Ranking the Rarity Expys From Worst to Best · 1:32am Oct 12th, 2020
Rarity didn't get as many expys as every other member of the mane six we've covered up to this point, probably because she's such a complex character and thus hard to truly pin down to one attribute. Still, she managed to get a total of officially five expys from some very unexpected places. As always, we're looking at how these characters function as an expy of the mane six member they're based on and not just how they are as characters as a whole.
5. Spoiled Rich
Why she's on the bottom: Spoiled Rich could loosely be said to be a Rarity expy (I don't count Zesty Gourmand considering Rarity hasn't sought to exert direct control over what others think, and Jet Set and Upper Crust as well as Prince Blueblood aren't Rarity expys because they care solely about appearances with no desire to look beyond that), since her motivation for what she does is being aware of one's social standing. In and of itself this isn't a bad thing to do, what others think of you can have an impact on your life more than you think it does. But there is such a thing as caring too much about appearance or reputation, and where Spoiled Rich fails is that she cares only about worming her way into the ranks of uppercrusts and cares about little else. What makes her a Rarity expy is that Rarity has similar motivations, but time and again she has stayed true to her roots when challenged on them and has refused to fully reinvent herself even for the sake of possible clientele.
4. Sweetie Belle
Why she's not on the bottom: Although Sweetie Belle did slowly become somewhat like a miniature version of her sister, she didn't start out that way. Throughout the first two or three seasons she was a bit of a ditz and was also quite shy. She had ambitions to be like her big sister, but she didn't take many strides to make that happen. It wasn't really until Season 4 and "For Whom The Sweetie Belle Toils" that she first made an effort to not just be like her sister but also shine on her own. After that she didn't really do much either way in regard to trying to be like Rarity, but she'd stopped being a ditz and had overcome her stage fright and performance anxiety as she was growing older. She seemed to most embody a leader for the CMC from that point onward, even though they frequently alternated who called the shots. If they'd done more with her singing Sweetie Belle probably could've developed more as she decided how much she really wanted to follow in her sister's hoofsteps.
3. Sassy Saddles
Why she's in the middle: Sassy Saddles seems to be what you'd get if you took Rarity's love of fashion and business ambitions, and mixed them with Twilight's OCD tendencies and analytical mind. At least that's what Sassy is for her debut appearance, in the two speaking appearances she got after that she mostly became (like Coco Pommel) an understudy for Rarity. Given Rarity's obviously made-up trans-atlantic accent, Sassy has that posh tone of speaking that even Rarity never fully slipped into. I still don't understand why they bothered to bump her up to the title sequence for Seasons 8 and 9 if they weren't going to do anything with her. Like a lot of characters introduced in the later seasons, she got cast aside in favor of newer "main" characters.
2. Mistmane
Why she's not on the top: At first glance it might seem odd that Rarity and Mistmane share a virtue, considering Rarity would hardly be willing to permanently sacrifice her beauty or anything close to it for others, and dislikes doing anything that involves getting dirty. But when one considers why Mistmane did what she did it's easy to see how she and Rarity can be alike, Mistmane wanted to restore beauty to the land around her and Rarity has always strived to bring out the beauty and self worth in others through her work. And we've seen Rarity willing to make sacrifices even of herself and her talents to please others. Both her and Mistmane are also wise beyond their years, albeit for different reasons. Considering people originally pegged Mistmane as a Fluttershy expy (before the true Fluttershy expy among the pillars was revealed), Mistmane becoming a Rarity expy was quite unexpected but well worth it. However, like all her fellow pillars she is held back by a lack of screen time after "Shadow Play", and like Somnambula Mistmane had a conflict that surely could've related to Rockhoof's (even though her village still stands everyone in it from her time surely will have died or moved away).
1. Suri Polomare
Why she's on the top: Suri is unquestionably the anti-Rarity, even down to sharing a voice actress in Tabitha St. Germain (which just proves how talented Tabitha is when she can voice two characters like that and make them sound so distinct despite their similarities). Suri already has achieved what Rarity desires to achieve, but we soon learn that Suri achieved that progress at a price and that price was her soul. Rarity faces a similar dilemma at one point, but she refuses to abandon her generous nature even if it may cost her her dreams (it's a case not unlike Batman and Owlman, both stared into the abyss but when the abyss stared back the latter blinked and was consumed by their worst instincts). Suri Polomare was willing to abuse the talents of others to get ahead and expressed no qualms in doing so at any point, so unlike Rarity she has little to no faith in her own creations or her own talents. Even the treatment of Coco Pommel allows us to see the similarities and differences, as Rarity took Coco under her wing and let her blossom into her own pony whereas Suri only took Coco under her wing to basically make Coco do all her dirty work for her. It's kind of a bummer that unlike the likes of Gilda, Trixie and Lightning Dust, Suri never made a return appearance. Although considering how divisive the returns of both Trixie and Lightning Dust panned out maybe that's for the best. Anyway, for all the reasons mentioned above, Suri Polomare easily takes the top spot.
And there you have it, come back tomorrow when we'll close out these expy rankings when we look at and rank the Applejack expys from worst to best.
As much as I dislike Suri... I have to agree with her placement.
5376231
Every negative trait of Rarity personified.
Suri was a shoo in for the top. Also, for your AJ expys, you'd think Maud or Limestone would be expys, just saying; Limestone's got a temper, almost like AJ, and Maud's got quite a bit of that AJ strength.
5376794 Maybe Maud could count, but Limestone would be more suited to Rainbow Dash given her temper.
5376798
I suppose there's that.