Story Notes: 16 (Bonus Chapter: Cozyheart) · 2:25am Sep 2nd, 2020
Source: https://derpibooru.org/images/2270595
First of all, my apologies. I'm sure many of you were expecting Ploomette when you saw the notification that the story had updated. Why CozyGlowheart? I'd planned on doing this as a bonus chapter after Act I was completed (and once Act I is done, this chapter will be moved to be the final entry in the act). It got bumped up because...
You may or may not remember me advertising the Cozy Glow group's contest a few months back. The good news is enough people expressed interest, and the contest is now wrapping up (which for those of you who weren't aware of it, probably explains all the Cozy Glow stories posted here the past few weeks 
). I'm not a huge fan of 'dark' so most of the prompts weren't up my alley, but as soon as I saw Cutie mark yesterday, cuteceañera today! I knew I had one I could work with. Flitterheart's chapter raised a lot of questions, as we got our first glimpses as to things being truly 'wrong' in Equestria. This time around we get to see events from Cozyheart's perspective, which should clear up a few questions (and hopefully raise a bunch more). In addition to being posted as a chapter to 16, this is also being posted (slightly revised; edited to remove everything other than just the day she gets her cutie mark and her cuteceañera) as a standalone story entitled, Heart In Pieces. There will be a separate blog entry for that. If you read the chapter, you can skip both that story, and the associated blog. That needs to function as a standalone to be eligible for the contest. But I'm posting the full version first.
I'm 3,500+ words into Ploomette's chapter, but almost all of those words were written before Lulu Luck's chapter was published. The last few weeks have been crazy around here, and I barely had time to work on my Cozy Glow contest entry. Everyone's probably sick about me talking about my cars, but the third vehicle in my fleet (technically second, as I've had it longer than the Volvo) has been sitting for the last four years. In the last few weeks it's gone from being a sad, neglected clunker sitting on three flats to sporting four shiny new blackwalls and... well, some other new pieces, none of which actually made the car run for more than a few seconds. It's now in the hands of a capable shop as my friends and I couldn't get it running. For those of you who read Ponies, Horses, And Mustangs, Oh My! it was Razzaroo's ride in said fic. It's also pictured below with a coating of snow and an evil adorable evildorable pegasus. Look at how happy she is!
...My car is doomed.
Photo: AlwaysDressesInStyle; vector: https://derpibooru.org/images/2054241
If nothing else, at least we got to see more of Flitterheart, and that's never a bad thing! I'll never get tired of posting this picture.
Source: https://derpibooru.org/images/229848
One thing I request is that the comments not turn into a flame war regarding the series finale. Love it, hate it, or anywhere in between, it is what it is. For those who don't like it, there's fanfiction.
Source: https://www.deviantart.com/praisecastiel/art/The-Care-Bear-Family-312755504
The Care Bears Family Flitterheart's Scrapbook. Just picture them as ponies. Not pictured: Cold Heart, the franchise's first villain.
Seriously, her name is Flitterheart. All it took was combining 'Cozy Glow' & 'Heart' to realize there's a 'Cozy Heart Penguin' in the Care Bear Cousins.
Lucky is from another famous '80s toyline: Pound Puppies. Specifically, one of the Pound Pur-r-ries.
What?
I really like the '80s.
Source: https://derpibooru.org/images/1752392
One thing I'd like to talk about is how the story has changed from what I originally envisioned months ago. At the time, Cozy Glow was to be an adopted sister (Cozy Glow becomes Cozyheart upon adoption, then reverts back when she abandons her adopted family), and she wasn't innocent. Now she finds herself the unwitting host of a voice in her head, one that eventually takes over all her actions, little by little, as time goes by. The voice abandons her when she's no longer useful.
Originally, she was to leave the Heart family due to being jealous of Flitterheart's ease of making friends. That aspect of her character hasn't changed, she still struggles with making friends. It's what makes her vulnerable, even though she has a loving family. If we factor in the fact that her relatives are based on the Care Bears, it's quite possible that she has the most loving family in all of Equestria.
With the changes to the story, now she finds herself an unwitting victim, a pawn. It's a change of pace for me writing Cozy Glow, and that's the nice thing about her character being mostly blank slate. There are so many different possibilities. Innocent, but possessed like Luna was? Sure, let's give that a whirl for this fic. With her complete lack of a canon backstory, there's nothing saying that can't be a possibility. Hey, it's no crazier than believing a young child is capable of overthrowing a government with just a few magical artifacts, a ragtag army of students, a little guidance from an imprisoned mentor, and cuteness.
Source: https://derpibooru.org/images/26833
Sweet Stuff demonstrates autodefenestration.
Defenestration doesn't come up nearly as often as it should. This is the official term for going out through a window, regardless of whether it's open or not. Autodefenstration/self-defenstration is when it's self-inflicted, such as Brightheart's escape from his sister, and Proudheart's pursuit of her brother.
Since pegasi can fly, and humans can't, I'd imagine it's a much more common term in Equestria than it is here on Earth.
Source: https://derpibooru.org/images/2300413
Writing Cozy Glow as a sympathetic character? Seriously, I must be crazy.
It's a sad story, since we know exactly how it's going to end for her. Can there be a 'happy' ending for a character that's caused so much harm?
Maybe? Much like superhero cartoons where property damage routinely goes into the billions, the show's rating means nopony ever dies. So Cozy's got that TV-G thing working for her, much like Luna, Discord, and Starlight Glimmer before her. Sorry, Storm King, that PG rating is a real killer.
I was lucky enough to own some of the bigger plush Care Bears and Care Bear Cousins when younger: Good Luck Bear, Tenderheart Bear and Bright Heart Raccoon. I was trying to add Wild Heart Fox to my collection when the plushies seemed to vanish almost overnight here in Australian toy-stores. Several moves and a fire later and they were gone (sigh). When they finally reappeared after twenty-so years, the ones I wanted to replace weren't part of those released. While I have several Pony figurines and some other plushies (a masculine raccoon and twin femme skunks [Pepe approves!]), I would have loved to get my missing four back again. At least I can still get the accurate figurines of our proud Pony protagonists.
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"If you read the chapter, you can skip both that story, and the associated blog."
...Which, yeah, might have been a helpful message if I'd seen it before reading that story, then its blog, and then the chapter... :D
Oh well. :)
(Oh, and thanks, since that would indeed have been a useful note then, and hopefully was for other people. :))
Thanks for the blog post! :)
(Oh, and good luck with the car, regarding both technical problems and the machinations of alien evildorable pegasi. :))
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I posted this one first, hoping people would see this first. I apologize to you (as well as to anyone else who saw the other blog/story first) that it didn't work quite as intended.
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Apology accepted, and thanks. :)
And I likely did see it first, but that doesn't mean I (or someone else) would read it first. For instance, particularly when I have a high enough load in the urgent queue here that I don't expect to get through it all in one day (as was the case then), I'll often triage new stories in the urgent queue ahead of story updates, since the latter are already in my library with a persistent unread chapter notification while the former, if I don't get them done that day, I'll need to take extra steps to save and notify myself of. Stories might also be processed out of the order received due to things like length and time availability, and while the previously-noted factor dominated here, without it I might still have, in the situation I was in (and I still haven't gotten that queue from the end-of-month surge cleared, since new stuff keeps coming in...), processed the standalone story first due to it being shorter. That's just the way I do it, and I recognize there are many, many ways to approach new stories and updates here; still, I imagine a lot of those ways would have similar issues in this situation.