May
19th
2018
Points of Canon: S8x10 - The Break Up Break Down · 4:00pm May 19th, 2018
Frankly, I expected that after shipping Mac off canonically, they would forget about Sugar Belle entirely. They didn’t.
- Chronology markers: School of Friendship does not appear on screen, – I certainly didn’t catch such an establishing shot if there was one – but Maud appears together with Mudbriar, requiring The Maud Couple to have happened, or at least, started, and forcing this episode into Season 8. Big Mac and Sugar Belle’s relationship exists, requiring Hard to Say Anything to have concluded. Dungeons and Discord is explicitly referenced. This episode occurs on the Hearts and Hooves day of the year it is in, and therefore must be on an integer years boundary with Hearts and Hooves Day.
- Big Mac starts the episode by staring at a kitchen timer, which conclusively demonstrates that ponies have 60 minutes in an hour. See RTAC #13. That said, usually kitchen timers count down, not up.
- As a side note, something that I could have noticed previously but didn’t: The oven the Apples use has to be electrical, gas or magical. There is no space remaining for any other kind of heat source. There is no evidence of open flames, so I’m leaning towards electrical, but they could be hidden by cartoon resolution, and gas remains a possibility. At the same time, this kitchen has a pump-style water tap, like Sugarcube Corner…
- Spike addresses Discord on the off chance he is listening in, and Discord ignores him. At the same time, at the mention of O&O, Discord appears instantly. Were he actually monitoring the situation in any kind of active fashion, Discord would know he’s being tricked, and either ignore the call or snark about it, but he behaves like he did not. Therefore, Discord has some manner of keyword-trigger listening capability, with unknown limitations, but does not know everything instantly. Not entirely unexpected, but good to know nonetheless.
“This needs to go in the mail today, or it will never get to Sugar Belle in time for Hearts and Hooves day!”
- I have problems with this statement! Previously, in Hard to Say Anything, it took much less than a day for Big Mac to get to Our Town himself, and he was burdened with a cart full of apples. It follows that by directly hiring a pegasus they could get it there with many hours to spare. I’m sure Rainbow would do it for Mac if they called her awesome enough times – or, for that matter, Discord could deliver it. Furthermore… mailing a cake?
- For that matter, we have seen Spike flash-cook pies before, haven’t we?
- This does give us a season lock: This episode overlaps Hearts and Hooves day. Unfortunately we still don’t have a solid indication which season it is, just that it’s definitely not winter. My call is still spring.
- “Can’t you see that this holiday is a commercialized ruse, pushed on you by the greeting card industry?” This is very interesting when taken together with statements that indicate that it existed pre-Nightmare in Princess Cadance and the Spring Hearts Garden. It would require a greeting card industry predating most other civilization. Or throwing that silly book out, that’s always an option. In any case, ponies have a greeting card industry now.
- Discord is using a wand for his performance. Notice that about the only place we have seen a wand before would be Trixie’s cutie mark.
The label, instead of being legibly written, represents Sugar Belle pictographically.
- And misrepresents her, drawing a bell. Presumably, because drawing a belle is too much effort.
- In any case, the sugar gets smudged resulting in sending the cake to Sweetie Belle, and I’m not sure how to interpret this mess, because it’s explicitly a plot point. Couldn’t he, you know, draw her cutie mark instead?… I can’t even. Lost my ability to even entirely.
- For that matter, sugar is in cubes. That isn’t necessarily what sugar looks like, and certainly isn’t a good way to write down an addressee’s name.
- Even assuming the label is indeed interpreted as “Sweetie Belle,” how does anypony know where Sweetie Belle currently is? Because the package is delivered to the Apple barn, which is definitely not her residence. The way the CMC move around town precludes them from notifying next of kin where they are in a general way. And since Apple Bloom says “no idea who it’s from,” there’s no return address anywhere on the package.
- “For a formerly friendless immortal despot, you’re pretty cynical.” We don’t have solid evidence that Discord is immortal or that he has ever actually been a despot, – see RTAC #6 – but that’s what Spike believes, at least.
“I mean, you don’t have tea with Fluttershy every weekend because you like tea.”
- So this tea happens on weekends. I was under impression this was on weekdays instead, looks like I was wrong. Then again, this happens after the School of Friendship is established, which might have necessitated moving the party to weekends.
