Prithee and well met, thou tempestuous witch of storms, to alight so delicately upon the jet streams of the cerulean sky. Welcome to Spirit Airlines.
First place in the 2021 Everfree Northwest Iron Author contest
After an unknowable amount of time sealed inside a prison of magical stone, Cozy Glow finally escapes. The hapless young Princess who freed her, intent on allying with the "Frozen Foal" to oppose her family's tyrannical rule, doesn't have any idea how dramatically her plans are about to go awry.
And neither, it turns out, does Cozy Glow.
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Such a sad ending. I kinda wonder what happened to Cozy Glow because she has some serious issues.
You call this an “Iron Author” winner, when Cozy Glowzy is clearly turning into stone. Care to comment? No? Of course not. Coward. Checkmate, liberal.
Damn, I can see why this won.
10950115 wow I can't believe it ive been owned and my life is Over I will re-tire into the woods and shit in a Hole and then go inside of the Hole and slowley die in my own shit
10950115 I went bald at the age of nine, and am smooth as a newborn dolphin. How dare you speak to me in such degrading terms. Father will hear of this.
While I do not believe that Cozy is as hopeless as this story depicts her as, it is still well-written for what it is, although perhaps next time it would be smarter to give Cozy time to remember the previous attempts before trying to pull another Discord on her.
10950129
Geez, "Frozen" is just the story title. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go...
Lovely story, I enjoyed hearing it at EFNW.
Loved hearing you read this live and it's just as good the second time around. Awesome job hon, congrats on a well-deserved win \o/
Hey Cozy!
knock
knock
knock knock
knock
🎵Do you wanna build a stonemare~?
a burst of light, a hole in her brain, and then tightness and darkness once more.
How can she change, if all the previous attempts get blocked, putting her right back to the day she was first turned to stone?
Next time, Flurry, let her KEEP her memories so she can actually learn from her mistakes.
10950262
Locking her memories also prevents her from learning her way out. Perhaps next time she would play along with her rescuer or her therapist or whoever, until she has a more guaranteed method of escaping stoning.
She can't learn from her failures, and that is both good and bad.
Daaaaaayum. I can see why this won. Great job!
10950262
By erasing her memories, the ponies can try multiple different methods to get Cozy to stop being evil, some methods even contradicting each other (Flurry pretending to want to start a revolution would not work if Cozy remembered all the other attempts to "reform" her). Also, letting her keep her memories runs the risk of her figuring out how to manipulate everyone and gain freedom to attempt another takeover.
So... petrification is basically resetting her every time?
Did she really, though? The previous paragraph seems to imply otherwise.
I gotta echo 10950262's sentiments here. This attempt at reformation really doesn't sit right with me. Flurry says that they've tried everything, but putting her back in stone (thereby resetting her back to her villainous mindset) at the first sign of backstabbery feels like she's giving up way too soon.
That was charming, breezy, and villainous. Thank you and congratulations.
10950032
Own the ponies with facts and logic.
Congratulations on winning the Iron Author contest. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to you read it last Sunday at EFNW.
10950032
Stone OBVIOUSLY imbued with iron throughout its entire makeup. Also, its iron AUTHOR, not iron SUBJECT you pretentious wankdoodle
Also ALSO you have some megucas to write you fucking lazy jackass go do that instead~~~~~11111eleven
Interesting characters in a non boring scene. Exciting twist even. More than technically competent.
I think this would resonate better if Cozy wasn't a child. I know I am supposed to suspend my disbelief and not bog down a fic with thought of real world parallels, but it's hard to shake.
Flurry basically has been punishing and erasing any progress Cozy, a child, could possibly make by instantly giving up and resetting her to zero with each mistake.
Rehabilitating problem children.... you accept that they will fail, hurt you, mess up, and take time. In fact, you especially have to do that if their actions are violent or self-destructive. You have to come to them with honestly and stability, and make them feel some measure of safety.
Relapse is a necessary part of rehabilitation.
