Aug
1st
2017
Points of Canon: S1x24 - Owl’s Well That Ends Well · 10:43am Aug 1st, 2017
Ah, the episode that introduces the owl with a name nobody can spell.
It also contains some really interesting statements regarding pony astrophysics – see RTAC #7 for a full discussion of that if you haven’t already.
- “This meteor shower tonight’s gonna be amazing!” Meteor showers exist.
- “You know, this shower only happens once every 100 years.” This would actually fit well with an orbital period of Pony Earth at about 200 years – smack between Pluto and Neptune – and a group of asteroids that share the orbital plane with it. Actually, I’m not sure a shower that reliably repeats once every 100 years is possible with an orbital period of one year like on our Earth.
- I think that’s the first and only time we see that hanging multi-tiered fruit basket thing. The upper tiers are difficult to get to without magic.
- Spike is using his cart again, and it’s definitely distinct from the CMC cart. I wonder, whether I should assume this is a chronology marker and put this episode before A Dog And Pony Show, because that’s where he lost it, or assume that he found it or got a new one.
- “I’ve also packed a telescope, apples, bananas, fruit punch, and my freshly baked homemade triple-decker nut-crazy vanilla cream cookies!” Season 1 has Spike cook like nobody’s business. I wonder, if he’s self-taught, or did someone at the SGU teach him? Because Twilight doesn’t sound like a pony very interested in cooking.
- “I wanna bring the ‘Astronomical Astronomer’s Almanac to All Things Astronomy.’” Alliterative allusions also abound, aggressively agglomerating.
- “You know that really old big blue book on stars, moons, planets, the universe…?” Ponies know enough to distinguish between stars, moons and planets, and observe multiple moons, though not necessarily orbiting the Pony Earth.
- Notably, Spike remembers exactly where the book is once Twilight describes it, even though he does not recognize the title. And he opens it to double-check, which is what results in the accident. Did he read it? With the way how dusty it is, it had to have been several months since anyone touched it last.
- The flame that fries the book is green.
- It’s interesting that while all of the remaining Mane 5 are already on the hill, Apple Bloom is standing there with Fluttershy and not Applejack, who is still climbing up.
1. Never understood the people who don’t eat the entire apple.
When told to take out the trash, Scootaloo grabs the apple core in her teeth rather than in any other way.1
- Rarity says, “Do we have Spike to thank again for this amazing spread?” This sort of picnic has happened before.
- Rarity made a jeweled bow tie for Spike. He never wore it again. Owlowiscious never wore his, either.
- While the Mane 6 and family are watching the meteor shower, two Bon-Bons are watching them. One is not amused.
- Meteors don’t usually look like that around here. I expect that the magic field has some equivalent to the compression heating in air to produce that kind of effect…
- Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom climb their sisters’ backs on their own without aid.
- Notably, Twilight has another portable telescope – the one next to her bed – and Spike didn’t take that one, even though it is present in this episode. Also notably, they were never shown using this telescope either.
- Pinkie jokes “And now the punch has been… ‘spiked!’” and everypony understands, which can only happen if alcohol is, indeed, a thing.
- “The Study of Comets. Comets are small, irregularly shaped bodies that are made of non-volatile grains and frozen gasses. They have body structures that are fragile and diverse, with a surrounding cloud of material called a coma, that grows in size and brightness as the comet approaches the sun…” Notably, Twilight never describes what the grains themselves are composed of, but otherwise, this is a very normal description of what comets are.
- The latch on the balcony door is shown clearly this time. It’s primitive, automatic, and should have resulted in somepony getting locked out on the balcony more than once.
- “Gosh, it’s cold tonight.” You wouldn’t expect a summer to have a cold night, would you? This is probably in autumn.
- …So who’s that “Gosh?”
- The alarm clock Spike grabs is not very clear, using two forelegs of a pony to display time, so I don’t know which one is the hour hand. But it’s clearly between 9:00 and 12:00, and it’s morning, and he’s late, so yes, day starts at midnight.
- “And what do you want for breakfast? Oatmeal? How about a sunflower smoothie? Grass pancakes?” Spike offers to cook all of that, but to make a sunflower smoothie, he would require a powered blender. Which means those are not just the province of eating establishments, but are also household items by now.
- Twilight refers to Owlowiscious doing all of Spike’s chores, presumably including cooking. I find it difficult to believe he did that, because he is never shown doing anything of the kind, so probably, Twilight had to cook for herself.
- …So who named the owl?
- Spike can sweat.
- So why does Spike expect Owlowiscious to talk back intelligibly?
- “So, a man of mystery, huh?” What’s this word you keep using… “man?”
