5. Learning Curve
Twilight considered as she took in what Trixie said, explaining how her day had gone so far – her talking to Raindrops the other day and learning about Snails’ condition, volunteering to help Snails, the other foals showing up at her home unexpectedly, the small rivalry between Tootsie Flute and Dinky Doo that had nearly given her brain damage, and Firelock’s earning of her cutie mark that had, as a side-effect, nearly caused Trixie’s house to explode. While she spoke, the foals sat in one corner of the library, looking over some of the more accessible books to them.
One point that Trixie had raised stood out in particular, though. “I’ve been indentured?” she asked.
Trixie – who had her cape off and was running magic over it, trying to rid it of the smell of smoke – paused in what she was doing and saying, and looked to Twilight. “No!” she exclaimed. “Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Well, now that I think about it, it actually does sound a lot like indentured servitude…”
“It’s not!” Trixie insisted as she shook out her cape. “You’re here of your own free will, you can get any job you like in Ponyville, the town council just set you up with this one, and you don’t even have to stay here, you could go back to Canterlot whenever you liked – ”
Twilight held up her hooves, though, and there was a small grin on her face. “I know, I know,” she consoled. “It’s kind of funny, though.”
Trixie rolled her eyes as she put her cape back on. “I guess,” she admitted after a few moments, letting out a long breath.
Twilight did likewise, before looking over her shoulder at the seven foals. “So…” Twilight said, “magic tutor?”
“Yeah.”
“And it’s not going well.”
Trixie shook her head, though she then looked around the library. “I didn’t know you were re-shelving everything, though,” she noted, putting a hoof to one nearby pile that was nearly half again as tall as she was. “And you just got here, probably the last thing you want to do is deal with foals…”
It wasn’t the last thing, but it was fairly far down the list. Twilight hadn’t gotten any sleep last night in her re-shelving efforts, and while it was true she’d done seventy-two hour study sessions in the past, she’d never had to deal with a rambunctious foal while doing such, let alone seven. Twilight wasn’t very good with foals, either – and most importantly of all, she was, well, Twilight Sparkle, the pony who had brought an Ursa Minor into the town and ruined these foals’ Eventime festival. Indeed, all of them probably remembered the bear stomping into town. She had personally put these foals’ lives at risk.
But on the other hoof, Trixie needed help, and wasn’t likely to find it anywhere else at this time of day – not without disappointing the foals. Twilight steeled herself. “Okay,” she decided, holding up a hoof in determination. “I’ll help.”
Trixie looked surprised. “You will?”
Twilight nodded. “Mayor Ivory Scroll suggested that I should use my time here to help out ponies, right? Well, this is a good start – and I don’t even have to leave the library!” She thought a moment, to another book she had seen in the library. “In fact…”
Twilight trotted off, looking over the various stacks of books strewn about the library. After a few false leads, she finally found what she was looking for. The book looked new, but in fact it was just underused in the earth pony-majority town of Ponyville – it was in fact several decades old, so old that it predated the current trend of alliteration in Equestria’s books and was instead simply entitled Cantrips, by Dry Inkwell.
“Here we go!” Twilight said as she carefully removed the book from the pile it was in and dusted it off with telekinesis. “This is the most basic kind of spellbook there is, and nearly all of them can be used by any unicorn pony if they try hard enough. I can teach them from this!”
Trixie looked the book over. The cover was as plain as could be, simply the title, the author’s name, and a stylized image of a unicorn foal’s head. The blue unicorn couldn’t help but stick her tongue out. “Ugh…magic books…I have a bad history with them.”
Twilight nodded, remembering what Trixie had told her in the Everfree Forest – well, an Everfree Forest – a few months ago. “Well, most unicorns don’t have your probl…” Twilight bit her tongue before she could finish what she was about to say, looking to Trixie worriedly. “N-not that it’s a problem!” she said quickly. “Not problem, um…difficulty…uh – ”
Trixie smirked, waving her off. “It’s okay, Sparkle. I can take a good ribbing. Usually.”
The two started trotting back to the foals. Twilight looked down at the floor as she did. “S-sorry…” she said, then grinned sheepishly. “After everything that’s happened, I still don’t think before I speak or act…”
“No, but you did catch yourself,” Trixie pointed out. She was still wearing her smirk. “C’mon, let’s go introduce you to everypony.”
Twilight couldn’t help but keep her head slightly bowed as the two reached the seven foals, each of them having found a book to keep them occupied. Trixie cleared her throat after a moment, getting their attention, and Twilight suddenly found seven sets of eyes focused on her. She managed to keep herself from flinching.
“Okay, guys,” Trixie said, pointing to Twilight with one hoof. “This is Twilight Sparkle, the town’s new librarian. She’s really good with magic, too – ”
“As good as you?” Snips asked.
Trixie looked to Twilight, putting a hoof to her mouth as she considered. “Maybe a little better,” she allowed.
“A little?” Twilight asked, standing up straighter at the challenge.
“A smidge.”
Twilight stared at Trixie, who winked after a moment. Twilight’s eyes narrowed in response, but she also smiled as she turned back to the foals. “I graduated summa cum laude in my class at the Princess Luna Academy of Advanced Magic and Higher Learning. I had a perfect grade-point average, and Princess Luna herself hoofed me my diploma. My thesis, An Empirical Study of Translocation: Analyzing Conjurational Variables to Enable Teleportation Arrivals Within .5 thou, was published in the Arcane Academic Archives.”
The foals stared at Twilight. Twilight stared back for a few moments, before letting out a grunt of annoyance – this was why she wasn’t any good with foals. She didn’t know how to talk to them. “I’m really, really good at magic. Princess Luna said so,” she abridged, trying to ignore Trixie’s chuckle.
“Didn’t you bring the Ursa Major to town once?” Sweetie Belle asked.
Twilight started, considering running back to her books behind her and forgetting this whole idea, before she realized what she was thinking and let out a sigh, hanging her head. No more running, no more hiding. That was her new mantra in life, wasn't it? It had to apply here, too. “Yeah. Except it was an Ursa Minor, but yeah. That was me.”
She deserved this. Any second now the foals were going to cry out and say that they didn’t feel safe around her, and that was entirely fair. But at least she would have made the attempt for Trixie –
“That was awesome!” Snails exclaimed.
Twilight blinked, looking up. “Huh?”
Snips and Snails bumped hooves. “Yeah!” Snails said. “That was the biggest bear I ever saw!”
Snails got up on his hind hooves and lumbered forward like a bear towards the fillies. “Rawr! Ursa attack!” He lunged for Alula, who leaped out the way, wings fluttering a little for extra speed, though she giggled as she did. The game quickly became some kind of variation on tag, where the foals had to keep in a comparatively tight circle around the ‘ursa’ foal, who could only move on his or her hind hooves. Whoever he or she tagged had to take his or her place.
Twilight stared. This…this had not been what she was expecting. She had put ponies lives at risk. “It…it wasn’t a game – ” she began, but she was nudged by Trixie. Looking, she saw the other mare wink, then look back to the foals. “Miss Sparkle’s the one who brought an Ursa Minor into town,” she said, leaning down to look the foals in the eyes as she smiled, “but she’s also the one who got rid of it!”
