People Say Friends Don't Destroy One Another: Musings On "In Your Nature" · 1:58am Oct 2nd, 2023
If Cozy Glow were a normal foal, she might have cried, and if Tirek were someone besides Tirek, he might have offered comfort. But they were only who they were. Thus, the three of them stood in their awkward circle around a heap of dirt piled on a dead vermin, and nobody said anything.
It's not often I luck into a paragraph that sums up the thesis of the story, but this is undoubtedly it. This is also around the part where I seriously, seriously considered labeling this a tragedy. In the classical sense, I mean.
Redemption for Cozy Glow is far from impossible, but more importantly, it's far from impossible for Tirek and Chrysalis, too. If they wanted to, if they REALLY committed to turning their shit around, they could do it. But first they'd have to want to, and they have no reason to want to. More than that, when the temptation to turn around does come up, they dig their heels in and refuse. The problem with becoming friends in an evil partnership is that at any time for any reason, your allies may turn on you, and all of you can never forget it. Friendship needs trust, and when in a constant Mexicolt standoff, that's kind of hard to achieve. If you become friends genuinely, you've gone soft and villains will eliminate soft creatures the first chance they get. Worse, if they become friends, then to some extent, they've abandoned some part of themselves they can't get back.
At some point, someone's pride has to take a hit. Someone has to bare their throat and trust that it won't get ripped out eventually. If there's a point where that can happen, they're not there yet. Given time, given a few more chances to bond as they work together, some more common enemies to hate, they could have gotten there, I think. Still, it doesn't change where they are now, and right now, none of them are in a position to do anything but stand around awkwardly. They're still in this game of winners and losers. If Cozy cries for real, she loses because she let herself be vulnerable and becomes the weak soft laughable pony in the villain group. If Tirek feels bad, and openly SHOWS he feels bad, he loses because he's given Cozy ground and shown that he can be made to feel something for someone else, which means he can be manipulated. If Chrysalis feels bad, she loses because she's let some modicum of friendship in, and friendship changes creatures, and she will not allow that to happen. If they lose, Twilight wins. Even if she's not here, she wins. They would rather be miserable forever before letting that happen. So that's why they become statues at the end of the show.
And man, that just sucks. That is so sad.
Let me be clear: I don't care for Cozy Glow apologetics, and I especially don't care for the great goalpost shuffle that is debating her punishment (which is...just a whole other Thing that deserves an essay in itself). I don't think she's incapable of change, I don't think she popped from the caul already evil, and I certainly don't think she deserves to suffer forever. But she is absolutely, 100% a villain. Given the chance (and arguably, just being present and conscious in Equestria is a chance) she'd immediately dive right back into villainy. Cozy's not stupid, either. The kid knows what happens when cloudwalk spells stop working. She is aware of the harm she is doing and doesn't care. But whether she intends to cause harm... well, that's where it gets tricky.
I rewatched every scene Cozy is in at least five times before finishing final draft, and for a significant number of those scenes I legitimately don't know when she's lying or not. Or rather, I don't know when she's being genuine. By the end of Frenemies and onward, this shifts and we see more and more of what we can presume the "real" Cozy looks like.
...Probably. Maybe. This might be headcanon talking to an extent, but I see Cozy Glow as a pony who adapts to fit the room. If there is one constant with her character, it's that she NEEDS to be needed. Not liked. Not wanted. Needed. And if you're among villains, what they need isn't a cute cuddly little pony, so an unhinged little maniac would play much better in Grogar's lair. Is that unhinged maniac the real her? In my opinion, yeah... but she's playing it up a bit. (A lot?) Mostly for catharsis reasons, partly for evil company, and partly because that's just the energy in the room right now. Also because at the moment, like Chrysalis, she's holding onto the anchor of revenge for dear life because right now, it's the best thing she's got. In any case, the urge to be taken seriously as a peer is what drives the argument about body counts, despite the fact that Tirek is absolutely unimpressed with the concept.
On a similar note, there are several moments where I'm not sure if Tirek is trying to help in his own way, attempting to solve the problem in the fastest way possible, or just picking on Cozy because it's fun to pick on Cozy. Probably all three, just shuffled differently. (Chrysalis is pretty straightforward and means all of what she says because it's like three a.m. and she wants to go to bed and her tummy hurts too much to be fake right now.)
ADDITIONAL NOTES
- I'm a little unsure on the redemption arc side of things, but I AM absolutely team Found Family But Evil. Not a healthy family, but hey. Also, I get that we have two adults of different genders plus a kid, but I'm sorry this is not a nuclear family material. This is two siblings and a wine aunt. (On that note, somehow I decided Tirek & Cozy=Arthur & D.W. and I CANNOT overemphasize how funny that is to me.)
- Cozy says she's thirteen but that's a guesstimate. She actually doesn't know how old she is, and for all she knows she might be a year younger or older. Like, she knows her birthday, but nobody showed her the birth certificate and she's purposely been playing younger since she can remember. (Nobody likes an old orphan.) She's been going by the last time she got candles on her cake, adding one year, then telling everyone she's the youngest age they'll believe, but also been doing that so long she sort of... forgot. It's no more than a year over or under thirteen, though.
- Chrysalis is one of those characters that's hard to write the first time, but easy every other time after that. The changeling was stupidly difficult to write in rough, but in second draft, she just skipped along and wrote herself.
