Checking the wiki article does seem to indicate truth in this comment. Who knew?

Your last little paragraph is probabl one of the things that bugs me the most about that episode. His 'tricks' are just him not being able to do the things he's actually trying to do. That, coupled with the fact that he got his mark BEFORE anyone was laughing at him, makes the whole situation of 'making ponies laugh be his special talent' just one big mess that doesn't make any sense.

At least this most recent episode handled the topic in a better way, I feel. Not going to discuss it here in case you haven't seen it, though.

Or perhaps she doesn't make it so that they survive, but through her travels (or the mane 6 travelling to stop her) we see how they died?

I'm not saying the cutie mark restricts him, I'm saying his natural clumsiness, which appears to be something unrelated to his mark, restricts him. And yes, clowning is more than slapstick, but that's another fault against the episode in my opinion.

Troubleshoes seems fated to be a rodeo clown not out of any skill, or ability to perform tricks, but because he's clumsy. And while one could argue that his clumsiness is some innate ability to do these sorts of things, in his personal life it's more of a curse than anything else. It's caused him inconvenience and physical harm.

Put this way, he's not trying to clown. He's not trying to perform slapstick and look silly, those things are happening by accident, without any control of his. He's messing up the tricks that he's legitimately trying to do. And yet the episode tries to have us believe that this is the mark of a great entertainer?

Actually, going back to doublecheck the episode makes it even worse for me. He feels the sense of fulfillment, but while he's doing what appears to be a normal rodeo routine. Not making anyone laugh, not doing a clown show, just performing. So now it appears that there's some strange disconnect between what he's actually good at, and what he wants to do. It's leaving me even more confused about the nature of cutie marks.

Is he supposed to be just generally good at entertaining? Is he meant to be at home in a rodeo, but restricted to being a rodeo clown because of his clumisness?

I agree about the rewarding experiences coinciding with gaining a cutie mark. My issue is that Troubleshoe's cutie mark moment was NOT emotionally rewarding. He was humiliated, and as I recall left the arena in tears, which makes it doubtful to me that he felt any kind of sense of belonging either consciously, or subconsciously. In fact, it's not until the CMC pushed him into performing with the clowns that he's shown as feeling anything like that. By the way cutie marks are portrayed in the series prior, THAT should have been the moment he got his mark.

With regards to Fluttershy, I think the answer is both yes, and that you're misinterpreting her talent. Fluttershy's special talent isn't so much caring for animals, as it is being able to communicate with them. But even caring for animals is her special talent, I still think the answer would be yes. You said it yourself, she felt like she belonged. This, using her talent to comfort the animals, was something that she was good at, and something that she enjoyed. She had a moment of self-realisation, and thus her cutie mark appeared. With Applejack, it may well have been something similar; after experiencing life in the big city, she returns home and realises that she doesn't want to live anywhere else, that the farm encapsulated what she really wanted from life.

Now, at this point I suppose I should make it clear that the pony, from the evidence we've seen, doesn't necessarily have to make the connection between the talent and cutie mark. It's not presented as a matter of "I really like this activity, and I'm good at it, therefore it must be my Special Talent." In more cases than not, it seems that the realisation is deeper than that, and not accociated with cutie marks until the mark appears. But, as far as I'm aware, all the special talents we've seen so far have arose from ponies doing things that they enjoyed. Things that they wanted to do.

Now we come back to poor Troubleshoes. True, he had a realisation that what he was doing was something that, paradoxically, he was good at. He had a talent for messing up. But the important thing is that it wasn't something he enjoyed. He didn't like being the butt of the joke, having ponies laughing at him. So why would it be that his mark appears in a moment of dispair?

I understand what I think the writers were trying to do with AMW. Investigate an interesting story idea that's been hinted at before, the idea of what happens if a pony doesn't like their cutie mark. And yet, that very scenario doesn't appear to be very plausible, going by the show's own mythology.

Now, its perfectly possible for a pony to have conflict because of their mark. Maybe it's not a very useful talent that they possess, something that doesn't really pay the bills. But to have completely misinterperated a mark in the way Troubleshoes has, and to have gained it in a way that seems so out of order with the mythology? That stretches belief somewhat, and I think that's why people reacted so badly to the episode, and why I think it doesn't enrich the canon.

I don't really feel that it 'enriched' the canon info. It introduced into canon the idea that one can have a cutie mark without knowing what it means, which does rather go against what was the established idea in canon; that a pony gets their cutie mark when they realise their special talent. Troubleshoes never realised that he might be good at making ponies laugh with his antics, he thought his mark symbolised nothing more than clumsiness. Admittedly, you could argue the same about Twilight's mark, that she achieved it without coming to the realisation that she was good at magic, but one could argue both ways for that.

The way that cutie marks are presented in Call of the Cutie, and in many other canon sources, is that finding a cutie mark is about knowing one's self. Either Troubleshoes didn't know himself, and still got a mark regardless, or he was right about it all along, and the crusaders were pretty much BSing to try and make him feel better. Either way, I'm not sure there's much of an enrichment of canon going on there.

Nah, if they're trying to stay hidden and feed they wouldn't be so dumb as to alienate such a bountiful source of love. It's probably sirens.

Yeah, Lyra's "cooked them up and ate them" line really threw me through a loop. I'm still trying to decide if that was delibarate (they saw that, and seriously thought 'that's a good thing to reference!'" or if it was just a staggeringly great coincidence.