@dreaper  
I wouldn’t mind it, but ‘Dragon Quest’ seemed to enforce the whole ‘ponies good, dragons bad’ thing. Course, that was a Merriwether episode, and while I don’t think she deserves all the bashing she gets, I will admit her characterization is a bit shaky.

@Background Pony  
As long as people remain respectful, or at the very least are disrespectful in ways that amuse me, I always enjoy hearing others opinions.
 
Sadly, most shipping in this show is of ‘They’re friends who get along/have clashing personalities/show friendly concern for each other so it must be lesbian love’ variety, or ‘These background ponies stood next to each other/have never appeared in the same episode but have fanon personalities that clash so its lesbian love variety’ so I don’t ship much these days. The fifteen years I’ve been involved on internet fandoms has left me weary of most shipping cliches, but this fandom has damn near ruined lesbians for me. And that’s terrible.

@candrew  
I hope that we get so see nicer dragons in season 4. Spike really needs it.

@candrew
 
I do disagree, naturally, with pretty much everything in your last post to me, but as long as people are willing to remain respectful and not resort to bashing, insults or ridiculous far-fetched arguments to argue for something (or even worse, use fanon for arguing a ship) I’m fine with it. To each their own, and only the future will prove/disprove or add weight to arguments about any alleged pairings/relationships out there.

@Itsthinking  
In what way? Raised by ponies? Based on their lack of knowledge of dragons, I’d say that Spike is pretty much the only dragon with substantial pony exposure. Plus, long standing tradition is that dragons are jerks in MLP.
 
There’s only ever been four nice dragons in the series, three of them were/are Spike, and one was from G3.5.

@Background Pony  
I say that it was his romantic feelings because the scene focused on the kiss. Monster Spike places his claws against his cheek as he remembered it. It was an act of generosity, but it is one that came about solely because of his romantic feelings. Like I said, I couldn’t imagine see him giving that gem to anyone else, save maybe Twilight. If you see it differently, you can, but that’s what I saw in that scene.
 
Again, if you think he’s substantially younger than she is, that’s fine, I just don’t think the show supports that as I’ve stated several times.
 
We could argue a possible relationship between any of the characters, there’s just the most evidence between these two. Spike has romantic feelings for her, that’s the extent of canon certainly, but no other ship between non married characters can claim even that. This show has had three kisses in it, two by Rarity to Spike’s cheek, one between Shining and Cadance. We know the Cakes have done more than kiss as they have children, yet we never see any of it.
 
I agree on basing shipping on character interaction. That’s why I ship these two.
 
I would say that it is likely to happen, maybe not very, but certainly more than pretty much any other ship. You may disagree of course.

@Itsthinking  
Nah, I don’t Spike will ever going to find another dragon just like him. He is the only dragon in Equestria.

@dreaper  
This. I want more Larson and Powell episodes. I just want to see something more about him.
 
 
@candrew  
What if there were a female dragon that was like him?

@QueenCold  
Fair enough. I disagree with you naturally, including this last post, but I do enjoy seeing why people think the way they do, even if I disagree.
 
In the end though, I do feel kind of sorry for the little guy. No one wants him around the mares and he’d not be able to fit in with a female dragon even if he found one that was nice, though given the track record for dragons in MLP that possibility is slightly less than zero. Still, I love rooting for the underdog.

Huh, it is clear from this discussion that Spike is the most ambiguous character in FiM, we don’t know exactly what is his position in the FiM-verse. He is a main character or secondary character? What kind of relationship he has with Twilight? His crush on Rarity is just a childish crush? How mature Spike really is? How the other ponies see Spike, as their close friend or just “Twilight’s tiny brother”? How he will grow, it will be through greed? He will have wings or not? Where does he come from? He will become a pivotal character in the future or he will remain as a butt monkey? and many others…
 
Too many questions…
 
I WANT ANSWERS GOD DAMMIT!!!

