Points of Canon: S5x01-02 - The Cutie Map

I only have a few episodes left to complete this series of notes, remember? At least for the primary televised canon. Now, I expect that much of the observations here will be duplicated from RTAC #14, because this episode is where most of the logic for the Other Sith Theory came from. However, there’s no telling what I will find on a yet another walk through it.

No, I’m not doing the entire series two times.

• For the record, Lemon Hearts is walking towards the Friendship Castle with a stallion. No, I haven’t seen her with this one before or after, I think.
• The throne room of the castle is sans roots. I remind you that roots are chronologically important and are put up in Castle Sweet Castle – which is not necessarily the next episode chronologically.
• The one big thing missing from the throne room is the Cutie Map table itself. Remember that Rainbow Rocks has to happen before this table is revealed.
• Fortunately for the above, this is definitely not the first time the Mane 6 enter the throne room: Spike is already sleeping on his throne, and even Rainbow says, “We’ve been over it like a million times, Twilight! We found all six keys, defeated Tirek, and got this sweet castle! End of story!” We don’t know just how much of a breather did the castle give them before revealing the map, but it did give them some.

• One thing that is different about them sitting in the thrones this time is that the cutie marks on the thrones light up.

  • This did not happen at all while they were sitting in the thrones during Twilight’s Kingdom, even though Rainbow and Rarity were sitting in their correct thrones.
  • During Rainbow Rocks, Rarity’s mark is lit up while Rarity is sitting in her throne, Twilight’s is lit up when she is not sitting is hers but Spike is sitting in his, and Pinkie is sitting in Applejack’s throne, which is not lit up. None of the other marks are visible. When Rarity gets up from hers, the light on her mark turns off.

  I think we have to conclude that just sitting in all the correct thrones was not enough. Maybe, thrones needed to be activated in a particular order? This time, the order is Pinkie-Rainbow-Applejack-Rarity-Fluttershy-Twilight, which forms two intersecting triangles, i.e. a hexagram. It could be the order they actually got their keys in, by the way, though this is not the airing order of the key stories, nor the printed Friendship Journal order.

• “This is incredible! It’s got all of Equestria!” Notice that Spike is using the word “Equestria” to mean the nation, rather than the world: We know the world is bigger than that.
• “Y’know what? There’s a ton of room for dangerous adventure along that route. Count me in!” Notably, we never see any dangerous adventure along the route, just at the other end. Did anything interesting happen on the way?
• “Well, I was planning on organizing my baking sheets, but okay!” Ponies use baking sheets, but we saw them before.

• “Me and Big Mac have a huge weekend ahead of us talkin’ hoofball, and… and trading hoofball cards, and arguing about hoofball stats…”

  • Today is the start of a weekend. Which is possibly another condition for the Cutie Map to start up.
  • Hoofball cards are a thing.
  • Spike is talking about hoofball, but what he’s wearing looks more like a pitcher’s helmet for baseball. Together with helmet-mounted drink flasks and a straw.
  • If you want to suppose that this is when Spike started playing Ogres and Oubliettes with Big Mac, to eventually end up in Dungeons and Discord, I think you have every reason to think so.
  • Fluttershy utterly dreads the perspective of staying with Spike once hoofball is mentioned. Was Zephyr Breeze a fan of hoofball at any point?…

• “But he’s got a Hock Fetlock rookie card I plan to sweet-talk right into these hot little claws.”

