It's so nice that if you combine the words Alicorn + Twilight you get "let's make everyone else immortal, too" independetly of the universe in question.
I responded on fimfiction here, but I'll copy it here:
First question: do you want Celestia to have good points, or not?
Celestia should probably argue that ponies are adapted to the cycle of death and rebirth; the trouble with immortality for everyone is that now ponies still have the drives to procreate, conquer, and replace their elders. Luna was Celestia's first student that she elevated to immortality; things were fine for a hundred years, and then Luna grew tired of being perpetually number 2 and rebelled. Twilight was elevated only because she understands social dynamics enough to be okay with being perpetually second-tier and because she genuinely likes Celestia much more than Luna did. If Twilight spreads immortality to everyone, the result won't be a complete reduction in deaths, but a transfer of deaths from age-related disease to murders, and Celestia is pretty sure that will lead to less harmony and happiness.
(Note: Faust has commented that she always planned for Twilight to be Celestia's successor. If Celestia is immortal, she hardly needs a successor, but that's how deeply ingrained that pattern is in the human psyche.)
She can also call on the destructive impact of fam...
Argument: Harder to keep the populace in line, if everyone has more power.
I think you're missing the existential risk inherent in Alicorns or how precariously Equestria is balanced on the knife edge of extinction. Here's a short list of possible extinction events: Nightmare Moon, Parasprites (Twilight enhanced), Discord, King Sombra, and god-knows-what from Star-Swirl the Bearded's library. 'Mere' civilization ending events are Smarty Pants Doll (enchanted), Parasprites (unmodified), Windegos, Changelings, and the duplicating mirror. This is a world with Cuban Missile Crisis going on every other month and a rogue AI power-equivelent popping up every year . Imagine if Twilight had accidentally made parasprites carnivorous in addition to eating non-edibles? Game over, for everyone, forever. It's not a world made safer by having more Alicorns. God-tier magic seems to override other Got-tier magic; in all God-tier confrontations, victory always goes to the initiator of each round of any fight. TLDR; offense > defense.
Also, you need to look at what Celestia herself has to gain. Right now she's the God Empress of ponies. The only people capable of challenging her are her...
all comprised of ponies Celestia trusted sufficiently
You're a god. You've got the ability to make other gods. You've got literally a million years to find people trustworthy enough. A single failure is a possible extinction event, and that nearly happened once already. How high do you set the bar for 'trust sufficiently'?
She's already working on the problem (and communicating with other alicorns about it, as seen at the end of S3Ep2). She's increased the number by two within the last couple decades or so (Twilight, and I assume Cadance is young). Is the problem just that she's going too slowly and cautiously?
(I do want to note I'm not trying to be hostile in any way. I just find this sphere of thought very intriguing.)
I don't think this is the right place for fiction advice, but I'm upvoting anyway because your question is interesting independently of the fiction. That said..
On the one hand, you shouldn't expect to find a very convincing argument for deathism. Given that it's the status quo, if there were good arguments for it you would probably be a deathist!
On the other hand, there are arguments specifically against being turned into an alicorn which would also apply to most realistic real-world ways to prevent death.
Specifically, you get turned into an alicorn, which is not the same race you've been the rest of your life. If you're a pegasus, you gain an additional sense for magic and probably lose a bit of maneuverability, if you're a unicorn you gain wings, and I hardly need to explain why the poor earth ponies might object.
That, alone, is probably enough for many people to postpone the process for a while.
Other possible arguments...
It would reduce diversity. Well, it would, though that seems rather selfish.
Alicorns are scarily powerful, being able to move celestial objects around and all. Some analogies to nanotech-powered antiagatics here... Equestria might end up destroyed in short o
- Nothing in canon suggests that there's any sort of religion in Equestria. Even in fanfics I've read, I've only read one fanfic where someone made up an afterlife that some ponies believed in, and in many more that I've read, Celestia's name is actually used in place of God in various sentences, like "Oh for Celestia's sake!" Thus, it's unlikely they'd believe in an afterlife: Both in canon and the majority of fanon, the closest thing to a God appears to be Celestia herself.
I think this gives you useful material to work with. Just because imm...
