In my world, Rarity is Best Pony. (Luna is Best Princess, Chrysalis is Best Queen, and Applejack is Best Background Character. Sorry, old joke!) This started with the episode "Art of the Dress", the one that hooked me as an MLP:FIM fan. Not long after, I realized that the show's run really depicts two Rarities:

• Artist Rarity appreciates beauty so much that she sees some amount of it in everything, and her greatest joy is in creating it for others, even if it costs her deeply to do so. You know, Element of Generosity and such. She's positive about others' art, even when she doesn't actually like it. She apologizes when she can't assist her friends, and she really only breaks when she hasn't lived up to her own standards.

• Fashionista Rarity is an aloof self-absorbed classist manager-calling whiner who makes pretty things mostly for her own satisfaction or to bring attention to herself, and she always complains about doing anything outside of that. She's critical and dismissive of others' work, especially when she feels it's better than her own. She's confident right up until things go wrong and then she's useless.

I try very hard to be more Artist Rarity than Fashionista Rarity, but I feel like embracing one means will always mean having to deal with the other. The big difference is this:

• The Rarity depicted in any given episode depends largely on who wrote it.

• The Rarity I'm most similar to depends largely on my dopamine and seratonin levels.