Stories I'll (Probably) Never Write, #2! · 3:33pm Jul 21st, 2015
I typed up the notes for this the better part of a year ago, but never produced even the introductory chapter.
The premise is Prince Blueblood taking an interest in Suri Polomare, whom he encounters working in Canterlot because the only job she can still get in that town is being an assistant to a lunatic. Disgraced in the fashion industry, she can only find work with Photo Finish, who doesn't seem to care too much, sending her on crazy tasks, like applying too much or not enough blush to a mannequin or leaving a half-full cup of coffee on a particular street corner for stylistic symmetry. If not those, boring tasks, like sending her to fetch things, deliver messages, sometimes to actually help put an outfit together. She dreams of being able to submit her own designs, if only a few times, without everyone immediately assuming it's stolen. There would have been scenes of her making a delivery and the pony receiving it giving her suspicious looks, possibly a few biting comments, and while she badly wants to mouth off to them, she's too ashamed to do anything but silently take it, knowing she's lucky to have a job at all now.
Then, she bumps into Blueblood at a high-society event, and looking her over, he's immediately intrigued. It's the ways she isn't beautiful that catches his eye, like so many dolled up mares he's seen before, the ones exploiting every trick in every magazine they've ever read to stand out and look 'perfect', whereas Suri was only exploiting three or four. ("The eyeshadow one is a good choice for her, actually, it makes her irises appear to glow like a welcoming bonfire.") It gives her a kind of odd, almost friendly sort of appeal that he wants to see more of, but she immediately shuns him, knowing full well who he is and that there's no way it's not a trick. This only makes him want her more, of course, unable to remember the last time he had a challenge, the last time he had to earn affection and prove himself like a prince of yore! He does this by constantly showing up wherever Photo Finish sends her, doing anything from offering her a rose to arranging for her name to be written in the clouds, to letting her find him lying on a piano while wearing a sparkly tuxedo. She may shout at him for all of this. ("You idiot! The piano trick is for mares, okay?!")
BB might have noted aloud that she looks almost motherly, somehow, her simple, yet feminine look combined with a kind of down-to-earth attitude, nothing at all like his own mother. Not that he bases the mare of his dreams on how she contrasts his mother. Or father. Or any other family member. That would be weird. He'll be over there if she needs him. That kind of awkward babble might have been a regular thing.
From there, part of Suri is insulted/flattered to be thought of as an equal to Rarity, whom she had to steal from to feel like she had a chance, and that the prince is going for completion or something. Then it occurs to her that Rarity is gal-pals with at least one princess, and that she must have been the one to put him up to this, and after a few weeks of him popping up all Pepe Le Blue everywhere her work takes her, she gets fed up with the joke and does something drastic to turn him away, which finally makes him relent.
Genuinely feeling bad when it looks like there really was no scheme, she opts to apologize. Then come wacky break-into-the-palace shenanigans, as she isn't allowed in and he's not coming out. When she's finally said it, he asks the guards to release her, saying the offer is still good if she'd give him just one chance. She may turn red, but hesitantly nods.
On their first date, (that she actually agreed to) she feels like she knows him too well to get nervous about the crazy prince that'd been (mostly unintentionally) messing with her life for the last few weeks, so they can just talk normally.
One of the topics is Rarity, and how Blue could've have been all over her, in multiple senses of the word, but he wasn't sold on the idea.
"...Honestly? She reminded me of my mother. She even yelled at me in the exact same way, same posture, same expression." He shook his head. "I offered her a formal apology later, but I don't regret a thing I did that night."
(instills idea of regret to recur in Suri's thoughts)
Toward the end, she's come to brag about her new coltfriend to Coco Pommel, whom she sees step out of a closet, mane messy and face flushed, at the sound of her name. Coco tries and fails to cover up with a hastily-thought-up lie. Suri is not amused.
---
"Coco, if I wasn't convinced that you weren't furiously making out in a closet at the start of this exchange, what makes you think I'd change my mind at that?"
"...Wishful thinking?"
A little part of her enjoyed watching her former assistant squirm under her flat stare, but she had bigger fish to fry. (couldn't have used that line anyway, fish frying implies they eat meat) "Well, I gotta go, but make sure you-" she stepped closer and grinned madly, raising her voice and speaking directly at the closet door, "USE PROTECTION!!"
She didn't need to look at Coco to hear the mortified squeak, nor the sound of the flustered filly collapsing in embarrassment. It wasn't quite the revenge she'd had in mind, but sweet, innocent Coco Pommel probably wouldn't even understand being jealous over a colt. Or filly. Whichever she had waiting for her in there.
---
In the last stretch of the story, Suri feels guilty about having stolen. Not just Rarity's designs, but her dreams, both of being a high-ranking fashionista and of marrying a prince. ("My special talent is sewing on buttons. Buttons! I only ever started screwing with fashion because it was what Rarity wanted to do!") She reveals that she looked up to Rarity for a number of reasons when they were younger, wanting to be special like her, instead of boring like she was. She wanted it so badly she wound up trying to steal it all, and she's only felt worse about it with every new thing she hears about Rarity. She says in tears that she can't marry Blueblood because it would mean that she finally got away with it, took something Rarity could never get back from her, and she can't do that to someone that used to be her friend.
Blueblood contacts Rarity (earnestly asking that she talk to an old friend, no matter how much she may still hate him. She responds that she let it go a long time ago, and is glad to see he has too.) while Suri is making plans to leave town, perhaps leave Equestria, for somewhere that wouldn't mind another boring, selfish little thief. Rarity catches Suri before she can go, cue heart-to-heart-type moment with Rarity explaining that Suri's relationship with Blueblood never had anything to do with her, that he fell for Suri for Suri alone, that it's not stealing if nopony else was likely to ever even find it. "He loves you, Suri. Just you. Will you really throw that away because I, because anypony, might wish it was them instead?"
Happily-ever-after ensues! Suri marries him, but refuses to be called 'Princess', at least not so soon.
I will not write this because:
-Time
-It might wind up being a relatively funny, crazy story, but the overall tone feels a little too serious and soap-opera-y for my writing style.
-How many BluebloodxFormer Bad Guy stories am I up to at this point, anyway? I know there's not a limit, but I should at least focus on the ones I liked enough to write more than one chapter for first.
-I would not remember to include nearly enough 'okay's in her dialogue. That's a tricky verbal tic to write. Not okay.
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I had the vague idea where she'd be hearing about Coco's continued success as Rarity's protege or something like that, cosmic salt in the wound. That, and it feels criminal not to mention Coco somewhere in a Suri story, even if there wasn't much more than a one-off gag at the end of it. The pony in the closet might have been plot-relevant in some way, if I ended up writing the thing out, but I didn't have any ideas at the time. It could have gone either way, but as I'm binning this thing, it probably doesn't matter now.
Cool idea. I always thought there was more to Suri then we saw. After all, she grew up in Ponyville, was in a club with Rarity, and when Rarity saw her years later she still liked Suri enough to give her that fabric. Rarity's really good at social observation, so I find it hard to believe anything other than that Suri really did used to be a nice, decent pony, before she was ground down by the big city of Manehatten or something else. That and she looks like Diamond Tiara's cousin or big sister or something.
Also, who was Coco in the closet with?