Young Six: Elements? (No Spoilers) · 3:28am Sep 9th, 2019
(I have not watched the finale. No spoilers!)
I know there's been speculation over the Young Six being the next Bearers of Harmony, partly from this:
Ponies have speculated that the aura colors indicate which Element each of the Six hold, but...
I don't agree with this theory. Let me explain why.
First off, the colors aren't the colors of the Elements. They're clearly the colors of the Bearers themselves (the Mane Six). Some of these make sense, while others, not so much. Let's look at the colors and apply them transitively to ponies and elements:
Silverstream > Pink > Pinkie Pie > Laughter (P: yes, E: yes)
Yona > Orange > Applejack > Honesty (P: yes, E: no)
Smolder > Cyan > Rainbow Dash > Loyalty (P: yes, E: no)
Gallus > Purple > Twilight Sparkle > Magic (P: maybe, E: no)
Sandbar > Yellow > Fluttershy > Kindness (P: no, E: no)
Ocellus > White > Rarity > Generosity (P: no, E: no)
Above, P indicates personality match with the Bearer, and E indicates element match. Let's ignore Silverstream because she could not more obviously be Ponk and giggles—at least they got that one right.
For personality, Yona and Smolder clearly line up with AJ and Dash as indicated by the colors. Gallus is closest to Twilight if only because he's a loner in desperate need of friends, but he's not much of a leader or a nerd. Only Silverstream and Ocellus have done anything remotely nerdy, and they have personalities much closer to other characters. I suppose I could tentatively accept Gallus as Twilight based on what's there.
For personality, Ocellus should obviously be Fluttershy rather than Rarity. But Sandbar doesn't match any of the personalities of the Mane Six. In part this is because he hasn't been developed as a character, which he hasn't—try to describe him without using empty ideas like "normal" or "laid back". His biggest character trait is that he's willing to hang out with a cosmopolitan group. (Silverstream is also largely undeveloped beyond her genki stereotype.) So maybe Sandbar could fit in for Twilight instead of Gallus, but Gallus isn't like anypony else except maybe a little of Dash, and Smolder is much more like Dash than anypony else. My point is that the analogy breaks down under scrutiny.
So let's examine the elements to see if that makes more sense. Obviously, Silverstream is Laughter. But the other five don't match up. I suppose Yona could be Honesty, but there's a problem.
Gallus is Honesty. There was an entire episode about it in Season 8, remember?
Sandbar is Loyalty. That's another easy one. Remember him confronting the Tree's challenge?
That leaves Kindness, Generosity, and Magic. These are a less clear, but we can try to narrow things down.
Yona is Generosity. It's the only one that makes sense. She does everything to extremes and always gives her all, and she's too rough around the edges for Kindness or Magic to click.
That leaves Ocellus and Smolder, and here I'm stumped. It's tempting to say Ocellus is Kindness, because she's shy and sensitive, but she doesn't get a lot of opportunity to show kindness, and she leans on Magic far more than any of the other characters.
However, Smolder could also be Magic. The question is, could she be Kindness? She has a hidden sensitive side, but when does Kindness shine through? I haven't seen it.
If I had to guess, Ocellus is Kindness and Smolder is Magic.
Now I'm worried I shouldn't publish any headcanon on the Young Six until I watch the rest of the series, and I'm missing a couple of episodes in the middle, so I'm waiting for those before I watch the final three. (If this topic is addressed by the show, you can tell me that it is addressed, but no spoilers beyond that!)
So what do you think?
Well, I don't think an exact match is necessary. After all, the originals were Strength, Beauty... uh, and some other junk. Could as well have been Perseverance, Sacrifice... etc. Plus, the elements were all shattered by Sombra, so... what I'm saying is that I have no clue which will be which, but I'd bet the Young Six will be the next Bearer stand-ins.
OOh! A subject near and dear to my heart.
I made this graphic a while back when the Season 8 finale aired:
i.redd.it/9n8oktaibgs11.png
You put a lot of focus on the names of the Elements of Harmony as they are presented in the Series premier of the show. But there's been other names for those elements.
Namely, what the Pillars of Old Equestria are called, as well as the short speech that Celestia gives in the Season 03 finale.
