I have always found strange how Twilight's talent appears to be something as wide and all-encompassing as 'Magic'. Everypony else seems to have something much more specific, why would not she?

I my mind, her actual talent is mimicking magic. She can replicate any spell she can see being used once, but this does not give her insight into how it works; that, she has to reverse-engineer.

What are your ideas?

I would say Twilight's special talent is as, essentially, a living Archive for magic.

the OP said it themselves, she can replicate any spell and, given time, understand it.

however, there are the obvious limitations of common understanding.

7800217
Hmm, I actually think its the other way around. Like, when trixie used the alicorn amulet, she used an age spell. Twilight tried to replicate it, but was unsuccessful, because it was so advanced. “how can trixie know such advanced magic?”

she needs insight into how it works first, so she can reverse-engineer it.

And when she copied rarities gem-finding spell, she asked rarity to tell her how she did it “a while back”

People think, she can copy spells by only seeing them once, because she used the dark magic at the start of season 3, after seeing celestia do it, but that might have been a spell she knew before, she just learned a new application, as it isnt really that complex a spell: The spell itself LOOKS like its some advanced crystal magic. However most of the effects are caused by the crystals of the crystal empire: “if the empire is filled with hope and love, those things are reflected across all of equestria, but if hatred and fear take hold...” The crystals respond in different ways when exposed to strong positive or negative emotion, all the spell does is generate that emotion, which is something twilight already did in season 2 with the want it need it. Celestia just showed her, what the crystals can do, and twilight used that to solve the crystal castle puzzles.

7800217
I disagree. I think magic, as a broad concept, is her talent. However, since her talent is magic in general, she's not as good as someone who's talent is specific. For example, Shining Armor specializes in shield magic and has used that to shield an entire city while the biggest shield Twilight has ever cast was only enough to cover the library. Likewise, we've seen Rarity manipulating several dozen objects at once (during the 'Way of the Dress' song), while Twilight struggled with a dozen. Basically, she's a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none.

7800217
Yeah basically what 7800254 said.

Although I think her special talent is more along the lines of harmonizing things to work together.

So she taps into magic and balances amplifies and focuses it to her benefit.

This also applies to her book knowledge. She applies it to make things fit together as it were. Like when she organized winter wrap up.

Or solved the issue of Nightmare Moon, her destiny and the source of her cutie mark.

Perhaps her special talent is Friendship Magic specifically. She managed to fix star swirls spell and her Cuti Mark was stamped onto the tree of Harmony. Her wide array of spells and ability to learn them so quicky might just be due to pure raw power and intellect rather than her mark.

I am going to submit my first story with a badass Twilight Sparkle in a week or so. It is called Sunsets Shattering. How do I put stories into this folder?

7800270 Go to the story. On the top right there is a small arrow pointing down. The first option is Add to Group.

7800226 I kind of like that. It is similar to my interpretation, but makes her a 'chosen' of sorts.

7800247 See, that depends on what you think that spell was. You trink it was crystal magic. I think Sombra's magic was the creation and control of fear. And I surrely hope she did not know that beforehand!

7800254 That would mean her talent is...being average :/

To clarify, to me the Cutie Mark is there just to point at something the character was already good at. The skill or talent was already there, all the mark does is bring attention to it.

7800217
Personally, in my fics I explained Twilight's cutiemark as ability to analyse magic. In someone else this would lead to someone as lame as Sunburst, having a lot of knowledge about magical lore and very few actual spells. In Twilight's case though said cutiemark is combined with something few ponies tend to have in the first place, which is actual, genuine talent with magic of once-in-a-generation kind and leftovers of messy reincarnation after being very powerful archmage. These three things together allow her to figure out what magic does, drag to the light barely remembered analogue of spell she just saw and then filling in the blanks on the fly to replicate whatever it is that she saw. Most of the time,when it overlaps with her experience it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

7800369
Absolutely not. Average is just mediocrity. It's more like this; say skills are measured on a 1-100 scale. Most ponies have an average of 20 in most categories, and have 80-100 in a single skill, making 30-40 average. Twilight, however has 50-60 in every category. She's above average, but not exceptional in any single category.

TL;DR, she better than the majority in any given category, but not as good as a specialist.

7800371 I think it's more that a cutie mark focuses a pony's magic to make them better at something they're already good at.

7800254
technically rarity's telekinetic ability has nothing to do with her tallent, its pure practice, shes just so used to doing so much multitasking that it comes naturally to her now, her actual talent remember is gem finding gems, which she then uses to make her passion, dress makeing all the more fabulous.

