Rainbow Dash

Rainbow Dash is one of the "Mane 6". She is a friend of Twilight, Pinkie, Fluttershy, Applejack and Rarity.

She is also the bearer of the element of loyalty.

Personality
She is fast, blunt, and concerned with looking "cool." She can often be found napping on a cloud, practicing a new trick, or actually doing her job of maintaining Ponyville's weather. Also, she tries her best to reach her goals without giving up. Despite that, she is loyal to her friends and Ponyville, and will always try to help them in their time of need.

Use in fan works
Common themes for Rainbow Dash include:


 * Getting killed by various means and/or losing her wings, preferably before she becomes a Wonderbolt as seen in "Cupcakes", "Rainbow Factory", and "The Cold Hand of Mercy." "Tales" inverts this idea, she dies after becoming a wonderbolt and gets to keep her wings in the process.
 * Her ties to the Wonderbolts, who she almost always ends up joining in stories set in the future.
 * Working with Scootaloo on flying or avoiding the small Pegasus's obsessive adoration.
 * Injuring herself badly after failing a new trick (these stories were "banned" from Equestria Daily after the events of S2E03 - "Lesson Zero", but let back in after the events of S2E16- "Read it and Weep").
 * Being shipped with everypony and everything, up to and including the very concept of shipping itself.
 * She is commonly shipped with her male counterpart Rainbow Blitz, such as in On a Cross and Arrow.
 * Trying to learn how to scooter like Scootaloo, she is very bad at scootering. This pokes fun at Scootaloo's will to be a grand flier like her mentor.
 * She is the Guardian Mare form of human Heather Modern in My Little Pony: Guardian Mares

Humanized/anthropomorphized
In humanized and anthropomorphized fan art, Rainbow Dash is mostly depicted as thin and wiry as well as usually being the shortest of the Mane 6. Because of her tomboyish personality and athleticism, Rainbow Dash is rarely portrayed in fan art as being especially well-endowed to the same level as the rest of the Mane 6 are (when she is, the meme is sometimes referred to by the fanbase as "Rainboob Dash").

Super Rainbow Dash
Created by the deviantART user Super Klonoa and inspired by Super Sonic, Super Rainbow Dash is a fanonical concept of Rainbow Dash having undergone a super-powered transformation. In this form, her blue coat turns to white, her irises from rose to red, the cloud of her cutie mark from white to storm gray, her rainbow mane flares up (similar to Twilight Sparkle's mane in Feeling Pinkie Keen), and her Element of Loyalty necklace appears on her neck. Initially, she was the product of a Sonic crossover, but was later re-characterized by Super Klonoa in the fanfic, "Harmonic Spectrum", where Rainbow Dash unknowingly represents and transforms through all of the Elements of Harmony at once, the plot of which was based on the theories of an undisclosed user.

Metal Rainbow Dash
Metal Rainbow Dash or also know as just Metal Dash is a robot doppelganger of Rainbow Dash, who usually appears in crossovers with the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series. Like the Metal Sonic character from that series, she is usually created by Doctor Eggman.

As far as her personality goes, she is most often depicted as being disloyal, in contrast to Rainbow Dash. Additionally, she is often depicted as having a deep hatred towards Rainbow Dash, and occasionally Sonic.

She appears as Rainbow Dash's rival in most fan works that feature her, which are almost always Sonic and  crossovers. She also has her own ask pony blog.

20% Cooler
In the episode, "Suited for Success," Rainbow Dash critiqued the dress Rarity made for her to wear at the Grand Galloping Gala by saying Rarity needed to make it 20% cooler. The fanbase took the quote to heart and it since has become a running gag to use variations of the phrase while critiquing something online. (I.E.-(Blank) would be 20% (blank)er if (blank).

Relationships
She is most commonly shipped with Applejack; this shipping is called "AppleDash". She is also commonly shipped with Pinkie Pie (RainbowPie), and Big Macintosh.

A less common shipping, though prevalent nonetheless, is the "FlutterDash" ship, which is Rainbow Dash shipped with Fluttershy. She is sometimes paired with a Wonderbolt, most commonly Soarin' or Spitfire. In some cases, she is depicted as having foals with Soarin'. Thunderlane is also another pony she is commonly paired with. There is also a deviantArt group dedicated to the pairing of Twilight and Rainbow Dash(TwiDash or Rainbowsparkle).

The prevalence of lesbian pairings with Rainbow Dash, and the prevalence of the widely-accepted fanon "understanding" that she is a lesbian in general (partially due to her hexachromatic mane, being the color scheme for lesbians), has resulted in at least one parody of the concept, Five's Company: There, Rainbow is pursued by all five of her Ponyville friends and turns out to be the only mare to not have homosexual or bisexual tendencies. In that story, as in some others (like The Birds and the Bees), Dash is characterized as completely clueless about sex. The story Skittles inverts that idea.

Non romantic relationships
Lauren Faust has stated that Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo are not related in any way; however, this has not stopped fans from having Rainbow adopt Scootaloo in some cases.

The fan fiction Mommy Nearest, and its continuation, Alicorn, cast Celestia as Rainbow Dash's mother. Celestia explains the reasoning for not admitting to being Dash's mother: having been born a Pegasus instead of a unicorn, Rainbow would not be accepted by the Court of Canterlot. So she gives Dash to an older Pegasus couple who had wanted a foal for many years. At the end of the fic, Celestia implies that Pinkie's father is, in fact, who impregnated her with Rainbow Dash.

Fan voices

 * FiMFlamFilosophy
 * Voice characterization in: The Mentally Advanced Series, Rainbow Dash Presents


 * Max Gilardi
 * Voice characterization in: PONY.MOV


 * Emily Koch
 * Voice characterization in: Double Rainboom, Journey of the Spark


 * Erica Mendez
 * Voice characterization in: Death Battle, Re-enacted by Ponies, Epic Pony Time


 * Jenny Nicholson
 * Voice characterization in: Friendship is Witchcraft

Fan art examples


Fan music examples


Fan fiction examples


Super Rainbow Dash


Metal Rainbow Dash
