I. Color Theory
In the messiness of Rarity’s work room, they’d set up a little card table while Spike was napping on the couch. Sweetie Belle was out, they’d finished a lovely dinner, and Twilight had offered to wind the night down with cards and perhaps wine. Rarity liked the sound of both, though she was partial to the wine and brought it to the table with her.
The cards were human in nature, but pony in make—Twilight played with the cards she had made herself after returning, all of them based rather religiously on the human game she had found in their world. Magic, she called it, a game of magic of the human variety. Or at least, of the sort they imagined.
“You know, I wasn’t sure about all this card business at first, but you’ve taken to the human game,” Rarity said with a smile as she shuffled a deck with her magic.
Twilight mirrored her. “It’s an intriguing game. I like systems, I like games…”
“And, despite yourself, you love the aesthetics as much as I do,” Rarity finished. “Really, Twilight, I know what you read. You’d have the world think you are all business, a mare of science and highest thought, and yet more nights than not I find you buried deep in fiction. Fiction of the most fantastic sort, I might add,” she said as she slid the deck across the table to Twilight.
Twilight presented her own and cut Rarity’s before giving it back.
“A girl’s allowed to like knights and mages,” Twilight said. “Anyhow, I was more surprised how interested you got when I first started importing Magic across from the human world. I guess that was foolish on my part. You’ve always enjoyed sharing games with me.”
A dice was rolled and hands were drawn and settled. “And you were excited. Should I not be excited for my partner’s passions, hm? Swamp and go, dear.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow, played a white-blue land, and gestured.
Rarity drew, hummed, and laid out a swamp and a Gifted Aetherborn.
“Vampires?” Twilight asked. “Mono black, probably. I’m surprised.”
The turn went back. A plains and a Wall of Omens. She drew and extra card.
Rarity, for her part, had not forgotten the comment. “And why, Twilight dear, would you be surprised? By vampires?”
“More by mono-black. It’s a bit macabre, and I suppose I don’t think of that as being your aesthetic.” Blinking, Twilight quickly added, “Not that it’s a bad thing! Just not what I expect.”
Rarity let out a little hmmph but seemed to let it go. The attacks she made the next turn were purely business, and definitely not her poking Twilight for her presumptions. Twilight noted the deathtouch on her creature and let it through. No need losing assets so quickly for little gain.
“Blue and white is exactly what I expect from you, of course,” Rarity said. “Unlike you, I can exactly see what you’re about and expect it. You’re a clever mare, I know that. You like clever sorts of strategies. You like to manipulate the tempo of play.”
She dropped another vampire, and Twilight grimaced. With a cheerful hum, she swung again, and Twilight decided to take it. It was just two points.
Rarity was right of course. Twilight wasn’t blind to the obvious. She knew her proclivities rather well. The more complicated, the more moving parts—necessary or not—the more she loved to learn and operate the levers that made it all go.
“So why vampires? Or, I guess, why mono-black?”
“Why not?”
She played a Thoughtseize, and Twilight noticed she’d chosen an older printing, one with a strange faerie, and she pointed to it. “See, this card makes sense. We’ve talked before. I like to make decks based on effects I like, and you like to create an aesthetic that recalls an experience.”
Twilight tapped and laid down a Dovin’s Veto. She’d rather keep that Soulherder in hoof, thank you. She’d need it later.
“Blast. Also, interesting. We aren’t monolithic, dear.”
“But I think this time you are building along an aesthetic. But mono-black doesn’t seem to fit.”
Rarity smiled a bit sardonically over her cards. Twilight knew that look. It was the I’m-indulging-this-but-be-warned look, the one she gave right before she dropped something sent Twilight into a rush of confusion and speculation about whatever chaos she’d caused and—
“Well, Monoblack does fit me best, just as Bant fits you best, Twilight. I am rather monoblack.”
Twilight squinted at her and played her Soulherder at last.
“Nah.”
