Let's talk about Rarity · 8:58pm Aug 2nd, 2015
Here are five big things you should remember while writing Rarity:
1. Rarity is generous except when she isn’t
This used to be a big point of debate back in the day. Fans used to really want each of the mane 6 to be perfect personifications of their elements instead of actual characters, and particularly get pissy about Rarity because she does lots of selfish things even though she’s supposed to be the element of generosity. Luckily, the show’s writers were smarter than the fans and knew that characters make better stories than caricatures.
Rarity does lots of generous things over the course the series. She makes all sorts of personal sacrifices in the name of helping out her friends (and those sacrifices almost always involve getting icky for a little while). But Rarity also does all sorts of shitty things, like screwing Rainbow Dash over during the Best Young Flyer’s Competition or blowing Twilight’s birthday party off to go hang out with the snobby smauffy ponies in Canterlot. Rarity has a constant inner conflict going on. She wants to do what’s right, but she also wants to what’s in her own best interest.
If that reminds you of someone, it’s because it reminds you of yourself. And also of everyone else ever.
Everyone wants to be good, and do what’s right, and be generous all the time. But everyone also wants to do what’s best for them. Knowing what’s right and doing what’s right are two different things, and everyone fails eventually. Most of us pretty often.
That’s what makes Rarity a good character and why making her into a total personification of the concept of generosity would have been terrible. Rarity’s inner struggle makes her feel real. She’s dealing with conflicts that are mundane, but still tangible and important to all of us. Overcoming selfishness is something that matters, and seeing a character accomplish that is exciting.
When you’re writing Rarity, keep in mind that she both wants what’s best for Rarity, and what’s best for her friends, and those two things don’t always line up. When they don’t, she has to make a choice. That choice isn’t easy, and she doesn’t always choose right.
2. Image is everything
Rarity’s entire career is image. It's manufacturing a specific image through dress and appearance to have a particular effect on ponies around her. It’s what she does for a living, and she’s good at doing it. She crafts an image to display to her friends. It’s similar to how Rainbow Dash is always putting on a certain front so ponies will think of her a certain way, but the big difference is that Rarity is doing so consciously whereas Rainbow Dash is doing it on instinct.
In the show, Rarity has a habit of putting on dramatic performances for her friends, like fainting backwards on a couch or locking herself into her room for days. The point you need to remember while writing her is that Rarity knows exactly what’s she doing, is doing it on purpose, and knows what effect it will have on her friends. It’s staged. She’s a big phony. Sort of.
Rarity is also, at least sometimes, totally genuine. Back when she locked herself weeping in her bedroom because the mane 6 ruined her fashion show with those terrible dresses they had her make, I don’t think anyone one would argue that she wasn’t actually sad. Rarity thinks and acts in grand gestures, because somewhere she learned that people are supposed to act on their emotions in the most dramatic way possible. So when she's sad, she has to dial it up to a ten, even if she doesn't feel ten level sad, but because that's how she thinks ponies are supposed to act when they're sad.
When you write Rarity, remember that her feelings are genuine, but the way she acts on those feelings is often at least somewhat staged and considered, not because she’s some Machiavellian mastermind, but simply because those are the terms she thinks in.
3. Words, words, words
Something that always surprised me while reading certain authors, Jane Austen for example, is how socially aware their characters are. Every one of Austen's gentleman’s class protagonists will spend at least a third of the novel thinking about what to say, how to say it, and who to say it to in order to have some desired effect on others and get something they want. It’s not just her protagonists. All of her characters engage in this semi-creepy social engineering and manipulation.
If you wrote an Applejack who wrote in those terms, who carefully chose each of her words and danced around different subjects trying to get ponies around her to agree with her or do what she wants, it wouldn’t work, because Applejack isn’t that kind of pony. She’s straight and to the point. She knows what she wants to say and she’ll say it.
But that kind of internal monologue is a perfect fit for Rarity. Rarity is not straight and to the point. She knows what she wants, but hell if she’s going to come right out and say it.
When you write Rarity, and particularly while writing her dialogue, keep in mind that Rarity chooses her words carefully. She wants to have a certain effect on those around her, and that effect isn’t necessarily something negative or manipulative. Even when she’s trying to cheer up a friend, she’s going to be very socially aware of what she’s saying and how she’s saying it.
4. Rarity isn’t half as smart as she thinks she is
I said earlier that when Rarity puts on her dramatic performances for her friends, she knows exactly what she’s doing and what effect it will have on them, but that’s only half-true.