  • Hock Fetlock is a hoofball player of note.
  • Even if this is a ruse and Spike just wants the Mane 6 out of the castle to roleplay in peace, I’m pretty sure he does have a hoofball card collection.
• The route towards Our Town involves a train, crosses a series of bridges, and strangely, ends on the dead end of a railroad track with no sign of a station. Likewise, the train contains no ponies at all other than the Mane 6. Did Twilight just use her princess authority for once?…
• The route continues through a rope bridge. Which, subsequently, was bypassed somehow in Hard to Say Anything and To Where and Back Again, because in both of those, a cart was involved, which would never pass through it. Now, I can imagine either Starlight just teleporting it over a chasm in the latter case, but Big Mac has no such option. This probably involves a bridge being built somewhere else later, which might even cut down a lot on Big Mac’s travel time.
• Our Town is exactly 12 cottages plus Starlight’s cottage, with no sign of other buildings or farmland of any kind.
• “Let’s get down there and find the spa.” Rarity is convinced every town worthy of the name has a spa. Are they indeed so common that she is justified to expect one, though?
• Pinkie repeatedly lifts boulders which should, in theory, be embedded in the ground, as if they were lying flat on it instead. This is not the first time she pulls this stunt, but I’m mentioning it because this time it involves a 10-ton boulder.
• “Forget the smiles. Look at the cutie marks.” By that point, two distinct cutie mark-less foals of 5 years or older passed through. Two groups of four turn up later when the Mane 6 enter the town, for a total of 10 distinct foals. All of them disappear for most of the episode afterwards.
• There are two shop signs in Our Town: A book with a quill and a cup. The sign for the “clothing” shop and a muffin turn up later, even though they aren’t visible on the establishing shots. And there are two distinct eating establishments. For the observed amount of ponies, that’s a bit too much economy…
• “’Cause fighting a horrific monster would be super-awesome!” Rainbow has no qualms about fighting and potentially killing stuff, as long as it’s a horrific monster, does she?
• “Pardon my forwardness, but are you an alicorn?” The entire season 4, very few ponies acknowledged Twilight’s alicorn nature, but here Party Favor picks her out instantly.
• “Trouble? Why, I don’t think we’ve ever had trouble in our little village.” Unfortunately this doesn’t actually rule out an attempted coup in the past.
• “Perhaps you’d care to speak to our founder Starlight Glimmer.” Starlight is explicitly cited as the “founder” of Our Town.
• Starlight’s cottage has a fireplace – with ashes. I’m pointing these out because starting with Season 6, weird crystals start turning up in place of wood…
• “Forgive my bluntness, but I’m assuming it’s Princess Twilight Sparkle?” Which is one minor argument in favor of the idea that every (proper) alicorn is automatically a prince/princess.
• “We don’t get many alicorns around here.” Is there a chance they would get any? Twilight’s Kingdom was pretty explicit in saying that only four alicorn princesses exist at the time, and that was weeks ago at best.
