Cozy Glow ends up in the human world after her defeat and has to adapt.
Luckily she's a quick study. Unfortunately for everyone else, she's as diabolical as ever.
Part of FanOfMostEverything's latest writing contest. I know I said I wouldn't enter, but I got inspired last minute, don't burn me at the stake.
Cover art is my MAD PHOTOSHOP SKILLS, GOOGLE SEARCH, and art by Jon Fawkes
-GM, master of pies.
Page generated in 0.143 seconds
Total duration
1,074 users online
1,943,533 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Your other fic is showing.
Great story, I know some people didn't care for Cozy as a villain but I honestly really liked her and I'm excited to see what they do with her in season 9.
9243473
I PERFORMED A TEXT SEARCH FOR CORONA. THAT NAME SWITCH WAS SUCH A PROBLEM FOR ME.
HOW DID THAT ONE SLIP THROUGH AT THE END. HOW. HOW. HOOOOOOOW.
-GM, master of spices.
Brilliant and very enjoyable story.
I still beat you to writing about EG Cozy. But enough gloating from me, great story!
ok
And Cozy Q isn't a minor?
I know this is canon, but there is something wrong about the whole "putting baddies in cages in a hellish dimension for all eternity" as a way to solve problems. No wonder they are so insane and pissed when they get out.
9243870
Different species, different jurisdictions. Equestria does not seem to have an age of liability
9243939
It could just be considerably lower. After all, while the CMC go to school now, they aren't treated like children as much anymore. They have jobs and everything.
There's also the possibility that they only dare punish ponies who aren't looking for redemption.
-GM, master of ices
9243870
You can't stop them and you can't (or won't) kill them. What are the options? Getting rid of X forever strategy didn't work out too well either.
Admittedly, in Cozy's case, execution or petrification + jettison into space would be prudent. Unless you deny her all means of external communication, for good, she will always remain a threat.
Shame Sonata got screwed again in the end though :(
I think in a strange way this one gives a slightly more optimistic ending for Cozy-Q. To me, at the end when she asked Princess Luna to help Sonata Dusk, with nothing to gain from it for herself or her plan, only to make Sonata happier, shows her having some empathy and sympathy, as well as actually genuinely caring for her friend. She may have a better chance at rehabilitation and release than her full-canon counterpart.
9243870
She stole all the magic and was completely unrepentant just like Tirek thus she gets locked up in Tartarus which despite what the name implies is not actually pony hell but a highly secure prison.
You have here a protagonist who is both hard-working and clever, and also rescues from homelessness the character that all the heroes had forgotten about. And she adapts to situations quickly, she understands the fundamentals of magic and harmony better than anyone else (like changing Sonata's song) and faces enormous odds with the whole school stacked against her. And she gets so very close to winning.
All this meant that the desire was for Cozy to win. So the ending was very disheartening. If nothing else, a story from a villain's perspective in which they are eventually defeated and fail to achieve their goals should be marked as a tragedy, I think.
This was compounded by the person who was to be her undoing. For most of the story, it was looking like it was a Rollercoaster of Friendship scenario of Applejack saving the day by being too simple to fool. Which, just as in that special, relies on stubbornness and distrust to win the day, so there's an additional wish for the villain to overcome the Applejack hurdle and prove that that behaviour shouldn't be rewarded. And Cozy did! It was delightful to see her on top of that problem. So, while Trixie appearing as the last minute hero was a good bait and switch for it being Applejack, it did also mean that she kind of came out of nowhere. And made it frustrating that she did, because Cozy deserved this one.
Out of interest, how does extradition work here? Because Sonata hasn't broken any Equestrian laws, save for those she's already been punished for breaking with banishment.
Stylistically, this settled down nicely, though I really could have done with 2/3 of the italics being removed from the first couple of thousand words. The first scene, for example, is only a page long, and has eight different instances of italics. I find that not only does punctuation for emphasis like that quickly lose its effect, it then becomes annoying.
This is a very interesting story, and I haven't yet worked out quite how I feel about it, other than certain that the other side should have been victorious. I found Cozy as irritating as everyone else did in canon, but from her own perspective she's a lot less so, and it's much easier to be on her side. And ethically, her thing of weaponising friendship, and the characterisation that has to go along with that, leaves her and the story in an awkward situation, because I think she achieved more good than most of the hero-labelled characters here, who spent half the time bickering among themselves. Really, Rainbow and Rarity were nastier to Trixie through the story than Cozy was. Perhaps one satisfying ending would be for Trixie to turn from Princess Twilight to glance over at Cozy, then smirk at the Rainbooms behind her, and then tell Twilight everything's fine.
