cross the streams!

@Background Pony #7AAB  
More like Celestia never gaining ground using those ineffective laser beams again.

Meanwhile, yaks are just chilling in the middle of the storm.

@Amm  
My examples were of them not being effective. You saying that they were examples of the contrary confused me.

@Amm  
Actually i didn’t say that is what they definitely are, what i did say is that it’s a logical explanation/possibility that is in line with what we know about everything.

@SuperDEF  
To be fair he then immediately descended into an argument based on a headcanon. “We don’t know how their sun and moon work” was correct, then they’re small islands and the planet is a large island and other such tosh that’s not evidenced anywhere. What we do know is that a band of unicorns were magically neutering themselves doing what Celestia/Luna did by themselves, but that doesn’t scale to them being god on its own.

@moonlightaveger  
“What examples?”  
“I guess you expected that they’d defeat the advance of the weather?”  
I mean, there’s no real point in replying if you didn’t actually read my comment to begin with.

@Kibate  

 
What’s this? Someone using actual facts instead of blunt fanons to justified their reasonings about a character?
 
Your my new best friend.

@moonlightaveger  
Actually Dash managed to effectively clear the large chunk of the sky before succumbing to cold - and that’s when the storm was already at its strongest! I don’t argue here that Princesses not did their best to fight off the blizzard themselves - my point is just that they overlooked extremely useful asset in their disposal. Dash would be much more useful as additional weather fighter than she was as a negotiator.

@Vaidelot  
Okay. That’s it in this conversation for me. I lost my ability to take it seriously. Dash lasted seconds, while the two sisters were there for half the two parter. You’re ignoring dialogue about the situation and making headcanon about the situation. Compared to all the other times Celestia (mainly her) had to be taken out of the plot, this is the best effort from the show to have them participate and still be useful in their own way. I’ll take it over the alternative any day.

@moonlightaveger  
Actually Dash fought the weather pretty good on her own when the princesses were already down. Not getting her along with them was IMHO their biggest mistake in the premier. Simple anti-freezing spell on her wings - and the trio of them could stove off the blizzard for MUCH longer: pretty sure couple of Rainbooms would do even better than magic beams in that situation!

@Amm  
What examples? Because I have a hard time seeing Celestia being effective in any of them.
 
I’m having a hard time understanding your point. They’re keeping the winter at bay. Sure they’re losing, but they’re still taking part in the fight and in the end they take part in the resolution of the whole situation. I guess you expected that they’d defeat the advance of the weather? Because in the beginning it shows that their magic is being effective, latter the weather got stronger, but Rainbow couldn’t stand seconds of it, while they kept at it. I’ll take it over them being defeat in the first seconds and forgotten for the duration of the episode any day.

@kepernyos  
As i said, the moon/sun are magical, they don’t grant light like the real world does. Case in point, the moon cast DARKNESS(as shown when they were side by side in the season 4 premiere). Also we don’t know how big the world is, heck, from canterlot to ponyvile it is possible to cross that distance by flight alone in a short time. Thus if you roughly look at the distance to the “edge” of the map, it isn’t actually much bigger than an island, at least not the known places available to the map. We can’t guess on what is beyond that or if there is even anything beyond that.

@Kibate
 
The problem is that in this case, the size and curvature of the planet wouldn’t allow them to illuminate half of it. This could only work if the world itself was not bigger than a large island, which is demonstratibly false.

@kepernyos  
(okay, then i will ignore for now what you said before to “me”)
 
as for the sun/moon and size of small islands. AGAIN, not our world, not our universe. If the sun/moon is only a few km/miles away, they would be completely visible at the size of an island. They are not millions of kilometer/miles away.

@Kibate
 
No, because that’s physically impossible.  
If the sun and the moon were “the size of a small island”, they simply wouldn’t be visible.
 
(Now that I look back, you were not the person I wanted to reply to)

@kepernyos  
so you agree with what i say? Okay

@Kibate
 
It’s not about power levels; it’s about characters and writing.
 
Celestia has lost against Chrysalis, the vines, Tirek, and now this storm. (not to mention the comics) Also, she pratically disappeared from slice of life episodes. All she does now is provide some exposition on the villain of the day, then fail to stop it. I’m sick of this.

@untraceablelarry  
And this is where i have to disagree  
“The character’s who were built up to be gods”  
They were NEVER even once refereed to as gods or attributed feats that only a “God” could do, this is all headcanon by the fanbase because of one or two pun lines of “Oh sweet celestia”, which could easily be attributed to the status of kings/queens, which celestia certainly is.  
Now she was indeed be called very powerful, much more than any unicorn: But that’s it. As it is show constantly by twilight, the element of magic, a regular Unicorn can do shit. If it were an rpg, all regular Unicorns are like level 5, while an alicorn is level 15, and the show never claimed otherwise.
 
People say “but they literally raise the moon/sun” and i say “so what?”. Remember, the sun/moon are completely different than the ones in the real world, they are small landscapes with magic inside them to make it light/dark, the sun is not like with us a million km diameter or the moon over 3000km. They are probably at best the size of a small island. You are powerful to move them on your own? Sure. Gods? Not even close.

@moonlightaveger  
In your examples they’re shown being effective while in this one they’re shown being ineffective while we’re told they’re effective. That’s the difference. Showing will always have priority over telling in a visual medium. If you remove their scenes from the episode there is no effective change.
 
It’s amusing that most of the supportive comments here compare them to other examples where people are being useful and effective, but still fail (ala the Alamo), which just supports the opposing point.

@Tiger beetle  
Well, they are, compared to how powerful the show has set them up to be, pretty useless; they slowed down the weather a bit. The character’s who were built up to be gods simply slowed the storm down a bit, and we’re assuming that they actually helped; nothing in the episode really indicated that they even had an effect.
 
Celestia has consistently seemed so much weaker than she was built up to be in every situation where she had been able to show strength of any kind (shout outs in particular to the plunder vines); if this were not the case, people probably wouldn’t be complaining here.
 
Also, that effect looks so terrible and ineffective, which is not helping at all.

@moonlightaveger  
That’s one of the things I liked about the second episode, and the blizzard didn’t knock them out until the end like the Plunder Seeds in the S4 Premiere.

Even the White Frost shall consume Equestria. It is the inevitable fate of all worlds, to fall before its relentless freeze.
 
They should have heeded Ithlinne.

They bought time for the other Pones to do what they needed to do for The Crystalling to happen.
 
It’s a bit reminiscent of a military group that stays at the front to defend against an enemy, even when they know they will be destroyed by the overwhelming force or numbers, to allow their compatriots time to escape or fall back.

Something is wrong with the world. Celestia and Luna were helping throughout the episode. I feel like the end of the world (our world) is near. I’m fucking happy, but I feel like the world is about to end. I mean… It’s a season opener and Celestia isn’t useless. It’s gotta be a sign of the end times!
 
I have to disagree with people saying that the two are being ineffective. The message is that if they weren’t doing that, things would’ve been over much sooner. This’s happened with Luna in that episode with the long name, Cadance in The Crystal Empire.
 
At least the weren’t swallowed by the storm in the beginning and forgotten, in a similar way to when Celestia fought Chrysalis or when they are shoved aside the story in Twilight’s Kingdom. They’re doing things. The’re participating.