If Cozy was an adult, it would be different. But children are still growing and developing, so they need opportunities to fail and learn from that failure. Casting one as born bad, no hope, she is choosing to be this way, an adult mind in a child's body, is kind of. It's bad. It's bad and messed up that the original show did this. What Flurry is doing here is also bad and messed up.
She mentions bringing in therapists, but no therapist worth their salt would allow this - child abuse - to continue. Unless forced, that is.
10951194
Honestly for a... show about friendship and harmony....there bright idea really was let's put a kid in literal hell and then after she makes a...mess like a poopy they tell her go to your stone prison....which she is aware?
This is well written and character's can be written to be bad. But, this kind of stuff and all this other stuff is why I am not fond of immortal's (societly or static alone). Surely they can be good. But, like anything and anyone? What is good? Anything can be labelled good? So then one wonder's what does a immortal especially a lone group of immortal's to have to check themselves against?
Like literally. Not saying mortal's as such can not matter. Only that folk's tend really seem to play down the way's society's remind and keep people health and safe?
You know...I thought of great example...imagine you have ypur friend's love or hate them they are your friends. Now imagine all the times you and yes you...who stayed silent when they did something stupid. Now take that on the level of not wanting to have a immortal companion for century's?
Also for those that bother. I am not saying the following..
1. Immortality itself is not bad. Or invalid as a state of existence.
2. That they would be jerk's or cruel necessarilly but would you really leave that up to chance for the any love you may have for what comes after you?
3. What no one or rather very few people like to ignore is consider your best impulse that impulse is not necesarily alway's good. I.e able to do good.
Ps. I vibe with what you said about Cozy. I have discussion's in comment's about them believe she is...evil. Would not anyone want said person to grow up and be a better person?
10950610
All true. But then why not get Sunset involved? I mean she's clearly old enough by now to work independently, if Flurry's a adult. She would be invaluable to pinpointing the reason Cozy is the way that she is, if there is one.
And if you are going to erase her memory and betray her trust anyway, why not go a step further? They clearly don't care about her sanity or sense of self determination, so why would you make use of the spell in such a arbitrarily watered down fashion?
Discord tormented her and tried to get her to embark on a mission he fully intended to end with their defeat (and possible demise) and he's the closest thing Fluttershy (and she's supposed to be the Element of Kindness) has to a boyfriend.
If someone with a close personal association with the so called hero's of Equestria already manipulated and betrayed her, who's to say they wouldn't do the same thing again? For that matter, why should Cozy trust them with the memories she already has?
10951194
How so? I mean honestly, how would it be different, other then the fact that we tend to have a lot less sympathy for adults as a society? They still have to learn from their mistakes, same as anybody else.
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10950262
10951194
10951300
I think the real point is commentary about Equestria itself. It is simply incapable of properly handling this situation. They even know what they did was in most's eyes' to be bad:
This is the entire reason that they have attempted in the first place to "reform" Cozy Glow. They want to justify their actions by proving this was the correct result, but they will not. They were into mind wiping with "reformation" spells before Discord ate them all, so they are forced to justify what they did the hard way.
They are lying -- constructing falsehoods of reasons for de-stonings, cheating by getting nearly unlimited time through stoning's and memory-wipes -- more on that later, and self delusion of righteousness from a position of power. By all means they are the villains, and this is why they are failing from a purely construction standpoint. If Cozy's mark is for planning and outmaneuvering, then in essentially every scenario a base built on falsehoods cannot be watertight, so purely by construction it would fail. However by harmony standards, they are being rather cruel and unusual, so I don't imagine they will ever "win" unless they decide to change their own ways and admit their faults -- they won't however; they have no challenges as the ruling body, so they never have to consider they are incorrect. The nearly unlimited time: the ironic part about this is that Cozy will still age, and grow -- possibly starve to death/ dehydrate to death -- even if it is just for a few minutes of time in each de-stoning.
Further irony being that one can say the exact same thing about Equestrians
This is almost exactly mirrored, if not angry, then frustrated about the situation.
I want to hear this comment thread’s perspectives on Anon-A-Miss.
