Still Ponies

Watched the finale like 3 or 4 times now, changed my background, changed my av and banner, making a chubbie sock Cadence (I already made a Nightmare Moon one that I need to show you guys), downloaded all the songs from the episodes and have had them on loop all day. I woke up sick but honestly, I don't really care because it gives me more time for ponies. =3

Not sure if I'm gonna notice the gap between this season and the next. But I -am- chomping at the bit (HAHARR) to purchase the pony wedding castle.

My excuse, if I really need one, is that when I was a kid, my grandma and mom pushed all this "career girl" stuff on me; I got a lot of then-modern Barbie stuff, which I didn't care for. All I wanted was to be a princess; tea parties, pretty dresses, tiaras, kitchen stuff, purses, makeup, high heels, etc. Whenever I got money, I blew it on all sorts of pretty dress-up sets, princesses, ponies, tea sets, and castle play sets (I got away with this because I threw a fit so my dad would be the one who took me shopping, lol.) What I loved most were characters who were definitely feminine, but strong, passionate, and doing what they loved, without being that preppy mean girl stereotype that dominated TV shows when I was little. When Sailor Moon came along, that was the Best Thing Ever to me. But I had to watch the show at my friend's house since my mom didn't want me watching it, so naturally I couldn't buy any of the merchandise until I was older and could hide it.

The newest My Little Pony generation is everything I wanted as a child, and the characters, especially Rarity, were what I really needed when I was young. Instead of feeling kind of bummed about being technically 17 years too old for it, I decided it would be better to just let myself like what I like. What makes it even more enjoyable is that a lot of other young adults like it, too.

Sorry that turned into a rant. XD People go on about how MLP cured their depression, gained them some really good friends when they were lonely, etc, and that's awesome. But for me, it's made me feel more confident in being myself, in a society of extreme sides that's warred over whether it's a good thing for me or not, all my life and in every stage of my life. For instance, in high school there were people telling me wearing skirts and makeup and loving pink was bad, and other people thought I wasn't being girly enough or wearing enough makeup. And nowadays, some people are telling me that enjoying cleaning, sewing, scrapbooking, crafting, etc is REALLY BAD. And other people have told me that it's AWFUL when I pursue my passion for crafting or play video games or read instead of cooking dinner or cleaning up all the time. It's kind of amazing how passionate people are about instructing others on how to live their lives.

But watching Friendship is Magic makes me feel a lot better about this, and helps me to just laugh at it. I'm not sure exactly why. Maybe it's that this show tells me that people like me are perfectly normal and acceptable, and I don't have to be defined by a set gender cookie-cutter. Which is something I know, but I love the feeling of support and reinforcement I get from it. An additional thing I love is that, while it's accepting of women like me, it also supports other sorts of women and even men, without saying that one gender, personality, or combo of the two is more ideal than the other. A personality is made up of traits, and so, people with the same sort of personality are not necessarily just like each other. The ponies are even identified by their strongest traits instead of some generic stamp. The show targets individual traits, such as rudeness, selfishness, dishonesty, self-consciousness, pride, etc, and tries to correct those instead of correcting overall personalities. That's really awesome.

So yeah.