That’s...an interesting point. I never actually thought that Celestia and Luna could move the celestial bodies because they were alicorns. I always just thought they could move them because it was their special talents, and it was unique magic they could do because of their knowledge or talent, not because only they had the brute force to do it. After all, the only fight Celestia was ever in canonically, she lost, and it wasn’t even all that climactic either.
In the event that all alicorns have royal-sister levels of power (Again, my assumptions have blinded me here, I always thought that being an alicorn would basically be like being a very powerful unicorn, and Celestia and Luna were so powerful because, in addition to being alicorns, they were also thousands of years old and knew far more about magic than any mortal) that’s an extremely, EXTREMELY good reason not to do it.
I see no reason why earth ponies would lose their talents, though they might decide they want to do something else upon gaining MORE talents. That said, that could easily apply both ways: A pegasus who can now not only fly, but also have a deeper relationship with the earth might decide they’d rather farm than be a weather pony.
And you’re right about the diversity. This isn’t a very good Celestia argument imo, but if I expanded the story, it could certainly be a justification for certain groups to oppose the concept, such as groups that believe that the unique culture of their race would be destroyed by this move.
Even if I make my assumptions canon within the fic, there’s no reason to expect the average pony on the street would know it, and wouldn’t assume that your assumptions were correct. And given the irrationality of humans, and that ponies seem to act mostly like humans, a mere statement that “This is the way alicorn power is” isn’t going to be enough to assuage the populace...
Lastly, should I fail to get any real discourse going here, I can delete it now. The LessWrong group on a popular MLP fanfiction site is much, much more active than it looked. It hadn’t gotten any activity in it’s forum in weeks, but when I posted this question there, I started getting replies very quickly. If I’d known that I’d get that level of activity, I wouldn’t have bothered to post this here at all.
I see no reason why earth ponies would lose their talents, though they might decide they want to do something else upon gaining MORE talents.
Given that your own opinions fall squarely on one side of the debate… you should be very careful about using your powers as an author to make the world itself support your point of view. In every such case (earth pony talents, alicorn power levels, etc.) you could make either option the rule. But if every such decision favors your argument, readers may feel that you’re making things too easy for yourself.
The notion that alicorns combine the powers of the other three is canon.
If S4 doesn’t have Twilight Sparkle gaining a new awareness of (and perhaps influence over) the earth and life, not just flight abilities, it’ll be a plot hole.
Good point. It also makes Celestia look like a much more credible character. One of my biggest problems was “Why the hell hasn’t Celestia come up with this solution a thousand years ago?” and by making it genuinely really difficult to make the mass alicornification work properly, I can come up with a plausible answer for this that isn’t “Celestia isn’t rational.”.
For what it’s worth, I think I’m going to keep the particular thing you quoted, because I think it makes significantly more logical sense for alicorns, which are supposed to emulate the strengths of all three races, to be able to do everything than to lose the ability to do certain things. But I’ll probably change the power level of alicorns to be more dangerous, as to me that makes just as much sense as my own interpretation of their power, and ought to be an equally challenging obstacle to the protagonists as the loss of talents would be.
I was thinking along the lines of “Jack of all trades, master of none”.
It’s not that they’d lose their abilities, it’s that they’d lose precision. They might regain what they had and more, given a thousand years to work on it, but they’d lose out now.
Fortunately, I now have enough arguments against alicornification to turn the fanfic into a good fight while still having the world the way I originally envisioned it. I doubt many people are going to say I’m making it too easy, what with all the arguments about social pressure, overpopulation, and potential for magical abuse. Plus, I’m adding something that we don’t see often enough: At the beginning of the fic, the protagonist is simply WRONG. Twilight’s belief is “We should charge ahead and turn everypony into alicorns as quickly as possible” and to me, that’s actually very stupid. My own belief is that the best way forward involves care and caution, making sure things will work on a societal level before taking significant steps forward, and that’s the belief Twilight will eventually take on.
(I know that it’s a big warning sign to have my protagonist have the same beliefs as me, but I can’t avoid it, since I want Twilight to be rational enough to eventually reach the right conclusion, and I obviously think my belief is correct, or else I’d believe something else. So, hopefully this helps with that problem.)
But thanks very much for your initial point, it definitely made me think much harder about the world, and how I wanted it to work. I likely would have taken your advice on if I hadn’t received so many good arguments. In fact, I was originally going to give other ponies Celestia-like powers to counter this author bias until I was soundly defeated in a debate about alicornification with that prior, which therefore made me decide “Okay, it’s not being too easy on myself to make alicorn magic a force multiplier, it’s being too hard on myself to make every alicorn Celestia!”