@candrew  
To add: Also you are right there, theoretically, that his feelings could eventually grow beyond a crush into actual romantic love, but as things stand in the cartoon now this is not the case, and you could argue any progression of feelings/relationships in the hypothetical future between any of the characters. Spike-Rarity is not exclusive in that respect at all. My opinions on ships that I believe work or don’t work are all based on relationships between the characters as they currently exist in canon… to argue beyond that is pointless because the possibilities outside established canon and the current timeline are basically limitless.

@candrew  
You’ve decided to interpret the events that way, but there’s no reason whatsoever to think that it was any romantic feelings for Rarity as opposed to a platonic bond or that one simple act of giving up something he coveted that was responsible for his regression. Spike’s growth in that episode was triggered by greed, which was reversed when he remembered his act of generosity and how happy it made Rarity… anything else is how you’ve interpreted the events to try and support some argument (in this case, a potential relationship or feelings between them). The opposite could theoretically be true, and you could say I’m only interpreting that it was his selflessness and not his crush that reversed his growth because I’m playing devil’s advocate against the ship, but when you consider that canon scene where he was just as infatuated with Twilight for a moment it lends more credence to my argument. He’s a younger kid with a simple crush based on physical appearance, on top of his platonic bonds with Rarity (the same that he shares with Twilight and the others), and nothing more. And there’s nothing wrong with that, until some people try to start arguing for this ship like it’s canon or actually likely to ever happen (or think that it should happen).

@candrew  
Where to begin?
 
Greed DID make Spike grow in SoME. Zecora stated that “A dragon’s heart is prone to greed, a steady diet to make growth speed”. Spike got greedy after getting things he liked. He didn’t like the books Twi gave him. He also didn’t grow until he focused solely on greed, at which point it was too late for him to stay sane. So simply owning stuff doesn’t make him grow bigger.
 
The show has never treated him like the CMC, because they are mentally younger than him. Still, there is a very big grey area between CMC and adult.  
About school, if he gets homeschooled by Twilight, which is very likely, he’s far ahead of the foals in school and Cheerilee’s lessons would be too easy for him.
 
In Just for Sidekicks Spike has gems, correct, but we don’t know how he got them. Maybe he gets a gem to snack on every once in a while and he decided to save up. Getting the occassional snack hardly qualifies as pay. That, or he went gem-hunting with Rarity again, in which case it has nothing to do with his chores.
 
I’m going too stop right here, because this discussion has gone on too long for my taste. I could talk about this for hours and get all scientific and stuff, but honestly that’d be drastically overanalyzing. We already went too far.
 
If you want to ship them, that’s up to you. But I’m entitled to my personal opinion.  
Based on what I see in the show, I wouldn’t ship Spike with any of the characters.

In my headcanon Spike is a 12-13 year old tween and the mane 6 are 19-21 year old young adults. Numerically, the age gap between Rarity and Spike is really not that high, but since Spike is still a boy and Rarity a young adult, a romantic relationship between those is inappropriate at this moment, and that’s because he is still immature for her. HOWEVER… once Spike reaches adulthood, the age difference becomes meaningless.

@candrew  
Ah, here it is.:
 
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/683/a-change-of-heart

Meh, I don’t really care. I’ve seen crazier pairings become canon before.

@Itsthinking  
No, dammnit, now I’m going to have to dig through the depths of fimfiction to find it. We’re talking during the first great pony drought here, mid 2011. Back then, no one shipped Sparity.

@Background Pony  
Yes, this is true, he is physically attracted to that look. But his ‘crush’ was enough to reverse a natural biological function of his species, so I see no reason to assume it can’t/doesn’t go deeper than that.

@candrew  
I’m part of the people who thinks age difference is an obstacle for love. Come on…my parents were 15 years apart each other…

@candrew  
“How to Woo Your Lady in Seven Steps” or something like that?
 
I think that Cutie Pox thing was mostly a gag that doesn’t really show his true feelings. For crissakes, how much he liked her was thing he said to her when he thought he was going to die.

@Itsthinking  
As do a lot of people. That’s why Sparity is, while not poular per se, more accepted than it was before SoME. I remember back when there were really only two Sparity fics. “Like Fine Wine’, and some other fic that never got finished and was written mostly as a challenge to prove that a Sparity relationship could work.

