The problem with that is that the pillars are not supposed to be sexist. That is not where the narrative is going.

The problem is that these Pillars are coded in a sexist way, not they are personally sexist.

It's the writing that seems sexist, not the characters themselves. Is that gist of what you're saying? It's one of those problems that are not Watsonian in origin but doylist, having to do more with the writer then the characters?

That is true. There could have been an interesting story about how ideologies have changed over the past thousand years, built into the distinction between the Pillars' Patriarchal gender assignments and the Element-bearers living in a feminist world where your gender doesn't define who you are or what you can do. Especially when you consider that the Pillars' ideology is ultimately meant to be wrong in "Shadow Play".

But, as Redmess noted, that would require this distinction to have been deliberate. They were created to be cool heroes from a thousand years ago, with no greater thought put into how they relate to traditional gender roles.

That's about the gist of it.

That's why I always pick on Josh Haber, specifically, when talking about these things. The problem isn't Starlight or Sunburst or the Pillars themselves. It's how they were conceived, written, and utilized. The flaw is in the writing, not in anything the characters specifically said or did.

Hell, even Sunburst can be a fun and likable character as demonstrated by "The Parent Map". He just needs to be under a better pen than Haber's.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 21st 2019 at 1:10:39 PM

I do feel like the Pillars are treated as heavily INADEQUATE though. Let me see if I can get across what I mean.

Like, would you say that Shadow Play glorified the Pillars? Because one of the main themes I took away from it was that rampant idol worship can blind you to things, and the cast being in reverent awe of the pillars was not a good thing. Because it kept them from thinking that the pillars could've been screwups.

The pillars themselves were undeniable failures. They may have planted the seeds that eventually morphed into the elements, but the elements have grown beyond them and are no longer the same. Meadowbrook pointed it out, and the Map clearly knew how to solve a situation that the Pillars didn't. Since it recognized the situation with Stygian for what it was. A friendship problem. The elements know more than the pillars do, they're stronger than the pillars. and Starswirl especially has had to learn directly from Twilight twice now.

There's a line in part 1 where Sunburst says "I'm sure that Starswirl and the pillars did the best they could back then". In context he's talking about magic, but it's a thematically important line as well. Starswirl and the others "tried their best" back in the past. But it wasn't enough. A monster born of their own mistakes almost destroyed them, and their solution was to piss off forever.

Now, move forward to season 8, and we have the Student 6. I don't know how people read the gender stuff with them, but I think their dynamic is a lot better in that sense than the Pillars. Their strongest members are Smoulder and Yona, for instance. They themselves are also positioned as a version of the Mane 6. As something resembling successors. The inheritors of the Cast's teachings. But the Students were actually celebrated in my opinion. They got to save the day. They got an entire episode who's central closing statement was for Harmony itself to show up and say "All of you need to shut up and stop moping, because you're all awesome."

One day I will make a good argument.

I agree with you that the Students are presented better in terms of gender dynamics. We have the traditionally feminine Ocellus and Silverstream next to the more masculine Yona and Smolder. The guys aren't as lucky, with Sandbar and Gallus being different shades of "Dude".

Gallus, however, gets some interesting development over the course of the season. Sometimes it doesn't feel like he's a tough guy, so much as that he likes to look like a tough guy. I think there are some interesting stories about Toxic Masculinity and its effects on boys' upbringing that could be written around him.

They don't have the same problem that the Pillars do. Possibly because they weren't created by the same person. The Students came into existence in "School Daze", written by Michael Vogel and Nicole Dubuc. Literally the only episode they have ever featured in to be written by Haber is "School Raze, Part 2".

Vogel and Dubuc are responsible for most of the plot-centric episodes of season 8, including "Marks for Effort", "The Mean Six", and "What Lies Beneath". It's more or less their plot, with Haber just popping in at the very end to cap it off.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 21st 2019 at 6:15:07 AM

Isn't Haber Season 8's show runner though?

While the Lady Writers were the runners for season 7? Maybe it's different from show to show but I always thought the show runner called most of the shots when it comes to a show's vision.

The Pillars does feel like the kind of thing that would have involved multiple people, since there's lots of tieins and it spanned multiple episodes and all.

This series comes off more often as being the work of individual writers doing their own thing with each assigned episode, rather than being one person's creative vision. Seems easier to tell the writing patterns by looking at who wrote a particular episode rather than by who's leading the writing team for a given season.

