#mylittlepony - #Cozy Glow and the cruelty of children

Cozy Glow and the cruelty of children

Cozy Glow is the latest MLP villain, one whose past and motives are both somewhat mysterious, but who we have gotten to know somewhat well over the course of season 8. On the surface Cozy seems kind and considerate, if a bit precocious, as well as very intelligent and observant. The kindness, we find out later, is an act and any consideration she had previously seemed to show another was just part of a plan to endear herself to another and manipulate them into seeing her in a positive light.

The intelligence, however, was not a show, and Cozy Glow seems to genuinely understand right and wrong and has come to know all about friendship... even so, she rejects the ideal of friendship as some sort of magical state to be strives for in and of itself and instead sees it as merely a means towards greater power.

This bothers fans considerably.

I've seen a general reaction among the fan base that seems to split between two general camps. One is the camp that can't believe that Cozy is anything other than misguided and shouldn't have been imprisoned in Tartarus and ought to be given a second chance and reformed. The other camp seems to be one that doesn't accept that Cozy is really a child, let alone a pony, and instead thinks she must be some kind of monster in disguise. Both perspectives are understandable though both are also flawed, and the show itself is responsible for the fandom having this divided approach to dealing with Cozy Glow based on prior experience.

But let's take a moment and consider this: Cozy Glow is not the first child villain on the show. That dubious honor belongs to the duo of Diamond Tiara and Solverspoon who were for many seasons the collective nemesis of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. While they never engaged in any activity remotely as destructive as Cozy, they also had a tendency to try to endear themselves to adults and their peers while privately not caring about them in the slightest so long as they got their way.

Eventually it would be revealed that Diamond Tiara had a rough home life and much of the flaws in her personality seem to come from her mother Spoiled Rich. Eventually Diamond Tiara is reformed (and it turns out Silverspoon wasn't that bad and was just following her bad influence). So it's reasonable to think that Cozy Glow might have some kind of history that explains both her behavior and obsession with power.

On the other hand, her vast intellegeance does seem to exceed her apparant age. In the past when we have seen a character who was so manipulative and dastardly they often turned out to be something far more heinous in disguise. The Changelings and even Discord have shown that trusting appearance in Equestria is something of a fools errand when magic can so readily generate near flawless illusions and transformations. With Cozy Glow behaving in such an intentionally cruel and callous way to all around her, shunning the very concept of friendship and plotting to harm all the inhabitants of Equestria fornher own selfish and personal gain it is easy to see where some suspect that there may be more to the little pony than meets the eye. We've come to expect monsterous behavior to be the first indication that someone actually is a monster.

But I think I fall into a third camp, and that has to do with the concept of the cruelty of children. Up to a certain age children can show a remarkable lack of empathy. It's impossible for them to put themselves mentally in another's position and more often than not the idea of something is 'right' or 'wrong' to do is less important than if they 'can' and if they can get away with it.

I suspect Cozy has always been smarter than those around her and found it effortless to manipulate those taken in by her cute looks and those who thought she was their friend. I suspect she has gone a long time without meeting anyone she considers her intellectual equal and that the closest she has come to that is Twilight (whom she does treat with respect up to a point) but even the Princess of Friendship isn't someone Cozy would consider to be as smart as she is.

I don't think this intellect is born of Cozy not being a pony, but I do think that her intellect is meant to be the origin of her cruelty. Cozy Glow is the epitome of selfishness, far more than any other character in the series save perhaps Discord before his reform. She doesn't care about anyone else and casually manipulated their feelings and fears not just for her own goals but also as entertainment.

It seems obvious she had no larger goal in trying to convince the student six in 'What Lies Beneath' that friendship was not in their nature aside from deriving pleasure from watching them squirm. Likewise it seems obvious now that she only failed her friendship exam in 'Marks for Effort' to see how the CMC and the teachers at Twilight's school would react. When things fidn't Go as she suspected (that the teachers would see the CMC as flawed and in need of instruction) she then took measures to manipulate the situation further to clear the CMC's name not by admitting her deceit to them or to Twilight, but rather by manipulating Starlight just to see if she could.

Ultimately we don't know what season 9 will hold for development for Cozy Glow. She may end up relatively forgotten like the Pony of Shadows, or she may have a recurring role like Queen Chrysalis. She could turn out to have a 'tragic pst' like Starlight and actually come around to wanting to be reformed or she could turn out to secretly be in league with some greater evil from another dimension and not even a real pony herself.

But as it stand s at the end of season 8, I think Cozy Glow is a child, but she is that rare kind of selfish child who is genuinely smart but has gone unchallenged for so long (intellectually and socially) that she has become the worst kind of raging narcissist who manipulated everyone around them for their own amusement. And honestly Tartarus is probably the safest place for her not just for everyone else but for herself too.

Submitted October 25, 2018 at 10:39AM by TheKnackerman
via reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/9rby9r/cozy_glow_and_the_cruelty_of_children/?utm_source=ifttt