How did baby Ember get her cutie mark?

[brightberry]

In G1, it sometimes seemed that the ponies had their symbols and names bestowed on them from some interaction they had from the elements/environment around them. That's kind of what I got from backcard stories as a kid. I mean, Bubbles didn't have a name until she got a bath? How weird is that. A lot of ponies are like that. My other childhood theory was that literally someone imagined them and they suddenly came to be like in the Neverending story.  They just were and no drawn out canon and backstory needed.  Ponies just sprang out from thin air.   And that, to me is far more interesting.

[lovesbabysquirmy]

My Little Nihilist: Nothing in Life Matters, Everything About Us was Created For Someone Else’s Profit, and We are All Doomed to Ceaselessly Perpetuate a Plastic Pony-Making Machine

I’m kidding, but teen angst Ember is my new headcanon (we’re supposed to give her our own personality, after all!). “What does your cutie mark symbolize?” “It’s a metaphor.”

*crying with laughter*

[Zapper]

Hello everyone,

I listened to baby Ember's dream. The tape that came with the pony baby Ember with her star cutie mark/symbol.

It was a cute story but it didn't explain how Ember got her mark.

Was that never revealed? Did she just get a random star? Was it maybe revealed in a comic or backward story?

Let me know if you know please. Or if you have any fun theories about it.

Cheers,

Luke

In Tales, Madame Percheron is shown younger with a different symbol (a sunflower) in a photograph in Shop Talk; in her other appearance(s) in at least Send in the Clown, she is shown with ballet shoes. Perhaps in the Tales universe, their symbols change over time with their interests and roles...

I always liked this version the best! The FiM version is now so popular because they made a big deal about symbols/marks on the show, but a symbol that can change as the pony changes feels just more natural somehow. A pony symbol as some kind of reflection of their being instead of their talent.

[Taffeta]

Hello everyone,

I listened to baby Ember's dream. The tape that came with the pony baby Ember with her star cutie mark/symbol.

It was a cute story but it didn't explain how Ember got her mark.

Was that never revealed? Did she just get a random star? Was it maybe revealed in a comic or backward story?

Let me know if you know please. Or if you have any fun theories about it.

Cheers,

Luke

In Tales, Madame Percheron is shown younger with a different symbol (a sunflower) in a photograph in Shop Talk; in her other appearance(s) in at least Send in the Clown, she is shown with ballet shoes. Perhaps in the Tales universe, their symbols change over time with their interests and roles...

I always liked this version the best! The FiM version is now so popular because they made a big deal about symbols/marks on the show, but a symbol that can change as the pony changes feels just more natural somehow. A pony symbol as some kind of reflection of their being instead of their talent.

I have to agree on this. It's a slightly different topic and why I didn't go into it earlier, but you cannot have a whole life defined by the inconvenience of what turns up on your butt. :/

The thing is that earlier generations were defined by how broad the imagination of the child was. So anything goes. Of course that doesn't rule out using the G4 ethos if that's your poison, but it's the least imaginative option to just cling to the invention of G4.

I think individual ponies in G1 sometimes did have stuff around their symbols...but not just their symbols. For example the TE ponies (comic only, possibly) and the Sparkle Ponies (backcard/comic, I believe) each had different stories behind their key gimmick features as well. I'm sure there are more, but just to point out that in G1 at least, ponies were more than just some random butt tattoo.

The toys in G1-3 were designed for imaginative play. Not as avatars for the TV show as the main theme. I guess that does make a difference in how they are marketed. I wouldn't call it 'gaps' in earlier generations. They aren't gaps. They're opportunities for imaginative play inspired by the child themselves.

[otocolobus_manul]

Mm, I would call it a gap, as it's a part of the universe that's never fully explained. That's not a bad thing, though - every fictional universe has gaps in the lore. It's just part of fiction; we can never fully capture or recreate the complexity of the real universe. I don't mean "gaps" as "failures", just as "things up to interpretation".

Also, what exactly fosters imaginative play varies by child. As a kid, I preferred universes with pre-existing rules and lore (if a toylike didn't have any I'd incorporate some from some kind of media) so I could focus on imagining how different characters would fit in the established world. I've always been more interested in characterization than worldbuilding, haha. I still got in endless trouble at school for my "overactive imagination" AKA undiagnosed ADHD, but my imagination ran more towards characters and still does.

Child me would've loved FiM for that reason, and would've loved using the toys to make my own adventures within the established G4 world, while G3's books and TV specials didn't hold my attention for long and thus I sold my G3s at a young age and didn't regret it until I started collecting as a teenager.

That's the great thing about play - there's no real wrong way to do it (as long as you're not playing with swords or something like that).

