Sep
30th
2017
Points of Canon: S7x21 - Marks and Recreation · 5:38pm Sep 30th, 2017
A delightfully empty episode save for a few things.
- The cold open for this episode explicitly precedes Fame and Misfortune, since that’s when the CMC get the idea for the day camp, but the rest of the episode happens afterwards, as Apple Bloom’s lines in said episode make clear. We also know this is a “summer” day camp.
Kettle Corn is drawing an enso.
- Coupled with her later cutie mark in haiku, it’s really strange that she has no explanation as to why she’s drawing a circle when attempting to draw a still life. Nopony recognizes it, herself included. Later on, she speaks in haiku and doesn’t notice, which Sweetie lampshades. There’s something strange going on here.
- Mind you, it’s a bad haiku…
- Notice that neither she changes her name upon acquiring her mark, nor does her name have anything to do with said mark.
- “If only there was a way we could help the whole herd of them at once.” Ponies very rarely use the word “herd” as a noun. The only other time I could find was Sweetie Belle in Sleepless in Ponyville. Using it as a verb is a lot more common.
- The wall behind the stack of newspapers has a strange pattern of naughts and crosses in chalk on it, that isn’t a naughts and crosses game. What is it? It hasn’t been here before.
- The location for this day camp is “Camp Friendship,” explicitly the one where Applejack met Coloratura. Whether this requires the Mane Attraction to precede this episode or not is not definite, though.
- Skedaddle – the unicorn kid who is worried of getting a mark in being bored later – approaches the CMC table in company with Minuette, though the other Canterlot Friends all found something else to do today. Of course, we will never know if they are related or not.
- We don’t know when exactly did Thunderlane become a full-fledged Wonderbolt, as the last time we heard, he was a reservist. I’ll make a guess and say that it is far more likely that this happened after Rainbow Dash became one, rather than before, if only because she could be the one to recommend him, which gives us a soft lock against Newbie Dash. The arena for the Wonderbolt show that Thunderlane is training for is the same as the one in that episode, at least, coupled with the conspicuously purple Red Cross.
- It’s interesting that the archery targets are obviously the kind meant for sharp arrows, but the arrows themselves are sucker-tipped. It’s strange that they stick at all, at that. Notice that everypony mounts their bows on wooden bases, even though from studying Rumble’s bow we can see that they are not permanently attached to these.
- “The first and last lines have five syllables, but the middle has seven.” How the hell did ponies come by the concept of a haiku – which doesn’t really work all that well in English, mind you, and requires an aesthetic culture that is almost entirely alien to everything else ponies do – and the word itself remains a mystery. Just like Kettle Corn’s enso.
- Notice that Camp Friendship is a day camp, not an overnight activity – the episode takes multiple days, and at the end of each, the foals all go to their respective homes. Which means that it’s close enough to Ponyville for this to happen.
- Apple Bloom claims to still love making potions with Zecora but can’t remember when was the last time she did that. This could be important for chronology later, thought to be honest, I’m not sure we’ve seen her do it at all ever since The Cutie Pox.
- “The fastest, most elite flier in Equestria!” “Thunderlane!” That was a fundamentally dickish thing to do to your brother, Thunderlane.
- “You’re not the only pegasus in the family, you know.” Does this mean their family includes non-pegasi or not?
- Throughout the episode, Thunderlane and later the CMC insist that getting a mark is inevitable. Something to keep in mind.
- “Am I speaking Old Ponish?” There she goeth again.
- “Has everypony gone mad?” Kettle Corn, who covered up the mark she just got, certainly had.
- “Cutie marks make you special!” Notice the irony and compare it to Call of the Cutie, where Sweetie defends Apple Bloom as being “full of potential,” and it’s Diamond Tiara who is insisting that not having a cutie mark makes one not-special. When, later on, Rumble announces, “No more potential cutie mark activities!” Kettle Corn is the only one who has the right idea – since she already has a cutie mark, no activity has a chance to give her one, so she keeps painting her enso – but I’m not sure she notices that, either.
