YAY!

FINALLY. A season 4 My Little Pony episode I actually liked again! I haven't really liked an episode this season since the Castle one! By this point I wasn't expecting much from it at all, so I was absolutely elated to love it!

This one was just lovely. Rarity was more the way I like her (although loading all those bags on poor Spike was terrible). In one way I thought Rarity's transformation to being snappish happened a little too quickly, but of course there's only so far they can go with the amount of time they have. And that betrayal must have cut really deep. Ugh, that Pony was just awful. I wish her tricks would have been found out so she'd get disqualified. At least her assistant wised up and quit. I'm glad Rarity gave her the costuming job, too, so Rarity could go back home.

I really adored what I got out of the episode, that even though Rarity wasn't acting her best after the betrayal, her friends still cared about her because they knew she was just having a bad time and she wasn't usually like that at all. It hits very close to home and means a great deal to me.

Rainbow was pretty cute. I was terribly amused by her standard feeling on musicals, which I share. Musicals are normally not a favorite thing of mine, although it's usually more because I don't tend to find them funny when they're supposed to be funny and I think some of the song topics are bizarre.

Also, it was really a switch to have Rainbow thinking Apple was being too brutally honest! Usually Rainbow is way blunt.

Loved the Ponies' version of New York, too. So much fun. Nice to see such an urban setting once in a while. I am a city girl at heart. I could never be happy out in the middle of nowhere.

Overall, this was such a refreshing episode after the last few weeks.

I'm having a lot of fun with my friendshippy 100songs fics, too. I kind of think I write fairy tales, just about friendships rather than romance, although I definitely believe and even know that there are strong friendships as well as lasting romances (just that both are rare gems). My stories are meant to be a celebration of friendship in all its facets, and of how a true friendship can come through all events, from good times and bad, arguments and peacetime, and the just plain weird. And a little shameless hurt/comfort now and then is nice to throw in.

I have a squeeable image for a ficlet I think I'll write for Valentine's Day, where Ginger is making fun of and deriding the holiday for its general association with romantic couples, and he and Lou eventually decide to go out to dinner and celebrate being single and being friends. I have an image of them clinking their glasses in a toast that I'd like to draw, but I might not because positioning two people so things they're holding will meet is one of the most hair-tearing experiences I have with drawing.

I suppose the definition for a lot of the friendships I write would be "bromance", but that term absolutely bewilders me, since it's supposed to be deeply platonic and yet it's a portmanteau of "bro/brother" and "romance". Seems to me that the term kind of defeats its purpose. I prefer not to use it because of that.