Thoughts on "Common Ground" · 5:36pm May 6th, 2019
Noooooooo! My shiiiiiiiiiiiiiip! 
Even if I was preparing for this one, it still hurts!
*sniff* At least this one sank with some dignity...
...even though Quibble Pants doesn't have much dignity this episode. Desperation tends to do that to a guy.
Anyway, ship sinking aside, this is a pretty good episode. I think it does kids good to see how their parent's new boy/girlfriend might feel when trying to connect with them, while also acknowledging the fear that the potential stepparent would be trying to make them forget their biological parent (the way they talk, it sounds like Clear Sky's husband and Wind Sprint's father might be dead), and saying that you can have room for both in your heart. It kind of reminds me of something that my Grandma keeps saying about family: Love does not divide, it multiplies.
I can't say I'm too close to this subject personally (my own parents are both still alive and still married), but there are a couple of stepfamilies in my extended family. My dad's sister had a divorce and remarriage when I was small, so I never really knew that her current husband was her second until I was a teenager. On the other side, my mom's brother had been unmarried for quite a while, up until I was a teenager and suddenly he had a girlfriend who has a couple of kids, and they kept showing up enough that the rest of the extended (Mom-side) family just quietly accepted them as honorary family until it became official last October with the wedding.
On another note, even though the ship is sunk and I'm probably gonna be sad about it for a while, I still appreciate the amazing friendship that Rainbow and Quibble have. She just tries to help him with bonding with his girlfriend's daughter without a second thought, even though we all know that she's a queen of bad ideas. Though I have to wonder how anyone can be that inept at sports to fail at kicking a slow-moving ball or even running on a track (does it only work when he's scared? He did have a decent pace when running from that crocodile... thing in Stranger than Fan Fiction).
I'm amazed at how fast buckball became a national phenomenon, and that Pinkie, Fluttershy, and Snails are already in the Hall of Fame. I'm having a little too much fun imagining Cheese Sandwich, who I headcanon as having little interest in sports, visiting that museum only to see the stuff about Pinkie and maybe brag a little about knowing her (and since its in Appleloosa, Braeburn's there and while trying to be nice, he's in a mood of, "Okay, I get it, you like Pinkie!").
I'm a little disappointed at how little Pinkie and Quibble interacted (I always thought it'd be funny if they met and thought about each other, "S/He talks a lot"), but Pinkie's eye roll of "Oh, I have to help you kick it" is great.
Also, Snips be giving me vibes of Eddy from Ed, Edd, n' Eddy. Looking back, he did seem to be the idea guy between him and Snails, and it's interesting to see that trait go in that direction. I was like, "Okay, that just happened", when it... happened.
Comparing this time to the last time one of my ships sank, can I just say that thank goodness that they don't overdo it with Quibble Pants and Clear Sky like they do with Big Mac and Sugar Belle? No pasting hearts everywhere, no stupid baby talk trying to be romance talk, no stupid romance cliches, their one misunderstanding having something that might make it believable and their having it cleared up quickly, and we're actually shown in her scenes with Quibble that they have a good relationship that feels natural, instead of just being told of how wonderful it is that so-and-so is in love while throwing stupid manufactured drama in our faces. I guess it's helped by their voice actors actually being married in real life. Sure, Sky could stand to be a more interesting character, but granted, this episode is more about her daughter.
Should I be ashamed about looking at Clear Sky and thinking she looks a bit like G3 Pinkie? 
And of course, I also need to bring up another thing in my fic 'verse that is relevant for this, and that is my headcanon on Quibble Pants' siblings (for anyone that's new, I have him come from a family of ten foals; he's one of the middle kids), more specifically the brother that I designated as the sporty one of the bunch, Victory Screech (insert SpongeBob joke here).
So, if I were to adapt that headcanon to this episode, given Quibble's lack of knowledge on anything sporty, what could that say about his relationship with Vic? Well, I did already consider that Quibble is not all that close to his siblings, and in fact finds them really annoying. I'd imagine that whenever forced to attend one of Vic's hoofball games, he either stuck his nose in a book or fell asleep because he found it boring (he often got scolded for either). And often blocked out or forgot about anything sports-related that Vic told him because it was never relevant to him. And then later in life it bites him in the butt when his girlfriend has a daughter who's sporty, and he does not want to bring it up with Vic just yet.
Huh, story idea about Sky and Windy meeting Quibble's siblings right there.
Anyway, there are my thoughts. Wow, I knew I'd have a lot of thoughts for this one, but I'm a little surprised on how much to say I had.
So, props to the Oswalt family for their voice acting this episode, and nice to see how the staff adapted a real life situation that the family was in into the show, though with roles reversed between the couple. So, yeah, good episode, even if I do have to have a funeral for one of my favorite ships (insert Titanic theme here).
Now, to wait if Pinkie's line about that Party Planner's Memorial Library amounts to anything and that's where Cheese returns, or it's just a throwaway line and I'm still waffling around in doubt about the truthfulness of said supposed return.
While the episode wasn’t bad, I did feel like it fell victim to the problem of ‘too much hype’. I expected it to be a lot better than it was.
Well, I think the ship isn’t truly dead until Quibble and Clear Sky are married.
I still ship QuibbleDash pretty hard.
Though, I liked Clear Sky. If I were to read a QuibbleDash ship that got rid of Quibble x Clear Sky, I’d want them to treat Clear Sky and Windy nicely instead of killing them off or treating them like ooc jerks.