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Unicorns are more prone to headaches than the other races.

@GargantuanBass  
Or too much.

@Princess♠Molestia  
>winking  
>characters are horses
 
someone didn’t put much thought into this

@GargantuanBass  
In G1, Teleportation was called winking out.

@PonyPon  
huh never heard that before

@GargantuanBass  
Yes.

@Sjogre  
uhh
 
is winking some slang for teleportation I don’t know about

@Sjogre  
Lauren Faust mentioned it in an interview sometime after leaving the show, and she elaborated a bit on it in one of those posts on that image board website she did the Q&A thing on.
 
@Yetanotherbrony
 
See my post about ratings, adventure, magic girls and all that jazz.

@Trickquestion  

 
Keep in mind this is still My Little Pony. Hasbro isn’t going to go near Twilight, or any unicorn or alicorn, actually using dangerous/lethal spells.

@GargantuanBass  
We’ve seen five unicorns capable of winking. Two of them were the Royal Sisters, one was using an outside power boost, and the other two were Celestia’s personal students. And in that group, only one of them was even implied to be able to teleport more than a few hundred yards.
 
For whatever reason, any usage of winking is implied to be top-level magic. Kinda ironic, given that it used to be the racial ability.

Successful teleportation isn’t related to how powerful a unicorn’s magic is, but rather their experience.
 
With a little practice, any unicorn can teleport, but attempting too much right off the bat will cause harm. For example, teleporting an inch or two would be no problem, but teleporting a mile or so would cause severe burns or something to that effect.

@Trickquestion  
Do you have any references for that? Because the closest thing that I’ve heard is that they did less adventure episodes because they took more effort to write and they were in a hurry.
 
How would spreading the fight against Nightmare Moon across the entire season work, anyway? Until they beat her, the world would be covered in darkness, which would hinder slice of life activities.
 
I mean, I’d like to know what Nightmare was planning on with her eternal night, but it’s not the kind of thing that you just push into the background.

@Sjogre  
Yes, but way more in favor of the adventure then the slice of life. For example, the battle against Nightmare Moon was supposed to last all of season 1, with the six traversing the world of eternal night and spending entire episodes earning the elements. That’s why Luna didn’t show up in any season 1 episodes, because they didn’t plan to actually create a characterization for her until season 2.

@Trickquestion  
… So, turning up the strength on a horn beam, or impaling people with crystals, or throwing them off of a building with levitation, none of those things can kill people?
 
Not to mention the mind whammy that he used. Why would he need to kill them when he could control them?
 
Lauren’s original idea of an fantasy themed magical girl adventure was canned in favor of slice of life.
 
Didn’t Lauren herself say that it was always supposed to be a combination of adventure and slice of life, like it is now?

Fluttershy makes most of her living money by masterminding heists and taking part of the cut. Nopony ever suspects her because she is very, very careful never to let her associates see her face, and everytime the pony FBI gets close their profilers dismiss her out of hand.

@Sjogre  
I guess we can agree to disagree on the whole horn beam thing.
 
As for Sombra, he has to have some kind of magic capable of ending life, or else all the crystal ponies would have just dogpiled him at some point. I could buy the crystal control thing as his sole power if he had soldiers or minions to fight people for him, but the Crystal Empire was a one stallion show. He had to have some kind of magic capable of killing his enemies, or he wouldn’t have any power in the first.
 
As for Magic Duel, I guess it’s another example of the limits the show is under. It is established that the amulet is has turned Trixie into a total psychopath, seeing as she at one point smashes Applejack into the ground multiple times, with enough force to have shattered bones if cartoon physics into place. The writers created a situation where the amount of violence they can show is radically inappropriate for the situation, but went ahead and did it anyway.
 
Don’t get me wrong, I really do like this show (trust me, I wouldn’t be endlessly bitching if I didn’t) but they really threw away a ton of it’s potential when Lauren’s original idea of an fantasy themed magical girl adventure was canned in favor of slice of life.

@Trickquestion  
Teleportation is not exclusively a combat power.  
But it retains combat applications, along with the forcefield. Admittedly, we don’t know how Sombra got past the forcefield when Shining Armor used it, so we don’t know just how useful it would be.
 
