“Creativity” and Alicorns · 7:02am Oct 19th, 2015
I'm being told this is a blog entry... fine, why not?
Okay, so, I’m sorry, but I have to burst everyone’s bubbles on several things on this issue.
First, there is NO I repeat, NO, cannon evidence that Alicorns are god characters. Not only have alicorn characters been shown to fear and be beaten by every villain to date save for those they did not personally encounter, but even moving the celestial bodies, the main reason everyone calls Luna and Celestia god characters, can be done by Discord on a whim and they can be moved by Twilight without even thinking about it when she’s so powerful she… yea she was still trying to run away from Trek at that point wasn’t she? (She did fight him, but she wasn’t supposed to.) So no, I can see how episode one might make you think Celestia is supposed to be a Jehovah like figure, but the rest of the series makes it pretty blunt she’s not like that.
“But she has a sun over her head!”
Pay attention, cause I’m gonna blow you’re little pony minds, guess who this is:
That’s right, king Solomon. Anything about Celestia starting to line up now? The long reign of peace, the small kingdom surrounded by enemies, wisdom that can only be appreciated in proper context, passing on his wisdom to a successor as the ultimate treasure and weapon, I can go on… No I don’t think MLP is a Christian series, but if a Biblical character inspired Celestia, the point is, it wasn’t God himself, it was a human.
But now lets get to the meat of the Alicorn debate shall we? Alicorn OCs. I’ve heard this quote so many times:
“Stop making Alicorns, be creative and choose one of the three races!”
Translation:
“Be creative and follow the rules!”
*HEAD*HIT*KEYBOARD!*
Yes, be chaotic by being orderly. That makes so much sense!
“But alicorns are gods!”
No their not.
“But they’re all royalty!”
Far as we know, that we’ve only seen royal Alicorns, is merely coincidence. The show has never stated that they are exclusively royal. Also, huge monkey wrench for ya, neither Cadence nor Twilight were royalty BEFORE they ascended. Which means no, being royal or even important BEFORE ascension is not necessary. This is not a rule.
“But it’s more interesting if you follow the rules!”
Oh boy… no. I’m sorry, no it’s not.
I’m gonna purpose two stories.
Story A: Mr. McPerfect was born to the royal house and trained all his life for special powers. He then became an alicorn and enacted his powers with wisdom to rule over Equestria alongside the other rulers.
Story B: Derpy Hooves ascended for unknown reasons, became an alicorn and now has more power than she knows what to do with, especially considering she’s somewhat mentally handicapped. Now Twilight and co have to stop Derpy from harming the ponies she cares about as well as their own friends. There’s one catch though, Derpy is completely innocent, and therefore hurting her would be an evil act, forcing our heroes to have to tread lightly and think carefully about their actions.
Which sounds more interesting? I know I’m gonna get some sarcastic responses like “You’re just a bad writer” but to those of you who get my point, you know the answer. The second you read “Derpy Hooves ascended” you were already more invested. Why are we more attracted to the idea of Derpy ascending than Mr. McPerfect? Well because like his name implies, Mr. McPerfect is perfect and his ascension was according to plan. He’s unrelatable and his story is according to plan, therefore, his story is boring. We already know Derpy is relatable as she has well defined flaws as a klutz with possible mental conditions, bringing her down to earth. Also no one expects her to ascend and such happening would be a disaster.
Yes creativity requires rules, but not because creativity is created by rules. Creativity is the OPPOSITE of rules. It requires them like chaos requires order. Without order Chaos makes no sense. But without chaos, life loses meaning as everything starts playing out according to the design of a machine.
I want Alicorn OCs. I want them to be powerful. I just want them to have good stories, however those come from breaking the rules, not following them.
“But too many people make Alicorns that are too powerful!”
No, too many people don’t know how to write powerful characters. Superman is OPed beyond belief yet he’s still a good character. Oh and before anyone says it, the kryptonite thing is a contrivance. Think of all the good Superman movies that leave it out. Doomsday, Unbound, Allstar, Superman 2. Now think about the movies that included it, Superman Returns-gag me-, the first live action movie –how many of you even remembered that was in that movie before I said anything, it really didn’t contribute much-. The key is being creative and making obstacles that they can’t beat even at their power levels, or maybe being even more creative and figuring out the implications of helping too much, or being even more creative and having your character cause a discussion like this: if you really could fix all the world’s problems with the snap of a finger… should you?
“But it’s a power fantasy!”
What do you think Spider Man was?
“Are you calling us stupid?”
No, not at all. I think a lot of very smart people on FimFic have come across terrible stories involving alicorn ocs and have wracked their brains trying to figure out why they’re seeing so many. They came up with explanations that seemed logical, but they forgot one of the underlying real rules of writing.
“There is no such thing as bad ideas, only poorly executed awesome ones”.
“This is a straw man!”
What? No, not at all, it’s a scarecrow man, totally different!
You would enjoy my take on alicorns. You should prescribe to my fanfic.
3481393
Which one?
3481397
I am drunk, so feel free to ignore me. I am referring to The Conquering of Love.
In particular, I delve into alicorns at around............*checks*.......... Somewhere around here, lightly at first, more in-depth later. That's like, the 34th chapter.
None of the quotes below spoil the story, but give some insight on how I treat alicorns.
And at a later point, much later, without spoiling a ton...
I love this!
In my case, I have where the alicorns Celestia and Luna, rather than being goddesses, are actually crossbreeds between two different tribes of wild horses: a Saddle Arabian traditional unicorn (deerlike build, lion tail, cloven hooves) and a wild horse draft-type pegasus, thus the two mares have both a horn and wings, are graceful and strong, and are much taller than normal ponies. The ponies thought them goddesses because they had never seen the wild horse tribes.
And if you want to get into genetics: in my headcanon, having a horn is a recessive gene, as is having wings, but draft-like build is the 'default' build of the equines. Because of this, alicorns are rare but not gods/goddesses- for an alicorn to be born, they have to have two copies of the Wing gene and of the Horn gene so wings and horn are both expressed. Also in my headcanon, alicorn 'ascension' is the result of magic messing with the genes of the one ascended so both a horn and wings are expressed.