The foals stopped at that, as Tootsie scratched the back of her head. “I thought you did, Miss Trixie,” she said. “I was watching. You made, like, fifty copies of yourself, and you threw lighting at it…”
Trixie chuckled again. “Not exactly,” she said. “Mostly I just distracted it for a few minutes, and Snails’ sister did all the hoof-work with the lightning. We were just buying time, though, so that Miss Sparkle,” she pointed back to Twilight, “could teleport it back home!”
The foals all once again looked to Twilight, eyes wide. “But…but it was huge!” Dinky exclaimed. “How’d you teleport it all?”
Twilight realized she was staring in confusion, and forced herself past it after a few moments. “U-um,” she said. “Actually, it’s not really that different from teleporting anything else, you just need to have the power – ”
“How much power do you have?” Firelock asked.
“W-well, it’s not like magic can just be easily quantified…there’s a lot of variables, hence why I needed all the time to build up the magic in the first place since it’s an exponential growth based on the mass – ”
“But she did have enough to teleport a bear the size of the town hall,” Trixie interrupted as she stood up straight again, nodding sagely.
“Wow…” the foals all let out as their eyes somehow grew even wider.
Trixie winked at Twilight again, then motioned to Snails. “Okay,” she said. “I want you six to stick with Twilight for the moment, and behave yourselves for her. She’s got a book of cantrips to teach you. Snails, we’ll get that memory spell down like I promised. Then I’ll try and work in more time with each of the rest of you, starting with helping Firelock refine her new spell. Sound good?”
The foals all nodded, though they were all more fixated on Twilight as Trixie and Snails trotted over to the library’s second floor. Twilight tried her best smile. “Um…okay,” she said, getting Cantrips and opening it to the first page. “So…where would you like to begin?”
“I want to teleport!” Snips exclaimed.
Twilight grimaced a little at that, as she looked down at the book. “Um…teleporting magic is really, really difficult. Most unicorns can never learn any variation of it.” She read down the book’s list of cantrips. None of them were related to teleporting in any way, not even small objects. “Sorry.”
The foals, almost as one, let out a collective sigh at that. Firelock, Snips, Sweetie, and Alula each looked over to Tootsie and Dinky, almost as though for guidance.
“Well…” Tootsie said after a moment, trotting over to the book and looking down at its table of contents, “what’s stick?”
“It’s an adhesive spell,” she responded. When she got a blank look, she reminded herself yet again that she was dealing with foals. “Um…it makes something sticky for a short time, so that you can attach it to something else.”
Tootsie looked to the rest of the foals, who considered for a few moments. “That sounds fun,” Dinky said after a moment. “Miss Trixie hasn’t taught me that one yet, so it’d be new for me, too!”
“Well…okay, then!” Twilight said, smiling as she turned through the book’s pages until she reached the cantrip. She was surprised to find that it seemed to take up more than two dozen pages in the book – all the cantrips, in fact, were explained in exacting detail. Twilight herself knew several different ways to accomplish the spell, but as she glanced it over she found that this level of attention to the ins and outs of the cantrip would make it perfect for teaching. Dry Inkwell certainly wanted whoever read this book to learn everything about the spells contained therein.
“Okay!” she declared, standing up straight as her horn glowed and she conjured some paper and simple pencils for the foals, each of whom gasped in surprise at their appearance. “Everypony, get ready to learn!”
---
The second floor of the library was no better organized than the first, except that it was smaller and so the stacks of books seemed to make space even more of a premium than on the first floor. Trixie used telekinesis to move some of the books aside, then picked one out at random. “What’s an entomological encyclopedia?” she wondered aloud.
“Ooh!” Snails exclaimed, grabbing at the book. On instinct, Trixie kept it away from Snails’ hoof, holding it over her head – though admittedly that didn’t put it very far out of the tall foal’s reach. Snails realized his mistake after a moment. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry for trying to just take it…I just get really excited with entomology. It’s the study of insects!”
“Oh,” Trixie said. She almost lowered the book, but then smiled. “Quick warm-up, then,” she placed the book on top of a large stack, then nodded towards it. “Grab it with telekinesis, and then we can use a page from it for the memory spell. If you can’t, then you’ll have to memorize a page from…” she glanced around, picking out the least pleasant book she could find in a moment and holding it up. “The Complete History of the Decline and Fall of the Fourth Griffin Empire!”
“Ah!” Snails exclaimed, looking up to the entomological encyclopedia desperately, horn glowing.
“In four parts!” Trixie added, as she found a second volume in a different stack. She now had parts two and four. “If I can find all four parts then you’ll have to use this instead of the bug book!”
“No!” Snails cried again, eyes closed tight and teeth grit. His green-gold telekinesis wrapped around the encyclopedia and tugged at it. It moved a few inches.
Trixie chuckled slightly as she trotted around, looking over the stacks. “Uh-oh, I found part three…”
“Ngh…!” Snails let out, as he moved the encyclopedia a few more inches. It teetered on the edge of the stack. Trixie continued trotting around the room, half-heartedly looking for part one. She was pretty sure she saw it buried in one of the stacks closer to the back wall, but decided to ignore it for at least a few more seconds. In those few seconds, Snails managed to get the encyclopedia into the air, and then over to his hooves.
Trixie smiled, setting volumes two through four of Decline down near the first volume, something she was sure Twilight would appreciate later. She tapped her front hooves on the ground in applause. “Good work,” she complimented. Snails was panting a little, but smiled himself at Trixie’s praise. “You should try to use your telekinesis as much as possible at home. My aunt and grand-père actually forbade me from using my hooves or mouth to grab things to eat at dinner for a whole week in order to teach me. If I couldn’t grab it with telekinesis, then I wasn’t allowed to eat it.”
Snails blanched. “That’s mean!” he exclaimed.
Trixie shrugged. “It was only for dinner. Made me learn telekinesis real fast. Also my uncle told them that it was a ‘take your daughter to work’ week, so I got to have big lunches with him and my cousin Sharp Minded.” She frowned. “La petite rapporteuse told on us in exchange for ice cream. That was alright, though, she was a unicorn like me, so when her turn came and I caught her at the dinner table…”
Snails stared at Trixie, and Trixie stared back. “Anyway,” Trixie said. “Memory spell. Find a page you like.”
The colt did, flipping through the pages and looking over the various pictures and information about different insects. He finally stopped on a page and picture about diving beetles. “This one!” he said, setting it on the ground and setting his horn aglow again. Trixie noted that this first step – channeling magic through his horn, the step before actually shaping the magic – was already becoming much easier for him, even if the more vital second step of actually shaping that magic seemed to be just as hard. Casting her magic sight spell, she saw that his magic was flowing through his horn at a much speedier pace, and the ‘block’ of under-channeled magic was slightly smaller. Even if he hadn’t learned a new spell yet, Trixie’s efforts were definitely helping Snails.
Grinning at that thought, she trotted over next to Snails, and pointed to the page of text that accompanied the picture. “So we’ll focus on this rather than the picture. It’ll be just like before, with my hat. Think of a really, really memorable flavor – ”
“Sour apples!” Snails proclaimed, his lips once again puckering at the memory.
