Recap / Triptych Continuum Glimmer

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There are those who say that a mark is a portion of the soul made visible to the world. That the mark is destiny, and so cannot be denied. Equestria has existed under the influence of marks for all of its recorded history, allowing the ever-changing tide of icons to guide the way.

But it could also be said that every system contains the seed of its own destruction.

There is one who believes destiny is nothing more than a trap. And there is nothing she will not do to make the world free.

The story may be found here.

Tropes found in this story include:

• Armor-Piercing Response: Right before Linchpin takes the action that ends his life, and right after Starlight has explained that it will end his life, the two share the following exchange. The narration even notes that she's incapable of understanding it, while simultaneously incable of not thinking about it. And indeed, she's shown to still be struggling with it when the Mane 6 arrive a few weeks later.
  Starlight: I don't think you want to die.
  Linchpin: [Hysterical laugh] That's your problem, Starlight! You can only think of the things YOU can think of!
• Awesome Ego: In-Universe, discussed; as a showpony, this was a deliberate and necessary choice on Trixie's part. It only becomes a problem when she starts using the persona off the stage.
  You're going to need multiple selling points. So... start with the personality, because you're about to craft an artificial one. Make it big and bold, then add a heaping helping of loud. Make yourself into the center of attention. Ponies have to pay attention to you, because you won't let them look anywhere else! Dress to impress, or at least to give ponies that much more to look at (if only because you're dressed in the first place). And you're going to need some public ego, or rather, if you're going to make this work at all, you're going to need an Ego. Dramatic gestures, the tone-shifting vocal patterns of the true showmare, there's probably things you can do with your mane, and you meld it all into the Ego because you're not only the center of attention, you have to make the audience feel like nopony else deserves to be.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Starlight has a surveillance network made up of spy crystals. It's not a very good surveillance network, because she only has so many crystals, she can't keep very many active at once, and the system has no recording capability, so if she's not watching when something happens, she has no way of seeing it. If she trusted anypony else, maybe she could put a pony in there watching constantly, but she doesn't.
• Black Comedy: One of the very few things Starlight is passionate about are the mane combs made from pony bones. These are completely irrelevant to her experiment, but she keeps trying to get ponies to try them out, and demands detailed feedback. It's also the only thing that the ponies of Truedawn aren't willing to go along with.
• Call-Forward: In the first chapter, Starlight explains that the teleportation device comes in two parts; the rod, and something sewn into clothes that protects the user from being killed in the process, which Linchpin hadn't realized and doesn't have. Much later, we see him being teleported to the community, and he's given a strangely stiff scarf.
  It is stiff. There's some sort of wire at the edges, helping it hold the shape. But once it's wrapped, it stays that way.
  "There," the big stallion declares with satisfaction, stepping back. "Keep you from catching your death." There's a little grin at the end of the words, as if he's taking note of a private joke.
• Central Theme:
  • Death, in multiple contexts. Flashbacks follow ponies on their way to inevitable death, and Twilight finds herself musing on the idea that "theories are crafted to die." There's even a long digression about how everypony wants to kill Rainbow Dash.
  • Every chapter of the story opens with some kind of reference to death. This isn't just individuals: ideas, places, emotions, and items are invoked, and there can be some comedy to it—but whenever a new segment starts, it does so with a termination.
• Chill Capybara: Both groups separately take note of capybaras just wandering around, hanging out. Twilight's group assumes it's a messenger from Fluttershy, but no, it just wants to hang out.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: At one point, Rainbow has to carry Rarity over a river during a rainstorm. The water gets under Rarity's clothes, and adds enough slipperiness for her to fall off of Rainbow's back and into the water, where she quickly gets swept away by the current. Trixie manages to save her by snapping a tree branch and putting it in Rarity's path, but as soon as she's back on shore Rarity immediately tears into Trixie for how roughly she was treated. Made particularly egregious by the fact that everyone else present quietly concludes that Rarity would most likely have drowned if Trixie hadn't acted. Oh, and Rarity freely admits that if Trixie hadn't done anything, she would have blamed her for causing the accident. Trixie also would have been willing to just levitate them across the river, but Rarity shouted her down before she could offer.
• Cult: Truedawn is explicitly called a cult by the narration (though it takes a while for the Bearers to catch on to that), and all its indoctrination methods are examined at length.
  Ponies, as a prey species, can find it easy to fear the different. The unnatural, or whatever they choose to see as such. They're sapient, and anypony who can think is generally going to wind up thinking about how many problems they have and how difficult it is to actually solve them.
