The weaker alicorns are, the safer it is to create them and the more wiling Celestia would be to make them. If every alicorn could literally control the rotation of the entire planet with telekinesis on the first day, I think Celestia would probably be even more discerning than uplifting Twilight. Twilight might be a paragon of virtue, but she’s still the type of filly who will cast a spell given to her even when she has no idea what it does and it’s labeled as powerful and experimental. Conversely, if alicorns were just immortal winged unicorns with no extra powers, I assume the name of the show would be My Little Alicorn, with 99%+ of the population being alicorns. At least, I’d hope that would be the case given how benevolent Celestia seems.
For each level of power, there’s a different maximally safe rate of alicornification. Whether or not Celestia is already uplifting at that rate is a point of debate. (As a side note, the idea of Twilight discovering there’s a new magic to turn ponies into alicorns and then just casting it right away is such a Twilight thing to do.)
It’s an interesting analog to one of the ethical problems of uploading. Imagine a known serial killer is released from jail on his 100th birthday since he’s not a danger to the populace anymore. He knows he’s going to die soon, so he comes to your newly successful upload company. Do you allow him to upload? If you don’t he’ll die within ~5 years, if you do, he’ll do god-knows-what on the system.
My willingness to upload him would be based on how much damage he could do. I wouldn’t let him upload 1st for sure, or even within the top 10. But I probably wouldn’t be distressed after 10,000 uploads and we’ve already had a chance to see what hostile uploads can do (and it turns out not-so-bad).
For the purpose of this fanfiction, Celestia is able to uplift alicorns at a significantly higher rate than she currently is and other alicorns can either cast it, or learn to cast it. So logistically, it’s possible to increase alicornification at an exponential rate. Call it somewhere between 6 and 12 casts a year, for now: The exact rate isn’t all that important, what’s important is that it can be done, which means arguments then shift to “Should it be done?”
As for the power vs. safety thing, I agree, that’s definitely true, but what I was asking was, given this particular point on the spectrum, what would you think then? It’s clearly too unsafe to make everyone gods, as you’ve demonstrated, and it’s clearly perfectly safe if there’s zero dangers to making alicorns at all. But if ponies are significantly more powerful as alicorns, and thus had the potential to do more damage both deliberately and accidentally, but most ponies didn’t have the capacity to cause REALLY bad stuff to go down: What would your opinion be then?
If I were in Celestia’s shoes, my strategy would be to take the top .001% ‘friendliest[*]’ of the population each generation and turn them into alicorns. Fewer if some generations don’t have good candidates, and more if some generations are exceptional. The number of alicorns would grow exponentially as the population experienced exponential growth. From the other end of the equation, I’d use my influence as the God Empress to gradually raise the ‘friendliness waterline’ so that I could gradually lower the requirements from top .001% to top 1% to top 10% to eventually allowing everyone in.
Though this would be a process that could take, literally, millennia to fully complete (though it could probably be accelerated to ‘only’ a couple hundred years safely). I could easily envision Celestia seeing it utterly reasonable to have a multi-thousand year plan where pony wellfare steadily increases, the proportion of immortal ponies gradually increase as a fraction of the population, and risk is as minimized as possible. The plan is benevolent, meritocratic, and safe.
… but if I were Twilight? I’m not sure I would be comfortable waiting that long or seeing most of my family and acquaintances die first, (even assuming my friends, the other elements of Harmony, eventually become alicorns too). The plan is slow, needlessly callous, and accepts millions of unnecessary deaths.
Shifting my point of view from one side to the other drastically changes how acceptable I find each strategy. I suppose that is the mark of a good disagreement.
[*] Friendly as in FAI friendly or friendship=magic in pony terms. Not just the most effusive ponies.
That...is actually pretty brilliant. I was originally going to have Celestia be opposed to the idea of alicornification, but I may have Celestia change her mind to this. Cadence has the view of “We should make absolutely sure we’ve concluded things will work before proceeding”, which is likely to take decades, but not millenia. Twilight starts out with the view of “We should start right now, why the hell are we even hesitating?”