[Taffeta]

Mm, I would call it a gap, as it's a part of the universe that's never fully explained. That's not a bad thing, though - every fictional universe has gaps in the lore. It's just part of fiction; we can never fully capture or recreate the complexity of the real universe. I don't mean "gaps" as "failures", just as "things up to interpretation".

I wasn't really reading 'gap' as failure, just that in my view there aren't really gaps. But I grew up with the comics which did provide a more detailed world than the TV series or the backcards could do in the US, which may be a different perspective. Even given that nothing was set in stone and things were still open for individual imagination. For example as a kid I used some things from the fact file as a basis for the stories I wrote, but I still wrote the stories based on my own ideas. I didn't need to have that bigger overarching 'canon' set in stone.

In G1 Magic Star is either a down to earth logical earth pony (animation) or the most magical pony in ponyland (Factfile). These two interpretations seem to contradict each other completely. They don't have to, they can be put together, but that requires child + imagination to achieve. And frankly the latter is much more interesting as a character prompt in my opinion - but the former is the better known iteration. In the G1 animation, earth ponies weren't magical. Unicorns each had one special magic and could wink in and out. Pegasus ponies could fly over the rainbow. Those were sort of rules...but at the same time some of those things were being contradicted in the comics, where earth ponies often had magic (so did pegasus ponies), flying over the rainbow hardly ever happened, and at least one unicorn spent her life organising parties rather than doing magic (Sunbeam).

...I don't know if this makes sense, but what I'm getting at is that by having multiple canons G1 gives more opportunity for imagination than G4 can. I am quite character driven when it comes to my writing and so on, and G4 doesn't (for me) have any original characters, just familiar tropes that don't really develop beyond a handful of set-in-stone ideas (friendship, elements of harmony, princesses are alicorns, etc). Whereas G1 really doesn't have those or any other limits. And maybe that's not suitable for all kids, but for me it was perfect.

I have said it before but if I was a kid now I would not have got into MLP. For me the things you call 'gaps' are points of imagination and ultimately, for me as a kid, inspiration. This idea that FIM has the best canon because it is the only formalised canon is a bit of a misnoma in my view. I would never have wanted to play games in which I was tied to Equestria and the concepts it put forth. I get that some kids will and do and that's fine. My point is that trying to then extrapolate those ideas out and impose them on earlier generations is disrespectful to those other generations. It wouldn't be right to impose any or all of the G1 world rules (Such as they are) on G4 and expect other people to just accept that without question. G4 has its own concepts and rules, but they belong TO G4. And that's basically where I stand on this.

[Shaz]

To me, pony symbols are basically tattoos . Whoever it was mentioned ponies getting tattoos in a coming of age ceremony: that's my headcanon too! I suppose it's a bit of a prosaic idea for such a magic-filled world but I like it, and it's a good explanation for why babies often have the same symbols as their mothers (perhaps everyone in the family has that tattoo), and why some ponies have symbols that have nothing to do with their personality (the tattoo could symbolise what their parents wanted for them/it could just be a nice design that doesn't mean anything). It could also explain TAF symbols and other variations: perhaps they come from specific cultures within PonyLand who have different traditions. And if you really hated the mark your family gave you, perhaps you can have it lasered off and replaced (though this seems uncommon; if the tattoos are culturally important, it might be frowned on or seen as severing your family ties).

But what about babies with babyish symbols? Hmm. Perhaps in some PonyLand cultures, the tattoos are seen as charms that keep ponies safe from various evil spirits. Therefore a pony has to be tattooed as soon as possible after birth, much like a christening ceremony. However, you can't know what sort of personality the pony will have and which symbol might be appropriate, so perhaps it became the fashion to give the baby a cute 'babyish' symbol, which can then be changed in a coming of age ceremony when they're older. Perhaps sometimes these coming of age ceremonies involve getting a new name as well (it's ok, Rattles, you don't have to be named after a baby toy forever!).

So my theory for Ember (if the two Embers are the same character) is that she came from a part of PonyLand where foals are first tattooed when they're young, but not as babies. Perhaps the tattoo is received when they perform their first magic or an important deed.

I'm assuming ponies have developed tattooing to be quite painless and very precise, since it's obviously a big part of their culture.

So that doesn't involve any canon at all really (I've never even listened to Ember's Dream). Imaginative play for the win! (I'm 27, possibly I'm not part of the demographic Hasbro is encouraging to play imaginatively....)

[brightberry]

It seems like people are trying to shoehorn G1 into some kind of Marvel comic universe with an all encompassing story world that explains everything?  But, in the early 80s that really wasn't a thing with MLP.  It just wasn't what they were going for.  To do that, you would have to throw out part of G1 history, make other parts "unofficial" and give meanings other than what was intended to still more parts.  That's too much of a distortion of actual history. 

