Background Pony #6112
I know it’s been a year and a half since the ending. There’s a new generation of pone on the way. Why look back? I know I shouldn’t even be spending time on this, yet here I am. Mourning over the loss of my favorite character yet again. It’s time to move on.
However, I was inspired by this recent image. The image assigns types of autisms to varies characters, including Cozy Glow. And, the image reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. Originally I was just going to type a comment into that image, but I felt there was too much information, that it was best to just start a thread to make it easier to discuss. Then I put it down for a few days b/c like I said, it isn’t worth beating this dead horse. But I’m going to beat the dead horse anyway.
Enough waffling, let’s just dive into it. Let me preface by saying that every villain, we can answer if their evilness is nature or nurture. The former being their nature of course, and the latter being things that happened to them during their lives.
Discord, Queen Chrysalis, Lord Tirek, they act the way they do because that’s their nature.
Nightmare Moon, King Sombra (going off the comics), Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer, Tempest Shadow, they didn’t start off bad, but pursued evil endeavors because of things that happened in their lives. This can be its own topic, so I’ll leave it at this.
So with Cozy Glow, we literally don’t know the answer. We can speculate, but there’s no clues stated in the show to allow us to do anything but guess. It could be as simple as she had bad parents, or it could be something deeper, and more a part of her. Which brings me to my main point.
Like the person who made the image, I’ve also had the idea that maybe Cozy Glow had some kind of mental disorder, or possible autism. I don’t know if I’d pick the exact same disorder, but still, it would help explain a lot. Why would a child act so evil after all?
The reason why children with disorders in the real world sometimes get into trouble, often is because their disorders aren’t recognized, or taken seriously, and they can cause harm to themselves, or others, in incidents that in hindsight were easily predictable and obvious. Now who does that sound like? It’s a sad thing that happens, and it ties right into Cozy Glow.
The problem is that nopony in the show bothered to look beyond the surface when it came to Cozy. She acts rude and manipulative, and every character just takes that at face value. Rusty Bucket just shrugs when Cozy is crushed by a giant snowball and falls down a mountain. While admittingly a funny scene if treated as just cartoon violence, the only justification is karma, because she was so rude to him. Fine whatever, but then I realized something. Earlier Rusty literally shows off Twilight’s friendship handbook, and shows it to Cozy to justify why he won’t show her up the mountain, but apparently there’s no chapter in there about helping all creatures in need no matter what, or something to that effect. If Rusty checked on Cozy, and then she rejected him again (which admittingly probably would have happened), then he can tell her to screw off. But his meh after seeing she couldn’t potentially been killed just comes across as really rude, especially for someone who, again, claims to know so much from Twilight’s handbook.
So if nopony shows Cozy kindness, how can she be expected to learn? Sure she’s mean, so ponies are going to be mean to her back. Catch 22 is a vicious cycle, but somepony’s gotta be the one to break that cycle. Sucks that nopony wanted to be the one to do that. Not Celestia, not Starlight, not the so-called Princess of Friendship Twilight Sparkle. And not even any of the hundreds of creatures who showed up to the final battle.
This is why when people tell me that Cozy had her chance at redemption, but passed it up, I argue so adamantly that nopony in the show gave her a real chance after it was found out she was evil.
It’s always, geez, she’s so rude and evil. It’s never why did she act so evil?
After School Raze, nopony thought to look beyond the surface and ask why, and Equestria’s leaders decided to lock her up and forget about her. They’d rather put away the problem, instead of solve the problem. Not a very princess-like thing to do. Didn’t Celestia learn not to lock up baddies? She longed for her sister every day she spent on the Moon, and ultimately decided to free Discord and recruit him. But then she goes back to locking away her problems?
Anyway, they put Cozy in Tartarus, thinking she’s no longer an issue. But guess what happens! She escapes, gets ahold of Grogar’s bell, and causes even more damage!
Once that mess is cleared up, do they ask Cozy why she is the way she is then? NO! They just give her an even more severe punishment to ensure she DEFINATELY won’t cause any damage again. They seriously learn nothing after The Ending of the End, and repeat their mistake from School Raze ten fold.
Cozy never would have been recruited into Discord’s legion if Twilight had just did what she did in previous seasons, and reached out to the evil pone, find out why she’s evil, and solve her friendship problem. But they just don’t! And it’s never clearly explained what makes Cozy any different. Yes she does some of the most evil stuff in the show, plus she’s the youngest villain, and that’s all the more reason to ask why, but they never do! And look what happened! A filly turned to stone forever. She may be the villain, but she, Tirek, and Chrysalis are the real victims of all of this. No second thoughts, not trial, no discussion or anything either, they just take Discord’s advice (a creature they have no business ever trusting again), and do it. They carried out the act that ultimately ruined the show for me.
