Build a baddie

[Jane 123]

On 11/21/2019 at 3:31 AM, Sepul-Coloratura said:

 we should also discuss about what kind of villain shouldn't have existed. 

I say Cozy Glow and Tempest Shadow, they should never have been villains.

[Goat-kun 2,530]

On 12/2/2019 at 3:42 AM, Jane said:

I say Cozy Glow and Tempest Shadow, they should never have been villains.

Explain yourself

[Jane 123]

They are two ponies with really weak stories (in fact, Cozy does not even have a reason why she is a `` villain '') Tempest, like Starlight, suffered a trauma when she was little that left her without friends, somehow He left a kingdom never mentioned before and apparently far away, Tempest was able to do anything to recover his horn, just as Starlight was going to intervene in the sonic rainboom to recover his village.

If you ask me, neither Tempest, nor Cozy, nor Starlight were villains. Wanting to recover the horn is a bad thing? Wanting to be a princess is bad? Is it wrong to want to recover something that was built for years? It does not hurt to put the reaction here of Twilight upon learning that there were ponies with a different friendship than I thought, I thought it was wrong how Twilight reacted? Yes, because there are different types of friends and then she imposes her friendship model as if she were the only good one. It would have been much better than Twilight, instead of teaching Starlight a lesson, it was she who learned a lesson, that not all friendships work, or are the same way.

Cozy is a little pony, and Hasbro puts her as `` the most evil villain of all time '' Shouldn't it be common for little ponies in Equestria to want to be princesses? Isn't it normal to feel hate towards someone as popular as Princess Twilight Sparkle? Is she a villain for that? You can put Cozy and Moondancer in a line, Moondancer was rejected by who she considered her best friend, then she abandoned her and she isolated herself from society, since out there everyone loved a pony that ruined her life. This leads me to wonder, is this monarchy fair? where a single pony leaves in charge of whom only she thinks is the ideal to be the next ruler, shouldn't she be a good leader chosen by the inhabitants? Taking into account the fact that Celestia has ruled for a thousand years, shouldn't there also be a set time limit to be a ruler? Because this smells like dictatorship.

And according to Hasbro or whoever, you put without friends = ponies not happy = ponies villains.

Honestly, the villains of this series do not have a good handling (except Nightmare Moon), nor should they exist, because it is about friendship, where the ponies learn from it, but it should not be considered as THE MOST IMPORTANT or magic '' more powerful''.

They are two ponies with really weak stories (in fact, Cozy does not even have a reason why she is a `` villain '') Tempest, like Starlight, suffered a trauma when she was little that left her without friends, somehow He left a kingdom never mentioned before and apparently far away, Tempest was able to do anything to recover his horn, just as Starlight was going to intervene in the sonic rainboom to recover his village.

If you ask me, neither Tempest, nor Cozy, nor Starlight were villains. Wanting to recover the horn is a bad thing? Wanting to be a princess is bad? Is it wrong to want to recover something that was built for years? It does not hurt to put the reaction here of Twilight upon learning that there were ponies with a different friendship than I thought, I thought it was wrong how Twilight reacted? Yes, because there are different types of friends and then she imposes her friendship model as if she were the only good one. It would have been much better than Twilight, instead of teaching Starlight a lesson, it was she who learned a lesson, that not all friendships work, or are the same way.

Cozy is a little pony, and Hasbro puts her as `` the most evil villain of all time '' Shouldn't it be common for little ponies in Equestria to want to be princesses? Isn't it normal to feel hate towards someone as popular as Princess Twilight Sparkle? Is she a villain for that? You can put Cozy and Moondancer in a line, Moondancer was rejected by who she considered her best friend, then she abandoned her and she isolated herself from society, since out there everyone loved a pony that ruined her life. This leads me to wonder, is this monarchy fair? where a single pony leaves in charge of whom only she thinks is the ideal to be the next ruler, shouldn't she be a good leader chosen by the inhabitants? Taking into account the fact that Celestia has ruled for a thousand years, shouldn't there also be a set time limit to be a ruler? Because this smells like dictatorship.

