User blog:DarkClaw3/PE Proposal: Cosmos

This is a proposal I've been thinking about (and putting off) ever since creating the page, so I think its about time I actually got around to making it. Let's talk about Cosmos from the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comic series.

What's the Work?
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you have no idea what the heck a "My Little Pony" is, so I guess I'll explain. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (or MLP: FiM, for short) is an ongoing comic series published by IDW based on the TV series of the same name. The series revolves around six ponies (or the "Mane 6")—Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie—and their other friends going on adventures in Ponyville or throughout the rest of Equestria, learning (sometimes surprisingly good) lessons about friendship and things along the way. Oh yeah. And sometimes they fight horrifying parasitic shape-shifters, magic-stealing demon centaurs and psychopathic schoolchildren to protect the world too. But those villains aren't the ones we're here to talk about today...

Who is She?
Cosmos serves as the main antagonist of the story arc of the same name, spanning issues #75 through #78. As established in several flashbacks throughout the arc, she is a being similar to Discord who, after turning up in his home of Chaosville, struck up a friendship and eventually romance with him based on a shared love of chaos and disorder. However, this relationship eventually soured when the two decided to cause trouble throughout Equestria together, with Cosmos becoming obsessed with disposing of Celestia and Luna in order to take over the land for herself while growing even more destructive and volatile with her actions. Eventually, unable to stand Cosmos' destruction and abuse any longer, Discord turned to Celestia, Luna and a few others in order to banish her and stop her magic from destroying the universe—however, afterwards, Discord wiped everyone's memory of her and took the fall for her actions, not wanting anybody to ever learn of or remember what she did.

Cosmos, now banished into a constellation known as the Andalusian, would eventually return to Equestria when the Andalusian stars were knocked out of the sky. Years later, Twilight Sparkle would come into possession of one of these stars as a gift from Rarity, thus allowing Cosmos to take over her body and, through the guise of an archaeological expedition, manipulate her friends into splitting up to recover the remaining stars. Discord is naturally unpleased to learn of Cosmos' coming return when informed of the expedition by Fluttershy and reluctantly retrieves one of the stars from the Everfree forest and heads with her to warn Celestia, only to find that Cosmos-Twilight had used the star that Celestia was keeping to possess her before using the third star to do the same to Luna. She briefly reunites with Discord before learning that he has reformed, and so transforms Fluttershy into a pony/butterfly hybrid in order to keep him occupied enough not to interfere with her plans.

Later, Cosmos gets her hands (hooves...?) on two more of the stars after they are delivered and then forcefully taken from Pinkie Pie and Zecora's groups, with Cosmos taking possession of the latter and Big Mac while imprisoning the rest, then deciding to obtain the final star herself. As such, she travels to the Crystal Empire just as Cadence becomes possessed, allowing her to regain physical form by merging her victims together; while, simultaneously, Discord and the others arrive, and she begins to tear through the Crystal Empire looking for him. Discord and the others formulate a plan to stop her by destroying the stars and thus all of her magic, which they proceed with as she gradually begins transforming them all. Eventually, Discord musters up the courage to finally call out her despicable nature and tell her off; however, once he does, she drops the lovey-dovey act—revealing that she is the personification of malice and was using him since the start. Thankfully, Discord manages to destroy the last star by feeding it to Spike, destroying Cosmos' magic and undoing all of her actions in the process, before banishing her to the moon for good.

What Has She Done?
In essence, Cosmos seems to be the answer to the time-old fan-fic question, "what if Discord was truly evil?" And not just evil, but an irredeemably sadistic psychopath who uses her unlimited power to cause rampant destruction for fun. Because, in the end, that's what she is.

As opposed to Discord's more silly and relatively harmless brand of chaos magic, Cosmos is far more destructive and way more violent in how she uses her abilities, with far, far less morals or restraints, to the point where she nearly tears apart the fabric of reality during her first reign. In both the flashbacks and the present of her story arc, the environments she warps become horrifying and Lovecraftian in nature, buildings are almost always seen either destroyed or on fire around her (especially during her rampage through the Crystal Empire), and it is made explicitly clear by a grave Princess Luna that people are being injured by her actions. Speaking of which, it is shown on multiple occasions that, again opposed to Discord, she has few (if any) qualms about hurting/killing ponies with her magic. Not only does she deliberately do so to Fluttershy in order to keep Discord occupied, but, when first learning of Luna and Celestia, she immediately resolves to kill them in order to rule Equestria (saying, and I quote, "Princesses you say? Well, that won't do...they'll have to be done away with. Ooh! Let's turn them into salmon and throw them at a bear!")

