What is most likely cozy glow's backstory?

[Rushing cash 843]

What is her most likely (or your favorite theory) backstory? Is she a crazy cunning child, perhaps she is an adult that looks like a kid (like baby doll from batman) or maybe she isn't even a pony but a demon?

I personally like the theory that she is an adult but looks like a kid and with time went insane. 

[Otaku-sempai 582]

Without any conclusive evidence otherwise, I do think that Cozy Glow really is a filly with some skewed ideas about friendship. The question for me is how she got that way. She might be from Thracia (from the MLP:FIM comics) but all the Thracian ponies we've seen seem to be Earth Ponies. 

[tomatopotato 167]

42 minutes ago, Otaku-sempai said:

Without any conclusive evidence otherwise, I do think that Cozy Glow really is a filly with some skewed ideas about friendship. The question for me is how she got that way. She might be from Thracia (from the MLP:FIM comics) but all the Thracian ponies we've seen seem to be Earth Ponies. 

Tirek mentioned in either Season 8 Episode 25 or Episode 26 that he became pen pals with Cozy. We all know that Tirek has some EXTREMELY messed up ideals, so it shouldn't have been too hard for Cozy to catch on with his ideas......

[Rushing cash 843]

1 hour ago, Otaku-sempai said:

Without any conclusive evidence otherwise, I do think that Cozy Glow really is a filly with some skewed ideas about friendship. The question for me is how she got that way. She might be from Thracia (from the MLP:FIM comics) but all the Thracian ponies we've seen seem to be Earth Ponies. 

Interesting, I actually forgot about this comic. Too bad it wasn't continued, it was pretty promising. It does seem like all the ponies there are earth ponies so its pretty unlikely.

If cozy is indeed a child (or even if not) did she become evil through life experiences (bad parents, bullying, bad environment growing up etc.) or is she a psychopath who simply can't feel empathy twoards others and just use them however she see fits like some chess figures.

 

29 minutes ago, tomatopotato said:

Tirek mentioned in either Season 8 Episode 25 or Episode 26 that he became pen pals with Cozy. We all know that Tirek has some EXTREMELY messed up ideals, so it shouldn't have been too hard for Cozy to catch on with his ideas......

Maybe, but its more likely she somehow contacted him (not sure how though, perhaps derpy) since he was imprisoned so she already had bad intentions. From their interaction in season 9 it seems to me like she tried to manipulate him (and the others), so I personally don't think Tirek played a serious role in her turning out like that.  

[Street Light 69]

she's probably just someone who was neglected or abandoned by their family.. idk what sort of institutions equestria would have for that, although there hasn't been any depiction of like. an orphanage. anywhere. idk she might've just grown up on the street or smth. when u have to look out for urself like that, developing misguided ideals to survive in that situation tend to stick with you. like perhaps she saw friendship as a means to get by, a way to get what she needed to live or survive. maybe she figured the only way to make do was to outwit others emotionally. anyone who grows up on the streets or on their own is generally a lot more aware (comparatively), but it's also a forced maturity, in a way; yes she is aware that she can manipulate others due to her age, cuteness, etc.. but no she does not understand the consequences of it, or much of anything. 

 

but yeah she's probably just a street urchin or something :3c def a real kid, though

[Interstellar Sketch 2,817]

Maybe she did not receive love from her parent(s). I almost became something like that. Or maybe something happened that was out of her control such as what I said above or another thing. To her, control = power. When she met everypony at the School of Friendship, she may have felt that manipulating, or having control over everypony, would allow her to make sure that same thing wouldn't happen again. Or make sure that they wouldn't dare leave her and would show her all of the love and attention. "Besides, if I have control over everything, nothing out of the ordinary can happen! Everypony will adore me and I will never feel unloved or unwanted again! If not even my family will love me..then who will?" is what she might have thought. Of course, this is a terrible way of thinking. Everyone responds differently to trauma and perhaps she is just a very sad filly who didn't know how to handle it. So with all of this built up negativity, she took it out on unsuspecting ponies who would love her if she made them.

