The end of an era.

So, MLP:FiM/G4 has come to an end, not counting the semi-official ideas of season 10 being continued in comic form and such. I won't do any big spoiler stuff in case some people haven't seen it yet (though I'm pretty sure most ppl saw the ending already when the eps leaked).

A lot has changed, a lot has stayed the same... a lot of clop and lewd material was drawn and written. And all in all, I think the ending was good. You can go on and on about power level inconsistencies and unoriginal battle scenes and UNBELIEVABLY unrealistic and plot convenient travel times between places, but none of that was the point of the ending. I think the "cycle starts anew" trope was done decently well. I think the two more lesbian couples(AJ+RD and Lyra+Bonbon's wedding in the newspaper Twilight is reading) was a gigantic, beautiful, and glorious FUCK YOU to all those hypocritical idiots who whined about sexuality not belonging into children cartoon after Scootaloo's "aunts" episode while being fine with showing Shiny + Cadance + their little crotchmonster. Amusingly enough, the power draining all around played incredibly well into my Imbalanced world lore, so the only current big inconsistencies are Chrysalis and Thorax.

I could go on and recap how MLP affected me, and in some way I'm a bit disappointed that I deleted my oldest drunk and depressed blog posts just to see the difference. I hope the few depressed people who said that original Imbalanced helped them not end their lives are still around and kicking life in the balls, reading fanfics or not. They were the original reason why I myself kept going and trying, and in the end I'm still here, over six years later, and tearing up like a little bitch as I write this. Quality of my stories has changed, some for the worst, most for the better, but Imbalanced is a memory of horrible, dark times which has the most of my heart in it. Maybe aside from "Happiness is what you make of it", I haven't been able to recreate the same depth of feeling, and in a sense I don't really want to. The overall lesson stays, though - it is something I can look BACK on, that there still IS a me that can look. I got through that part of my life mostly with the help of few unknown people masquerading under silly internet names, because my real life surroundings and people supposed to be on my side sure as hell didn't help, and neither did my own head. I think the fight between Blaze, the voices in his head, and eventually the acceptance of Mistake chronicles the overall feeling well.

But back to the ending of MLP. Twilight is written really well in the last eps (although the process of her dealing with stuff is simplified and fastened because "show for kids" reasons), and it genuinely shows that the show writers know well how many broken people found comfort in ponies that was impossible to find in reality, movies, or other cartoons. MLP is a story about the idea that hope exists for everyone, and that tenacity might get us to the point where we might either find it ourselves, or find the right messengers, whatever form those might take... and so is the Imbalanced storyline.

I know most of you are here these days just for the silly changelings, so I promise I'm done with the emotional oil spill that is this post.

So, good luck, stay resilient, find comfort in whatever miniscule thing you can, and if life is too much shit to bear, just laugh at how ridiculously hard it's trying to take you down, how many resources all around it has, and it's still failing.

Life is a comedy, if you know where to look. In some cases it just happens to be the mirror.