“Sour apples,” Trixie confirmed. “Okay, so take that flavor and kind of project it onto the page. You need to…” Trixie thought a moment, wondering how to work this with flavors instead of colors and light, like she used for her own magic. “You need to basically strongly associate this page with that taste. They need to be the same thing for you. Every time you think about sour apples, you remember this.”
Snails licked his lips as he kept channeling magic through his horn, small, harmless sparks flying out as the colt channeled more magic that was necessary and the excess escaped his horn. After a few moments, his eyes started to gain a green-gold color, both in Trixie’s normal vision and in her magic sight.
Trixie rubbed Snail’s back. “Okay, you’ve nearly got it!” she said encouragingly. Snails grunted, redoubling his magical efforts. To Trixie, it looked like he had hit a wall; the magic required for the spell being just too much for him to channel right now thanks to his under-channeling problem. But he was so close…Trixie decided to lend a tiny bit of her own magic to the effort. Her horn glowed, and she melded some of her own magic with that of Snails. The foal didn’t seem to notice, but after a few more seconds there was a bright flash, and all at once Snails’ horn gave out.
The colt stumbled a little, but caught himself with Trixie’s help. He shook his head. “Ow…” he moaned. “That hurt…”
Trixie patted him on the head as she cancelled her magic sight spell. “It’s because you’re under-channeling, you have to put a lot more effort into this than normal. I also had to use a little of my own magic to help you – but only a little, and again, only ‘cause you’re under-channeling. Keep doing magic and it’ll get easier.” Smiling, she looked to the encyclopedia, pulling it forward and holding it in front of her, so that Snails couldn’t see the page. “Okay, so, let’s see if this worked. Fourth line of the paragraph that starts with ‘adult beetles have streamlined’ was…?”
Snails thought, licking his lips. “Covers, then elytra in…um, these,” he made half-circle motions with his hooves.
“Parentheses,” Trixie provided. “And then…?”
“They have elongate hairlike ‘filiform’ – ” Snails made the half-circle motion again, “ – antennae. Larvae are not frequently seen and have a long thorax.”
Trixie nodded. “Okay. Fourth word in, first line, from the paragraph below that.”
“Are,” Snails provided.
“Yup! Okay, what’s it say after the first semicolon under its pest status?”
“What’s a semicolon?”
“A comma with a dot over it.”
“Oh! Um…I don’t know what that first word is. P-R-E-D-A-C-E-O-U-S on other insects.”
Trixie’s smile widened; the fact that he was using punctuation marks and words he didn’t know the meaning of meant that the spell had most likely worked. Snails could have probably told her or written down whatever he wanted about diving beetles already, but he would have been limited by his own grasp of Equestrian while doing so. There was just one other test. “How many times,” she said, counting, “does the word ‘and’ appear?”
Snails frowned, eyes still closed as he thought. “Nine,” he said after a moment.
Trixie offered her largest grin yet. “Snails, I’ve got news for you,” she said, her tone making it clear what kind of news it was. Snails opened his eyes, giving a full tooth grin that Trixie matched. “You did it!”
“Yay!” Snails exclaimed, hopping back and forth between his front and hind legs. “My first spell!”
Trixie nodded. She felt an errant itch on her flank, around her cutie mark, but ignored it as she came forward and offered a hoof. “Good job,” she provided.
Snails ignored the offered hoof, and instead hugged Trixie. “Thanks, Miss Trixie!” he exclaimed. Trixie accepted the hug as Snails continued. “I kind of wanted my first spell to be something to do with my animal friends. Like making them bigger! But this is really cool too!” He closed his eyes. “It’s like I can carry around all the pictures of them I want all the time!”
Trixie patted Snails on the head. “Well, you’ll probably only be able to carry two or three images in your head,” she said. “That’s all I’ve ever managed, and this spell isn’t related to your special talent so you’ll probably be about the same.”
“It’s still really cool! I can use it to help me draw them, too!”
Trixie nodded, breaking away from Snails’ hug, and hoofed him the entomological encyclopedia. “Okay. Let’s take a little bit to see if I can’t help you cast this easier. Then we’ll go and get Firelock.”
---
“Alright,” Twilight said, using a hoof to point to the blackboard she had created and on which she had drawn the specific magical symbol and formula for stick. “Stick is a transmutation spell. Or more precisely, an alteration/transmutation. An alteration/transmutation changes the properties of some creature, thing, or condition. A spell that heats something up, changes something’s color or shape, or turns one thing into something else, is an alteration/transmutation.” She pointed to the next part of the blackboard. “Now, stick is the colloquial name of – ”
“What does that mean?” Sweetie Belle asked.
Twilight paused a moment. “Colloquial?” she asked. Sweetie Belle nodded. “It means informal or common. Like…for example, we normally just call our country Equestria. That’s its colloquial name. But its proper name is the Kingdom of Equestria. Although outside of Equestria, we’re colloquially known as the Principality of Equestria. There’s a really neat reason for this – ”
“Um,” Firelock interrupted, looking down at her sheet of paper. “Can we learn the spell?”
Twilight blinked. “Of course!” she declared, turning back to the chalk board. “As I was saying, stick is the colloquial name of this spell. Properly, as Dry Inkwell points out, its real name should be adhesive dweomer. A dweomer is an ongoing, lingering magical effect that exists independent of any influx of magic, as opposed to an ars, which is a magical effect that begins and ends instantly or nearly instantly, though its results can linger.” The foals collectively repressed giggles at the word ars, though Twilight didn’t know why.
“The adhesive dweomer consists of several steps,” Twilight explained, pointing to another part of the chalkboard. “First, you gather your magic in your thauma and project it up through your horn. Next, you shape the magic, adding qualities to it. Now, as I’m sure you know, every spell has three qualities – ”
“I didn’t know that,” Sweetie Belle said.
“Neither did I,” Tootsie said, looking surprised herself as the other foals voiced their agreement.
Twilight looked between them. “Huh,” she said. “Well, that’s okay, we can go over those now.”
“Um…” Dinky said, raising a hoof. “Miss Twilight…what does this have to do with making stuff sticky?”
Twilight smiled. “Well, for one thing, you’re not making anything sticky with stick, despite its name,” she said. “It makes one object stick to another object, but not through any kind of conjured glue. That would be a different spell. This just makes one object attach to another.”
“Okay…” Dinky said, looking at the chalkboard, then down to her own pencil and paper. Twilight had been having them take notes. “But, it’s just…Miss Trixie never does any of this when teaching me a spell. She just…shows me how to do the spell, and then walks me through casting it myself.”
Twilight tapped a hoof to her chin, wondering how to explain this to foals in terms they could understand. At their age, she’d already grasped most of the advanced concepts of magic, and was already moving on to high magical studies. She imagined that most of these foals were somewhat less adept, though. “If I asked you what two plus two is,” she said at length, “you’d all have an easy time answering, right?”
“Four,” the foals answered as one.
“Right. That’s simple math, so simple you don’t really need to go through the steps to add it up any more. But what if I asked you…what’s a hundred eighty-four plus two-hundred seventy-three? Try to do it in just your heads.”
