Cutie marks · 5:32am Sep 13th, 2020
I spend a lot of time thinking about cutie marks, and I get that that’s a little weird. Something about the concept feels idyllic, yet somehow within grasp. Cutie marks are emblematic of The Thing I feel is missing in our world of squishy humans, and the lack of them somehow feels like it’s at the root of every other important problem. No matter what the problem, it could have been solved if only the right person had found their cutie mark.
Find your place in the world, your special talent unfurled. See the light that shines in you, and know what you’re meant to do.
Discovery, skill, illumination, and purpose. I have this mental image of a light radiating from a pony’s cutie mark showing them the world in… well, a new light. That light doesn’t reflect colors. It reflects ways in which a pony is needed. It’s a subtle change not just how the pony sees the world, but also in what captures their imagination. An argument, a couple on a date, an equation, a flight pattern, an animal. These are things worth paying attention to, but they don’t mean much when you see them in the wrong light. With a change in perspective, you can more easily know what these things say about the world and what someone really should do about them, and you can know that that person could be you.
A cutie mark defines a pony not because their fate is set in stone, but because a large part of their path— a part that matters very much to them— becomes natural. I want to understand how to instill that sense of naturality in people. I think it’s possible, and the world feels incomplete without it.
I plan to revisit this topic once I have a better grasp on it, but for now I want to at least explain how I think about the problem. Because a cutie mark defines a substantial portion of a pony’s life, it feels like a specification, much like the architecture documents for a house, the design documents for a complicated piece of software, or the DNA from whence an organism began. Specifications are descriptions that guide the creation or transformation of things, and so in some sense they sit at the intersection of language and construction. That’s rather convenient because this intersection is well explored in computer science, which is a topic I'm somewhat familiar with.
The way I’m looking at it, a cutie mark is a partial specification for living one’s life. There are many partial specifications for living one’s life, including stories, guidance from parents and mentors, and aphorisms. Cutie mark specifications feel somehow more complete and less constraining than these other examples.
I intend to understand all of these things in more depth over the next few weeks. One thing I’ve noted is that there doesn’t seem to be an explicit study of specifications. That sucks because that would be pretty useful for a lot of things. If anyone knows of such a field, please let me know.
Anyway. Until next time.
Ah.... Cutie marks..... Why don't we have them?
Good luck with the project, indeed! And thank you for sharing your thoughts. :)
Some interesting meditations indeed. I look forward to seeing your further thoughts on the topic.
5354461
I think I finally figured out how to answer your question! The answer is a little involved, so I wrote it up as a separate blog post.
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/919326/cutie-marks-why-dont-we-have-them
5367013
cool!