I think Trixie is a better performer than Twilight is, and all of her spells reflect that; she's extremely flashy and interesting to watch, but they aren't exactly useful for any other purpose. Kinda like a stage magician making a helicopter "appear"; it's fun to watch, but the magician can't actually create helicopters out of thing air.

Twilight does practical, not flashy, so when you need to get something done, Twilight is infinitely more useful.

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:13:35 PM by JapaneseTeeth

But then she re-used some of those same spells to fight the Ursa...

Well forgive me, I was just trying to find something positive to say about Trixie, and that's what I picked up on, especially since a point was made that Twilight's spells were from books

I assumed that was because the Ursa was far out of her comfort range and she just started grasping at straws

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:15:52 PM by gingerninja666

I suppose we could say that Trixie simply has a larger knowledge of smaller-scale spells.

I always sort of thought she was limited, though - Twilight demonstrates transmogrification, levitation, scrying, enchantment, and a few others. Trixie, on the other hand, could easily said to be doing very little, if anything, outside the realm of illusions and fine telekinesis.

sorry to repeat but going back to an earlier convertation about Sweetie Belle, I think "Ditz" is defiantly the wrong word. on this wiki, "ditz" means, "the dumbass character" Sweetie Belle may be a little slow but there's now doubt she could out wit Snips and Snails.

Trixie seems more willing to use magic though, her telekinesis is some of the best in the show, and she clearly has a talent for spellcasting, which I honestly found refreshing, it's so rare that you see a boaster who actually has some of the talent they boast about

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:22:46 PM by gingerninja666

I think if it came down to it, Trixie probably has one advantage in the spellcasting department. And, while I say this, I want to point out that there's very little evidence for it in the actual episode, and I'm mostly extrapolating from the fact that she's a stage magician.

I think Trixie has the talent to use and maintain multiple spells at once. Part of putting on a magic show is going to be misdirection, even if the magic is real. She'd want to be able to make the audience's attention flow from one thing to another as she directed it. This would also be what she did to Rainbow Dash. Rainbows are just light, so how could she wrap Dash up in one and spin her around? Answer: It was two spells, used simultaneously, an illusion to make it look like the rainbow was moving and a telekinetic attack to toss Dash around.

I don't think any other unicorn has displayed this ability, except possibly Nightmare Moon, and she's a goddess hopped up on the power of the Dark Side. Rarity and Twilight can do multiple things at once with their telekinesis, but I don't think they can use other spells while doing that.

If you're sorry to repeat then why are you doing it. You've been admonished by a mod already for that in another thread. Stop repeating points just because everyone doesn't drop what they're doing to pay attention to them.

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:25:55 PM by TurnwaysFlip

Patience, friend. You can't expect to pop a point in the middle of a conversation, then have everyone comment on it. Wait for a lull in the last topic. Still, for what it's worth, It doesn't seem to me that Either Snips or Snails are that daft either. They made a bad decision once, and Snails wasn't paying much attention to Snips once. A wandering mind can, in fact, be a sign of great intellegence - and when you consider that his responce was to do with fleas, and fanon claims him to be an entymologist...

That was my thoughts on the whole thing; Trixie may not have as much as Twilight, but she's a heck of a lot better with what she's got. It's a bit of a stretch normally, but wen compared to Twilight she's Weak But Skilled

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:28:07 PM by kegisak

^^Rainbows work differently in this universe, it seems. We've seen rainbows moving slower than the speed of sound (in "Cutie Mark Crusaders", Pinkie mentions that she heard the boom before she saw the rainbow, and it happens in Fluttershy's flashback as well), as well as rainbows you can (but shouldn't) drink.

In any case, I've said before that I doubt every piece of unicorn magic is a spell designed to do explicitly that. A lot of what we've seen can fall under general telekinesis; I highly doubt there's a spell made specifically to levitate a water tower through a barn and milk the cows in it.

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:32:02 PM by RedSavant

The reason the boom was heard before the rainbow was seen is really quite simple.

Creating a sonic boom would require you to go faster than the speed of sound.

Creating a rainbow just by moving fast would require your movement to actually cause prisms to form in the air around you. I'm not sure how fast you'd have to go to accomplish that, but I would assume it's faster than the speed of sound.

Effectively, the rainbow is actually being created after the sonic boom, it just appears to be simultaneous precisely because the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound.

I'm... not sure how that works at long distances though.

Anyway, the rainbow in Boast Busters looked like a pretty normal one to me; Dash sprayed some water into the air, accumulated from clouds, and the light shining through it created a rainbow. Nothing odd about that. So how do you hit someone with it?

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:36:32 PM by TurnwaysFlip

Yeah, that's more a case of power and precision in utilizing telekinesis.

Though thinking about the Cows, what relationship do they have to the rest of Equestria?

Trixie goes for flash, Twilight goes for usefulness.

Milk?

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:36:53 PM by gingerninja666

But do they have any other role? Do they own property? Vote? Are they an underclass kept only for their capacity to produce quantities of lipids and proteins in an emulsified form?

^MST3K Mantra, definitely. Under the Carnivore Confusion sub-heading (not that the ponies eat meat, but you know what I mean).

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:43:38 PM by RedSavant

Are you thinking too hard? XD

but nah they do seem to be of a lower class than ponies, especially since we've seen them get herded at one point

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:44:05 PM by gingerninja666

I'd say it's a mild variation of Furry Confusion? Maybe?

Spike does say that Twilight knew 25 kinds of spells in Boast Busters, and was impressed by that number. So it seems like there aren't a lot of kinds of spells, but they are versitile. So a specific spell to attack you with a rainbow is unlikely, but other spells are flexible enough to allow it.

Mybe there is a spill for Homosexual Reproduction

edited 22nd Jul '11 6:08:44 PM by RandomChaos

I hate to keep repeating myself but it was suggested I post this when the current topic calms down. regarding an earlier conversation about Sweetie Belle, "ditz" was certinly the wrong word as on this wiki it means "the character that is defined mostly or completely by being a bumbass". Sweetie Belle is just a little slow.

It might just be that it takes a long time to learn spells. Given that Twilight is prone to learning spells via experimentation, I'd say it's probable that there are either as many spells as they care to invent, or a lot of variations on a few spells that have to be learned individually.

11216

I think everybody's thinking too hard!

But at least I'm thinking too hard about new things!

Oh, Rainbow Dash thought Twilight was a Spy. Why would she think that if Equestria didn't have enemies of some kind??

Ben, you ever think that maybe nobody has anything to add to that?

Anyway, please stop trying to force the topic shift. It's just getting annoying.

Well, I don't think I've ever seen ditz used to mean 'borderline retarded'. The proper definition, in so far as any slang can have one, is 'scatterbrained person', which I think fits for Sweetie Bell. It seems to me that, while clever enough when she sets her mind to something(she managed to come up with a decent lyric off the top of her head - talent or not, that requires a bit of a brain)she tends to have very narrow focus - as in, she thinks about what she is doing right now, with no real regard for the bigger picture. That's what led to a costume with five sleeves, and brown all over - she knew she was stitching sleeves, or dipping her paintbrush in red paint, but she was so intent on that that she forgot about what she had just done. Not an uncommon problem for adults, let alone children.

edited 22nd Jul '11 6:18:12 PM by kegisak

I'm not trying to force a topic change, I just suck at timing my posts.