Responding to MV's "The Legion Of Doom Do Not Deserve Reformation" · 7:06pm April 9th
So recently there was a video uploaded to YouTube titled The Legion Of Doom Do Not Deserve Reformation by user MV. I've known of this person for some time. I've read many of their tweets regarding Cozy Glow, and I've long taken issue with how they represent her. I've never interacted with this person. I may have done one QRT, or subtweet, I don't remember what it was exactly but I had an indirect response to at least one of their takes. But most of the time I don't pay too much mind, aside from curiosity. Well as I've said, they've now made a whole video. I thought about not even watching the video, as I've recently made peace with The Ending of the End(we'll come back to this towards to the end), but I did watch it. I watched it mostly for curiosity's sake, but also to face my demons, so to speak. Having seen it, I thought about how best to respond to it. Should I respond? Leave a YT comment? Heck no. Try to message the person? Maybe? Twitter thread? Perhaps, but then I thought, a blog post like this is probably the best avenue to get my thoughts out, cause I have a lot of thoughts that all won't fit into a few tweets. So enough waffling on, let's dive into this video...
The first 8 minutes isn't much to write home about. It's basically just recapping what each of them all did, and ends with a strawman saying how they deserve redemption like all the other villains, didn't deserve their punishment, and then literally bitch slapping anyone who says that. And then he says he's going to say why! So sure. I'm down for points. Let's analyze them and come up with counterpoints. And by the way, this post will mostly be focused on just Cozy Glow. I'll touch on all of them collectively towards the end, you'll see what I mean.
1) Their goals.
As far as Cozy Glow goes in this section, it's once again recapping what she did. Which is joining the School of Friendship, coming in charge of it, and sneakily using magical artifacts to suck all the magic from Equestria to another realm. Yeah... what of it?
2) They got no remorse.
This is largely true. After each of their initial defeats, none of them show particular remorse. Chrysalis rejecting Starlight's offer, and Cozy Glow simply being bratty after her defeat in School Raze. This is in contrast to reformed villains who were remorseful and were reformed after their initial outings. Some good examples of this are Princess Luna, and Sunset Shimmer. The Equestria Girls movie is largely derivative of the first episode anyway. So is it true? Do they have not have any remorse? I wouldn't say so. But why do I say this? After all, we see them so gleefully enjoying being evil. Well I think better understand things, we need to contextualize their episodes.
Tirek in Twilight's Kingdom felt more like he was doing it cause he had something to prove. Thinking to his backstory in the comics and why he went to Equestria, dude wanted power, yeah, but he had reason and motive for it. Doesn't make him a good guy, but it does ground him. Chrysalis, found the greatest source of love and energy to fuel her hive. Very parasitic, but that's what parasites do. Chrysalis turning her back on her hive in Season 6 is odd, but I chock this up to her being slower to adapt to the changing ways of the Changelings. Cozy Glow? Well, we don't really know the nuances of her motivation, so we're not going to infer anything here. Point is, they are not psychopaths. So please stop saying this everyone. Yes they came back for revenge in the finale, but we'll touch upon this later, as it's the main crux of point 4. So did they ever develop remorse? Perhaps they did. And to see why, we gotta revisit my "favorite" scene of the whole show. The moment of their defeat in The Ending of the End. I've said this numerous times, we don't get to hear what Cozy had to say, we only have her facial expressions to go off of. He says they have no remorse and that they were bitter and evil up until their very end. Now then, if you call this face unremorseful, the face Cozy makes as she's being turned to stone, if you think this is the face of somepony who's vengeful and unwilling to change up until her end, I think you need your eyes checked. Or maybe your moral compass checked. To me, she looks so fearful. She is shocked when she realizes what is happening, and then is fearful when she realizes that she's screwed. So I wouldn't call this vengeful until the end. The only one who truly was was Chrysalis, but you can't just apply that to all three of them. The fact we can look at the same thing and come to wildly different conclusions is... well, expected actually And we'll touch on this point too, but that's about it for this point actually. He says they got no remorse, I disagree, and I pointed out why. They
3) The things they did are the absolute worst things any villains have done on the show.
