So, About The New Episode · 6:35pm Oct 24th, 2015
Ah, yes, Hearthbreakers. Putting aside my distaste for Christmas stuff when it's before Thanksgiving (or even before Halloween in this case), I'm going to admit...
I LOVED IT.
Yes, I really enjoyed seeing what the Pie Family is like in canon. For one, I am so happy that they're not Maud clones! True, they all like rocks (obviously), but they don't annoy me about it as much as Maud does. One of her is enough, we don't need any more, and yes, she's still my least favorite character. She's the only thing that bugged me about the episode--best if I speak as little as possible about her.
Anyway, so, I did have The Rock Farmer's Daughters on mind when watching the episode, and I was seeing what I got right and what I got wrong. Anyway, here are my comments below.
--Psht, lonely train station. Nickerlite still exists in my headcanon, and I'm not budging on it.
--(On a side note, I love the way they decorate with the gleaming crystals and the lights. It's pretty.) 
--Huh, so apparently, Igneous and Cloudy speak in fancy Early Modern English speech.
--Also, canon name for Pinkie's grandpa! Feldspar Granite Pie--neat. 
--(Crap, does that mean Granny Pie is Igneous' mother, or...?)
--Cloudy, why do you have a different voice from last time?
--(Granny Smith, really? "Big Mama Q"? Sounds like a rapper name)
--Limestone scares me. I had her as a sarcastic and sassy mare in the fic; here, she's kinda mean and aggressive.
--(Also, punny cutie mark is punny--it's a lime and two stones!)
--Wait, wait, wait... Marble and Pinkie are twins?! Also, yay, I was right in that Marble is the youngest! She's shyer than I wrote her, but... but... SHE'S SO CUTE I'M GONNA DIE.
--(I think this means Pinkie is the third child; darn it, I had her as the second)
--Stone soup! I totally called that it would be a meal they eat!
--(Igneous just casually chews on a rock 
)
--Pinkie was calling them "Mom and Dad" in earlier episodes--why is she calling them "Ma and Pa" now? Eh, nitpick, besides, I kind of like it.
--Is it just me, or does there seem to be a little friction between Pinkie and Limestone? It's not nearly at Sandwich feud levels, but Pinkie's kind of sassy toward her.
--Hello there, quarry! I had no idea you existed!
--Nimble Thimble sewed the first Hearth's Warming Flag. Nice history.
--Hello there, crystally mine! Looks like a bunch of other people knew you existed... and I neglected you.
--Pairing stone? Igneous and Cloudy were betrothed by a pairing stone? Ooookay. At least this was a good match.
--Sudden faultline is sudden, conveniently there to make sure Applejack messed up more than she already had.
--Another Pie ancestor--Holder Clobberstone.
--(Dragon's nest? He found that boulder in a dragon's nest? Um...)
--Aw, geez, if Maud's having trouble, then that's one heavy boulder. 
--(Let's not make pushing the boulder out of the quarry a tradition.)
--What the heck episode why are you shipping MarbleMac?
--I liked Igneous' cute awkward moment in trying to say "Yeehaw". And Cloudy's little clap there... 
So, yeah, we finally get to see the rest of the Pies. I like them... mostly... (but Limestone still scares me, and I don't need to repeat my feelings on Maud).
Now, of course, I'm not going to go back and rewrite RFD--that took eight months to complete, and it'd take forever to adjust accordingly. Besides, RFD's in an alternate universe anyway, so it's all good. At least I have some idea of how to write them for future stories. 
Well, she's Limestone. Of course she's sour.
And I can definitely see how she and Pinkie would grate on one another, given their very different default emotional states.
Also, you seem to be the only other person who noticed the twin thing. Definitely didn't see that coming. Or the surprising rapport between Maud and Apple Bloom of all ponies.
Must...ship...MARBLEMAC!!!!!
It was awesomely cute.
Yeah, I need to watch that episode. Though when I saw that it was coming out, I thought that would enjoy it!
