Cozy Glow & the end of Friendship is Magic · 5:33pm Nov 21st, 2023
Hey everyone :)
So! Cozy Glow... not a very kind character.
She's not given a whole lot of development in terms of a past and that is very much a double-edged sword. She can be shown committing incredibly anti-social acts and yet, being given no backstory except for a Cutie Mark which indicates she's very good at setting things up, she can just be used to commit evil deeds and the audience can have fun with that. The rook, also, is often used in chess in a way that can bring control or end of game. Cozy also resembles Shirley Temple and her colors seem to be a reference to Rhoda Penmark, and I think that's a nice touch.
In not having a backstory in the main series (I have yet to read the continuation in the comics) we're also not as able to sympathize with her. She's just a rotten character, using her situation to her advantage and manipulating the heck out of those around her to get what she wants... which is nothing that will benefit others, just herself at the expense of everyone else's happiness, security, safety, and independence. I almost get the feeling the character was originally going to be Diamond Tiara, but they changed their minds and created a new character possibly due to the episode where the Cutie Mark Crusaders get their Cutie Marks or their planning to just have this character be "that evil". Just a thought.
So, both her master plans involve power, and the first time she is thwarted she is pretty much sent to hell. Awfully harsh, but I get it -- she's evil, irredeemable. She's also a filly -- no looking into her family or anything for guidance? Seems a bit much, but I can wrap my head around it. She's been set up to suffer the consequences of her actions, possibly even as a response to Starlight Glimmer's thin excuse for her pursuit of power, but they're not backing down this time. Sending a filly to hell? Absolutely -- MLP just got that hardcore ^^
Personally? I would have institutionalized her the first time, as she's a danger to herself and others. There's an institution right there in Ponyville, plop her in and shut the doors. Let the professionals treat her apparent megalomania and sociopathy. As Celestia and Luna the second time I would have taken her away, telling the populace I would put her in an oubliette that she could only escape by honestly seeing the error in her ways and repenting (putting that truth telling McMuffin from the earlier episode to good use). But... I know putting the Truth Talisman on her would reveal how she would just want to make us all unalive the moment she gets chance. Probably while we're asleep and with a very sharp or heavy object. Solution? Seeing as the ponies appear to be pacifists, I just would have quietly given her to Buttercup Lightwood Gamboge, eventually or right away, saying "we can not EVER allow this filly to grow-up" and look the other way while Buttercup does her thing with Cozy Glow, checking up periodically to make sure she doesn't accidentally kill her. Horrible? Absolutely. The other alternative would be banishing her to the moon... which of course makes me think of that bit from Tex Avery's The Cat that Hated People. Which all three of these ideas (by my watch) would have ended in diapers for the filly.
Turning her to stone didn't sit right with me. It feels like the only one who deserved that was Queen Chrysalis, but even she might have been redeemed by her ex-drones revisiting her, and Tirek could have been reunited with Scorpan. These characters are wounded and alienated, lashing out because they feel betrayed or like there's no point in being kind. Cozy Glow just needed to be stopped and examined to find out what was going on. It feels like, perhaps the series created a villain roster to punish at the end of the run to help bring it and the evil a sense of closure: good triumphs over supreme evil, and life continues on to a new generation. THE END.
That said, I do love the final episodes of My Little Pony. It's very nostalgic, the way the characters developed into their later years feels very bittersweet and the images say a lot very quickly. The music's also good. It feels to me this was always going to be a part of it, but also like maybe... the series ran out of time to fully express its final ideas. Which, if that's the case, also is bettersweet.
As an aside, I also feel as though The Student 6 was possibly pitched as a spin-off but got combined with the series towards the end. The moment it stopped focusing so much on Twilight Sparkle and her friends just being ponies in Ponyville, and going on an occasional adventure, was the moment I felt a shift which said to me "the series is either trying to pull in new people, there's arguing in the higher-ups, or its running out of ideas." I didn't know what that meant at the time, and took in the new ideas with curiosity. I really enjoyed what they did with the characters, and I kinda like 'em.
So yeah... just a few thoughts on the whole thing and how it ended ^^
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As for me, personally? Things're going well here. Still primarily focusing on drawing, but I do come back here occasionally to see what's going on. I'm still very much new to home ownership and recovering from the loss of my father, but... it's not as bad as it was last year. I felt emotionally dead then, I'm quite alive now. I'm a survivor, always have been, always will be.
Will I return to writing on this site? Possibly. The thing about writing vs drawing is I can draw with stuff going on in the house that's very noisy... but writing is a lot more difficult. I find writing short stories lately has helped. I also don't care that the series has ended, if anything it makes my appreciation of this stuff go up as now we've nothing left but to be creative, and the series creators seems have just released the idea to us to do what we want, even while the series was alive. Times may change and people may move on, but something tells me this will be its own entity for a long time to come.
That said, I do have a few stories on my Fur Affinity and Ink Bunny page, but they involve anthropomorphic MLP characters (mostly, with the exception of one commission). They tend to be shorter, and I do have a few ideas I might visit after Christmas.
Hope everyone's well!
Peace 
Some people brought up that she is actually suffering from dwarfism and is a young adult. From what I understand the Starlight was supposed to be new front runner for the show with Twilight becoming more of a mentor figure and the Student Six were supposed to be more predominant, but internal conflicts and couldn't escape Hasbro's mandates forced them to stick with the status quo and sticking to slice of life stuff, along with the Mane Six themselves not really allowed to go on adventures and do more wold building lead to the quicker degradation of the show. I would subscribe to that belief mainly because despite some progress the corporate view on what should count as a little girls TF show was still incredibly myopic of the belief that little girls don't want adventures, they want princesses and parties.
She is the best character to redeem. I still need to try and attempt a sort of homage to this one story about Turbo from Wreck-It Ralph. It's called The Path Not Taken
Simple idea is after Cozy dies (for all intents and purposes, let's face it, she is dead) she returns back to the moment where it all started where she has a chance to make new choices. And because we know so little about her past, the start can be anything. I got sort of far, but I hit a road block.