Twi tricks Pinkie into asking Maud about a rock related question, which apparently disqualified her. Man, these rules are brutal. Why would that even BE a rule? And how does THIS rule only disqualify Pinkie, when that OTHER rule disqualified Sunburst, who WASN'T sleeping at all. That's not very consistent.

Why wouldn't it be a rule? Asking other people for the answers is clearly cheating, so asking answers for anticipated questions (because you know the current category) is practically cheating as well. Also Sunburst wasn't actually disqualified, he just didn't have a team anymore.

Also, weren't these two disqualified earlier? And now they are suddenly in the game again. WITH their team mates.

I don't think they were ever disqualified. Presumably, the penalty for sticking your tongue out is somewhat lesser.

Man, these rules are so brutal yet so casual at the same time.

Yeah, that part was weird. Most of the rules make sense by themselves, but there's a weird disparity in harshness.

The rules encourage jerkish behaviour between and within teams.

My interpretation is that usually those rules aren't enforced. Heck, Granny didn't even know that those rules existed. It's just that Twilight's competitive mania caused her to resort to asshole Rules Lawyering in an attempt to win.

That begs the question though of why these rules are written down in the first place, then.

It's odd how the episode uses one of Hasbro's games, but then makes the game seem overly complex, heavy on rules, and not all that fun, really. It's not exactly good advertising for the game, if that was at all the intent.

It doesn't bear all that much resemblance to Trivial Pursuit, anyway. I get the feeling the writers had something akin to University Challenge in mind.

It's not even called Trivial Pursuit! The fact that it a) has a different name and b) is completely different makes comparison to Trivial Pursuit unfounded. The only similarity between them is that the cards shown have multiple questions on them like TP.

Are Hasbro properties suddenly not allowed to utter the word "trivia" for fear of being accused of advertising now or something?

Edited by storyyeller on Aug 17th 2019 at 6:25:58 AM

I think it's pretty obvious what Trivial Trot is referring to. Not to mention the title of the episode being "A Trivial Pursuit" as well.

Edited by Redmess on Aug 17th 2019 at 12:57:43 PM

What do you think is more likely? That they tried to do stealth advertising but were so incompetent at it that it bears no resemblance to what they were trying to advertise, or that they weren't trying to advertise it at all?

I interpreted the episode as being about a trivia competition which is what, you know, was actually depicted in the show. The title was just chosen for the pun, not because anything in the episode was intended to literally represent the board game.

P.S. Years ago, I had an idea for an MLP fanfic which involved a trivia competition, as well as rules lawyering and seemingly incompetent teammates. IIRC, my concept had Derpy as the teammate everyone assumed to be The Load, but her wrong answers and seeming incompetence was actually a secret plot to manipulate the other teams and win out of nowhere at the end with a bunch of Rules Lawyering. Although in my concept, Twilight was the judge (due to being princess) and secretly wanted the Ponyville team to win, but had to appear impartial, which is why she went along with all of Derpy's rules laywering.

Edited by storyyeller on Aug 17th 2019 at 7:20:52 AM

I wasn't being serious, mind you, I don't actually think this was advertising. I was just joking that if it was, it wouldn't be very good advertising, since it seems to be rule heavy, confusing, and not much fun.

Twilight is a neurotic mess who can't hold it together for a minute, while Pinkie is over-excited at every last thing, no matter how (pardon the pun) trivial. That's pretty clear Flanderization to me.

But they've already been portrayed like that at various points in the past.

Yes, but never to the extent as this, where they pretty much spent the entire episode that way.

Pretty sure Twilight was crazier in Lesson Zero than this episode.

I've banged on this drum before, but this strikes me as just another result of the show's main problem — that it has to come up with a lesson for every episode. After nine whole years of characters learning new lessons every week, there comes a point where you can't have them learn new ones without having them seemingly forget their own character development.

Yep, that is the curse of a show like this. They tried to get around it by introducing new characters to have problems instead, and then ignored that.

Yeah, like how Fluttershy has to learn to be assertive in various forms across multiple seasons.

To be fair, she did pretty much learn the lesson. It's been a long time since she acted like she did in season 1.

