I know kids nowadays are basically little sociopaths, but she's probably about eight.

6969744
Easy. abusing childhood mixed with the praises the mane 6 gets.

6969744 Yes, and I hate eight year olds. They're monsters. Honestly it's a miracle only one turned thoroughly evil.

6969750
Sociopaths can come out of normal homes too.
Abuse doesn't mean much in terms of predictors.

6969744
The show's writers probably just watched one too many 'creepy kid' horror movies.

6969744
Well first off, you should probably make it clear if you want finale spoilers or not.

Secondly, she may look young, but given the general age at the School of Friendship I'm going to say she's a very small teen who plays up her cuteness.

Thirdly, we don't really know anything about her background or much about her motivations save power and "friends" (unless it's revealed in the finale), but she does seem both intelligent and slightly unhinged. Like, that kid sociopath thing added onto a real sociopath. (Speaking of which...) There may be more interesting discussion in her group.

6969744
I actually wrote a blog with my own theory. Feel free to check it out.

6969744
She's Diamond Tiara's evolved form

6969763
NO SPOILERS!!!

...sorry. Reflex.

6969794
Yeah, that's my take too, but it would be best to hear it from the OP.

Cozy Glow suffers from equine primordial dwarfism.
She's actually a 28 year old (human years) mare named Ruth the Ruthless
Ever since her youth, when she first convinced a shopkeeper to give her free candy, she's been honing her skills of manipulation and weaponizing the undeniably adorable aesthetic she's cultivated

6969794
Snape kills Dumbledore.
Let's see if you can hold back from that juicy, juicy tidbit.

6969744
Am I the only one who thinks she should have either been Chancellor Neighsay's pawn or Queen Chrysalis in disguise.

6969828
No, I've heard others express those views. They and you are both wrong, though.

(Well, Mudbriar insists that I point out that technically, art is subjective, so you can't be wrong. But what does he know?)

6969826
Okay, no lie, I accidentally unmasked it as I scrolled down. But don't worry; I only saw it for a second.

And I'm not even a Harry Potter fan anyway.

Seriously, though, I actually jumped for a moment before it clicked in my head what the names were.

6969778 Now you've got me thinking Pokemon crossover.

"Cozy Glow, I choose you! Sneak attack!"

"But why would I want to attack such a powerful trainer like you? I bet you treat your Pokemon so much better than my trainer. He's so mean to me. And I'd be oh so happy to join your team, with the right incentives. Can we talk salary and benefits?"

"Cozy!! Come back!! Return! You little sneak!"

6969840

Good sport!

6969847
And now I want a fic with everypony as Pokemon.

6969858
And I wish now that Ponymon project was finished.

To get slightly back on topic. I would have liked to see DT and CG interact.

6969823
Reminds me of the movie Orphan or was that Orpony?

Seriously, her turning out to not really be a kid would suck only slightly less than her turning out not to be a pony.

I saw one theory that Cozy was Grogar or something, but that was before we had more than a bedtime story about him interrupted by a screaming baby Alicorn.

Eh,

🎵IT JUST WORKS!!🎵

6969858
I’d read that.

probably an abusive "YOU NEED TO BE PERFECT OR ELSE" family mixed with resentment towards ponies who are acknowledged as "perfect" (ie. the mane 6 or the princesses)
putting that into perspective, she has illusions of grandeur where if she was able to take away what made ponies perfect (the magic each pony has), she'd finally be accepted into society. much like starlight, but instead of trying to achieve perfect equality, she's trying to take away the perfect ponies to create an equal group of non-perfect ponies. too bad magic is what keeps equestria running lol

6970161
A quite interesting motivation.

6969750
The thing is though, the Mane Six get praise because they are the ones that save Equestria way more than once. So it's not like they don't deserve it. In fact, I think they deserve way more praise then what ponies give them in the show. I think Cozy is just obsessed with attention and manipulation because she likes controlling others, who normally wouldn't pay mind to a small filly.

6969828

Queen Chrysalis in disguise.

She's not that smart and can't even pretend to not be a total bitch and actually try to be someone's foal sitter they haven't seen in years.

6969828

6969744

When Talent-genius goes wrong I suppose...

6969744
My wild theory, based on nothing much and 99.99999% certain to be proved wrong almost instantly, is that Cozy is a double agent, sent by Princess Celestia and enchanted to look like a filly. Or -- even wilder theory -- that she is Celestia in disguise. The chess piece cutie mark goes with the "Chessmaster Celestia" concept, after all...