This is partly because of the big red flag of having the protagonist share my personal beliefs. In this fanfic, it’s unavoidable, however. Twilight is meant to be fairly rational, and thus, is meant to believe what’s correct, at least eventually. Obviously, I think that what I believe is correct, or I wouldn’t believe it. Starting Twilight out with a more reckless view, where my own view is closer to the Cadence stance, goes some way towards deflecting that problem.
Man, it’s times like this I wish I had a fifth alicorn to throw in, because I have too many views I currently want to showcase front and centre.
“Do it, and do it now.”
“Calculate everything out carefully, then act relatively decisively.”
“Steadily make it happen, over several millenia, gradually making it so that the very worst scum of society are still as harmonic as the best examples of pony virtue today.”
“Don’t do it, as we can’t accurately calculate the risk.”
“Don’t do it. Don’t even think about it. You saw what happened with Nightmare Moon, didn’t you?”
Maybe I need a fifth main character, but I find the views are much more legitimised by having them be spoken by an alicorn, rather than a societal representative, who’ll be representing various arguments like overpopulation, pushing forward magical research, attacking the culture of the various pony races, etc. And there are only four alicorns, and randomly adding a fifth is a move I simply refuse to make.
With the exception of the third view, i.e, the one you just gave me, I was originally going to have Twilight, Cadence, Celestia and Luna hold those four views, from most supportive to least supportive. But your argument is just too good not to be featured in the fanfiction.
The easiest solution is likely to be to merge Argument 4 and 5 together, leaving Luna as the only true anti-alicornifying one, with the remaining three each believing it should be done in different ways, but I worry that might turn the fanfic too much towards the pro-alicorn view. That said, I might be able to make up for this by having a disproportionate amount of the social representatives be opposed to the idea.
I can see the problem with a powerless entity trying to advance arguments against those vastly more powerful than them.
What about an equally powerful entity to alicorns? Discord for example, might be opposed to it for his own reasons but adopt any argument that makes it less likely. (Though he, stylistically, may not fit at all into your fic anyhow.) Although, I can see how people may not like that evil guy is advancing the opposing argument. There are other immortal entities. Dragons perhaps. Whatever employs Cerberus or Ahuizotl.
Or political opponents like Zebra or Gryphon could have reasons to disagree with the plan (like I assume they would dislike the pony hegemony that would occur if everypony became alicorns tomorrow.) They wouldn’t be strictly equal to alicorns on the same power level, but would have some ability to back up their arguments with force, unlike a social representative.
As a side note, I’m a bit confused about Cadence and Twilight. I know that Twilight is sometimes heroically compulsive, but isn’t Cadence the avatar of love or something? I would imagine she’d be a lot more empathetic about suffering ponies and that Twilight would be more disposed to studying.
It’s not even really about magical power. Within the world, it’s about political power, and the fact that the alicorns are royalty. In reality, it’s about the nature of the fanfiction. Much of the fanfiction is about the discussion and debate between the four princesses of Equestria. Therefore, any pony that isn’t an alicorn tends to fade into the background a bit, taking the role of a driving force on the main characters. The main power that the alicorns have is the literary device of being major characters.
I spent two minutes arguing about why Discord was a stupid example, but then realised Discord is actually good now. Discord doesn’t really stylistically fit into any of those five arguments, however. Looking at him, I imagine he would abstain from the issue. I simply don’t see why he would care, period. The only thing he might do would be to try and get Fluttershy immortality, but even if he did take on that side, I don’t see him entering the political arena. Adding an OC immortal isn’t really something I want to do. For one, I suck at making characters, and for another, the thing I enjoy most about fanfiction is exploring the world that already exists.
The political opponents are really more of an obstacle than a character. In my opinion, they would be far better off as an abstraction: Instead of the Griffon Prince coming to Equestria to argue with the princesses, the argument is “The griffons won’t be happy if we do this, and there could be consequences.”
