Ever since the beginning of the borny fandom 7 years ago, the majority of the brony community have hated alicorn OCs, calling them OP and Mary Sues without thinking. But why? In this post, I'll explain why the concept of an alicorn OCs are generally hated among the fandom and what caused it. And these reasons why are pretty much our own fault.
1. We lack canon info
Quick! Tell me something about alicorns that's been confirmed!
-cricket noises-
Yeah, I thought so. We've never gotten anything canon about the nature of alicorns, and where this does gives us a lot of room to come up with interesting headcanons and theories about alicorns, but it also gives us little to work with, thus, this makes it easy to makes things too simple, too complex, or even too powerful for the creator to handle.
2. Guilty by association
If you were to ask a random brony, "What are alicorns?" you may get, "They're royalty goddesses," but is this ACTUALLY true? Most would say that it is, but the thing is, this is logically not the case. Why do we think that alicorns are royalty and whatnot? Well, this due to something called the "availability heuristic," meaning that we judge something based on how many examples of it we have. Since we've only seen alicorns that are royalty and none that aren't, we've assumed that all alicorns are royalty. We have this assumption because our brains are lazy machines that wants everything organized and simplified as much as possible. And this is not an insult, it's a biological fact of the human brain.
3. Why Alicorn OCs are generally bad
Now, for main topic of this entry. Alicorn OCs are generally bad because it's own our lazy faults. Again, not an insult! When take reason #2 into consideration, you clearly see why alicorn OCs are bad: since we believe that they're royalty, all-powerful, immortal, etc., we feel like that half of the work is done for us and we don't think we need to put much work and effort into making the character, thus, our alicorn OCs are often are to weak as a character and/or too powerful in ability and half-assed in personality structure.
4. Why Alicorn OCs are generally hated
On a related note, we often hate alicorn OCs on a creative level due to the laziness of their character structure (if any at all), and we have high expectations for the fandom we dedicated ourselves to. Plus, when it comes to other characters, we may associate and see ourselves as our OCs (aka ponysonas) and we don't want to feel like others can overpower us. This is because we feel we're powerful and in control when we see ourselves AS our OC(s), and we feel like we're in danger when hear about an alicorn OC because we're biased to the "community canon" that alicorns are gods and can do just about anything and we're unable to do anything to go against it, let a lot stop it.
Put simply, we hate alicorn OCs on a concept level because we don't want to feel like others can overpower us and take away our control. This hated is actually based on fear. Namely, the fear of losing control. It's a psychological defense mechanism that applies to all of us.
In the end, alicorns are no different from the other pony species. We just have to learn how to make good characters and not judge the'r race on its stereotypes alone.
Bonus content!
I've made some explanations for some of the attributes of alicorns that we never gotten any info about (see reason #1 above), and I made sure that they're reasonable and makes logical sense. I hope you enjoy. And let me know what you think.
1. Where did alicorns come from?
In my story, the alicorn species first started 8,000 years before the Equestrian era.
Now, back in those days, you were only allowed to have foal with another from your own species group. But, one day, a pegasus stallion and a unicorn mare developed a Romeo-and-Juliet-like relationship and had a foal that had his father's wings and his mother's horn. While some thought that this was an abomination, others thought it was a miracle. Even though this foal had wings and a horn, he was technically a hybrid because the dominate genes for the wings and horn were separate. But as the generations past, these the genetic codes for the wings and horn eventually fused together, and the first alicorn was burn and, thus, the alicorn species came to be. The alicorn species is only about 9,000 years old and it evolved quickly due to the extensive family tree containing 60% unicorns, which is where the magical attributes of the alicorn came from.
That's just my take on it. ^^
2. Are alicorns more powerful than unicorns?
It's not that they're more power, but more like they're able to access and use magic easier. It's all due 1 simple observation: The alicorn horn is larger than the unicorn's. This larger size enables the alicorn to store and channel more magical energies, thus, it's able to cast more complex and/or powerful spells easier than a unicorn can. And believe it or not, there's something in the canon show that supports this. If you watch unicorn Twilight trying to cast a new spell in the earlier seasons, she seems to struggle with the spell. This is because she's trying to store and channel more magical energies than her horn is used to, and this can cause some minor headaches. And if you watch alicorn Twilight cast a new spell, she barely struggles because her horn is larger and able to store and channel more magical energies.
"But Starlight Glimmer's horn is a standard size for a unicorn and she casts complex and powerful spells without struggles," you may point out. This is true, but she probably have taught herself an alternate way of managing magical energies differently, not just storing it all in her horn like most unicorns/alicorns are taught to do.
Those are my theories and views on those. What are yours?