And according to Hasbro or whoever, you put without friends = ponies not happy = ponies villains.

Honestly, the villains of this series do not have a good handling (except Nightmare Moon), nor should they exist, because it is about friendship, where the ponies learn from it, but it should not be considered as THE MOST IMPORTANT or magic '' more powerful''.

[Jane 123]

.............,,,,,,,,

Edited December 3, 2019 by Jane

[Goat-kun 2,530]

20 hours ago, Jane said:

They are two ponies with really weak stories (in fact, Cozy does not even have a reason why she is a `` villain '') Tempest, like Starlight, suffered a trauma when she was little that left her without friends, somehow He left a kingdom never mentioned before and apparently far away, Tempest was able to do anything to recover his horn, just as Starlight was going to intervene in the sonic rainboom to recover his village.

If you ask me, neither Tempest, nor Cozy, nor Starlight were villains. Wanting to recover the horn is a bad thing? Wanting to be a princess is bad? Is it wrong to want to recover something that was built for years? It does not hurt to put the reaction here of Twilight upon learning that there were ponies with a different friendship than I thought, I thought it was wrong how Twilight reacted? Yes, because there are different types of friends and then she imposes her friendship model as if she were the only good one. It would have been much better than Twilight, instead of teaching Starlight a lesson, it was she who learned a lesson, that not all friendships work, or are the same way.

Cozy is a little pony, and Hasbro puts her as `` the most evil villain of all time '' Shouldn't it be common for little ponies in Equestria to want to be princesses? Isn't it normal to feel hate towards someone as popular as Princess Twilight Sparkle? Is she a villain for that? You can put Cozy and Moondancer in a line, Moondancer was rejected by who she considered her best friend, then she abandoned her and she isolated herself from society, since out there everyone loved a pony that ruined her life. This leads me to wonder, is this monarchy fair? where a single pony leaves in charge of whom only she thinks is the ideal to be the next ruler, shouldn't she be a good leader chosen by the inhabitants? Taking into account the fact that Celestia has ruled for a thousand years, shouldn't there also be a set time limit to be a ruler? Because this smells like dictatorship.

And according to Hasbro or whoever, you put without friends = ponies not happy = ponies villains.

Honestly, the villains of this series do not have a good handling (except Nightmare Moon), nor should they exist, because it is about friendship, where the ponies learn from it, but it should not be considered as THE MOST IMPORTANT or magic '' more powerful''.

They are two ponies with really weak stories (in fact, Cozy does not even have a reason why she is a `` villain '') Tempest, like Starlight, suffered a trauma when she was little that left her without friends, somehow He left a kingdom never mentioned before and apparently far away, Tempest was able to do anything to recover his horn, just as Starlight was going to intervene in the sonic rainboom to recover his village.

If you ask me, neither Tempest, nor Cozy, nor Starlight were villains. Wanting to recover the horn is a bad thing? Wanting to be a princess is bad? Is it wrong to want to recover something that was built for years? It does not hurt to put the reaction here of Twilight upon learning that there were ponies with a different friendship than I thought, I thought it was wrong how Twilight reacted? Yes, because there are different types of friends and then she imposes her friendship model as if she were the only good one. It would have been much better than Twilight, instead of teaching Starlight a lesson, it was she who learned a lesson, that not all friendships work, or are the same way.

Cozy is a little pony, and Hasbro puts her as `` the most evil villain of all time '' Shouldn't it be common for little ponies in Equestria to want to be princesses? Isn't it normal to feel hate towards someone as popular as Princess Twilight Sparkle? Is she a villain for that? You can put Cozy and Moondancer in a line, Moondancer was rejected by who she considered her best friend, then she abandoned her and she isolated herself from society, since out there everyone loved a pony that ruined her life. This leads me to wonder, is this monarchy fair? where a single pony leaves in charge of whom only she thinks is the ideal to be the next ruler, shouldn't she be a good leader chosen by the inhabitants? Taking into account the fact that Celestia has ruled for a thousand years, shouldn't there also be a set time limit to be a ruler? Because this smells like dictatorship.

