Sandbar: “…You all realize Yona and I went to the dance together just as friends, right?”

Smolder: “You blush whenever you talk to her, you keep making goo-goo eyes, and you didn’t even consider asking any of your other friends to join you at the dance. You’re not fooling anyone, dude.”

Let’s grab our best pony pals and mosey on over to the Season 9 Retirement Party! This week’s comic is based on She’s All Yak, aka: “Yona Forsakes Her Heritage to Become Less-Than-Perfect: the Episode”. For how much we’ve seen ponies visiting other regions and being expected to learn and adapt to their customs, it was nice to see the inverse here, especially coming from a yak. It also amazes me how we’re still somehow learning brand new things about pony traditions and customs in Season 9! Clearly there’s still enough material here to keep going beyond this season if the powers that be were at all interested in doing so, but at least the fandom is going to have plenty to work with for years to come!

So… shipping. It’s weird; I have no interest in pursuing romantic relationships personally, but I do still enjoy shipping fictional characters from time to time. I dunno what it is; I guess it’s just a good outlet for sharing headcanons and expanding upon characters and relationships, and of course it’s all in good fun. But when you’ve got a group of six in this show, you know they are gonna be paired together in a multitude of ways, something the Mane Six are all too familiar with. I actually haven’t committed to any ships among the students yet myself, but I’ve included the popular ones I’ve come across for this comic… except Galbar. Sorry; I wasn’t able to fit it in with the pattern of the rest of the strip.

Hope you all never lose sight of what makes you special! Looking forward to the next episode!