[Taffeta]

It seems like people are trying to shoehorn G1 into some kind of Marvel comic universe with an all encompassing story world that explains everything?  But, in the early 80s that really wasn't a thing with MLP.  It just wasn't what they were going for.  To do that, you would have to throw out part of G1 history, make other parts "unofficial" and give meanings other than what was intended to still more parts.  That's too much of a distortion of actual history. 

Exactly.
It's an anachronism.

And it really isn't necessary.

Besides, if you start on that path, someone's childhood is going to be trampled on. Whether you had your own world (like Faust clearly did), the animation, the comics, the backcards or whatever as your background - someone is going to get pushed out if you start trying to streamline it.

It's applying the "must have canon" logic of FIM to a generation that neither had nor needed that rigidity.

I know that folk have said it's not about that, but it is, because I'm pretty sure there never were conversations about one 'canon' and whatever for older generations before FIM.

[otocolobus_manul]

I'm not trying to say G4's lore is better than G1's - I'm exactly trying to say that they're both equal in different ways. G1's world/canon is more up to interpretation, whereas G4's world/canon has more set rules if you want to focus your imagination on something else besides worldbuilding. Both are equally great for different reasons, and appeal to different people. I'm not trying to force G4 canon on earlier gens by imagining G1 elements/characters in a G4-inspired context, but it is true that I've seen very few of the reverse happening. Which is a right shame, imo - G1's world, while not my cup of tea, is fascinating in its own right and deserves more attention. Not just in the case of generational crossovers, of course, but in any context.

And Shaz, that's a super cool idea! I love the thought of ponies having cultural traditions surrounding tattoos. G2, with its tendency to have ponies switch names, symbols, hair colors or even species (as in the case of Silver Swirl/Star Swirl), is especially fascinating to think about. What are the rites behind ponies changing symbols or names, or dyeing their hair, or somehow changing species? Is it natural or deliberate? Are they like frogs and have dramatically different appearances based on what stage of their life they're in? This has turned into a speculative thread for pre-G4 symbols and I love it.

[Taffeta]

I'm not trying to say G4's lore is better than G1's - I'm exactly trying to say that they're both equal in different ways. G1's world/canon is more up to interpretation, whereas G4's world/canon has more set rules if you want to focus your imagination on something else besides worldbuilding. Both are equally great for different reasons, and appeal to different people. I'm not trying to force G4 canon on earlier gens by imagining G1 elements/characters in a G4-inspired context, but it is true that I've seen very few of the reverse happening. Which is a right shame, imo - G1's world, while not my cup of tea, is fascinating in its own right and deserves more attention. Not just in the case of generational crossovers, of course, but in any context.

I am guessing because canon is less important for pre-G4 generation fans, although I admit it could be because of G4 fatigue and just wanting away from the M6 as well.

I agree they are both fine - IN their own worlds. The CM destiny concept is a G4 concept. It's neither fun nor interesting IMO to apply that to G1 just because it exists :/ It simply sends a message that G4 canon should override whatever G1 was doing because it doesn't have a proper 'canon'. And while I'm sure that's not the motive of everyone, I have seen people write that exact thing in other places before - hence context.

[Leave a Whisper]

Don't see why every symbol pre-G4  needs to be explained officially? They're colorful plastic ponies, and the symbol is there to help identify and make them unique, and sometimes ties into their interests. I don't even like the way G4 tried to finally shoehorn a reason in. It was handled poorly story-wise imo. A symbol magically appearing on your hip once you've found your destiny or talent or whatever was annoying.

[Carrehz]

LaW - my thoughts exactly. If FiM wants to explain the symbols then that's fine, if future instalments want to give reasons for them then that's fine too! But I agree, there doesn't need to be an explanation.

[Taffeta]

Don't see why every symbol pre-G4  needs to be explained officially? They're colorful plastic ponies, and the symbol is there to help identify and make them unique, and sometimes ties into their interests. I don't even like the way G4 tried to finally shoehorn a reason in. It was handled poorly story-wise imo. A symbol magically appearing on your hip once you've found your destiny or talent or whatever was annoying.

 

[otocolobus_manul]

I guess it really is a generational (human, not pony lol) thing, because I feel like everything needs an explanation. We'll agree to disagree!

Anyway, harking back to the thread's original intent (connecting two generational concepts just because they exist, not to assert the dominance of one over the other, just because I'm a sucker for crossovers simply for the sake of crossing things over) I like the idea that Ember got her cutie mark by looking through a telescope and finding a star that hadn't been charted before.