FimFiction Link - Short ID: 87224/all-about-rarity
Published: Feb '13 — Mar '14
All About Rarity is a 200k Dark Romantic Tragedy. In this story, Rarity is obsessed with achieving the fairytale life of her dreams. Despite her (new) relationship with AJ, she begins an affair with Shining Armor soon after the royal wedding and things spiral from there.
More than anything, I think the epilogue pushes the flaws of this story out into the open. That's jumping ahead a little, but I do think it needs to be addressed. It's... pretty verbose with its writing at times but overall readable. It does have quite a few errors, though.
Rarity is an absolute nutjob in this. Within the story, she:
>Constantly cheats on AJ
>Spreads tons of slander about Cadance within upper social circles (and is also willing to be tribalist toward EPs)
>Threatens to lie and tell RD that FS molested her while she was drunk just to keep FS from telling anyone about her affair with SA
>Drops a fucking chandelier on a pregnant Cadance
>She was, in addition to that, perfectly fine with both Cadance and her foal dying in the emergency surgery that would need to be done after she was taken to the hospital
>Goes batshit and starts a fire in a room full of ponies
So yes. Nutty. As such, when the story tries to make you pity her it just... doesn't work. What gets set up/revealed for why she's the way she is just does not eclipse her being such a reptilian.
That isn't only an issue for Rares. The reasoning for Shining being willing to cheat on Cadance (within the very year they got married) is... strange. He's not comfortable getting intimate with Cadance in the way he is with Rarity so he cheats because he uh... loves his wife so much and doesn't want to sully her? He just has a very warped few of intimacy and I wish this was touched on more.
To speak of Cadance... uh. She's forgiving. WAY too forgiving, to the point it's legitimately mind-boggling. Rarity reveals the affair? Oh, she's known for a while, she just didn't want to say anything and risk upsetting things. But, now that things are out in the open, "could you please stop sleeping with my husband?"
Never in the story does Cadance show even an iota of hatred, or disgust at what Rarity did to her. It's painting her in the light of a truly loving, willing-to-understand person but ffs. This is the same mare that is responsible for you ending up in the hospital and risking the chance of dying in surgery, both you AND your foal dying in surgery, or your foal dying or being born with brain damage. They both turn out fine but she quite sincerely was not hoping for that. Some contempt, please, even just a glower or something.
But ultimately I can look past that, because the ending does, at least, leave Rarity miserable and exiled, for a time, from Equestria. She ruined her chance at a happy life with AJ, destroyed her own name, and hurt all her friends, just because she couldn't let go of some childhood dream.
(1/2)
Then the epilogue comes and gives her a happy ending. Three years later, she returns to Ponyville, having fulfilled her mandatory three-year exile and (somehow) paying off her debt of two million bits. She heads to SAA, AJ sees her through the window. AJ rushes to her and takes her into her loving embrace.
If the story had gone in different directions, I would not have minded this epilogue. But as it stands...
It tries, a lot, to make it seem that Rarity has good inside her that is trapped beneath an unhealthy obsession. But too often do we see just how disgusting a person she is. Thinking about SA while getting intimate with AJ, callously thinking she could kill FS when she comes and tells her that she saw her cheating on AJ, the way she'll read ponies and adjust her behavior to manipulate them accordingly. Because of all that, something like this just doesn't work. It already requires a loooot of suspension of disbelief to read about this version of Rares, but I was willing to do so under the assumption she'd get her comeuppance. The ending was already just 'okay' in my eyes, but the epilogue just... yeah. Happy when it shouldn't have been. To compare it to another story, just like Subjunctive.
In the end, this is a story about an unwell, obsessive Rarity starting an affair with a Shining Armor that has a very unhealthy view of sex, and includes a one-note, love-blind AJ and a Cadance that seems to value Rarity's 'friendship' over every other thing in her life. It's a pretty wild ride, all things considered. I can't say I liked it as a whole, but I was able to read it and not drop it.
Oh! Pinkie. Pinkamena, I should say. Probably the funniest thing in the fic. 'Pagliacci', the author referred to her as, and reading her dialogue/internal thoughts was just... lol.
(2/2)