I neglected to mention an important dynamic to Rarity's character that revolves around two of her songs in my earlier analysis. Link for posterity: http://mlpforums.com/blog/1599/entry-12196-freudian-psych-and-rarity-pretentiousness-intensifies/

In that analysis I used her songs as the primary source of my analysis. Here I will do the same but between two of the songs like I had meant to do in the earlier post.

Becoming Popular, the "I Want" song, and Generosity, the "I Am" song. These songs display traits that are often at odds, and this cuts right to the core of rarity as a character. The "I Want" song is clearly the Id, and "I Am" the Superego as a recap.

In BP, she both expresses a desire to be popular but also charts her rise to popularity (which is why I find it truly baffling how people argue she was not actually good at socializing with the Elites when this song shows her charming them but that is another blog).

This is generally seen as a bad or neutral trait, caring about one's own elevation in such a petty manner.

Certainly it is almost always at odds with the ideas presented in Generosity (another blog post) where she enjoys being generous out of altruism.

However, this is not as hard to understand through the lens of my earlier Freudian analysis. I said her Id is simply after social acceptance and belonging (popularity), which while true ignores the role the superego plays.

As the Nightmare Arc showed, she values not simply being popular but being accepted and valued. A reasonable position for a character whose profession and virtue revolves around giving or selling things which are then appraised and deemed valuable or not.

Hence me referencing the Id and Superego as being two sides to the same coin in my earlier post. By being generous she is satisfying her Id as she garners validation.

Which is representative of what Rarity as a character has always been: popular alpha girl with a heart of gold.

Some of the mentally subnormal may take this opportunity to claim that "if she is getting validation then she is not genuinely generous!" This concept is so laughable that the show FRIENDS made fun of it, which was brought to my attention by Roboshi of Derpibooru. The fact is that feeling good and enjoying the care of others for being a good person does not invalidate generosity. Only a generous person would feel good by being generous or value others enough to be validated by helping them. A truly selfish person would not do these things.

But back to the substance of this post. Unnoticed aspects to Sweet & Elite and Rarity Takes Manehattan help bring this idea together. In Sweet & Elite Rarity goes to the parties partly because she would like to and would enjoy them but what really pushes her is the Elites guilting her into doing so. They make obvious allusions to the idea that her not coming would mean the events might as well be cancelled and that they would be personally distraught by this. Rarity echoes this idea in the next scene. An example of how these two motivations are blended. As she valued being accepted by the Elites and chose to satisfy this by putting their "needs" before her own (as she wanted to work on Twilight's dress. And while this didn't work out it is more an issue of not knowing who to trust and be loyal to which the lesson of the episode addressed).

But more important are her actions during the song. At the art gallery she is the first to like the artwork, which causes the other Elites to like it as well, whereas the other Elites were indifferent. Later at the charity auction she bids on a piece no one else cares for (and probably did not care for based on their half-lidded expressions), causing them to all bid on it. Whether this was intentional on her part or not doesn't matter. It still shows a far less snooty and more charitable way of life than the Elites. Demonstrating a willingness to share the spoils of her social attainment with others as she chose to be supportive of the efforts of others.

An aspect present in her character in other areas. She did it in Green Isn't Your Color when she turned the crowd to Fluttershy's side and it is analogous to her using her fashion skills to make others look good. In both instances she uses her advantages to help those who could use it.

However Rarity Takes Manehattan showed it even more. She was freely generous, and through this garnered social connections which she then used to be more generous. At the beginning of the episode she shares a "thank you gift" from her fashion peer with her friends.

And with the bellhop pony, who helps her at every opportunity he can, she repays with more gems as an additional thank you. Not to mention the ending where she gets a private show and Coco a job. All due to social connections.

So both of these seemingly competing interests are in fact compatible with Rarity as a character.

This also shows what separates Rarity, and her episodes, from the other ponies. Her episodes taken as a whole are widely seen as the best of the mane 6 and this fact is corroborated by IMDB.

Personally I attribute this to the fact that her depth of character allows her to use similar motifs and plot points as a jumping off point for completely different stories, an example of which is shown above.

The following gif is one I just find funny.