@Wayneponeth  
Her wanting to feed her hive there ultimately struck to the fans as sympathetic regardless.
 
She only attacked Equestria due to it has amount of love for her buggos to feed on. She pretty much said that when she first revealed herself.  
The problem is the writers didn’t bother exploring enough at all for the changelings.

@nightshroud96  
Actually, I don’t think it was ever hinted Chrysalis is sympathetic. Sure she makes a point that she has to feed her hive but her reason for that is more power to take over Equestria rather than just for the wellbeing of her subjects. If they  
had made it obvious that she has tried feeding her subjects peacefully but it didn’t work so she had to do what she did, it would’ve been sympathetic. From what I’ve seen, she only attacks Equestria because she wants Equestria. She never really shows any concern for her hive. If only they’ve actually shown how difficult it was for Changelings to gain love in Equestria before season 2 and Chrysalis had no other choice but manipulate Shining Armor. It all seems like Chrysalis wants love from Equestria because she just wants to take over Equestria to me.  
That said, if you think Chrysalis is sympathetic and deserves to be reformed. That’s fine and you’re free to think however you like. I personally don’t feel that way, plus like I said I sometimes like downright evil villains better.

@Wayneponeth  
The thing is people were pissed about how rushed the reformations were and how they were handled, not the rate itself.  
They had the right idea of Chrysalis not reforming on the spot but they screwed up by not having her reform at all.  
They tried the same with Starlight but what went wrong is her backstory, its missing vital pieces to make it remotely work.  
Its not the rate of reformations that is the problem but how the reformations were handled themselves.
 
Problem is Chrysalis’s first impression was that of a sympathetic villain, so its dumb they backtracked with they made her look evil for the sake of evil.

@Badumsquish  
That’s one of the strengths of MLP. All these monsters and mythical creatures and they still manage to put something meaningful and true to life elements into it. It’s just not all of them are perfect.
 
@nightshroud96  
Remember at the time of Chrysalis’ second appearance fans were tired of villains being reformed. I remember a lot of us didn’t like the reformation rate of MLP villains. So they probably also had to do make Chryssie unredeemable to balance things out and maybe, very possibly sate the fans at the same time. I remember how happy everyone actually was when Chrysalis finally wasn’t reformed.  
I personally think we’re too obsessed with sympathetic villains. I actually like it when we don’t know anything about a villain and the reason they do bad thing is a complete mystery. Sometimes it’s just more fun to have a downright evil villain for me. :P

@Badumsquish  
I hope so, I think she needs her chance. Besides, it’s by our power that we made Luster into a fully fleshed character than another twilight.

@Background Pony #FF61  
Pretty sure the writers still have reign on Chrysalis being sympathetic or not.  
Nightmare Moon was a sympathetic villain pretty much.

@nightshroud96  
Blame Hasbro for not allowing that, not the writers…

@Badumsquish  
So they decided to make her unsympathetic due to the thing with Shining Armor there?  
The writers sure need a smack to the head if that’s their reasoning. Many fans saw Chrysalis as sympathetic, so the writers should have went with the flow there instead of just going “Nah, lets make her unsympathetic lol”

@nightshroud96  
My theory is that she ended up being seen as far more sympathetic than they intended her to be, and so probably their motivation for changing her motives to make her unsympathetic were the way you could interpret her as having had non-consensual “relations” with Shining Armor. Which, as much as I would have much preferred her to get a portrayal as a sympathetic villain, if that was their reasoning I do at least understand that :P
 
Though, they certainly didn’t need to change that motivation of hers to make her unsympathetic. A character can have a sympathetic backstory and a noble motive and STILL be an evil, bad person. Like, Neighsay had a very valid and understandable motivation, and it didn’t stop it from being wrong or not make him repulsive. Like, instead of the whole reveal that she’s just using them, have Thorax tell the changelings that they can get the love they need by coexisting with ponies, and then have Chrysalis snap at him “I remember the last time we tried that. THEY will never accept us!” and she flees with some, but not all, of the changelings. Imply that in the past the changelings were driven to conquest because ponies wouldn’t accept them, but times are changing and Chrysalis can’t let go of her grudge and the cruelty that comes with it. It would have even foreshadowed and led into Season 8’s conflict really well, and it would sort of imply that the ponies maybe have a darkness to them which is why they NEED the Power of Friendship :D
 
@Wayneponeth  
My absolute favorite episodes are the ones that have a fantastic and adventure element to them but are still slice of life. Like, any time a monster shows up like the hydra or the chimera I really dig, the one where they’re in the comic or in Discord’s D&D world, stuff like that :D
 
@Phoenixflambe  
@Background Pony #F52A  
@Phoenixflambe  
I don’t think Luster will ever be forgotten. I think she’ll go the way of Derpy Hooves or Lyra, where she becomes established to the point that she a generally accepted personality :D

@Background Pony #F52A  
But when it does happen, can they coexist?

@Phoenixflambe  
G5 hasn’t even started yet. There’s plenty of time left.