9244699
Just like in show, the whole thing's rather vague. I actually didn't think about it myself, but when it came time to write the ending I knew that I wanted to show Cozy actually DOES form real bonds, and to do that I needed to show her with a real friend AFTER the plan had fallen. I decided the best way to do that (and change up the season's canon ending in a fun little way) was to have Sonata end up with Cozy. This provided numerous advantages from a storytelling standpoint, so I sent Sonata over to Equestria rather than Earth.
From an in-world standpoint... I'd think it makes more sense to send Sonata over to Equestria rather than Earth because how are you going to prosecute someone on Earth for mass brainwashing? You aren't. She's proven herself capable of being a problem more than once, so you've got to do something, and as a siren (who still has her magic at the moment) it would be best handled by Equestria since, well, they were originally from there.
The actual legal system as to why she got sent to Tartarus instead of Equestrian 'reformation' efforts? I have no idea. Can't work that one out on the fly.
-GM, master of Tartarus.
Cozy looks like she needs a hearty potato soup.
Seriously, I easily imagined this instead of the finale and decided it would be better. Not that the original was bad or something, I quite enjoyed it, but with this "add-on" it would become a hella epic four-parter. Good work, indeed!
Fantastic work. Cozy was already a frighteningly competent chessmistress. Two of her? No wonder they did so well. Plus, the setup was executed masterfully; the villains' triumph felt earned, as did their downfall. Excellent work all around. Thank you for it.
(Also, logarithms aren't that bad. logn(nx) = x)
9245894
Ah, while that is true, there is a problem when the logarithm is used on a number rather than an exponential - creating a 'base' function which is, while not impossible to solve by hand, pretty darn close to it. Now, when you attempt to integrate equations with logarithms in them, you best hold on to your britches because those become a nightmare right quick. Remember your absolute value signs!
...The further I get into the higher math the more I despise the things. Logarithmic differentiation for differential equations is a tedious, annoying, and roundabout process.
(I totally based their response on my HS reaction to the stupid things. And I'm a guy who usually LIKES math.)
-GM, master of pies.
9245977
Say whaa?? What in Equestria is a logarthm?
9244734
In Sonata's case, her return to Equestria could be considered a violation of her banishment and since she was a criminal dangerous enough to warrant banishment via being chucked into another world...
Yeah, that's Tartarus bound for sure.
I’ll be the first to admit that I thought the season finale a bit of a mess. But that’s more to do with some decisions by the show. The concept of Cozy Glow is a very compelling one.
An
AmericanEquestrian Psycho who understands all the nuance of friendship but can coldly manipulate to move everything into place. It reminds me of my college classes of the various theories on altruism. If someone acted altruistically for some selfish motivation (IE: social gain vs innate goodness) would you really be able to tell the difference? Considering how hyper-competent Cozy Glow is, hell why not make herprincesspresidentprincipalempress? If she does a million good deeds to keep up the façade of being a person that cares about doing good deeds. That… might not be too bad.There is something fun about the upending of the trope of Heroes using Dark or Evil magic and finding themselves corrupted by it. A What if a villain used Light and Good and ended up with their own form of ‘corruption’ IE: a tiny bit of redemption. I sort of agree with Summer, It might have made for a fun ending for Cozy Glow to totally win, take over and find herself becoming good from all the pretend good she was doing. The concern for Sonata at the very end sort of hinted at that direction. And like… saving Sonata from being homeless in a dumpster is as much of a save-the-cat moment as you can get.
I laughed outloud at the Rainbow getting a faceful of smokebomb and Cozy being frustrated by Pinkie’s denial of being able to do anything but her normal magic. Reminds me of a favorite scene.
I admit to losing the thread in some of the conversations, but some of that is just the unfortunate need to use Cozy-E and Cozy-Q. I know the pain of having to write a story with mirror characters. The pacing near the end kinda got a little frantic with a lot happening very quickly though I guess it helped with imagining that 51 transformed Human to pony pile-up in Twilight’s castle.
But those gripes are minor. This was a fun story and fun entry!
Best Cozy Glow portrayal I've seen yet. She doesn't really have any powers except she's basically an evil batman. For me, this is the definitive Cozy Glow.
Interesting side-note, I think her cutie mark is a rook not just because she' a brilliant chessmaster, but because to "rook" someone is also a slang for tricking or scamming someone.