- Even Spike assumes Discord’s relationship with Fluttershy is more than simply friendly, doesn’t he?
- Discord’s presentation contains a gas-fired oven and a toaster, which would have to be electrical, not to mention a phone. Unfortunately that’s useless for us, since Discord is known to like human paraphernalia, and nopony bats an eye anymore.
- “Is it like a riding mower, or…?” Spike knows that powered lawnmowers exist, otherwise he would never expect Discord to have one. All lawnmowers actually shown so far were not powered.
- Derpy is wearing her brown uniform, the same one she was seen in during To Where and Back Again, but is working in the same office she appeared in during Slice of Life. You would think Ponyville doesn’t have enough business for multiple offices of this size, which would imply this is not a competing postal service like UPS – even though the uniform shares the UPS brand colors for some reason – but is yet another non-uniform postal uniform. Which is especially strange considering that all the other ponies in there are wearing the same uniform. What the aerial postal intercourse? Incidentally, that’s a lot of mail for a small town…
1. Unless it involves Lemon Hearts. Who isn’t here today for some reason.
I’m not going to play spot-the-couple exhaustively,1 but I’m sure they’re going to torpedo many a background pony ship, especially considering that some ponies end up in multiple couples. At least two same sex couples appear in one shot, too… Incidentally, Rose and Lily appear to be one.
- Discord engages in making a ship in a bottle the hard way: getting individual parts through the neck with tweezers. I wonder, is this a hobby ponies understand at all? Because I would expect unicorns to find it an exercise in magic control for amateurs.
- “Maybe ‘We’re finished’ was about the day!” I wonder, why neither Spike nor Big Mac himself wonder, why would Sugar Belle be discussing this topic with Mrs. Cake, rather than, say, anyone else. Were they close enough for Sugar Belle to visit previously? Because we have seen none of that. Further, Spike offers the idea that Sugar Belle is going to be apprenticing with Mrs. Cake, which, as we later find out, is true – but it follows that it wasn’t a thing before.
- Discord’s handkerchief has a readable “D” monogram on it. Which is once again not very useful: Discord claims it’s a thousand years old, but he can and will exaggerate for humor’s sake.
- Bottles in the bar – ostensibly, not put there by Discord himself – are labeled with images of apple, some kind of berry, a pineapple, and a crescent moon. I presume those contain moonshine, unless someone actually managed to squeeze juice out of the Moon.
- “Please say no, please say no, please say no…” Sweetie Belle does not consider Snips or Snails desirable romantic partners.
“…but only to pay off skeleton student loan debts…”
- This representation of a skeleton would imply ponies have bones in their ears, which is nonsense. Previously shown pony skeletons didn’t have those, anyway.
- I wonder if Big Mac understood that at all. Because if he did, that would mean ponies have student loans. You don’t want ponies to have student loans. Trust me on this.
- “I don’t get it! We asked every stallion in Ponyville!” What, Scootaloo, even the adults? Because were they to confine the questioning to the appropriate age group, she should have said “colt” instead.
- “Yes, what did she do to deserve this?” A question many people asked, indeed, because Sugarmac was not really in anybody’s cards before it was abruptly announced.
- Lyra and Bon-Bon exchange identically packaged gifts, which is actually a little weird, unless the coloring of the packaging is in some way traditional. No other packages shown in the episode look like this, though…
- Doodle and Matilda having a couples’ dinner would indicate Slice of Life is in the past, which it would have to be anyway due to other chronology markers, but Doodle is wearing a black wig for some reason. Notice he was wearing the orange one as late as No Second Prances. What happened?… Is that even Doodle?…
- The list of potential suitors Sweetie Belle considered as per the chart includes Snips, Snails, Pipsqueak, Shady Daze, Button Mash, and Chip Cutter. I’m sure their class alone had more boys in it…
- “I have this wacky cousin, who has never been on his own…” This statement is problematic: It would imply the cousin is currently, and has always been a resident of Our Town, and would have joined it together with Sugar Belle. We have never seen any such cousin, and Big Mac remained unaware of his existence throughout his entire courtship. Unless this cousin got dumped on Sugar Belle very recently, I don’t see how this is possible, and a cult survivor is the last person you want to dump such a person onto.
