"Spice Up Your Life" and the Cutie Map's mission · 11:49pm Jun 18th, 2016
I've been meaning to write this blog post for the past week, but things keep coming up. Let's see if I can get it out now.
So, last Saturday we got the final episode before the mid-season hiatus, and we got the long-awaited return of the Cutie Map. So let's talk about that.
I remember way back when the Cutie Map was first revealed, in a promo during the hiatus before season 5. Someone, I think Big Jim, said that the map would send the ponies on missions across Equestria, and we'd get to see a bunch of the fabulous locales we had heard about but hadn't gotten to see before. But then instead the places the map sent them to were either places we had already seen plenty of times, like Manehattan or Canterlot, or places that had never been mentioned before, like Griffonstone and the Smokey Mountains and Starlight's village. All the brand new places, in fact, were decrepit hellholes rather than exotic locales. So clearly that wasn't the connecting thread.
(I am still waiting on my 1001 Saddle Arabian Nights episode, Jim.)
But there is a connecting thread that runs through the map episodes. The ponies call them "friendship problems", but by now it should be clear that's actually a very poor description of what the Map is for. The situations the Map highlights are not about one or two ponies failing at friendship and learning a lesson, it's about an entire society that has gone wrong and needs to be set right. These episodes are never about fixing the problems of individuals, as most episodes are, but about instilling community spirit. The griffons of Griffonstone do not need the Idol of Boreas, they need to see that their society's survival depends on them caring for each other. The ponies of Manehattan do not need a perfect park and theater stage, they need to slow down and get to know their neighbours. The ponies of the Village need to recognize each pony's strengths as complementary rather than disruptive. And the Hooffields and the McColts all need to give up their personal grudges and make peace with their enemies for the good of the valley.
It makes a certain symbolic sense: maps do not show people. They show places. The Cutie Map doesn't care about individuals, but about communities.
Well, except for one individual in particular: Starlight Glimmer. Starlight Glimmer, who was the first pony the Map sent them to, and whose acceptance of friendship was marked by the Map giving up its magic and going to sleep.
A lot of people have wondered where the Map was throughout season 6. I didn't, because my interpretation of the way season 5 ended seemed to explain it fine: the Map's real purpose from the start was the redemption of Starlight Glimmer, and once that purpose was fulfilled, the magic of destiny that powered the Map returned to the beyond from whence it came, taking the spell scroll with it.
The fact that the Map and the Spell interacted so closely is interesting too. Whose magic was that? Why, Star Swirl the Bearded of course. And who has a well-established tendency to crop up in discussions of destiny linking events in the past to the events of the present? Star Swirl the Bearded does. And who has a well-established characterization as Twilight Sparkle's precursor, to the point where it begins to seem like he foresaw and laid the groundwork for her achievements from the distant past so that she would be able to fulfill destiny where he could not? Discord Star Swirl the Bearded!
So you can probably tell how I feel about that.
Anyway... The new episode did bring the map back to life, but it didn't directly disprove that theory either. Its main purpose has been fulfilled, but it can still run its other function of alerting the mane six to communities that go wrong and need to be set right. Such as, a restaurant district that is collapsing in upon itself under the weight of a rigid paradigm and needs an injection of new blood from a radically different culinary tradition (on that note, Pineta had some interesting observations about culinary matters earlier today that are worth reading).
And it was a good episode. The new characters were adorable, and very personable. The song was fun, and catchy. And it was good to see that the foreigners from distant lands were ponies, for once, because to be honest this show has an unfortunate tendency to use non-pony races that are portrayed as one-dimensional and unsympathetic to serve as 'foreigners'. I must admit I was kind of worried when I first heard the thick-and-easily-ridiculed Indian accent, but it's never brought up as a concern for anyone, and the episode is all about the benefits that diversity contributes to the whole.
On another note: As FOME has repeatedly pointed out, the writers seem not to know what to do with Starlight if she's not the focus character. This episode was the first one in which she appeared for a bit part, and she was even allowed to roll her eyes at Rarity's exuberance along with the rest of the group. She's finally welcome enough and comfortable enough with her place in the group to participate casually alongside the others. I find this detail noteworthy because integration is the major theme of the episode. Coincidence? Probably. But hey, a coincidence that fits with the theme is as good as an intention.
Well, it's almost 2 AM here so I should probably get to sleep. What did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments.
