Original Description:
Ever since the video Starlight the hynotist established that Shining Armor had given his sister an extreme phobia of ladybugs by telling her their spots were eyes, I found it amusing that almost every time Twilight meets Cadance they perform their dance with the line “ladybugs awake!”
With the eye reference I included a little nod to the song “open up your eyes” with the background pony appearance of a young Tempest Shadow aka Fizzlepop Berrytwist. Her being turned into a cactus is a reference to what Twilight does to her parents during the school entrance exam in which she earns her cutie mark. The “quesadilla incidence” in the final panel refers to Twilight’s fear of quesadillas refered to in the episode “Party Pooped” and it is also a nod to the never explained noodle incident in the Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes.
I’m glad I managed to get this comic done in time for Shining Armor and Cadance Day 2022.
This is one of very many little comic ideas I have had in mind for years but never realized because digital art takes such a long time for me to make. I actually drew and submitted two figures for the first panel back in 2020 but then let the project hibernate till now.
I had hoped to come up with some kind of style that would take me less time to make but got to admit that I utterly failed in that regard, taking more than a month of work for this page. Maybe I can come up with a less time intensive style for future comic pages.