- Mac fixes the cart by hammering the wheel on. Which shouldn’t work, because the axis snapped…
- Sweetie Belle is able to pick up a piece of the pie from five meters away or so.
I don’t buy the smudged label entirely, as you might have guessed from the above. Any interpretations that don’t make this episode stupid? Because the rest of it mostly within the limits of sensible for a comedy of errors, but this part isn’t.
Well, the cousin also isn’t, but he can be explained in a number of ways – for example, by involving Discord, who admits that he broke the wagon wheel, and could have convinced Sugar Belle to give Spike’s version of the reason, rather than the real, equally innocent reason, just for giggles, as part of a promise to restore her relationship. But the mysterious track of the package cannot be explained this way.
Discord could just be being ridiculous when referring to the greeting card industry.
I suppose postal pegasi have the same unerring instincts as Potterverse mail owls.
Also, despite its many-uniformed postal service, it seems Equestria doesn't have a concept of addresses at all. Not this episode, anyway.
Given that Discord's referred to "Tuesday tea" in the past, moving it to accommodate Fluttershy's teaching schedule makes the most sense.
Hey, now. It may be Hearts and Hooves Day, but there's no call for that kind of behavior.
Well, this is Discord we're talking about...
Other than other O&O enemies, anyway. Though that says more about Spike's knowledge of pony anatomy than actual equine skeletons. For shame, Twilight.
Would it? It's entirely possible that he's moving to Our Town from his parents' home in his hometown (and presumably Sugar Belle's) to run her bakery.
And yeah, the mismanaged mail is quite bizarre. And the B plot doesn't really go anywhere with it beyond reaffirming the Crusaders' friendship. (And, given that it's in the same episode as one of the most blatant Lyrabon moments yet, raises questions about Equestria's polygamy laws.)
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…But what if ponies reproduce by mail, like Vulcans?
She doesn’t let him do ear scritches, how would he know anyway.
See below that: Dumping such a pony on Sugar Belle, who has her own problems – and had her own problems, considering most residents of Our Town appear to have come there voluntarily – strikes me as extremely unwise.
Then again, it would explain why did she want to be rid of her cutie mark…
In a campsite, will make this quick.
Could the cooking timer be seconds, based on the speed?
If Spike thinks Discord and Fluttershy are dating, I doubt he's more perceptive than anyone else, so I'll take it as a general assumption.
Discord's denial, and mysterious passion for teas, seems to drive his attitude for the rest of the episode. In O&O terms, Discord's armor class gained a huge deflection bonus!
The postal workers union negotiated weekly New uniforms.
Here's how the mix-up happened: They got a smudged label, couldn't read it, so they took it back to the return address. That's exactly what would happen in the real world. Saw someone in the barn at SWA and handed it to them.
The chart of colts might be Colts that have been observed staring at Sweetie Bell.
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Nope, it can only be a minute timer and it can only be counting up rather than down.
Only, there’s no return address on the package, otherwise, Apple Bloom would know who the hypothetical secret admirer is instantly. And Derpy does not say anything to the sorting room ponies when she smudges the label.
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It could be that Apple Bloom doesn't know to read the return address. It looked like the girls saw the Bell and just focused in on that. You would think they would pour over clues on the package to discern the identity of the secret admirer, but it doesn't look like it.
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I agree she probably isn’t the sharpest nail in the box, but I doubt she’s quite that stupid.
Not taking Discord's comment about the greeting card industry seriously. He's Discord.
Lyra and Bonbon ARE kinda wierd, with one being a secret agent and the other one sitting like a human, so I can see them having a weird tradition of matching packages. Maybe it's to make it harder to guess what's inside?
Big Mac fixing the broken axle mystifies me. Initially I concluded this is something Earth Pony magic can do? But then, they would have easily fixed the wagon in the Apple Pie episode...
Could it be that he carries a toolkit everywhere and it's hidden by cartoon resolution?
More seriously, could the address label be a weird case of cartoon resolution? The show has established that English writing is never shown... so they can either show the viewers squiggles, or somehow indicate the recipient pictographically. But if they'd shown her cutie mark, or a portrait, then the delivery mistake wouldn't make sense. A bit far to go for what should be obvious, but then, this show does have to be watchable by 6-year-olds, who may never have used snail mail in their life, especially in 2018.