It’s a moral-based edutainment show, not a character-based one. Our characters serve as the conduits for the moral: it’s not actually for them, it’s for the children watching.

While the main appeal may be about the characters, the main purpose is to convey lessons for the kids to learn.

It’s not a bug for Fluttershy to learn assertiveness or Sparkles to learn how not to be a neurotic control freak or dash to learn to not be an arrogant showboat multiple times.

Hell, didn’t that one episode in season 7, the meta one, cover this criticism?

Edited by fredhot16 on Aug 17th 2019 at 10:05:22 AM

It's both, and that's fine. The problem comes when a show turns into a long runner, and the character development starts to reach a point where they should not really need to learn these lessons anymore.

I think Mud Briar was flanderized for this episode somewhat. His dialogue is reduced to his catchphrase, and he suddenly seems to be more obnoxious with it, despite having undergone some character development in his last appearance. This wasn't in aid of any lessons, either.

Applejack has always suffered from some degree of flanderization in later seasons, with many episodes reducing her to the Truth pony who only thinks about Apples.

But as I said, I don't think Apples and Dash suffer from flanderization as much as from an old script that was written for a much earlier characterization.

Bulk Biceps is another obviously flanderized character here, I think. His character now seems to consist of Being Loud and Not Knowing His Strength. He didn't even have a question tailored to him.

Post of the Day #2611

Posted by Sereg on Fri, 4th May '12 7:48:04 AM - Post #184392 in the old thread

I'm not sure Bulk Biceps counts, since he never had a personality to begin with. The character has always been "look at how buff this pony is, isn't that funny?" with an occasional "isn't it funny how this super buff pony likes cute and sensitive things?" thrown in. Remember how it was several episodes before he even got to say more than one word?

One issue Mud Briar seems to suffer from is that people aren't sure how to write his quirk. Even in past episodes, he sometimes interrupts with things that aren't actually corrections!

I think the problem is more writers leaning too heavily on the quirk. The problem here comes mostly from Mud Briar being written as a joke character to accompany Maud, and to serve as an antagonist to Pinkie. The writers clearly have some trouble moving away from that role, leaning a bit too much on his annoying quirk, though some are clearly doing better with him than others.

I loved that in Student Counsel he was becoming slightly more self aware of his quirk. He recognized at certain points that what he said wasn't helping.

"Mm. I wasn't going to say anything, but these flowers are just glued on, so technically, it wasn't perfect already... But that's probably not important."

"Technically, she wasn't alone... but we wanted to help anyway."

Edited by GNinja on Aug 18th 2019 at 3:14:38 PM

Sorry to change the subject.

Although I love this show, I do think it can be so unrealistic regarding friendships. With Starlight losing her friend that caused her to go insane, that was a missed opportunity to teach kids the bittersweet lesson that not every friend you have will stay in your life and that people come and go.

With Pinkie Pie and Cranky Doodle Donkey, that was a missed opportunity to teach kids another bittersweet lesson that not everybody is going to like you and want to be friends with you. Even Twilight lampshaded this in the episode.

The show does seem to be unwilling to tackle difficult lessons and admit that in real life, things don't always work out due to the power of friendship. But I feel like that's endemic to children's shows in general.

I agree, that sort of things is generally seen as a Family-Unfriendly Aesop, and avoided by many children's shows. This is one of the main reasons children's shows can seem overly optimistic or naive, because they refuse the acknowledge the complexity of real life situations.

Except there is no character development. Or, rather, it’s limited to certain vital areas: Sparkles and Glimmer learning how to friendship, for example.

It’s why I said the PURPOSE (my phone can’t handle italics) is moral-based, not character-based. Because the character development is reserved for the kids watching.

Simply put, they do not really learn their lessons because their entire purpose is to communicate lessons. If they learned their lessons, then there’s no show.

Again, hadn’t that one meta episode covered that criticism of “why don’t you learn your lessons”?

It's still my belief that Fluttershy never DID learn the same lesson over and over. They just covered the same topic in thorough detail. Filli Vanilli is not the same conflict as Scare M Aster, for instance. And she's generally been pretty assertive since Flutter Brutter.

The issue of characters forgetting their lessons is a real one, but I always thought it was overblown in Shy's case.