Apr
21st
2018
Points of Canon: S8x06 - Surf and/or Turf · 6:37pm Apr 21st, 2018
So now we have a divorce episode.
- Chronology markers: It obviously happens after School Daze, due to multiple references, however, it has no markers fixing it against any other episodes of Season 8 – even Mudbriar does not appear.
- “We’re glowing!” So apparently, the Cutie Map can summon anyone it pleases – and as we know from Triple Threat, even having a cutie mark is not actually a requirement. I just hope it won’t buzz someone in, say, Manehattan, so that the poor victim has no way to find out why is their cutie mark glowing. Or did that happen already? We wouldn’t ever find out if it did, would we? And neither would the Mane 6 for that matter.
- “Actually, where you’re going isn’t even in Equestria.” This statement acknowledges that Mount Aris is not in Equestria. See gross misuse of the word “Equestria” over the course of the series.
- Numerous Ponyville ponies ended up at the station for some reason – notably, Dinky is paired off with Amethyst Star.
“This permission slip is for Silverstream. It’s very important that her mother and father sign it, or else no field trips.”
- Notice the strange disconnect: The CMC are capable of making the trip to mount Aris on their own, and had previously engaged in similar cross-country trips on multiple occasions. Nopony batted an eye. But Silverstream needs a permission slip to go on a field trip with her teachers – and both parents are required to sign it.
- The permission slip identifies Silverstream with a drawing – or possibly, a very bad photo. I wonder why.
- “All aboard! Last stop – the new Mount Aris Station!” So how long did it take them to connect Mount Aris to the rail network, considering that both the official map and the Cutie Map insist it is an island – and no known routes go anywhere near the region? The direct approach to Mount Aris is over a stretch of obviously artificial embankment, however, we don’t really know how far is the island from the mainland. We just know that nopony seems to have disembarked the train. I don’t see a bridge…
- “I learned all about them from Applejack.” Not from, say, a newspaper. Applejack is probably a better source anyway…
- “Uh, maybe she didn’t say that exactly. But it makes for a better story.” Apple Bloom is not necessarily a reliable narrator. See my commentary on Where the Apple Lies and how it makes the most sense as a story told by Apple Bloom to the rest of the CMC.
- Twinkleshine is riding on the opposite side of the car, and she is very definitely aware of Twilight, seeing how she’s listening in to Apple Bloom’s story. Did Twilight even say hello?…
- For that matter, I wonder what is Lemon Hearts doing on Mount Aris, and whether Twilight said hello to her.
- “But hippogriffs don’t have cutie marks.” Good to know.
- “Attention, please! Anygriff here have a problem?” See the comments on the Pony Service Announcement post. My current stance is that it is grammatically correct in Equish to use “anypony” when referring to ponies only, and “anyone/anybody” when referring to a mixed group or a group composed of other species, and instances of “anyX” where X is some other species are just characters not speaking proper Equish because they are not sufficiently educated or don’t come into contact with other species often enough to be aware of the proper usage. But if you disagree, this here, as well as several other usages in this episode, is an argument you could interpret in favor of whichever version you like.
- The very first thing Twilight does upon disembarking the train is go down stairs. See School Daze. Of course, one could argue that this is where the idea of stairs came from, but… well… oh ok, I’ll shut up.
- Mount Aris has quite a lot of streetlights – more than Ponyville, even. The specific light-emitting technology is difficult to identify.
- “A Hippogriff can have a seapony for a brother? How does that work exactly?” Strange how nopony asked this question about Tirek and Scorpan.
1. I kinda liked Aquastria better…
“But others got used to living under the water and stayed in Seaquestria.” I’m not sure the term was actually used in the movie itself, and I haven’t gotten around to doing a PoC writeup on it yet. Can anyone confirm or deny? This episode uses the word liberally.1
- “It’s a tiny piece of the magic pearl. It was split up among our kingdoms.” …wait, wait, what?…
- Twilight moves the scroll with the form she needs signed out of and back into invisible bags. See cartoon resolution.
