective.

Something the toys just... don't have. They're trying and they're learning, but in a sense, Lily represents what Playtime did: they're ALL isolated children lashing out, trying to make sense of the world, and parroting what they learn. It's just that by interacting with more sources, you have more to build on, and a chance to grow (for good AND for bad.)

Lily's tragedy is that she's a kid being hurt by other kids for reasons she can't understand, and that they can't let go off.
I think it's so telling that Lily chases you, the player, and doesn't suddenly turn on Prototype or anyone else who actually hurt her. To her mind, they're out of reach, but she can convince herself that you're at fault... just like the toys can no longer hurt Gracie, who is now dead and out of reach, so they convince themselves that Lily is equally at fault.

You acted like a bad toy, and she should punish bad toys. She acts like Gracie, and Gracie should be punished.
It's the mindset of a child.

Lily is such a well written character and its hard not to sympathize with her.

She's a completely new person, she's more like a childish clone of gracie more than being a recreation of her. She's been isolated so long and doesn't even remember what her actual name or personality was, which most likely makes her question why none of the other toys would want to be with her and is heartbreaking knowing she isn't even Gracie anymore, she has no memory, no thought other than the videos she has watched of her old self.

Some may say she still did horrible things, yes she did, but even if you told her that, she'd be confused or either try to brush it off. Seeming by her personality in the game, she has no bits of Ms. Gracie left in her.

(I'd like to add that even in her chase scene, she acts like a child and has a complete tantrum, even what she says in her chase is kind of sad, she just wants friends and to be known as a good toy. As she said, she can't go to a better place but is still hopeful towards the prototype despite him having a strong hatred towards her)

11:16 Mommy didn't die while she pleaded for her life; she died while she pleaded not to become part of The Prototype

Considering how minuscule she is despite how much depth she has as a side-antagonist I wouldn’t feel surprised if Mob decides to bring her back in some way like Huggy and Dr Sawyer since they haven’t really had a character that blew up in popularity since the Smiling Critters in Chapter 3

My interest in Lily nearly overshadows my immense unbridled hatred of Ms. Gracie

All these little doodles of Lily are gold I adore them