I’m writing a similar fic*. My solution to this problem: if the debate between mortality and immortality doesn’t provide a deep enough conflict, then use something else. (In Mortal, the core conflict is that Twilight is forced to choose between Celestia and Rainbow Dash.) Less centrally, I set my story in a world in which immortality is irreversible, and made it clear that Celestia’s first attempt at spreading immortality led to that “eternal night” thing.
Other arguments I used for Celestia:
Argument: If they don’t die, older generations will accumulate pow...
For what it's worth, I'm now taking pro-alicornism arguments, having strengthened the anti-alicornism side significantly. Anti-alicornism arguments are still acceptable.
If the argument is one-sided because one side is obviously right, you could change the facts. Invent some downside to alicorns.
For example, maybe being an alicorn gives you access to offensive magic much stronger than the defensive magic it gives you so that any alicorn has the power to kill everyone, even if everyone is an alicorn. Maybe any alicorn has the power to bring the sun crashing down on Equestria? (I've always imagined the Equestrian sun as being much smaller than the real sun, but still big enough to cause terrible, terrible damage).
But that mi...
This might've been mentioned but Celestia can argue that she is in some way different enough that immortality doesn't take a toll on her but that it would on most ponies even if they become alicorns. I don't know much about mlp but this seems like an easy way to let Celestia use arguments like depression and boredom etc. opposing immortality for anypony.
I admit to only having watched scattered episodes and the pilot, but assuming that the alicorn transformation can only be granted to ponies one could argue upraising the entire population would have a negative effect on the other sapient species such as Gryphons. If she held that position she could even support transponyism inherently, but oppose immediate application until a parallel can be developed for other sapients.
Some possibilities:
You could think of some in-universe arguments. Along the same lines as Dumbledore's talk to Harry: what if souls really do exist? In the MLP world, what if alicorns have some downside that is not yet known to Twilight? Maybe they are in constant agony after two years. Maybe turning someone into an alicorn requires a hidden sacrifice of the soul of your friends? Maybe there is a proven tendency for new (attempted) alicorns to go insane if they are not sufficiently ready for it, and for them to turn into monsters. Chrysalis, Sombra, Luna and even Discord could be examples.
Argument: Harder to keep the populace in line, if everyone has more power.
Taking what Baughn has said further, you could postulate that the normal 'pony's life is about ' is inverted for alicorns: Concepts are .."embodiments" of alicorns. By which I mean that, .. Applejack has a life which is about apples, whereas the moon and stars' existence and state is about Luna. This would imply that every alicorn needs phenomenal self-control and forebearance to avoid disturbing the structure of everyday reality. (and also perhaps that the sun, stars a...
EDIT: I am now taking arguments for alicornism. Alicornism being the placeholder term I've given to the stance that all ponies should be alicorns. Please PM me or post here if you have a good one, or an argument against one of anti-alicornism's strongest points: Overpopulation/over-use of resources, magical abuse/existential risk, or upheaval of the respect ponies have for their rulers due to their alicorn status. I would prefer general arguments for alicornism over counter-arguments if possible. Deathist / anti-alicornist arguments are still fine to post here.
Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this is worthy of a discussion post, but I figured, given the amount of people on LW who like My Little Pony, it would have at least as many potentially interested people as a regional meet-up thread would, so I figured I'd give it a shot. If this is too trivial or frivolous for LW, feel free to tell me and/or downvote, and I'll refrain from such threads in future. A place where I could go to find some help instead of the Discussion section would also be greatly appreciated in such a case.
So I had an idea for a one-shot or small novella, depending on how the plot developed, about an argument between Twilight and Celestia. Twilight finds out she's immortal now that she's an alicorn, and Twilight then decides that, given the standard anti-death concepts that immortality is good, death is bad, and so on, they should turn everyone who wants to be an alicorn into one.
The problem is, I'm having a very difficult time coming up with actual arguments for Celestia.
- Celestia herself is immortal, she's lived for well over a thousand years, and she isn't horrifically depressed, so clearly, immortal life is worth living and there's enough stuff to do with an extended lifespan.