- Hippogriffs make a point of living in trees, rather than, say, on them like griffons. Notice that back in Equestria, we only have three instances of housing like that: Golden Oak Library / Friendship Castle, Zecora’s house, and Meadowbrook’s village…
- Those beaks can’t be very solid if they can play horns by cupping the ends in the beaks.
- “We do this every weekend. Hippogriffs really like being Hippogriffs.” If you ask me, repeating this celebration weekly indicates some deep-seated dysfunction.
- “Attention, everygriff! Princess Twilight Sparkle is here! She’s Silverstream’s teacher!” Notice “everygriff”. It’s very interesting that he chooses this particular thing to introduce Twilight rather than anything else she has done. It’s even more interesting that it’s this that gets a reaction out of the crowd, rather than the title.
- “To the refreshment tent for a stein of salmon juice!” Now, it’s a safe bet that hippogriffs are omnivorous – living on an island like that, as howard035 points out, most of their diet would have to be fish anyway – but I can’t help but wonder how do you squeeze juice out of a salmon.
- “Those are the Harmonizing Heights. Legend says that—” Terramar was obviously about to explain just how are they making the sound. Now we will never know.
- “Every other griff my age already knows where they belong.” Notice the shortening of hippogriff to griff, rather than hippo. Poor griffons.
- “Pro - it’s beautiful. Con - too far from Equestria.” At least Sweetie Belle agrees that Mount Aris is “far” from Equestria. Let’s see how deeply does this distance compress over the rest of the season.
- “Look what I won at the ring toss booth!” Hippogriffs play ring toss, rather than horseshoe toss.
- Any given pearl shard is sufficient to turn more than one pony into seaponies, though seeing as how in this instance, it’s one teenager, one adult and three children being transformed, we don’t know the actual limits, if any. Touch contact is definitely required between all participants.
- Notice that the wing-fins on Scootaloo are even smaller than her actual wings.
- “This must be just like flying!” I previously mentioned, when discussing Parental Glideance, that Scootaloo is either disabled or an orphan, but not both. This statement swings the needle towards the “disabled” side, but she still remains undefined.
Notice that neither seapony children nor hippogriff children have their own necklaces – but we do have both seapony and hippogriff children. For that matter, here’s a logistics question: It’s most likely that to achieve a successful fertilization, both parents would need to be the same species at the time. Sure, easy. But:
- Do they lay eggs or bear live children?
- If they lay eggs, do they work differently when laid by a seapony and when laid by a hippogriff? Because the anatomy would suggest significant differences.
- So do they always get born hippogriffs, or can one be born a seapony?
- Should they bear live children, what happens if a pregnant mother transforms?
Really, that’s a lot more important than you’d think. Particularly because some of the reasonable answers to these questions could explain why the whole divorce this episode is about is a thing in the first place.
- “Princess Twilight Sparkle! What an honor! You know, Silverstream just raves about you.” Once again, it appears the primary source of information about the rest of the world that the hippogriff culture has at all is Silverstream.
- “In fact, I brought this form for you to sign so that–” it would get wet?…
- “Some kelp chips? Fish oil tea?” Further evidence that hippogriffs are omnivorous, though, how does one get fish oil to dissolve in anything to make it a tea, I’ll never know. Especially considering they’re drinking from cups. Underwater.
- “And excuse me, but how do you keep from getting all pruney?” Marshmallow-ness runs in the family, it appears.
- “Princess Twilight, you’re back! And just in time for the screeching competition.” That’s what this horrible sound is called.
- During the song montage, Scootaloo high-fives a dolphin. Or a porpoise. It’s hard to tell, especially considering that she sings “For all intents and porpoises.” Recognizing this pun would require whichever animal this is to be quite sapient.
- “Star wishes every night” While this is a montage, and thus, at least the imagery is not entirely diegetic, this line corresponds to one of the rare cases of crescent moon on screen.
- “Starfish by eel light” Glowing eels exist in our world – but they’re extremely rare, first discovered as late as 2011, and they glow green, rather than yellow like these.
