YMMV / Alphabet Lore

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Do both sides of W have the same personality, or are they different? Some interpretations of them involve them both being goths, while others have them being polar opposites.
• Awesome Music:
  • Creepy Fantasy, composed by Rafael Krux, plays as F's main theme, usually when the cave is shown.
  • Superhero Theme, also composed Rafael Krux, is a catchy and exciting tune that plays when the letters are in for a serious adventure.
  • Cheerful Happy Anime Song J-Pop is easily the best and most memorable soundtrack that plays different sections depending on who's transforming. Not to mention that it added to the heroic ending to F when N does his super transformation.
  • The cover of the alphabet song that plays when the letters of "friends" dance is adorable and charming.
  • The AEIOU dance theme is also catchy and is a fun way to introduce the vowel team and A and E's rivalry.
• Broken Base:
  • In general, the whole series' content is debated; is the series a nice, little thing that can be put on in order to entertain the audience easily and is a good way to spend 18 minutes, or is it an overly simple, rushed out story with nothing but flat characters?
  • The video "Now I Know My ABCs" is subject to this. Is the video a good, heartwarming finale that brings a happy ending to the story, or was it a bad, seemingly rushed finale that was merely done to appease shippers and render the story pointless?
• Cry for the Devil: F starts the series beating up random letters and killing them for the hell of it, but once you see just HOW the letters ended up treating him back then, especially when he just wanted to be friends with them, you end up feeling bad for the poor letter. In the retconned timeline, at the least he gets N to be with before the series' events begin.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Of all things, F. Even after F tricks G into killing his girlfriend P, many fans latch on heavily on how F was bullied when young and just wanted friends, giving a Bully Hunter image.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • H is popular among the fanbase who even got voted into the final four of Mike Salcedo's Alphabet Lore polls, despite their only roles are dying by smelling the fart, and then later being farted out by F.
  • W is fairly popular among fans for their unique design, despite their only role being to be part of "Coward". They had at least five pictures shown in the fanart collection, with most of the minor cast usually only getting one or two.
• Fan Nickname: G and P's son, a lowercase g, wasn't identified at the time of introduction. Fans have nicknamed him "Baby G", "G Jr.", etc. Word of God said "g" is the official name.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The punctuation gems give their users powers that correspond to the punctuation they're based on:
    • L's period gem can freeze people in place. Periods are used to mark the end of sentences.
    • M's comma gem slows down time. Commas are used to indicate pauses or slowdowns in text.
    • N's semicolon gem can connect things. Semicolons are used to connect independent clauses into a single sentence.
    • O's colon gem makes letters attract other nearby letters. Colons are used to introduce lists.
    • P's exclamation point gem gives the user Super-Speed and sound powers. Exclamation points are used to indicate emphasis and loudness.
    • Q's question mark gem lets him see visions of the past and future. Question marks are, obviously, used to indicate questions, such as the one it just answered without Q even asking: "What happens in the past and future?" The fact it's Q who gets it may also be a case of Bilingual Bonus, as the letter "Q" in Portuguese is pronounced "Quê?", which translates to "What?"
    • X's asterisk gem lets him create copies of himself. Asterisks are used both to indicate extra text and as a multiplication symbol, the latter of which X also sometimes serves as.
    • Z's ellipsis gem allows him to rewind time. Ellipsis are used as short term to summarize that the text continues on even after the shown passage ends. The ellipsis also act as moons to Z, and the planet's orbit around the sun (which was originally thought to be the reverse, with the sun orbiting around the Earth like a moon) is used to determine the passage of time. Thus, by orbiting in reverse, time would also appear to go in reverse.
  • A, E, I, O and U form a dance sequence together, because they're all vowels. And why does E keep competing against A over the spotlight? Because they're the two most common letters in the alphabet.
  • Each episode of Number Lore so far seems to have some sort of mathematical nod in it:
    • The arc opens with 1 traveling to "Find X", a common way to phrase algebraic questions (with "x" standing in for an unknown quantity). Also, the binary codes above “Find X” and pointing to the characters in “1” correspond to each phrase/letter.
    • The cast of letters in "1" isn't a random selection at all. Q is fairly obvious, but we also have Y, M, X (who will likely appear to be plot-relevant), and B. "y = mx + b" is the slope intercept function. This is compounded by 1 lowering a ramp, i.e. a slope, over the last four letters.
    • During the 1 + 1 addition sequence in "2", a long string of algebraic notations is shown on the screen. These strings were directly quoted from Principia Mathematica, a series of books attempting to describe and catalogue all the fundamentals of mathematics; specifically, the quoted string is from a proof that 1 + 1 = 2.
    • When the numbers get caught by O's colon gem in "3", they form the first 4 terms of the Fibonacci Sequence.
  • g's dialogue, "goo, goo, gah!" is a reference to the letter G in morse code (−−·).
• Ho Yay: L and O in Number Lore 3. When AEIOU plots to go after the Number Ship, L goes through O's hole, with the two blushing at each other and then transforming into their superhero egos. While it's not confirmed if they're an Official Couple, it won't stop the LGBT fanbase from shipping the two further.
• I Knew It!:
  • Since his debut episode, a lot of viewers predicted that Q will become important (or at least relevant) to the plot later on. Sure enough, "Y" reveals that not only does he hold the seventh punctuation gem, but he also had important information about F.
  • In fact, several predictions about this series have come true too, starting with C, A, and B spelling out a cab. It's unknown if this is intentional or not.
