I definitely didn't expect them to be just grey again. Lowkey hope they're not all just grey since it'd both be kinda confusing and feel like pandering to the nostaliga for trolls.

Overall I thought it was a lovely update, a more return to form which you'd expect of a story that already had 3 returns to forms. I was halfway expecting to look around and see a more negative resception because of all the joy and whimsey, but I'm happy to know I was wrong. The Act 1 stuff was definitely interesting but I didn't feel like I needed to check in regularly to see where the story was going. Just an every now and then checkin to see what's up. But Act 2 has definitely put my interest up in a "I want to see what's going to happen" kind of way.

Continuing an old story with something that feels like an ending is always going to be hard. You have very little to work on "What's going to happen" after the "happy ending". There's very few question left unanswered, some of which might be completely uninentional, like if the author just didn't think about the plothole they made, or intentionally left something vague to give people some fun. Picking up those pieces and making sense out of them is hard, you have to essentially do as much setup as was done at the begining of the story but wtihout the creative liberty of just making everything up as you go. Which then leads to a setup phase with like 1'000'000 minefields, so most of what happens you can essentially figure out how it'll happen if you just pay attention. But the happening part still needs to happen and takes effort on its own. And I for one, am happy, the setup phase is done. And am happy, I have very little idea of what's coming up.