I probably will enjoy it also!
The episode numbers for Season Five are really messed up, even more so than usual. Their internal numbering scheme has their Hearth's Warming Eve (early-winter) festival coming before their Nightmare Night (harvest) festival. Rather obviously, "Hearthbreakers" should be one of the last episodes in Season Five, just as rather obviously "Tanks For the Memories" has to be either the first Season Five episode or occurring just before "Hearthbreakers," if one wants to fit Season Five into a single year or less.
I liked the Pies as shown in this episode, even though one or two things derail my fanon -- mostly in minor ways, though. One of the things I really liked about it was that the show depicts the Pies as having a clear and obvious family subculture, and yet each one of them is very much an individual, and a fairly eccentric one at that (which I kind of knew they'd be, given that they are Pinkie Pie's family). They also managed to simultaneously depict them as fairly strong and stark, and yet sentimental and loving among each other, which is exactly what you did in The Rock Farmer's Daughters.
There almost certainly has to be a town there, else why would the station even exist?. It's likely that the railroad station was located according to the logic of the railway designers, who wanted a straight run from points A to B, and weren't too concerned with putting the station close to the center of a mining town whose center may have been located according to the logic of serving mines; with the consequence that the location of the center of Nickerlite could be a compromise between several aims (in my fanon, it would be between the railway station, the river landings, the mines and the much older town of South-Dunnich aka Pitapolis). Also, we didn't get to see the station from every angle.
I loved that too, because it was both beautiful and made sense in terms of the resources easily-available to rock farmers. Yes, their farm (and the attached mine) yields them a fair amount of income and is valuable real property, and yes they have access to the gigantic Equestrian economy to purchase things they can't make; but anything they can make with their own resources at the expense of a little labor increases the profitability of their farm, and is hence worthwhile.
Some of the mismatch between the customs of the Apples and the customs of the Pies stemmed directly from this -- did you notice how many of the things the Apples made or consumed for Hearth's Warming Eve were things they could easily make on their own farm? Same thing was true for the Pies -- just different things!
They're modeling them on the Amish, who speak slightly archaic English. Specifically, the Pies (and whatever Equestrian subculture from which they spring) have kept the second-person familiar ("thee, thou") and are using some other archaic forms ("Lo" for "look!"). Igneous and Cloudy may have been speaking in an even more affected than normal style to make a good impression on their Apple kin.
I haven't yet decided yet whether to patrilineal for the Pies in line with this episode or not, but I'm definitely going to have Igneous' father be Feldspar Granite now. It's a really good name. There's an obvious way I can keep matrilineality -- remember, small town, consequently a very good chance of marrying cousins. Doesn't even have to be first cousins -- could be second or third, or really remote.
In other words, Igneous' mother could be a Pie from a different branch, possibly even one of the branches not descended from Harmonia (in which case she would be a very distant cousin indeed.
One of the big incentives I would have to keep matrilineality is that I've made Goldie Pie a fairly important character in my world, and made her Cloudy's mother. I even wrote Goldie and Jasper into Twelfth Equestriad Interview. I also like the idea of giving her the Heroic Sacrifice death I've planned for her, blowing up the ancient Hyperborean base to delay the advance of High Queen Hunger's Swarms and buy time for the rest of her family and town to escape.
My explanation for this would be that Limestone has become cranky as she shoulders more and more of the responsibility for running the farm upon herself, as her parents get older, two of her sisters leave to found other careers, and Marble is obviously unsuited for leadership because of her diffidence. She may be new to this leadership role, and hence exaggerates her dominance. Note that the only Pie who seemed at all impressed by Limestone's posturing was Marble? The Apples, of course, were new to her, and were on her turf.
Which would totally derail my idea of Maud and Pinkie being half-sisters to Marble and Limsetone. I'll have to think about that a bit. Though the half-sisters notion only worked in context of the Paradise Entity; I can see Cloudy as the virgin mother of Chosen Ones followed by the non-virgin mother of children conceived the normal way, more than I can see her messing around, and there was never any reason to assume a prior marriage.
