Unpopular opinion time

Badumsquish

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@Vivace
Who says using a magic-enhancing item is in any way wrong or unfair in the Magic Duel, or at all in the series? Characters use magic-enhancing items all the time to either perform feats they couldn’t normally or to face threats with inherent power greater than theirs, like the Elements of Harmony, the Crystal Heart, the Box of Mystery (whatever it’s called, the one with the keys), Neighsay’s amulet, Grogar’s bell, Chrysalis’s throne, the Crystal Mirror, the Cutie Map, the 12 artifacts used by Mage Meadowbrook, the various artifacts shown off in the School of Friendship, the necklaces every hippogriff uses to become a seapony, magic potions, magic enhancing tomes, magic enhancing spells like the butterfly wings or cloudwalking, the list goes on. Magic-enhancing items are an every-day accepted element of magic, and it was clearly accepted and within the rules when Twilight brought her own artifact to their rematch :P

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Latecomer

@Badumsquish
In situations of crisis, not contests of skill.

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Vivace

“ShimSham my GlimGlams”

Applejack: Are you sayin’ you didn’t use your wings?
Rainbow Dash: Well… no. But you never said I couldn’t use my wings.
Applejack: I didn’t think I needed to tell you to play fair.

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Badumsquish

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@Latecomer
Never the less, using artifacts to boost your power in that contest of skill was clearly and openly allowed by both combatants. It’s kind of like refusing to use items in Smash Bros but not turning them off and then calling your opponent a cheater for hitting you with a Pokeball. You could argue to hell and back about it being cheap or unfair or not a true show of skill, but it was clearly allowed by the rules so it’s a valid move :P

@Vivace
As if to prove my point, that was allowed in that episode. Rainbow Dash was declared the winner of that bout and Applejack had to eat it :P

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Latecomer

@Badumsquish
I think we know far too few of the rules - if, indeed, there were any - to say such things. But if the duel doesn’t prove the superiority of her but just her jewleru, what’s the point? Surely it can only to make Twilight suffer for doing nothing wrong in the first place?

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Vivace

“ShimSham my GlimGlams”

@Badumsquish
Yet most rational people would agree that Apple’s jack’usation isn’t unfounded. Dash had a physical trait which her opponent had no logical way of answering to make the contest plausibly level. It was an inherently unfair match. Sometimes the spirit of rules is more important than the letter of the rules.

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Badumsquish

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@Latecomer
My theory is the writers had her target Twilight specifically because they knew that was the only way anyone would root against her. If she showed up and only rubbed egg in the faces of those who actually fucked with her people would have cheered her on :P

@Vivace
Yet she has no such qualms about using HER inherent abilities, that is her superior earth pony strength, to outperform Rainbow Dash in entirely strength-based bouts like kicking one of those carnival mallet red things into orbit. Maybe they should set rules about what is or isn’t okay, or pick contests of skill that don’t give specific types of ponies unfair advantages :P

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Latecomer

@Badumsquish
Nope, her behaviour in the episode would still be evil even if all Twilight-related parts were omitted. However, her targeting the pony who didn’t bother her at all but did show her up while saving others lives says a lot about her character I think you’re missing.

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Badumsquish

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@Latecomer
Character doesn’t count for so much when she’s been corrupted by an evil amulet and is even stated in the episode to be acting out of character and much worse than normal. Twilight even says “There was something different about her. It’s like she’s gone from high and mighty to mean and nasty”. I’d say that it says a lot about how inherently good a person she is, as it took being genuinely wronged, making a genuine protracted effort to not let it keep her down, AND being corrupted by an evil amulet to drive her to “mean and nasty”. It took a LOT more for her than just “lost a friend once” to drive her to evil and she STILL didn’t cross as many lines as other characters have :P

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@Badumsquish
Much shorter timeframe than Starlight too though, both for falling and carrying out her villanu. i’d give her another day or two before she killed somepony, possibly bi accident.

And I’m pretty sure Twilight was her target in the first place - the Amulet just raised the stakes.

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Background Pony #7973

Her magic tricks and sleight of hand would take more skill, training, effort, and practice than “real” magic to begin with, while the feats she’s incapable of are reliant on inherent abilities that she simply wasn’t born with or otherwise can’t obtain. She’d be capable of everything Twilight was if she happened to be the chosen child of destiny who (to quote Celestia) “had more raw magical power than any pony she’d ever seen” :P

It can’t be that difficult to learn if Twilight managed to stage a series of illusions with her friends that was good enough to trick the pony whose entire livelihood revolves around that stuff in the space of… what? An afternoon of training?

@Badumsquish

Magic-enhancing items are an every-day accepted element of magic, and it was clearly accepted and within the rules when Twilight brought her own artifact to their rematch :P

Except she only did that in an effort to get Trixie to take hers off. Plus the episode makes it quite clear that neither Twilight nor her friends realized Trixie was using a magical artifact when they fought.

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Latecomer

@Background Pony #6CA4

It can’t be that difficult to learn if Twilight managed to stage a series of illusions with her friends that was good enough to trick the pony whose entire livelihood revolves around that stuff in the space of… what? An afternoon of training?