“I am too!” Rarity huffed. “And, for good measure, at the end of your turn I’d like to squash that card with Victim of Night.”
“And I’ll just scoop it back up into safety with Ephemerate. It’s on rebound, also,” Twilight said lightly. “So it’ll come back on my next turn. The spell, I mean. And the creature.”
“Delightful,” Rarity groused. “And if I read that correctly, you’ll no doubt use it to flicker that wall and draw a card… and make that herder of yours a bit bigger.”
“Now you’ve got it,” Twilight said with a grin. “And Bant, really? White, green, and blue? Order and community, perfection and knowledge, and… green? Nature and preserving the natural order?”
“Chesterhoof’s fence,” Rarity said. She reached out and booped Twilight’s nose. “Do you know it?”
“I… I’m not sure I do.”
Rarity gestured lazily with the hoof she’d reached out. “You know Chesterhoof, I’ve seen you reading him. The Mare Who Was Thursday? Anyhow, he has this bit about a fence. A stallion on a stroll comes across it on his walk and says, why is this here? But after a moment he decides that it is probably best that it is where it is. If somepony put it there, they probably had some good reason, and so the stallion leaves the fence alone and does not go beyond it.”
“And that’s me?” Twilight asked. “I’m no stallion, but I would like to think I’m more clever than that.”
“Oh, you are. It’s not about a lack of curiosity. It’s about how you respect that for all of your curiosity, burning as it I know it is, it does have limits. You respect the world you find as much as you wish to know it. And the ponies you find.”
“I… well, I’m also just as likely to, ah, mess with time.”
“Fair.”
“But anyhow, you’re definitely not mono black! You’re obviously mono red!”
Rarity stuck out her tongue. “Dear, love, darling, you’re joking. Surely you are joking.”
“You’re certainly not monoblack. It’s the color of ambition, sure, but also of using others for your own ends. It’s greed, self-interest, the will to power. You’re too nice for that!”
Rarity shook her head, finding another Gifted Aetherborn. Twilight considered her next move, and then slid a Deputy of Detention, snagging both of the Aethorborns underneath it in exile… and making her herder bigger. Satisfied, she swung in at a scowling Rarity and dropped a creature that healed her.
“I rather think it fits me nicely. Better than monored, the color of lightning bolts and rashness. I am ambitious, you know.” She bit her lip. “Decisions, decisions, decisions, ah! Perhaps we should…”
She killed the Herder, and Twilight sighed. “Yeah, figured.”
“Did you? Oh, good, good. For myself, I knew you’d have some sort of trick up your sleeve, but I had to see. And if you did, well, I had my ways. Anyway, I am ambitious. I’m a social climber, so they tell me. Black is also the color of the performer, you know. All eyes on moi!” She raised both her hooves and with a bit of magic summoned a ribbon from an open chest and made it dance before her. “An artist! A Lady! All of these things are ambitious, self-interested, and a bit greedy, hm? Monored. What am I, Rainbow Dash?”
Twilight played a Flickerwhisp and flickered the wall again. “Well, no, but the thought of a Rarity that was a bit athletic in some other world is fascinating. Perhaps a jewel miner… I’m kidding! I’m kidding! Don’t frown too much!” She laughed. “Red isn’t just about being a bit rash. It’s the color of emotion and freedom. It’s about chasing dreams and wild impulse! It’s about being dramatic!”
“My flair for the dramatic can be overstated.”
Twilight shifted in her chair and gestured with both forelegs wordlessly at the ornate fainting couch in the corner.
“Aha, yes, that does exist, doesn’t it?That’s simply my emotional support couch! It is a bit attention grabbing, I’ll agree… but it's all the rage in Canterlot!”
“I grew up there and I know that’s a lie.”
Rarity shrugged. “But doesn’t that make my argument better, hm?”
Twilight raised a hoof, blinked, lowered it. Then startled forward as Rarity began another turn, looking back and forth among her cards.