- The camp is one of the few places we can see an obvious outhouse.
- Once again, rubber tires are part of an obstacle course. Can we see a cart with wheels in rubber tires please?
- “We take turns making the meals at Wonderbolt HQ.” Good to know. Let me know when it’s Rainbow’s turn, I want to watch this.
And then it just sort of ended.
So where was Starlight during this episode? Because I’m pretty sure she would have made a terrific special guest. If any episode should have been hers, it’s this one.
Skedaddle's doomed to get a lawn dart cutie mark, as often as he gets into situations where he's crashing into things horn first.
Somepony needs to film a PSA about horn protection, starring Tempest Shadow.
Very interesting point about the enso. (Not least because now I have a Friendship is Card Games design for that.) I wonder if Kettle Corn has any ancestors in the Vaguely Defined East.
Also, Apple Bloom is definitely showing the other Crusaders the joy of alchemy in "On Your Marks."
>Expecting Starlight to appear in an episode where her presence would actually enhance rather than detract.
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I actually really liked this episode. With Diamond Tiara now reformed and the Crusaders with their marks, it was interesting to see the usual dynamic inverted like this. The same argument that Sweetie Belle used to defend Apple Bloom from DT's cutie mark snobbery is now basically the antagonist's argument, and I find that so fascinating. This episode gets a point for interesting ideas.
It's like they were trying to make the translators' lives as difficult as possible. Somepony's got to rewrite those haiku into Polish/Portuguese/Estonian/Urdu/Korean/Russian/Czech, you know.
Notable also that they use the term for a completely mixed group of earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns. I've known some authors theorise that "herd" is specific to earth ponies. We've heard "flock of pegasi" before, haven't we?
*shrug* He's an athlete. It comes with the territory.
Any CMC episode with a song is one I will enjoy. That said, Rumble actually had a bit of a point here. Social pressure really does seem to lead ponies to spend more and more time doing their mark-related activity once they get their cutie mark, at least if the cutie mark is related to their future career.
There's also the fact that Kettle Corn gets a haiku instead of an enso for a cutie mark. Kettle Corn seems to prefer drawing ensos to writing haikus, she has previously spent a lot of time practicing ensos, and she even seems a little disappointed that "circles" isn't her special talent. She certainly doesn't mind covering it up to join camp blank flank. To me this suggests that there is some kind of external force that has at least a partial say in what one's special talent is. I.E Kettle could have spent 10 years drawing ensos, but destiny didn't want her to have an enso cutie mark, so after an hour or so writing haikus a cutie mark appears.
Something else that is releveant to this discussion: Here's a link to a video that Hasbro created and then took down for some reason, but seems to be Celestia giving an overview of magic in Magic Kindergarten:
What's relevant is that at 1:05, she seems to be saying Daring Do has a magical talent for locating treasures, which seems pretty likely to me to mean Daring Do's cutie mark is directly granting her a magical ability.
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It's interesting that the logistics of dark magic is at least partially covered in a Fundamentals class for very young ponies.
4684430 "Students, turn to your left. Now turn to your right. One of you will turn out to be a dark wizard Twilight Sparkle and her friends will have to beat up someday. Might as well get that over with now."
Huh, I forgot that part at the end. Does that mean Starlight's magic was classified as "dark?" I mean, when she was blowing up the time stream her eyes never got smoky, so I just figured it was regular magic.
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I don't think it's quite that clear-cut, dude. She was clearly using powerful magic for less-than-friendly reasons.
"Some dark magic, however unpleasant, has the silver lining of sticking out like a horn on a mule. Unfortunately, most dark wizards are simply good wizards who have lost their way. If you aren't taking Ethics this semester, change that. You'll need it."
Do you have all the episode transcripts in one text file or something?
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It’s easier to search through them if they are in text files, but I had to parse the wiki page that contains them to make the text files.
I actually need to update my set, haven’t done it in a while.