6969744
It's her cutie mark's fault. She is just doing what her cutie mark is telling her. Hey plausible as any other crazy theory.

6970887
Shouldn't her Cutie Mark tell her to move in a straight line for as long as she wants, instead?

6970889
And isn't that exactly what she does? She goes forward in a straight line with her life goals all the way to being the Empress of Friendship. Goes far beyond princess and skips queen.

Father:

Daughter:

Both shrimpy pegasi with anger issues. Only explanation that makes sense.

Nature AND nurture. She was doomed from birth.

TL,DR: Because being bad and "evil" is fun and you can't stop her.

Cozy Glow's a child genius who also happens to be power-hungry and also an asshole. Both of those latter factors may or may not just be the result of being a child, because unless taught otherwise, children are inherently selfish. That's not a judgement call, it's just how babies and children stay alive; staying alive is their only job. Other people take care of them, other people are at their whim. Cozy Glow is this instinct magnified by a couple hundred doses. This is one who's also capable of adult-level planning and also has a vindictive streak, ie: "My teacher made me do math, so I lied to the principal and got them arrested. Now I don't have to do math."
Cozy Glow knows what she wants, and by god is she gonna get it and heaven help you if you get in her way. Cozy wants cake, she's gonna get cake. Cozy wants power, she's gonna get power. She's not a threat despite being a child, she's a threat BECAUSE she's a child: low empathy, simple motives, idolizes villainy, and probably has no game plan for what she'd do after she won because that's Future Cozy's problem.

Homegirl really, really likes villainy the way Pinkie likes eating cake. It's fun. She likes doing it. She also has the capacity to trick everyone around her into thinking that she's innocent as fallen snow, so she can continue doing it. No sad backstory, no abusive parenting aside from maybe never learning how to say "no". Sometimes villains have a long, tragic, complicated psychology behind why they do what they do. Sometimes villains smash buildings because it's funny and it's there. "Because I want to and you can't stop me" isn't the most complex motive, but it is still a motive.

Cozy Glow is a child who just happens to be very capable and also kind of an asshole. That's it.

6969744
I'm starting to suspect that she may not actually be a very nice pony. But I don't want to jump to conclusions or anything.

Has anyone given any thought as to how her villany might be shaped by being an exceptionally small and cute little pony, but possessed of a cunning mind beyond her true age, let alone her apparent one? (Not that I'm saying she's secretly an adult or anything, but she is quite clearly a midget/slow-ager of some kind.)

6971111
Yeeeeah, but problem there. By the time they're 8-13-ish, they've generally started to develop some level of empathy.

Ultimately, the issue with Cozy is that we don't know anything about her background or history, or even how much of what happened on screen was sincere rather than part of the plot - was her double-bluff with the CMCs studying actually to get them into the school somehow, or part of a plot to help herself get in tight with the Headmare? How long has she been engaged in this plot?

One thing that I find very interesting comes up in School Raze.

And there we have Cozy with one of her apparently prized possessions - she keeps it in her box of other keepsakes that she wants to load up on the desk while Neighsay's chained up.

One must wonder where it is that she got that! And how that crack got there. Hmm.

Ultimately, I think that we have indications that she was plotting from the start. She may not have had all the details pinned down - the artifacts, things like that - but she was absolutely planning to find some way to steal Twilight's power, and quite possibly already in contact with Tirek.

This is partially reinforced by her wrong answers when training with the CMCs - listen to what she lists as the Elements. Control, Power, Intelligence? That seems to be what profilers would call 'leakage,' mistakes where she says what she's actually thinking, rather than keeping her story/cover straight. To Cozy, friendship is power. Power is what matters. Connections mean strength. Mean safety and security.

Her plot only seemed to drain overt magic - pegasi and earth ponies had their magic, even after the unicorns had lost theirs and the magical beasts had lost theirs. Dash and Fluttershy could fly, move clouds, etc. Weakened, perhaps, but not gone. It seems that her plot was primarily going to affect casters; unicorns, alicorns, etc. The backbone of a lot of the comfort of society, but not as devastating as Tirek's rampage. That may not have been intentional, but I'm inclined to think it probably was - a complete disaster for Equestrian society, but not something that would eliminate the two critical elements to *survival* for Equestria - food and weather control.