- My editor, SaddlesoapOpera, ponders if crashing into bookshelves ala Rainbow Dash is a Pegasus thing. I am inclined to presume it is, because it's funny. Also because Pegasus buildings are made of cloud.
- Cozy's "when the pool house burned down" incident happened at Wisteria Academy. I forget the actual date I pinned to it when I abandoned the idea of a full backstory exploration, but it's about a year after Silver Spoon gets the ballroom named after her. (No, Cozy and Silver don't know each other. Cozy was a scholarship student on a genius grant who skipped a few grades into the senior classes, so their circles were in entirely different universes. At most Cozy is vaguely aware something big shook up the juniors one winter, and Silver knows of "the chess kid".)
- I didn't have room for it anywhere, but Tirek also was going to suggest Cozy take up doing yoga with him in the mornings. (The silly Q&A session video is canon in my heart, let the guy have his hobbies.)
- The night I uploaded this story, I killed a roach in the bathroom by spraying it with soapy water. Thankfully, it chose to fall off the wall and die in the tub like a gentleman, and I repaid this kindness by deciding it was too late at night for this nonsense and went to bed. Also, I didn't want to touch a gross dead bug. I figured I'd get it tomorrow. By which I meant the day after tomorrow. Come the day after tomorrow, I found a bunch of ants chowing down on the roach and that's how I found out I had ants in the bathroom. Again. I would have been more entertained by the irony, but at the moment I was too busy using all my mental energy to touch a disgusting dead thing with my gloved and innocent hand. Anyway, the lesson is if you kill something, clean it up. Don't be like me, children.
"I mean, sure they're my friends, but--they're jackals"
--The Sopranos
Solid take on the tragedy angle.
It really could have gone a different direction. They could have had a satisfying (maybe not "happy") ending. We understand them enough to even imagine how it might have come to pass.
It didn't, though, and so left many unsatisfied.
I figure that's why there's so many attempted fix-fics and stories like yours that explore their fascinating dynamic.
Chrysalis's utter refusal to grow or adapt or change is one of the most beautiful and bizarre ironies of FiM. From the moment she sent her legion of infiltrators on a frontal assault, it's been clear that she has little to no idea what she's doing. (But that's a whole other kettle of fish.)
"That sign can't stop me because I can't read!"
"You were a star student in a school headed by Twilight Sparkle."
"And you wrote the sign in an extinct language."
And yes, this very much is a tragedy. The villain trio's fate is one of their own making. They were given every opportunity for coexistence and decided they didn't want any. Redemption requires remorse, and at best, these three felt bad because they couldn't get away with it. Externally, anyway. Showing any sincere regret beyond that would've gotten them eaten alive by the other two.
this is amazing XD
C. J. Cherryh, Cyteen (Regenesis)
What I find interesting is that they got to be Arthur and D.W. without inept bigshot parents brainlessly pitting them against one another and huffily insisting that they, despite it clearly being the case, are not the problem.
Sadly true. The fundamental problem is that they need outside help to change, and no one wants to do that, except Chrysalis when she was arguably at her most vulnerable. This was similarity true for Discord. He absolutely did not want to change until Fluttershy put in actual effort to help him. I think that's why most are angry with how they were handled. No one tried to ever reform them, or hint at doing so.
If you want to write more about them, Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle might be relevant. The personalities might be too different, but the situation of a reclusive 3-person "family of villains" against the world is similar.
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Ooh, that's an excellent suggestion. I've been meaning to read more Shirley Jackson anyway.
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Do you think people who are, let's say, "bad", always need outside help to change? I can't think at the moment of any reason to believe that. I think it's a Lutheran / Calvinist meme, in support of theology which claims that sinners are totally depraved and can't even accept grace on their own. I'd be more inclined to say the opposite--that people almost never change for the better due to the intervention of outsiders, unless that outsider is a doctor with psychoactive medicine.
(I know people whose depression was cured by antidepressants, and nobody whose depression was cured by therapy or friends or family.)
I myself changed from a fervent evangelical Baptist to a non-Christian all on my own, based on nothing but reading the Bible and recognizing that it says a lot of wrong and dumb things, and nothing with the stamp of godlike wisdom. I was at the time surrounded by Christian friends, family, and classmates. Not one person encouraged me to stop believing in Christianity.
And yet, there are many instances of people changing from good to bad owing to peer pressure and group membership. But these instances all have something in common: they are always changing from "good moral individual making their own judgements" to "mindless member of a community, now acting in the interests of that community." Even groups which claim to have a universal love for all humans--especially groups which claim to have a universal love for all humans, e.g., Christians, Muslims, French Revolutionaries, Marxists, and the Social Justice movement--end up dehumanizing everyone not in their group. There is no human instinct for group cooperation except in the face of an outgroup, so if a group welcomes people of any ethnicity, nationality, class, etc.; it must see everyone who doesn't join as a hostile outgroup.
(Buddhists and Taoists don't have an outgroup, but they don't claim to love everyone. Buddhists actually seek to escape from the "bonds" of love. They're both more nihilistic than altruistic.)
I think social pressure always has this sinister dynamic to it, because social mores can evolve only to aid in group-vs-group competition. There are only 2 powerful sources of motivations to change people: individual selection, which evolves individuals capable of getting themselves out of bad situations, and group selection, which evolve groups capable of altruism within the group, always paired with antagonism to anyone outside the group.