To be fair, I think she was only fooled because her head wasn’t on straight.

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Badumsquish

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@Latecomer
Nevertheless, you just can’t judge the character of someone who’s been explicitly altered of character. And yeah, her original goal was to show up and do better magic than Twilight so that she’d cease being an ostracized laughing stock. She even says as much:

Why? Because you humiliated me! After you showed me up with that Ursa Minor, I became a laughing stock! Everywhere I went I was laughed at and ostracized. I even had to take a job on a rock farm just to earn a living! A rock farm!

Yeah, Twilight didn’t do jack-shit intentionally, but the fact remains that Trixie besting the pony who performed the feat she wasn’t able to in front of the ponies who were (justly or not) calling her a fraud because of it will literally solve every problem she has. Hell, before being corrupted at all, her plan was probably just “I show up, best Twilight, puff my chest, and I’ve proven I’m great and powerful” which is about as “evil” as a pro boxer wanting a rematch :P

@Background Pony #6CA4
It also took Twilight the magical genius prodigy and student of Celestia who is explicitly stated at being better at planning than anyone in Ponyville, an entire group of friends including Pinkie Pie who explicitly has super-powers, and a carefully staged and planned Oceans 11 style heist to do the kind of things Trixie does by herself on stage with rudimentary magic and pyrotechnics :P

And that may be, but my point was using artifacts was clearly allowed :P

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Mr.Myoozik

Music Connoisseur

Speaking of Magic Duel, one of the best things to come out of that episodes was Trixie’s weird distaste for wheels. I know it was just a throwaway gag, but I would’ve loved to see a return to it.

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Vivace

“ShimSham my GlimGlams”

@Myoozik
Her hatred of wheels was probably a result of the Alicorn Amulet if not just an excuse to shit on Snips & Snails.

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Latecomer

@Badumsquish
Except it wouldn’t, because she still isn’t actually better than Twilight, probably still can’t beat an Ursa Major, and has managed to become less popular rather than more due to her attitude.

And it’s not a rematch, because there was never any match. Twilight is unquestionably better, doesn’t care, and Trixie can’t stand that.

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AC97

@Background Pony #6CA4

That makes no sense, unless it was never about anything other than Twilight being better than her. And to that extent, no, I don’t buy that she let bygones be bygones. Even when she became acquainted with Starlight, she admitted that her big goal was to one up Twilight in something, and whatever her eventual feelings on the matter, it seems pretty clear she was initially perfectly willing to use Starlight for that purpose.

If you’re taking notes from literally anything past S1, it’s plainly obvious that she was doing it because she was jealous of Twilight, moreso than because of anything the town at large did.

They spelled it out at least once.

Trixie: It’s true. Do you know who Twilight Sparkle is?
Pharynx: No.
Trixie: Well, she’s the most well-liked, studious, do-goodiest pony in Equestria.
Pharynx: Ugh! She sounds awful.
Trixie: Oh, you’d hate her. I used to. She made me unsure about my place in the world, which led me to act out against her.

Trixie herself didn’t exactly go “oh well I only acted against Twilight because of the Amulet” at any point ~~(well, in a reliable sense, self-aggrandizing “apology” of questionable sincerity to avoid punishment aside)~~, and it’s not like it was an impulse buy of hers. You can, in fact, judge her character to at least some extent, because if she was trying to heavily boost her magic artificially… she probably wanted Twilight out of her way, regardless, because she’d inevitably try to stop her with her magic with whatever she might’ve had in mind.

One of her primary motives was basically to soothe her hurt ego after Twilight dealt with the Ursa Minor after she failed to do it herself, so that’s why in her mind, it was personal, even if it wasn’t actually.

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@AC97
She can ignore that she’s not actually the most great and powerful pony in all of Equestria as long as she never actually meets a pony she can’t top. But one who did… who also exposed the ridiculousness of her claims… and who worst of all, did so for reasons that had nothing to do with her… well, that mare she couldn’t forget even if it wasn’t the night she’d lost her wagon.

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Background Pony #BA4F

@Background Pony #6A45
It’s a filly version of Anon/Anon turned into a filly, so same.

I don’t like either of them. They’re trash, but that’s my opinion.

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Mr.Myoozik

Music Connoisseur

@Vivace
It was, made her insane but if they would’ve made a call back to it seasons later, I would’ve laughed my ass off.

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Latecomer

@Myoozik
I’d have liked someone to bring up her short-lived reign of terror sometimes - say, when she’s being mobbed in All Bottled Up? i guess maybe they tried brushing that under the table so no-one wonders why she’s allowed within five miles, though.

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Meanlucario

Time to get spooky

@Latecomer
In Bottled Up, it was Starlight’s anger infecting the townponies, not them angry at Trixie.

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Latecomer

@Meanlucario
well you know that and I know that, but she didn’t know that and seemed quite confused as to their motives, when any Ponyvillian has a built-in reason to resent her.

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Meanlucario

Time to get spooky

@Latecomer
You forget that the citizens of Ponyville are dumb as bricks and will forgive/forget anyone if the writing ask it, like the Flam Flam brothers.

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Latecomer

@Meanlucario
Not forget so much as ignore. And it would still have been an amusing reference.

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