The foals all thought, using their hooves to tap out mnemonic rhythms to help with their equations. “Four hundred fifty seven!” Tootsie Flute eventually exclaimed.
“That’s right,” Twilight responded, pointing at Tootsie. “Now how did you get that?”
“Well, first you add the four and the three together and get seven,” Tootsie responded. “Then the eight and the seven. That gives you fifteen…”
Twilight nodded in confirmation as Tootsie explained the simple arithmetic. “You used simple math to do more complex math,” she said, “breaking the problem down into pieces that made it easier to solve. Magic builds off of itself in the same way,” She held out a hoof and conjured a piece of chalk. “Knowing and mastering all the steps in simple cantrips will make it that much easier to do major magic.” She turned around, tossed the piece of chalk up into the air, and shot a beam of magic at it. By the time the chalk had hit the floor, it had transformed into a marble statue, taller than Twilight, depicting a model of the planet and the orbit of the Sun, Moon, and Stars around it.
“Ooh…” the foals let out as one.
Twilight smiled. She sent the statue back into nothingness, then turned around, looking back to Dinky. “Understand?” she asked.
Dinky nodded. “I do. Thanks, Miss Sparkle!”
“Alright, now where were we?” Twilight asked, looking back to Cantrips and glancing up and down the page. “Oh, right. Every spell has three qualities…”
Twilight continued on for some time. She found herself surprised at how little these foals knew about the terminology and nuances of spellcraft; even if they came from non-unicorn families, surely there parents could have seen to it that they got at least a basic walkthrough, right? She decided to just chalk it up to the fact that Ponyville was an earth-pony-majority rural town; unicorns were a comparative minority, and most of them would only focus on learning spells related directly to their special talents, which would come more-or-less naturally. Few would ever try and branch out and test the limits of their cutie marks as Twilight had.
“…right, so everypony got that?” Twilight asked as she finished.
“I didn’t,” Trixie’s voice said. Twilight looked, and saw her coming down the steps from the library’s second floor, Snails in tow, the latter holding an entomological encyclopedia in his mouth as he trotted along, looking quite pleased with himself.
“Done,” Trixie proclaimed, holding up a hoof in triumph. “I have now officially accomplished something today. How’re things on your end?”
“We’ve almost started!” Alula supplied helpfully, as Snails trotted over to Snips and showed off the encyclopedia, while Sweetie Belle, who could see the pictures of the bugs in the book, looked a little grossed out.
Trixie’s eyebrow raised at Alula’s statement. “Almost started?” she asked.
Twilight nodded. “We had to cover a few basics first,” Twilight said with a small smile. “The qualities of a spell, the difference between a dweomer and an ars…”
Once again, the foals giggled slightly at that word, though Twilight still didn’t know why. Trixie, meanwhile, looked even more confused as she looked back to Twilight. “A what and a what?”
Twilight blinked a few times. “A dweomer and an ars,” she repeated. Trixie continued to stare blankly. “A continuously-empowered spell verses a singular spell event?” Trixie didn’t look any more enlightened, and Twilight grunted. She conjured a brief flash of light. “Ars,” she provided, then created a ball of light that she kept empowering with her horn. “Dweomer.”
Trixie stared at the light, tapping one hoof to her mouth. “I think I…maybe…seem to recall that…” Twilight leaned forward hopefully, “…I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Trixie nodded her head with certainty at that, while Twilight let out a groan before she could stop herself. “But you learned magic from Princess Luna!” she cried.
“Yeah…but not really the technical side,” Trixie admitted as she trotted over to Twilight’s conjured blackboard, looking it over. “Whenever Luna wanted to teach me a spell, she just sort of…walked me through the steps. Or she’d let me watch her cast the spell, and then I’d do whatever she was doing.” Trixie smiled as she raised a hoof, looking back to Twilight. “I know how to raise the Moon!”
The foals all went wide eyed at that. “Really?” Tootsie asked.
Trixie rubbed a hoof behind her neck, and Twilight took that in. “Well, I’ll never have the power needed,” she said. “Me and Twilight and every other unicorn in all of Ponyville together wouldn’t have even a tenth the power. But I do know how to, yeah.”
“How?” Twilight asked, her voice completely deadpanned.
“It’s not easy,” Trixie responded. “See, first you have to use magic kind of like a mix between a lever and a key, and plug it into the Moon…”
“Not that,” Twilight interrupted. “How could you know how to do that, but not know some of the most basic magical terms?”
Trixie put her front hooves together as she thought, looking again at the blackboard and the magical formula there. “Okay,” she said. “I have no idea what all that stuff means. But I could easily still just write it all down without understanding it, right? And with magic, that makes you end up with a spell.” She held up a hoof. “Or like with painting! I don’t have to know how to actually make paint in order to be a good painter.”
Twilight shook her head. “Actually, some of the best painters make their own paint.”
“You get what I mean, though – ”
“No, I don’t! So you mean to tell me that when you turn yourself invisible or create copies of yourself with illusions, you have no idea what’s happening?”
Trixie bristled, trotting forward. “I know what’s happening!” she objected. “I’m bending light!”
“But you don’t know how?”
“With magic! Isn’t that enough?”
“Not if you want to do anything really complicated – ”
“Hey! I can do complicated easy.” Trixie turned and her horn flashed blue. She created a facsimile of herself, grinning haughtily at Twilight. “See? Perfect mirror image! You know how hard that was to learn?”
Twilight grunted, her horn flashing lavender. The mirror image of Trixie disappeared in a puff of magic. “But how are you going to learn to do something really complicated?” she asked, rifling through a few of the spells she knew. “Like…this?”
Twilight closed her eyes, channeling magic from her horn down to her back. She was wrapped in a lavender glow for several long moments. When the glow cleared, she had sprouted a large pair of shimmering, butterfly-like wings. She fluttered them a few times, lifting off of the ground and smiling down at Trixie as she drifted up towards the ceiling. The foals, too, were staring in awe.
One of Trixie’s eyes narrowed. “I could figure that out,” she objected.
“You sure? This is a really difficult spell,” Twilight said as she flitted around through the air, nimbly avoiding the stacks of books that reached towards the ceiling. “There’s eight different steps, each of them requiring precise timing and balance of magic. It took up twenty pages in the book I found it in – ”
“Ugh!” Trixie groaned, horn and eyes both taking on a blue glow as she watch Twilight. “Spellbooks. That’s like writing down the steps to a dance. You lose the entire dance in the process!”
Twilight froze in mid-air, glaring down at Trixie. “I’ve learned nearly every spell I know from a spellbook! They work just fine for every other unicorn!”
“Well, here’s something that I made up just now!” Trixie called, the azure glow to her eyes disappearing and shooting a beam of blue magic at Twilight. It struck Twilight harmlessly, but she felt it washing over her newly-created wings. With a purple flash, the wings disintegrated. Twilight let out a yelp as she fell towards the ground, though Trixie’s telekinesis caught her and set her back on her hooves harmlessly.
Twilight glared at Trixie nevertheless. “You dispelled my wings!”