As for Twilight and Cadence, just because Twilight’s bookish doesn’t mean she doesn’t care. I assume she’d be on the forefront of research to solve mass-transformation-related problems, but to do that, it’s only logical that she convince the other princesses they should actually go ahead and agree to the transforming first. I agree that Cadence actually would be a likely candidate to take on the mantle of “We should transform everypony as fast as possible” but that argument is likely to be pretty soundly defeated in the first few chapters anyway. Thus, it’s better for the fic if Cadence has a pro-alicorn, but reasonably well thought out view. It’s okay for Twilight to hold that view for a while and still be rational, because it’s a snap judgement: She only finds out that Cadence and herself are immortal when she actually gets transformed. Before Celestia mentions it, Twilight assumes that only Celestia and Luna are immortal.
Essentially, it would make sense for Cadence to be an irrational character, but I think the fic is overall better to give Cadence a slightly different character and allow her to be more rational, and thus increase the amount of solid discourse within the story. It’s a sacrifice, but I think it’s one worth making. I actually think the irrational view is more in Cadence’s character, but the alicorns are already being bumped up in rationality to begin with: One more won’t be too odd. And a rationalist!Cadence would likely take on the role of “Do it once we’re sure it will work.” I actually have a scene I drafted out which has this particular argument in it, which I’ll send to you as an example of Cadence’s character. (I don’t want to make my comments TOO long in length, we already have a massive comment chain as it is!)
If you want a fifth main character, Shining Armor could fit the bill. His sister and his wife are both alicorns, so you could easily justify having uplifted him. Even if he’s still mortal, Twilight and Cadence would give his words a lot of weight.
Good point. Shining would be a good one as well, because I already figured out he’d probably be the next alicorn if alicornism won.
1) He’s a very skilled unicorn, so he can transform other alicorns.
2) He has a strong relationship with not one, but two of the royal alicorns.
3) He’s very important in the defense of the realm.
Hell, I’m pretty sure Shining is technically a prince now anyway. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch, and he could certainly appear in the same settings as the other four where other potential characters can’t. (Say, eating at the royal dining room at Canterlot Castle.)
The weaker alicorns are, the safer it is to create them and the more wiling Celestia would be to make them. If every alicorn could literally control the rotation of the entire planet with telekinesis on the first day, I think Celestia would probably be even more discerning than uplifting Twilight. Twilight might be a paragon of virtue, but she’s still the type of filly who will cast a spell given to her even when she has no idea what it does and it’s labeled as powerful and experimental. Conversely, if alicorns were just immortal winged unicorns with no extra powers, I assume the name of the show would be My Little Alicorn, with 99%+ of the population being alicorns. At least, I’d hope that would be the case given how benevolent Celestia seems.
For each level of power, there’s a different maximally safe rate of alicornification. Whether or not Celestia is already uplifting at that rate is a point of debate. (As a side note, the idea of Twilight discovering there’s a new magic to turn ponies into alicorns and then just casting it right away is such a Twilight thing to do.)
It’s an interesting analog to one of the ethical problems of uploading. Imagine a known serial killer is released from jail on his 100th birthday since he’s not a danger to the populace anymore. He knows he’s going to die soon, so he comes to your newly successful upload company. Do you allow him to upload? If you don’t he’ll die within ~5 years, if you do, he’ll do god-knows-what on the system.
My willingness to upload him would be based on how much damage he could do. I wouldn’t let him upload 1st for sure, or even within the top 10. But I probably wouldn’t be distressed after 10,000 uploads and we’ve already had a chance to see what hostile uploads can do (and it turns out not-so-bad).
For the purpose of this fanfiction, Celestia is able to uplift alicorns at a significantly higher rate than she currently is and other alicorns can either cast it, or learn to cast it. So logistically, it’s possible to increase alicornification at an exponential rate. Call it somewhere between 6 and 12 casts a year, for now: The exact rate isn’t all that important, what’s important is that it can be done, which means arguments then shift to “Should it be done?”