9248623
Same thought process here. It's funny: Until the moment she started casting mind-control spells, she even had me convinced, despite knowing her plans for world domination. She was that good.
Really, if she didn't opt to go for the creepy route, I pretty much expected her to end up winning completely, and have that turn out to be a good thing in the end. Like she said: Friendship is bi-directional.
Though I feel sorry the most for Sonata Dusk here. She went from wanting revenge on the Rainbooms to almost being reformed.
I don't think she really wanted revenge anymore - she liked them in the end.
All she wanted was to have friends and take over the world, with her friendships intact. Cozy Glow showed her how. She showed her how wonderful friendship could be. Sonata was almost reformed.
Her being lumped together with Cozy in terms of legal treatment doesn't quite feel fair.
Great work on this story.
9244699
Oh, you might get your wish. The ponies were too weak to execute Cozy-Q, so she is probably coming back :D And that's not Chrysalis with her brainless schemes like using infiltration-based species for a frontal assault on enemy stronghold. That's actually very scary.
And, no. It didn't appear like she actually legitimatelly 'believed' in making friends. Her Sonata thing at the end was both a pity play on Luna and reassurance for Sonata (she's still a potential asset, nothing's over till it's over.) Friendship is indeed, after all, bi-directional. I help you and you help me. You like me and I use you. Give and take. Emphasis on take.
Nicely done.
9244063
My own conclusion from the show was simply that she was small, rather than young, and just played it up for the disarming effect. (Sufficiently well that she convinced most of the people watching...)
Cozy was, I felt, an excellent villain, the best we've had for ages. That she wasn't someone else in disguise or Naysayer's lap dog completely blindsided me.
So I could very much see how two of her would be extremely dangerous. And I think by sticking Cosy-E somewhere, they made the precisie mistake that Equestria DIDN'T (that perhaps they could and Eartn couldn't). As Cosy is sufficiently good she can just fake herself being "cured" - even if you can figure out a way to make "I want to geninuely be friends with everyone" sound bad to people that don't know she has literally weaponised friendship. As then she'll be out, have made a load more friends and be able to start making new plans...!
(I'm not even sure locking Cosy in Tarterus right next to Tirek was a particulary wise idea in canon, actually...)
you mean Cozy-Q right?
I thought of this story while watching the Spring Break Special (Spoilers!)
Good story here, and while I may personally question the notion of Sonata hating her own original form, that's more of difference of opinion than anything else. Honestly, when I read this
I began to suspect the way it was going to go, though I was wrong about who was going to save the day.
Because the idea Wallflower Blush making use of her innate inconspicuousness for great justice tickles me. As does the thought of dual Cozies going "Wait... who?" when they'd planned around literally everything else. That being said, Trixie getting to be the big hero and not the one who facilitates the victory through being elsewhere is pretty sweet.
Curious and good story, too bad it was not a 'Villain Win' but it was good
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. So close. So close. Only to trip in the end because Trixie had to go all noble. Also do season 9 with Sonata as well as the other villains.
9244699
I wish i could see the other ending that cozy win.😔
9827102 I can't say I've read the story again since leaving that comment (but I'm liking Cozy Glow a lot more in season 9, now she can be openly bad), but yeah, I think competence and intelligence are attractive, admirable traits - regardless of the ethics of the use they're put to - and I like when they're rewarded.
I would really love for this story to go down a rabbit hole and see how Sonata's presence could change the rest of the show you know butterfly effect and all that
9244063
The latter is unlikely. If there was such a looking for redemption clause that gets you out of Tartarus, I bet Cozy would be the first to get in line.
XD damn that was so funny, I loved the situation with Trixie in pony world, how Sunset tried to save the situation by saying that Trixie was infected with evil magic. Priceless :D. Thank you, this was wonderful
I'm honestly confused as to why there aren't any mundane sanitoriums in Equestria.
I'm also angry that this story still has Cozy Glow apologists and even people rooting for her? What is wrong with people?
Great look at Cozy, never been happier that she's stoned in canon.
This story was absurdly good. This is the best written Cozy Glow I think I've ever seen. Everything about it is clever and fantastic.
Good work.
Was looking for another Cozy Glow to Human fic, saw I read this one, decided to read again. Good choice on my part!
Image source, for exact one from the artist, I was looking: https://derpibooru.org/images/1855809
----
Typos:
foregro > foreground
Cozy glow nodded > Cozy Glow nodded