Bonus: This explains Sweetie Belle not complaining that her name was misspelled as 'Bell' -- it's spelled Belle on the label, but we see the picture. Six-year-olds won't know what a belle is, anyway.
This does imply that the postal service somehow uses names without addresses, or it would've ended up in Our Town. Unless that part of the label got smudged too?
As for the delivery pony seeking out Sweetie Belle at her current location instead of dropping it off at her parents' place, perhaps she's a romantic and didn't want the pie to get cold waiting, so she went above and beyond her job and looked for Sweetie Belle. If she wasn't at home, the Apple farm is an obvious place to check. Everyone in town knows the CMC.
Perhaps Mac's concern about 'getting it in the mail today' is less about travel time and more about 'the mail is only processed once a day -- perhaps because mailponies seek out the addressees instead of just leaving stuff in the mailbox'. Asking RD to deliver it means FINDING her, and she could be off in Cloudsdale or somewhere. Not sure why they didn't just ask Discord to teleport the pie too, though.
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It’s more that nobody asks what a greeting card industry is. Unless they learned to never ask what are all those things he is talking about, because he might start explaining.
Not impossible, but would introduce a weird pause in the conversation where he disassembled the thing and nailed the axle together or something…
I am pretty sure that it couldn’t be. It is referred to in speech, plot directly relies on it being as shown… About the only not-entirely-stupid thing I can think of right now, is that the label is for Sugar Belle herself, some manner of a private joke between Mac and her, while the actual address, with the properly written name is written on a separate label, which is hidden by the cartoon resolution.
If so, this is what happens, in order:
The only thing that remains is the ambiguous drawing which is not an address nor a return address. The CMC just assume somepony paid the mailpony personally for discreet direct delivery, which is precisely the sort of thing local secret admirers would do.
That does explain the time limit, I suppose…
Interestingly, this use of symbols in the address doesn't translate well because the misunderstanding is still word-based. Most (but not all) translations of the show use different names, which can vary quite a lot, so there's no guarantee that Sweetie Belle and Sugar Belle have anything in common. Right now there's probably some poor under-appreciated Indonesian or Hebrew translator going, "Oh no, not another one."
Theory: Doodle exhibits different personalities depending on his current wig.
Well, I do have an explanation, but it once again invokes an unbelievable coincidence.
I read about this postal address system in NewScientist magazine article:
Getting on the map: How to fix the problem with addresses
It's called what3words, and divides the entire Earth's surface into 57 trillion plots of land of 3 metres square. Each one is assigned a combination of three words like index.home.raft or Cutaway.jazz.wording.
Granted, Big Mac's label only had two "words": sugarcube.bell, but perhaps Equestria being a smaller location needs fewer words? The postal worker misread the smudge as something else, a word, maybe cloud, and cloud bell happens to be the address of the CMC clubhouse.
Admittedly, this is a huge stretch, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I thought about how to deliver to an address based on two seemingly unrelated words. Equestria might have real addresses, though, but the what3words system was devised for places where standard addresses were impossible to implement due to lack of road names, lack of roads even and so forth. The CMC Clubhouse could potentially qualify for a what3words-style address, though.
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Um. No, sorry. Really, really, just no.
What3words is not the first system to encode a set of geographical coordinates – two numeric values – as something pronounceable. Before it existed, we used Maidenhead locator grid. I still would even now, if only because to decode it, you don’t require a large database of word to number correspondence. Which is what what3words is: 40000 words used to encode grid squares instead of numbers, and an opaque algorithm to convert between them.
Such an address would be impossible to decode or encode without a dictionary, and even if that was available in any post office in Equestria, using it would be entirely impractical – it’s only practical for us because we have computers to do it. And that’s assuming that ponies have a universal geodetic datum (doubtful) and can determine geographical coordinates of an arbitrary point without a global positioning system to a sufficiently high precision (even more doubtful). I remind you that maps precise down to a single house are mostly an advent of the last three decades and satellite imaging. Sure, pegasi could offer cheap aerial imaging, but is anyone in Equestria determined enough to combine millions of photos into a single super-atlas, let alone keep it up to date?
And then consider that a one-word error results in dropping the package in Sweetie Belle’s hooves when it was addressed to Our Town.
If you’re up to supposing something like that, you’re better off just assuming pegasi have magical means to locate the addressee based on pictographical representation of the name, it will make more sense.