“I have it! But you’re the Element of Generosity! That’s not about ambition and all that. Even heroic characters that are black-aligned aren’t generous.”
Rarity inclined her head wordlessly, still looking at cards. At last, she smiled and answered. “My generosity often takes the form of sharing my skills… my expertise… I’ll grant you that it is generous, if you’ll grant we are not just our elements… but look at it constructively. It’s not that unlike the social climber, showing how useful she is to you and you and you, and you—”
She laid down a mountain, and Twilight leaned in. “What—”
“And that’ll be a Kholagan’s Command, dear. Discard a card and take two.”
“And that is getting cancelled,” Twilight said. “Or, uh. It would be if I had something.”
“Which you do not,” Rarity said with a bit too much smugness. “Also, I’d like to play a Gatekeeper of Malikir, kicked.”
“...And I sacrifice something. Oh, lovely,” Twilight groused, still surprised. “I’d been sure you were monocolored.”
“Ah, it is a mistake to get married to our assumptions.”
The game continued. The deputy was bolted, and Twilight found out the hard way that the red black deck Rarity had built was a tribal list with just enough interesting synergies with things dying on the battlefield to make Twilight’s attempts to control the tempo rather moot. Her cards were ripped from her hooves and her life total was pummeled.
At last, all but defeated, Twilight surveyed the army of vampires menacing her.
“So I’ve been thinking,” she began.
“A dangerous past time, but a good one,” Rarity said.
“I think you’re the less suitable person to call a social climber.”
Rarity set the desk aside and gestured for her to go on. But her smile was bright. She loved seeing Twilight’s mind at work on a problem. “Continue, please.”
“You’re not a social climber. Ambitious, sure. But what separates you from your hypothetical social climber offering her skills widely is that when you do so it is to make your art accessible. You want beauty to be something anypony can aspire to and for.” She drew a card, and held back a laugh as she went on. “You are the most generous pony I know. And its not out of ambition or a desire to be admired, but because you genuinely believe that art is worth sharing. And.. also, I’ve finally gotten to six lands, so I’d like to say that I have enough to pay the overload cost of Winds of Abandon, exiling all of these vampires and making my Soulherder a rather large threat. And as you have no cards in hand…”
She turned the Herder sideways and Rarity winced.
“I believe I have you at the end of a loving rapier, darling,” Twilight said.
“Ha! Like Tartarus you do, rascal,” Rarity said.
It was at this moment that a sleepy Spike peaked his head in. Neither mare noticed him until he cleared his throat. “Uh, I was gonna ask if you had any of those nice rubies, but I always saw you both as monogreen.”
Twilight and Rarity looked at each other, blinked, and with one voice said:
“Wait… what?”
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Great job on this! Loved the moment where after spending so much time talking about how she isn't red, Rarity proceeded to plop down a Mountain. Definitely worth the commission!
If the girls were monocolor... I'd agree Twilight is definitely blue, Rarity would be black, and Rainbow would be red.
The other three would be...
Applejack is green.
Fluttershy is white.
Pinkie Pie is Pinkie Pie.
10527536
much like The Doctor, RB are brilliant liars.
10527562
Interestingly I'd say Fluttershy is mono green and Applejack is white.
Consider: both live in nature and work in nature, but FS loves nature as it is and AJ's livelihood lies in taming it and making it hospitable. AJ is a farmer and a part of her community because she values community highly, whereas FS is okay with community cause thats just pony nature, but is more attached to the land as it is, and the animals as they come.
10527591
You make good points. It was honestly a tossup for me. But I was looking at Fluttershy being a protector and healer while AJ is more strength and endurance.
I also find much humor in your implicit agreement of my choice for Pinkie Pie's color.
If we go bicolor, Fluts and AJ are both definitely White/Green.
I agree Rarity would be Black/Red.
Twilight would be Blue/White. She's not nearly aggressive enough for anything else.