I think the reality is taht the map was damaged from the events of that episode.
Basically i think a possibility you have not thought of yet is that the map is in fact the tree of harmony communicating with the mane six. The tree can sense when disharmony begins to form. And it can manifest in different ways. Either expression being supressed or old angers causing violence.
The map was damaged from the events of the time travel, as it became a point of travel for twilight.
If the map and the castle area means of communication between the tree and the mane six, and is in a way a way for them to access that power at some point, then it is likely that it was the Tree itself that banished that spell into the void of timespace.
A very interesting viewpoint. I don't totally buy it—Starlight's time spell seems to be a modification of the original designed to exploit the nature of the Cutie Map, and if she infiltrated Twilight's caste once, she could've done it multiple times to gather the necessary data—but it's still an fascinating possibility.
I can acknowledge some points you raise. I basically agree with you that the map is the Tree of Harmony's direct means of communication to the Mane 6. And I think your observation that the problems it shows revolve around communities, rather than individuals, is correct.
But that's just it. If there are more communities in need of help out there, why shut the map down? If the only purpose for its activation was to redeem Starlight Glimmer, why send them to Manehattan and Griffonstone? The Tree of Harmony is basically playing Charlie to the Mane 6's Angels. And the map is still there.
It seems to me that the connection really was broken. Here is what I think happened. Starlight's tampering basically put the map in a state of information overload, since not just communities, but Equestria as a whole, was being put through major crisis'. The map just couldn't handle all the constantly changing possibilities and went into a sort of lockdown mode. And that's why it was always there in the other timelines, even though the castle was not.
Basically the Tree felt some sort of interference from Starlight, who isn't one of its chosen instruments, and shut it down completely after the season finale, to prevent any further misuse. So Twilight and Starlight activating their magic together, while in the presence of the other Elements, probably acted like a kind of security release. It wasn't so much a fix something broken spell as it was a message to the Tree of Harmony that Starlight was no longer an enemy and thus the map could resume normal operations.
One more thought. Notice the last problem the map showed before it sent Rarity and Pinkie to Canterlot.
And that makes sense. The last problem it faced was the season finale, where Twilight was constantly hopping back to the same point in time and space. Clearly, the Tree of Harmony itself wasn't affected by the time shifts, but it suddenly had multiples of Twilight trying to access the mainframe at the same time, at least from its point of view. And that might have sent the map into shutdown, because it couldn't compute the duplication of Twilight's powers properly.
If I sound like I'm talking about the map like a computer, that's because I am. I agree that the Tree of Harmony has a consciousness, but it doesn't have any way of expressing itself. So I believe the Tree created the map as a piece of technology through which it could communicate with the Bearers of the Elements. And that piece of technology can and did experience an unexpected error. (And there's a slight bit of evidence in the animation, given the fizziness of what appears to be a hologram as the map came back online.)
The Tree of Harmony must have felt that a more direct means of communication was required. After all, if it could just have sent the simple message 'Give back the Elements' in the Season 4 premiere, things would have been much easier. So it created the lockbox, although it still couldn't give any specific instructions for it, which in turn created the map that is now able to express the Tree's wishes much more clearly.
I don't think Starswirl had anything to do with it, really. It's just that he's the only wizard to ever attempt and create a time travel spell. But I do understand your viewpoint based on your own interpretation of Starswirl and how he is linked with destiny.
A little detail I just noticed in the opening scene: Spike has moved his throne to sit next to Rarity.
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At this point I'm not sure what exactly was the point of using the Map with the spell, unless it is that the Map was particularly compatible with Star Swirl's magic. The spell seems to be the important part, while the Map itself doesn't actually do much in the s5 finale, except give us something to look at.
I suppose it is that the Map is magically linked to the Mane 6's friendship, so it gives Starlight an easy route to the moment that friendship was formed. But that just feels kinda small to me for a device that is linked to the fate of the multiverse
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That is the biggest gap in the interpretation, I think. It would basically boil down to "well, I may as well get some work done while I'm here", which is not very narratively satisfying.
The standard explanation would be that the Map was preparing them for the task ahead... except that when the task comes, only Twilight and Spike can face it, thus making any preparation for the others moot. I suppose I could say that the Map didn't know that - that it was preparing for a wide array of possible situations and was covering as many bases as possible. And of course Star Swirl is a multiverse-savvy character in canon (and especially in the comics). But that's not cohesive storytelling.