And according to Hasbro or whoever, you put without friends = ponies not happy = ponies villains.

Honestly, the villains of this series do not have a good handling (except Nightmare Moon), nor should they exist, because it is about friendship, where the ponies learn from it, but it should not be considered as THE MOST IMPORTANT or magic '' more powerful''.

Luna, Sunset, Starlight, Tempest, they are all utterly irrelevant villains with weak personalities and boring characteristics. Luna is the same as the rest of them. It's just that her excuse for delinquency has been glorified by Bronies that desperately wanted to portray their own social awkwardness as strength of character. Then again, the same happened with the subsequent iterations. It is interesting to note that Tempest is the only pony that actually suffered any sort of notable loss. She only fails as a villains cause she doesn't progress as a character. Instead she goes full circle back to being just another boring pony with a slightly less uniform design. Tempest whose misplaced or understandable hatred of Equestria had been reinforced by the end of the story would have become quite a decent villain. None of the aforementioned ponies had a desire that could have pushed them towards such a character development. They're all just socially challenged mooks in need of friend-mommies and friend-daddies in the form of Mane 6. Discord is also in this category.

 

I like to think that Cozy is the answer for shitty pony villains, or at least the best answer our glorious writers were able to come up with. Instead of fixing shit backstory they let Cozy have none. Instead of trying to make a decent redemption arc they've made Cozy irredeemable. She is one of the best villains we have by the grace of procrastination, while her loli looks and cartoonishly evil personality that is indeed abnormal for ponykind make her fun to watch.

 

So the moral here is that in FIM no story is way better than a tragic past story. You've also identified the problem correctly: it's all about the Cult of Friendship & Harmony and that's why both friendships (as in relationships) and villains are all shit. Never go full friendship.

[Rumpelstiltskin 45]

On 12/4/2019 at 10:01 AM, Goat-kun said:

 

I like to think that Cozy is the answer for shitty pony villains, or at least the best answer our glorious writers were able to come up with. Instead of fixing shit backstory they let Cozy have none. Instead of trying to make a decent redemption arc they've made Cozy irredeemable. She is one of the best villains we have by the grace of procrastination, while her loli looks and cartoonishly evil personality that is indeed abnormal for ponykind make her fun to watch.

 

I loved how wild and evil Cozy was, she was one of the best elements of season nine. But I do wish they explored what makes her tick a bit more. Both Tirek and Chrysalis were shown to have insecurities and I felt that made them 'more human', for lack of a better word. Tirek has family issues, and Chrysalis was mentally falling apart because of how lonely she was. It would've been nice to see something similar with Cozy. 

[Goat-kun 2,530]

14 hours ago, Rumpelstiltskin said:

I loved how wild and evil Cozy was, she was one of the best elements of season nine. But I do wish they explored what makes her tick a bit more. Both Tirek and Chrysalis were shown to have insecurities and I felt that made them 'more human', for lack of a better word. Tirek has family issues, and Chrysalis was mentally falling apart because of how lonely she was. It would've been nice to see something similar with Cozy. 

All the villains had weak stories bordering on nonexistent. Let's try to amend that:

 

Tirek wants power. But why? His issues were never explored within the show. He could have been driven by his dream of becoming better King of Monsters than both his father and his brother, and absorbing magic seems like the easiest way to obtain power in his case. He is the more capable of the two siblings, yet his parents chose Scorpan due to his benevolent nature. Perhaps they hoped that such a move would awaken some semblance of doubt in their eldest son yet it only managed to fuel his ambition.

 

Chrysalis was a conceited bitch even before her hive abandoned her. However, since other changelings are halfwits that can barely put 2 + 2 together, one could try and derive her bitterness from her lonely existence on the throne where she is torn between her duty to feed the hive and the growing disdain she feels towards her subjects. Her being lonely among lesser beings for who know how long would answer why she rejects society.

