Points of Canon: S6x04 - On Your Marks · 5:49pm Apr 9th, 2016
Continuing my points-of-canon series once again. This particular dose of pony is brought to us by Dave Polsky, the gentleman responsible for “Over a Barrel,” i.e. the source of some of the most egregious canon problems.
I was expecting something outrageously difficult, but surprisingly, I had to really fish for any world building elements in this one at all.
- The episode opens with Apple Bloom announcing that this is the “First post-cutie-mark meeting” of the CMC, which further enforces anachronic order of episodes, since one would have to have happened no later than a week after they got their marks.(1) Since none of the Mane 6 nor Starlight Glimmer are present in this episode, it’s perfectly possible for it to be backdated.
- More often than not, ponies only wear boots on back hooves. Except the times when they suddenly wear boots on all four appendages, and this time, Sweetie Belle aptly demonstrates why this is an issue by using a booted hoof to hike up her own skirt.(2)
- The entire episode premise revolves around the idea that problems getting a cutie mark, or problems following it are uncommon in ponies.(3)
- In a rare fit of consistency, Apple Bloom pulls down an exact trace of the Season 5 official Equestria map.
- Sweetie Belle demonstrates sheet music that is perfectly identical to ours.(4)
- Apple Bloom says she is allergic to bees.(5)
- I think that’s the first time I see a proper inflatable boat, which implies some rather specific technologies being available.
- This episode suggests a specific use for forks, which previously were mostly avoided: ponies hold them in their mouths to offer pieces of food to other ponies.(6)
- Sweetie Belle has no observable aptitude for crochet.
In other news, baby Cakes still have the old eye design. Seriously, gentlemen… Also, the Andy Warhol pony with his Campbell Soup cutie mark needs a pony name.
(1) Basically, this has to have happened somewhere between episodes of Season 5. Season 2 has a similar problem, with most of Season 2 episodes needing to be somewhere between episodes of Season 1 to ever make sense.
(2) To show the cutie mark, of course, what did you think? Go watch the episode.
(3) To be fair, it has never been a particularly big idea in fandom that they are. We’re eager to imagine every kind of social ill in ponies, but for some reason, not the pony-specific ones…
(4) While previously, we’ve seen lots of cutie marks showing musical notes, a full page of sheet music is kind of new. We’ve previously seen a conductor’s baton as well, but not up close.
(5) Notice that as per Castle Mane-ia, Applejack either has no such allergy or has a deathwish.
(6) I do wonder how often does this use actually comes up, because actually holding forks in hooves to eat like humans do is not something we see often, if at all.
This. So much this!! Especially their age!!! When I saw the perspective of that shot, I knew it was going to show the Cake twins in their perpetually-newborn state. So many facehoofs!!
cks about the passage of time in the show.
This was the final nail in the coffin for me; I am convinced that Hasbro gives precisely zero f
Also worth a mention is that Sweetie Belle names Rarity as her authority figure (who would not likely let her go out on nationwide adventures unattended). What could possibly go wrong? But seriously, where are their parents? We've seen them before. Supposedly Sweetie still lives with them and only visits with Rarity rather than live with her full time.
And I'm not sure if Hasbro gave the three such narcissistic obsessions about how their cutie marks look on purpose to try and convince the fans that they are anything but fugly as hell... but simply saying that they look amazing does not make it so. Really, Hasbro, would it have been so hard to do this?
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That took me all of five minutes in Photoshop. Surely someone on the design committee at DHX could have taken a moment to come up with something aesthetically pleasing that still made sense for the characters.
3860721
Actually, with the use of the term "moon" for passage of time displacing all other terms, you can safely say the number of f
cks in their budget is actually negative.
This apparently has something to do with their production process. Somehow, there's no concept of series planning at all. There is a season opener, and season ending, and lots of teams which work in parallel on episodes, the airing order of which is not determined until most of them are done, and is set by a person who basically had no say in what the episodes would be about. And the episodes which don't fit get pushed to the next season. If the process is indeed like that, they basically can't account for passage of time at all.
Careful, you might accidentally make it non-ambiguous whether Scootallo will ever fly. And that will never fly. :)
3860744
That one went over my head, sorry. What?