Treating the Tree of Harmony as a magical computer feels kind of off to me. Just, it's a tree, it has an organic mode of behavior rather than a technological mode. I'd rather think that Star Swirl made the Map because magical devices of destiny suit him. Plus, I'm not so sure that the Tree of Harmony could exist in the multiple timelines: without Twilight and her friends, it would never have been restored to its full strength. But again, Star Swirl knows multiverses.
Another thing is that the Map didn't alert Twilight to Starlight's tampering. I can see two reasons for this: one is that the season 5 finale wasn't technically a Map situation at all, and I really want to dismiss that explanation for being boring :P the other is that Starlight's tampering was part of the prophecy, or one possible way destiny could unfold, so the Map let it happen.
I don't expect canon to ever verify my theory, of course. This is mostly an intellectual exercise in storytelling. But I thought it was interesting.
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No, that's not what I meant. The Tree of Harmony is an organic entity with organic thought processes. That much I agree with.
But I think the map itself is not the same thing as the Tree. The map is a tool for the Tree of Harmony to communicate with the Mane 6. Kinda like the speech-snythesizing wheelchair used by Stephen Hawking, if that helps explain what I mean.
The map, which is something technological with a limited set of routines, was being subjected to confusing inputs, so it could no longer function as the relay between the Tree of Harmony and the Mane 6.
Twilight speculates that the Tree of Harmony must somehow feel the wrongness of the timelines. So I suspect the Tree of Harmony was exerting all its will to keep the map running during the finale in some kind of failsafe mode, just enough to give Twilight the chance to correct things.
What Twilight and Starlight did last week was probably bypassing the shut down protocols and establishing a direct link with the Tree of Harmony. Now that the map was once again receiving coherent information from both ends, it rebooted and resumed its normal functions.
... That actually makes a lot of sense to me. Remember my theory that Starswirl's alicorn spell was supposed to reactivate the Elements for use by Celestia? Starswirl probably knew about the Tree of Harmony, since Celestia knew about it. So maybe he invented the map table to try and communicate with it.
But it probably didn't work, because Starswirl 'didn't understand friendship.' But the tree kept the map table hidden in the lock box until it found a use for it with someone that could communicate with it. (And frankly, that fits perfectly well with your idea that Twilight is Starswirl's successor, who would eventually complete all these destined things he couldn't.)
You know, we never did learn how Starswirl came up with the idea of his time travel spell.
So I postulate (in the full knowledge that there is not a single piece of evidence for what I'm about to say) that the Tree of Harmony transcends time itself. That is how the Tree has knowledge of problems that arise within communities, because it can see all the different outcomes.
And maybe, just maybe, Starswirl was able to glean just enough about the Tree's true power during his interactions with it to develop his own rudimentary time magic. And that is why his spell could be so flawlessly adapted by Starlight to interact with the map, because its original source was the Tree of Harmony itself.
Tell me if I'm going too far down the rabbit hole here. I'll freely admit that I have Sci-Fi on the brain, considering I've just recently started reading the Honor Harrington series of novels by David Weber.
That's probably why I even hit on the idea of the map table being technology (albeit magically powered technology) in the first place.
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I wholly support this interpretation
That... would actually be a really elegant explanation. But it does require that the power of Harmony be somehow linked to time magic, and I'm not sure how to make that connection. As you say, there's no evidence.
I haven't read those. Is it good?
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Yeah, it makes internal and logical sense. And it makes for a well enough head canon, I suppose. But as a real interpretation, it lacks any grounding in the source material.
I can practically hear my old literature professor telling me: "You're interpreting past the text."
Eh, it's a mixed bag. I'm halfway through the third book of the main series. Some parts are a little dark for my taste, and the writing is ... schizophrenic, to put it bluntly. Some moral dilemmas are presented as actual dilemmas, others are portrayed as absurdly black and white. Some characters (the ones the reader is supposed to respect) are well-rounded and complex, even some of the adversaries. Others (the ones the reader is supposed to hate) are ridiculously one-dimensional.
They're hardly literary masterpieces, but they are entertaining and action-packed with a good protagonist. I'd definitely recommend the first one, On Basilisk Station. Whether or not to continue from there is probably up to an individual's tastes.
If I were to sum up the feeling of the series in a few words up to this point, ... think Mass Effect without Reapers but with even more politics.