Ask King Sombra - the Cutie Mark Question · 11:57pm Jun 29th, 2016
(image by Ask King Sombra)
Spoilers for the blog, Ask King Sombra.
Part of what bothered me so much about Kingsley's final was this picture above. A cutie mark appearing during his apparent/supposed death throes? What the Tartarus is THAT supposed to mean? Wiggles only comment to this update involved his mark, saying, "it was what he cutie mark was telling him".
I dug back into the archives and found what I vaguely recalled about his cutie mark. The last mention of it was by Kingsley himself saying his absence of a cutie mark meant, "his cutie mark was telling him he was NOTHING" by it not being there. Amidst the flood of reblogs, people were just as confused as I was, a few even joking, "What? His talent was exploding?!?"
I wasn't in a very good state of mind to process this logically, unwilling to believe the cruel twist of fate of getting your mark WHILE YOU'RE DYING and felt like I had seriously missed something vitally important somewhere. Having no time to go back further through three years of updates, I decided to ask fellow Sombraphile, Askre, what he got out of that update and remark of blog mod and artist Wiggles. He has been pretty on the money anticipating Wiggles logic and moves during this final part of the series, from what he told me. He even changed his final chapters of "Possession in the Crystal Empire" because he felt they too closely paralleled what she was doing with the ending of Ask King Sombra. This is what he said about Kingsley receiving his cutie mark so late in the game: "The whole his cutie mark was telling him he was nothing was a very clever mind game played by Übers to keep Sombra at his lowest point and make him think he was nothing if he wasn't king.
I think the current update was a call back to that now that he has actually earned his cutie mark. I got the implication that it has something to do with protection. Sombra was a good guard, he rose to the ranks of Captain, the problem was mostly his huge ego getting in the way, but I think he was clearly destined to get a cutie mark that had something to do with protection and now that he was sacrificing himself to protect the very Empire he had sworn to protect, he finally was getting the actual cutie mark and it was telling him he was indeed doing what he was destined to do - protect the Crystal Empire."
It seems excellent reasoning to me, but if you have any other theories, we'd love to hear them. The next update of Ask King Sombra will be in four hours. We may or may not find out more about his mark. Everything has been tossed up into the air (except Kingsley) at this point and we are all just waiting to see where it all lands.
I know the current update is a very sad and poignant moment and I fully understand the varied reactions shown to it. Yet deep back in my head I keep expecting there to be a sudden needle scratch and we'll see Sombra stuck to the wall flailing about and screaming at someone get him out of it.
I suddenly had this weird thought and looked back at how everyone was talking about how Sombra still had the curved horn and everything even after Über was expelled out of him while Luna looked nothing like Nightmare moon after having her corruption washed out. Sombra snorts she had her evil blasted out of her while he didn't and he's looked like that for 1000 years so it would make sense it stuck. Now I'm wondering if this talk is a foreshadowing. Of course Luna was blasted by the Elements of Harmony, Sombra again is blasted with the much more dangerous Crystal Heart.
Now please don't take my words for it, I'm probably just grasping at straws myself. Then again for all the drama lately, I keep being reminded that Wiggles has always insisted that AKS is first and foremost a comedy. She really often defuses tense moments with something silly happening, so I'm looking left and right, up and down, going "Alright Wiggles, what are you up to, what is going to happen?"
I don't know if I'm at this point jaded or just desperately hoping that this isn't it, one more Wiggles twist, PLEASE!!!!