No surprises there, right? MLP has always been more on the arcadian, pastoral, and romantic side of things.

And it leads to weird plots sometimes. Remember when Grogar wanted to become Warlock-Emperor of a rustic valley with, like, one farm, some fields, and a handful of ponies and humans?

Optimism is a duty.

Hey man, Ponyland has some great real estate.

Scar himself looks like foreign, weak, and with very female moves.

Post of the Week #3506

Posted by Cookoo on Tue, 6th Mar '12 11:24:49 AM - Post #116718 in the old thread

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Wow, that's a pull.

and that ending it was so .......

New theme music also a box

Yeeeeeah. Extended Cut helped but that should have been how it was to begin with.

And I think the original ending idea was stupid.

Post of the Week #3507

Posted by Sereg on Thu, 12th Apr '12 6:32:45 AM - Post #154007 in the old thread

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

I mean, in Yiddish, "Mensch" (originally "person") now means "an upstanding person"; likewise, Menschlichkeit ("humanity") means "the qualities of an upstanding person".

Edited by SantosLHalper on May 29th 2022 at 9:35:02 AM

That's language change for you.

Optimism is a duty.

Post of the Week #3508

Posted by Thirikal on Mon, 10th Jun '13 5:46:28 PM - Post #374543 in the old thread

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

If MLP:FiM drew its voice actors from Los Angeles, (i.e. Grey DeLisle, Jennifer Hale) which pony would be voiced by who instead?

I can see Rarity being voiced by Catherine Taber.

Edited by Afrovenator on Jun 9th 2022 at 11:22:14 AM

Scar himself looks like foreign, weak, and with very female moves.

Reposted from the cleanup thread (on fans making excuses for Cozy's behaviour):

Agreed, some fans just insist on treating her like an adult in a child's body or something like that to justify the overly harsh punishments she gets (first Tartarus, then petrification), so they don't have to feel bad about a preteen getting first Supermax, then the death penalty, effectively.

It's all an outflow of fans trying to cope with this terrible idea of having a preteen child be played as the show's single most evil villain with no redeemable qualities or options for redemption whatsoever, basically.

I mean, she's supposed to be just as evil as Chrysalis the love vampire bug queen who enslaved her entire species and offspring into a life of loveless parasitism, and Tirek the magic vampire who is basically pony Satan and just wants to murder everyone with lots and lots of fire. Tirek at least still has considerable power of his own, and is still a clear and present danger to all around him. Chrysalis is basically doomed without her hive, and barely poses a threat to a small group of ponies who are not even aware of said threat. Both are ancient and very unlikely to ever repent, so petrification seems like a reasonable solution there.

And Cozy? Uh, well, she basically talked her way into running her school because her headmaster is a racist dumbass and the other teachers were all preoccupied elsewhere, and then managed to shut down magic through a method conveniently handed to her on a silver platter by the Tree of Fucking Friendship itself, no less. She's a child with no powers other than a good gab and the luck of being in the right place at the right moment to do maximum damage. She can't even do magic of her own, because she's a pegasus. Also, she's like ten. Once the sensible adults with magic and the guards are in the room, it's over for miss fast-talker. Nothing but a conveniently provided magical powerup, provided, again, by fucking Discord, could give her anything beyond a sliver's hope of doing... anything, really. On top of that, she's a child, and even children who do very bad things are generally seen by our society as both being capable of changing and deserving of getting that chance at least until they are adults.

Again, Cozy is a filly pegasus with absolutely no powers of her own other than her own quick wits, which won't get her jack once ponies catch on to her tricks. She could have been put under house arrest and that would have been a perfectly effective punishment. Putting her under house arrest, close to trustworthy adults and children who could be a good influence on her (of which there are literal dozens around at that point) would also provide for plenty of opportunities for her to be reformed. You know, like we do with criminal children in the real world. After all, she's only a child with a twisted mind and an inferiority complex, not some ancient evil being hell-bent on the destruction of ponykind.

And yet, she gets treated just like those ancient evils. First she gets thrown into magical Supermax (which may as well be hell in this setting), with absolutely no outside contact whatsoever, except for... one of aforementioned ancient evil creatures. And then, when she escapes from Supermax entirely outside of her own control through the aid of an adult (Discord), she becomes a threat, not because of her innate ability to convince adults (which is useless since she has been found out and is demonstrated to be useless against less gullible ponies anyway), she only becomes an actual threat, once again, purely through the aid of adults (Discord again!). And then we are supposed to conclude that she is an eternal threat to the world around her, and deserves the magic death penalty (petrification, that is, and a prior episode with Rockhoof has outright established that petrification is considered pseudo-death by these same ponies).

Do you see the huge disconnect between the character and her crimes and the punishment here? And the show insists that this is the only right and moral decision to make. Oh, and to top it off, that last, final punishment was suggested by Discord of all people, the one who was chiefly responsible for putting her in that position in the first place after her initial imprisonment.

Is it any wonder fans are struggling to cope with the sheer disconnect this character brings?

I mean, in the real world, when an adult frees a child from juvie hall to go on a crime spree with them, we usually don't give the child the maximum punishment for having been taken along.

If anyone should have been petrified here, it was Discord. Instead, it was the child.

