Wow, I’ve missed a
lot of conversation.
Anyway, my two cents on all that’s been discussed:
Regarding the want-it-need-it spell, an impression I’ve been getting throughout the show’s run is that while mental magic is definitely seen as a bad thing, it doesn’t really seem to be treated with the degree of repulsion that we would expect it to. When Twilight performed the want-it-need-it spell itself, she mostly seemed to catch flak for stirring up trouble rather than for mind controlling half the town. Then there’s the infamous reforming spell from “Keep Calm and Flutter On”, as well as the issues people have been raising these past couple seasons regarding Starlight never really getting in trouble for her tendency to solve her trouble through mind controlling people – like the time she turned Twilight’s friends into obedient mind-controlled thralls, and really didn’t get reprimanded to the level that that sort of violation should have warranted. If I remember correctly, she was primarily scolded for having missed the point of the friendship lessons.
I highly doubt that that was the writers’ intention, but the picture I get is that of a society that is a lot more comfortable with tinkering around in people’s minds than ours likely would be given the same abilities. The ponies still seem to frown on it in general, but seem to consider it a secondary issue when it happens, and seem willing to put this discomfort aside in causes that I feel we wouldn’t be willing to do so for.
@Background Pony #E8C7
Honestly? I could see that as the worst one for drawbacks. I mean, not to draw from other mediums, but you think about Lord Voldemort’s desire to live forever and what it cost him to do that, and then imagine a scenario in Equestria where you so love yourself that you would twist that love into sustaining your life even after death, and… that just seems like asking for the worst of all fates. Even if you don’t mess it up. The words “grim mockery” come to mind if you fail, and all the unending torment that goes along with sustaining yourself because yourself is the only thing you ever loved.
To spin a more positive tangent off of this general idea, I wonder if Celestia’s and Luna’s immortality doesn’t work as an inverse of this, at least partially, so that they’re sustained by a giving, selfless love rather than by a selfish love like these theoretical undead. Instead of enduring due to a narcissistic, obsessive love for themselves, they genuinely love and care for their nation and their people so much that this is at least partly what’s been sustaining them all this time. I’m sure there’s more to their immortality, but I do like this idea.
On a related note, I can’t help but think that being brought back in the best way is a pretty rare circumstance, considering that it requires love not used selfishly or out of a refusal to let nature have its way. I’d like to think it would also be the one closest to actual life, whatever that would signify.
So basically something like this. Undeath is pretty much immortality done wrong.
![Thread Starter - [NO SPOILER, LEAK-FREE] Season 8 Discussion and Speculation: Discovery Family airings](https://derpicdn.net/badges/2017/7/2/0bd59d4eff9c3aeaad.svg "Thread Starter - [NO SPOILER, LEAK-FREE] Season 8 Discussion and Speculation: Discovery Family airings"){kind=small}