 

Cozy is too young to buy help and too abnormal to maintain friendships. Thus she has learned how to wear a mask and manipulate others to do her bidding. I'd dare add some irony into her origin by having her parents be fanatical supporters of Friendship and Harmony in secret service of Equestrian throne. That is why Cozy would know so much about magic and inner workings of Equestria. It's also how Cozy would come in contact with Tirek and make the final conclusion: How would she make ponies do her bidding all the time? Why by becoming a princess, of course! Her rage and malice would be enriched by her dissocial nature; however, they would stem from her wish to have an easy life free of judgmental ponies that regard her pragmatic way of thinking as monstrous. No wonder that she would be drawn to Tirek as he is one of the few characters capable of accepting her as she is. She would also envy Chrysalis for having her own state and a bunch of hapless drones.

All in all, there's a lot one could do with these. Too bad. More unicorns and Maud jokes pls! Yawn.

[BornAgainBrony 2,398]

2 hours ago, Goat-kun said:

Tirek wants power. But why? His issues were never explored within the show. He could have been driven by his dream of becoming better King of Monsters than both his father and his brother, and absorbing magic seems like the easiest way to obtain power in his case. He is the more capable of the two siblings, yet his parents chose Scorpan due to his benevolent nature. Perhaps they hoped that such a move would awaken some semblance of doubt in their eldest son yet it only managed to fuel his ambition.

Those two would have made for such a wonderful story. Something in the vein of Thor/Loki seems a likely parallel of a relationship. We can only assume that Tirek was just as deceitful back in the day, and that what ultimately happened with Discord is nearly a repeat of how things went down. Was it really as simple as the Pony way of life bringing Skorpan into the light? Or was it also that Tirek was being a complete ass to his brother and Equestria was the lesser of the two evils? Tirek certainly comes off as one of those "evil for the sake of it" kind of villains, the kind that I always want to ask, "If you win, then what?" As far as we know, the answer to that is "set stuff on fire." Could this have made sense for impressing the family? Who the heck knows. But just the act of conquering Equestria you might think would be enough. If you want to present a gift to impress a political figure, what route to do take? Do you come home with an annexed nation full of riches, culture, servants, and an easily repairable infrastructure? Or a smoldering pile of wasteland?

2 hours ago, Goat-kun said:

Chrysalis was a conceited bitch even before her hive abandoned her. However, since other changelings are halfwits that can barely put 2 + 2 together, one could try and derive her bitterness from her lonely existence on the throne where she is torn between her duty to feed the hive and the growing disdain she feels towards her subjects. Her being lonely among lesser beings for who know how long would answer why she rejects society

I could see more going on. Something older than her tyrannical rule. Imagine something like Malificent (the first one). That's the vibe I get off of Chryssy. It doesn't have to be romance-related, but given how Changelings get their nourishment (in both forms), it seems like a pretty good possibility. The much more happy-go-lucky Changelings are sitting on a house of cards, and Pharynx is there to warn them of that. The Changelings jumped from one extreme to another and left themselves open to attack. Sure, if the shit hit the fan, Equestria would intervene but there's something to be said for cautious enthusiasm. Pharynx being right was at least partial proof that there was 'something' right about how Chrysalis was running things, and the Changelings had now tossed out the baby with the bathwater on their quest to be vegan vampires. Something far worse could have happened than a maulwurf attack, and Chrysalis has very likely been a witness to it. Assuming she isn't the first mother of all changelings, and follows the logical behavior of hive insects, she's the princess of another hive that she departed from. Perhaps just by the laws of nature, but chaos may have shoved her out of the nest before she was ready. Were her parents equally naive, resulting in the destruction of a hive, eventually leading to her being extremely closed off and paranoid? Did something even more sinister steal from her or her family after showing up with an olive branch? And what of the two ambient forms of changelings? Which one is the true one? Or is the reality of that a bit more grim? Neither is the true one, and both are integral stages of their lifecycle?