As for the power vs. safety thing, I agree, that’s definitely true, but what I was asking was, given this particular point on the spectrum, what would you think then? It’s clearly too unsafe to make everyone gods, as you’ve demonstrated, and it’s clearly perfectly safe if there’s zero dangers to making alicorns at all. But if ponies are significantly more powerful as alicorns, and thus had the potential to do more damage both deliberately and accidentally, but most ponies didn’t have the capacity to cause REALLY bad stuff to go down: What would your opinion be then?
If I were in Celestia’s shoes, my strategy would be to take the top .001% ‘friendliest[*]’ of the population each generation and turn them into alicorns. Fewer if some generations don’t have good candidates, and more if some generations are exceptional. The number of alicorns would grow exponentially as the population experienced exponential growth. From the other end of the equation, I’d use my influence as the God Empress to gradually raise the ‘friendliness waterline’ so that I could gradually lower the requirements from top .001% to top 1% to top 10% to eventually allowing everyone in.
Though this would be a process that could take, literally, millennia to fully complete (though it could probably be accelerated to ‘only’ a couple hundred years safely). I could easily envision Celestia seeing it utterly reasonable to have a multi-thousand year plan where pony wellfare steadily increases, the proportion of immortal ponies gradually increase as a fraction of the population, and risk is as minimized as possible. The plan is benevolent, meritocratic, and safe.
… but if I were Twilight? I’m not sure I would be comfortable waiting that long or seeing most of my family and acquaintances die first, (even assuming my friends, the other elements of Harmony, eventually become alicorns too). The plan is slow, needlessly callous, and accepts millions of unnecessary deaths.
Shifting my point of view from one side to the other drastically changes how acceptable I find each strategy. I suppose that is the mark of a good disagreement.
[*] Friendly as in FAI friendly or friendship=magic in pony terms. Not just the most effusive ponies.
That...is actually pretty brilliant. I was originally going to have Celestia be opposed to the idea of alicornification, but I may have Celestia change her mind to this. Cadence has the view of “We should make absolutely sure we’ve concluded things will work before proceeding”, which is likely to take decades, but not millenia. Twilight starts out with the view of “We should start right now, why the hell are we even hesitating?”
This is partly because of the big red flag of having the protagonist share my personal beliefs. In this fanfic, it’s unavoidable, however. Twilight is meant to be fairly rational, and thus, is meant to believe what’s correct, at least eventually. Obviously, I think that what I believe is correct, or I wouldn’t believe it. Starting Twilight out with a more reckless view, where my own view is closer to the Cadence stance, goes some way towards deflecting that problem.
Man, it’s times like this I wish I had a fifth alicorn to throw in, because I have too many views I currently want to showcase front and centre.
“Do it, and do it now.”
“Calculate everything out carefully, then act relatively decisively.”
“Steadily make it happen, over several millenia, gradually making it so that the very worst scum of society are still as harmonic as the best examples of pony virtue today.”
“Don’t do it, as we can’t accurately calculate the risk.”
“Don’t do it. Don’t even think about it. You saw what happened with Nightmare Moon, didn’t you?”
Maybe I need a fifth main character, but I find the views are much more legitimised by having them be spoken by an alicorn, rather than a societal representative, who’ll be representing various arguments like overpopulation, pushing forward magical research, attacking the culture of the various pony races, etc. And there are only four alicorns, and randomly adding a fifth is a move I simply refuse to make.
With the exception of the third view, i.e, the one you just gave me, I was originally going to have Twilight, Cadence, Celestia and Luna hold those four views, from most supportive to least supportive. But your argument is just too good not to be featured in the fanfiction.
The easiest solution is likely to be to merge Argument 4 and 5 together, leaving Luna as the only true anti-alicornifying one, with the remaining three each believing it should be done in different ways, but I worry that might turn the fanfic too much towards the pro-alicorn view. That said, I might be able to make up for this by having a disproportionate amount of the social representatives be opposed to the idea.
I can see the problem with a powerless entity trying to advance arguments against those vastly more powerful than them.