  What does a cult do?
  It gives the problems a source.
• Despair Event Horizon: The prologue follows a zebra who has just had her mark removed. She commits suicide in less than two days. The narration implies this is a common reaction.
• Dramatic Irony: The audience knows from the very start that Linchpin escaped from a brainwashing cult (and can guess some more details with knowledge from the show). The Bearers and the Princesses know absolutely nothing, so they keep struggling not to make too many assumptions. For example, maybe the markless ponies are sick (they're convinced everypony else is sick), maybe the last stages of the disease cause ponies to flee (they think that too). Maybe Linchpin agreed to have his mark removed (he did... for a certain value of "agreed").
• The Drifter: Glimmer is a villainous example in the prologue. She's making her way through zebra lands because their kraals don't coordinate law enforcement and it's easier to find isolated individuals to experiment on there than it is in Equestria. Also because not including Zebras in her studies would be prejudiced and a poor application of the scientific method.
• Driven to Suicide: Each of the first two chapters ends with one of Glimmer's victims committing suicide in response to being stripped of their mark.
• Dying Smirk: Linchpin dies with a small smile on his face. In the following chapters it serves to underscore the intensely gruesome nature of his death and the desperation he must have experienced leading up to it.
• Empty Shell: The ponies of Truedawn are not completely gone. But between the loss of their marks, the loss of their magic, and their absurd desire to always act equally with everypony else, what's left is just a mindless, smiling automaton fungible with any other in the herd.
  The locals looked — happy. Constantly. But it almost felt as if there was something else present or rather, as if there wasn't.
  Fall into the mark, until only the talent remains.
  Fall into — the absence?
  The lack?
  They all seemed so happy. They smiled all the time.
  'void, hollowed'
  As if the only thing which truly existed about each pony was... the smile.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • The Doctors Bear specifically state that the corpse they found cannot be that of Linchpin, despite having the right height, build, tribe, and colors, because the marks are different and it's well known that nothing can change a mark.
  • Linchpin's fake mark fades almost immediately after his death, and this is caught on-camera, leaving the Doctors Bear to suspect a disease that destroys marks rather than that the mark they saw was somehow faked.
• Exact Words:
  • Trixie gets unintentionally brought along during Twilight's teleportation of the Bearers to follow the fragments of the teleportation device, because during the buildup to casting the spell, Twilight repeats to herself that she wants to bring all of her friends with her. Because the others aren't privy to Twilight's internal monologue, this leaves them believing that Trixie deliberately sabotaged the teleport by somehow attaching herself to it.
  • Trixie gets around Starlight's Seeds of Truth this way; she never actually says "I want to help you" or "I want to get rid of my cutie mark". She says "You're trying to get rid of marks. Mine is for innovation. Would you like to know how to do it better?" There's no actual promise in anything she says. Sadly, the Bearers mostly miss this trick, leading them to assume Trixie really did betray them.
• Fictional Disability: The ponies of Truedawn treat anypony who still has their mark as if they're a brainwashed slave who doesn't even know it (they are brainwashed slaves who don't even know it). This, notably, is how Starlight gets away with keeping her mark; she convinced them all that it was shameful, and a great burden that she would give up in a second if she could. It's quite likely that she believes this herself.
• Foil:
  • Rarity and Trixie are compared repeatedly throughout the fic, with Rarity getting the short end. Trixie did something bad and is trying to be better, but Rarity can see nothing except that maybe she would have done the same thing in her situation, and refusing to believe it.
    Distorted mirrors. Every Bearer was a partial reflection of every other. Twilight and Pinkie could both get lost in their own heads. Rainbow and Applejack easily compared aspects of their core drives. Designer and caretaker... one would frequently blame anypony except herself, while the other's emotional attacks were typically aimed inwards. And in both cases, they almost never went after the actual source.
  • As Twilight Sparkle interacts with Starlight Glimmer, she becomes increasingly aware of their similarities; both of them being highly intelligent magical prodigies with less than stellar social skills. Twilight even starts repeatedly offering up mental pleas for assurances that she wasn't that bad when she sees how completely inept Starlight is at social interaction, being quite disconcerted at the similarities. But even at her worst, Twilight was merely brutally blunt and introverted — Starlight's methodical atrocities would have been anathema even to a pre-Ponyville Twilight sparkle.
