what was starswirls spell's purpose and other questions

[derpy4ever 48]

A bunch of questions on twilight becoming princess episode.

What was the original purpose of starswirl's spell? What new magic did twilight create? What comes first, being alicorn or princess? What was going on when twilight was with celestia in the space void? The end of this episode made very little sense to me!

[Courageous Thunder Dash 7,824]

Star Swirl's spell probably dealt with revealing someone's true destiny. Since it was incomplete, it switched the destinies of Twilight's friends. Twilight didn't create new magic. As Celestia stated, she finished what Starswirl couldn't finish, because he didn't understand the magic of friendship like Twilight did. 

 

Twilight was transported to that realm that Celestia was in via the elements of harmony. When she had finished the spell, this triggered a spark that then casted the spell on Twilight, thus sending her to Celestia's realm, where she was transformed into an alicorn and brought back to the real world. If you noticed right when Celestia sang her last note of her ballad, a blob of magic emerged from Twilight. That was Starswirl's spell that she completed taking effect, engaging the transformation to alicorn status. 

[J. Brony 313]

Maybe Starswirl was unhappy and wanted to exchange his destiny with a pony who had a happier one.  Or maybe he was just planning to pull an epic prank on Celestia & Luna.

 

But seriously, in the original draft of season 3's finale, there was no spell.  Celestia gave Twilight a magic "Pandora's Box" for her to figure out how to open rather than a spellbook.  It was later changed to Starswirl's book, probably just as a tie-in to a pre-existing character.

[cmarston1 5,959]

Maybe Starswirl was trying to become an alicorn.

Either that or somehow change his destiny.

[Goat-kun 2,530]

From one to another, another to one, a mark of one’s destiny singled out alone fulfilled.

From all of us together, together we’re friends, with the marks of our destinies made one there’s magic without end – Twilight Sparkle

 

Clearly Star Swirl was just testing some new aura with “A target creature gets flying and X/X counters for each color of mana on the battlefield”. He got constantly mana blocked, so he finally flipped the table and stopped trying to make it work. Then he switched to white blue flyers with Celestia and Rift Mirror exile abuse. The rest is known.

 

The cold hard truth is a little less glorious. They wrote what they thought was the best worst ending to MLP: FIM. It’s like trying to hammer down a nail with your forehead: it can work but it’s not recommended. Same could be said for Magical Mystery Cure. Don’t get me wrong, I like Twilicorn, but the whole metamorphosis should have been handled with far more care. And Star Swirl? He’s just a simple plot device for when you ain’t got time for logical explanations. Something happened and you’re a few minutes short? Star Swirl did it! Why? Nopony knows!

[TopQuark 409]

Starswirl was coming home late one night from the opium den, and though to himself, How could I really mess with some ponies? He spent the next three hours cobbling together a spell that could switch the talents of two or more ponies. It was haphazard, pointless, and probably full of nasty hilarious side effects, but it would do. That's when he came down off his opium high, and went out like a light right there on his work bench. In the morning, he could bearly remember a thing. When he came across the spellbook he had apperantly written, he could hardly read his own writing, not to mention decipher what he had been trying to do in the first place.

 

Two weeks later, the book coincidentally went missing after a nice afternoon tea with Celestia, not that he cared, or even really noticed. It's not like that half-written mess could actually hurt somepony, despite the lack of a counter-spell. What ever it was supposed to do, it probably didn't even work.