@candrew  
(not the same BGP as the other person)  
Don’t forget how Spike acted exactly the same towards Twilight as he does Rarity when she got Rarity’s hairstyle in “Cutie Pox”. He does care about her as a friend just as she does him, but his romantic feelings seem to be entirely based on simple infatuation, meaning it’s just a childish crush.

Huh. Well. I always thought Rarity and Spike were separated by less than ten years.

@QueenCold  
Greed didn’t make him grow before, that was Twilight’s magic in the flashback, and it didn’t make him grow in SoME. The greed was a by product of him maturing, which is what Zecora said was happening. Owning stuff made him grow after his birthday, and growth between hatching and episode one can be easily explained because he now owns books, his bed, and the occasional gem stash, which he certainly didn’t have when he was born. Like I said, that’s the only concrete fact we have on dragons, and while natural growth could happen with time, the argument could easily be made possessions are directly correlated with dragon size.
 
Or he could simply be older than you want him to be since the show has never treated him like the CMC. They go trick-or-treating, he doesn’t; they never go with the mane 6, Spike does; they go to school, he does not. Last I checked, being mature for your age didn’t get you out of having to go to school, and we know that they do have school in Equestria since all the school age characters are seen going to it. If you want to make the argument that he’s just mature for his age, I’m going to need more evidence than ‘maybe he’s mature for his age’.
 
Just for Sidekicks confirmed pay for Spike, and I don’t mean the gems he got for pet sitting, I mean the ones he saved up for his cake the first time around. There’s also the incredibly rare fire ruby he got on his own with no knowledge of Twilight, who most people write as being his caretaker, or Rarity, who he has gone gem hunting with in the past.
 
Indeed, he’s not always mature enough to handle everything thrown at him. Just like all the main characters aren’t mature everything thrown at them. That’s the point of a kid’s show with lessons at the end, the characters evolve a little with every episode.
 
We know that Twilight hatched Spike at the start of her magical studies. This is canon. We know that Twilight had no interest before the summer sun celebration she saw in flashback. We know that she took something called magic kindergarten at some point, and I see no reason to assume that kindergarten means something different in Equestria than it does on Earth.
 
Leaving a ten year old by himself overnight gets you arrested last I checked.
 
Rarity is a young adult who can find currency with magic and has a magic tattoo that has been shown to grant skill. She also has known what she wanted to be since she was younger than Sweetie Belle. Spike is a mid to late teenager who is good enough at his job that the princess occasionally calls him out of town, by himself mind you, to do work for her. The rest of the time he maintains the library in a way that pleases Twilight, who is more than slightly organized.
 
I’ve stated before I believe Spike to about 6 years younger than the mane 6, and that age difference is nothing in the long run.

@candrew  
Spike explicitly stated the only thing he ever got from Twilight was books. Spike owns nothing but those, his bed and an occassional gem stash.  
If greed was what made him grow before, then explain to me how he was able to control himself when he was more immature and how Twilight had absolutely no idea what was going on during the events of SoME.
 
The fact that Spike acts mature for his age is a by-product of spending his entire life with Twilight Sparkle. We all know how she is and how she used to be.
 
Spike does chores and it’s never been implied he gets anything in return for his efforts with the exception of things all children should be provided: food and shelter. And just because Twilight lets him bite off more than he can chew, because she tends to be inconsiderate of his age half of the time, doesn’t mean he’s mature enough to handle just about anything that gets thrown at him.
 
Spike is a good example of a child that is forced to grow up fast, perhaps too fast for his own good. I can identify. The child is more mature than their peers in general and can’t really socialize with them because of that. But deep down they are still a child. Spike is mentally about 10 years old. (a smart 10-year-old, mind you) Physically he is much younger than that.  
A kid that age isn’t completely helpless/incompetent and can definitely spend one night alone at home in a safe place like Ponyville. But to say that he’s old and wise enough to date Rarity, that just goes way too far.
 
Rarity is a young adult with her own business. she is too old for Spike.