10951638
Thank's for the thoughtful comment. I am going to reread the story to have more information to reflect upon!
10951473
Cozy was the first to backstab Flurry, while still believing that Flurry broke her out because she needed help to overthrow the "now-evil" government. Well, why Flurry deceived her at all? Because Cozy is a dangerous criminal, with a chronic backstabbing disorder, you most definitely cannot trust her. So, various methods to somehow get to her are attempted (with memory wipes, because it would not be effective otherwise).
Personally, I would not have bothered at all, Cozy proved that she is a danger to everyone and shows no remorse for what she did, so she can stay a statue forever.
10951638
In my opinion - no. Cozy initiated the whole thing, she's guilty and should be punished, but more importantly, the society should be protected from her.
What she did in the show, IMO, amounts to terrorism. imagine a terrorist got his hands on a nuke and was minutes away from detonating it in a densely populated area (draining magic from Equestria would probably be even worse than a nuke, but whatever). He was stopped and put in prison. Then, broken out of prison by a rogue government agent (who had a very good disguise), who decided to form a team from four terrorists (one of them got himself killed though) to test the security of the government by imitating a coup.
However, Cozy and the other two decided to betray, for what they knew, another terrorist, but not because they felt bad about following him, but because they decided to take over for themselves.
Cozy had multiple chances to behave correctly:
1. Not try to drain magic from Equestria in the first place.
2. After she got caught, she could have started begging for forgiveness, it probably would have worked.
3. Not follow Discord/Grogar, betray him to the authorities, then beg or forgiveness of her previous crime.
4. Not betray Discord/Grogar claim to be doing as told because of far for her life, beg for forgiveness.
She always chose the option that, in her mind, would bring her the most personal gain, screw everyone else. After all of that, I would not trust her at all.
Great story, Aquaman. What a twist at the end, but I like it. Sounds along the lines of a Cozy Glow reform story I made actually - I should really get it finished sometime. Nice job.
10951776
Discord had multiple chances to behave correctly:
1. Not cause mass chaos like he did in the first place.
2. After escaping, begging for forgiveness or just leaving Equestria.
3. Not mocking the ponies after they willingly gave him a chance.
4. Not side with Tirek.
5. Not do the whole Grogar thing.
Even after being forgiven for so many things despite having no real excuse for what he's done and the fact some of those horrible things came after he supposedly reformed, its strange that the ponies just immediately start trusting him again.
The fact of the matter is that every single villain had opportunities to simply not do what they did, even the reformed ones. The difference is that some just happened to be given proper help and second chances and those were almost always somehow initiated by the heroes weather it was Twilight convincing Starlight to stop or Celestia releasing Discord from prison specifically to get reformed. Singling out Cozy is pointless and doesn't make what happened to her in the show any less unfair considering the chances others got.
The fact that this won first place tells a lot about the fandom nowadays.
10951814
Discord got stoned for a long time after his first takeover.
Then he escaped and got stoned again.
Then, yes, Celestia did un-stone him, hoping to reform, but with the threat that if he misbehaves, he gets stoned again, until he actually managed to kind-of reform himself.
Starlight got chased away, then after she actually begged for forgiveness, she was placed under close supervision (my headcanon is that being Twilight's student was a form of "parole" for her and if she misbehaved, there would have been bad consequences).
However, what Starlight and Discord have in common, in my opinion, is that their behavior could be explained (not justified) as them being misguided. Discord likes chaos and could be said that he did not understand that he is actually hurting ponies and that it is possible to have fun without hurting anyone.
Starlight was an extremist, but, at least it appeared that her reasons were also understandable - she believed that cutie marks are bad and that ponies without them would be better friends. Even though that is wrong, it is what she believed and you could say that her intentions were good, but the results were bad.
What's Cozy's reason for trying to take over the school and draining magic from Equestria? "I want to be the most powerful pony".
OK, what other villains wanted power for themselves and what happened to them?
Nightmare Moon - got a 1000 year vacation on the Moon, then got brainwashed (if NM was actually Luna) or killed (if NM was a separate entity controlling Luna).