What about an equally powerful entity to alicorns? Discord for example, might be opposed to it for his own reasons but adopt any argument that makes it less likely. (Though he, stylistically, may not fit at all into your fic anyhow.) Although, I can see how people may not like that evil guy is advancing the opposing argument. There are other immortal entities. Dragons perhaps. Whatever employs Cerberus or Ahuizotl.
Or political opponents like Zebra or Gryphon could have reasons to disagree with the plan (like I assume they would dislike the pony hegemony that would occur if everypony became alicorns tomorrow.) They wouldn’t be strictly equal to alicorns on the same power level, but would have some ability to back up their arguments with force, unlike a social representative.
As a side note, I’m a bit confused about Cadence and Twilight. I know that Twilight is sometimes heroically compulsive, but isn’t Cadence the avatar of love or something? I would imagine she’d be a lot more empathetic about suffering ponies and that Twilight would be more disposed to studying.
It’s not even really about magical power. Within the world, it’s about political power, and the fact that the alicorns are royalty. In reality, it’s about the nature of the fanfiction. Much of the fanfiction is about the discussion and debate between the four princesses of Equestria. Therefore, any pony that isn’t an alicorn tends to fade into the background a bit, taking the role of a driving force on the main characters. The main power that the alicorns have is the literary device of being major characters.
I spent two minutes arguing about why Discord was a stupid example, but then realised Discord is actually good now. Discord doesn’t really stylistically fit into any of those five arguments, however. Looking at him, I imagine he would abstain from the issue. I simply don’t see why he would care, period. The only thing he might do would be to try and get Fluttershy immortality, but even if he did take on that side, I don’t see him entering the political arena. Adding an OC immortal isn’t really something I want to do. For one, I suck at making characters, and for another, the thing I enjoy most about fanfiction is exploring the world that already exists.
The political opponents are really more of an obstacle than a character. In my opinion, they would be far better off as an abstraction: Instead of the Griffon Prince coming to Equestria to argue with the princesses, the argument is “The griffons won’t be happy if we do this, and there could be consequences.”
As for Twilight and Cadence, just because Twilight’s bookish doesn’t mean she doesn’t care. I assume she’d be on the forefront of research to solve mass-transformation-related problems, but to do that, it’s only logical that she convince the other princesses they should actually go ahead and agree to the transforming first. I agree that Cadence actually would be a likely candidate to take on the mantle of “We should transform everypony as fast as possible” but that argument is likely to be pretty soundly defeated in the first few chapters anyway. Thus, it’s better for the fic if Cadence has a pro-alicorn, but reasonably well thought out view. It’s okay for Twilight to hold that view for a while and still be rational, because it’s a snap judgement: She only finds out that Cadence and herself are immortal when she actually gets transformed. Before Celestia mentions it, Twilight assumes that only Celestia and Luna are immortal.
Essentially, it would make sense for Cadence to be an irrational character, but I think the fic is overall better to give Cadence a slightly different character and allow her to be more rational, and thus increase the amount of solid discourse within the story. It’s a sacrifice, but I think it’s one worth making. I actually think the irrational view is more in Cadence’s character, but the alicorns are already being bumped up in rationality to begin with: One more won’t be too odd. And a rationalist!Cadence would likely take on the role of “Do it once we’re sure it will work.” I actually have a scene I drafted out which has this particular argument in it, which I’ll send to you as an example of Cadence’s character. (I don’t want to make my comments TOO long in length, we already have a massive comment chain as it is!)
If you want a fifth main character, Shining Armor could fit the bill. His sister and his wife are both alicorns, so you could easily justify having uplifted him. Even if he’s still mortal, Twilight and Cadence would give his words a lot of weight.
Good point. Shining would be a good one as well, because I already figured out he’d probably be the next alicorn if alicornism won.
1) He’s a very skilled unicorn, so he can transform other alicorns. 2) He has a strong relationship with not one, but two of the royal alicorns. 3) He’s very important in the defense of the realm.
Hell, I’m pretty sure Shining is technically a prince now anyway. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch, and he could certainly appear in the same settings as the other four where other potential characters can’t. (Say, eating at the royal dining room at Canterlot Castle.)