Just my headcanon >:D

[Rushing cash 843]

21 hours ago, Interstellar Sketch said:

Maybe she did not receive love from her parent(s). I almost became something like that. Or maybe something happened that was out of her control such as what I said above or another thing. To her, control = power. When she met everypony at the School of Friendship, she may have felt that manipulating, or having control over everypony, would allow her to make sure that same thing wouldn't happen again. Or make sure that they wouldn't dare leave her and would show her all of the love and attention. "Besides, if I have control over everything, nothing out of the ordinary can happen! Everypony will adore me and I will never feel unloved or unwanted again! If not even my family will love me..then who will?" is what she might have thought. Of course, this is a terrible way of thinking. Everyone responds differently to trauma and perhaps she is just a very sad filly who didn't know how to handle it. So with all of this built up negativity, she took it out on unsuspecting ponies who would love her if she made them.

Just my headcanon >:D

Thats sounds like a good theory. Perhaps she felt that inorder to control her own life and destiny she needs to have control of nearly everything. That might also explain her plans (to some degree), she tries to gain power by different methods, in S8 she doesn't have strong magic so she takes it away from the others so she can get to a power position more easily (by having many followers) and thus more control, in S9 she tries to get magic so this time she can force it. That said, it doesn't completely explain her cruelty and I do disagree on the wanting love part. I personally don't think that what she wants, to me it seems she wants others to like her (in season 8 mostly) only to be in a position of power, its just for manipulation so they will do what she says. That is what she is trying to pull on Tirek (and slightly on Chrysalis), Tirek just realizes it. We see that she is rather sadistic, so to me at least it seems like there is more to it. Do you think her cruelty is the result of built up frustration that she can't help but show occaasinally? 

 

 

21 hours ago, Street Light said:

idk what sort of institutions equestria would have for that, although there hasn't been any depiction of like. an orphanage. anywhere.

I can't recall an orphanage either although I still think such an institution is more likely to exist than not. If we never got a confirmation of an orphanage in the show I will find it rather funny, since for so many years Scootaloo being an orphan was such a strong theory.

21 hours ago, Street Light said:

when u have to look out for urself like that, developing misguided ideals to survive in that situation tend to stick with you. like perhaps she saw friendship as a means to get by, a way to get what she needed to live or survive. maybe she figured the only way to make do was to outwit others emotionally. anyone who grows up on the streets or on their own is generally a lot more aware (comparatively), but it's also a forced maturity, in a way; yes she is aware that she can manipulate others due to her age, cuteness, etc..

True, that might explain why she manipulates and how she became so good at this. Still, there is a difference between make do or get by and what she ended up doing. Maybe she realized she wanted more and needed to think bigger? 

 

21 hours ago, Street Light said:

but no she does not understand the consequences of it, or much of anything. 

You mean consequences of her actions on what will happen (like equestria will lose its magic) overall and what it really means? Or understand how this will effect others (in this case you mean it like she can't comprehand or she emotionally doesn't understand, that she couldn't care less)? Or what will happen to her? Or all of them? I personally think she is smart enough and understands them to a degree, but emotionally she doesn't get others suffering and sometimes she is a bit to self centered and impulsive to completely realize what might happen to her if she fails. I my opinion its pretty clear that she has (a pretty severe case of) antisocial personality disorder (or something of the sort). 

 

Edited Sunday at 08:26 PM by Rushing cash

[Street Light 69]

honestlyyy??? equestria doesn't seem like it'd rlly have too many orphanages, if any. canonically the show kinda depicts ponies as being a peaceful and stable species, far removed from the rigors of real life. i mean look at the only ponies who presumably had a rough childhood; cozy glow and starlight glimmer. just the fact she got abandoned by her friend led starlight down a spiral, and cozy glow has no indication of even having a family. sunset shimmer is another who ran away from her home, abandoning her apprenticeship with princess celestia, and became estranged. These are kinda the only examples of dysfunctional homes in the show, unless you count applejack and her parents. but there were many support structures in place for her and her family to counteract the negative feedback loop.

the only examples of villains who aren't thousands(s) of years old were ponies who grew up with a rough childhood, unless you count flim and flam whose cardinal sin was that they were CAPITALIST (lol) or trixie who is, by the way, homeless :3. which is another point, trixie is the only example of homelessness we have in the show and she's a VILLAIN. real life struggle is just something that a pony struggles to deal with. a point could be made for caballeron but he's like, so far removed from mainstream society that everypony thinks he's a myth to the point of doubting his existence when face to face with him :3

the point is, i think that cozy glow had a rough home, a rough childhood, and that's just something that literally never happens to families in the universe, at least not ponies. they've had a thousand years of more-or-less uninterrupted peace, and disrupting that can be something that really changes a pony. 