Though admittedly, I'm mostly basing this idea off of other people's reactions and reviews, as I'm not the best at spotting this sort of pattern on my own.

Edited by KylerThatch on Feb 21st 2019 at 11:43:08 PM

My gut says G5 will be a retread of G1, with Dream Valley, human children like Megan, weirdly serious and evil villains, etc. And the big gimmick will be that they're ramping up the fantasy adventure element. More emphasis on action and continuity, like the difference between The Simpsons and Futurama. And it will take inspiration from the new She-Ra.

I'm less confident about this next part but I don't think they'll be able to resist the siren song of doing crossovers with G4. Friendship is Magic practically invented the idea of selling pink stuff to dudes.

Edited by ThriceCharming on Feb 21st 2019 at 8:45:29 AM

Though admittedly, I'm mostly basing this idea off of other people's reactions and reviews, as I'm not the best at spotting this sort of pattern on my own.

I don't keep track of who wrote what, but there is definitely a lot of inconsistency in the show. Often it seems like the writers don't even watch each other's episodes.

I wonder if G5 will air on Discovery Kids, or if they'd rather try another network, or even a streaming platform or youtube. Myself, I'd like to see it on Cartoon Network (you could argue that they'd bury it on Saturday Mornings, but they've been pretty good to Unikitty, another toy-based show).

Edited by J79 on Feb 21st 2019 at 8:41:52 AM

Barry Safchik and Michael Platt

Gillian M. Berrow

Sammie Crowley and Whitney Wetta

Josh Haber and Nicole Dubuc

The whole list of people that shaped who the Pillars were in season 7.

Edited by MrSeyker on Feb 21st 2019 at 9:09:19 AM

Maybe they'll air it on Treehouse.

Post of the Day #2434

Posted by Seraphem on 5th Apr 2015 02:12:03 PM - Post #111278 in the new thread

We'll file that under the "Hilariously relevant Posts of the Day" category.

Story, I know you pull these with a randomizer, but sometimes I think the randomizer is following the conversation and wants to chime in.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:15:37 AM

It's probably also a sign of just how much some topics keep popping up.

And how many topics are semi-relevant to each other.

Now, I have never seen "the Cutie Remark" but from what I've gleaned from the grapevine, Sparkles only tried to rehabilitate Glimmer after every attempt at violence didn't work and because she was far too powerful to be left by herself?

Because, if so...what.

So, our Princess only goes for empathy and compassion as a last resort after violence didn't work, again and again, and part of the reason is because she's too powerful to let alone?

I'd be for attempting to reform a villain but it really seems as though it undermines the sincerity of it if one of the reasons has to do with how powerful she is because it kinda paints this image of it being necessary for the good of Equestria and not for Glimmer's good.

Edited by fredhot16 on Feb 22nd 2019 at 7:21:52 AM

It's not like Twilight ambushed Starlight, failed to kill her, and then said "Fine, I'll give peace a chance." Starlight ambushed Twilight, used an uber-spell that had serious consequences, ignored Twilight's attempts to talk it out, and then they fought a few times until they were both too tired to continue. Then Twilight was able to force her to confront what she had done wrong.

There was arguably some plot-mandated incompetence with Twilight being unable to talk her down first, and then being unable to fight her down, but the logic flowed well enough.

By the way, has anyone seen Sereg? I just noticed that he hasn't posted on the forums since November, and I'm concerned.

Has he posted anywhere else? Send him a DM.

Post of the Day #2435

Posted by Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi on Thu, 22nd May '14 4:09:50 PM - Post #73664 in the new thread

So, I checked Sereg's forum history and the last time he was on any forum was on this forum in what storyyeller said: 11-28-2018.

Test (trying to figure out how to work around Tv Trope's broken handling of unicode)

F̴̛̖͇̪̳́̈n̷̳͛̽̉͆͒o̷̢̨̧̦̖̦̬͍͇̺̱̟̾̂̒͌̓̒͑̅͒̂̒̕r̸̛̥̄̑̉̎̄̔́̌͐̅̾̚d̸̟͚̱̦̯̠̝̠̳̈́̂͑̌̋̂̽̈́́̚͝ͅ

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 23rd 2019 at 1:54:55 PM

cover your eyes children!