• Foreshadowing: There are a lot of hints as to the identity of Linchpin's "friend," but his strong insistence that he stays out of Ponyville is probably the biggest.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: This seems to be part of Our Town's basic set up. It serves to counteract the aforementioned Despair Event Horizon and prevent inconvenient questions from the residents.
• Godzilla Threshold: Celestia and Luna are so worried about the implications of erasing marks that they decide to use their ability to spy from SUN and MOON daily, at pre-arranged times, to check for signs that Twilight's party is in trouble. It usually takes hours to pull them out every time.
• Human Resources: Starlight has conducted some extensive experiments into making use of the corpses her experiments create, including learning to make glue from pony hooves, leather from pony skin, and tools such as needles and combs from the bones. She doesn't need these things and doesn't create corpses purposefully; she just doesn't understand the idea of not using every resource available.
  The community doesn't have a graveyard, because the unicorn didn't see the need. It was an obvious waste of space, along with creating an unnecessary gap in the advancement of knowledge through cutting off supplies.
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Starlight is absolutely befuddled, even weeks later, by Linchpin's claim "you can only think of the things you can think of!" Her obsession with being the only "sane" person in the world means that she is utterly incapable of considering outside opinions. Gathering outside evidence, yes, but opinions different from hers are wrong, and thus can be easily discarded.
• Ignored Expert: On paper, Trixie has a combination of skills that would make her indispensable for an expedition into untamed wilderness: her frequent travels across various Wild Zones resulted in her picking up survival skills out of necessity, her knowledge of magical theory is enough to keep pace with Twilight Sparkle, and her talent as a performer makes her good at reading crowds and coming up with plausible cover stories. Unfortunately, her status as Reformed, but Rejected means most of the Mane 6 are unwilling to give her a chance to make use of these talents.
• Insane Troll Logic: Everything Starlight does is predicated on "how do we eliminate cutie marks forever?" That is her starting point and her end goal. She is able to make intelligent, well-reasoned choices that are nonetheless completely bugnuts insane. All while ignoring anypony who contradicts her, because she doesn't need to listen to "the disease."
  The mare had her own way of thinking, and it was something she tried to gift onto all who were unfortunate enough to encounter her. A series of progressive steps, moving forward under the pressure of eternal inquiry. The process was something which could pass for logic, as long as you didn't bring it up in front of anyone who was sane.
• Interspecies Friendship: Sizzler has never been able to make friends with ponies, who find his talent inherently repulsive. Since becoming aware of the existence of the small griffon migrant community in Canterlot, however, he's become very popular, and it's mentioned he may be considering moving there.
• Interspecies Romance: It's mentioned in passing that Sizzler has started dating. Given what was established about how he needed to look to griffons to find friendship, the obvious inference is that he's started dating one of Menagerie's more carnivorous species; the story is ambiguous if this is a griffon or perhaps the Diamond Dog, Yapper, who is shown comforting Sizzler in the makeshift royal coroner's office.
• It's All My Fault: When Spike and Twilight are separated, there are some issues because Twilight never learned Spike's fire communication trick. Twilight thinks it's her part because she wasn't trying hard enough to learn it, while Spike thinks it's his fault because he wasn't trying hard enough to teach it.
• Literal-Minded: Starlight is most politely described as straightforward, and it comes out in conversations.
  "May I compliment how clean you are?"
  There was a pause.
  "You just did."
  "...yes. Rather. Is that protection the result of a spell?"
  Eventually, "Yes."
• Loophole Abuse: Starlight uses seemingly Wrong Context Magic all the time through exploiting loopholes. For example, her water collection devices can't directly collect humidity, but they can exploit the way that liquid reacts to a unicorn field to produce much the same effect.
  And then you have what the unicorn thinks of as the dominions: categories of magic, divided between the sapient species. Pegasi have atmospherics, while yaks claim (and revel in) destruction. And you can't cross the lines—but with careful inspection, it's sometimes possible to see where they haven't been drawn. And then, with careful study, applied thought, several rounds of the scientific method, and some previously-untried uses of her field—she can sometimes find a workaround. Because when you're being forced to operate within unfair rules, the most practical answer is to write new ones. Find a different way to achieve the same results.