• “Technically, it’s a Tree-chest-castle-map!” Pinkie inadvertently gives Starlight an opening: I don’t think she would know about the Map quite as easily otherwise.
• “Join in our utopia” Ponies have the word “utopia.” Which actually has very specific origins in our world: it was coined in 1516 by Thomas More.
• “When we were sent to this village, we assumed it was to help in some way. But, well, it doesn’t seem like you need any help.” “Have you considered perhaps that you might have been sent here so we could help you?” Have Starlight considered that since Twilight was sent here, whoever sent her will come looking? Or does she have recruiters elsewhere, which would allow her to interpret this statement to mean that one of them sent Twilight to her?
• “After all, nopony has ever come to our village and wanted to leave.” Notice that this is true – even the rebels don’t appear to want to leave. In any case, I’m pretty sure this implies nopony succeeded.
• “Well, this will certainly provide a boost to our little community. When the rest of Equestria sees that a princess gave up her cutie mark to join us, they’ll finally understand what we’re trying to accomplish.” Technically, this would be an aside. However, I think that only Starlight’s ominous facial expression is an aside, while the actual phrase is directed to the ponies of Our Town.
• “A cutie mark is a representation of a pony’s unique talents and skills. How is it possible to…” Twilight has no idea how is it possible to give up a cutie mark at all at this point.
• Double Diamond is reading a newspaper. Wherever did he get one?
• “That and two bits’ll get you a cup of cider.” One can buy a cup of cider for two bits, I suppose? That worth of a bit is somewhat smaller than most people expect.
• “Don’t drag me into this!” The foals reappear at this phrase, only to have their ears covered up by the adults. Is there a joke I’m not getting here?…
• Sugar Belle quotes: “Different talents lead to different opinions, which lead to bitterness and misery.”
• “You got a stronger stomach than any of us, and that filly in there might be our best chance at findin’ out what the hay is goin’ on round here.” Applejack believes Pinkie’s powers of digestion are superior, something to keep in mind.
• “Do you know Princess Celestia?” Well, the villagers certainly know Celestia exists…
• “Daydreaming is one thing, but you mean actually having it put back on? That seems extreme.” Notice that while Party Favor and company are interested in Mane 6, and how do they live with different cutie marks, only Sugar Belle actually says she wants hers back at this point. Later on, Party Favor admits that he wants to have it just “to remember what it was like” and says “I’m sorry, everypony! I never wanted to leave the village! I love all of…”
• “Oh, we’re not kept from them. They’re in the vault up in the caves. We can visit them any time we like to remind us of the heartache of a life with special talents.” Notice that this cutie mark watching is an essential part of this whole lifestyle.
• “We hope someday every pony in Equestria will make a pilgrimage here to our little village to have theirs removed too, and our message of perfectly equal friendship can finally spread across the land.” Ponies have the word “pilgrimage”, but I have no idea how did they come by it.