- Twilight mentions books titled “Two-headed Mythological Mysteries” and “Ferrets of Fairyland.” I wonder, are they masked? I also wonder where the Fairyland is.
- Twilight literally says either “OMG” or “Oh, and gee.” Different transcriptions think differently. Both phrases are suspect.
- Mysteriously, while looking for the quill, Spike ends up in the Sugarcube Corner kitchen and Pinkie’s bathroom, where he finds Owlowiscious again, before returning to the library. Huh.
- “But the store is called ‘Quills and Sofas.’ You only sell two things!” I’m sure Spike is exaggerating, otherwise there would never be enough business to keep the store afloat.
- “All outta quills until Monday.” Mondays exist.
- Pinkie offers, in order, a quince, a quail, a quilt, a quesadilla, and a quiche - with a fork in it. All of these are things. I wonder if Spike knows that Twilight is afraid of quesadillas or not.
- Spike chooses to chase Applejack’s chicken for a quill rather than, say, ask a pegasus.
- So apparently, strong emotion can cause things Spike is holding to burn up, unless we’re discounting visual gags this time.
- Apparently, Spike is prone to abruptly falling asleep in general, in the middle of whatever he was doing, because back in Friendship is Magic he also did this. In this episode he does this twice.
- “Have you ever seen a dragon sneeze?” You would think Twilight had seen a dragon sneeze. Lots of times, if dust can cause him to sneeze.
- Where exactly did Spike pick up the mustache-twirling villain archetype? They aren’t characteristic for the kind of comics he reads.
- Spike acknowledges that owls are predators and expects Twilight to know that – the punishment he expects Owlowiscious to suffer is not for eating mice in general, but for eating them where Twilight can see that and making a mess on her floor. Which is telling regarding pony attitudes towards predators, at least the smaller ones.
- The place where Spike found that dragon’s lair looks like Everfree, and once Twilight is out of the forest, the same background is used as for the cases where the destination is known to be Everfree. We never see this particular dragon afterwards, though.
- Notably, this dragon’s lair also has columns chiseled out of the walls deep in the background, the same kind seen in Dragonshy. It’s actually the same background. This cave is ground level, however, not high up on a mountain.
- This hoard is composed exclusively from gems, rather than gold. Maybe this is why this dragon’s snoring is not causing an ecological catastrophe.
- This dragon’s flame is orange, while Spike’s green throughout the episode.
- “Hey, Spike. Why don’t you write to Princess Celestia? And tell her what you’ve learned?” replied to with “Really? Why, that’s a big responsibility!” suggests that Spike normally does not communicate with Celestia, or at least did not until this episode.
Owlowiscious is so Mary Sue in this episode.
This episode offers very little “wtf” and a lot of astronomically useful things, but one rather large question remains – so where is that dragon now and why didn’t we see him ever again?
The changeling was later disposed of in the Everfree.
I want to say the next universe over from the Breezie dimension.
I still want to spell that name Owloysius.
Either it's tied to rage or it's a gag, given how he can't pyrokinese on command in "Equestria Games"
The movies, perhaps? If Ponyville has a cinema by the time of "Babs Seed," it seems reasonable for Canterlot to have had when he lived there.
I personally like Estee's hypothesis: The red dragon has asthma. Or a similar respiratory condition.
It's possible that the green dragon moved deeper into the Everfree, so as not to be bothered by hungry hatchlings. Or he tried to revenge himself and was placated, bribed, and/or Stared at by the Mane Six. There's definitely a story there, though I haven't seen many that use him.
4620026
I’m tempted to assume that it is the Breezie dimension (many people, including myself, have been using breezies where fairies, the tiny kind, would be mentioned otherwise) but then I wonder how would breezies survive the ferrets…
Well, he’s owl and his name is vicious…
Probably. We know very little about pony movies, though.
Like most Spike episodes, I don't find myself with many observations here. Although you've mentioned elsewhere that you've found that Starlight Glimmer was associated with globes in Season 6 episodes - do you think that Spike was likewise somehow associated this way in earlier episodes?
'Fairyland'. Hrm. And yeah, if there were ferrets in the Breezie pocket dimension, I'd think there would very shortly be no more Breezies.
Speaking of no more [x], when's the last time we saw Owlowiscious? (And damn, if that's not a nonintuitive spelling of that name.) The wikia page says that he was last seen in the flesh in "What About Discord", with a photo of him showing up in "Celestial Advice". I think the writers just got bored with him.
4620116
Not really. All of the early globes that I remember except the one he covets turn up in school setting when he’s far away from the action. They turn up even when the school probably wouldn’t have a globe out – like during Twilight’s exam or during the lecture about cutie marks.