- “Don’t ever talk to me again!” This is a very significant falling out for that late in CMC history. The only way it could happen would be through both sides of the argument being heavily invested in their view for their own reasons. While it’s obvious why Scootaloo is behaving this way – “swimming is just like flying” – it’s less clear just what is Sweetie Belle so invested in, since otherwise, she is just the pony to prefer big city amenities to nature. The natural sound of Harmonizing Heights has to be the reason, and implies that Sweetie Belle needs music much more than anypony else realizes.
- “Ocean Flow! You’re looking well.” At least two species-divided couples can be observed simultaneously, three if you count the same-sex pairing as a couple, indicating the split is not uncommon. See above regarding logistics.
- One of the picnic tables includes what looks like a sushi roll.
- “Yes! We did it!” If you ask me, more like they fooled the map: If any serious disagreement between the parents exists – and the fact that they’re unwilling to fluctuate the same way they suggest their son does implies so – this solution won’t serve for long.
Fun fridge logic for everyone!
Lemon Hearts is obviously there to sample male hippogriff and seaponies.
Variety is the spice of life after all.
Doesn't the map indicate the active mission at the same time as it sends out its summons? At the very least, mark alerts do direct ponies towards the map if they're far enough away. Of course, that doesn't address the logistics of transporting the ponies themselves.
I stand by my "K/N chromosome" hypothesis. If dragons are all one species, that degree of anatomical variance seems well within reason.
The term "Seaquestria" doesn't seem to be used in the movie itself, but I think it was mentioned in the supplemental materials. At the very least, Derpibooru taggers were using the term months ago.
I'm guessing Twilight magically waterproofed it when she found out they'd be going underwater. Now there's just the question of what Ocean Flow would use to sign it there...
Could that be because of where they are, rather than when?
Twilight coming along on this trip is the one thing I found most interesting about this episode. Several times before, Twilight really, really wanted to tag along on a map mission, but she held back because she trusted that the Map knew what it was doing—that if she came along, her presence would screw everything up, somehow. Even in “A Royal Problem”, where Twi decided to keep tabs on Starlight’s progress, she still insisted on following the letter of the Map’s instructions, by putting that spell on the music box while remaining physically in Ponyville. But this time, Twilight just openly tags along so she could do her own thing—and even offers the CMC a bit of advice with their friendship problem—and she treats it like it’s no big deal.
I suspect it’s because of “Shadow Play”. Now that Twi knows the real origin of the Cutie Map, she isn’t as scared of its judgment anymore. “Who are you to tell me I can’t go visit the Hippogriffs? You’re not a fundamental force of the universe. You’re just a map that Starswirl the Bearded made, by accident. And I know way more about Friendship than Starswirl does.”
Aquastria from Under The Sparkling Sea hasn't necessarily been retconned away. After all Queen Novo had to have gotten the idea of the sea pony form from somewhere. And the official map of Equestria shows that it spans the entire continent and touches two separate oceans.
Seaquestria and the transformed hippogriffs could be in one and Aquastria and natural sea ponies are in the other.
4844691
That’s why I was asking about the logistics: If they lay eggs, male seaponies likely don’t have much to sample.
Which could explain why it’s predominantly the males who choose to be hippogriffs.
4844769
It does, but it’s easy to imagine a mission which wouldn’t get visibly indicated, like, I dunno, under the sea.
Pencils and crayons would work. Felt tips of any kind would not.
4844805
As far as I can tell, no: At least Ponyville occasionally sports the crescent moon, even though most of the time it’s full.
4844823
But what about the underwater city of Coltlantis?
4844968
The Mare From Coltlantis? A long-running pulp fantasy series that some academics hold to be one of the strongest influences on A.K. Yearling's equally ludicrous Daring Do stories?
As nice as it is, this episode already had a pronunciation problem in the form of Mt Aris. I was watching a Berrytube stream, and some people kept mishearing it as Mt Eris, which... uh... led to a lewd joke involving Rule 63 Discord.
Aquastria would also have the same problem. And given that Tara Strong mispronounced Canterlot Cantibles to sound like Canterlot Cannibals (in i]Equestria Girls: Forgotten Friendship), I'm guessing Seaquestria was in part to avoid her mispronouncing Aquastria to sound like Equestria.