This is easily the weakest point, in my opinion as it's totally objective. There is no absolute measure. Yes, Cozy Glow wanted to take all the magic, but so did Sci-Twi in Friendship Games(sort of). Chrysalis captured an entire Kingdom, but so did Storm King, and his plan was more or less completely helmed by Tempest Shadow, who was redeemed. And since I know this guy loves Starlight Glimmer, it's worth noting how much he downplays Starlight's evil acts. From brainwashing and mentally draining an entire village of ponies, to wanting to take Twilight's entire life away from her, thus creating infinitely many branching timelines of pain an suffering for all the Equestrians who inhabit it. But it's fine because once she saw what her spell was doing, she felt sorry. Fair point, I'll give him that. But then again I love Cozy Glow and I continuously downplay the bad she's done. See what I mean? It's all objective, and I objectively disagree with this point. I don't think what they did is that much outlandish than other villain schemes.
Point 4 is where things get spicy.
4) They're irredeemable, because they came back for more.
This is his slam dunk piece of evidence for their irredeemability. The fact that they returned in the finale to wreck havoc onto Equestria. But once again, we need to contextualize it. He completely ignores the fact that Season 9 is where Grogar organized all the villains coming together. Taking a closer look at The Beginning of the End, none of them even seem particularly interested in the idea. In the beginning of Frenemies, they're constantly nagging Grogar for not even having a plan. They were enabled and encouraged to do all of this by Grogar. He sought them out, and gathered them, knowing of their destructive tendencies, and fed into that, by telling them of a powerful artifact, and quite literally forcing them to find it for him. It's then Chrysalis who gets the idea to pretend to hide it from him and hatch their own plan. Admittedly, this is more blame shifting from me. Cozy went along with all of these because she wanted it. However, I believe were she surrounded by the right ponies, who did care for her, things would've turned out differently for her eventually. Yes she fired back at Twilight, but I hardly count that as a valiant effort to redeem. More so just admitting to giving up on her. But that doesn't mean that that's it for her. They're not incapable of changing. But the entirety of the season they're led down the wrong path willingly by Discord himself. He bred them to be even more evil than they were before. Yes I know I'm blame shifting a little bit, but my point is, none of this destruction would've happened were it not for him. Discord acts shocked when the villains he gathered to do evil stuff, do evil stuff to him instead. However, give Cozy a fair shot in a different version of Season 9, and undoubtedly we could've seen her be redeemed.
NOT!
But why? Why can't they be redeemed? What makes them so special and fixated on being evil above any other villain? Why aren't they capable of learning the errors of their ways? You haven't proved that they're in capable of learning, you've only proven that they've done bad things, and enjoyed doing bad things in the moment. Let's talk about my actual favorite scene, and it's one he brings up to drive his point home, but I think it's incredibly misguided and shortsighted. In short, he says that since they thought about friendship, but rejected it, that makes them the absolute worse. They saw the path of light of friendship, and willingly chose the other path. Now, this is true, and does make them out to be pretty bad, but let's look at this scene more closely. Chrysalis is the first to yell out, and snap them out of their thinking. Chrysalis calls friendship a disease that won't get her, to which Tirek and Cozy agree, but the latter agrees somewhat reluctantly. Go back to the episode and look at the face on her, then how unsure she looks in the next scene. She says that Grogar says they have to work together. Why would she say that specifically You know what Cozy is likely thinking here? She's afraid that this spells the end of their team work together. To play devil's advocate, I think that the fact that they had these realizations I think is hints at their potential. Yes they rejected it initially, but it's still a seed to work off given the right ponies to tend to it. Again, they're not psychopaths, they have reason. The entire episode she's advocating for them to work together, because I believe it's something she genuinely enjoys. It's not just about the sheer destruction, she does enjoy them for them in the episode. She wants them to appreciate her. She has character and depth that I feel many choose to largely ignore cause they'd rather subscribe to the "psychopath child" idea. Which is fine. It's fun and all, but I see things differently personally.
As much as MV wants to state his opinions as facts, and slap anyone who disagrees, I'm gonna have to disagree anyway. I don't know if his goal is to invalidate opinions like mine. I've never seen the guy allow for the slightest bit of nuance, and he always just seems to argue against certain points. Even so, it doesn't matter. Videos like this do not damper my excitement. Videos like this, opinions of people like this do not hamper me, or invalidate my opinions of Cozy. This video does not invalidate any headcanon, or any fanfic where Cozy Glow is redeemed. I still love Cozy Glow with all my heart, and truly believe she had so much untapped potential. So much is unknown about her. Really, anything goes, and any belief or opinion of hers is fine. If it's your opinion that she deserved what she got, that's fine. Just like how it's fine that it's my opinion that she deserves redemption. The goal of this isn't to prove him wrong(okay it kinda is), it's to show that there's more nuance and potential for these characters than he lets on. I just don't like how MV constantly is stating his opinions like they're facts that I'm a fool for not subscribing too. And besides, this isn't math where 2+2=4. This is fiction, where things heavily revolve around the made up portrayal of fictional characters. There are limitless possibilities, and what we believe says a lot about our own personal beliefs and preferences. It's fine to discuss these differences, but stop being so absolute, and strawmanning and slapping people who object to your so called "facts". So in the past, when I read a piece explaining why Cozy doesn't deserve redemption, and deserved her fate, I would get quite worked up about it. In the present, well I still kinda do, as you can see by this blog, but, especially in recent times, I've garnered a newfound appreciation for the open nature of The Ending of the End. Wait... appreciation? For The Ending of the End?