--(I think this means Pinkie is the third child; darn it, I had her as the second)I'm not sure about this. Did Show really say that Limestone was older than Marble? Previous images of them as fillies made it look as if Marble was older than Limestone. It might be that, now that all of them are adults, Limestone is simply the more dominant of that pair.
But yes, Marble is really cute. I think Big Mac agrees with you on this.
Different social context. Pinkie was around Twilight and other more cosmopolitan Ponies when she referred to them as "Mom and Dad"; here, she was back on the farm with them. Literally.
Limestone wants to be dominant so that she can run the farm properly. She exaggerates it because, of all the other Ponies present, she's actually junior or the same age to possibly all but two of them.
Obviously, she's not going to dominate her parents. Or the unflappable Maud. If Marble and Pinkie are younger, then they are the only ones she figures she really has a shot at dominating; if Marble and Pinkie are older, then she has to try even harder as she becomes the youngest Pie on the scene (and the youngest Pony present period, aside from Apple Bloom).
Limestone does her dominance routine on Pinkie and Pinkie is totally unimpressed: her reactions run the gamut from "yeah, whatever" to "aw, that's cute" to mild annoyance. Pinkie is totally unimpressed because she grew up with Limestone and knows her aggression is mostly bluff, and Pinkie's not at all submissive. Plus, fighting actual Dragons and mad gods and evil warlocks and so forth makes sisterly wrath a little tame by comparison, unless your name is Celestia or Luna.
This bothers Limestone. A lot.
I figured it had to be there. Along with a mine. Because if it wasn't, where were the Pies getting their rocks?
They could buy them from somepony else, and they probably do buy some of their raw materials from other mines and quarries, when they want crystals and ores not found on their lands, but the more they can get locally, the higher their profit margin. And the Pies impress me as a strong, hardworking family. They probably mostly work their quarry and mines themselves, occasionally hiring additional hoofs to help out if they're doing an exceptionally big or difficult job. As you showed in The Rock Farmer's Daughters.
And as in my world, with the addition of Goldie Pie sitting up on a hill in her one-mare Mad Scientist's Lair / Birthing Clinic.
Of course in my world, there's a fifth Pie Sister to pitch in, though you can't see her very well.
This is open to all sorts of interpretation. It could be anything from mere ritualized sentimentalism (declare Intent to kin of both parties, do a ritual with the Pairing Stone then wait x weeks and hold a wedding) to mysterious Earth Pony magic (the Pairing Stone actually does the match-making). I fully intend to integrate it into my version of the story of how Igneous and Cloudy marry, but am not sure exactly how it works yet. Note that in my version, they'd been deeply in love for years, and with the full knowledge of both their families, before they announced formal betrothal. But in my version, Cloudy's responsibility to the Paradise Entity was the main obstacle; else they'd have gotten married long ago.
This totally sounds like mysterious Earth Pony magic which Applejack accidentally triggered because she had no notion how the Rock Pony variant of this operated.
I like that name. Incidentally, the farm growing up arond Holder's Boulder isn't inconsistent with my version where the earliest Pie Rock Farm (that of Petros Pita) was around 2500 years old -- I've always assumed that both farm and Pitapolis (the town that grew up around it) have been destroyed, abandoned and rebuilt many times in all those centuries, frequently being re-established on different ground nearby. And they are going to get destroyed again in 1513 when Queen Nightmare Hunger's Swarms roll north toward Canterlot; and rebuilt again in 1515 at the end of the war.
And note the size of that suspiciously egg-shaped rock. Whatever hatches from that, if it is still alive, must be immense.
The way Maud lampshaded it made it fairly obvious that the writers knew exactly why that didn't make sense, and were implying that Maud was deliberately delaying things until the Apples could get there and bond with the Pies by pushing it up the ramp together. Given that my Maud is in occasional telepathic contact with her sire, the Paradise Entity, it's easy to see how and why she could know and would do this.