• Lost Technology: When the Crystal Empire was displaced, it left behind a great many technologies that required a Crystal Pony's innate magic to manufacture, and in some cases operate. Additionally, Sombra had several devices scrapped and their designers culled due to their potential to be used against him. One such example is the "telefacet," a quartz crystal that, when paired with another, allows for long-distance communication. Starlight is stated to have collected almost thirty of them, and has kludged them together into a subtle surveillance network in and around Truedawn, but she has no idea how to fix them if any of them become inoperable.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: The story does a very good job of conveying the utter, sanity-destroying wrongness of Starlight's mark amputation.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's left intentionally unclear what parts of the brainwashing are magic and what parts are merely mundane manipulation tactics. Even before ponies are brought to Truedawn, the recruiters have access to some nasty magical drugs that they tend to mix into drinks. There's at least some actual magic, though; part of what let Linchpin escape the brainwashing was the fact that Starlight can only keep so many ponies under control at once, but she doesn't know her new limit until she reaches it and some of the older ones escape control.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Linchpin's name is an obvious reference to his career as an architect, and is part of the community's lesson on how names dictate destiny (and why they choose new ones). In a meta sense, he is also the linchpin of the mystery, the keystone that makes the entire plot come tumbling apart.
  • Snap Shutter might sound like the name for a pony interested in photography, but there's no mention of him being interested in photography or it having anything to do with his mark. His name does, however, sound quite similar to a trap closing around a hapless victim.
  • Starlight's cultists take new names which specifically do not mean anything, as a symbol of their desire to sever themselves from their destinies and from every external source of definition.
• Metaphorical Suicide: Linchpin leaving Canterlot is framed in almost exactly the same way as a suicide; he gets a sudden burst of happiness as he destroys his life (which he now views as everything that made him unhappy), leaving all that behind to go towards some new unknown that might be better.
  The joy of self-destruction. The catharsis of suicide. Because as he eventually learns, long after it's too long to turn back and well after he stops actually caring... the breakdown of identity is part of the goal. And here he is, doing it to himself, out of what he believes to be his own free will. Rejoicing in childish glee as something else shatters, because he's told himself that it means he's starting over.
  What else can he break? Because he's not bringing much. He still doesn't know where they're going. It's a surprise.
  (He trusts his friend that much.)
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: Sizzler has only ever used his trick to keep meat from spoiling. However, a chance encounter with the Royal Physicians make them realize that what he's really doing is completely arresting decomposition, making him a coroner's dreampony since he can perfectly preserve a corpse. Sizzler himself is... less than happy about this, and using his trick that way for the first time finds him spending a few hours crying in the palace's abandoned barracks.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: After simmering for much of the story, Rarity's animosity toward Trixie eventually boils to the point where she starts shoving her way through a crowd specifically to spew venom into her ear. This prompts Trixie to go straight to Starlight and declare her intent to switch sides.
  • Later chapters show this to be a Subversion. While the audience is shown that there's a kernel of truth to Trixie's stated reasons for switching, her actual intent was to get into Starlight's inner sanctum to learn the true shape of her plans. Unfortunately, she sold the act well enough that most of the Mane 6 don't question it, with Twilight in particular wondering if they were ever really friends, and Rarity taking it as vindication for the aforementioned mistreatment.
• Mundane Solution: The humidity of the rainforest makes Spike very sick, and they can't find the gems he's craving that would probably help. Twilight's solution? Put him in a fire and boil the water out. Since dragons are Immune to Fire, the hardest part is making the fire somewhere it can't spread.
• Mundanger: Glimmer captures and breaks new victims using primarily mundane cult recruitment and brainwashing techniques, to the point where it's unclear if any of it is magic other than the final mutilation of the soul.
• My Instincts Are Showing: One of the ways that Truedawn controls its population is by encouraging the pony herd instinct. Ponies are never allowed to be alone unless absolutely necessary, and they're supposed to do everything at the same level as everypony else; no showing off or putting in extra effort. This encourages further conformity and discourages ever finding a reason to leave. Twilight also notes that this is why nopony particularly cares when sometimes ponies disappear and never come back; to the herd, any individual member is fungible.
• No Conservation of Energy: Discussed by Twilight's internal narration in Chapter 6. Normal pegasus magic obeys the conservation of energy: if you want to warm one area up you have to draw the heat from somewhere else, and when you want to cool an area down that heat has to be sent someplace. The Diarchs, under the other hoof, do not seem to follow this rule: Celestia can radiate vast amounts of heat without any apparent source while Luna radiates chill without apparently sending the energy she is draining anywhere.