3861279
Your projected cutie mark for Scootaloo is just a wing. So far, two topics are studiously avoided by show writers: Whether Scootaloo actually has any family or not and whether she will at any point in the future be able to actually fly. Hence Scootalove/Scootabuse as MLP-specific story genres, by the way...
P.S. The Many Secret Origins of Scootaloo actually milks both of these for a lot of comedy.
3861292
You do realize I just took their actual cutie marks and removed the shields and gaudy color scheme, right?
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members.iinet.net.au/~recon/ForumImages/0013.png
3861297
I do, but it significantly changes the heraldic interpretation. Actually, I dislike their current marks for a reason other than the ugly color scheme: So far, shields have been a symbol of protection in cutie mark heraldry pretty consistently.
What the hay are they supposed to be protecting?...
3861302
Well that's just it. It is an empty theme which a clever writer needs to fill. Just tossing it into random "we have no idea what we're doing" episodes like S06E04 only serves to highlight the fact that the writers have no idea what they're doing. The whole episode felt like one enormous lampshade.
Pen Stroke (oddly) did the same exact thing with Nyx. Her cutie mark is also a shield. But what is she supposed to be protecting? What is her destiny? How would that manifest itself in a way that makes for a great story? That's one reason my story exists.
RE: Scootaloo, I don't know why the hell they had to create this ambiguity in the first place. My personal headcanon is that she was just a late bloomer. Either way, making it ambiguous just causes arguments within the fandom. It's the same thing with the natural born alicorn thing.
3861302
Also, the official cutie marks are way too busy. Each has six different colors which are low-contrast to one another causing the images to be difficult to interpret at a glance. And each image has three separate symbols!! Way way too busy. That makes them not even look like cutie marks. What other pony has ridiculous marks like this?
3861341
If my memory serves me right (I did skim through it before starting to read "Nightmare Nyx") it appears when she goes out to protect Ponyville from Everfree monsters. How exactly does it roll from there depends on what you believe cutie marks to be. Canon is quite ambiguous on that. :)
So far, my best theory and resulting definition looks kind of like this:
A cutie mark is a tangible representation of declaration of intent, supported by natural magical forces of Equestria, which convey certain aptitudes to further that intent, sometimes extraordinary ones. This declaration is (normally) made in the moment of spiritual epiphany, when a pony realizes that what they are doing and/or experiencing right now is what they want to devote their life to -- not necessarily, but often, something they will eventually have a career in.
As all declarations, it is to a certain degree open to interpretation, reinterpretation, and even forgetting and misinterpretation soon after, which is what happened to Trouble Shoes. They do not specifically convey "destiny," if such a thing even exists, but indirectly can produce results very similar to what destiny would do if it definitely existed and manifested as a mark, because such a declaration influences future behaviour and choices.
CMC's marks are still mighty odd even if you use this rather flexible interpretation, though. :)
3861354
Some cutie mark images are pretty complicated, (Shining Armor, Coloratura...) but few are so densely compressed, indeed.
3861370
Mmm. Yeah, that sounds about right (the definition of cutie marks).
As a point of clarification on Past Sins, the situation there was that Nyx gave up the throne and defended Ponyville from a wave of Everfree monsters (once) and quite nearly got herself killed. She also brought back the royal sisters from exile. She then submitted herself to their judgment in the climax of the story. The climax was definitely not the Mare against Monsters chapter. It was the Judgment chapter.
What happened then was quite interesting. She was willing to face whatever punishment the sisters decided upon. Celestia gave the task solely to Luna to pass judgment. In the end, Nyx made a rather moving statement about how she can survive what would kill normal ponies. That protecting others is the one thing she felt she could do right. She then committed her life in a vow to protecting ponies and in that moment, her cutie mark appeared.
And then Pen proceed to revert her back to being a filly and write absolutely nothing about it from that point forward.
The bee allergy is actually kind of horrifying, given how Apple Bloom helped Granny Smith get honey in "Family Appreciation Day" and apparently put her life in her hooves in the process.
3867746
Let's just hope she developed this allergy afterwards... brrr...
❧Apple Bloom does not like carpentry nor mechanism-tinkering, jossing some fan-hypotheses. ('m sure you could find more with a good freeze-frame of all those nixed idea drawings.)