I can easily see, given their personalities, why each would find the other attractive.
Marble's shy and in a fairly isolated area, so she doesn't meet a lot of eligible stallions and would often be too shy to get to know them on the occasions that she does. She's probably heard and seen pictures of Big Mac before, because Pinkie is explicitly a friend of his (shown most notably in "Pinkie Apple Pie"). We know that mares find Big Mac handsome, and he's also of very good character.
My wife pointed out to me that she might have gotten a crush on Big Mac before ever meeting him. If she has, she might have been having romantic fantasies about him. This would have made her even shyer when she actually met him. And Big Mac, of course, is canonically very shy when he first meets other Ponies.
As for Big Mac, it's quite possible that he heard about Marble from Pinkie beforehand. Furthermore, Marble was, as you pointed out, really cute and adorable. There are all sorts of reasons why he would have felt attracted to her. If I were a stallion, I'd find Marble quite attractive -- though at some point she'd probably have to actually start talking back to me for anything to happen between us.
Pinkie thinks their mutual shyness is cute and tries to bring them together, did you notice that? Pinkie probably also finds Big Mac attractive, but is far more attracted to Cheese Sandwich. She might well think of him as a good match for her sister, and certainly somepony she could trust not to hurt her.
In terms of The Rock Farmer's Daughters, that's an AU anyway. Perhaps Limestone's personality develops differently with Pinkie staying home? Also, I notice that the Pinkie in that world has a personality more similar to Limestones in the main universe, which may mean specifically that Pinkie shoulders the burden of being the leader in her generation (Maud doesn't really care to do so, as her fascination is for rocks rather than other Ponies) and thus Limestone can relax more.
I actually thought that Limestone was a good character. She serves as a nice foil to Applejack, in that they run their respective farms, and take things very seriously.
I also find it strange that they shipped Big Mac and Marble, since they may be related. Hasbro may have to confirm that their families aren't actually related, and I actually think that that would be better if they weren't; it would really make the moral from Pinkie Apple Pie better, since they're not related but still as close as family. Although, I still find MarbleMac adorable.
3494102
During the scene where Applejack revealed that she redecorated the farm, she outright says that Marble's the youngest.
3494202
My math might be wrong, because I'm not a geneticist, but here goes.
Suppose that you had a great-great-great grandfather. He was born five generations ago; whch is to say about 110 years before your birth. If you are 25, you were born in 1990; your great-great-great-grandfather was born in 1880. If he had two children, and from one lineage came you, and from the other lineage came Marble Pie, then, assuming no more recent crosses, you would be fifth cousins. Which is to say that Marble Pie would be related to you 1/32nd as much as you are related to your full sister, Jacqueline.
You have 1/2 of each your parent's DNA; your full sister has 1/4 of the same DNA as you. It would be unwise of you to marry your full sister, because there is a 1/16 (1/4 x 1/4) chance that you would have any particular paired recessive. Across your whole genotype, that creates a significant risk of birth defects in your children, and if your family routinely engages in sibling-marriage, this risk increases because some genetic defects will become omnipresent in your shared lineage (so there will be a 100% chance barring mutations that you would share them).
If you marry Marble Pie, then the risk of you both having any particular paired recessive is 1/32 x 1/32, which is to say 1/1024th, which to say less than a tenth of one percent. The chances of paired recessives with Marble would not be particularly greater than with, say, Berry Punch (and note, as you and Berry Punch are both members of long-resident families in a small town, there is a very good chance that you and she are also fifth or closer cousins).
Short form, fifth cousins aren't very closely related, which is why it's neither illegal nor considered immoral in most places for them to wed.
What's more, the Sweet Apple Acre Siblings and the Pie Sisters are (possibly) fifth cousins twice removed. This means that two of the connections between them are by marriage, which means they may not be any more closely related than are any two other random Ponies in Central Equestria.
So I don't know why Hasbro needs to be careful about the incestuous implications of love between two fairly distant relatives.