[Rushing cash 843]

On 2025-05-26 at 2:24 AM, Street Light said:

honestlyyy??? equestria doesn't seem like it'd rlly have too many orphanages, if any. canonically the show kinda depicts ponies as being a peaceful and stable species, far removed from the rigors of real life. i mean look at the only ponies who presumably had a rough childhood; cozy glow and starlight glimmer. just the fact she got abandoned by her friend led starlight down a spiral, and cozy glow has no indication of even having a family. sunset shimmer is another who ran away from her home, abandoning her apprenticeship with princess celestia, and became estranged. These are kinda the only examples of dysfunctional homes in the show, unless you count applejack and her parents. but there were many support structures in place for her and her family to counteract the negative feedback loop.

the only examples of villains who aren't thousands(s) of years old were ponies who grew up with a rough childhood, unless you count flim and flam whose cardinal sin was that they were CAPITALIST (lol) or trixie who is, by the way, homeless :3. which is another point, trixie is the only example of homelessness we have in the show and she's a VILLAIN. real life struggle is just something that a pony struggles to deal with. a point could be made for caballeron but he's like, so far removed from mainstream society that everypony thinks he's a myth to the point of doubting his existence when face to face with him :3

the point is, i think that cozy glow had a rough home, a rough childhood, and that's just something that literally never happens to families in the universe, at least not ponies. they've had a thousand years of more-or-less uninterrupted peace, and disrupting that can be something that really changes a pony. 

While the show does depict equestria as a more friendly environment than real life, we do know that injuries, diseases and death exist. I personally believe that equestria very likely has orphanges, granted less than in real life with lower demand. But thats up for fans interpretations, so fair enough. I don't remember that the show ever addresses trixies backstory (maybe the comics did), maybe she decided to be a travelling pony on her own. Presumably inspired by her (possibly) dad? There are some other antagonists in the series with no backstory (to my knowledge) like lightning dust and suri polomare. There is also Tempest who also had a rough childhood. I agree on that a rough or toxic chilhood is a very likely cause for cozy becoming that. In my opinion, she has some issues that are not completely related to her childhood, but her environment growing up (or perhaps after that) could have lead to these issues to come to the surface and really manifest (but maybe that just me). 

[Raskolnikov 540]

In universe I agree that probably some kind of rough childhood is the most likely scenario as we were never given any indication of anything more outlandish and it seems the most 'grounded' scenario. Her being an adult in a child's body in reality is curious and fun as a theory but maybe too outlandish for something not alluded to in the show. (And honestly psychopathy IMO is itself traumatogenic - I think the reason why clinicians may not find trauma in those with diagnosed with ASPD is (outside of specific medical cases of brain damage) because they have a narrow view of trauma and do not see more invisible forms of emotional abuse/neglect/abandonment as severe enough. So Cozy Glow could hypothetically display 'psychopathic' traits but that's because of something in her past, or something ongoing.)

The meta explanation I think is more boring in that they just didn't really think about her character that much. Perhaps I'm being harsh to feel justified in thinking as such just from that tweet alone because of course you won't think of every detail of characters you write, but from how absurd it was that she was shown to act so cartoonishly evil for no discernible reason, then she, a literal child, was deemed more irredeemable than e.g. the literal God of Chaos... something just isn't right. Her character made 0 sense and did not fit into the show's themes of friendship to have her punished the way she was when way worse villains were treated with more grace. Any fan explanations for her behaviour would be simply theories trying to patch up the show's lack of care regarding her writing. We just weren't given enough explanation.

Edited 8 hours ago by Raskolnikov