Welcome! Today I will be reviewing Companion by Bicyclette. This little story is one of two companion (hah!) pieces that work together; for the purposes of this review I only read the one that was submitted to my review box. More to the point, this story is a RariTwi story, set after the finale of the show. I’m a big fan of how the show ended, so let’s see what Bicyclette does here, shall we?

TCompanion

• MLP: FiM
• Romance
• Drama
• Slice of Life

A fashion empire at the top of its field. A social calendar in great demand. And being the companion of Princess Twilight Sparkle, Sovereign of Equestria. It's everything Rarity had ever wanted. So she's happy, right?

• Sex
• Twilight
• Applejack
• Rarity

Bicyclette · 4.8k words  ·  108  17 · 2.8k views

Rarity has always dreamed of three things. Being at the top of the fashion game, having a full social calendar in great demand, and catching the eye of a royal. She now has all of these things, in the best way. She’s the special somepony of the most royal royal of all. Her longtime friend and Sovereign of Equestria, Princess Twilight Sparkle.

So she's happy, right?

It’s so much better than what she would have had with Applejack all those years ago.

Right?

Oh dear. This does not seem like it will end well.

I was more prepared coming into this, after the last Bicyclette story I’d read. Bicyclette is a fan of depicting romances that have a tragic or sad element, and this story does that with aplomb. It takes a concept--Rarity being enamoured by royalty, being supposedly in love with Twilight--and turns it on its head, showcasing it as a rotten, worm-ridden apple polished and painted to a sheen, looking for all the world from the outside like a perfect relationship, while inside everything is ruined. 

The worst part is how much Rarity has deceived herself. She has convinced herself that she loves Twilight, that faking enthusiasm is love, that pretending to do things that people like is love, that roleplaying the same little scene over and over and over again until Twilight breaks down into tears is somehow love. Meanwhile she misses the relationship she had with Applejack once upon a time--which is covered by the companion piece--and the reflections show that one was no better, full of arguments and mistakes, breakups and renewals until at some point Applejack was so hateful towards her she saw Rarity as a threat.

Despite knowing how hard this would hit, the ending was a complete gut punch. I found myself dropping my phone in disgust, not at the writing, but at what the characters had done to themselves, to each other. It left me feeling sick, wronged, like this mockery of love could somehow stand up to any real scrutiny. And that’s good. That’s damned good that the story made me feel that way. Because that means it did what it was supposed to do.

Perfect grammar, spelling, and punctuation with nary an issue, this one scored an easy five, as there was nary a thing I saw wrong.

Tragic love might be a dime a dozen, but properly showcasing unhealthy relationship dynamics isn’t so much. Indeed far too often stories will pretend something unhealthy is healthy, so for this one to so blatantly lay out in its warnings from the start how unhealthy it is really helps showcase the reality behind it. While the idea of post-finale Rarilight is hardly a new one, this is used in a brilliant way.

I give credit to Bicyclette for many things, and this was well executed for sure. She took the concept of tragic love and of unhealthy relationship dynamics and really showed their all. The world-building here is similar to that in Bicyclette’s previous story, Limerence, where alicorns can bond with their lovers and have children with them. We see such a thing here, where Twilight has bonded to Rarity in such a way that she has to outright hide her real cutie mark because to showcase it to the world would be to destroy what little joy she has left in life.  

Meanwhile Twilight’s behavior flip-flopping between cold-hearted Sovereign and clinging-to-the-past lost pony was downright chilling. I wanted to hear more about the fishing villages and their dances with the magical glowing version of what seemed like a type of salmon. What a cool concept that was, and used perfectly to help sell us on the kind of leader Twilight had become.

I also want to credit Bicyclette for making perfect use of the word count here. While a short story, coming in just under 5000 words, it nevertheless feels like it sells a tale far longer, with every bit jam-packed to bursting.

Bicyclette’s prose is as elegant as ever, delving into details when necessary while eschewing the useless ones, weaving a tapestry that tells precisely the tale it needs without wasting time on pointless inanities. I find myself giving a very high score as unlike some of her other stories, this one is not littered with French or other foreign language terms that draw one out of the story, with the only exception being the use of Couturière which context makes pretty obvious is something along the lines of fashion designer or fashionista. I also want to give special compliment to the way it described how Rarity felt she aged, where all the grace had vanished, replaced by lines and wrinkles she strove to hide.

This was a hard one to rate fairly. On the one hand, I was loving every last bit of the world-building and the concept here. Everything about the idea was magnificent, and it was beautifully crafted. On the other hand, as I mentioned before, the ending left me feeling sick and disgusted. In a way it almost made me wish I hadn’t read the story--not because the story isn’t good, because it’s amazing, but because the story left me feeling so grossed out by the end. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m married, and that my husband and I do our best to celebrate each other’s enthusiasm, and we do little silly roleplays from time to time, and as such reading this story was like seeing a couple ape everything my husband and I do, except for hollow reasons, with equally hollow results. It felt a little like it was calling me out, in that sense.

That is perhaps unfair to say, and it is in no way meant as an insult towards Bicyclette. But I found that as such it soured my enjoyment of the story. Again I must stress: this story is not bad. It’s great. But my ability to enjoy it was hampered by the ending. The ending did exactly what it was supposed to. The feelings I’m left with are what the author intended. It’s supposed to leave me feeling sick. It’s supposed to be a clear display of something unhealthy.

So I waffled on this score for a while. It was the hardest score to determine, and in the end I gave the story a higher score than I might have had I gone with my first instinct, because in the end I enjoyed it quite a lot, the ending perfectly summed up the story, and it was well written. I’m not likely to read this story again, but that’s not meant as a slight at all: it’s a compliment, a testament to how well you wrung those emotions out of me.

“Companion” is a story that illustrates problems a lot of couples have, set against a backdrop of high society, royalty, magical ponies, and a fantasy world. In the end no matter how different they are in shape and in biology, these ponies are so human in how they relate to each other. They’ve made terrible mistakes, and frankly they shouldn’t be together, not in the unhealthy way they are. Yet far too often relationships like this persist, in both books and in the real world, usually for the sake of some responsibility, such as children, or a shared career.

In this case this relationship is unlikely to do anything but progress, ultimately, towards making something official. As much as Rarity might think otherwise, she’s likely to become Twilight’s official consort sooner or later. Either Twilight will break down and demand it for the sake of her own feelings, or Rarity will lose what’s left of her enthusiasm for her normal life and give in to the circumstances within which she’s trapped. The only other way this ends is if one of them dies, and we all know it won’t be Twilight if that happens.

In some ways I look at this story as a warning, a warning to people like me, who think they’re safe and secure in the relationships they have. Don’t ever take it for granted. Don’t lose yourself in the idea of what you’re supposed to do that you fail to communicate, fail to properly convey your feelings, your hopes and desires. Don’t think that just because you made a commitment that you have to keep honoring it when it does nothing but make you unhappy or downright sad. Don’t assume that just because you were happy in the past that you’ll always be happy, because unless you work at it, you won’t be.

I want to thank Bicyclette for writing this story, for it was fantastic, no matter how sick it made me feel in the end. It showed us a scenario we can only hope never actually came to pass in the “real” setting of the show, and laid bare the lies at the heart of the pretend truth of Twilight and Rarity’s love. This Rarilight was, if anything, more like Raridark, in that it cast appalling curtains over the rest of Rarity’s life, dooming her to dwell within the darkness of Twilight’s shadow until she is nothing but dust.