"The Parent Map" Afterthoughts: Equestria has Silly Fillies!

- I already loved the first few moments of the episode, because we finally saw the Crystal Empire again! It's a place we unfortunately get to see rarely, the last time where there was a real focus on it was during Season 6 in "The Times They Are a Changeling"!
And I like how we have seen that the Crystal Empire has a mailpony. It's not the biggest surprise since the Crystal Empire needs to get letters delivered somehow, but ever since I saw "Games Ponies Play" in 2013, I'm highly interested in seeing how it develops after King Sombra's reign and its return from its 1,000 year long absence and that the Crystal Empire got mailponies at some point definitely counts as development! :D

- The beginning of this episode also gave us a nice little insight into what happens when a pony gets called by the map. When Sunburst sat at the table and read in his book, he noticed something before he saw that his cutie mark was glowing, thinking that he feels the "Cerebration Transmogrification" effect he read about. Apparently, ponies who get called by the map can feel how their cutie mark glows!
And considering that cutie marks appear on the coats of ponies by changing the color of the hairs on their flanks, as we found out in "Ponyville Confidential" back in Season 2, this means that the glowing happens by the coat hairs around their cutie marks temporarily changing colors.
I'm always so amazed by it how much one can find out by deeply looking into such details!

- Just like "Grannies Gone Wild", we see a few of the Student Six again right at the beginning of this episode, this time Silverstream, Gallus and Ocellus. Silverstream flew away from Twilight's castle, sporting a very happy and satisfied expression, clearly up to something she looked forward to a lot. Gallus flew into the other direction, with a similar expression on his face. And Ocellus stood beneath Gallus, near the pond, looking quite happy herself. School's Out for the day at the Friendship School?
This marks the third episode now in which the Student Six (or half of them) have appearances since "School Daze", yet, they were in the background for the most part and without speaking roles let alone a focus on them..... It's starting me to bother again that they still don't get episodes on their own, after I could at least see all six of them doing something last week and have gotten a CMC episode the week before and I once more wonder when they will finally get their deserved, permanent place in the spotlight.

- Aside from Silverstream, Gallus and Ocellus, we've also seen Mrs. Cake trotting towards the school/castle. What did she do there? She definitely isn't a student, even though Twilight's school is cross-generational and for all ages, as she has way too much to do with having to run a bakery. I'm thinking that she is responsible for the school buffet and was either delivering some new food to the school (we could not see if the was carrying a wagon as the camera wasn't on her long enough) or that she went to the school to discuss a new order for the school buffet.

- Spike was very proud of the single map mission he had so far, even so much that he described it as his "fair share of missions". This showed nicely how he would like to be a great hero and do important things, just like Twilight and her friends, too. He was compensating for not getting to do such important things by blowing this one mission (that didn't even lead him out of Ponyville) out of proportions and making it look more grand than it was.

- When Starlight appeared like she doesn't want to go on a mission with him, Sunburst was visibly hurt by this, almost to the point of tearing up. This showed that, despite what we saw in "Uncommon Bond", he cares a lot for Starlight and his friendship with her. And, maybe he feels a little guilt and fear that Starlight doesn't want to be his friend anymore, after he showed more interest in her friends than herself when he visited her a while ago?

- I like a lot how Starlight's dad taught her about the founding of their village and wanted to teach her all about its history. Of course this was just a trick to make Starlight stay longer, but he also had a point about this. Problems of the present often have their roots in the past (that was even the case for one map mission, just think on the Hooffields and McColts), so he was right that understanding the past can be helpful for solving a problem of the present. He is wiser than it seems at first glance. And he also seems to be a historian in general, judging by the things he wanted to teach Starlight.

- There's one pony in this episode I can relate to a bit. While we don't exactly know if she was serious or if all of this was just part of the acting to make Sunburst believe there is a friendship problem, I can nonetheless relate to the aversion against using perfumes or deodorants to cover "bad" smells. Not only smell most perfumes much worse than any body odor from sweating ever could, deodorants are also not very healthy as they clog pores and prevent them from letting out sweat to cool the body on a hot day, which is why I use neither of those.

- The phrase "Silly Filly" exists in Equestria! Starlight's dad called her a silly filly while she was hiding from him with Sunburst behind the fountain. For years we have used this phrase for jokes, now we know that it's actually used in Equestria! :D

- After they called out their parents and when Starlight returned to her dad to apologize, what he was using to clean the blackboard from the things he had written on it to teach Starlight about their village's past, was her old blanket he was wrapping around her head earlier. This expressed nicely how he felt afterwards, even more so than his tears, as the blanket reminds him on the time where Starlight was really still a filly.

- We now know what exactly happened that Sunburst did not finish his education at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. So far, there were the possibilities that he got either kicked from it when it turned out that he isn't good at wielding magic or that he left on his own when he realized that. His mother said that he "flunked out" of magic school, so we now know that it's the former. Sounds like the education at Celestia's School is very strict and unforgiving.
Also, quite apparent because of his mother's worries of him not having a plan, Sunburst never told her that he has now a very high position in the Crystal Empire as Flurry Heart's royal crystaller, due to his mother constantly asking annoying questions about his future.