no thoughts. only spike and twilights weirdly under explored relationship.

1.) An update to my Spike headcanon, because I don’t think I’ve actually done a proper one since 2019?

So dragons come in many shapes and sizes, herbivores, carnivores, ominvores, etc. Spike in particular is a herbivore. His breed is known (when not raised by ponies) for being massive tanks of brute strength. The males have two front tusks, not used for actually chewing their food, but as a means of attracting a mate (the bigger the hotter you is), and in fights.

A common misconception about dragons is that their diet consists of jewels and naughty little ponies. Neither of these are 100% true, but they do come from…. somewhere. For example, some dragons are carnivores, and do eat meat (however they’re only known to prey on ponies if they’re really hungry) - and some herbivorous dragons are gastroliths: meaning they swallow rocks to help the process of grinding up plant matter in their guts. Spike himself is a gastrolith, so while he definitely needs like….real food to live, a gem or two never hurt.

2.) So like…. the big question a lot of people have is about Celestia, and her role in Spike and Twilight’s relationship.

Many many years ago, far before Twilight was born, dragon hunting was a very common practice among ponies. Simmilarly to how timber wolf hunting was very common, too, with their scales and claws and body parts providing many magical properties - Furthermore, it was seen as noble, protecting your herd from a mean and scary dragon.

Though it took until Twilight’s time for ponies to fully understand everything about dragon society, Celestia did outlaw dragon hunting hundreds of years prior. She’d set out a plan to crack down, hard, on any leftover businesses still operating dragon hunting services. She’d helped her guards liberate many caged dragons, and their young, and allowed them to return to their homelands - but at the end of it all, just one dragon egg was left.

She kept hoping that it’s parents would come back for it, but they never did. Celestia could only assume she’d arrived too late, and this little eggs parents had already been taken by the dragon hunters.

…So, Celestia is left with this random dragon egg.

For a dragon egg to hatch, it takes a strong surge of magic, typically done by the mother with a strong breath of fire. Celestia could have very easily done this herself, and hatched it there and then, but… well….
With Nightmare Moons return incoming, and a need for a protege that could help to defeat her, she decided to put this to better use.

She theorised that any filly or colt that could even come close to hatching the egg, would be strong enough to defeat nightmare moon. Many students came close (one such being Sunset Shimmer, who’d gotten close enough for Celestia to begin teaching her) - but it wasn’t until Twilight, who literally hatched the egg…. aged it rapidly….and turned the invigilator into a plant… did she find the right foal for the job.

Something i struggled with, in writing this, was trying to find a way where Twilight becomes the main caretaker for Spike, without it looking incredibly bad on Celestia’s part…. because I want Twilight to have a good mother figure in this AU god dammit. but then I read that one issue of the comics, and read this - and was like… yea there is like, no way she comes out of this looking good.

Celestia certainly understood that dragons were just as intelligent as ponies, and equally, a baby dragon is just as much work as a baby pony - but well… years of being on the throne have left her a bit out of touch to what the average foal should be able to handle. That and Spike imprints hard onto Twilight so he becomes a touch too attached to her.

3.)
So if I can find the comment I will, but I had someone ask me a while ago about how Spike and Velvet’s relationship is, considering…. everything Velvet is…

and well, to be honest, she viewed Spike as a pet. This is pretty common among ponies of the time, as with very little contact with actual dragons, they just assumed adorable baby Spike was the equivalent to a puppy or a kitten or something. Hence why Velvet offered Twilight very little help with raising Spike - something about “learning some responsibility.” The only help Twilight got was from Shining Armour and on the very odd occasion, Celestia.

Velvet didn’t regard him much, but when he did, it often wasn’t for good reasons. Like if he made a mess or made too much noise (as babies do). In almost every instance, though, Twilight wouldn’t let Velvet touch him. She always stood up for him, and took most of the telling off, even if she’s shaking in fear. Velvet seemed to be satisfied with this most of the time anyway (after all SHE should be the one taking care of it).

4.) Twilight made a lot of mistakes in raising him, being just a child. This strained their relationship at times, but ultimately, they both love each other dearly and they’d go to the ends of the earth to protect each other…. And when Spike is a big boy, he can return the favour for all the times Twilight protected and saved him.

5.)
“Hey Twilight! Wanna come over tonight and-”

“Sorry. Can’t.”

So a lot of Twilight’s lack of friends during her time in Canterlot, is actually caused by a lot of this. When given a child to raise, and extra studies assigned to you by the princess herself, it leaves you very little time to actually make friends. And then, when Spike’s finally old enough to not need constant care, she sort of… doesn’t really know where to begin. She’s not socially stunted, she can still hold a conversation (her mother made sure of that) - but actually making friends? rather than just small talk?… She had no clue. Hence why Celestia had to actually send her away to learn how to be a friend, and literally turned it into an assignment lmao.

6.) Redraw of this meme. Sums up season 1 Twilight pretty nicely.

7.)

–

Velvet is the kind of person to say “you’re TIRED? imagine having KIDS!” when you complain about anything.

Ok anyway. Twilight is an absolute mess when Birdie is born. Old habits die hard, right? She reverts back to who she was before she moved to Ponyville almost, feeling the need to focus all her attention and life on this baby. Rainbow has to fight to actually get much of a moment alone with Birdie herself. Twilight barely sleeps, she’s moody, she’s overprotective… it’s just… not a good time.

Eventually there’s some sort of intervention, Twilight recognises she’s spiralling, and lets Rainbow take over for a while. But it takes a lot of convincing and gentle coaxing for this to happen.

Anyway. Twilight and Spike are in severe need of therapy. anyone in the Sparkle family needs therapy.

This dump of stuff is huge, and I honestly think I might try and do more smaller dumps of not necessarily related drawings. Just because I didn’t realise until I was putting this together how many drawings I’d done for this, and how long it’d actually been since I uploaded something nextgen related even though I’m drawing it p consistently. Oopsie.