Rarity invites Twilight for an impromptu lesson in fashion design, and in so doing, discovers an unexpected fatal flaw in her own sense of style. Twilight has an answer, of course. It only requires a small amount of set theory...
Just a tongue-in-cheek exploration of what might really happen if Rarity's spur-of-the moment fashion sense met Twilight's encyclopedic nerdiness head on.
This is set somewhere in the middle of Season 4. Because amongst other things, I really miss the Golden Oak Library...
Chapters (1)
Sometimes you just have to look back and think "Whatever happened to the life that we once knew?"
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...Anybody get it? No? Ok...
My horribly-disguised references aside, I enjoyed reading this. The exposition felt a tad too heavy in a couple places, but overall this was an enjoyable little episode-style fic.
Have a Thumbs Up!
I've always thought that image for the cover was Rarity stabbing Twilight in the neck with her horn.
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While it's a bit forced, I can't unsee it now...
What kind of thought process would lead one to that?
This was a great read; I like seeing Rarity and Twilight as a friendship duo and not have the others involved. Enjoyed the part of Twilight's 'accident' of pointing out Rarity's influence and her designs as not being as original as she thought. You got Twi's egghead-ness good with this story. Didn't see the twist at the end coming. Gave it a thumb's up!
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I have a twisted sense of humor thanks to both sides of my family. You're welcome.
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Thanks?
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You didn't foresee the vapid Canterlot crowd having bad and sycophantic opinions?
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Thanks much for reading, Jay, and for your detailed feedback -- hearing what works in a story (and what doesn't) really helps!
Twilight is obviously my go-to pony as a main character, though I wanted to branch out of my comfort zone in this one and give Rarity a bit more of the spotlight. I also wanted to try to show both her confident and knowledgeable fashionista side, as well as a bit of her wonderfully overblown drama-queen ranting, which is what makes the character so much fun to watch.
Poor Rarity -- always the town, never the toast...
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"Fashion is fickle, dahling -- one can never truly predict how the audience will respond, or what they'll choose to focus on..."
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I can just imagine the response. “Rarity...you do realize I’m immortal right?”
I mostly wear jeans and variations of tshirts, so I really don't understand high fashion. But this tale made me think...
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Not to worry -- remember the episode It Isn't the Mane Thing About You? Rarity can rock the grunge look too -- once she stops panicking first...
In Twi's defense, I don't think her copy-cat works without the Diagonals before it to prompt the viewers into seeing it as a capstone exact reference to draw attention to all the almosts.
THis was a great and I likes the twist at the end. Though that design only works because none of the others are copies which is omething Rarity will realize after some time. Twilight's memory is also impressive and she doesn'r even use a mind palace to achieve it.
What really confuses the issues is that Fashion doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's an ecology. So it doesn't just matter what a design looks like, it also matters what others will be wearing AROUND it. Adds a whole new level of complexity, and I think gets beyond just set theory.
Speaking of, I love the math humor.
Twilight is literally me. That's how I've done pretty much every school project: trace the lines, follow the recipes, always needing instructions. You have perfectly captured the difficulties of high-functioning autism. Well done.
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Fair point, and this is definitely intended as tongue-in-cheek math humor. Though it could be argued that there's a large element of arbitrary herd-effect to fashion (it's all about who says what is fashionable or goes well together, and how big an influencer they are) and that on a large enough scale this cancels out local, rational, ecological effects -- so statistically speaking, a given fashion is equivalent to a random real number, and hence diagonalization may apply.
Or so I tell myself. Along with the other five impossible things I believe before breakfast...
You had me at Cantor. Er, Canter.
I've always found stories which incorporate mathematical concepts into everyday situations strangely appealing, and this might be the most enjoyable one I've read since Infinitely Too Many Pinkie Pies (okay, maybe "everyday situations" isn't the best way to put it, but you get the idea).
Apart from set theory, something I really appreciate is the way you depicted Rarity in all of this, especially in the first part: giving Twilight free reign to experiment with different colors and fabrics to boost her confidence, and later encouraging her to draw inspiration from period outfits when she realizes that working with pre-existing patterns is the Twilight way. She makes for a pretty great teacher.
And as for Twilight herself, well, your Twilight is always on point.
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Thanks so much! And it should be no surprise that two of my favorite books when I was growing up were "Fantasia Mathematica" and "The Mathematical Magpie", both edited by Clifton Fadiman. They're full of stories and poems like this, and if you haven't read them I can well recommend them. One of my favorite stories from these collections is "A Subway Named Möbius", wherein the Boston subway system gets one connecting line too many, and becomes topologically a one-sided surface... after which trains start disappearing...
