Thing is, Twilight's spell only found individual gems, while Rarity's found huge caches. Rarity's version is way more efficient because you only need to dig one hole to get a buttload of gems. With Twilight's you'd have to dig up the gems individually, which would take forever. Like if you needed 100 gems, Rarity would find 2 or 3 big hotspots, while Twilight would find 100 single gems that you'd have to dig individual holes for. The former plan is way more convenient. Rarity probably could find all the gems in an area, but there's no reason to when finding the big clumps is a lot faster.

@Perpetual: Except we've never seen any other unicorn teleport, so we don't know if that's just a limit on Twilight's ability to replicate a teleportation spell, or if it's just inherent to the skill itself. I mean, having to know where you're teleporting to doesn't really strike me as that weird of a limitation just in general. You'd have to know your way around to avoid ending up inside a rock or telefragging somepony.

edited 24th Jul '12 11:06:47 AM by JapaneseTeeth

@Bad Rarity's version was powerful enough to activate involuntarily and drag her a few miles to a particularly large deposit of gems. I'd say that it's safe to assume that it's better than Twilight's version.

Well, we've seen Celestia teleport, apparently all the way from Ponyville to Canterlot in one jump. But Celestia isn't exactly a good measure comparison considering the difference in power.

In any case, I'm just putting my headcanon out there.

edited 24th Jul '12 11:08:58 AM by PerpetualLurker

@ JT: Rarity's spell also homed in on that Diamond Dog's necklace rather than a large deposit. And finding every nearby gem is better than just deposits, since you'll find the large deposits and the small ones.

@ Lurker: That's happened once, if it happened all the time she'd never get anything done.

@Bad Well she would have had to learn to control it since then, of course.

@Lurker That still seems to be answerable by just "power increases the distance one can teleport" rather than "one needs to know where one is teleporting

@Bad But they were wearing quite a few more gems as well.

I suppose most Unicorns learn just magic associated with their talent as a side effect of their Cutie Mark. Twi has access to almost any spell, but she needs to manually learn said spells. Good thing she's a smart 'un, then

Anyway, 's late and I need to go to bed. Before I leave for the dreamscape, a fanvid:

Night, Ace

Night, Ace.

Regarding Twi mimicking Shining's spell: she wanted to keep the CMC out and I don't think anypony else tried to pass through it on screen. It is significantly smaller than Shining's, but it seems to hardly tax her to shield the library, so I'm guessing she could probably go larger (although still probably not as large as Shining could).

Night Ace!

Night Ace

Good name for pony.

Spell number 25 was originally meant to be a beard growth spell, but the facial hair automatically flees to the moustache area out of fear of trying to compete with Star Swirl's beard.

(There should be more Star Swirl facts, the few I've seen were great.)

Why did Rarity's spell take her several days away from Ponyville? The caverns below Canterlot had far more gems and was closer. For that matter the Diamond Dogs lair had more gems and was closer.

Hey guys.

What's up?

@Bad Was it really several days? I must have missed that. In any case, we don't even know if Rarity grew up in Ponyville.

@ Lurker: The sun rose and set several times so I imagine it was several days. And one of her classmates appears to be Cheerilee so I'd imagine that she lived in Ponyville.

@Kuroi: Well, Twilight explicitly says that she couldn't do Shining's spell, so I'm guessing her version isn't nearly as powerful. There's literally an order of a magnitude of difference between shielding one building and shielding a whole city.

@Bad We don't know if Cheerilee grew up in Ponyville, either.

Not saying that it's not true, just that there's no evidence either way.

As for why her spell took her there? I'm just gonna go and say destiny and not think about it too hard.

It was indeed several days and was probably due to the size of the deposit. One rock containing a lot of gems.

Remember me?

By the way, how did a gigantic geode get to the edge of a cliff like that?

Magic.

Or....

Humans!

edited 24th Jul '12 11:47:10 AM by JapaneseTeeth

I remember you, Light Phazer!

@Light

FTFY.

@ Waz: The pies grew it there.

@ Light: No. And we've certainly not been talking an hour ago.

@ Lurker: I will watch that portion of the episode and find evidence.

Vaguely.