Which also brings me to what I would have rather seen with Chryssy's diabolical plots. Forget turning sticks into ponies. Be a bug queen. Build a lair, far from Equestria's influence where there's plenty of food for the taking and the odds of being found are slim. Lay eggs. Grow a formidable nest. Teach the new offspring your deviant way of life, and then declare civil war on Thorax.

There's something very clever about the dual nature of the Changelings which would be so much fun to explore in a harder sci-fi universe. Being that they're more or less instinctive creatures, capable of higher thought but still bound by a need to feed, the polarity between the two extremes makes for an interesting thought experiment. Something much more primal than friendship lessons, driven by evolution and instinct, not by culture and social influence. Not good vs. evil. Competition vs. Cooperation. Parasitism vs. Symbiosis.

2 hours ago, Goat-kun said:

Cozy is too young to buy help and too abnormal to maintain friendships. Thus she has learned how to wear a mask and manipulate others to do her bidding. I'd dare add some irony into her origin by having her parents be fanatical supporters of Friendship and Harmony in secret service of Equestrian throne. That is why Cozy would know so much about magic and inner workings of Equestria. It's also how Cozy would come in contact with Tirek and make the final conclusion: How would she make ponies do her bidding all the time? Why by becoming a princess, of course! Her rage and malice would be enriched by her dissocial nature; however, they would stem from her wish to have an easy life free of judgmental ponies that regard her pragmatic way of thinking as monstrous. No wonder that she would be drawn to Tirek as he is one of the few characters capable of accepting her as she is. She would also envy Chrysalis for having her own state and a bunch of hapless drones.

At least a couple of times I thought she could be the quintessential "Joker" of the villains. To analyze her requires us to take a snapshot of time though because her motivations change between S8 and S9. There was no official material written for her backstory, but Sunni Westbrook confirmed for me what I had suspected. Cozy Glow saw herself as rising up to be a benevolent dictator in S8. After her time in Tartarus, those aspirations were gone and she was purely out for vengeance.

How she wound up as she was in S8 though, that would have been far more interesting if her approach to life wasn't purely environmental but a bizarre reaction to being taught the doctrines of friendship. Jesus said, "Love thy neighbor" and someone managed to distort that into "Kill everyone who doesn't believe in me." Every religious dogma can breed extremists even under the most idealistic of intentions, and that's exactly what I see in Cozy Glow. "Friendship is Magic" Twilight says. Cozy Glow distorts that into "Friendship is Power." Like a child raised on social media, she looks at friendship like a power game, and whoever gets the most likes, the most follows, the most friends, wins. Using the rise of Twilight as a basis, it's not at all hard to see how an impressionable child might take that inspiration and run wild with it. She wants to be the rock star, and using a rock star as an idol, she's looking at a couple of key moments in the life of said individual, missing out on the more nuanced but equally-important stuff. Heck, Twilight even only got her castle after briefly doing the same thing as Tirek, harnessing the magic of her fellow Alicorns. The more I think about it, the more believable it is that such ideas got into her head.

[Jesse Terrence 2,969]

My favorite kind of villains are those who are RIGHT despite their ways. Those villains who you can tell "well, he's a total monster, but he's going far beyond what any hero would for the greater good of everyone, even if they end up being seen as villains by the public eye". Bonus points if they keep up their villain facade all the way until the very end.