It's also reassuring to hear that I'm doing well by Rarity as a character. I did want to try to show her in action as an actual designer, not merely a social climber or drama queen. And having never designed a stitch in my life, I was wingin' it like a pegasus...
And Twilight? What can I say? Twilight is my pony!
Reading this felt like reading a fic from 2014, not 2019. Good work!
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Thanks much! It's helped that I've watched the entire G4 series over the past year, so I still have a reasonably good recollection of what happened when -- and when I really lose it, there's always the wonderful Wiki to fall back on!
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Well, Twilight only just INVENTED the field of Computational Fashion. She can't think of everything right away.
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"I have discovered a truly remarkable proof that representation of modern grunge fashion requires quaternion algebra and hence is isomorphic to the operators of thaumic field theory. Unfortunately this hemline is too small to contain it..."
One can only imagine the conference proceedings:
Unexpectedly quirky fic, but that's what made me enjoy it.
So, the crowd completely misinterpreted Twilight's dress and thought she was doing a callback to past period fashion rather than accidentally copying it?
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This makes me wonder if the author used the same process as Twilight and Rarity in the story lol
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Nah -- tea leaves and an occasional D20 roll gives you much better results for fiction.
Brilliant work from start to finish. Great friendshipping, excellent emotional climax, and a flawlessly integrated bit of math keeping Rarity from becoming derivative. Thank you for a great read.
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Thanks so much for the detailed feedback -- glad you enjoyed it!
Dahling, dahling, dahling! Has Rarity ever actually talked like that? I was beginning to wonder if she's turning into G3 Rainbow Dash.
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She has been known to, on occasion...
I enjoyed reading this story, even if I know next to nothing of the math theory that was involved here. XD
Oh, Rarity. That conclusion...
This was a lovely read. Love the interactions of Twilight and Rarity and the nod to the mathematical uncountable numbers
A very engaging and entertaining read. It was so much like an actual episode!
Mind you, I doubt they'd utilize something as mathematically complicated in the show as diagonalization, as it would totally go over kids' heads. 
Unless they're little geniuses, of course. 
Still, this was a nice Twilight/Rarity friendship tale, and it all felt so very in-character throughout. Thanks for sharing! 
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Thanks so much for reading and commenting, and I'm glad I could brighten your day!
One of the benefits of fanfiction is being able to explore concepts and angles to things that the show might not, and while transfinite math isn't the first thing that would come to anyone's mind, it certainly counts!
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Oh yeah, totally! I certainly didn't mean it as an unfavorable comparison.
The ending kind of lost me. I feel so confused
This little bit of dialogue struck me as odd. In real life, eidetic memory is closer to being of dubious existence, from what I last remember reading about it, and many of the experiments performed to 'prove' it were often... weird. (Like, a guy married his test subject/former student in one case weird.) While it's certainly been something more regulated to comic books, sci-fi, and like, in a world with extensive magic, surely somepony has thought to use memory magics? Or has a special talent in eidetic memory? Would there never have been a magical creature Twilight likes to flex knowledge on that has this ability?
Or Flim and Flam have made a hoax juice that'll give you the memory ability on par with a thousand-some year old Alicorn, and it's totally worth your bits?9732317
Twilight's just making the point that she doesn't have what most people (and ponies) think of as "photographic" or "eidetic" memory. Rather, Twilight's skill is as Twilight describes it, a facility with categorizing and recalling details, as a result of her uber-geeky tendency to track down every possible reference. I felt it important to call this out so readers wouldn't think I was using "photographic recall" as a superpower-like crutch here. Twilight has earned her annoying facility with recall -- and it's annoying precisely because it keeps tripping her up in dealing with her friends.
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Very true; she’s been shown to have a superior recall to her friends. Though, she might have met her match in Pinkie.
...which sounds a bit like a story idea. Hm.
That explanation does put her motives for saying so into perspective better.
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Good 'n' proper divination implements, tea leaves and a twenty-sided die. All you need now's a crystal ball and a deck of cards (tarot would probably be best, but regular playing could be workable).
"Spirits! Tell me! What story should I write next?"
"The next installment in the Not Exactly Friends series!"
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I guess a way to imagine Twilight's Fashion Mathematics™ are those character creation settings you see in some video games like Dark Souls, with each slider being endless and each setting being pushed, at least slightly further than the last.
Really enjoyed this one. Yes it's geeky to an extent, but that doesn't overpower the very pleasant characterisation of Twilight and Rarity. In particular, the still slightly inexperienced, S4-appropriate Princess of Friendship. Faved!
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Yeah, but "Free as a Pegasus" doesn't scan.