May the muffins be forever in your favour."Surf and/or Turf" Afterthoughts: How the Cutie Mark Crusaders prevented a war, Ancient Hippogriff Architecture, Scootaloo's Decision & More! · 11:29pm May 4th, 2018
After some delay due to a certain rise of depressions, here are now my belated afterthoughts on "Surf and/or Turf":
- Right at the beginning of the episode, I noticed something interesting about Sweetie Belle's reaction over it that they get send to Mount Aris. After she said "Wow, that's almost", she paused for a very short moment and only then continued with "off the table!". And she was flinching slightly during that pause and seemed confused.
I like this reaction, it showed so nicely how she had either forgotten what she wanted to say, didn't know the word for something or how to spell a certain word she was going to say and, therefore, paused a moment to think about that and then decided to change the second part of her sentence.
It's little details like that why MLP: FiM is such a realistic and immersive show and that make it feel so real, as well as what makes the characters of it so relatable.
Also, how Sweetie Belle barely made it apparent that she had trouble finishing that sentence and swiftly improvised, this is a skill that she has totally gotten from Rarity!
- In this episode, we finally see Dinky again, and it's her first appearance in Season 8, too!^^ And what makes this even better, she was at Sparkler's side! It is long ago since we have seen Dinky and Sparkler together the last time, in "Brotherhooves Social" during Season 5. That's two and a half seasons, or, more than two and a half years!
Even though they are sisters, it's incredibly rare that we can spot them while being together in an episode, so this makes this moment very special. And this time, they apparently were on a sister trip together, as they clearly had just arrived back in Ponyville and left the train when we saw them.
I wonder where they went together?
- Scootaloo is an incredibly strong filly with a high pain tolerance! Proof? She got hit in the face by several heavy pieces of luggage at full speed and knocked to the side by them, but did not even whimper or show any signs of how painful that definitely was.
If you needed more demonstration for why she's best pony, there you got it! :D
- I love the dynamic between Applebloom, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Twilight! The three of them know Twilight well enough that they immediately figured out that the slip she needed to get signed by Silverstream's parents was just an excuse used by her to do research on Mount Aris. And neither did Twilight mind that they made this so bluntly clear and stayed completely cool when explaining herself.
You can see that there's a strong bond between them, forged in countless Twilight Time lessons. I wish we could have seen all those lessons, or at least a few more, and it makes me somber that we didn't.
Now I really hope that, before the show ends, we get another "CMC & Twilight" episode.
- Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle wondered why the Tree of Harmony sent them to Mount Aris, even though hippogriffs don't have cutie marks and that it couldn't have been a cutie mark-related problem because of that. But if you think about it, it's very easy to see why they got chosen for this mission.
A cutie mark is the embodiment of a pony's special talent and a pony's special talent is a large part of a pony's identity. So, when they help a pony to get its cutie mark or to understand the cutie mark it already has, then they help the pony to find its identity.
And the problemTerramar had was very related to an identity crisis. He had the choice between living in the ocean as a seapony or on land as a hippogriff and he had to decide that. He also had to decide with whom of his divorced parents he wanted to stay, which is another aspect of his problem, but ultimately, his decision would have affected as what he identifies, seapony or hippogriff.
And due to their experience of helping ponies finding their special talents and, therefore, identities, they were the perfect ones to help Terramar with his identity crisis.
- As I already touched upon in my review of "Surf and/or Turf", Queen Novo has shattered the magic pearl Twilight wanted to steal to defeat the Storm King and split it up among all the hippogriffs. This also shattered my theory that Queen Novo has only taken out a small piece of the pearl and given it to Silverstream, to make it possible for her to live on the land properly after leaving Seaquestria to attend Twilight's friendship school and to keep her safe out in the wide, wide world.
- The hippogriffs have their houses built into trees. This reminds me a lot on Twilight's library. Interestingly enough, her library was, aside from Zecora's hut in the Everfree, also the only building we've ever seen in Equestria that was a hollowed-out tree. Maybe her library was built by a hippogriff and the legacy of an ancient bond between hippogriffs and ponies.
- "Not really..... We do this every weekend. Hippogriffs really like being hippogriffs." This was very subtle and it already showed that Terramar had trouble to decide between Seaquestria and Mount Aris, the tone in his voice made very clear that he wasn't sure if he also likes being a hippogriff.
- Terramar's dad, Sky Beak, greets Twilight with a loud and long screech that sounds like one of a predator bird. Yet, ponies don't whinny like horses do it in order to communicate. Apparently, hippogriffs are evolutionary much closer to the animals they evolved from than ponies are.
- After this greeting, Sky Beak invites Twilight to the refreshment tent of their "Proud-to-be-a-Hippogriff" festival for some "semen juice" and reveals a traditional beverage that hippogriffs drink with that. They are apparently somehow able to squeeze juice out of the semen (= seeds) of a certain fruit (or several fruits). Although, I'm not exactly sure if he really said "semen" and I misheard words when watching MLP: FiM before. Another possibility could be that he said "salmon juice". The hippogriffs have obviously evolved from predator birds and they always lived near the ocean, which is why they probably eat fish, so juice made of salmons is not an unlikely thing for them to drink.
