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

[BlueSkySprite]

I’ll also add another grammatical construction that I don’t usually see elsewhere: “You want I should …” or “You want that I should …”. I think the first time I saw this was in a part of Effulgence where I could think that it was put in because the characters are speaking a weird dialect due to the setting, but then I noticed it elsewhere too.

I have seen this in a couple of other works of fiction. I've read it in some Ursula Vernon stories and heard it sometimes in other places. I think it's just a phrase that's probably more common in some places than others. According to a brief search, it's most common on coasts and maybe from a translated Yiddish phrase?

[MTC]

Yes, that’s what I realized after seeing it a couple more times in Alicorn RPs. Thought I should mention it anyway, especially given that the other grammatical construction that was mentioned earlier in the thread was one that I found normal.

[Alicorn]

I have no idea where I picked up "you want I should", but it feels natural, if informal, to me. I am half Jewish so if it's a Yiddish thing that makes sense, except I can't mentally cast it into my dad's voice...

[Nemo]

Most of the times I've noticed the phrase "such that" used conversationally have been in glowfic. E.g., "Magics are a kind of place, such that if things go into them, magic is likely to happen to them" and "Are you a historical reenactor such that if I hop out the window and fly for a while I will find skyscrapers."
Either it's rare, or I just don't notice it everywhere else, but I like how it sounds enough that I consciously adopted it.

[BlueSkySprite]

Most of the times I've noticed the phrase "such that" used conversationally have been in glowfic. E.g., "Magics are a kind of place, such that if things go into them, magic is likely to happen to them" and "Are you a historical reenactor such that if I hop out the window and fly for a while I will find skyscrapers."
Either it's rare, or I just don't notice it everywhere else, but I like how it sounds enough that I consciously adopted it.

It isn't used commonly in daily speech, but I have noticed people saying this. They are normally more Math, Science, or Literature people.
I hear it a little more when it is used to describe things in logical proofs.

[Alicorn]

I probably picked that up in intro logic in college. I find it very useful.

[jalapeno_dude]

Extreme amounts of cuddling. :) That may be a function of the medium rather than Alicorn, though (I don't remember it in Elcenia, for example).

(I'll give a more complete response later, but don't have the time right now.)

[Lambda]

I think this is most visible in HTHT, which suddenly acquires Distinctive Alicorn Voice at the same time that it switches from comic format to prose format.

Now this is not just something to chew on (I'm getting lots to chew on in this thread) but especially fascinating and surprising. I have no idea how including illustrations would have suppressed these habits; can you say more about what you noticed? Does Syzygy (if you've read it) have an obvious characteristic relative to this trait? Is there enough Ensorcel for you to say whether it matters if I'm doing the drawing?

Syzygy mostly does the thing, but it doesn't feel like it does.

I had assumed that the distinction in HTHT was due to it pausing for a while and you developing the distinctive voice during the pause. However, on rereading, I think HTHT actually started doing the thing around #179. Here too, the inclusion of illustrations seems to make the thing less noticeable; the letters feel more do-the-thing-ish than the comics before or after them.

I think it has to do with how downtime is handled. In most fiction and early HTHT, there's a rhythm and pacing, a flow between high tension crisis action scenes and low power relaxed muddling around hanging out and stuff; the bulk of the story is the low power moments, and the plot trickles through them, the crucial plot elements seeming almost like byproducts of the main action, which is actually about people hanging out being people. A good example is HTHT 057, which shows-not-tells how Kristi is handling her family and friends, and incidentally-establishes that she's going to have to deal with siblings at some point.

In Luminosity and Radiance, it feels like it's mostly high tension. In Effulgence and Elcenia, it feels like there's high tension parts and low power parts, but they're segregated and there's not much inbetween flow. In Syzygy and late HTHT, the scripting is high-paced but the art is low-paced; a good example is this Syzygy, where most of the text by wordcount is in panels 1 and 2 planning what they're going to do next plotwise, and most of the art by page area used is in panel 3 where they're having a character moment.

edited to add: There is not enough of Ensorcel to tell. What is there is a blend of character, worldbuilding, and stuff happening, which points in the direction of not so much doing the thing, but to really know I'd have to see how the various details fit into a larger arc.

I don't have a clear or well-researched theory here, only a vague impression, so take with salt.

ps. offtopic, but the popular girl being blond and sun-aligned is an example of the sort of thing that my "blue and yellow morality" alief expects to happen.

(edit: previously accidentally said "more noticeable" instead of "less noticeable")

[Tamien]

Some things which give Alicornfic an Alicorn flavor to me - mainly critiquey things, because that's what my mind chews on when I read:

Lack of coordinated opposition or prolonged conflict; protagonists rarely encounter major failures or setbacks - enemies, where they exist at all, tend to be not very persistent or convicted or motivated, or not very powerful or numerous or organized. This can be surprising and refreshing, as when tropes would lead you to expect two characters to have to have a period of conflict before they come to trust each other, but instead they are able to team up almost immediately, or frustrating and deus-ex-machina-y, as when a problem is built up to be a Big Deal and then is easily steamrolled once the protagonists actually try. Stella teaming up with her Libby is actually an example of both of these - it was surprising and refreshing that they were able to sidestep the coordination issues presented by lack of trust and knowledge of each other, and simultaneously narratively frustrating that this happened because Libby suddenly acquired an outside magical informant which the readers had no way to anticipate. The conflict between Phix and the dragon is an example of a conflict going from "major challenge, serious threat to the protagonists" to "steamrolled" in a narratively satisfying way, because the outside resources had been waiting in the wings for quite a while at that point. Good example of villains built up to be a scary and believable challenge: the Volturi (the ending of Luminosity is still a singularly impressive feat to me, in that I KNEW the series was about Bella taking over the world, and was nevertheless well convinced that she had been killed and started thinking up ways that the series could end with her winning as I had been informed she did despite what seemed to be a very major, permanent obstacle to that happening :P)