Good to see people drawing fanart of Luster Dawn to this day. She got very popular even for 1 episode, but i’m afraid g5 would make her forgotten.

@Badumsquish  
Honestly it’s sad that this show requires an “epic superhero style good vs evil” plot when the show is always a really good slice of life series and its charm is mostly from said slice of life aspect as well. The ponies are written so well and relatable that it really is enough for them to overcome normal everyday tasks to make an episode. Their flaws are essentially what makes them so fun to watch. I actually think whatever problems their flaws bring to them actually work better than a random big bad villain they have to defeat. I guess this is what must be done in a magical and fantasy setting. It’s really ironic how a bunch of magical multi-colored ponies are so human though and that really doesn’t only apply to MLP.

@Badumsquish  
Really I just prefer if they didn’t have Chrysalis be all “Evil because evil”, she clearly struck to fans as sympathetic due to wanting to feed her hive. So its pretty aggravating the writers just went with “nah, she just a monster because monster” and then screwed her over badly with Discord’s iffy plan there..

@nightshroud96  
We don’t actually know if that’s the case. That’s just one possibility. For all we know the writers just wanted definitively evil villains with no real redeeming qualities. Such a thing does have value, like Skeletor and Megabyte are so memorable and beloved BECAUSE they’re so shallow in their motives and lack of redeeming qualities. Besides, the show does have minor villains who have a ton of redeeming qualities, like Trixie, Lightning Dust, or Neighsay: all that make them “villains” is they each had one glaring flaw and were opposing the protagonists, while they also had redeeming and even noble qualities about them long before there was any attempt to “reform” them. The show also compensates by having very flawed heroes, and having a lot of protagonists who fill roles that would normally be filled by antagonists, like the vapid self-absorbed pretty girl and the privileged rich girl and the obnoxious jock, and then giving them enough positive qualities that it makes them likable and good people in spite of it :D
 
Though, I actually consider post-reformation Discord to be a sympathetic villain. Think about it. As a “good guy” he’s actually committed far more and far worse acts of villainy than he did as a villain, and Discord is actually comparable to some depictions of Lex Luthor when you consider they both do bad things thinking it’s the right thing to do and get away with it because of their connections, power, and because the general public has no clue what they’re actually up to :P

@Badumsquish  
Its pretty bad Hasbro didn’t allowed the writers for any grey-moral area stuff such as with the villains.  
Hell, Chrysalis seems to got screwed badly due to that now that you mentioned that change there.

@nightshroud96  
I do think she would have benefited more from a backstory, but I think a big problem was their reluctance to do nuanced villains. You notice how the series has no morally gray villains, they’re either pure good or pure evil, and they even went out of their way to remove nuances from villains like how they changed Chrysalis from “I’m the changeling queen I need to find food for my subjects” to “They’re my slaves and I’m just taking advantage of them” or how they changed Starlight from “Manipulative cult leader who thinks cutie marks are bad” to “I lost a friend and was sad”. I actually wonder if they were forbidden from writing nuanced villains, like maybe they were told outright that heroes were heroes, and villains were villains, the way the old Hays Code worked. Consider too, that giving her a backstory that doesn’t give her nuance or sympathetic qualities really wouldn’t add much to her character. We already know she’s a murderous sociopath so if we learned she was an orphan because she murdered her parents that doesn’t teach us anything about the character or cast her actions in any new light, but it DOES eat up a bunch of screen-time. Alternately, any backstory that gave her depth or nuance or sympathetic qualities would cause problems because then it would mean the characters HAD to forgive and reform her, or risk looking like hypocritical jerks. Like, how bad would Twilight’s School of Friendship look if a kid who was messed up from abusive parents went to a friendship school, learned all the wrong things about friendship, and was then sent to Hell and then imprisoned in stone for all eternity, the end, series over? Like, that’s more depressing than the Mean Six’s plight to be honest. Even if they were allowed to give her a nuanced backstory, that’d probably take up a lot more time than they could allocate to Cozy. So yeah, a good backstory would have been nice, but I totally understand why they took the less-is-more approach :D
 
@Wayneponeth  
Totally, man. Like, I’ve already heard a handful of people complain in the past how the whole “If you have a sob story you’re entitled to be forgiven” thing is a pretty bad moral lesson. Adding one more probably wouldn’t help :P

@Background Pony #EF77  
While I’m on the topic of Batman, let’s not forget the OG adult character stuck in a child’s body: Mary Dahl aka Baby Doll!
 
@Badumsquish  
I actually like to associate Cozy Glow with Michael Myers, having no backstory makes the character so much more threatening and scarier. Michael in the original at least, had absolutely no reason to kill his sister. You’d think an innocent child wouldn’t do such a thing but Michael is just different which makes him scarier(we can all agree the remake ruins that aspect). I know they’re from completely different genre and with horror less is always better, but I think that still works with Cozy Glow. Besides, if Cozy had a backstory and got reformed the same way as Starlight, that would deliver a terrible message that you can be forgiven for doing terrible things just because you’re a child. Considering the target demographic for this show, that definitely wouldn’t be good.

