That is one of the many things the fanon workshop thread is for.

Link in my sig.

Yep, it's in my sig too!

@Ginger: Um...I can't really see how Hard Work Hardly Works when she worked her plot off to get where she is. As for the "magic is her special talent" thing, it's a chicken and egg thing, she got that cutie mark because she was passionate about music. It's like complaining that Fluttershy is the best with animals because she has a special talent for it and spends all her time around animals. I'm not exactly sure what you want Twilight's power level to be at. She fully deserves to be as powerful as she is because she's spent her whole life honing that skill. If Twilight had The Gift but didn't put that effort in, she'd be nowhere near as skillful as she is.

edited 5th Jan '12 6:21:27 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Nice post JT. If there is something I love of twilight is that she earned every ounce of magic she has.

Ginger is assuming that most of her ability lies in her potential. What he is arguing is that even with all of the work she has done she wouldn't be able to accomplish half of the things she has done if it weren't for her high magical potential, apparently the highest of any unicorn.

edited 5th Jan '12 6:23:32 PM by Mio

Yeah you can hardly fault Twi for being so apt...she strived to get where she is now.

Ah, that's good. I never really liked it when we did OC building here, mostly because I suck with worldbuilding and anything creative, so I could never contribute.

Okay, that makes sense. Thing is, I'm not sure I buy into the assumption that Cutie Mark = excellence. It means that they enjoy it, and are better than average, but not necessarily that they're the best at it. Now that might be the case here, but just because you have a natural affinity for something doesn't at all mean that she's going to be awesome at it without learning or practicing.

Yeah, that's why we moved it.

edited 5th Jan '12 6:26:30 PM by JapaneseTeeth

@Ginger I say, yes she could.

Again, her passion, the thing that she spent her life working on, was magic in all its forms.

When has she gone into a white-eyed trance since childhood, when she wasn't hooked up to a power much greater than her own? Never. If she ever had some nebulous reserve of "potential" power, it's been long since dwarfed by the sheer amount of work she's put into learning and refining the skill. What does "raw magic" mean? I rather think that it's just that as a filly, her magical abilities were highly visible and untamed, at least in that flare of magic.

Again, it's only because she put just about all her time into the practice that she'd been able to reach her current level with all the spells she has. As another example of a unicorn who puts her time into a specific area of study, look at Trixie. She couldn't fight the Ursa because she didn't focus on magic for fighting things. Her focus, her passion, is towards performance and illusion. And because she focuses on that, she's also had time to work on her stage presence and charisma.

edited 5th Jan '12 6:28:25 PM by Enlong

Just for me? Aw, you guys are sweet.

But honestly, it seems most everyone in this thread has contributed to the foil!Mane 6 or Peeler or some other OC, and I feel a bit guilty about that.

I haven't...

Word Of God is that Celestia did saw something special in twilight.She was looking for the new wielder of the element of magic... But! Twilight would not be powerful at all if she hadn't practiced her magic. She was barely able to move a page! as a filly.

Remember how she fixed the dam ? twiligh said that it required a lot of study.

edited 5th Jan '12 6:32:30 PM by FallenLegend

Yeah. I think she saw that she, eitehr mentally or physically, had some affinity for magic that needed to be worked on from a young age.

Strangely, it wasn't until a day before the Grave Eclipse longest day of the 1000th year that she remembered that Twilight also needed to be able to make friends with other people to fully realize the power of that element.

Thing is, this is just SUCH an easy thing to fix. Simple. Remove one line. One. Line. and Twilight would be my favourite character in the entire show. (trumping even Applejack)

[1]

It was never about her Cutie Mark. It was about that freaky display of magic she demonstrated in CMC. The implication seems to be that she had some hidden "magical reserve" or what not that no other Unicorn does. In essences she is not better because she worked for it (not to say that she hasn't) but because she was born with more power.

, And neither should you feel obligated to. Thus the thread.

edited 5th Jan '12 6:36:04 PM by Mio

Twilight may have started with huge amount of potential power, but it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest if she hadn't spent years working at it. The ability to occasionally freak out and turn your parents into cacti isn't the most useful of skills. Without all her hard work those massive power reserves would have been useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Suddenly, I'm thinking of Twilight as Crazy Prepared.

"Twilight? Whatcha reading?"

"'An Oral Tradition on the Defeating of Albino Ursa Majors'!"

"..."

"They're different than normal ones."

edited 5th Jan '12 6:35:57 PM by SkyStrike

"Special gift". A very pretty turn of phrase, very inspiring, especially when said to a young child, especially especially one who moments ago was afraid she didn't have any talent, and even sooner ago, was apologizing for the magic she'd just displayed.

You may even say it's exactly what Twilight would have wanted to hear.

How shrewd.

edited 5th Jan '12 6:38:01 PM by Enlong

@Ginger I know how you feel my favorite charaters are the ones that are special for their effort and not for being "the chosen one".

But I have to admit that twilight really is special in-universe. But she still gives a lot of effort. I say she earned her power

edited 5th Jan '12 6:37:58 PM by FallenLegend

NOT THAT!!! The line after

edited 5th Jan '12 6:37:52 PM by gingerninja666

@Crowfall: Exactly.

Having a lot of skill in something doesn't mean much if you never use that skill. You can have more skill at being a quarterback than any other person on the planet and you'll still lose every game if you don't practice.

Other thing is, Celestia was referring to Twilight's potential for greatness. Potential can be wasted. Sure she may have more potential than any other unicorn, but unless she studies, it doesn't mean jack squat.

edited 5th Jan '12 6:39:06 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Just as an aside, would it be possible to use L-Space to travel to Twilight's library? Would the phase space of L-Space transcend the Fourth Wall?

If that is so, Twilight might be reading books from our world.

Anyway she clearly sacrificed her social skills for that level of maic proficiency.

edited 5th Jan '12 6:40:28 PM by AceOfScarabs

My comment about her being shrewd, half-serious though it is, still stands. I'm sure there is at least some exaggeration there. After all, what about Luna?

And she never even said "Potential". Just "Raw magic", which is a good sight more nebulous in definition.

edited 5th Jan '12 6:40:27 PM by Enlong

Yeah I felt bad when the fanoning...usually started by me...started scaring people away...I never wanted that.

Hence, new thread!

edited 5th Jan '12 6:40:31 PM by ApplelightLimited

@Crowfal couldn't have said it better.