3494236
So then is the birth order Maud, Pinkie + Limestone, Marble? Or Maud, Limestone, and Pinkie + Marble?
3494853 Well, prepare for a shock, because look what the episode's writer just said:
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RFD just got more AU...
That's odd. I think Maud is a brilliant and hilarious character. Her dynamic with Pinkie Pie is really sweet and I could connect with her quite well. Not about rocks, though I was a rock enthusiast as a kid. Yeah, given how I constantly moved, I didn't get to continue that hobby.
{If you want annoying, watch Rainbow or Luna. *SHOTS FIRED*}
Anyways, I loved the episode too and the dynamic between the sisters was splendid.
3494863
So they're saying Limestone's the oldest? That seems weird given what they showed of them in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles," and the fact that Maud is going for a doctorate and thus (if the timing works anything like in our world) is probably in her early to mid twenties (I'm willing to believe that Maud, brilliant and with a special talent linking her to geology, may well have entered college early and hence be likely to get her doctorage early). Though, of course, this might explain why Limestone's rather bitter: her two immediately-younger sisters are both making careers for themselvs out in the Wide World, with the family putting a lot of money into Maud's education and Pinkie a national heroine who pals around with a Princess, while Limestone goes nowhere on the family farm.
3494908 I know, it's so weird. It seemed like "Maud Pie" indicated that Maud was the oldest.
Still, that theory of Limestone being bitter about the two born after her being more successful kind of makes sense in a way. I know I'd be pretty miffed if my sisters were succeeding while I'm stuck at home. Oddly, it kind of reminds me a bit of how I wrote Cheese Sandwich resenting his brother for having better grades and being more popular than he was.
Speaking of Sandwiches, I wonder how a meeting between them and the Pies would go now that we know what they're all like?
That's really odd that they're doing the Christmas stuff now because there is a Halloween episode coming up. In fact, it's the next episode. The only reason I can think of that they would do this is because the Nightmare Night episode will literally air on the day of Halloween, which is admittedly pretty awesome. Still I don't see how they couldn't have rearranged the episode order a little bit, unless some of the last episode leading to the finale follow some specific chronological order, but that seems highly unlikely.
Anyways, it was a great episode and I really enjoyed it.
3494947
Cheese is very different from the Pies, but I think they already know that Pinkie isn't going to marry anypony they'd consider "normal." Or, really, that most Ponies would consider normal. One of the things I like about the Pies is that they, pretty much, accept Pinkie for who she is, and understand that they are never going to completely understand her. This is one reason why Pinkie loves them back even though she wouldn't want to spend her life on the rock farm, as opposed to looking to her past as a hell from which she is glad to have escaped.
This also has implications about the characters of Igneous and Cloudy. They clearly aren't cruel or intolerant Ponies; their children are all weird one way or another, and there's no evidence that any of them are unloved (Marble is very shy and skittish, but one gets the impression that this is simply her innate personality). This is actually superverting a cliche regarding traditional farmers (one invented by resentful urbal intellectuals). The cliche version of the Pies would be cold, unloving and perhaps secretly evil.
I think that Pinkie's parents would be pretty protective of their daughters. What they thought of Cheese would largely be based on whether or not they thought that he'd treat Pinkie properly. At a minimum, they would be watching to make sure that he respected her.
Igneous might be dubious about Cheese's ability to help support her, and he'd be half-right, because Pinkie's means of supporting herself and the aid which Cheese could render would both be outside his experience. Igneous also knows, however, that he doesn't totally understand Pinkie, and by extension wouldn't understand another Pony similar to Pinkie.
Cloudy might also be concerned with the issue of emotional compatibility. Here a big question is just how active and reliable is the Choosing Stone. If it really works well, then this fear would be alleviated by them performing the ritual; but that's obviously something normally done shortly before actually getting married. Aside from this, Cloudy would be watching how they got along.