That’s...an interesting point. I never actually thought that Celestia and Luna could move the celestial bodies because they were alicorns. I always just thought they could move them because it was their special talents, and it was unique magic they could do because of their knowledge or talent, not because only they had the brute force to do it. After all, the only fight Celestia was ever in canonically, she lost, and it wasn’t even all that climactic either.
In the event that all alicorns have royal-sister levels of power (Again, my assumptions have blinded me here, I always thought that being an alicorn would basically be like being a very powerful unicorn, and Celestia and Luna were so powerful because, in addition to being alicorns, they were also thousands of years old and knew far more about magic than any mortal) that’s an extremely, EXTREMELY good reason not to do it.
I see no reason why earth ponies would lose their talents, though they might decide they want to do something else upon gaining MORE talents. That said, that could easily apply both ways: A pegasus who can now not only fly, but also have a deeper relationship with the earth might decide they’d rather farm than be a weather pony.
And you’re right about the diversity. This isn’t a very good Celestia argument imo, but if I expanded the story, it could certainly be a justification for certain groups to oppose the concept, such as groups that believe that the unique culture of their race would be destroyed by this move.
Even if I make my assumptions canon within the fic, there’s no reason to expect the average pony on the street would know it, and wouldn’t assume that your assumptions were correct. And given the irrationality of humans, and that ponies seem to act mostly like humans, a mere statement that “This is the way alicorn power is” isn’t going to be enough to assuage the populace...
Lastly, should I fail to get any real discourse going here, I can delete it now. The LessWrong group on a popular MLP fanfiction site is much, much more active than it looked. It hadn’t gotten any activity in it’s forum in weeks, but when I posted this question there, I started getting replies very quickly. If I’d known that I’d get that level of activity, I wouldn’t have bothered to post this here at all.
Given that your own opinions fall squarely on one side of the debate… you should be very careful about using your powers as an author to make the world itself support your point of view. In every such case (earth pony talents, alicorn power levels, etc.) you could make either option the rule. But if every such decision favors your argument, readers may feel that you’re making things too easy for yourself.
The notion that alicorns combine the powers of the other three is canon.
If S4 doesn’t have Twilight Sparkle gaining a new awareness of (and perhaps influence over) the earth and life, not just flight abilities, it’ll be a plot hole.
About half of the show’s writers don’t seem to mind plot holes.
I’m aware of that, which is why I phrased it that way instead of just saying I expect S4 to include that.
Good point. It also makes Celestia look like a much more credible character. One of my biggest problems was “Why the hell hasn’t Celestia come up with this solution a thousand years ago?” and by making it genuinely really difficult to make the mass alicornification work properly, I can come up with a plausible answer for this that isn’t “Celestia isn’t rational.”.
For what it’s worth, I think I’m going to keep the particular thing you quoted, because I think it makes significantly more logical sense for alicorns, which are supposed to emulate the strengths of all three races, to be able to do everything than to lose the ability to do certain things. But I’ll probably change the power level of alicorns to be more dangerous, as to me that makes just as much sense as my own interpretation of their power, and ought to be an equally challenging obstacle to the protagonists as the loss of talents would be.
I was thinking along the lines of “Jack of all trades, master of none”.
It’s not that they’d lose their abilities, it’s that they’d lose precision. They might regain what they had and more, given a thousand years to work on it, but they’d lose out now.
Fair enough. I know close to nothing about how the different flavors of ponies work.
Fortunately, I now have enough arguments against alicornification to turn the fanfic into a good fight while still having the world the way I originally envisioned it. I doubt many people are going to say I’m making it too easy, what with all the arguments about social pressure, overpopulation, and potential for magical abuse. Plus, I’m adding something that we don’t see often enough: At the beginning of the fic, the protagonist is simply WRONG. Twilight’s belief is “We should charge ahead and turn everypony into alicorns as quickly as possible” and to me, that’s actually very stupid. My own belief is that the best way forward involves care and caution, making sure things will work on a societal level before taking significant steps forward, and that’s the belief Twilight will eventually take on.
(I know that it’s a big warning sign to have my protagonist have the same beliefs as me, but I can’t avoid it, since I want Twilight to be rational enough to eventually reach the right conclusion, and I obviously think my belief is correct, or else I’d believe something else. So, hopefully this helps with that problem.)
But thanks very much for your initial point, it definitely made me think much harder about the world, and how I wanted it to work. I likely would have taken your advice on if I hadn’t received so many good arguments. In fact, I was originally going to give other ponies Celestia-like powers to counter this author bias until I was soundly defeated in a debate about alicornification with that prior, which therefore made me decide “Okay, it’s not being too easy on myself to make alicorn magic a force multiplier, it’s being too hard on myself to make every alicorn Celestia!”