We saw Twilight change the properties of the blast on the fly, and I see no reason to believe that they are in any way related to levitation. Most obviously, levitation generates the effect around the object, rather than being connected to the horn, and there’s an easier way to use levitation as a weapon. Also, the first form of the bolt that she used was reflected by a crystal, something that wouldn’t make sense for kinetic force, and even less so with levitation.
 
Why would be kinetic force make it less potent as a weapon? Lead bullets, for reference, use kinetic force.
 
By the same token, we haven’t seen Sombra use even a horn beam. What makes you think that he has weapons beyond his crystal control? If you’re going to bring up his traps, you might as well allow Twilight her utility magic, some of which can be used in a fight. The only pony that we’ve seen use something other than a horn beam was Luna/Nightmare Moon, and she’s more powerful, and likely more experienced, than Sombra.
 
Technically, we also saw Trixie use lightning from a cloud, but she had to summon the cloud first.
 
Trixie threw that cart at some bystanders, not Twilight. Trixie did throw some pies at Twilight, but that was more embarrassing than physically dangerous. The terms of the duel also show that it was non-lethal, so they weren’t trying to injure each other, although embarrassment was okay.

@Sjogre  
Teleportation is not exclusively a combat power.
 
As for those magic blasts, as I said above, they’re kinetic bursts instead of some kind of energy. In fact, it’s probably improvised telekinesis. Her telekinesis spell seems to work by projecting kinetic energy into the environment, kinda like how a green lantern ring works. At the wedding, she focused it into a solid beam, as opposed to wrapping it around objects to move them around. So, I suppose it does count as combat magic, but in a “shovels into swords” kind of way.
 
I was talking about stuff like fireball, lightning bolt, acid arrow, etc. My apologies for being unclear.
 
As for the duel, Trixie threw a cart at Twilight, clearly intending to crush her with it.

@Trickquestion  
I… What? She’s used combat magic. She’s actually the only mane to use magic in a fight. Aside from using magic blasts and levitation, we’ve seen her use winking and Shining’s forcefield to intercept attacks. Twilight’s magic blasts were capable of smashing crystals to bits. And even if she restricted them to non-lethal levels, that doesn’t mean that he’d be able to get back up any time soon.
 
Neither Trixie nor Twilight used a direct attack in the duel. From what we saw, the point was the use the more impressive magic, not actually injure the other.

@PonyPon  
Good catch, I totally overlooked that one. Still, that was a non-lethal, physical attack, not even an energy beam kind of thing, and you’d have to shoot someone off a cliff for it to be lethal.

@Trickquestion  
Well, she does have a decent blaster.
 
Canterlot Wedding.
 
But yeah, she would have been screwed if she had to face him in battle.

@Sjogre  
Twilight is not a fighter though. “Magic Duel” pretty much confirmed she knows no spells designed for battle, seeing as all her attacks against Trixie stack up as mere pranks compared to what even a 1st level D&D mage can do. The closest she’s come to actually fighting someone through magic is using telekinesis to smack Spike around. So, vastly powerful, yes, but dangerous? Sombra was a full fledged dark lord. He would have turned her into dust.
 
Goddamn did that episode make Celestia an irresponsible asshole.

@Trickquestion  
We know that Sombra possessed the Heart, and we know what the visual effect for the Elements of Harmony looks like. Even in the storybook, the rainbow effect was kept, so they weren’t being used against him. Which would also fit with how Celestia didn’t think he was worth unpacking them when he reappeared.
 
Keep in mind, Twilight is vastly powerful and dangerous, but still less powerful than Princess Celestia. Strong doesn’t mean being able to take on the world in a fist fight. Given the traps in his castle, I’d expect that his mind was what made him dangerous. Unfortunately, his fog form didn’t seem capable of reason…
 
@PonyPon  
Enh. We probably only saw the tail end of the fight. He tried, but they were just more powerful than him.

@Sjogre  
Actually, we don’t know if they used any of those things. The visual and audio exposition given by Celestia is incredibly vague. Sombra is supposed to be powerful and dangerous, but I can see how you remain unconvinced seeing as his only episode was marked by some seriously shitty storytelling. I admit, my idea of Sombra is almost completely Headcanon.

@Sjogre  
Why didn’t he fight back?
 
That’s the biggest mystery for me. From what we saw, they just showed up and zip, zap, zort! He’s gone.