Here’s where we circle back to the main point. Capital punishment for a child who potentially has a mental disorder is an extremely touchy subject, and one that I have very strong opinions on. Everything that happens in the show, from the way Cozy secretly plans such a big catastrophe, to Equestria’s leaders not taking her seriously, to their poor decisions leading to more disasters that were easily preventable, culminating into their extremely cruel punishment to her, it all just echoes real life examples of kids with mental issues being mistreated or abused, leading to further trauma, and psychological damage. That’s why I can’t stand the ending. It’s not just mah cute filly deserved redemption. It’s more serious than that. I am simply appalled that such a scenario was depicted and handled in such an offensive and careless way.
FiM basically said that children who do bad things deserve to be tried no differently than adults doing the same crimes, which is quite the controversial subject, that I’ll leave you to decide. It also states that any character’s actions are 100% their own, again not an uncontroversial subject I won’t get into here. It undermines children who undergo traumatic experiences.
It’s my opinion that Cozy Glow had either had a traumatic past, or she has some serious mental issues that lead to her manipulative nature. Nopony ever put checks on her, which allowed her to freely manipulate herself above other ponies, culminating into something crazy dangerous, like working with Tirek to create that spell to deplete all the magic.
She needed help, but nopony gave it to her, and things only got worse from there for everypony, but especially the victim herself.
I think that’ll just about do it. I could’ve added how Cozy Glow will never grow up now, but at this point I’m just sounding like a broken record, so we’ll cut it off here. I know opinions on Cozy are split. I know a lot of people do wish she got a fair chance, in which case, I’m just being an echo chamber. But also I know a lot of people don’t like her, in which case, I doubt this’ll change the minds of anyone. So really, I’m not sure what this post is meant to accomplish. This is just me being overly negative, and I need to stop.
What do you guys think? Am I totally off base? Did I miss the mark completely? Am I over analyzing something that wasn’t meant to be analyzed this closely? Am I just a salty fanboy who needs something better to do? Or am I actually onto something? Reply with your thoughts, or ignore the post. I don’t care. This is mostly me venting anyway. If discussion does take place, I’ll try not to get involved too much for my mental health’s sake.
Bonus thoughts:
People compare Starlight and Cozy, and ask why Glimmy got a redemption arc, but Cozy didn’t. But then I realized a possible in-universe reason why. Twilight couldn’t defeat Starlight in a fight, or break the time loop. Their magics were evenly matched, and Starlight outsmarted Twilight at every turn. Turning around and reaching out to Starlight to be her friend was her only option, and it worked. Cozy Glow on the other hand is defenseless. She has no magic or anything to offer them, they have nothing to gain by talking sense into her. So after her spell is stopped, they go with the easy option and lock her up. If that’s the case, that’s screwed up how they pounce on a defenseless filly. They don’t reform her because they don’t have to. Twilight had to reform Starlight to make things right in The Cutie Remark, but Twilight has reason to help Cozy. Other than it’s her job to spread friendship or whatever.
However, I was inspired by this recent image. The image assigns types of autisms to varies characters, including Cozy Glow. And, the image reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. Originally I was just going to type a comment into that image, but I felt there was too much information, that it was best to just start a thread to make it easier to discuss. Then I put it down for a few days b/c like I said, it isn’t worth beating this dead horse. But I’m going to beat the dead horse anyway.
Enough waffling, let’s just dive into it. Let me preface by saying that every villain, we can answer if their evilness is nature or nurture. The former being their nature of course, and the latter being things that happened to them during their lives.
Discord, Queen Chrysalis, Lord Tirek, they act the way they do because that’s their nature.
Nightmare Moon, King Sombra (going off the comics), Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer, Tempest Shadow, they didn’t start off bad, but pursued evil endeavors because of things that happened in their lives. This can be its own topic, so I’ll leave it at this.
So with Cozy Glow, we literally don’t know the answer. We can speculate, but there’s no clues stated in the show to allow us to do anything but guess. It could be as simple as she had bad parents, or it could be something deeper, and more a part of her. Which brings me to my main point.
Like the person who made the image, I’ve also had the idea that maybe Cozy Glow had some kind of mental disorder, or possible autism. I don’t know if I’d pick the exact same disorder, but still, it would help explain a lot. Why would a child act so evil after all?
The reason why children with disorders in the real world sometimes get into trouble, often is because their disorders aren’t recognized, or taken seriously, and they can cause harm to themselves, or others, in incidents that in hindsight were easily predictable and obvious. Now who does that sound like? It’s a sad thing that happens, and it ties right into Cozy Glow.
The problem is that nopony in the show bothered to look beyond the surface when it came to Cozy. She acts rude and manipulative, and every character just takes that at face value. Rusty Bucket just shrugs when Cozy is crushed by a giant snowball and falls down a mountain. While admittingly a funny scene if treated as just cartoon violence, the only justification is karma, because she was so rude to him. Fine whatever, but then I realized something. Earlier Rusty literally shows off Twilight’s friendship handbook, and shows it to Cozy to justify why he won’t show her up the mountain, but apparently there’s no chapter in there about helping all creatures in need no matter what, or something to that effect. If Rusty checked on Cozy, and then she rejected him again (which admittingly probably would have happened), then he can tell her to screw off. But his meh after seeing she couldn’t potentially been killed just comes across as really rude, especially for someone who, again, claims to know so much from Twilight’s handbook.
