EDIT 3/6/19:

I drew this when I was a minor. This was originally ship art. Now, at 21 years old, the idea of up-aging a child character in order to ship them with an adult character is symptomatic of inappropriate feelings and beliefs about age differences. There's nothing normal with looking at a young character, presumably in elementary school, and thinking they should be in a relationship with an adult character, even if that adult character is immortal. Making the child an adult doesn't change the fact that you saw the child and thought about their romantic or sexual ability to be with an adult.

I had quite a few issues at this age. I had a crush on Snails, an elementary school student, despite being in high school at the time. I had an inappropriate interest in "older female teacher/younger male student", "older sexy popular female/younger ugly unpopular male", and "older abled female/younger disabled male" tropes, and shipping Snails with Celestia was an outlet for these disturbing interests.

Snails represented a character type that I was attracted to in general at the time-- the dorky, shy, awkward outcast. There were characters of similar nature that I also had crushes on... Wheatley, Ferb, Neville, Sheldon, even Luigi. I undoubtedly shipped every one of these characters with more powerful, attractive females, and I wanted to insert my own identity into those roles. (I find it disturbing, by the way, that Ferb actually ended up with Vanessa in the show, despite the significant and inappropriate age difference between them)

I still tend to gravitate towards the "dorky shy awkward outcast" type, as my fiance (26) is one of them. There's nothing inherently wrong with enjoying a "powerful female/weak male" sort of relationship dynamic, but that should NEVER include age differences. Now that I'm no longer a minor, it's my responsibility to never allow pedophilia or significant age differences into that dynamic.

There comes a time when we all need to stop having crushes on the child characters we had crushes on when we were children, and especially when we need to stop producing or consuming suggestive content with them in it. DeviantArt is notorious for harboring suggestive fanart of child characters that are both produced and consumed by adults, and I'm very disturbed I ever even slightly contributed to it, even if it was very watered down and I produced it as a minor.

For some people it's easier to see why this type of relationship is disturbing if you change the character's genders. We would look at an immortal, thousands-of-years old male character wanting to be in a relationship with a young female student as predatory, especially if in the canon material, that female character was in elementary school. I would, anyway. (I'm staring daggers at any and all of you who make suggestive content with the Cutie Mark Crusaders or Button or Pipsqueak or any of the child characters of this show. You need therapy and you need to take responsibility for your actions)

That being said, switching the gender roles to be male/male, female/female, male/nonbinary, female/nonbinary, or nonbinary/nonbinary does not and will not change the nature of age differences and pedophilia. I remember the fandom liked to joke about "Molestia", but a female predator and pedophile is just as illegal is disgusting as a male predator and pedophile. The same goes for any gender combination.

All this in mind, I have changed both the title and nature of this piece. We know that Snails is a great appreciator of magically adept characters such as Trixie and Sunset Shimmer, as well as attempting to perform his own magic show, so I want him to be inspired by his mentors to go into learning magic himself. In "Buckball Season", we see that Snails actually has great reflexes and levitating magic, and proves to be the best "in all of ponyville" for their Buckball team:

(Season 6 Episode 18) Snails's interest in magical education is further proven by his presence in Celestia's "Fundamentals of magic" classes:

. It's important to note that, aside from Snails's Buckball skills, Snips is included in the classes and interest in magic. I like to believe that both of them are given the opportunity, as they get older, to be more intensive students of Celestia's school of magic.