“And I didn’t even need a spellbook,” Trixie proclaimed, raising one hoof in the air as though in victory, eyes closed. “It’s way more fun that way!”
“Fun, huh?” Twilight asked, horn glowing.
Trixie opened her eyes just as a lavender beam of energy struck her in the face. It didn’t hurt, but she suddenly felt…something. Reaching up to her face, she felt significantly more hair than was supposed to be on her muzzle. Twilight conjured a mirror in front of her, and Trixie saw that she was now the owner of a brand-new moustache and goatee ensemble.
Twilight laughed, as did the foals. Trixie, fumed, channeling magic into her face and dispelling the unnecessary facial hair as she turned to Twilight. The lavender unicorn was sniggering herself. “I learned that from a book, too,” she declared. “See? It can be fun. Funny, anyway. For me.”
Trixie’s horn glowed bright blue.
---
“They’re like you two, but adults,” Firelock said to Dinky and Tootsie as the two adult unicorns argued back and forth about magic, as well as slung the occasional, harmless spell between each other to make some point.
“Yeah…” Dinky admitted, looking to the notes that Twilight had made them take. “I think Miss Twilight has a point about knowing how magic works, though,” she said. “But Miss Trixie’s got a good point, too! Magic should be special, not just…math homework.”
Tootsie Flute nodded in agreement. The foals had gathered in a circle around the notes that they had taken, in front of the chalkboard that Miss Twilight had created. It did feel like a math problem, and even if there was a new spell for the foals at the end of the problem, none of them were particularly looking forward to working through it, what with them having gotten out of school so recently. “Think we can put this together ourselves?” she asked.
“Maybe, but I think we’d need Miss Twilight’s help,” Sweetie Bell decided, and after a moment the foals agreed: they didn’t yet know what any of the formulae on the chalkboard or in their notes meant, as Twilight and Trixie had started after each other before they could begin. She looked to Snails. “But you learned your first spell?” she asked.
Snails brightened, nodding. “It’s a memory spell!” he explained, holding forward the encyclopedia he held, opened to the page on diving beetles. “Go on, ask me anything about that page!”
“Wouldn’t you know everything anyway?” Snips asked, as Alula and Sweetie both went a little green at the picture next to the page in the book, a diving beetle depicted at several times its normal size.
Snails shook his head. “I mean, sort of,” he admitted. “I’d be able to tell you all about diving beetles, yeah. But I wouldn’t be able to tell you something like…” he thought for a few moments, eyes closed. “There are twenty-one periods!”
The other foals all crowded around the book, counting the periods. “He’s right!” Tootsie declared after a moment. “Hey, how many the’s are there?”
Snails counted in his head. “Eleven!”
“Hey, cool!” Firelock exclaimed, a few sparks shooting from her horn in excitement. The other foals all flinched, but they were just harmless, intangible magic sparks, not real ones. Firelock blushed a little. “Sorry,” she said. “But that’s a cool spell! You could use it to help you take tests!”
Snails shook his head. “Miss Trixie suggested the same thing. But that seems like cheating. I don’t want to do that.”
Firelock shrugged, grinning. “If Miss Trixie shows me that spell, that’s what I’ll use it for.”
“Scootaloo would probably love it, too, if she were a unicorn,” Sweetie thought aloud. She brightened. “So, hey! Firelock, you learned how to make fireworks, and Snails, you learned that memory spell, and me and Snips and Alula all learned how to make dancing lights. So we all learned something new today!”
“Except me and Tootsie,” Dinky pointed out, looking to Tootsie Flute. “Why did you come today anyway, Tootsie? You and me are already the best in class with magic. I’m Miss Trixie’s magician’s assistant, so that’s why I came, but why did you?”
“I had a question for Miss Trixie,” Tootsie said. “My momma and papa say that pure unicorns are better at magic than unicorns from mixed families. But these guys didn’t believe me.”
Dinky frowned at Tootsie’s statement. “But I’m as good as you, and my momma’s a pegasus, and so is the rest of her family.”
“What about your dad?” Snips asked. “Your sister’s a unicorn. Is your dad?”
Dinky thought. It occurred to her that she’d never actually asked what tribe her father Castor Cut was, and she couldn’t remember if her momma or Sparkler had ever mentioned it. She’d never met him herself, either. “I dunno,” she admitted with a shrug. “But…look at Firelock! Firelock, isn’t your dad an earth pony?” Firelock nodded, and Dinky continued. “But she figured out her own spell all by herself!”
Tootsie considered. “But it’s related to your special talent,” she pointed out, poking a hoof against Firelock’s flank and the new cutie mark there. “Those spells always come in eventually.”
“Oh, right,” Dinky admitted. “Did you ask Alula?”
Alula started, looking down at her hooves. “I don’t know why everypony always comes to me, I don’t know…” she said softly.
“I did,” Tootsie said with a nod. “Alula agrees with everypony else. But my momma and papa wouldn’t have told me that for no good reason!”
“That’s true,” Dinky admitted. “My momma always has a reason for everything!” She paused a moment, though, as she thought about some of her mother’s decisions. She loved her mother dearly, but…“though…sometimes, it doesn’t seem like a very good reason.”
“Well, that’s why I came.” Tootsie said. She turned around. “In fact, I think I’ll just go and ask them now.”
Tootsie trotted off towards the two adults. Intentionally or otherwise, the two had cleared a broad space in the library for the two of them to argue/duel in, moving stacks of books aside as they debated and spell-slung. Trixie was once again sporting a goatee, though she seemed to be taking it in stride this time. Twilight, meanwhile, had somehow turned bright pink, with yellow polka-dots all over her coat.
“Magic is not a science, Sparkle!” Trixie proclaimed with a stomp of her hoof.
“Well it isn’t an art either, Lulamoon!” Twilight countered.
“Um…excuse me?” Tootsie asked.
The two adults paused, before their horns glowed bright and they dispelled the respective enchantments they had lain over each other. “What’s up?” Trixie asked, any of her previous annoyance with Twilight apparently forgotten save for a slight glare at the other mare, which Twilight returned.
“I have a question,” Tootsie provided.
“About adhesive dweomer?” Twilight asked, trotting forward. Her eyes widened. “Oh, I completely forgot about all of you! I’m so sorry, I’ll – ”
“No, it’s not about that,” Tootsie said, shaking her head. She was aware of the other foals coming forward, watching and listening in order to learn the answer to Tootsie’s question themselves. “It’s actually about the reason I went over to Miss Trixie’s today in the first place. You two can go back to fighting after – ”
“We weren’t fighting, we were debating,” Twilight interrupted.
“Fervently,” Trixie added.
Tootsie blinked. “I, um…don’t know what that word means.”
Trixie trotted over to Tootsie, settling down in front of her. “Passionately,” she explained. “It’s a good word, you should use it. But anyway – what question did you want to ask? Is it about magic?”
“Sort of,” Tootsie said, rubbing one front hoof against her opposite leg as she considered. “Okay, I’m the best in class at magic, or at least I’m as good as Dinky,” she nodded towards the gray unicorn foal, who nodded with pride. She then looked back to Trixie. “My momma and papa always said that was ‘cause I come from a good pedigree.”
