@Background Pony #0E75  

 
New headcanon: Dog!Spike is currently at the “pet groomers”, being waited on by 5 different versions of Rarity. :P

@Background Pony #0E75  
She finds him to be the most “fetching” of all!

Poor dog Spike, left outside scratching at the door.

Kinda wish Dog-Spike was there too…
 
Just for laughs.

@Trickquestion  
Especially in a ’verse like this. Creepy thought: some King Sombra tyrant-warlock type instituting a dracopone breeding program for shock troops.

@Background Pony #E7D0  
Don’t forget sorcery! That stuff pops up where you least expect it.

@bico-kun  
I’ll give Marx points for expanding that right-of-passage stuff from Dragon Quest, and a neat circumvention of the mayfly issue. Guy’s pretty decent at world-expansion.
 
Neat. I can roll with draconic DNA sporting some mutagenic/thaumic mojo to enable cross-species shenanigans on top of their various overt powers (flame, flight, mild shapechanging, etc.). Some fanmusings I’ve seen took the extra step of turning the mare(s) involved part-dragon themselves (all the better to gestate hybrids, supposedly).
 
Makes one wonder how far hybridization could go in either direction, and which traits might persist or dilute: fore or rear-hooved drakes with equine great-great-great ancestry? Eighth-generation mixes who seem 85-100% pone save for hereditary fireproofing? Food for thought.

@Background Pony #E7D0  
Yes, looking it up I did remember reading that one. It was pretty interesting, I thought, though not one of my favorites. Actually, and this is strictly headcanon and not something I think would ever be in the show, I go with the idea that Spike will be the forefather of a new breed of dragonponies, but mostly because he’ll have a lot of foals with Rarity (spaced out a lot because I also headcanon dragon seed to have properties that can grant considerable longevity) and his kids will likewise average at least enough kids to triple their numbers each generation.

@bico-kun  
Ahh, totally missed that part of Dragonshy. Didn’t realize that nap-for-a-century quote came c/o another nigh-immortal as opposed to some speculative tome. Thanks for the clarification & discussion.
 
Say, ever read QTMarx’s Oats and Strawberries? That fic got some interesting mileage outta the ponies-barely-know-dragons angle.

@Background Pony #E7D0  
Maybe, though given that there are characters both pony and non-pony who have lived at least a thousand years, themselves, I’d say the proposition that dragons live at least that long isn’t unrealistic. Certainly, you’d expect Celestia to have some first hoof experience since it sounded like she knew what she was talking about vis–à–vis dragon naps. I guess it’d be interesting if dragons really only had normal pony lifespans and put on some charade like Phantom where their descendants pretend to be them (they could reproduce via parthenogenesis so as to be identical, perhaps). That’d be venturing way out into crack headcanon territory, though.

@bico-kun  
Neat D&D/Hasbro connection, though I’d still like to have those lifespan-suppositions confirmed straight from the non-horses’ mouths, insasmuch as (a) G3’s a different continuity (right?) and (b) ponies’ general lack of hard draconic data reminds me of the wild exaggerations re: big exotic animals (elephants, apes, etc.) that passed for fact a century (and more) back. ’Course, unlike said beasties, FiM dragons might have a vested interest in keeping their sapient neighbors misinformed.

@Background Pony #E7D0  
Prob’ly. Of course, sleeping for 100 years qualified as a “nap” for a G4 dragon, and G3 Spike did describe himself as “quite young - merely a thousand or two,” and implied that if he were a million he’d be considered “very, very old.” Seems like it can be safely assumed that MLP dragons can live for at least thousands of years. It wouldn’t really make sense for their childhood phases to be extended proportionately, regardless. The time to develop can be constrained by lifespan, but there’s no reason that even a sapient being would need longer than a couple decades to develop to the level of complexity of a dragon. Heck, D&D puts the age of maturity for their dragons at 12, and Wizards of the Coast is a subsidiary of Hasbro.

@Trahzo  
I knew it.

Oh yeah and also Bico-kun…YOU FOOL!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I already did a story on the Spike and 5 Rarities pic, now I’m gonna do something with this! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHH!!!

It’s time for an orgy, now! Now!1 NOOOOOOKPPMOHNJ:ONUIBNLKJNBJOUHBIOUBJKNBJIHN!!!

@bico-kun  
I have to wonder whether (a) draconic lifespans aren’t fanonically exaggerated by lack of information (Twilight was remarkably clueless despite, y’know, hatching one), and (b) even if their lifespans are crazy long, whether their ‘infancies’ are proportionally extended. Stuff like greed-growth & the teen drakes’ jackass stunts seems to imply rough, grow-up-fast living. Perhaps more early nurturing than RL reptiles enjoy, but drakelets seem likely to get shooed from the nest earlier than fillies/colts.
 
As for the dreaded age gap, I figure whatever Twiley may be, Spike’s 5 years behind her at most.

@albert19  
Well, the thing is that “pony years” and “dragon years” doesn’t really factor in. For instance, my dog started puberty at 6 months in “human years.” In “dog years” that’s 5.25 years. She just recently reached full adulthood at a year old, which is 10.5 years old. So, in “dog years” we would call her a child, but she’s physically an adult. In the same way, if dragons live a million years compared to an Equestrian pony’s average lifespan, which let’s just say is around 100 years, that doesn’t mean Spike will have to wait another 30,000 years before he can graduate to being a “toddler dragon.” Spike does not, in any case, display the characteristics of a baby. He can walk, talk, feed himself, work, and can generally take care of himself without supervision. Clearly, he is not an infant or toddler, which are what the term “baby” most commonly refers to. It could be descriptive of his size, of course, but I find that its use seems to give a lot of people the wrong impression, as I’ve seen a lot of fans treat him as if he’s literally five years old. That’s why I say it’s “misleading.”

@Itsthinking  
Yeah, I wasn’t really convinced of that point, myself. As I told the guy who pointed it out in the first place: the cake is round, so at least on the lower tiers there’s probably, like, twice as many candles as seen, which would make her 41 if candle=year. I generally assume 17-18 at series start, at least. I kind of like the headcanon that cultural adulthood for ponies starts at 16, though, since they presumably wouldn’t need the kind of general schooling we would given the magic butt symbols which seem to make them savants at their destined careers (I may be a bit biased, though, since I and many of my family members tend to graduate high school one or two years early, and we aren’t exactly genius-level).

@bico-kun  
Regardless of his age in pony years, in dragon years, he’s a baby.

@bico-kun  
They did say that they just placed candles randomly on the cake and that’s not proof of her age, but Spike is definitely not a baby in the way that the Cake Twins are. I think your assumption of him being 11 or 12 is reasonable. Maybe slightly older.

@albert19  
Oh, good, though I find the term “baby” to be misleading. Babies poo in their diapers and can’t hold a meaningful conversation. Canon Spike is more like a “kid.” If you take greed growth as a sign of puberty, he could be at least 11 or 12. Not to mention, since Twilight apparently attended Kindergarten at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns where she hatched Spike, it wouldn’t make much sense for him to be younger than 12 if she’s, say, 18 (though if she’s RD’s apparent age of 21, Spike could be 15 as of Season 4).

@bico-kun  
I meant current canon Spike, but that’ll do.

@bico-kun  
[girly sounding squee noises]

@albert19  
There you go.  

Needs baby Spike.