Additionally: lack of serious ideological incompatibilities; no one ever breaks up - characters often seem to ultimately have, if not the same, then extremely fundamentally compatible goals and values AND mental frameworks for how to achieve those goals and values AND ideas of what is those goals and values entail. Characters are surprisingly cooperative and willing to put in a lot of work to achieve mutually satisfactory outcomes. People get into relationships with compatible people and never leave those relationships, even when those relationships undergo significant stresses, and instead choose to work through them and support each other despite the emotional difficulty. People spend a lot of time cuddling or having cutesy conversations or otherwise engaged in mundane, everyday prosocial bonding activities, with little plot advancement. There are obvious exceptions to these points - Cheleas, the dragon, Ripper breaking up with Rayne (though that was clearly not the relationship that anyone at the meta level was invested in). But the general rule is that people will get along and work together and not have major personalities clashes or unworkable differences. (A lot of this in glowfic can be chalked up to people being alts of themselves and their friends, and thus unusually likely to be cooperative, so it's not like it's narratively unwarranted. But it is notably Alicorn-flavored.)

These things can be negative but are not necessarily - conflict-oriented plots are not vital for me in stories, and I very much enjoy slice-of-lifey stories which simply reveal and build up details about characters and the setting they exist in through everyday happenings - either way, they are notably Alicorn-flavored departures from what I typically run into in fiction I read.

Also, and I'm not sure how to tie it into those first points, but there is a certain focus on worldbuilding and what can be done with a given powerset and how powers can be expanded, and less focus on internal character growth or relationship growth. This is not to say that characters do not grow or relationships do not evolve, or that narrative time is not spent on these things, but that they does not seem to be the focus of the story - the focus seems to be on external events, while the changes in characters' personalities and their in relationships to themselves and each other, seem to be either in preparation for or in reaction to the external events. This is sortof incongruous with a story that is so character-driven and spends so much time on character- and relationship-establishing scenes and I'm really not sure how to account for it. (Part of it I chalk up to Bells being central characters and also being extraordinarily luminous - most personality changes and relationship changes that occur for Bells are ones that they are not only extremely aware of, but which they fully intend and purposefully enact. Self-discovery necessarily looks very different for characters like Bells than for more standard protagonists. Ultimately, I see this as a feature because it's a demonstration of a sort of mind that I value the chance to observe and rarely get to.)

Relatedly - side characters that seem to be primarily there to prop up the main character/plot. Antagonists tend not to have very well-thought out goals or complicated motives, and are quick to defect to the side of the protagonists or throw up their hands in defeat. Bell allies, especially siblings, all seem to exist as Bell-support, and their non-Bell-related interests, relationships, and personality features often feel blandly sketched in. Even their conversations with non-Bells seem to frequently revolve around Bells. Sometimes this is believable because Bells are kindof consuming and bossy and tend to structure things so that they revolve around themselves, but sometimes it comes across like "even when talking to non-Bells about non-Bell related things, this character is finding ways to slip reference to their local Bell into the conversation. do they actually have their own life outside the life Bells have for them??". Bells are egocentric so when the story is from a Bell perspective this isn't a problem, but it is WEIRD when we are ostensibly not in the gravity well of a Bell's ego and yet characters continue to behave as though the local Bell is more real than they are. This is not exactly to say that side characters don't have their own personalities or lives or stories, just that the ones they have are often clearly of subordinate importance even at story level. This seems to mainly be a Bell thing, as I haven't noticed it as much in Alicornfic which does not feature Bells, but I also have read MUCH more Alicornfic with Bells than without, so I'm less able to comment on, eg, Elcenia, and not at all on, eg, Goldmage.

On a less structural level and a more stylistic one: a certain didactic feeling to the prose. I'm not sure how to explain this one at as much length as the previous points, but the writing often comes across as more "tell"y than "show"y. Where it IS "show"y rather than "tell"y, it's very well done, but this is usually limited to features of the setting rather than features of the characters or their relationships, so this may have something to do with the point I made above about the narrative focus (exceptions to this seem to be mainly where character-oriented features are Plot Points and thus they are not spelled out because figuring them out is explicitly an exercise for the reader). Part of this also relates to POV - it feels natural for us to discover things about Bells' personality in a "tell"y manner when we have a Bell POV, because of who Bells are. However, the didactic feel to the prose frequently extends to things outside of Bells as well.

Other than those things: clever protagonists, characters whom I admire and/or I identify with *hard*, creative powersets and uses for those powersets, interesting worldbuilding, amusing narration and dialog, lots of traumatic events happening to characters, and an inexorable advance in happiness-level and power-level for the characters over time despite those traumatic events. I have less critiquey things to say about these features, but they also contribute to giving Alicornfic its distictive Alicorn flavor, and so I thought they should be listed as well.

[Alicorn]

Y'all are going full English-class essay on me, it's great :D