Fanfic Tropes: Unicorn Horns · 6:34pm Jul 14th, 2012
Why can't the unicorns use magic to get out of their situation? Every fanfic depicting a unicorn in peril has to explain why they can't just magically escape. It's the MLP fanfic equivalent of the scene in horror movies showing the cellphone losing its signal.
I love and hate this trope at the same time. I think it's funny how many creative ways we come up with for dealing with this issue. For instance, there's the brutal solution of cutting off or breaking the horn to prevent magical use; but that's often too permanent or too drastic a solution for most stories to use.
I've used the excuse that if a unicorn is frightened or in severe pain, they can't just use magic because it requires concentration. There's also things that absorb magical energy. Anything from magic-dampening force fields to magic-absorbing rings, gems or stones. There's also poison joke exposure or swallowing a magic-neutralizing potion.
What does everyone else think? Is it necessary to explain why a unicorn can't just use magic to escape a situation, or have we as a community put too much stock in what unicorns can do? Several times in the show, Twilight didn't immediately use magic when it would have helped.
For example, when she escaped the hydra, she didn't just teleport over to her friends on the other side. (This contributes to my theory that magic can't work if you're scared.)
Please feel free to post any thoughts in the comments and thanks for reading!
I think magic stops working when it creates dramatic tension
231596
Sad but true, I'm afraid.
magic reserve depletion.
just like the magic user in many RPG, the mage has a finite ammount of energy to use at any given moment. This reduces the ammount of spellcasting abilities one has.
while the reserves can be refilled through rest over time, without the aid of additional reserves, unicors are stuck with a fixed ammount of responses.
This makes casting a mental exersise that increases in difficulty with high pressure situations. for not only will they have to figure out the best response, focus on the spell, but also calculate whether the spell will leave them a vulnerable mess upon completion.
that's my opinion anyway.
I often see that in the show, they aren't always able to use magic to get out of situations.
In fact, Twilight - one of the most powerful of the unicorns - can not use it as a get out of jail free card.
Looking at the wedding episode, she could not teleport out, but could teleport to a place she could see, she could not fight Chrysalis' magic-
She's got her limits, and when we then consider that other unicorns are not as diverse or talented as her in magic, we can do almost anything we want to limit their use of magic as a... "Why didn't she just teleport out?" My headcanon, based on what I've seen, is that most ponies can't really do much outside their field of study or interest.
Even Trixie, with her cutiemark in magic(illusion or otherwise), can not teleport. So yeah, like Jack Fraust, it depletes, and has many limits.
Look at Twilight when she tries to conjure a cutiemark, she tires fast!
So while magic is powerful, it's not as impossible to stop, as many angry commenters seem to want it to be. I say, look to the show, you can see many ways to interrupt magic. I think in one episode Sweetie interrupts Rarity's magical grip by flicking her horn- but I can't remember.
231784
Thanks everyone for the feedback.
A lot of good points were made! I think I'll try to avoid the trope of "magic-sapping MacGuffin" in future stories as, you're right, it is overused.
231879
You make several good points. I probably was being too hard on the old "horn shackles."
Magic is concentration and skill based so a stressful situation would render it useless more or less.
Guess it doesn't come to mind, or maybe they are too preoccupied to remember to use it?
When you think about it magic is really unfair.
Its that thing that the dickish fat kid uses constantly along with his lava-proof shoes whenever you play pretend.
So naturally us "grown-ups" dump limitation after limitation on it to make it fair so as not to become the dickish fat kid.
So of course we whip out the horn shackles and make it so that unicorns can't use magic when alarmed otherwise they would just telekenitically open the lock or undo the ropes.
If magic were the be all and end all how would the irrate earth pony show the knowitall unicorn whose boss?
Other times the writer/director just pretends its not there.
For example.
In one episode I can't name right off the top of my head Twilight grabs Rainbow's tail with her magic to stop her speeding off.
In Return of Harmony part 2 (Discord gets beat episode.... Can't actually remember the name... I guessed.) she doesn't try to use magic to grab rainbow despite proving she can carry massive weights from afar... i.e. Ursa Minor.
After watching the fight between Greivous and Ki Adi in the original Clone Wars series I got in an argument as to why Ki Adi hadn't just squished Greivous with the force.
It's how almost no one EVER just side steps the rasengan in the Naruto Shippuden series.
In all honesty I think its only really the fans that try to apply rhyme or reason to magic and character behaviour around magic.
To the producers its just a fun little gimmik to fuck with.