Touching some Abrahamic religions, we could take for example Satan, Samael or to some degree Lucifer. Given there's a lot of mixing due lost translations and many forbidden texts by the 3 main abrahamic religions out there, people is likely to talk about Satan when actually they are talking about Samael, or Lucifer when they meant Satan and so. But at the end, the 3 can be summed up as guys who do something seen as horrible but indeed their cause is far more noble than the typical interpretation given to god's word and will. Lucifer himself was actually the best creation of god, and according to some of the forbiden texts, he caused the uprising due 2 main reasons. The first and most known is that he didn't want to recognize God's supperiority. He was a rebel. The second and which moved the masses of rebel angels that later on became fallen ones was that he didn't think it was fair for the creation that angels were the only ones to enjoy of all the nice things in heaven along with inmortality and a total lack of suffering while the rest of the universe was supposed to suffer.
Then we have Satan who is, according to a lot of fobidden texts, the angel who was sent to temp Adam and Eve with the fruit. And we could argue he was a piece of shit for doing so. However, technically he's the one doing God's dirty laundry throughout the Abrahamic mythos. Pretty much, it was God who ordered Satan to temp them and see what happened. They fucked up and you know the rest. Later on we have the constant idea that Satan rules hell, but is more likely that Satan is just punishing sinners under God's direct commands. Yeah, the freezing hell and the hellfire and the everlasting suffering? All that was ordered by God. Once again, those are things you could read in texts all Christian churches and derivative sects (like catholiscism) agreed on not recognizing.
Finally, Samael is actually the angel of death, though sometimes texts blend him with Satan as the big baddie that lurks in hell and temps people. He's another dude who goes around doing God's will, but the kind of dirty laundry will. His job is to test people before collecting their souls and sending them their way to whatever part they should end up at. Yeah, he "kills" people and can be "cruel", but all under god's command. It doesn't help him that he's represented as a red snake in some texts, but he's not doing evil stuff out of boredom.

Stretching a bit on that, and according to the unrecognized gospel by Jesus, we get to know that Judas wasn't all the traitor he's supposed to be. According to that forbiden text, Judas was the loyalest to Jesus, and it was Jesus himself who ordered Judas to turn him in so things went as planned by God to forgive our sins, given the rest would decline to do so.

 

So yeah. Hope I don't offend anyone.

[Goat-kun 2,530]

21 hours ago, BornAgainBrony said:

Those two would have made for such a wonderful story. Something in the vein of Thor/Loki seems a likely parallel of a relationship. We can only assume that Tirek was just as deceitful back in the day, and that what ultimately happened with Discord is nearly a repeat of how things went down. Was it really as simple as the Pony way of life bringing Skorpan into the light? Or was it also that Tirek was being a complete ass to his brother and Equestria was the lesser of the two evils? Tirek certainly comes off as one of those "evil for the sake of it" kind of villains, the kind that I always want to ask, "If you win, then what?" As far as we know, the answer to that is "set stuff on fire." Could this have made sense for impressing the family? Who the heck knows. But just the act of conquering Equestria you might think would be enough. If you want to present a gift to impress a political figure, what route to do take? Do you come home with an annexed nation full of riches, culture, servants, and an easily repairable infrastructure? Or a smoldering pile of wasteland?

Tirek had some Gul'dan type as a teacher if the comics are to be believed. Warlocks are rarely good leaders. However, can one truly rule monsters by not being a powerful despot? He could learn a lot from his villainous companions, and in time he could become far worthier of the crown that his brother, even as a villain, or perhaps because of it. Call it a villain's journey Scorpan was not able to confront Tirek on his own. Nice or not, a frail pony lapdog has no place on the throne.

21 hours ago, BornAgainBrony said:

I could see more going on. Something older than her tyrannical rule. Imagine something like Malificent (the first one). That's the vibe I get off of Chryssy. It doesn't have to be romance-related, but given how Changelings get their nourishment (in both forms), it seems like a pretty good possibility. The much more happy-go-lucky Changelings are sitting on a house of cards, and Pharynx is there to warn them of that. The Changelings jumped from one extreme to another and left themselves open to attack. Sure, if the shit hit the fan, Equestria would intervene but there's something to be said for cautious enthusiasm. Pharynx being right was at least partial proof that there was 'something' right about how Chrysalis was running things, and the Changelings had now tossed out the baby with the bathwater on their quest to be vegan vampires. Something far worse could have happened than a maulwurf attack, and Chrysalis has very likely been a witness to it. Assuming she isn't the first mother of all changelings, and follows the logical behavior of hive insects, she's the princess of another hive that she departed from. Perhaps just by the laws of nature, but chaos may have shoved her out of the nest before she was ready. Were her parents equally naive, resulting in the destruction of a hive, eventually leading to her being extremely closed off and paranoid? Did something even more sinister steal from her or her family after showing up with an olive branch? And what of the two ambient forms of changelings? Which one is the true one? Or is the reality of that a bit more grim? Neither is the true one, and both are integral stages of their lifecycle?

