A Little Insight Into Rarity · 7:29am Jul 5th, 2012
That I’m able to write well for Twilight is hardly a surprise to me, as she is like me in so many ways.
What’s a little more unusual is how well I can write for Rarity. Perhaps it is because I see more than a little of my mother in her, and we were very close in her last years.
Of all of the Mane 6, Rarity has the greatest gap between who she thinks she is, and who she really is.
Rarity thinks that what she wants in life is to be famous.
What she is in fact is generous, and generosity often thrives best on anonymity. Now I don’t think there’s any proof from the show, but I am convinced that there are dozens of residents of Ponyville that owe their lives, or at the very least their financial well-being, to Rarity, and none of them know that it is her that they owe their thanks to.
As an illustration of this gap, let’s consider her fantasy about Prince Blueblood.
Imagine for a moment that the Prince turned out to be the pony Rarity fantasized he would be: a perfect gentlecolt of taste and refinement, one who instantly fell in love with Rarity because of her inner beauty. Imagine that he swept her off of her hooves like she dreamed of. Imagine that he proposed, and she accepted.
Now imagine that Rarity is now Princess Rarity, a member of the Equestrian royalty. What would she do then? She couldn’t possibly remain in the fashion industry, so she’d have to give up the role that gave her meaning in life. And although she would be able to engage in some charity, there wouldn’t be that much of it. No, the life of a mortal princess means ceremony, endless amounts of ceremony. Going out there and letting yourself be seen. And nothing else.
It seems to me that that would quickly turn into a nightmare for Rarity. A lifetime of merely being, never doing. In Rarity’s words, actually getting what she wants in this fantasy would be the “Worst. Possible. Thing.”
How could Rarity even entertain such a fantasy if it has no choice but to end so badly? Because she doesn’t care to think things through. Leave it to Twilight to spend forever in planning. Rarity gets inspired, dives in, and takes life as it happens.
She loves melodrama, because life to her is a great emotional roller coaster, with the lows more than justified by the highs that inevitably follow.
In PMV’s, I’ve occasionally seen some version of Baroque suggested as Rarity’s characteristic mode of music. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love Baroque for the complexity and order, but Baroque is relatively sterile in the realm of emotion. No, Rarity’s favorite style of music is show tunes. She’d love Phantom of the Opera. If she had a copy of “Memory” from Cats, she’d play it on the record player late at night, and she’d always end up crying--and afterwards, she’d feel a lot better about things and refer to it as “emotionally cleansing” or something like that. The pony equivalent of Barbra Streisand is her favorite artist, as that kind of musical emotion is what she does best. Remember, after all, “Art of the Dress” was based on an obscure Stephen Sondheim song popularized by...Barbra Streisand.
Now I realize at this point that I sound presumptuous. Nobody’s seen any of my fiction with Rarity in it yet. I don’t think I have her mid-Atlantic accent quite down, and I’m far better at writing her reactions than to actually have her do anything interesting (that bit when Pinkie Pie wrestles with a rubber chicken in “Dragonshy” gets a laugh out of me every time). But out of all of the ponies I didn’t create/shape, Rarity’s the one whose heart I think I truly know.
Let me toss something out here. It’s a scene from an upcoming fanfic of mine, and I think it illustrates the way I write for Rarity. I think you should be able to figure out enough about what's going on without context, but feel free to ask any questions if you’d like:
From Canterlot Station, Rarity led the ponies to the penthouse apartment she used when entertaining guests. It had been a long day for Twilight and Rainbow Dash, and so they excused themselves for some well-earned shut-eye.
It was nearly midnight, and the two white unicorns, Rarity and Vinyl Scratch, stood outside the door of the apartment complex for a moment. Rarity’s saddlebag was full of sewing supplies, while Vinyl was hitched to a cart full of her audio equipment.
“There’s a client that needs a fitting,” the designer told the DJ, “and now is a good a time to do it as any. I seem to do my best work at night.”
“What a coincidence,” said Vinyl with a smirk. “So do I.”
As their paths were initially in the same direction, they walked together for a few blocks, reminding each other along the way of some of their adventures when they were fillies together in Ponyville.
“It was such a small basket,” Rarity recounted during one of these stories. “I don’t see how Big Macintosh could possibly have...oh you’ve got to be kidding me!”
“What is it?” asked Vinyl, backtracking to where Rarity had frozen in place.
Rarity responded by tearing a poster off of the wall and stuffing it into a trash bin. “If Twilight had seen this, it would have turned our trip into the worst excursion ever!”
“What was on it that could have such a bad effect on Twilight?” Vinyl asked. “Did the letterer split an infinitive?”
“Oh, grammar humor! Very funny. As a matter of fact, this poster advertised the upcoming season finale of the Risking It All Team program!”
“You mean My Little Pony: Explosions Are Awesome?” Vinyl replied with a smirk, using one of the less-reverent fan names of the show. “You did know that the season finale was airing this Monday, right? I don’t see why that would be such a big deal. After all, RIAT’s just an Etheric show...whose main character of Shrinking Violet is a blatant rip-off of Twilight Sparkle. I know Twilight said she never listens to the etheric, but surely she knows about the most popular series in the history of CEN. If she had a problem with it, she would have gotten it shut down a long time ago. Unless...”
“I’ve been conducting a massive conspiracy to keep Twilight Sparkle ignorant of my favorite Etheric show!” Rarity suddenly and loudly confessed to the universe at large.
Vinyl Scratch pointed her head at her friend and waited several seconds for Rarity’s hyperventilating to correct itself. “Is that all?” she said finally, with as much sarcasm as she could muster. “You could save yourself a lot of trouble and tell her...”
“NO!”
“...or you can decide to maintain this charade. Very well, all we have to do is tear down every poster we find, steer her away from anypony who wants to ask her what she thinks will happen in the finale, and start singing random show tunes at the top of our lungs to drown out any pony who starts singing the show’s incredibly-addictive theme song. All without making the most paranoid pony in all of Equestria suspicious. You know how this is going to end, don’t you? Griffish Inquisition.”
Rarity forced out an insincere laugh. “That old game? You exaggerate! Twilight will handle the news calmly and rationally.”
“Then why don’t you tell...”
“NO!”
“Yup,” Vinyl concluded, “Griffish Inquisition, mark my words. And when Twilight Sparkle backs you into her imaginary witness stand and begins her interrogation, I’ll sit back in the spectator’s seats, and eat my popcorn.”
“It won’t come to that,” Rarity insisted. “One little weekend to get her back to Ponyville, and then I’ll explain everything. It’ll be easy!”
“Easy as p-p...something Pinkie would bake?”
Rarity laughed. “And you call Twilight paranoid! Do you honestly think that Pinkie P...Pinkie magically appears every time you say her last name? Even when you’re in an entirely different city than her?”
“I noticed you avoided saying her last name just now.”
“Force of habit,” Rarity admitted under her breath.
* * *
Back at Canterlot Station, a new arrival read the large type on a sign very, very carefully.
“Welcome to Canterlot!” Pinkie Pie read out loud. “See, ponies! I told you I’d get us there eventually! RIAT season finale, here we come!”
What I like most about Rarity is how she has exceedingly high standards for herself. People see to want to think that she's aloof, but in the end I can't help but feel that she's actually more self-aware and determined to live up to her own standards.