How Can You Tell You're Reading An Alicorn Story?

[Lambda]

Goldmage does not do the thing at all.

[Tulip]

Well, my thing feels kind of tiny and pathetic after all the other stuff which has been posted. But the one which immediately rose to the top of my head when I read the question was that characters use "what all" rather than "what" under, from what I can tell, the same grammatical conditions which would warrant a "you all" rather than "you". I've never seen that usage anywhere else, so while it's pretty tiny as far as actual story-analysis goes, it sticks out very strongly in my head as an Alicorn Thing.

[Alicorn]

I have no idea where I picked up "what all" but I say it in real life too.

[Kappa]

I also say "what all", and I'm pretty sure it's independently of Alicorn.

[DanielH]

Same. And while we’re back on the topic of grammar, I hadn’t noticed “you want I should”, so it didn’t seem too odd, but once it was pointed out it didn’t seem natural either.

[Alicorn]

I'm bumping this because it has come to my attention that I may have a systematic deficiency in writing convincing male characters. Has anybody noticed this? If not, can you see what I'm talking about now that I bring it up? Any suggestions?

[jalapeno_dude]

...not really? Kaylo and Mallyn and Narax and Ilen and Tekaal and Lyle and Carlisle and Jake and Cam and Zeus (to name 10 of your male characters off the top of my head) etc etc all seem fine to me. Edward is a possible exception but that one is hardly your fault. Can you give an example of what you're talking about?

[Alicorn]

Several people are misreading AUSJ personae who were intended to be male and I haven't seen any misreadings in the other direction. Most of the AUSJ personae give no explicit tells, so this suggests some weakness in the voicing (even if it's a weakness that I normally cover for adequately by referring to characters by male pronouns and giving them masculine names).

[jalapeno_dude]

Ok. I haven't read your AUSJ stuff for a while now (the potions thing really upset me, and even just skimming each AUSJ-sounding post to determine whether it was potions or something else involved contemplating it more than I wanted to), so I can't comment.

[Alicorn]

You could get tumblr savior and block #potions, I tag them consistently. Or catch up on the non-potions tags. Sorry the potions thing was upsetting :(