Let me break down the words used for each: (I should probably make a spreadsheet)
Element 1:
Magic (Element of Harmony)
Sorcery (Pillar of Old Equestria)
Leadership (Celestia's Speech)
Element 2:
Laughter (Element of Harmony)
Hope (Pillar of Old Equestria)
Optimism (Celestia's Speech)
Element 3:
Honesty
Strength
Integrity
Element 4:
Generosity
Beauty
Charity
Element 5:
Kindness
Healing
Compassion
Element 6:
Loyalty
Bravery
Devotion
----
And all of this is to say that I feel like the Elements are a lot more malleable that we would think they should be.
I actually stand by the colors the show presented corresponding with the student six's element.
Why? Because we don't get to know the student 6! They haven't gotten an episode to them each—which I feel like is the bare minimum they should have gotten. We got an episode for Gallus, but never individual episodes about each of these characters and their backstories. So it's hard to really say for sure that the Student 6 shouldn't have a particular element or not.
It also doesn't help that many of the bearers exhibit the opposite of their element some of the time (looking at you, Rarity in yesterday's episode).
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Dude! That's awesome, and I'm convinced.
I made a spreadsheet!!! (Feel free to comment directly on that sheet)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fuYpSLLo30T9s4LW7ms--j74yy_5A0AlEJrbO5vwovQ/edit#gid=0
That should help a little bit, I also included pictures of the original Element Gem Colors, and Jewelry colors. They don't necessarily overlap.
The proposal idea my wife had was that the Ancient Pillars Colors corresponded to the Element of Harmony Gem. And that every time a bearer switched, the color of the Element of Harmony did also. But there doesn't seem to be as much correlation as I thought there would be.
In the end it's... well...
It's a cartoon show for little girls and the creators of the show, (and marketers and designers trying to make all these pieces of jewelry and stuff look right), probably don't care as much about this stuff as we do.
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Thanks!
As others have noted, the Elements change over time, much as the Tree grows, evolves, and remodels itself. Given how the Treehouse of Harmony doesn't appear to have reconstituted the Elements yet, it's unclear what they are or who bears them at this point. I suppose we'll need to see what they do at the finale to know for sure.
I think it makes sense, in fact I think the Odd Squad (taken from Twilight's Pirate School) were supposed to take over as the mane cast, so them being the elements would merely be part of that.
Pretty sure Smolder would be Loyalty. Magic fits Sandbar because ponies are inherently superior to other beings. :P
This is the kind of subject which just reminds me how well planned out the characters were at the beginning of the show, and how haphazardly they’ve been designed in the later seasons. It’d be one thing if a character wasn’t intended as a recurring addition to the cast but just became one due to popularity (either with the writers or the fans), but they’ve been adding characters central to the ongoing show that don’t seem to have much concrete direction to where they’re going or where they’ve come from.
The students are at least much better than Starlight who is a shockingly sloppily designed character with which they’ve never seemed to know what they were ultimately going to do. But these are the kinds of questions which I’d love to get a show-runner to dish on... were there plans for these characters that got nixed? Spin-offs? More seasons that got cut, truncating their stories? Crucial details that got rejected by Hasbro late in the game? Or were they just throwing things at the wall to see what would stick?
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Now that the show's ending, we may get some inside information. Heck, depending on the terms of their NDAs, someone may write a book!
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I hope we’ll hear more details about what they would have liked to do, but even once a show is over it’s not necessarily a good career move to be seen dishing dirt on your former coworkers or employers, so if there was some meddling that messed anything up we might not hear about it for a long time yet.
But people might go into what mistakes they feel they had made themselves, or circumstances that couldn’t be helped that hamstrung some larger plans ... assuming, of course, that anybody involved feels like some element of the show didn’t really turn out as they wanted it to.
But yeah... Either way I’d definitely love to hear the thinking behind adding Starlight, the Pillars, and the students especially.
Edit: oh and Flurry Heart... it seemed like her being born an Alicorn was supposed to go somewhere and never did.
I think some of the problem here is working on Twilight's element being magic. It's not, actually. It's the magic of friendship. That could be Gallus, I think.
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Shhhh! That's still a secret!
One also has to be careful not to read too much into things. A *lot* of the writing was passed off from one person to another, quite unlike stories like Babylon 5 which was a single writer/director/approver of all things. In all odds, they looked at the characters and said things like "No, green doesn't work on this character. Try it on Sandbar and we'll use pink here."