Sight Beyond Sight: Ponies who know realities beyond Equestria
I was inspired by /u/lunaticsongxiv's lovely post on the magic system in her stories and some of my own plans for future stories that rely on ponies who have knowledge outside what they "should" have known based on their experience and information propagation in the story. Specifically, these thoughts are based on the Divination school (but, as the linked discussion shows, ultimately incompatible with it as written).
As a general note, ponies who do have this talent are exclusively in one of the following categories, though they may be mischaracterized by others.
No walls broke: convincing fakes of divination
It's very possible for ponies to appear to others to have insight into other realities through a combination of direct experience, study, and common sense (genre-savvy to ponies with subterranean sight). If you've lived through alternate timelines, then it's not magically-implanted knowledge (even if it required magic to obtain).
Ponies who convincingly fake divination
- Princess Celestia [long memory, much experience, wisdom]
- Twilight Sparkle [bookworm, direct experience with alternate timelines]
- Princess Luna [dreamwalker who can spy on ponies with these talents]
- Time Turner [time traveler]
- Most agents in Celestia's intelligence agencies
Non-pony analogues
- River Song (from Doctor Who) [time traveler in the opposite direction]
Wall 3.5: Lay of the Land
Often called "Elevated Divination" or the gift of Oversight, this talent lets ponies see the lay of the land and know things beyond what they should know. What separates this group from full-on fourth wall breakers is that the entirety of their extra knowledge is strictly in-universe.
Manifestations of this talent
- Knowledge of alternate timelines
- Precognition
- Knowledge of faraway events before the information propagates [quantum entanglement?]
Ponies with Oversight
- Zecora [her knowledge that her changeling timeline is the wrong one in the S5 finale is the clearest example of a pony who saw the lay of the land]
Ponies without Oversight
- Pinkie Pie [see the section of 4th wall breakers]
Non-pony characters who see the lay of the land
- Sans (from Undertale) [his knowledge of all the timelines he discusses in his boss fight, borderline full 4th wall break]
Wall 4: Awareness of author, audience, animator, or artist
These are ponies with subterranean divination who know the hidden architecture of the universe. Dangers of an unmanaged case of this talent include becoming a homeless street yeller or becoming catatonically apathetic. These ponies don't necessarily have an accurate or clear picture of these outside elements, nor do they need the ability to interact with the beyond: they only know that there is something outside the story.
Ponies who see the hidden architecture
- Pinkie Pie [her Pinkie Sense is powered by looking a few lines ahead in the script]
- Lyra [possible, unconfirmed]
Non-ponies with subterranean divination
- Flowey & Chara (from Undertale, again)
- Depending on your beliefs or lack thereof, some IRL religious prophets
Seriously, if you haven't already done so, go read her post. It looks like it could be edited into a universal descriptor of magic systems, in the way that super weight is a universal comparison of the power of characters across franchises, if the story-specific rules are moved into an addendum.
I can't do this now: I already have my circuits full from sketching out my own stories and making graphing programs to understand the time travel plot and check for plot holes and other information leaks. However, it would be cool to find whether a 16-dimensional vector or an order 2 tensor in 4-D [4x4 matrix] is the better generic descriptor of arbitrary magic.
Submitted May 21, 2020 at 01:51PM by PUBLIQclopAccountant
via reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/go3vu1/sight_beyond_sight_ponies_who_know_realities/?utm_source=ifttt
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