Rainbow would be Red/Red. And Red/Red/Red if we go tricolor.
And Pinkie Pie is definitely Pinkie Pie.
What about other characters? Starlight Glimmer is Blue Black, but that’s a gimme. Cadance is white red, with passion balanced against the collective nature of the Crystal Empire and the Crystal Heart.
10527591
“Farmers love nature. They really do. But it’s a special kind of love, one that involves lots of leather.”
-Terry Pratchett
10527794
Discord is obviously Black/Red in his desire for chaos for chaos' sake and his personal enjoyment.
Chrysalis, Tirek, Sombra and Cozy Glow are great examples of pure Black though.
10527591
Controversial opinion time: Fluttershy is white/green/black.
White is all about harmony and order, something she enforces when taking care of her animals. It is also the major healer's colour, with the most spells and abilities centred around keep yourself and your creatures alive and healthy... sometimes even healthier than they started.
Green is what she accepts about the world. It isn't tame, but neither is it cruel and it doesn't need to be unkind. It is also the one with all the cute and not-so-cute creatures for her to be friends with. It is the forest she finds herself drawn to.
Black seems to be the odd one out, right? However it'd be the element of death that would... not attract her, but something she'd acknowledge the necessity of. More so, it would be the part of black that shows that life can survive and even thrive in the worst places.
Finally, black would be part of it due to the one creature and play style that I feel would attract her the most.
Saprolings and the creatures that are their parents and guardians.
Saprolings are at their strongest when you accept all of them, both their green and black natures. Which Fluttershy has been shown to be more than willing to do with her animals, even if she is more white than black. Fungus type Saprolings are just as important and useful as their more accepted plant Saprolings, something Fluttershy would acknowledge and accept as well.
White comes in when you remember that Fluttershy also loves to see her friends grow up healthy and strong, and white is king of token enhancing enchantments.
She is the one pony in the Mane 6 who probably knows death the best. She would have seen so many of her wildlife friends pass away, and many of them are themselves carnivores. Thus she would have more than enough life experience to accept death as a part of life. Saprolings are the one creature in M:tG that proves that black isn't evil and in fact can even be kind in its own way, as there are even black creatures that will produce and nurture Saprolings, most notably the Fungus creature group, but not just them.
I can see Fluttershy loving the little baby Saprolings and in turn the creatures that herd and protect them, regardless of the nature of those creatures. So yeah, Fluttershy is W/G/B, or at least would run it as her deck.
10527562
Pinkie Pie would run a 5 colour deck, just so no-one felt left out.
10527562
I could see Pinkie playing with decks full of all the "UN-" cards, unhinged, unglued, unstable, pretty much any card that has the picture pop out of its frame. i had a couple unhinged cards and they were fun, but hard to convince people to let me use them.
I'm a begginer of knowing magic, and I want to know the reason of Spike saying both is mono green.
And I want to ask which color Spike would be. I think he would make a great deck of Burn with black and red, what is your opinion?
I'm now fine with shipping Rarity with Twilight if Spike is dating Gabby too. I want to know if she plays as well XD
Does that even qualify as fantasy in Equestria? Seems more like historical fiction.
Twilight, have you seen some vampires? It's all about the aesthetic.
Arguably. Red is very much the color of personal expression, including the artistic, but black certainly lends itself to certain media.
I like the idea of the Ultimare Universe as a Planar Chaos-style "What if?" set for standard Equestria.
Ah! And there we have it. Twice over. Lovely stuff. Ponies discussing card game color theory is far more fun than it has any right to be. And I can only imagine what Rarity would think of her actual card. Brilliant stuff from start to finish. Thank you for it.
Also, may as well throw my hat into the ring on other color identities:
Rainbow Dash: Monored developing into uRw Jeskai over the series. (Aspiring towards perfection through athleticism, with a constant tension between personal desire and needs of the many that is resolved in becoming the ideal for others to aspire towards.)
