She’s so evil, I even wrote a song about her!

May 4, 2011

Consider the following:

  • Unicorns and pegasi are real
  • Griffons and sea serpents are real and speak the common language
  • Many animals that don't speak are clearly sentient and can understand language (Angel bunny, Winona the dog, Aloysius, Gummy… maybe)
  • Your monarch, the creator goddess of the world, is at least 1,000 years old
  • Magic is real, documented and studied (teleportation, telekinesis, transmutation of matter and dowsing for gems all function reliably)

Given all that, what if someone said her body twitches could predict the future? If she claimed to put a curse on you, would you believe her?

Would you believe? Or are you a lame-o? (art by Dawkz)

I'd like to consider myself rational enough to join Phil Plait fan club, but my mind boggled when Twilight Sparkle refused to believe that Zecora had put a curse on the ponies and that Pinkie Pie's predictions of the future weren't quackery. While she was validated on the former but conceded the latter, I was left wondering why someone who practices magic would disbelieve things that are essentially magic.

Pinkie Pie saves the day the only way she knows how... by partying! (art by John Joseco)

In Feeling Pinkie Keen, the pink partying pony Pinkie Pie protests the precision of her predictions. If her tail twitches, something's about to fall (typically from the sky). Floppy ears mean someone's going to get dirty. She also has "combos," multiple twitches in a specific order that result in a specific outcome. Normally these would be considered superstitions, like how breaking a mirror is supposed to cause seven years of bad luck. But Pinkie Pie's predictions are different: they're documented, immediate, local and anticipated. During the course of the episode every prediction she makes comes true.

Twilight dismisses them as coincidences and no match for her magic, which is performed by a conscious will and has a specific target. She's looking for a scientific reason this phenomenon happens before she believes it. This seems strange to me. If she doesn't believe that Pinkie Pie's twitches predict the future, why not try and disprove it? Conduct a blind experiment and analyze the results. The fact that Twilight plops a blinking colander on the twitching pony's head and waits for data suggests that she does believe Pinkie Pie and is looking for clues to whatever causes these predictions. She even follows Pinkius Piecus in its natural habitat and nearly gets killed as the successful predictions turn on her.

Considering Twilight's faith in the Mare in the Moon story - which her servant Spike and even her mentor Princess Celestia dismissed as fantasy - it's bizarre that she would claim to disbelieve in a phenomena that can form a testable hypothesis. At the end of the episode she throws in the towel and accepts the reality of Pinkie Pie's predictions without discovering the causal link between tail twitching and objects falling. This is treated as the defeat of Twilight's rationality, but it should have been the first step toward discovery. Pinkie Pie appears to be predicting the future, and if that can't be disproven, keep digging to find out why!

Bridle Gossip's excellent movie poster (art by Timon1771)

That answer never comes, but we get a second chance for science during Bridle Gossip, where Twilight tries to determine why the ponies have been afflicted by various ironic conditions. Rarity's hair is a mess, Twilight's horn is limp and spotted, Rainbow Dash can't fly straight, etcetera. These are supposedly curses applied by the "evil enchantress" Zecora, a zebra from the Everfree Forest.

Initially Twilight seeks a rational explanation: an illness or an allergy could be the cause of her floppy horn. None of her books contain a cure (or realistically, a description of her symptoms). She dismisses a book that Spike proffers because it contains the word "supernaturals" on the cover, which she associates with ghosts and zombies. Not with, say, stars helping a pony escape from the moon, or a half-snake / half-bird that turns people to stone. Twilight also fails to notice that Applebloom is unaffected, even though the little filly pursued Zecora the longest and was present when the curse could have been applied. It's not until late in the episode that she starts believing in the idea of Zecora using a curse.

Twilight's description of curses is very odd. She calls them artificial, smoke and mirrors designed to scare, essentially that they're magic tricks. Again Twilight contrasts it with her own magic, which she insists is real and natural. Why doesn't she accept the idea that Zecora used magic on her, and that calling magic a curse depends on your perspective? In Sonic Rainboom she cast an invisible spell on herself, Pinkie Pie and Applejack that allowed them to walk on clouds for three days. A pony who was afraid of heights might call that a curse.

Pinkie Pie sics the Recording Industry of Equestria on Zecora, the song-stealing zebra (art by 14-bis)

The true culprit were the blue Poison Joke flowers that touched every pony but Applebloom. Zecora shows Twilight a green book with the word "supernaturals" on the cover, the same one she dismissed earlier. It contains the cure for the ironic conditions, and Twilight learns not to judge a book by its cover (nor Zecora by her color). What she should learn is to read the full title of her materials. "Supernaturals" was just the first word. The subtitle was "natural remedies and cure-alls that are simply super." While it's normal to be skeptical of a book whose title is pure puffery, it should have been worth at least a cursory survey as none of her other resources contained an answer.

It's impossible to be a true skeptic when the line between "real" magic and "fake" magic is such a curvy one in Equestria. Maybe that's why the magic of friendship gets top billing.