Been using some shipping doodles as warmups for the last week or so! A handful of these I’m using in my next gen universe, but I really wanted to give attention to some of my other favorite pairings! So I’ll just blab a little about what I like about these pairings. What can I say, I like shipping and talking about ships lmao. In general I’m pretty okay with just about any pairings between Mane Six members, so even if you don’t see your favorite here I’m probably pretty okay with it (Appledash is the one exception, mostly for personal reasons. It’s a long story)

Twilight Sparkle ships aka Oops all orange ponies
Sunburst x Twilight is probably my current favorite Twilight ship! I used to be really into Caramel x Twilight back in the day (you can probably still find the old art of it buried in my gallery!) but Caramel was pretty much 100% a headcanon character for me, besides like one very sweet fanfic that had gotten me onto the ship in the first place. When Sunburst was introduced, he was basically exactly how I’d headcanoned Caramel? So I went ahead and jumped onto the ship that had more actual canon characterization and support.

Applejack x Twilight was a really unexpected one, and it really only gained so much traction during my current rewatch of the show. I haven’t watched the show in years and honestly? AJ and Twilight have a really great relationship. AJ tends to be an anchor of calm for Twilight in some of the bigger event episodes. I just think they make a really nice contrast and have a good foundation for a longlasting relationship. Also one of my favorite MLP fics is “Yours Truly” which heavily features Applejack x Twilight written so god damn well and has one of the most romantic endings of a fic in the entire world. So go read that if you have time!

Sunset x Twilight is a good solid ship, and the only reason I don’t pay it more attention is because poor Sunset is trapped in the Equestria Girls movies :( But I do also really love Science!Twilight and Sunset, which I haven’t done anything with yet, but is canon in my next gen.

Applejack Ships
Rarity and Applejack is just a classic, what can I say. They have great bickering married couple energy interspersed with the perfect amount of genuine affection to make it perfectly romantic. They also have a similar contrast to AJ/Twilight, which tends to just be my thing for the most part; I really liking shipping opposites attract type ships.

Applejack and Soarin is just a pure unadulterated nostalgia pairing for me. I just like how they look together, I think how they meet is really cute, and Soarin has a lot of potential to be a really interesting character. True it doesn’t have as much canon validation as my other two Applejack ships but it glommed onto my heart when I was like 15 and never really let go.

Rainbow Dash Ships (sorry I always draw Dash as an awkward gremlin, I just can’t resist)
I actually had to kind of struggle to think of at least two Rainbow Dash ships I really liked lmao; I really don’t ship her with a lot of other characters! Fluttershy has always been a top tier contender but there were never really any others that caught my interest enough? I’m mostly neutral to ships that involve Rainbow Dash. But during my rewatch I remembered that I used to ship her and Thunderlane; initially I couldn’t really remember why, but when I got to some of the episodes that feature him… I dunno! He’s just a fun nice guy! I think his design is interesting, we don’t see a lot of dark grey pony characters, and his entire friend group seems to be girls? Interesting! Plus I had forgotten that he becomes a Wonderbolt at the same time as Dash, which just made a ton of potential fun relationship dynamics with her since they were both newbies to what was their dream team! Just a lot of fun potential there!

And of course Fluttershy and Dash are just. They’re just great. They’re so cute and supportive of each other. Dash is always so tough but always pays attention to what might upset Fluttershy and will almost always do anything Fluttershy asks her to do. But is also always trying to help her out of her comfort zone! They went to flight school together as fillies! They’re just so great, I love them a lot.

Fluttershy Ships
It was a really close thing between going with Flutterpie or Flutterdash for my next gen, really really close. Flutterpie has a lot of the same qualities that I like in Flutterdash, with just a touch more sweetness and fluff. And they’re so pink together, I love it. What really decided it for me was that I didn’t really have any other Dash ships at the time that I liked as much as Flutterdash and for Pinkie I at least had Cheese as a really solid backup.

Fluttershy and Big Macintosh is another one of those ships that I’ve held onto since I first started watching the show like… ten years ago. It has a little less foundation then my other two Fluttershy ships, but I just think the idea of Big Quiet and Little Quiet are really cute v_v Though nowadays we do have the canon fact of them being in the Ponytunes together, which is just ridiculously cute! Tbh I lean pretty hard on the headcanon of Fluttershy being a lesbian, which goes pretty hand in hand with another of my favorite headcanons, Trans Big Mac! I tried to draw Mac pretty neutral here, but in my heart she’s a lovely trans lady~

Pinkie Pie ships
It actually took me a long time to grow to like Pinkie and Cheese, mostly because I do tend to lean much more heavily towards an opposites attract preference and these two are just! Very similar! But there’s so much great art of these two out there and their relationship really grew from how it was in that first episode that it really wasn’t too hard to win me over. Plus the actual canon validation?? Wild, I still can’t believe Pinkie Pie married Weird Al.

I’m a little surprised I don’t have more Pinkie ships, but I think most of her other popular ones were introduced after I had kind of dropped out of the fandom (who knows, maybe I’ll really attached to Party Favor and Prince Rutherford as I continue my rewatch. I’m just about to finish season 3 now)

Rarity ships
Rarity’s kind of in a similar boat to Dash in that I don’t! Really have a lot of ships for her! Which is a shame, cause she’s such a great character and loves romance a lot! There’s a few potential options that I’d read good fics for (ie: I’ll never be able to hate Blueblood/Rarity because of how good the Groundhog day fic “Best Night Ever” is. Whatever my quibbles with the fandom, it produced some damn good fanfiction) but never any that really grabbed my heart? Rarijack was my lone Rarity ship for a very long time and it’s really stood the test of time!

Thank god we got the MLP movie. The movie itself was just okay I think, but it did give us some outstanding characters like Tempest and in this specific case, Capper! Capper was such a fun, well animated character with a great song to boot. I thought he was the real standout of the characters that were like… specifically there to be befriended? He left more of an impression on me then the pirate griffon and the hippogriffs by a longshot. Just better set up and better payed off imo. I think he and Rarity would have a wonderful whirlwind romance and would constantly be sweeping each other off their feet. And I do love me a lady and the tramp dynamic.

Also I’m very impressed if you got to the end of this long ass post, congratulations! tl;dr I am always a slut for opposites attract. Now how the heck do I tag all these rip