@Badumsquish  
hehe yeah is clear XD

@Badumsquish  
Honestly its a pretty bad idea to not give her a backstory at all due to it just baffles everyone with “Why the hell is a little filly this crazy?”. Its like she’s there for the sake of “subvert expectations” or something.  
Why not just say she is an adult mare stuck as a filly due to some magic? At least it would solve the whole “but she’s a kid!” mess there.

@Background Pony #EF77  
I think the big problem too is their hands were tied in a lot of ways. Like, if they revealed she had some kind of sad backstory I think there would have been too much pressure to reform her which I really don’t think they ever wanted to do. Meanwhile, if they made her be like a monster or something like that, then it would mean letting a non-pony student into the school endangered Equestria and basically prove that Neighsay was completely right about it being dangerous to let non-ponies attend, which would have undermined the entire point of Season 8. And the whole “She’s evil because she’s an orphan” or “she’s evil because she had abusive parents” thing is a really overdone cliche, not to mention it’s a pretty mean stereotype toward people in real life who lost their parents or were abused, so maybe they didn’t want to do that either (Also, if having a perfect childhood but losing one friend once excuses stealing magic and then trying to destroy the world, then they’d basically have no choice but to reform Cozy if she was an orphan or abused). There basically wasn’t a lot of ways they could give her a backstory and still have her be a villain so I think in the end, even if it was a little unsatisfying, not giving her a backstory was probably the best direction they could have taken her in :D
 
@Wayneponeth  
Absolutely, but I wanted her jacket to be black :D

@Badumsquish  
Ironically Terry Mcginnis’ jacket is brown, but his shirt under the jacket is black, but then older Terry’s jacket is black . :P

@Badumsquish  
The first time i saw the season 8 finale i thought cozy glow was like leena from the orphan a adult that looks like a kid

@Background Pony #7527  
Unfortunately, no. When my old computer died, this was one of two images I didn’t have backed up. Now, I always copy the finished pictures over to my phone just in case, but I lost the unflattened version of this and one other image I’ve yet to upload. Everything else of course was saved since I had backups :P
 
@nightshroud96  
Definitely a fight XD
 
@NLTLF  
@Background Pony #F52A  
Maybe, but I would rather have Luster Dawn not be another Twilight and have some core differences in her beliefs and how she acts. It might even be part of why she’s Twilight’s apprentice, like Twilight’s trying to teach her to be more optimistic about the power of friendship while Luster is more cynical about it :D
 
It’s why I headcanon her as being Trixie and Sunburst’s daughter, as they’re two intelligent but magically unimpressive unicorns who have had to work pretty hard to get where they are instead of falling into roles because they’re gifted magically. So I imagine Luster would have average at best magical power, and be resourceful and calculating with maybe even a bit of a dark side from her parents flaws. Perhaps she’d be contumelious and insolent towards those who were born lucky with power, seeing them as privileged and who didn’t have to work for what they have, and she’d probably feel a bit self-important about being Twilight’s apprentice as she’d probably believe she earned that role since, after all, “she works hard.” :D
 
So I imagine a person like that would have a notoriously low opinion of people who used power to lash out at others. Her thought process probably wouldn’t go beyond that. She’d see them as morons who were squandering their power, and as immoral bastards who believed their power gave them the moral right to mistreat those who didn’t have the power to fight back. I feel like a person like that would be flippant at best to a sob story and she’d just brush it off as them making an excuse. ESPECIALLY when the sob story is coming from the mouth of someone whose a manipulative liar who will say anything to trick someone into helping her out :P
 
@isrrael120  
It’s a direct rip from Agents of Shield, where a villain tries to pull the whole “I’m going to have my revenge on you because you screwed me over years ago” and Phil Coulson basically just brushes it off like “Dude I don’t even know you, but cool story bro” XD
 
@Dirty Bit  
It’s like an “OK, villain” XD
 
@Background Pony #EF77  
@Dirty Bit  
All things considered, I’m glad we didn’t get one in canon. If they were going to give her one, it needed to be during season 8 so it could have been built upon and added up to a reformation or a beyond-redemption kind of thing. As much as I did want her to have some kind of backstory, I really don’t think it would have improved her character and there definitely is something just unsettlingly creepy about a child being that sadistic and manipulative. It’s the same reason why The Joker is so fascinating, I think :D
 
@Salamenace  
@Dirty Bit  
After all, when your opponent outmatches you power-wise, your best bet is to outsmart them, get inside their head, and keep them from thinking straight :D
 
@Wayneponeth  
It’s why I gave her the shiny black coat, to be analogous to the Batsuit Beyond :D
 
@FredMSloniker  
The Federal Research Information and Enemy Neutralization Department :D
 
@Background Pony #EF77  
:D
 
@Background Pony #2152  
Poor Lustie D:

@Wayneponeth  
And Chrysalis is Poison Ivy.