• The cutie mark containment grid has 112 visible slots.

  • About 12 appear to be empty at the time the Mane 6 enter.
  • One of the cutie marks is a microphone with a wire. Electric audio recording technology has to be over 10 years old.
• “And here is the Staff of Sameness. It was one of the great Mage Meadowbrook’s nine enchanted items.” Notice that the Mage Meadowbrook that appears in A Health of Information sports no obvious enchanted items whatsoever.
• “I’m curious… how did the subject of the vault come up?” Notice the contradiction: Starlight is very interested in knowing who told the Mane 6 about the vault, indicating that she did not want them to know about the vault, and yet she mentions hoping for a pilgrimage. I’m pretty sure that this hope for pilgrimage is entirely bogus.

• “In sameness, there is peace. Exceptionalism is a lie. Free yourself from your cutie mark. Choose equality as your special talent. Difference is frustration. To excel is to fail. Be your best by never being your best.”

  • Starlight is not intoning this into a microphone as the Mane 6 hear it – it’s a recording, which would be weak evidence of sound recording technology other than the phonograph record. Also, four pretty loud speakers.
  • The room contains at least 9 distinct books on the equalism ideology. That’s actually rather a lot.
• “Look at those drapes! I have no idea if they’re tacky or not!” Rarity’s aesthetic taste is part of her cutie mark skills, or at least she thinks so.
• “Oh, even tweets don’t make sense any more!” Now, previously, like in Pinkie Pride, we have observed that Fluttershy’s ability acts as an universal translator: Everything that she considers a creature understands her, she understands them back, both parties of the conversation speak their own language anyway. She tried to do exactly that and it didn’t work, but the particular wording would imply that she does not hear a translated version either – she hears and directly understands the tweets.
• “I can’t even make countryisms no more!” For Applejack, her accent is part of her special talent, or so she thinks – but notably, she also lacks earth pony magic: Normally she’d smash this door to dust.
• The way the equals cutie marks dark-glow whenever one of the Mane 6 attempts to invoke their special talent implies that they are active magic rather than just passive signifiers, though what exactly do they do is open to interpretation. This is particularly noticeable with Pinkie, who trips the equals-mark multiple times after getting pretty far into a joke.
• “Something odd about that staff. I haven’t studied Eastern unicorns as much as I should have, but I’m pretty sure Meadowbrook only had eight magical items, not nine. And I don’t remember any of them being a staff.” How interesting it is that A Health of Information a well as Shadow Play insist that Meadowbrook was not a unicorn, and don’t mention any of the eight magical items.
• The cell contains a basin of water and a trough of something green-ish, but no observable sanitation facilities. That’s inequine.
• “But they’re never gonna believe we switched over in just one night.” So far, only one night passed since the Mane 6 arrived.
• “They’ve been so welcoming and friendly… aside from locking us in here and trying to brainwash us into abandoning the things that make us special…” I do wonder how the word “brainwash” came about, because right now, we’re seeing an indoctrination through primarily non-magical means.
• “Oh, good morning!” Notice that this phrase is said over the cell audio system even though Starlight is standing directly outside. There should be a microphone near the door somewhere, but it’s invisible…
• “There are so many friends to be made once you realize you don’t need your cutie marks or the talents that come with them.” As Starlight says this, she stresses the word “talents” and presses into Twilight’s face. Hmmm…
• “We have a welcome ceremony for new friends! The whole village joins together to build you your own cottage…” This ceremony is a thing. Which would imply this has happened at least once before.
• “Will you kindly tell us the names of those friends who so desperately miss their cutie marks that they would sneak around in the shadows talking to strangers about it? Just so we can be sure your intentions are indeed pure.” See above: Doesn’t sit well with the idea of pilgrimage. Also notice how this is exploited to verify Fluttershy’s loyalty.
• “What was I thinking?! I can’t believe I even considered asking for my cutie mark back.” Asking or not, Party Favor managed to embed his horn in the door, which is closer than any of the Mane 6 got to escaping by force.
• “Laughs don’t come in barrels. They come from inside you as your body’s response to delight.” I’m sure Pinkie is experimenting here: She did pull off a joke, and yet the equals-mark did not activate.
• “Come. All new friends stay with me until their cottage is completed.” So that she can keep an eye on them, presumably.
• Fluttershy escapes through the chimney. Which happens to be the only chimney in the entire village. Hmm…
• The escape happens in the night, which means that by then, the Mane 5 have spent another day in the cell.

• I quoted this in RTAC #14 verbatim and I should quote it verbatim again:

  Double Diamond: Of course, but I don’t understand why you wanted me to bring them here. Fluttershy is one of us now. Surely she can be trusted.
  Starlight Glimmer: This one belongs to a princess. It could be very important to our cause.
  Double Diamond: But if Twilight Sparkle becomes our friend, then why do we care about this old cutie mark?
  Starlight Glimmer: I just want to keep them close until everything is… settled. You may go, Double Diamond.