- Scootaloo's reaction on it that swimming underwater must be like flying got me thinking about her future..... She is unable to fly, but obviously wants to. And since swimming underwater is the closest she'll ever get to flying while being awake, I'm very convinced that she will leave Ponyville and move to Seaquestria one day when she is older.
Sweetie Belle, however, will definitely not move together with her, as she doesn't like it underwater and Applebloom probably rather wants to stay in Ponyville with her family, so it hurts a little to think of it that one day, they will probably be separate from each other. But if this is what makes Scoots truly happy, I'll be fully supportive of that decision of hers.
- After arriving in the house where Terramar's mom, Ocean Flow, lives, she invites Twilight, Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle for some fishoil tea. Which could be the same kind of tea we saw hippogriffs drinking right after they arrived on Mount Aris and entered the village on it and this confirms that hippogriffs indeed eat (and drink) fish. This makes it more likely that Sky Beak said indeed "salmon juice".
Even more interesting than that, Twilight did not seem to be appalled by the idea of drinking tea made of fish and neither seemed Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle.
Is there something we don't know about eating habits of ponies yet or did the transformation into seaponies not only change their anatomy, but has also turned them into omnivores?
- One more reaction by Scoots further confirms that she thinks of moving to Seaquestria. When Sweetie Belle sung about how cool eagles who live in the Harmonizing Heights are, Scootaloo countered with it that fish schools are cooler. Because of her inability to fly, you would expect that she loves eagles and pretty much all birds, just as much as she adores Rainbow Dash's skills, because they can fly, but after having experienced swimming underwater, she suddenly dropped that and started to like fishes more.
This is a very unexpected thing for her and a very sudden change of mind, so it shows a lot how Scoots has already made her decision where she wants to live one day.
- Towards the end of the episode, we see Carrot Top and Berry Pinch together at Mount Aris. This shows, in addition to the many ponies we saw getting into the train in Ponyville, that Mount Aris is a travelling hotspot for ponies now. And I now wonder what connection there is between Carrot Top and Berry Pinch, as we never saw them together before, and commonly saw Carrot Top together with either Noi (older sister) or Dinky (close friend of Dinky's family). There is a mystery to unravel here.
- During the picnic at the end, on the table in the ocean the two hippogriffs came to after diving into the water and transforming into seaponies, there is a piece of food on one plate that looks suspiciously like a roll of sushi that hasn't been cut yet. The food in the bowl the hippogriff on the right was holding looks similar to black caviar. This adds even more confirmation for them eating fish, if you needed that.
- Lastly, with this episode it is the first time that I understood why the Tree of Harmony considered a certain mission to be important for Equestria's/the world's safety. As a higher being and with his intentions to send ponies all over Equestria and now even the world, it is fairly obvious that the Tree's goal is maintaining peace in the world. However, so far, I could never see how a certain mission would contribute to this goal, unless it was completely obvious, like with the feud between the Hooffields and McColts. At the end of this episode, though, after watching it a few times, the epiphany came over me.
During the course of the episode, we saw that both Terramar's dad and his mom really wanted that he stays with them and that both of them put, unintentionally, pressure to make a decision on him. Both of them had an interest in him either staying on Mount Aris or in Seaquestria and there were probably other hippogriffs who had an interest one way or another, as well.
If Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle wouldn't have gotten sent to Mount Aris to help him and Terramar's problem would have remained, his inability to decide would have led to stronger efforts by both sides to convince him to stay with them. Eventually, this would have led to fights when both sides would have tried harder and harder to show how their way of living is better than the other one.
And this would have carried the risk of a complete escalation of those fights and of a war breaking out between Seaquestria and Mount Aris, a war where both kingdoms would have tried to prove their superiority over the other kingdom. Which is a situation the Tree of Harmony foresaw and wanted to avoid, so he decided to intervene by sending Terramar some ponies to help him solve his problem before it could create this much bigger problem. Looks like my Crusaders prevented a war between two kingdoms.
It hasn't actually been confirmed whether or not Terramar's parents are divorced but that's a nice lesson to put in the episode given how Sky Beak and Ocean Flow were still friendly with each other
Also, I'm going with the idea that Dinky and Sparkler are going to Cloudsdale to visit some relatives. And that Berry Pinch wanted to see Mount Aris but Berry Punch was too busy, so Carrot Top volunteered to accompany her.
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It has not been outright stated, but it was heavily implied. The other possibility is that, cruel enough, Silverstream and Terramar weren't exactly wanted and happened during a one-night stand.
Though that would either require their parents to have made the same mistake, having sex without precautions, twice (unlikely after it already led to one foal) or that Silverstream and Terramar are twins. They don't look like twins, though.
Hmm, I never heard a theory that they have relatives in Cloudsdale and considering they are unicorns and not exactly expected travelling to a town that is exclusively designed for pegasi, very intriguing.
How did you develop that theory?
As a friend of the family? Or to get some extra bits by foalsitting?
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Well, I like to go with the HC that Derpy is their mom, so it's their relatives on her side that they're visiting. As for the factor of Cloudsdale being exclusively designed for pegasi, Sparkler probably knows a cloud walking spell and they'll be picked up by some pegasi relatives.
Oh, and I can see Carrot Top is just doing it as a favor for a friend. Good old Carrot Top