Some people suggested the Map actually wanted the CMC to solve a friendship problem between themselves, but then that would imply the Map manufactured a friendship problem that would have never happened if they never went to Mt. Aris.
4845068
Not necessarily. Scootaloo’s strong desire to fly to the exclusion of everything else is very rarely touched on. Similarly, I don’t think we have ever seen how much music actually means to Sweetie Belle before.
A fairly decent canon-building episode.
Given its track record, the map seems able to predict that the creature it sends, if sent to to the right place, will interact with the individual with the friendship problem. For that to happen consistently, the map has to have pretty good precognitive abilities. The map has never summoned someone who doesn't already know about its signal, that might be a factor.
I agree with Apple Bloom, Twilight just wants to go on a vacation. Alternatively, Silverstream disappearing almost started a World War, in the season opener, so special care might be taken with the friendship students.
Yeah, sounds like a big multi-year project to build bridges and run a train over it. Probably about the same amount of time it would take to build a school?
Other than the S5 Finale, have we ever seen Twilight acknowledging the existence of her Canterlot friends?
I betcha Equestria passed some equivalent of the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Aris, most of that went to the train but probably a lot of new infrastructure as well. (I think rebuilding after the Storm King was briefly referenced during the UN arc of the comics).
Aquastria might be where the Sirens are from, a different nation.
Didn't catch this, and it's really important: That means Mount Aris and Seaquestria are considered different kingdoms, right? Does Novo rule both?
Yeah, they definitely come off as insecure.
This might be beyond the scope of this blog, but anyone have Watsonian theories on why the Map grew? We know it apparently grew during the movie. Does the map just zoom out to cover the location of the Mane 6 wherever they go and not zoom back in? What about when Twilight goes to Pedestria?
I think she's disabled, adopted and living with her aunts.
We saw a lot of really young seaponies, and I believe Silverstream thing was stairs was that she had spent her whole life as seapony, so I'm going to say they can be born either way.
True, despite the fact that there a train station disgorging ponies to Mount Aris at a steady stream.
There's probably less of a difference in intelligence level between a real porpoise and the level needed to get this joke, than the difference between a real rabbit and Angel Bunny. Not sure if that means anything, just an observation.
From the way Apple Bloom didn't seem to worried about it, I don't think she really thought this was a permanent rift, plenty of kids have said don't ever talk to me again and made up 5 minutes later. That said, you have a great point about how much music means to Sweetie Bell.
Really Twilight figured it out and the CMC just passed on the message. I guess they were called because the map realized how Scootaloo and Sweetie would react, and knew that their fight would force Terramar to openly confront his feelings.
4844691 Hey, somepony had to do it to create Pegasi back in the day!
4844769
Yup, makes sense to me too.
4844819 That's a good point. When the girls are worried about finding their target, she just kind of shrugs and tells them not to worry too much.
Until we met both parents, I thought this would be more a metaphor for teenage sexuality than divorce.
This raises some very interesting questions regarding the political status of Mount Aris and Seaquestria. Are they different sections of one city, two different cities, two different provinces, two different countries, or what? Which one do Novo and Skystar live in? Do they even live in the same one? Do they travel between them regularly like Terramar? Could they maybe be separate nations with the same head of state like the Commonwealth?
4845381
I wondered if the whole thing was perhaps a metaphor for a biracial person—or the direct child of immigrants—feeling torn between two cultures, wondering if they have to choose between them.
Perhaps rather than a direct allegory, it’s just a broadly applicable theme.
4845381
Incidentally, we know…
She does glance in their direction in the movie and they wave to her, so…
No idea. The line does seem to imply that.
Upon some meditation, here’s what I came up with:
I.e. what we’re seeing is not a divorce, but a temporary separation: The mother won’t move out of the sea before the next child is done, since she would prefer to guard the egg, and in fact, most female hippogriffs will prefer this mode of childbirth, which they had a chance to experience in the past decade or more while in exile. This promotes selecting the submarine lifestyle in general.
Most male hippogriffs are not so happy about it, which is precisely why they feel the need to celebrate being a hippogriff every week.