onionchowder
Smash Journeyman
Pillaring for the most part is not a frame trap. There will be a frame trap between the shine->aerial or aerial->shine (as shown in the frame data), but besides that it becomes a guessing game of "Is Falco going to do an early or late aerial on my shield?". Also, Nair has more land lag and less shield stun (before decay) than Dair, so unless you're trying to space it to avoid grabs, Dair is usually better.So are you just ignoring the first section where there's only a 6 frame window? Which can be cut down to 5 if Falco uses nair instead of dair? That's enough to shut down shield grab and all aerials out of shield, leaving only invincible Up B's, which only a select few characters have. Shine to aerial IS a frame trap when it's done perfectly. Human error might make it difficult to do a true frame trap in practice, but unlike what some players would like to believe, human error goes both ways. Even if human error makes it theoretically punishable, now you're asking for near frame perfect play from the other character. Not to mention that last section where there's a 2 frame window.
I don't know if you know this, but it only takes two moves to make a frame trap. If you have three moves put together that couldn't be punished, then that would be...two frame traps. Shine to grab is pretty much a frame trap as well.
Just picking a point out. I mostly agree with the rest of what you said, although I haven't really encountered these "whiny spacies players" you're talking about.