Optimism is a duty.

I have heard people speculate that maybe one of the writers just didn't like children, because you've got that, and then there's Scootaloo's parents abandoning her for years being treated as a joke.

Its not that they dislike children but their sense of humour does'nt match their audiences so it comes across hateful instead of funny

New theme music also a box

Cozy may be a child, but she still did some very heartless, unchildlike things. Stealing all the magic would have caused countless Pegasi to fall out of the sky, and others to be unable to return to their homes in Cloudsdale ever again. Cozy knew that, and she just didn't care. Not to mention she was positively gleeful at seeing Starlight and the Young Six getting pulled into the magic-draining void.

Even Tirek thought her plan was "a tad excessive". And after getting that power boost, Cozy was easily the most vicious and bloodthirsty of the trio, relishing the idea of wiping out the Mane Six.

She may be a kid, but that doesn't change the fact that she was utterly vile, nor does it absolve her of punishment.

Not to mention Tara Strong would be voicing a LOT of background ponies.

Children having violent fantasies is nothing new, and there usually is little harm in them. The unusual thing here is that she was enabled to enact those fantasies by Discord.

Considering all her actions after being imprisoned were enabled by adults who were either recklessly negligent (Discord) or actively evil (Tirek and Chrysalis), I think those are pretty strong mitigating factors. Pretty much any child with a grudge would end up bad with that sort of influence.

And lets not forget that the princesses themselves put her in that situation to begin with by locking her up with Tirek.

Optimism is a duty.

Yeah, that was pretty dumb even without Discord's interference, seeing as they know Tirek was the one she was plotting with in the first place.

We never got a good explanation for this in the show, so my personal headcanon regarding Cozy is that she's a living breathing example of the proverb, "The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth."

I'll have to go back and check, but I feel like a large part of the reason she sided with Chrysalis and Tirek was because a) they had a strange sort of camaraderie and Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic while also potentially gearing up to screw each other over once they ruled Equestria, and b) she also recognized that they were her best bet to burn down Equestria for whatever she wanted revenge for.

Instead, all we got was her being evil for the sake of being evil. Which is nothing new, I don't think Tirek or Chrysalis ever got explanations for their villainy either.

Qui odoratus est qui fecit.

Well, Chrysalis is evil because she has a feeding complex, which just so happens to involve draining creatures of their love, and which she forcibly extended to her entire hive. I think you can square that as a motivation for being evil. Chrysalis (at least pre-Thoraxing) is basically the fruit bats debate writ large: can a species really be considered evil when they need to do what they do to survive? Does it matter when it means they threaten your livelihood or even your life? Of course Thorax then turned the rest of the hive into the Colorful Candy Crew of Wuv, so that motivation was undermined, but it was there, at least implicitly.

Tirek? Tirek is pony Satan. He doesn't really need a motivation because he implicitly gets his motivation from Satan by association.

But if you must, he also seems to have a feeding complex too, needing magic to thrive in his case. It's never made clear how he could ever get that magic in a non-evil way, and like with the Changelings, feeding on magic to survive.

So these are two villians who are, on some level, driven by natural instinct to be evil towards ponies.

Come to think of it... Discord fits that mould as well. Huh. All these villains are basically predators to ponies in some way or another.

Optimism is a duty.

I believe one of the writers said they were going to do a backstory for Cozy, but they ran out of time or something.

Yes, and if I recall correctly, and rather tellingly, the backstory was going to be that she was actually an adult in a child's body, or something like that.

Optimism is a duty.

As I understand, a number of people headcanon Cozy as such.

When "Marks for Effort" first introduced her, she was a living breathing example of Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, so I'd say that's 100% plausible.

In my in-progress fic The Archmage's Last Bow, I'm planning on having Nova (my protag) kinda force the princesses and Discord to break them out of stone in an attempt to redeem them all himself, and it all stems back to their (lack of) motivations, which allowed me to take some liberties.

The way I planned on going about doing this goes with the following:

• For Tirek, I haven't read the comics, but I'm planning on giving him Daddy issues. I think that was slightly implied when Discord mocked him about Vorak. Thing is, Nova grew up with some severe parenting issues as well, and this would be a good way to allow him to empathize and bond with Tirek.
• For Chrysalis, in Apprentice, Nova saved her life as a nymph from slavery and returned her to her hive and fed her love of his own volition, which I've essentially written to cause Chrysalis to owe him a Life Bond (a la the Wookies). So the Life Bond and his
• For Cozy, however, since she had so little to go off of, my earlier stated approach is what I'm going with. I'm still working on the details, but I'll basically imply that no one ever wanted to be her friend to begin with, and in her bitterness over that, she decided Then Let Me Be Evil. Nova's gonna get through to her because Cozy's an unapologetic troll, but so is Nova and then some. First attempt at getting through is gonna be straight out of Good Will Hunting where Cozy will just silently stare him down, but Nova will stare her down right back. He'll bring in strategic games to play while picking her brain like chess, that sort of thing, and she'll kinda start to like him while still being as sour as ever. And of course, she'll be extremely tsundere about it because she's Cozy Glow.

Edited by Rytex on Jun 9th 2022 at 7:35:34 AM

Qui odoratus est qui fecit.