Gentian's Lexical Tomfoolery

[Gentian]

Very informative, thank you for sharing.

My pleasure, thank you for reading it.

All really very informative! Interesting information you've laid out. Though I have a question, I see you compared objection possession as like in Royal Problem and in Amending Fences, but wasn't the bit in Amending Fences cited to be something else entirely, a specific method that she was gonna teach Moondancer?

The spells are arranged on the chart at their lowest level, and easiest versions. There are many spells that duplicate, to varying degrees of authenticity, the effects of others. "Object Possession," is given more as general class of magics, rather than a single spell. The same is true of "light," "polymorph," and a number of others.

And of course I already laid out my thoughts about Starlight, I think she studied very hard, just a lot of it was off screen we don't see her studying much on screen.

I know I already told you my thoughts on this but I wanted to say it here as well. This has been shown to be completely false. She's stated that she studied a spell for years in The Cutie Map and it has been shown atleast on a few occasions that she deeply studies and works on her magic quite frequently. If we're talking about her sheer magical power, "Hasbro's fanfiction cartoon" has more than explained why that is and I'm sure that's something she had to work many years on and didn't just wake up one day and make the connection.

Other than that I find your thoughts rather informative and interesting.

Whobawhats, I know you consider your Starlight to be the canonical one, or to at least be from a place which follows show canon exactly, but my Twilight does not come from such a place. Her Equestria has very little in common with what we see on on Hasbro's cartoon, and this essay was written with her world in mind.

Some of the differences are quite drastic, such as the complete absence of Spike, Discord, Changelings, dogs, and Princess Cadance. Her Celestia is a literal goddess, and ponies are the only sapient species on her world, no talking yaks, dragons, griffins, cows, breezies, etc. All but thaose last exist, but as beasts, not other intelligent creatures, and these are only a few of the differences.

Not all of those changes are welcome to me. I like Princess Cadance, for example, and tend to also like dogs; I own one, after all. I say this because I don't want you to get the wrong idea when I tell you that it seems there is no Starlight Glimmer in her world, either. Further, Starlight is not my waifu, and I am not as knowledgeable about her or her capabilities, as you obviously are. I used Starlight as an example there because that's how I've interpreted her to be: a powerful, talented magic user, but perhaps not as educated.

This is not intended as a slight against her, it simply seems to follow from her lifestyle choice as the leader of an extremely isolated town. Neither is this precluded by the lines in those episodes wherein she says it took her years to master a given spell. It just shows that she took that time to master that spell; it says nothing of a general magical education. Perhaps it took her years because she only had a single text to work from? Maybe it's because she had to piece the spell together herself from half-remembered fragments? Maybe it's because she spent so much of her time playing politics that she didnt have enough time to study? Do you see? I'm not insulting her, I'm extrapolating from what Hasbro has shown us onscreen.

If she had made her home in a more urban area, had easier access to a wider range of written knowledge, or ponies to teach her (or to challenge her), her background appearance in Canterlot, notwithstanding, it might not have taken her years. I simply don't know, and went with what to me seemed the most likely interpretation of events.

But again, I haven't waifued her, nor do I make a study of her, and as you do, I would expect you know more about her than I do. However, again, this essay is written to represent my Twilight's Equestria, and not Hasbro's, or anyone else's Equestria.