Rarity acts very mature and intelligent, and to a certain extent she is. But when you watch episodes like Best Night Ever and Simple Ways, and the way Rarity views Prince Blueblood and Trenderhoof, it becomes clear that Rarity thinks about relationships and the world at large in a childish, girlish way.
Rarity thinks about the world as if life were a theater production. Everyone has prepared speeches and acts in grand gestures. Everyone has their role to play, and when the Princess introduces herself to the Prince, or when the two star crossed lovers from afar finally meet, they fall in love and live happily ever after.
But that’s not how the world works, and Rarity hasn’t figured that out yet. Rarity chooses her words and actions carefully, but her words and actions are still so dramatic that a lot of times she ends up appearing silly instead of intelligent or mature. It’s never very clear in the show just how much self awareness she really possesses, but what is clear is that when it comes to certain subjects, particularly ones that make for good theater productions like romance and adventure, Rarity is far more naive than she lets on.
When you’re writing Rarity, remember that a lot of times she’s not quite seeing situations for how they very are, but for how they would be if she were an actress in a play, and acts accordingly.
5. And since you read that whole blog post, now you should read this story I’m posting tomorrow, because it's about similar stuff:
What you are talking about is why Rarity is surprisingly my 2nd favorite character to read in fanfiction (my favorite being Pinkie). Oddly despite this she is not in my top 5 to ship with Pinkie.
She is in my favorites in general because she is a versatile character with some potential depth. She is also a thinker (even if she does not always come to the right conclusion due to her dramatic emotional states) and so she can be a lot of fun to read.
This is also why I have her fairly high up the list on who is hard to write in MLP.
All the things you have said about Rarity are precisely the reason she is my favorite by a long way. People don't seem to be comfortable with giving Rarity any slack when it comes to her faults and shortcomings. Oh, sure paranoid Twilight is funny and cute, brusque AJ is charming and rustic, but girly, dramatic Rarity is just tedious and stupid. I disagree on every way. Rarity is as true to her own character as any of the other mane 6, sometimes to the detriment of her own success. One of my favorite episodes to prove that is Sweet and Elite, because it so thoroughly shows every important facet of her character. She is proud, she is generous, she wants to do nice things for her friends (even when she misses the mark a la planning Twi's dress too fancy for her at first), but more importantly, she is, at her heart, a small town girl dreaming of big things. When she gets that opportunity to live that life, she latches on. Who wouldn't? Her dreams are coming true. More importantly even than that, though, is what happens when that dream is put in jeopardy. Risking everything, risking losing her new status and GENUINELY POTENTIALLY DESTROYING ALL FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES, she chose her friends. Her friends who, let's not split hairs, were being absolute assholes. It was do or die, her friends or her future, and for no greater reward than simply not ignoring her dick friends, she stood by them. She was extraordinarily lucky--or rather, Fancy Pants is very kind--that it all worked out. Her friends may never really know what they almost cost her that day, but it took her mere seconds to decide they were more valuable than that. That's what the element of generosity really looks like.
Yes. This is why I like writing Rarity: she can be utterly selfless and profoundly dumb, and is generally best when bouncing between the two. I started writing with Rarity, where she struggles with admitting what she needs for herself and makes a pig's ear out of trying to help others as a means of deflection. I had my most successful story (in terms if views, at least) with Rarity, where she is 99% right, hugely supporting, compassionate, and loving, then lets her imagination carry her to a false assumption that almost torpedoes one of the best days in Fluttershy's life, and now I'm going back to her for a big finish with a story that has Rarity coming to terms with the fact that her failings might be the most important part of who she is and how ponies relate to her – because dammit, Jim, she's just the most human.
Oh, and I think you may have missed one facet that kind of borders on some of the other points, but is worth highlighting on it's own: Rarity is an absolute champion at cognitive dissonance.
Because she is written to exemplify lots of archetypal girly-traits, she is emotionally driven about everything. You can provide her with hard evidence that she is wrong and she is perfectly capable of staring it in the face and keeping her old, completely contradictory, thinking. You don't reason with Rarity, you connect. Her empathy is shaky at best (sometimes bordering on narcissism), so it usually takes a big gesture from someone else that speaks to her emotionally – she has to actually feel bad for someone to have an above average chance of changing her mind on a subject. She thinks in absolutes and is well practised in ignoring contradictions that might upset those over-simplified positions.
Agree on all points.