Which also brings me to what I would have rather seen with Chryssy's diabolical plots. Forget turning sticks into ponies. Be a bug queen. Build a lair, far from Equestria's influence where there's plenty of food for the taking and the odds of being found are slim. Lay eggs. Grow a formidable nest. Teach the new offspring your deviant way of life, and then declare civil war on Thorax.

There's something very clever about the dual nature of the Changelings which would be so much fun to explore in a harder sci-fi universe. Being that they're more or less instinctive creatures, capable of higher thought but still bound by a need to feed, the polarity between the two extremes makes for an interesting thought experiment. Something much more primal than friendship lessons, driven by evolution and instinct, not by culture and social influence. Not good vs. evil. Competition vs. Cooperation. Parasitism vs. Symbiosis.

Dunno about greater evils, burning skies and all that, but she should have formed a new hive, and a stronger one at that. Discard every notion of equinity and embrace your xenomorphic nature. Evolve! Throw in some warriors and swarm mages. Get yourself a royal guard. Then go and make an example out of the traitors while your ally, King Tirek, is busy posturing on the Equestrian border.

21 hours ago, BornAgainBrony said:

How she wound up as she was in S8 though, that would have been far more interesting if her approach to life wasn't purely environmental but a bizarre reaction to being taught the doctrines of friendship. Jesus said, "Love thy neighbor" and someone managed to distort that into "Kill everyone who doesn't believe in me." Every religious dogma can breed extremists even under the most idealistic of intentions, and that's exactly what I see in Cozy Glow. "Friendship is Magic" Twilight says. Cozy Glow distorts that into "Friendship is Power." Like a child raised on social media, she looks at friendship like a power game, and whoever gets the most likes, the most follows, the most friends, wins. Using the rise of Twilight as a basis, it's not at all hard to see how an impressionable child might take that inspiration and run wild with it. She wants to be the rock star, and using a rock star as an idol, she's looking at a couple of key moments in the life of said individual, missing out on the more nuanced but equally-important stuff. Heck, Twilight even only got her castle after briefly doing the same thing as Tirek, harnessing the magic of her fellow Alicorns. The more I think about it, the more believable it is that such ideas got into her head.

I'm not sure if Cozy is misinterpreting friendship or just using some of its concepts to further her own agenda. I'm leaning towards the latter. Perhaps there was a time when she may have truly believed in Friendship. That time is long gone. Still, that does not mean that she as a pony doesn't enjoy being in a company of other like-minded creatures. It's just that she enjoys being a tyrant more. Then what kind of an alicorn would she become once she obtains power? If FIM canon is to be regarded, an evil alicorn would go against everything we know about the magic of Friendship. So either that oh-so-righteous transformation can be used by someone that doesn't give two shits about harming others, or you go and turn Cozy into a shadow pony instead. And if she was a nihilistic "Joker", then she'd have even more of a reason to embrace the void in ways Stygian never could. Then we'd have a real cult leader.

[Goat-kun 2,530]

20 hours ago, Jesse Terrence said:

My favorite kind of villains are those who are RIGHT despite their ways. Those villains who you can tell "well, he's a total monster, but he's going far beyond what any hero would for the greater good of everyone, even if they end up being seen as villains by the public eye". Bonus points if they keep up their villain facade all the way until the very end.

So yeah. Hope I don't offend anyone.

Anyone who facechecks this thread cannot be offended so easily. I've seen to it.

 

So we're looking at the Imperium of Man? Indeed, Harmony would be the kind of a villain that could match that description