Alicornutopia

cbhacking wrote:Greetings and welcome!

I feel I may as well chime in here as somebody who had some of the same reservations as you (I've been reading what is now called Glowfic since there was only Effulgence, and the forum didn't exist yet). Some things you may want to know:
1) First a little terminology: Peal as verb means a character/world meeting those in other worlds. Specifically, instances of (Isa)Bell(a) (usually surnamed Swan) that have met other Bells (referred to as "instances of the Bell template"); the collection of pealed Bells are, collectively, referred to as "the peal". There are currently a number of "un-pealed" Bells whose stories are, in effect, standalone... though this will not last.
2) If you're really strongly spoiler-averse, reading the canons you haven't read yet but would like to read *will* result in spoilers, though you won't necessarily know which parts are "real" and which aren't. In general, though, Effulgence is well worth it. I read a number of canons that I'd have liked to consume the originals of first, and despite being pretty spoiler-averse I feel the trade was worth it.
3) If you really want to avoid a given continuity (for reasons of spoilers or otherwise) you will have a hard time making it any further in the peal threads (that is, those of worlds which are interconnected) once that continuity peals.
4) Unless you have significant reasons not to, just read the stories in the order that they're listed on the index. Some are long and some are short, some are more fun to read than others, and some of them aren't *required* for continuity... but in general, it would be hard (for me) to pick out the ones that won't leave holes in continuity. Read them straight through and you don't have to worry, plus you'll probably have more fun. If you're like most of us on the forum, you'll run out and find yourself wanting more soon enough!
5) The degree to which I like a canon had little enough effect on the degree to which I like the relevant Effulgence (or other glowfic) that I really wouldn't worry about it. Hell, Alicorn herself dislikes at least one of the source canons, but that chunk of Effulgence is nonetheless good.
6) Not actually relevant to Effulgence per se, but: Many of "sandboxes" (glowfic stories, usually short-running, that are not part of any of the established canonical continuities but may cross between them; you might call some of it auto-meta-fanfic I guess?) involve Elcenia. I would definitely recommend reading Elcenia first (though you should do that anyway, whether you plan to read the relevant sandboxes or not).

Yadal wrote:4., 5.: The problem is that I don't know a lot of these continuities and I doubt the story will introduce them to somebody who's never heard of the relevant works.

6.: What's this Elcenia you speak of? It's not on the Canons list.

Alicorn wrote:Okay. This is true. However, this is not more true because Alice told Bella about her having precog abilities. Bella also witnesses Alice totally fucking up (their conversation over lunch, and for that matter saving Bella from the van, is not a case of Alice smoothly causing Bella to suspect nothing). So, Alice makes an uncoerced bid for fairly free information-sharing by mentioning at all that she's a precog, and demonstrates that she is not actually a dictionary-attack master manipulator, pretty early on.