So if nopony shows Cozy kindness, how can she be expected to learn? Sure she’s mean, so ponies are going to be mean to her back. Catch 22 is a vicious cycle, but somepony’s gotta be the one to break that cycle. Sucks that nopony wanted to be the one to do that. Not Celestia, not Starlight, not the so-called Princess of Friendship Twilight Sparkle. And not even any of the hundreds of creatures who showed up to the final battle.
This is why when people tell me that Cozy had her chance at redemption, but passed it up, I argue so adamantly that nopony in the show gave her a real chance after it was found out she was evil.
It’s always, geez, she’s so rude and evil. It’s never why did she act so evil?
After School Raze, nopony thought to look beyond the surface and ask why, and Equestria’s leaders decided to lock her up and forget about her. They’d rather put away the problem, instead of solve the problem. Not a very princess-like thing to do. Didn’t Celestia learn not to lock up baddies? She longed for her sister every day she spent on the Moon, and ultimately decided to free Discord and recruit him. But then she goes back to locking away her problems?
Anyway, they put Cozy in Tartarus, thinking she’s no longer an issue. But guess what happens! She escapes, gets ahold of Grogar’s bell, and causes even more damage!
Once that mess is cleared up, do they ask Cozy why she is the way she is then? NO! They just give her an even more severe punishment to ensure she DEFINATELY won’t cause any damage again. They seriously learn nothing after The Ending of the End, and repeat their mistake from School Raze ten fold.
Cozy never would have been recruited into Discord’s legion if Twilight had just did what she did in previous seasons, and reached out to the evil pone, find out why she’s evil, and solve her friendship problem. But they just don’t! And it’s never clearly explained what makes Cozy any different. Yes she does some of the most evil stuff in the show, plus she’s the youngest villain, and that’s all the more reason to ask why, but they never do! And look what happened! A filly turned to stone forever. She may be the villain, but she, Tirek, and Chrysalis are the real victims of all of this. No second thoughts, not trial, no discussion or anything either, they just take Discord’s advice (a creature they have no business ever trusting again), and do it. They carried out the act that ultimately ruined the show for me.
Here’s where we circle back to the main point. Capital punishment for a child who potentially has a mental disorder is an extremely touchy subject, and one that I have very strong opinions on. Everything that happens in the show, from the way Cozy secretly plans such a big catastrophe, to Equestria’s leaders not taking her seriously, to their poor decisions leading to more disasters that were easily preventable, culminating into their extremely cruel punishment to her, it all just echoes real life examples of kids with mental issues being mistreated or abused, leading to further trauma, and psychological damage. That’s why I can’t stand the ending. It’s not just mah cute filly deserved redemption. It’s more serious than that. I am simply appalled that such a scenario was depicted and handled in such an offensive and careless way.
FiM basically said that children who do bad things deserve to be tried no differently than adults doing the same crimes, which is quite the controversial subject, that I’ll leave you to decide. It also states that any character’s actions are 100% their own, again not an uncontroversial subject I won’t get into here. It undermines children who undergo traumatic experiences.
It’s my opinion that Cozy Glow had either had a traumatic past, or she has some serious mental issues that lead to her manipulative nature. Nopony ever put checks on her, which allowed her to freely manipulate herself above other ponies, culminating into something crazy dangerous, like working with Tirek to create that spell to deplete all the magic.
She needed help, but nopony gave it to her, and things only got worse from there for everypony, but especially the victim herself.
I think that’ll just about do it. I could’ve added how Cozy Glow will never grow up now, but at this point I’m just sounding like a broken record, so we’ll cut it off here. I know opinions on Cozy are split. I know a lot of people do wish she got a fair chance, in which case, I’m just being an echo chamber. But also I know a lot of people don’t like her, in which case, I doubt this’ll change the minds of anyone. So really, I’m not sure what this post is meant to accomplish. This is just me being overly negative, and I need to stop.
What do you guys think? Am I totally off base? Did I miss the mark completely? Am I over analyzing something that wasn’t meant to be analyzed this closely? Am I just a salty fanboy who needs something better to do? Or am I actually onto something? Reply with your thoughts, or ignore the post. I don’t care. This is mostly me venting anyway. If discussion does take place, I’ll try not to get involved too much for my mental health’s sake.
Bonus thoughts:
People compare Starlight and Cozy, and ask why Glimmy got a redemption arc, but Cozy didn’t. But then I realized a possible in-universe reason why. Twilight couldn’t defeat Starlight in a fight, or break the time loop. Their magics were evenly matched, and Starlight outsmarted Twilight at every turn. Turning around and reaching out to Starlight to be her friend was her only option, and it worked. Cozy Glow on the other hand is defenseless. She has no magic or anything to offer them, they have nothing to gain by talking sense into her. So after her spell is stopped, they go with the easy option and lock her up. If that’s the case, that’s screwed up how they pounce on a defenseless filly. They don’t reform her because they don’t have to. Twilight had to reform Starlight to make things right in The Cutie Remark, but Twilight has reason to help Cozy. Other than it’s her job to spread friendship or whatever.
