Why not? This is beyond adorable, and if you can have canon romance then fanon should be fine too.

It strikes me as a dual-honours sort of episode, kind of like Pinkie and AJ had a more-or-less equal spotlight in Pinkie Apple Pie. Seems like AJ's sharing her episodes this season.

Hopefully she gets a solo gig soon, her fans are growing restless. Soon the time will come when they will surely strike and cover the world in... well, apples, I guess?

Look. I'd tentatively say that Rarity's my favourite character, and she didn't have a single episode last season. I didn't lose interest or try to start drama, and this season my patience was rewarded by a few damn good Rarity episodes.

Sure, there isn't as much AJ as there could be this season (although I agree with what people say that Pinkie Apple Pie was basically a dual-honours kind of ep, with equal prominence placed on Pinkie's genealogy adventure and AJ's family difficulties), but I doubt we'll go the whole season without an AJ episode. I mean, for a start, she still needs to get her key.

In any case, it's just a cartoon. If episodes focused entirely on Applejack (or any character) are the only thing that stops you from losing interest in the show generally, I'm surprised you've kept watching for this long.

Wait. You're thinking of stopping watching a show because the writers aren't giving your favourite character enough screentime in one season?

I agree that AJ's been a bit underrepresented this series, but throwing around phrases like "depressing" and "so unfair" is exactly why the internet perceives our fandom as entitled and immature. Applejack isn't real.

It certainly was sanctioned. And the question certainly is 'why did she let it get in?'

Although really, the answer to that question is almost certainly "because Meghan did promise that Flash Sentry wouldn't get his own episode, dialogue or otherwise significant plot-relevant presence in the series, but she's under no obligation to carefully expunge any pieces of background-character scenery dressing or micro-references which might prove unbearably offensive to the EQD shitstorm-mongers."

Sigh.

For the record, I get that you're joking, but there's already a shitstorm brewing about that tweet throughout this comment section, and it's really becoming annoying.

When Meghan said there wouldn't be any Flash, it's fairly obvious that she meant he wouldn't appear in any plot-relevant capacity, or have been written into any scripts by name. She meant that there wouldn't be any FlashLight shipping episodes, or any episodes in which he's a character with dialogue and actual input on the narrative. It WASN'T a guarantee that she would personally comb every storyboard frame to ensure he doesn't pop up as scenery dressing for 5 seconds somewhere.

I've already said this elsewhere, but Meghan most likely wasn't even the one who included him. She doesn't write every last background event into the script; those moments usually come from the storyboard people. Yes, she's the head writer, and she has the final say, but she isn't going to go diving in like some anti-Flash-Sentry-themed superhero to expunge him from the background of a scene based on some tweet she made back when the episodes were back in their storyboarding phase.

Seriously, to me, the mentality of people freaking out because of a 5-second plot-irrelevant nod to EQG is about as silly as those people on non-pony forums who get mouth-frothingly day-ruiningly furious if they see a single pony picture somewhere that it isn't strictly relevant. Sure, you don't like the thing that it's referencing, but it's way too small a reference to freak out about to such an extent. So yeah. Let's not be those people, mmkay?

You do realise there's a good chance that Meghan isn't even responsible for him showing up, right? The scriptwriter doesn't coordinate every little background event. If anything, it's probably the storyboard artists (they were responsible for a lot of the little Lyrabon moments back in S2) or some animator giving a little nod to fans of the movie.

For me, this is the best season so far, by a long way.

Not that the previous ones were weak by any means (none of us would be here if they were), but this time the writing, plotting, pacing, animation and overall 'feel' of the show is on another level, for me at least.

The plot arc is being handled wonderfully, with (presumably) the keys taking the form of 'rewards' given when a pony lives up to or discovers some new facet of their element. It's tied into the plots enough to feel like part of the story, but it doesn't dominate the format and detract from the slice-of-life storytelling that she show does so well. None of the episodes have felt rushed to me either (which was sometimes a problem with S3), although none of them have felt simplistic either.

Finally, the fan-nods are being handled perfectly this time around. It irritates me the way people describe stuff like funny faces, fan-favourite side characters and Derpy as being 'pandering'. It's not pandering, it's making a nod to the fans and saying 'hey you older guys, we know your fandom exists, so here's something for you.' It's a wink. Pandering would be having a whole episode about Derpy, or changing Luna into her 'gamer' character for an episode. Pandering is like that time in Adventure Time when they brought in Finn and Jake's fanon R63 equivalents, and even they were pretty fun episodes. In short, pandering is any time that fanon forces its way into the narrative, and any time that plot or characterisation is sacrificed on the altar of fan-appeasement. Amusing faces, funny background events, small pop-culture references and fanon-influenced background characters are not pandering. They're a little wink to the fandom to show that a dialogue exists between the creators and fans (which, for me, is often the mark of a good show and a great production team). It must suck for the show's creators to hear people whining about 'pandering' after they put in some fun little plot-irrelevant background event they think we'd appreciate. It's like reverse-entitlement, and it's just as annoying as the entitled 'how dare you include something in the show that contradicts my head canon' asshats. There were virtually no fandom nods in S3, nothing like the Big Lebowski/I Love Lucy references, no Derpy until the last episode, and it was almost certainly our fault. After S2, with Derpygate and the endless whining about 'Pandering', I can't blame them if they got pissed off with the fandom and decided it was best to ignore us for a while.

But in the end, nice to see that the link between the fans and creators still exists, and that S4 in general is so damn good. The show's been through some rough seas but I feel it's come out the other side stronger.

Um. Sorry, but you've kind of missed the point here.

I don't think anyone was saying that lesbians couldn't be adventurers. What irritates me is the assumption that the titular 'lesbian' elements of the game will be shallow, manipulative and explicitly sexual. Yes, a person's orientation dictates who they like to fuck. It also dictates who they like to pursue romantically, get all sappy over and generally do cute, innocent couple stuff with. Yes, romance might all come back to sex in the end, but that doesn't stop us from romanticising the hell out of it in hetero-focused media, mostly marketed towards idealistic teens. So I'll say it again: it DOESN'T irritate me that this game has the word 'lesbian' in the name and then actually focuses on their orientation as much as the adventure stuff. It annoys the hell out me that people assume you can only address that orientation through hardcore sex, rather than assuming that, hey, there might be some emotional connection there.

Look at it this way; imagine a Disney-channel tween TV 'romance' show aimed at girls, maybe set at a high school or something, in which the whole show revolves around the main group of girls trying to get with boys. You don't need to explicitly state it's heterosexual because everyone knows it will be, but it may as well be called 'super heterosexual adventures' if you wanted a particularly literal title. But just because it's clearly a show about characters expressing their (albeit straight) sexual orientation, you don't expect to see them spend half an hour fucking each others' brains out at 6-o-clock on the Disney channel.

So: "It's a sexual orientation. Of course people are going to think about sex." Sorry, but no. Sure, in real life, you're probably right, but in this case we're talking about cute, PG-rated, idealised media. In this instance, 'lesbian' in the title is a necessary descriptor which only means that it'll be exclusively girls doing the cute, sappy relationship stuff.

Anyway, Merry Christmas, let's get back to cute horses.

Maybe even NSFTWCILBCODAOTS?
Not safe for twits who can't imagine lesbians being capable of doing anything other than sex?