• No Endor Holocaust: Averted. Trixie's takeover of Ponyville may not have produced fatalities, but there were damages. Rarity's flashback in Chapter 20 makes it clear she's still very traumatized from essentially seeing Applejack and Pinkie being tortured in front of her. Among Trixie's known crimes are forcing anypony who can be useful to work and attacking them should they flag, nearly tossing a cart onto Shoeshine, stabbing Amethyst with tacks, and doing something to Time Turner that required hospitalization. And even after the Amulet was removed, she still threatened Rainbow with agony. In other words, Ponyville has every right to be feel that Trixie got off easy.
• No Full Name Given: Starlight only gives her first name, not her last name. Therefore, while the Bearers are able to pass that along to the palace for research, it doesn't do much good. It's unclear if Starlight intentionally avoided giving her last name out of paranoia, or if this was just more of her social awkwardness coming out.
• Plot Parallel: When Trixie is in Ponyville, Twilight has to keep her in the tree for her own safety. This parallels Starlight insisting that her work is for everypony's good, and how that means she can ignore all their own desires as the ravings of a disease.
• Questionable Consent: In classic cult fashion, everything from the moment the recruiters meet their targets is all about convincing them to give up all agency to the cult, while also convincing them that this is "true Freedom." Lots of drugs are involved, as well as everypony always having the option to walk away as long as they never take it.
  He was asked to think it over. See how those who had shed the burden lived, and then... make a decision.
  It was presented as a choice.
  What happened to the ones who said no?
• Quote Mining: Starlight quotes a thaumic fiction author (with credit!) about how if you take a fish out of the water, that would be its first moment of understanding water; before that, it was so ubiquitous that it never even noticed. The fish would then look insane to all other fish. Linchpin correctly guessed that Starlight had not shared the entire quote, and therefore missed most of the point of it... and it would say some very bad things about the community of "Freedom" she was building.
  The author had, in fact, used that metaphor — and kept going from there. Because there was an additional point to make.
  You had to drop the fish back in the water.
  Removal from the dominant environment, in order to finally see what that environment was? Yes. But that environment kept those within it alive. Permanent extraction would teach the fish any number of things, but most of them were going to be centered around what it felt like to stop breathing.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: All of the Bearers except Twilight - primarily Rarity and Pinkie - give one to Trixie, calling her out for her actions when she initially visited Ponyville, the various ways she nearly killed ponies whilst under the influence of the Alicorn Amulet, her choosing to search for the Amulet in the first place, and her failure to even attempt to make amends with anyone but Twilight (which they suggest is itself a lie to try to escape the consequences of her actions).
• Reformed, but Rejected:
  • Twilight is the only Bearer to have fully forgiven Trixie for her past actions; the others' reactions range from Spike's distrustful tolerance to Pinkie and Rarity's severe hostility. They all routinely visit the library while Trixie is staying there in order to keep an eye on her, expressly stating they believe it only a matter of time before she betrays Twilight's trust.
  • As is pointed out during "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Twilight is the only one that Trixie bothered apologizing to following the Amulet incident, and is the only one who's been in contact with her afterwards. The others have no particular reason to believe that she felt any remorse at all for what she did.
  • This hostility extends to the rest of the town as well; several ponies are even willing to defy a sign declaring her under Solar protection in order to vandalize her caravan.
• Released to Elsewhere: While fighting off the effects of Starlight's brainwashing, a part of Linchpin's mind notes that anytime a member of her community "leaves", the whole town simply stops thinking about them and doesn't even wonder where they went. He's too busy escaping to devote much thought to it, but the implications alone are enough to disturb him.
• Sanity Slippage: After her mark is amputated, it takes a little under a day before the unnamed charcoal-maker goes completely insane. We get to watch the whole thing from her perspective.
• Sleep Deprivation: One of the key methods the cult uses to indoctrinate new members, combined with constant requests for help with work crews and lots of sugar.
  ...he thought it had been a week. He hadn't been sleeping much. Because the community was trying to create something new, and all they asked of new arrivals was that they join in the work. Whenever such was asked for, regardless of who was doing the asking. And they worked hours which had no permanent allegiance to Solar or Lunar shifts. If somepony decided to check on the crops at night, then somepony else needed to carry the light. It wasn't very much to request...
  ...he wasn't sure he'd slept more than two hours at a time in...
• Slipping a Mickey: Starlight's recruiters specialize in this. They offer to mix up fancy drinks for anypony who asks, and the victims are not knowledgeable enough to realize the drunken haze is lasting too long, and there are other stranger effects taking place as well. Twilight says most of the ingredients would have to come from monsters, and anyone who would use them would be a monster as well.