Chrysalis - got beaten up, then chased away from her hive, then stoned.
Sombra - got killed twice.
Tirek - Tartarus, then stoned.
The only exception is Sunset Shimmer as far as I know. She did want power for herself (and take over Equestria), but very quickly started begging for forgiveness after she got defeated.
Cozy has chronic backstabbing disorder - IMO she's worse than Discord on intentions. The only difference is that unlike all of the other villains, Cozy has the least amount of "internal" power, still, she was able to cause a lot of damage. If Cozy had Discord's power, she would be much worse than him IMO.
10952001
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10952001
Yes, Discord did indeed get stoned. It's worth noting that there was no other way to stop him on both occasions as opposed to Cozy, who's a literal filly and that spending time as a statue did nothing to change him for the better. When Celestia un-stoned him she did so with the knowledge that he was utterly unrepentant, but still put him up for rehabilitation, unlike Cozy who never received anything of the sort. And no, he did not reform himself, Fluttershy did that.
And Starlight ran away without ever being punished for her crimes and when you look at the her return, it took Twilight much convincing, which included showing her how she would destroy the world with her actions, went back to her past and barely managing to convince her not to rip the time travel scroll after all that. I think its safe to say that her begging for forgiveness was only due to Twilight's help.
Discord saw ponies panicking and fearing him and the fact that they tried to stop him was more then enough of a clue that he was hurting them, but he didn't care because he enjoyed doing that and frankly, I'd say doing evil things for fun is worse then doing it for a goal.
Starlight, based on the way she treated her villagers and looked at the whole thing as HER ideal life, was clearly mostly doing it for herself, especially when she went against Twilight for the sake of petty revenge all because a friend of hers moved away when she was a filly. I wouldn't call either of their past selves well-intentioned.
You call them misguided? Try a literal child who misinterpreted friendship for manipulation and thought that having more friends then Twilight would make her an empress for power related reasons that Twilight never made her elaborate on or investigate further into the matter. The fates of other villains are irrelevant here, especially when one of them got reformed and the rest can be argued for a potential redemption as well.
Is that even a real disorder? She's not the only one who backstabbed others or betrayed their trust. Just look at Discord.
First off, we don't know that. Second, she doesn't, which immediately makes her far less of a threat. As it stands now the only way she can cause any sort of damage is to either get a magical artifact or hope that no one catches on to her attempted manipulations, which as we've seen in Frenemies, could even come from some random old pony.
So no, Cozy was not more evil then any past villain and she certainly wasn't any more dangerous. The only difference is that she never got the same second chance others did in the show.
10951638
Yeah, that's possible. But I'm not so sure if that's fully supported by the text.
A Dark, Horror or Tragedy tag would clear that up right away, but even then, a story shouldn't be relying on tags to make its message clear.
As it is, unless I've missed some other clues, I'm having a hard time figuring out whether it's an accidental implication or deliberate theme of the story...
This was great, a really insightful look into Cozy’s way of thinking and it has me going for a while there before Flurry’s reveal. The ending is so tragic, especially since Tirek and Chrysalis were also able to reform.
While I personally think there is hope for all three as we saw a glimpse of it in there episode, this fic speaks true in that a Villain has to want to reform for it to work. Cozy’s obsession with power will always get in the way of that.
Really awesome and can totally see why this won.
This story could have been good if they actually did not erase Cozy Glow's memories. Or are you purposely trying to portray Flurry Heart as a brainless idiot who never heard of the "those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it" quote?
Greetings. Your reading has been completed and can be found below. I hope you enjoy.
This was a great story, with a really clever twist that puts Flurry's initial reaction into perspective. The characters were written well, including the blank slate of Flurry Heart. Now, the entire memory-erasing business did strike me as a step too far, but I think you got enough debates about that.
🤡
11300144
🎪?
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😭
"It’s hard to find the good in some people & It’s harder when there isn't any."
Mark Twain
An oddball ghost happened across your fic and read it. Have a review!