All these years, I've been writing these fics, these blogs, my tweets, because I believed that Friendship is Magic said that Cozy Glow deserved to be turned to stone for forever. But you know what? Nowhere in the show do they ever say that. FiM never says Cozy can't be redeemed, that is only something that fans have been saying.
The main piece of evidence in the show that they didn't deserve redemption is the fact they didn't get it. But this line of thinking is short sighted. Even though Discord said forever(grumble...), it's just his word, and is yet to be seen. I think the thing that made me realize this was when I went to BABScon and met Andrea Libman, and asked her if she believed that Pinkie Pie believes Cozy can be redeemed, and she said yes. It's then when I realized maybe we've been making a bigger deal out of it than necessary.
I think when I first watched The Last Problem, I was hoping that the absence of the statue meant that they were freed, but just not seen. Unfortunately, I got caught up in the hysteria of the arguments online, and subscribed to the idea that they were turned to stone forever, and thus was outraged at how absurd that is, but FiM never said that that was the case. Discord wasn't in stone forever. Why would they? Somehow we as bronies got this idea and our head, and came to clash and started arguing about it.
So while I ultimately disagree with nearly every point brought up in the video, that's okay. I'm not losing (anymore) sleep because of it at this point.
The Ending of the End isn't the end of Cozy Glow. It's a new beginning. Sometimes you need to be at your lowest low to climb to your new all time high. Cozy Chronicles is my favorite story I've written. This is the main philosophy behind it. And I truly believe, even given all the stuff she did in the show, that it's something that fits her character. And at the end of the day, that's all that matters.
I like to respond to "X villain does/did not deserve redemption" arguments with "Neither did Sunset Shimmer"
Sunset was power hungry, showed zero remorse for any of her actions until they finally came to bite her in the ass, had zero redeeming qualities while she was a villain, and had no indication that there was anything more to her, even in her backstory comic, while Nightmare Moon was at least implied to have been overtaken by an outside force. Come Rainbow Rocks, she becomes undeniable proof that redemption isn't something you can deserve, it's something you have to earn. In the Cozy Chronicles, Cozy absolutely earned her redemption. If I had to pick an exact moment, it would be when she banished Grogar along with the Rainbow of Darkness in the same way she initially tried to banish all magic in Equestria
Some things I pulled from TV Tropes that you might be interested in:
This one shows an interpretation of why they had the reactions they did. Cozy was like "Oh no!", Tirek was like "Well, crap", and Chrysalis was like "
you!"
People tend to forget that while Chrysalis brought up backstabbing each other once everything was said and done and Cozy Glow actually went through with it when she got Discord's magic, Tirek never started anything like that and simply went along with what the other two were saying.
Less relevant, but the Storm King actually captured multiple kingdoms: Abyssinia, Mount Aris, and (briefly) Equestria. Same with Chrysalis, actually (she conquered Timbucktu and Trot in her backstory and the first arc starts with her conquering Wuvy-Duvy Smoochy Land, which is where she infamously murdered a cat in front of the Crusaders).
I should probably also mention that the "the" in the Storm King's name is important: it's a title, not a name
TBH, I was laughing my ass off when I heard all the strawman arguments throughout that video. No disrespect towards MV, of course, I respect his opinion, but the majority of the things he tried to point out are either assumptions, have alternative meanings aside from the Trio just being psychos, or are easily refuted.
Honestly, this has only reinforced my opinion that The Ending of the End is one of the worst episodes in the series, for how badly it screwed up all the character development Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy got throughout S9.
I'm currently at work on a massive Fanfic starring Cozy Glow as the main protagonist which serves to explore her background and personal history.
But in other news, G5 would have been just as interesting of a place to have Cozy Glow be reintroduced as a secondary character or pseudo-antagonist to Sunny Starscout: not really trying to fight her, but Cozys' personal goals often intersect with those of Sunny at the time. Also, this sort of narrative would have worked if we didn't have "Opium Adderall" screwing around as the quote-unquote "Main Antagonist".