@PonyPon
 
Which was a joke, and hardly to be taken as serious canon.
 
Celestia has never been implied to be that physically strong. I swear, people really need to stop assigning power levels to her that the show never said she had and then complain that she doesn’t use it to solve problems as if it was the writer’s fault _

@Background Pony #1A74  
Might be referring to the panel in the comics where the two were arm-wrestling, with him showing alot of strain and her looking really smug.

“Celestia is shown to be significantly physically stronger than Big Mac”
 
Uh? When? I don’t think I remember seeing Celestia lift anything physycally in the show proper?

@PonyPon  
Easier, perhaps. But Celestia wants to have fun with the process, and she has the patience of a pony who’s reigned for over a millennium.

@Somber Star  
There’s got to be easier ways to do those things.

@Background Pony #1A74  
To be fair, Celestia is shown to be significantly physically stronger than Big Mac, who is shown to be capable of throwing all of Ponyville’s mares a fair distance at the same time. So regardless of her magic’s effectiveness, there are other ways she could have done something there. Instead she chose to stand in the slime and make ineffectual glares. The ending of the episode even indicates that Celestia invited Discord specifically because she expected him to pull some shit like this.
 
I think she wants to convince the upper class to either lighten up or stop making her host Galas.

@SuperSonic15  
Dude, even I acknowledge the moments for when the odds are against Celestia.

@Background Pony #1A74  
Yeah, yeah…I just let the excitement of the episode go to my head these last 48 hours or so since it aired.
 
Can you blame me? I’ve been going nuts waiting for a new computer anyhow to get back on Garry’s Mod and Team Fortress 2 for almost a year!
 
And seeing Celestia for the first time in Season 5, along with that energetic side of her that we’ve not seen from her the last 4 seasons, really left an impression on me. She is my favorite Princess, after all.

@SuperSonic15
 
You really need to stop making these unnecessary, not-implied-by-the-show excuses.
 
Celestia didn’t defeat the Smooze because she couldn’t. Anti magic is anti magic.
 
Celestia didn’t defeat Chrisalys because love made her more powerful than her
 
Celestia isn’t quite as powerful as you pretend she is. It’s that simple.

@TexasUberAlles  
That’s what I’m thinking.
 
Hypothetically speaking, Celestia could have fought the Smooze at some point during her and Luna’s campaign to overthrow Discord in the past, dealing some very heavy damage to him with her magic since she was older and more experienced than Twilight.
 
Here, because she was enjoying all of the Smooze and Discord’s antics and enjoying herself thoroughly, while keeping her cover that she was just as annoyed and discomforted as the others, she actually restrained herself as she did not want to spoil her fun. Hence why when asked by Twilight to try her luck, she acted like all she could do was reduce the slime on the tip of her horn by blowing it like a bubble until it popped, then give up. If she had actually put effort into it, she would’ve blown her cover in the process and ruined all her fun.
 
Then there was the matter of collateral damage with all the guests as well. Kind of being similar to with when she fought Chrysalis in A Canterlot Wedding. Had to hold back to avoid collateral damage then. Had to do the same thing now.

@TexasUberAlles  
no, what you’re thinking of is counterspells, not anti-magic

@Somber Star  
@toxicitzi  
I’ve always assumed anti-magic to just be magic that disrupts other magic before it causes its intended effect, like two basketball players jumping to the net at the same time but one knocks the ball out of the other’s hand before it gets to the rim; any sufficiently strong magic would just bulldoze any insufficient anti-magic aside and dunk dat beeyatch.

@toxicitzi  
Anti-magic is kind of like a radiation shield or radio wave jammer. It’s there to control the presence of something that could be harmful or helpful depending on the quantity and control present, and the intent of its user. Kind of like the magic nullifier at the Equestria Games. In fact, it’s perfectly understandable for an Equestrian monster to have magic-nullifying properties, else the ponies would have almost no concept of a threat once they evolved unicorns.

@TexasUberAlles  
That’s what I thought after thinking it over. Celestia was having too much fun with having Discord and the Smooze there, and she had to maintain her ruse that she was just as discomforted and annoyed with their antics as the rest of the Mane Six and the other guests were.
 
She knew her Alicorn magic was more powerful than Twilight’s and could do some heavy damage to the Smooze compared to the small craters Twilight blasted in it, but she restrained herself by acting like her magic could barely even clear the slime off the tip of her horn and was just as useless as Twilight’s.
 
If that does not show how well Celestia prepared for Discord and his presence at the Gala without telling Twilight about it, nothing is.

@LunaticHell  
at least that one makes sense. The purpose of its existence is to clean and scrub off dirt, in order to not kill a living being with the odor of your body / clothes.
 
the anti-magic thing though? it’s not even a property expressed as part of something, it’s just a property in and of itself.  
It’s like if I said, they clean the clothes using a clean spell, instead of using telekinesis and other more understandable elements such as water and soap in association with it, to manage the cleaning materials. NOPE, it’s just a cleaning spell, that’s it and what it does is clean shit.
 
that’s what anti-magic feels like to me. As lazy and sleazy of an excuse to render something completely useless as you can get, especially when the reason you have to offer is, “The little pebble there is anti-magic that renders an entire 10,000 miles radius of magic users worthless.”

@toxicitzi  

 
Even in a fantasy world, fantasy people have to clean their shit with regular sponges. Not everything in a fantasy world has to be super-creative.

@serPomiz  

 
Considering that Twilight probably never met Smooze and thus didn’t know how to stop it, I’d say Discord had an advantage here.

@Somber Star  
Maybe. one thing that does irk me though is this shit excuse of “anti-magic”..
 
seriously, if there is a top most unimaginitive concepts for fantasy writing, the concept of anti-magic would have to be at least 1st or 2nd in that top, because that’s all this thing is, there is nothing else to it other than being a magic nullifying property.
 
in other words, anti-magic is shit, pure, uncreative and regurgitated shit..

Ok, you guys are getting way too worked up over this topic. This was clearly meant to be a throwaway event in a cute little slice-of-life episode. All the combat in it meant nothing, hence why Smooze basically facerolled the 6 and Celestia by accident. Kind of like in a cartoon.

@Etherspear  
who said she’s a deity, she’s powerful but she’s no god

@G.S.  
Smooze. Is. anti-magic. It is that simple.  
Twilight shot it twice with face lasers and gave up, and Celestia was clearly not even trying; I think you’re maybe exaggerating the ultra super powers of it just a bit, especially given that those face lasers did actually blast some craters in it.

@James739  
Well, I am not a sun deity-like pony… ^^

“My magic won’t work on this ooze! Can you stop it?”
 
I see what you did there.

@moonlightaveger  
Who’s saying the writer “do no wrong?” People just happen to have a different stance that you happen to disagree with. No need to get all condescending.
 
BTW, Smooze is anti-magic so Celestia couldn’t do a thing from the start. Not like it was sudden.

@G.S.
 
Agreed.
 
If the Element of Magic and Celestia could do nothing about it, no magic can.