Trixie frowned. “A good pedigree?” She asked. “What are you, a dog? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tootsie held up a hoof. “Well, see, my momma and papa are both unicorns, and their parents were unicorns, and their parents were unicorns…”
“Um,” Twilight said, glancing at Trixie, who glanced back. Both looked nervous for some reason.
“My momma and papa don’t think there’s anything wrong with earth ponies or pegasi, though!” Tootsie insisted. That was the case as far as she knew, anyway. Her family had moved to Ponyville a couple generations ago from Canterlot, after all – her great grandmother had even been the town representative, appointed by Luna herself! – and Ponyville had more earth ponies than anything. Tootsie continued. “But my momma and papa say that unicorns marrying and having foals with other tribes dilutes the blood. That’s why Snails is having trouble with his magic, ‘cause his family are all pegasi.”
“It…doesn’t work like that,” Trixie said, glancing at Twilight. “Right, Sparkle?”
Twilight was tapping her hooves together nervously, glancing at Trixie, then back to Tootsie. “Not…exactly?” she said in a small voice.
Trixie paused at that, before her eyes narrowed a little. “Twilight,” she said, her voice dropping an octave.
Twilight held up her hooves. “Just…let me explain, okay?” she asked, then looked back to Tootsie, licking her lips a moment before pressing on. Tootsie wasn’t sure why she was so nervous; all she’d done was ask a question. “Okay, Tootsie. It is true that unicorns raised amongst unicorns tend to learn magic faster, and know more spells. But that’s just because they have their family to teach them, or even just have more opportunities to see their family doing magic and just picking things up from them.”
She looked to Trixie, who crossed her hooves. “But…?” she asked. “My whole family is a mix of all the tribes, Sparkle.”
Twilight nodded, glancing around the library. “But,” she said, lifting a few books, before smiling as she pulled out the one she was looking for. She flipped it open, then held it out in front of Tootsie. It was a foal’s history book. “But Star Swirl the Bearded?” she asked. “The most powerful pony practitioner who ever lived? His family were mostly earth ponies!”
Tootsie blinked. “I didn’t know that!” she admitted.
“There’s more,” Twilight said, holding up a hoof. “Okay, let me think of some other famous unicorns…Red Magician was all unicorns in his family. But Astral Star came from a mixed family. So did Dry Inkwell. Sky Cast was a pegasus-unicorn, of course, though admittedly she had a mostly unicorn family…”
Trixie looked significantly more relieved at Twilight’s words as she looked to Tootsie. “The point is that unicorns can be great spellcasters no matter who their parents were,” she explained, tapping her hooves together. “Your parents…probably just made a mistake. They probably read somewhere or noticed that unicorns raised amongst unicorns tend to learn faster, and assumed that it was because they were ‘pure’ unicorns. But that’s not the case.”
Tootsie nodded. That made sense. Adults made mistakes just like foals did, she knew; they were just better at covering them up sometimes. She smiled a little at this new knowledge. “So there’s nothing wrong with a unicorn marrying an earth pony?” she asked.
Trixie smiled, tussling Tootsie’s mane. “Not a thing. Though maybe you should let Truffle Shuffle know you’re going to be marrying him at some point.”
Tootsie blushed, as her grin grew wider, though she tried to hide it with her hooves. The other foals, who had been watching, all giggled a little at the sight. Trixie and Twilight glanced between each other, then back to them. “Okay,” Twilight said at length, standing up. “We should get back to learning that cantrip!” She paused, glancing at Trixie. “Um…maybe you could hold off on teaching Firelock anything? Just until she’s learned this.”
Trixie nodded as she joined Twilight in trotting over to the foals. “Hey, you got a quill and paper?” she asked. “I want to take the time to write something down, before I forget.”
“Sure,” Twilight said, pointing off to the library’s front desk. Trixie was off in a moment, and Twilight looked to the seven foals, six of whom had gathered their magical notes and settled down in front of Twilight’s chalkboard again, while Snails had acquired a pencil and paper of his own and was doing his best to write down his own notes. Twilight let him catch up, then clapped her front hooves together. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s learn some magic!”
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Hmm... ah, I see what this story's been missing!
cdn.derpiboo.ru/media/BAhbBlsHOgZmSSJDMjAxMi8xMC8wOC8wMF80Nl8wN18xOTdfMTE2ODIwX19VTk9QVF9fc2FmZV9hbmltYXRlZF9zY29vdGFsb28GOgZFVA/116820__safe_twilight-sparkle_rainbow-dash_pinkie-pie_fluttershy_rarity_applejack_princess-celestia_princess-luna_animated_scootaloo_lyra_trixie_vinyl-scratch_filly_octavia_rose_hearts-and.gif
In D&D terms, Twilight is a Wizard, while Trixie is a Sorceror. The former studies magic, and casts it via rote learning. The latter intuitively knows how to cast spells, and does so through willpower.
The argument seen here is a rather tame version of the two classes clashing. For a more extreme version, see Qara and Sand from Neverwinter Nights 2's original campaign. Those two NEVER get along, because they're so radically different in their thought processes.
I think I would be very frustrated at Twilight because since she is an academic person she should know that there are multiple learning styles. I am more like Trixie in learning style, I can learn from books but if I actually write notes I seem to forget things faster or just not be able to understand something. But If I do something I learn much faster and retain more.
YaaaaaY, update!! I was wondering when Twilight was finally going to get into the teaching mix, Great chapter.
Do you ever find it weird that the show has an episode similar in style to a fic that you are currently reading? That is what I am experiencing now, because what Trixie and Twilight are debating is what the CMC were going through in Twilight Time. Applebloom was able to do one potion perfectly because she did it without a book, but when Twilight made her follow steps, it became hard for her. ITs a difference between being "book-smart" and "Street Smart." For instance, I could work on computers and fix t easily, but it gets harder when you throw the technicals at me. I much prefer seeing someone do it once and then I do it on my own. No book required.
I like that this is a difference in style of teaching, Trixie can learn by seeig and doing. While Twilight needs the mechanics and the steps and the footnotes and everything in between. Neither is right and neither is wrong, just two different ways that a pony can learn.
Wizard vs. sorcerer: the debate rages on!
A most enjoyable chapter, both in terms of character development and magibabble. Though I can definitely see Tootsie Flute's parents being very displeased with what she learned. Not guaranteed to happen, of course, but the stage is certainly set.
In any case, looking forward to more.
4038481 more wizard vs mage
sorcerers are by definition incapable of there own magic they use spirits to provide the mana for there spells.
twilight being the wizard puts everything about magic to study and books and theorums which is great but also weakens her as with any mental art magic's power can be boosted by imagination and curiosity.
trixie being the mage has the magic come to her naturaly and well book smarts help concentrating on the science would cause her to lose the feeling and flow.
I loved that fight scene. Truly a Twilight and Trixie scene. I can't wait for the next chapter. I love this series.
4038536 We're talking D&D definitions, here.
Normally, Wizard vs. sorcerer debates end with big smoking craters around.
4038481
Ten points from Slytherin, you runt!