Applejack: White with a dash of green. (TRADITION!)
Fluttershy: Balanced Selesnya, developing into rGW Naya over the series. (Caring for the meek and the lost, with a developing taste for the potential of chaos.)
Pinkie Pie: Mardu before it was cool. (Her greatest aspiration and personal desire is making other people happy.)
10527832
You really sure that she would restrict herself to only five colors?
10527928
Yes, that would definitely be her. Especially since they were conceived as joke decks.
When Rarity cast Gifted Aetherborn, I thought for sure she'd built a deck around Yahenni. Like, they share vocabulary and everything. Huge missed opportunity, I'd say.
10528109
The deck she is using is real and my wife made it. It does have the Undying Partisan in it. I’ll post when I’m home.
10527832
I can kinda see your argument here. Abzan doesn’t not fit FS
When I say that I can read just your dialogue because of how fascinating it is, this is pretty much what I meant.
10527936
Spike plays whatever is meta at the time. I mean... It's in his name.
For reals though I can only see Spike as Dimir. Case in point: Sibling Supreme.
In my mind, Rarity is more of an Izzet than a Rakdos. Her work requires specialized knowledge, and she is a bit of a perfectionist. Then again, I also fall into the trap of equating black with evil more often than I would like to admit.
10527591
Remember that green is also the color of balance, of integrity and of family. White is the color of order, honor, and the greater good. Applejack could not be more green (she's got traces of other colors, but not enough to change her color identity),
I wonder if Rainbow Dash has just enough blue to use flyers and little else
10527832
An interesting theory, though I would like to raise an objection. While it is true that black is the colour most commonly associated with death, it is not the sole purveyor of it. In fact, all colours have their own ways of addressing death, be it rejecting it, studying it, disregarding it, embrasing it, or exploiting it (not sure if these are the best examples, but I think my point still stands).
While i agree that Fluttershy would probably be the one amongst the Main 6 who is most familiar with death, her relationship with it matches green's realtionship with it. You even perfectly described this relationship above, you just falsely atributed it to black.
The reaction to Spike is easily the best part of this because I can just...see that moment so vividly~
Didn't expect to see this continuity again so soon after reading the other two. As I said elsewhere, I love the Ultimare reference. I'm not up-to-date on current Magic expansions, and a fair amount of the story fades into the realm of technobabble without the relevant knowledge. I looked up what flickering was and immediately understood much more about what Twilight had been doing the whole game. The turnabout at the end is well executed and I like the general premise that Twi brought this game to Equestria.
My actual preference is to ignore the present color framework and go back to the older, unbalanced and less thought out concept (which I probably don't perfectly recall) that the world generates mana, types of land refine colors, that which gets associated with the land tends to picks up some color and Platonic forms by that association, and while there really are broad associations of color with personality traits or concepts they're very indirect and mostly proved by how no matter how continually exceptions arise, we always notice them as exceptions.
Of course, while the actual reason for the redesign was likely ease of balancing operations, this is naturally far more fun for light arguing material. And since my normal build by the current standards is blue/black/white (in that order of importance but usually all three, playing oversized cosmetic Highlander decks (meaning only one of any card, even basic lands, but cards have to really be identical to count), and can usually get away with mixing in a few silver-bordered cards and older rules like mana pools and burn because I only join casual multiplayer games, don't normally play to win and my usual overt role the rare times I play is to enter, show off an odd card or combination and obligingly die)... the argument that saying I play blue/black/white doesn't do too much to pin down my actual playstyles or personality kind of writes itself without having to go back to the game's roots.
However, it does mean when I then follow by saying I think Spike has a valid argument that both Twilight and Rarity currently match mono-green, there's a clear way to interpret this statement other than as trolling, despite my lack of proceeding to lay it out. (And you can certainly build appropriate mono-green decks for both if you aren't too hung up on using recent editions of the game.)