  • Starlight needs the cutie mark itself, whatever it is that she plans to do with it.
  • Double Diamond is Starlight’s right hoof pony, but is not privy to her actual plans regarding the cutie marks.
  • Oh, and notice that marks can be contained in jars relatively long-term and Double Diamond can remove them from the vault and place them into the jars himself. How? Later in the episode, simply breaking the glass results in the marks scattering immediately.
• “Starlight, you clumsy foal!” Actually, what exactly was Starlight doing with that bucket, while still holding the jars in the air?
• Starlight’s cottage has electric lighting. How?…
• Starlight’s method of concealing her actual mark involves covering it with a cosmetic powder, which implies that the mark is not a projection over actual hairs of the coat, but a change of color in the hairs of the coat – otherwise the entire trick would be impossible. I do wonder why isn’t she simply using dye, though.
• So the next morning is the last day of the episode, it occupies a total of three days.
• “The staff is a piece of wood I found in the desert! It’s my magic that makes all this possible!”
• Starlight uses her unique push-away shield spell and runs off into her cottage. Notice that nobody chases her, they all run towards the vault instead.
• “Stand back, everypony!” It’s interesting that Double Diamond throws the staff at the vault and the glass cracks – but immediately prior, other earth ponies were knocking at the glass with their hooves, and it didn’t.
• Starlight’s cottage includes a secret tunnel underneath her bed. Notice that it starts on the second floor of the cottage, because that’s where her bedroom is – we can see that in the scene where Fluttershy watches her through the window. That’d be pretty difficult to conceal, and certainly impractical to build into an existing cottage. It’s also pretty short, and exits somewhere in a natural cave a hundred meters away at most.
• Party Favor, once cutie-marked, is capable of producing balloon objects that offer tangible function of their non-balloon counterparts. He starts with a pair of binoculars. Notice that it doesn’t just work for him: Pinkie’s appears to gain some optical benefits too.
• Starlight is hauling the cutie marks in a cart, instead of teleporting with them or moving in any other way. Evidently, this is the best she can do.
• “She’s headed for the pass! If she makes it into those mountains, we’ll never find her!” “There’s a whole network of caves up there! Your cutie marks will be gone forever!” I wonder, would she end up near any civilization, though? Ponies seem to be pretty dependent on it.
• “Are you all so willing to give up everything because of these strangers?!” Starlight uses some manner of bolt spell to destabilize a large chunk of snow and drop it on Night Glider.
• “We gave up everything for you, because we thought you were our friend!” The “we” in this case is spoken by Sugar Belle and has to refer to herself, plus some indeterminate group. Notice that it strongly implies that Sugar Belle, at least, gave something up consciously, rather than was tortured until giving in, like the Mane 6. Compare to Party Favor’s line “It’s you who have taught us something. We all came to this village because we were searching for something missing from our lives. We thought Starlight had given it to us, but now… now it seems it was in front of us all along. It’s us!”
• “My newest recipe… snow pie!” So does this mean Sugar Belle would not be able to throw this snowball as far or as precisely if it wasn’t shaped like a pie?… In any case, it wrecks the cart, which I don’t think a regular snowball wold be able to do.
• Starlight is capable of telekinetically affecting objects that are at least 50 meters away – she catches those jars with the marks pretty late. And then she uses another bolt spell to destroy the natural bridge she just crossed.
• …all so that Party Favor could replace it with a balloon bridge. That’s pretty ridiculously OP, actually.
• “Whoa! These are my old skis! This is where I first met Starlight!” I do think that Double Diamond was the first, based on this line. Actually, how long would skis remain usable if left out in the snow, unattended, for years?…
• The released cutie marks find their original Mane 6 owners in seconds, despite them being 500-700 meters away. The way all the marks scatter upon cracking the vault, I expect this is not the limit.
• “Finally, I can buck like a five-bit snake herder in an Appleloosa ranch house again!” Do ponies herd snakes? Why?…
• “I studied that spell for years!” Starlight directs a bolt at the pursuers, which Twilight intercepts with a hemispherical shield that doesn’t look like anything else she casts otherwise. My interpretation is that Starlight is trying to use the cutie mark resection spell on multiple targets at once and Twilight has improvised a specific counterspell to it – after only seeing it once before.
• “I gave these ponies real friendships they never could’ve had otherwise!” Starlight does think these ponies benefited by her scheme, doesn’t she?
• Starlight reuses her push-away shield spell to clear the entrance to the cave.
• The foals, who were hiding since mid-episode, reappear.
• “You’re a part of me, all of you. And there’s no doubt you’re a part of my mission to spread friendship too.” Remember the statement “Twilight will not outlive her friends,” that’s so wonderfully ambiguous?…

There’s hardly anything I didn’t notice before in here, except the trigger conditions for the Cutie Map, but one thing is pretty clear to me on the sum total of things: Starlight does have some direct use for the cutie marks, something she never gets to do on screen, which was the whole point of setting up Our Town. At the same time, whatever the use is, they don’t get expended, or at least, don’t get expended until a sufficiently large quantity is accumulated…

Comments

[Mitch H]

Do ponies herd snakes? Why?

To keep out the Irish, of course.