Twilight laughed, as did the foals. Trixie, fumed, channeling magic into her face and dispelling the unnecessary facial hair as she turned to Twilight. The lavender unicorn was sniggering herself.
Only one mention of the fact that Twilight is chortling is probably necessary. Or was Trixie supposed to be the one sniggering at the end there?
I'm reminded of when Doctor Orpheus told Triana that he took his duty seriously only to mutter "Oh...doody....very amusing." Same deal, right?
4038427
In DnD terms, ALL unicorns are sorcerer's. They're all born with the innate ability to cast spells.
A Wizard doesn't learn his spells by rote. In fact, that's what a Sorcerer does, to be honest, since he can cast any spell he's learned at any time, as long as he has the power left to do it. Wizard doesn't have such an ability, so he cheats, and the 'memorization' of spell is basically casting most of the spell a long time before you intend to use it, and when you actually need it, putting the final, tiny piece into place that causes the spell to 'cast'.
When a Wizard 'learns' a spell by copying it into his spellbook, he isn't actually learning it. He's merely copying down the procedure for preparing the spell before casting it.
In the Dresden Files, those two approaches to Magic make up the two major branches of spellcasting. Evocation, i.e. point and boom magic, is developed according to the caster's natural abilities, and while they can be guided, learning it from books is somewhere between difficult and impossible. In Thaumaturgy, which is any kind of long-range or long-lasting spells, you follow the steps perfectly and exactly. 'Working by feel' when summoning or brewing potions is a good way to get yourself killed.
That said, I'm a bookish man myself and would have to favor Twilight's style, both in personal use and in teaching.
4038427
I would classify Twilight as more an "Omni-Disciplinary" magic user, she does have a intuitive understanding of magic but she is more a scholar type and is more comfortable with learning spells from books. Of course Canon Twilight is much more of a intuitive caster than Luna verse Twilight as Cannon Twi got direct lessons from Celestia and more unstructured study time, she can more easily dissect a spell from observation and copy it. Trixie being defined as a Sorceror is a much more solid metaphor, though she could also be classified as an illusionist. Trixie copies the effects of spells rather than casting techniques, producing similar results using her own ideas or completely different spells. So Twilight copies spells, Trixie imitates spells. Additionally Lunaverse Trixie knows many more spells than she is able to cast as she still has a specialized talent for stage magic, magic that looks far more impressive than the actual result.
4038427 Never finished NWN2, but Qara's disinterest in academics did make me want to beat some sense into the girl a little, and I was playing a druid at the time. Maybe I'll finish that one day.
4038928 If you stopped playing during Act 1, you're not the only person. Act 1 is largely filler, with but a scarce few reminders of what your actual objective is (getting into Blacklake to talk to Aldanon). Acts 2 and 3 are far more interesting, with one of the game's best parts in Act 2.
I still wanna hear what Trixie has to say to Tootsie's parents
This was so sweet.
4038536 I think you're thinking of Warlocks. They're the ones that make deals with spirits (at least in D+D). The result in 3.5 was a bunch of weak spells that they could cast at will because they weren't using their own power.
4038791 Wizards can't just 'memorize' spells willy-nilly out of each others' books. They need to fully understand a spell (with a skill check) and copy it into their own notation (which takes time and money). Strangely, they can decompile a 'memorized' spell back into the notation and copy it into a book. I sort of get the impression that the 'memorized' spells are actually hanging out inside the wizard's mind, making 'memorization' a somewhat accurate description of the pre-cast state.
Unicorn magic in general doesn't map well to D+D if you want to be show accurate. At least not for the magic-focused unicorns -- for the normal cutie-mark-spell-only unicorns it's a lot like magical creatures who have a list of spell-like abilities (for example, unicorns).
Epic Magic Nerd VS. Dork Fight!
A cute and sweet chapter. Nice to see Snails progressing and the other foals slowly grasping the basics.
Keep it up!
Why, I do think Twilight and Trixie may have just established a bit of a rapport there at the end.
[FRIENDSHIPPING INTENSIFIES]
4039135
KEEP CALM. IT'S AN AU. SMALL DIFFERENCES MAY OCCUR.
4038956 I think I got a good deal through act 2 once, but I got caught up in other things. I'll have to get back to it sometime.
You know I'm not sure if Stick is a good spell to start with, I can see Trixie having to roll a large ball of intertwined foals back to their parents at this rate.
Also Trixie's threat to Snails should be considered cruel and unusual punishment, although as a trained Entomologist, Yay!
Insects are cool.
I didn't think this Twilight was very impressed by Star Swirl?
An interesting argument on the best teaching methods. Twilight is technically correct (the best kind of correct!) in that if you don't truly understand the processes involved then you're setting a much lower potential ceiling for yourself. To build a supercollider you need to be able to stand on the shoulders of giants... Nobody who is just naturally good at cobbling things together and inventing intuitively is going to ever create something that advanced without an in-depth understanding.
That said, are any of these foals in this humble farming community likely to ever need to push against the bleeding edge of magic research? Probably not... And Trixie's way would likely get them farther, faster, and surely with more enthusiasm to actually keep at it. But is it right to give up on the possibility that one of them might be the next Starswirl?
Clearly the two of them have more to offer as a team. Despite Trixie's dislike of spell books, she might have been able to say "yes" to many more of Snails' suggested spells had she been able to look them up and learn them herself. And Twilight desperately needs someone to keep her lessons from being so painfully dry that Snails might find keeping his headaches preferable.
I really enjoyed this chapter, especially when foals drew the comparison between Trixie & Twilight with Dinky & Tootsie, which was something I'd been starting to do myself. It's good to see Twilight and Trixie in this awkward middle ground, no longer enemies, but still rivals out to prove who's "right" and getting easily sidetracked by such debates. Wasn't expecting the flutter-wings spell though...
Anyway, I wonder if Snails could maybe "cheat" the memory spell and carry more snapshots, at least so long as they are related to information on bugs. Plus his mother is a photographer, so even if his talent is different, he might still have a little innate affinity.
4038427 4038791 4038845 4038536 4039024
As Karna said, in many ways all MLP unicorns are sorcerers since their magic is an innate talent that they are born with. That said, Twilight is very wizard-like in her approach to magic as a academic science. Conversely, Trixie isn't really all that much like a raw sorcerer, seeing as she's still a "student" of magic, just with a more artistic slant. As such, to me their argument more so resembles that of wizard -vs- bard; both classes study magic, but for one it's a hard science defined by rules, whereas for the other it's a free-flowing form of artistic expression. Even Trixie's way of mentally picturing her spells is bard-like, she just uses color instead of music.
4038430
In my experience the REALLY studious academic types tend to be the least understanding of alternative learning methods. Which only tends to make education all the more difficult for those of us that don't quite fit the system, as it's those same rigidly academic types who most often go onto become teachers.
4039135
Dictionary she may be, but Sweeite is also still only a child, so hasn't filled in all her "pages" just yet. For me at least the fact that she cares enough to ask makes this very in character.
4039424
Actually, IIRC, both Twilight's were equally fans of Starswirl. Rather, the argument they had was over Clover the Clever, with L! thinking she was just a hack who failed to live up to her mentor's legacy, while M! posited that without his apprentice to organize and interpret his notes, much of Starswirl's research wouldn't have survived.