Leaving her plot aside, things look like she has the typical power and control obsessions that you'd expect of a malignant psychopath. While she couldn't be diagnosed as being a full-bore psychopath, I do think that a full understanding of what she does and why - and what she's done and not been caught for - would put her firmly in the field of nascent psychopaths. She likely has the typical xenophobic/racial hangups that ponies seem to have, and may have a particular dislike for unicorns for some reason. Her general hangups indicate an abusive background. Possibly at the hooves of Yorick there!

What exactly is her deal?

Her deal is part that she's young - but I don't think she's as young as folks think. All signs point to the SoF being an institute of higher education; there are a large number of adult students there, and even the Y6 seem older than the CMCs and their classmates. She clearly *should* be handling empathy and such - and, unlike a lot of kids who aren't necessarily that good with it yet, she gets the concept well enough to have developed exceptional manipulation skills, right up there on the Rarity end of the spectrum I'd say. Notably... she's better than Starlight at it. And Starlight is the show's primary psychopath, albeit one who is trying really hard to work her way towards a better grasp of feelings and the emotions of others. So despite her age, I'd say that she's got mental maturity well beyond it, and firmly in the realm where we can say that she's not just a kid with a nasty streak who'll reform if she's just taught the right way.

I'd say, rather, that she has undergone the right combination of genetic factors, poor upbringing, and head trauma that while she understands the emotions of other ponies, she doesn't particularly care. Her temper tantrums reinforce this, indicative of the sort of underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex that goes along with psychopathy. Her behavior is also suitably scheming and forward-thinking that, while she does clearly have impulse control issues, she is also equally capable of controlling those issues - most of the time - in order to blend into society better. She's learned to be adaptive to her environment, something more common among psychopaths than sociopaths, who are much more likely to find themselves "botching the dismount," as it were, after doing something.

The typical profile would suggest probable abuse, numerous head injuries, and an environment where at some point she learned the lesson that she could only count on herself to keep herself in one piece. Where love and affection were things that meant additional pain was sure to follow, where she was rewarded for doing things she didn't like, and basically trained to see that the only thing that mattered was what she wanted. For some time, she probably thought that was how it always is, and likely still views thinking otherwise as a weakness. Her eagerness to exploit social bonds in order to get a wing up on the competition is only more evidence of the same issue.

But, in the end, she still decided to engage in a protracted campaign that probably would have killed or crippled a solid third of the population. It's pretty unbelievable to think that nopony died as a result of magic going away, whether in hospital, or because they didn't have friends who could catch them quickly enough. The failure of artifacts would have been even more devastating, and plagues would likely have been unleashed in the absence of magic-assisted storage and cleansing techniques.

In a lot of ways, she was - and remains - a Discord magnitude threat to Equestria. The knowledge of how to steal magic is there; that can't be taken out of her head. And she's clearly eager to reoffend. Tartarus might not have been the right solution for her, but I think the "she's just a kid" argument disregards significant facts regarding how dangerous she is, and how badly she wants to remain that way.

6971481
Incidentally - any of a number of horrible things could have happened to her without her necessarily having had a bad home life. Parents who didn't necessarily pay enough attention to trusted figures leave a lot of doors open.

6969744

This is my thought. Perhaps her parents were never there for her, she was basically a latchkey filly until they pawned her off on the school of friendship. There she learns about Tirek and decides to start contacting him about doing something that will make her feel important. After she gets cast into Tartarus and subsequently after Grogar frees them, Tirek pretty much becomes the father that she never really had. He may act like she is annoying as hell and has had moments with her that would be classified as mild abuse, I think he does genuinely care about her....like maybe the daughter he never had but wished he did.

6969778
Nah. Diamond Tiara was just a brat. Cozy Glow is f*^king evil.

6971481

Ultimately, I think that we have indications that she was plotting from the start.

Agreed. There were certainly some vibes of that, even aside from the whole "control" thing. The whole Gideon Gleeful "widdle ol' me" cute act was right at that point where I couldn't quite tell if it was supposed to be suspicious or not, and then there was her whole "devious" attempt at manipulating and misleading others to get what she wanted. If it hadn't been done to ostensibly help someone else, I probably would have pegged her as a bad guy instead of just wondering if she was supposed to give off those scheming manipulator vibes as some possible setup.