The most notable example of her homicidal tendencies comes from the day she finally crossed the line for Discord, she decided to convert a school in Canterlot into a towering inferno...with all the kids still inside. Yes, you read that right. What makes this moment more disturbing is the fact that, not only does she laugh at all the children she has just put in danger, but, while Discord is shown saving the kids on the next page, he makes it explicitly clear that they probably would've died had he done nothing ("Now listen here, Cosmos. You know how I feel about kil—"). And on top of that, Cosmos is visibly annoyed with Discord for intervening (and also dropping her new scarf).

Also, as opposed to all villains in the series who want to rule Equestria, Cosmos makes it clear after possessing the three princesses and reuniting with Discord that her main interest in taking over is simply just to make everyone in Equestria suffer and live in fear for her own enjoyment; which shouldn't come as much of a surprise when considering how she treats Discord. It's a little frightening to consider just how abusive her relationship is with him overall. She sees him as nothing more than a piece of property or a pet (in the most literal fashion, as in she is shown turning him into a dog for "disobeying"/ever so slightly ticking her off; and during the final issue, the "throne" she makes for him to sit alongside her in is literally a dog house) that she can use to cause even more misery and gain more power, disregarding his happiness and well-being for the sake of her own enjoyment. It even gets to the point where she's willing to harm the ones closest to him in order to ensure he stays under her thumb, as she expresses after transforming Fluttershy ("You have my permission to leave now! And think about how you'll want to talk to me next time we meet, dearest.") Honestly, Cosmos' excessive sadism and love of causing destruction and ruin puts pretty much every other villain in the series to shame. Here's hoping she stays on the moon for a long, long time.

Mitigating Factors?
None whatsoever. Cosmos is a nutty sadist bent on making every living creature in Equestria live in fear of her, with absolutely no limitations to her cruelty beyond her imagination. Much like Discord, she probably could do worse with her reality-shaping powers in certain situations, but everything she does more or less hinges on what she finds enjoyable for the moment—be that transforming her victims into animals or inanimate objects (with it being made clear in some cases they are totally aware of what has happened to them), simply terrifying them, or, y'know, letting them burn to death. It should be said that she does have her fun, humorous moments throughout her arc; however, none of them detract from her seriousness as a threat or make her seem any less evil in the end.

And before this gets brought up (and it will be), yes, even as the very personification of malice, she has a clear moral agency. After all, she is an entity similar in nature to Discord (only representing malice instead of chaos), and he expresses many times throughout the arc that even a chaotic being like him has limitations on how crazy he's willing to let things become. So, based on that, it's easy to assume that Cosmos is similar in being able to make conscious choices regarding her actions. Beyond that, she shows very clear signs of understanding everything she does and revels in all the harm she causes, which makes it obvious that she isn't "made of evil".

Heinous Standard?
The MLP comics, despite taking place more or less within the same continuity as the original series (i.e. the comics acknowledge everything that happens in the show, but not vice-versa) have a slightly different heinous standard. Some of the existing villains are made a little worse (the best example is Queen Chrysalis, who becomes not only a hell of a lot more ruthless during the first arc but turns one of the citizens of Wuvey-Dovey Smoochy land into a black stain on the wall in Issue #3) while many of the original villains are just as bad, if not worse (for example, Rabia and her Umbrum spent years attacking the ponies of the Crystal Empire for fun and Evil Celestia spreading mass destruction and havoc across the alternate Equestria for years.

However, I'd be inclined to say that Cosmos outclasses all of them. Not only because A) she operates on a universal scale due to her immense power (again, she nearly destroyed all of reality in her first visit to Equestria, and she's so far the only character in the series who can match the nearly omnipotent Discord) but B) because she is way more sadistic than all of them put together. She isn't bent on just ruling Equestria, but making everyone in it suffer and live in fear, which is something not even the worst of the worst villains in the series can attest to. As a bonus, the emotional/physical abuse she displays with Discord is an incredibly unique crime in a generally all-age friendly series like this, as well as the fact that she's very openly willing to murder or harm anything for any reason (of course, the likes of Chrysalis, Tirek and Cozy Glow are willing to kill too, but that only ever extents to the main characters—whereas Cosmos is volatile enough to hunt down Celestia and Luna upon learning that they challenge her rule over Equestria, willing to ignite a school full of children while laughing, and burn down/demolish both Canterlot and the Crystal Empire just to get her hands on Discord).

Verdict?
Never thought I'd say this of an MLP villain besides G1 Tirek, but Cosmos is definitely vile enough to count as PE.