7800371
sadly starlight glimers actions prove that notion wrong, a cutie mark is the physical representation of a ponies tallents, weather having it amplifies those tallents or not is hard to say, but it is tied to them and removing, or swaping that mark with someone elses, can drasticly alter that ponies personality and abilities

7800369
actually my point was that it wasnt crystal magic. It probably was some kind of emotion-projection spell, that makes the target feel whatever emotion twilight wants. The spell doesnt need to create hate specifically, it can be any emotion of her choosing. And we know she was able to do that before season 3, as she cast the wantitneedit in season 2, which is a spell, that makes people feel love. except the wantitneedit isnt cast directly on the person, it is cast on the object, from which it affects anyone looking at it, also the emotion is tied to the target object, instead of generally being in love. so the wantitneedit is technically more complex than the hate-spell.
So far weve seen Twilight create 3 types of emotion: Love, Hate and Hope(when she opened sombras nightmare door)

Her talent is simply magic which is even more obvious with her apotheosis into an alicorn (of magic specifically). To put it in rpg terms her magic governing stat is perhaps not the highest (while a unicorn) but it is well into being so far beyond everyone else that it almost makes no difference (only losing to Celestia, Luna, and possibly Sombra). On the other hand, I do concede that she has some disadvantages due to her non-specificity with regards to magic. Starlight Glimmer clearly has a talent for taking multiple spells and cobbling together new stronger magic which is not something we ever see Twilight do. On the other hand I do believe once seen (after becoming an alicorn) or perhaps explained to (as a unicorn) Twilight could replicate anything she makes.

7800513
Not true. Rarity's special talent isn't finding gems, it's bringing the beauty out of everything. Her gem finding ability is merely a result of that. Remember, she didn't get her cutie mark when she found the boulder full of gems, she got it after she returned home, made the costumes, and wowed the audience with their beauty.

On top of gem finding, her talent requires finesse, multitasking, and fine attention to detail. Her eye for detail is where her detective skills come from, just like her multitasking ability allows her to levitate many different objects.

7800517
That's assuming all her spell did was remove the cutie mark, but it didn't. It replaced the cutie mark. If you watch, you'll notice the equal sign pulses every time a pony tries to express their talent. Pinkie started being Pinkie, but then the mark pulsed and she couldn't. That shows it didn't take her talent, it suppressed it.

7800517 Not necessarily. If the mark is the consecuence of the talent, then removing the talent could remove the mark. The floating cutie marks are simply the shape the talent takes when torn away from its owner. It has to look like something. It is still the physical representation of the talent, but more literally.

7800578 I believe Starlight's impressive spellcasting is less about skill (Which she still has, no question), and more about having little to no mental restrains.

Seriously, she does not give a flying fuck about those around her!

7800615 I will be honest, the closer you strutiny the whole affair with Starlight, the more disturbing it gets.

7800775
I often describe Starlight not as a reformed villain, but as a villain that uses her villainy for good.

Everyone talks about magic skill when considering what Twilight's cutie mark is supposed to represent, but I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Typically, when a pony gets their cutie mark, it's preceded by a joyous revelation of what one wants out of life; Twilight sort of didn't get that?

She was ecstatic when she became Celestia's personal protege, but the moments leading up to that? Her magic going haywire as she writhes in pain, casting random spells causing chaos and legitimately being a threat to the wellbeing of those in the room with her - that doesn't sound fun per see, nor would it probably tell a child "this horrifying moment that caused me pain and endangered others is what I should do in life!"

The only thing I can think of that would reasonably give Twilight her cutie mark was that first Sonic Rainboom that startled her; not because it startled her magic into overdrive, but because of what it represented and the happiness it would grant her far in the future. Because in that moment, 5 other fillies got their cutie mark that same day and a dragon was hatched.

Twilight's cutie mark is comprised of seven stars; a large purple one as the centerpiece, a white one behind it, and five other white stars scattered around it - Twilight at the center, Spike always backing her up, and those nutty girls she's going to meet in Ponyville. Fluttershy even said it herself when the girls learned that Rainbow caused all of them to get their cutie marks, "all of us had a special connection before we even met!"

The Element of Magic is admittedly the odd one out of the Elements of Harmony when the rest are different virtues one can have and express..... until you remember the title of the show and the one constant moral this show always espouses - "Friendship is Magic."

If my point isn't obvious, I think Twilight's cutie mark is supposed to represent harmony and friendship. Yeah, a bit of a lame answer, I know, but it fits. Fate brought together the Mane 6 to form the Elements of Harmony, the twilight bridged the day and night, Love and Friendship forms a duo like the Sun and the Moon - destiny shenanigans basically that only ever needed a spark to set things off. Twilight even made a speech about the spark of friendship towards NMM.

I think that, while Twilight got her cutie mark as a kid, its full potential hadn't been realized yet, looking at all the friendship adventures she and her friends get into in the future. She may be a wiz at magic but I'm not too sure it really brought her a fulfilling type of happiness while she was in Canterlot. The grumpy, book-munching, snippy, anti-social intellectual just needed some friends to really round her out into the dorky, smarty, snarky, yet oh-so-eager-to-please-and-help goof she is today.

7800775
On that you will get no disagreement on me. She obviously doesn't care about anyone else.