4040130 I remember getting in trouble so many times for not taking notes or doing homework but aceing tests. The lot of them thought I was cheating . Screwed me out of being able to take honor/AP classes.
I would consider myself an academic but not as a logic based as Twilight is. In this case needing to break down every step. Goodness I hated mathematic proofs. Why do I need to show the work when the answer is right dammit
4038986
I want to see what Trixie has to say as well.
4039024
It's true they need to make a skill check to do so, but if you're a decent wizard(not a good wizard, a decent wizard), said Skill check should be pathetically easy.
Also if you decide to buy or make a Blessed Book, you don't need any money at all to copy spells into it.
4040541
That pretty much sums up my entire high school experience as well. The aggravating part was that my math teacher never mistakenly presumed I was cheating, yet still insisted that I show my work just because. Didn't help that half or more of the time I wouldn't have any work to show, since for me most of what we were doing in class felt as easy as "2+2=4".
Of course the real pièce de résistance was my junior high history teacher, who required that students write notes during class and then turn them in for grading. Didn't matter to her that I aced every test, because I wasn't learning the "correct" way. Not that I think she ever cared all that much about actual education, seeing as she once went on record that teachers should assign lots and LOTS of homework (especially over weekends and holidays), not for study purposes, but so students would be too busy to engage in delinquent behaviors.
Hmm... better. Still wanted to smack Twilight upside the head multiple times. And you made Trixie look pretty ignorant of apparently basic magical terms. She's not that book-dumb!
But... I am glad Trixie actually managed to make a positive contribution to the learning environment.
4040637
In college I had a history class - an ancient/classical history class - grind to a halt once because the professor wanted to spend an hour and a half talking about the factual existence of yetis and bigfoot.
4041067
... actually I'm not even sure what to make of or take away form that. 
That's...
4041242
That was strike one for the professor.
Strike two was when he tried to convince the class that the Nile river helped to defend ancient Egypt because its cataracts (areas of fast-flowing rapids) are difficult to navigate up.
...for the record, historically, when a nation has tried to invade Egypt, it has succeeded. In rough chronological order for the ancient/classical world, there's the ancient Libyans, the Sea Peoples, the Hyksos, the Nubians, the Kushites, the Hittites, the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Egypt has only ever managed to keep itself independent when it maintained strong borders distant from the center of its civilization, away from the Nile. Second problem, the Nile is a gigantic source of fresh water in the middle of a desert. Far from stopping an invasion, it encourages one. Plus navies were not very advanced for most of Egypt's history, and the majority of those who invaded would have done so overland from the east, or else upriver from the south - Kush and Nubia, both of which were landlocked nations who didn't even have navies. The Nile's cataracts were irrelevant.
Strike three...was when I learned that we were not going to be covering the Roman Empire.
In our ancient/classical history class.
We were going to cover before the Empire, and after the Empire. Up to the Crusades, in fact. But not the Roman Empire. Quoth my professor, "it wasn't really that important."
I dropped the class soon thereafter.
4041294
I could ~almost~ accept not covering the Roman Empire, but not on those grounds. If the reason were that it was too complex a subject and thus necessitating a whole separate class of its own, that might be a reasonable excuse. To say that nothing important happened though... that's just... the words don't even exist to describe the level of fail.
Great chapter!
4041294
I'm gonna take a wild shot in the dark... that professor had tenure
Both Trixie and Twilight make excellent points, personally I learn by watching and then copying others, but that doesn't stop me making notes so I can remember what to do later on.
But in my head I hear the Medic "Let's go practice medicine."
And once again Twilight and Trixie get into an argument about magic, while the foals demonstrate greater maturity than either of them. Good job, adults!
Both Twilight and Trixie have good points, and have a lot to offer the foals in terms of magical education, but I think this whole argument highlights the problem that there isn't any formal magical education for unicorn foals. If I were running the Equestrian education system, I'd mandate one hour per day, or one day per week, for tribal magic training - magic lessons for unicorn foals, flight and weather control lessons for pegasi, and plant and animal lessons for earth ponies. Scootaloo should have been receiving special flight training months ago, and it shouldn't have been Twilight's job to teach Sweetie Belle magic. Magical education can't simply be left to parents - that doesn't work for foals from mixed-tribe families, or families with parents who are always working, or just neglectful.
Another fun chapter. It's nice seeing some foals outside of the norm having roles in a story. Tootsie Flute, Fire Lock, and Alula are all delightful in their own right.
And I'm glad to see that both Trixie and Twilight have their own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to teaching; they serve as foils to one another, without one or the other being clearly superior. It was also a nice touch, to see them continue to refer to each other by their last names, as a result of the events in Crisis.
Nope, nosiree.
Why, what an interesting gun you have there, Mr. Chekhov. Fully loaded, is it?
OBVIOUSLY they are both missing the perfect solution:
BOTH!! Magic would be both Art AND Science, much like cooking on a stovetop, unlike baking which is more pure science. With normal cooking there are shortcuts, and exact measurements and times matter a lot less than with Baking.
So there is science involved, but certainly there is art as well, otherwise Trixie would not be able to do what she does.
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I like to introduce things early. Truth is a Scourge was first introduced several stories before it became relevant, for example.
Then again, I also like to drop red herrings.
4041390 Yeah, he should have known that most of what makes Western culture came from the Romans.
I loved the Book vs Show learning debate from Twilight and Trixie. Admittedly, I side with Twilight on this one, things can't progress without understanding the mechanics of said things.
And it seems that L!Twilight is shown more and more that she's having mild symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome or other conditions in the Autistic Spectrum Disorder, though it probably wouldn't have been discovered at the time.
4046999 But it could also be used to help in the season finale.
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You seem to be applying modern cultural standards and concepts that might not really be applicable in Equestrian society (a/k/a, Values Dissonance). Heck, even in our own world, mandatory public education is a fairly recent concept that was mostly only instituted in the early-to-mid 1900s (contrast the Lunverse's general late 1800s development level). Besides, Ponyville is explicitly a backwater rural farming community. Schools like what you describe might well exist in the larger urban cities, for example Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns in Canterlot, or the summer flight camp in Cloudsdale. Ponyville, however, seems to only have the singular one room school house.
Also, unicorn magic and pegasi flight are both natural physical skills, things ponies are all born with a natural instinct for. Even at that though, they aren't really skills required just to get by in daily life (except flying for ponies living in Cloudsdale, but that's likely why they have the afore mentioned flight camp). As a real world social comparison, a young pony who doesn't learn these skills might be functionally equivalent to human adults who never learn how to drive a car; it might make life less convenient, but most of us still find other ways to get from place to place.
...or perhaps a more accurate biological. example would be swimming. Human babies are actually born already knowing how to tread water, and if provided sufficient opportunities will develop natural swimming skills in the same way they also learn how to walk. However, most humans have no cause to swim as part of our daily lives, and so many humans grow up never learning how to swim. As such it's considered a largely recreation skill, and the same might easily be true of both flight and magic in Equestria (places like Cloudsdale not withstanding)
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To be fair, so does M!Twilight...