“That and two bits’ll get you a cup of cider.” One can buy a cup of cider for two bits, I suppose? That worth of a bit is somewhat smaller than most people expect.

How much was a couple of cherries again? Two bits for a cup of cider seems a bit cheaper all things considered. Bits are kind of small-denomination.

[Oliver]

4737400

Problem is, cents exist.

[Mitch H]

4737406
As a dead currency, maybe? We still retain 'two bits' as a phrase, even though nobody's used pieces of eight in I have no idea how long - at least 180 years.

[Oliver]

4737407

Nope: From the Shadows has a cash register marked up in cents. Twilight's bill from that shop also has cents in it.

[Comnislasher]

Starlight’s cottage has electric lighting. How?…

Some way to convert magic to electricity exist? Or some powerplant exist relatively close to Our Town? If wireless electricity transmission really exist then maybe Starlight cottage have a necessary receiver?

[schpeelah]

“Laughs don’t come in barrels. They come from inside you as your body’s response to delight.” I’m sure Pinkie is experimenting here: She did pull off a joke, and yet the equals-mark did not activate.

I always interpreted it as a simple statement of fact, and a demonstration of the equalization winning out.

I suppose she could be emulating Maud's humor here, but still.

Starlight’s method of concealing her actual mark involves covering it with a cosmetic powder, which implies that the mark is not a projection over actual hairs of the coat, but a change of color in the hairs of the coat – otherwise the entire trick would be impossible. I do wonder why isn’t she simply using dye, though.

Splits the difference, and the mark is a magical alteration of the coat? Dye is recognized as part of the hair, but loose powder covering it is not?

Starlight uses her unique push-away shield spell

Unique? She's not even the first one to use it. Cadance and Shining Armor's was far bigger, but it's the same basic concept. Celestia also uses it in the Crystal War, I think Twilight and/or Luna might have as well, but I don't remember when.

“She’s headed for the pass! If she makes it into those mountains, we’ll never find her!” “There’s a whole network of caves up there! Your cutie marks will be gone forever!” I wonder, would she end up near any civilization, though? Ponies seem to be pretty dependent on it.

Why the map has "Caves of Conundrum" that are nowhere near I have no idea.

Actually, how long would skis remain usable if left out in the snow, unattended, for years?…

If they were made by someone with a cutie mark in ski-making?

“You’re a part of me, all of you. And there’s no doubt you’re a part of my mission to spread friendship too.” Remember the statement “Twilight will not outlive her friends,” that’s so wonderfully ambiguous?…

Well, I certainly would say while Twilight has the wings and the title, the six of them should collectively be the Princess of Friendship in the demigod sense.

[howard035]

Not a lot of stuff we haven't covered before. Regarding the map's appearance, I wonder if the chair continuing to glow after Twilight left it just means all 7 have to sit on their thrones within a minute or two of each other.

I also think the area of the map is neither the nation of Equestria or the planet, but rather just a maximum radius that the tree can detect friendship problems in. After all, the map appears to be a perfect circle with Ponyville in the center.

I do wonder what Starlight was planning to do with those cutie marks though. Regardless of the other sith, there had to be some purpose for them that she at least approved of.

[Meta Four]

• “Don’t drag me into this!” The foals reappear at this phrase, only to have their ears covered up by the adults. Is there a joke I’m not getting here?…

Pretty sure the concerned adults are covering those ears so they don’t have to hear the argument at all. Because they think the mane six’s friendship is falling apart right in front of their eyes, and they want to spare the kids from witnessing it. Nothing to do with that specific phrase.

• “Stand back, everypony!” It’s interesting that Double Diamond throws the staff at the vault and the glass cracks – but immediately prior, other earth ponies were knocking at the glass with their hooves, and it didn’t.

It’s possible that the Equality cutie marks were negating their earth pony strength, just like happened to AJ before. The staff probably broke the glass because it concentrated all that force onto a point even smaller than a pony’s hoof.