There are only so many permutations you can subject a “Who?” joke to, he is not otherwise a particularly interesting character, and he takes away screen time.
So yeah.
Alternatively, just that he didn't normally report to Celestia on friendship lessons.
(I wonder... if Owlowiscious did take over cooking, how long till Twilight would also be eating meat?)
4620158
So what did he write to her about then? :)
Mostly depends on how busy she was at the time he approached her with that dead mouse of his.
4620168
Well, we know that horses can and do occasionally eat small animals like chicks and mice.
4620168 About life in general, about magic, about Twilight... Okay, canonically he doesn't view Celestia as a mother, but he still knows her really well and I think she'd be a good candidate for a grandmother.
4620176
Which is precisely why she would only notice afterwards.
4620190
...somehow, this made me imagine Spike as Heimdallr. Son of nine mothers and all that.
Or some similar intoxicating substance, other than ethanol, that could be added to a drink.
4620666 Like, according to several fanfics, salt?
The headline for me is this: Equus shouldn't have an orbital period at all, since the sun orbits around it. However, the fact that meteor showers are thing means the planet has to be moving, right? Otherwise the meteors would all hit Equus the first time around.
Now that I think of it, are regular meteor showers conclusive proof that Equus is not in a Celestial Sphere?
Spike appears to cook everything for Twilight except Daisy sandwiches, probably what she was getting by on with Owlowicious. Even if he could cook, he has mousy claws.
Is OMG taking Gosh's name in vain?
Looks like dragons like to carve things into the side of their caves.
Why would a dragon's hoard being gem-only affect their breathing pattern?
Not surprised we wouldn't see this dragon again. He seems fairly deep in the forest, and probably sleeps 99% of the time.
4621809
Yes. There are only two ways out of this that I can think of:
See RTAC #9.
Would be really strange for them to carve things into bricks, if you ask me. I suspect a more ancient ruin…
Why wouldn’t it?
4622534
Unfortunately, this is supported by that awful Bad Apple comic, which had a meteor of solidified dark magic come crashing down.
This seems to make a lot more sense to me. It's the first real alternative to my theory that gods like Anubis just straight up made Equus in a literal mythological world-building. If Equus evolved normally (albeit with magic) around a normal star, then as the star lost power and turned into a white dwarf powerful magic users created the sun as a localized heat lamp, that makes the most possible sense to me. I think you've found the best possible example of the solar system yet! (Except the stars...)
Also, predictable meteor showers make it really unlikely the sun has the gravitational pull of a normal sun. Besides the many other physical anomalies a normal Yellow Sun swinging around rapidly would cause, comets would change their trajectory whenever Celestia is a minute off in raising the sun.
I'm leaning towards the idea that long ago the Diamond Dogs had a great civilization, that collapsed before the ponies ever showed up on this continent.
I would guess that A) Dragons only brief smoke as a side effect of their life cycle, the draconic equivalent of male pattern baldness, not all dragons smoke all the time. or B) The red dragon's smoke was a problem because it was on top of a mountain and blotting out the sun. The green dragon's breath is low to the ground in the forest, and dispersed by the weird weather patterns of the Everfree.
4623053
No, actually the opposite. Magic contaminates debris, which is then accelerated to escape velocity – which, at the expected size of this planet, even despite the ~1g, should be stupidly low, like ~1500-2000m/s – and subsequently makes five orbits around the star before finally colliding with the Pony Earth a thousand years later. Perfectly normal behavior.
There’s still the matter of ~1g gravity. The planet itself has to be artificially constructed too. :)
Actually, Fluttershy smelled the red dragon’s smoke. No weird patterns would prevent her from smelling the green one’s.
Like the original Equus was too close to the star when it became a red giant, so the gods or whoever dumped a bunch of carbon on a moon and steered it out into an orbit the size of Neptune, then evacuated select members of all the sapient species and necessary wildlife to form an ecosytem?
4623440
That is indeed an option.
Mind you, I haven’t been able to calculate it yet (I did try) so it’s just a very rough estimate, but it needs at least a pure iron core to produce this kind of gravity, and much heavier elements might be required. The usual mostly-silicon – or carbon, for that matter – won’t get it the ~1g gravity. Considering that ponies know that it has plate tectonics, the actual composition of the planet might turn out to be quite weird.
Alternatively, a magical engine in the core that generates the gravity would do it. That’s the whole reason the mice connection looks so plausible, if amusing – the planet had to have been made to order.
He bakes. It is oft said that cooking is an art while baking is a science.
4620026
I've seen him multiple times.