Limestone would probably be belligerent. Now, a lot depends on how deep-seated one assumes her hostility. Is it the sort of thing that would be masking concern for Pinkie (and hence lead her to be hostile to any stallion who might hurt her) or would it be true envy and resentment of Pinkie's success (and hence lead her to be hostile to any stallion who might genuinely love her and be a good husband to her)?
I think that Maud would like Cheese. She wouldn't really understand him, but then she doesn't really understand Pinkie, either; she'd just use her script for dealing with Pinkie and apply it to Cheese with the requisite modifications for dealing with males. She's very protective of Pinkie, but when she saw that Cheese really cared for Pinkie, she'd probably regard him as an additional protector rather than threat to her.
Marble would find Cheese's extroversion intimidating, but she'd probably be amused by him. And she'd be inclined to support Cheese's choice.
As for Tomato ...
On the one hoof, given his talent and personality, he's somepony likely to succeed financially, which means that he could take good care of a wife. On the other hoof, he's the epitome of a Pony who comes from and is linked to the decadent city, though he's not at all personally decadent. And he's got a sometimes-abrasive personality, so he might wind up getting into stupid arguments with various members of the Pies. Also, how tolerant would he be of the strange rustic ways of the Pies?
A lot depends whether he's merely a casual visitor or actually courting one of the Pie Sisters. Rather obviously, they'd be more critical of him in the latter situation. On the one hand, the Pies are probably protective of one another. On the other hand, there would be some scarcity-value to a suitor -- they're in an isolated rural region, and there aren't that many eligible stallions about. So if Tomato impressed them well, he might actually find himself favored.
Though I actually like Maud Pie a lot, I agree with you that she and Tomato aren't emotionally-compatible. Whether or not he and Limestone would be depends on how you read Limestone's belligerence. Marble -- I don't know how Tommy would react to somepony that shy. None of his friends are particularly shy.
I don't see Tommy working with any of the Pie Sisters romantically. As friends -- he might actually get along with all of them, eventually.
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Yeah, I got the impression that they accepted Pinkie and her weirdness due to multiple clues throughout the seasons. Quite frankly, same thing happens in my family--I have a tendency to bolt and jump around the house whenever my imagination runs wild, pop up and say odd things, and pretty much be excited for no apparent reason while everybody else is just 'meh'. My family just rolls with it. Heck, if I'm not doing that, that's usually a cue that I'm not feeling well.
I've never liked the portrayal of Igneous and Cloudy being abusive anyway. I love how this episode absolutely destroyed that.
Well, it's a good thing that Cheese would treat Pinkie well, and is the most likely pony to catch what she means the first time and see plenty of her strange ideas as good ones. Let's hope that Pairing Stone decides that CheesePie is a go.
Cheese's interactions with Pinkie's sisters could be interesting after the initial bombastic and cheery greeting.
He might try to be polite to Limestone, though he'd be pretty annoyed with her for much of the time (she annoys Pinkie, that's for sure). But if he had brought his brother, and Lime was being aggressive towards him... well, Cheese is pretty protective whenever he sees someone threatening his brother, so he'd definitely step in between them and make it clear that he doesn't like that.
He'd be on better terms with Maud. They'd probably somewhat connect over being protective of younger siblings always getting into trouble. Of course, with that being their only talking point, Cheese would feel a little awkward around her most of the time, because rocks are not very important to him.
He might think back to his shy days when he meets Marble, though he might be frustrated when he can't get her to talk.
And then with Tomato, knowing him, he'd attempt to be cordial, though a combination of confusion and awkwardness might make end up having him muttering little sarcastic quips to deal with it all. Results may vary. XD
Limestone's attitude would definitely rub him the wrong way. It would get worse if he decided to be sassy toward her. It'd take a while for them to realize a common point they have, but they'd probably still grate on each other. I've already covered Maud--they'd be bored with each other. And Tomato would feel awkward around Marble as well. Heck, he'd probably feel more awkward around them than Cheese would be.
Yeah, romance not possible here, move along.