- For the purposes of this fic, it's possible to turn anypony into an alicorn. I'm likely going to go with the idea that the spell can only be used a few times a year, but that's still enough to turn anyone who wants it into an alicorn within a couple of decades via exponentiation: The first targets can all be gifted unicorns who can be easily trained to use the magic.
- In most of the "Immortality sucks" fics I've read, the only real argument that immortality sucks is that you have to watch everyone else grow up and die. If a large majority of the population were turned alicorn, this wouldn't be a problem anymore.
- Nothing in canon suggests that there's any sort of religion in Equestria. Even in fanfics I've read, I've only read one fanfic where someone made up an afterlife that some ponies believed in, and in many more that I've read, Celestia's name is actually used in place of God in various sentences, like "Oh for Celestia's sake!" Thus, it's unlikely they'd believe in an afterlife: Both in canon and the majority of fanon, the closest thing to a God appears to be Celestia herself.
I've come up with arguments for Celestia by roleplaying the argument out by myself, but I haven't come up with anything that Twilight can't just shoot down, and I'd prefer if the argument wasn't just Celestia getting steamrolled, and I'd like to do this by strengthening Celestia's side, not weakening Twilight's.
Is the argument for deathism really that weak? I've read over the Harry vs. Dumbledore deathism argument in HPMOR several times looking for ideas, and IIRC Eliezer actually claimed he steel-manned Dumbledore's position, but I don't find anything Dumbledore says convincing in the slightest, and ended that chapter feeling that Harry was the clear winner in that debate, and that's with Dumbledore having access to arguments that Celestia doesn't, given that in the Potterverse, nobody actually knows what it's like to be immortal, and Dumbledore believes in an afterlife.
Some other arguments I've come up with for Celestia:
Argument: We can't just have a massive ruling class.
Response: There's no need for alicorns to be royalty. "Princess = Alicorn, Alicorn = Princess" is only something that law and tradition dictate: They can be changed. After all, Blueblood is a prince and not an alicorn, and it's certainly possible for an alicorn to NOT be royalty, if the princesses wanted.
Argument: Harder to keep the populace in line, if everyone has more power.
Response: Celestia's not exactly going around fighting criminals herself with her alicorn powers, so Celestia being much more powerful than others isn't necessary to keep the peace. If anything, an alicornified populace is MORE likely to be able to govern itself: Atm, a pegasus criminal can only be pursued effectively by about one-third of police officers, for example.
Argument: Overpopulation.
Response: One response to this is the idea that, starting a year or so from a royal edict, ponies who wish to be changed into alicorns aren't permitted to give birth more than once or twice. A broader response is that "overpopulation" isn't actually a reason to oppose alicornification, it's just a problem that has to be solved in order to do it. Saying "There'd be overpopulation" and then forgetting about the entire idea would be like Twilight saying that they didn't know how she was supposed to save the Crystal Empire from being banished again when she got given the task, and responding to this by saying "Oh well, guess that's it, we may as well pack up and go home." rather than trying to actually solve the problem. That said, this is the only truly legitimate argument I've come up with, an argument that requires real thought to fully defeat, rather than an argument that has an easy response leap to my mind.
Argument: Mortals wouldn't understand the consequence of their decision.
Response: Again, several arguments for this. Firstly, there's no reason to believe the alicorn transformation is irreversible, even if it's not currently known how to transform it back. Secondly, Celestia can already predict the consequences, and since she thinks HER life is worth living, clearly there's a solid chance that other ponies will have their lives worth living as well.
So, the questions to ask:
Are there good arguments for Celestia I haven't thought of?
Are the arguments I've already posited sufficient to not straw-man the lifeism position, and to allow for a reasonable argument?
EDIT: I am now taking arguments for alicornism. Alicornism being the placeholder term I've given to the stance that all ponies should be alicorns. Please PM me or post here if you have a good one, or an argument against one of anti-alicornism's strongest points: Overpopulation/over-use of resources, magical abuse/existential risk, or upheaval of the respect ponies have for their rulers due to their alicorn status. I would prefer general arguments for alicornism over counter-arguments if possible. Deathist / anti-alicornist arguments are still fine to post here.