• Snowball Fight: Applejack and Twilight have one to let Twilight practice using truespeech, using slabs of earth to fling snow at each other. The second time, Celestia shows up and joins in to break the ice.
• Stating the Simple Solution:
  • Twilight mentions to Celestia that she's been saving up for the six-pony escort test. Celestia points out that the fees are paid directly to the government. Therefore, she can easily waive the fee, especially as it's something that will make Twilight's work for the government easier.
  • Non-verbal version: As Rarity is trying to figure out how to get her team across the river, Rainbow flies to the other side and just looks at her. She carries them across one by one. Trixie is also strong enough to carry them in her field, though Rarity shouts her down before she can offer.
• Stepford Smiler: The residents of the village just will not stop smiling. This contrasts with Starlight, who only smiles when she consciously decides it's appropriate, which manages to be worse.
  They smile, when they see the travelers. Smiles which, even to Rarity and Rainbow, are starting to feel somewhat... wide. Not so much forced as unmoderated. Everypony is happy, and can occasionally be caught looking at each other to make sure the state is universal. Just about constant.
  [...]
  "They're happy," Pinkie slowly said. "But something about that feels wrong. Like they've been happy for too long. And their smiles... it's as if they smile because... they've been smiling for a while, and everypony else is smiling, so they have to keep smiling." The stilled tail slowly drooped towards the splintered floor. "It's not joy. It's... repetition. And that's wrong. Does... does anypony understand what I'm trying to say...?"
• Surrounded by Idiots: Played for Horror. Starlight is truly convinced that she is the only sane and intelligent entity in the world, and "teaching them to think" is absolutely synonymous with making them think like her. But even among her brainwashed cult, she eventually becomes overwhelmed by their stupidity, so she seeks comfort among those who truly can't be stupid: The dead.
• Technopath: We get a more detailed look at Rachette's hybrid magic in this story. By smearing a device with her blood, she can mentally link to it, enabling her to activate, power, and control it.
• Thanatos Gambit: Linchpin uses the stolen teleport wand to teleport himself to Canterlot, knowing that Our Town's magical defenses will ensure he comes out the other side a corpse, in order to catch the Diarchy's attention.
• Too Dumb to Fool: Rainbow is the first one to realize several key facts about the community, mostly just by realizing that they've spent way too long trying to cover the holes in their arguments. She also correctly identifies the basic failure of logic that the community is predicated on: If your first step is insane, so is everything that comes after it.
  When it came to this kind of topic, she was done with listening. She also happened to believe that anypony who entered an argument with a thousand supporting charts on standby was working just a little too hard to convince her. Rainbow, despite the claims of multiple friends, wasn’t immune to logic. She was just the one who decided when to engage a significant amount of resistance, because logic was like stunts. You could build an entire plausible sequence from scratch and if the first move was false, then everything which came after would be just as much of a failure. Of a lie.
• The Un-Smile: Starlight is described by the narration as smiling in a mechanical fashion; she thinks it through, decides a smile would be contextually appropriate, and then puts one on her face. Pinkie is the first one to notice that this is more than just "socially awkward."
  "No," erupted in a blast of open vehemence, punctuated by a furious stomp of the right forehoof and a lash of pink tail curls: something which almost made Rainbow pull back and put the performer into a tiny jump. "Twilight could smile, even on her first day. She'd just forgotten what to smile about, and most of the why. Starlight's smile is just lips moving. It's the sort of smile which you put on your face because it can't reach your heart. And the others..."
• You Are Number Six: Scenes from Starlight's point of view reveal that she thinks of the village residents by number. Which makes some sort of sense since they change names pretty often, but is mostly to show that it's all just an experiment, and she doesn't actually care about them.
• You Are What You Hate: Played for Drama. Rarity has enough self-awareness to recognize how she and Trixie are alike. Unfortunately, that means the events of Magic Duel were doubly horrifying for her, because it could have been her. Since she doesn't want to believe herself capable of that, she's instead convinced herself that Trixie was already a cruel and sadistic person who only needed the barest nudge to descend into mustache-twirling supervillainy.
  Rarity hated Trixie, and there were so many reasons for that. But there was a part of her which took care to only regard the performer through a mist of rage.
  It did a lot to obscure the reflection.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: We get a horrifying first hand view of how Glimmer's Mark removal magic works under the Triptych Continuum's rules.
• A Wizard Did It: Discussed; many ponies accept "well, it was magic" as an explanation most of the time. Since the story delves into the deep magic of cutie marks, as well as highly experimental devices, this answer is nowhere near good enough.