  • One particularly long-running theory was that F's plan was ultimately to spell the word "friends". This was eventually revealed in "Y".
  • Several people theorized that after Alphabet Lore ended, the logical conclusion would be to have Number Lore after it, to the point where several people made their own Number Lores. This would later be confirmed in the compilation video for season 1.
• Jerkass Woobie: F, whose villainous actions are the result of him losing his friends and a desperate (but gradually more unhinged) plan to get them back. In Number Lore, he still carries a grudge that eventually undoes his friendship with N.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: F is well loved and sympathized by the fans. However, L and O aren't as favored, largely because they brought on F's Start of Darkness and made him the resentful outcast he is today. The same can be applied to the numbers in Number Lore, especially after L throws their spaceship at F's mountain.
• LGBT Fanbase: The popular ship of F and N, as well as the simple and cute character designs have resulted in the series attracting many young LGBT fans, with ships and headcanons regarding sexuality and personal relationships flourishing.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The series as a whole is infamous for appearing on nearly half of all Youtube videos in 2022, to the point of mockery.
  • "WHY ARE PEOPLE SIMPING OVER A LETTER" ^note Many people are shocked at the amount of Self-Fanservice F got, despite F being Anthropomorphic Typography that only says his name.
  • "Kyooooo!" ^note Whenever Q says his name, he always says it like this. Because of this and his Running Gag role in the series, it became a recurring joke in the community, as well as being a Fan Nickname for Q.
• Moe:
  • The lowercase letters are big-eyed, small, and have cute pitched-up voices, making it easy to find them all adorable.
  • I, N, P, and V are also lovable due to their simple appearances and charming personalities.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Even though F's villainy is eventually shown to have been due to fallout from events beyond his control, the moment when it becomes clear that he must be stopped is when he tricks G into killing his lover P by disguising her as himself, even though neither of them ever bullied F.
  • During Number Lore, while F hasn't totally changed, he isn't as bad as the previous arc. This time, it's L who crosses the line by hitting F with the calculator spaceship just for laughing at him and O earlier, much to the horror of N and the disgust of the other letters, who spell JERK behind him.
• One True Pairing: According to the fans, the only worthwhile pairing is F with N, despite the two being nothing more than (former) friends at most in canon. The epilogue adds fuel to this, as N stands with F after the latter been beaten up by the other letters.
• Periphery Demographic: The series is extremely popular among preschoolers and younger children for its alphabet-centric premise and colorful cast of characters. However, this has also resulted in content farms taking advantage of this and create fanmade Youtube Kids Channels to intentionally pander to children, naturally resulting in disdain from the fanbase.
• Popular with Furries: F is a letter with a vaguely reptilian snout, especially with sharp teeth coming out of his mouth. That Animal Motif helped F be popular with furries on top of his Rooting for the Empire status.
• Ron the Death Eater: L and O sometimes get this treatment from fans due to them being responsible for F's Start of Darkness, beating up on N as a kid, and being judgmental towards him as an adult, oftentimes being called "the real villains". To a lesser extent, N also sometimes gets this treatment due to him failing to stand up to F's abuse and hiding behind L, M, and O. While the epilogue alleviates this for N due to fixing his mistakes in the past, the fact that L and O still never get punished for their ostracizing of F and now N, their reputation hasn't changed much for them.
• Rooting for the Empire: ...F. Considering he's the closest thing to an antagonistic force, has a Tragic Backstory, and is also popular with fans as-is, however, this isn't much of a surprise given how much of an active role he has in the series.
• Sailor Earth: Characters based off of other typography such as extinct letters like Þ, foreign letters such as ß, or numbers are very common. The latter group, as of Season 2, is now canon, but fans seek to use obscure numbers just like their letter counterparts.
• Self-Fanservice: Many fan-artists of F anthropomorphize him... sometimes making him muscular. They might even give him formal clothing or space armour.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The song when entering F's cave (which is "Creepy Fantasy" by Rafael Krux) sounds a lot like "Neptune" from The Planets by Gustav Holst.
• Ugly Cute: Q may look like a weird Funny Animal but he's also kind at heart.
• Unpopular Popular Character:
  • As stated before, F is hated by almost all the other letters In-Universe but a favorite among the fans.
  • Q is also highly popular to the point where he is the first letter to have official merch, but is often overlooked by the other letters.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Some people mistake I for a girl due to his high-pitched voice, despite Tertiary Sexual Characteristics being applied to the females, except K. Plenty of humanized Alphabet Lore fanart portrays I as a girl.
    • Same thing with V, although rather to a much smaller extent.
  • K even had an Ambiguous Gender that was often assumed to be male, until Mike revealed her to be female.
  • H is also commonly portrayed as a girl in fanart, but they do not have a confirmed gender yet.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Alphabet Lore is often mistaken for something kid-friendly or educational due to it's Anthropomorphic Typography. However, it also contains brutal injuries and other content that isn't the at-most suitable.
  • Can also count as What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? as official playsets have released in Korea, though that could also be a case of Misaimed Marketing.
• The Woobie:
  • N is haunted by his cowardice to stand up to F, leading to the deaths of C and P. This all comes to a head in his backstory, where it's revealed that he and F were once friends until a Prank Gone Too Far leads to F becoming an outcast, and N, the only one who could vouch for him, gave in to peer pressure and refused to help him, which he would sorely regret. Even after being sent back in time and fixing his mistake, his troubles wouldn't end there. As shown in Number Lore, N still retains the tragic memories of the previous timeline, and F still holds a rather sadistic grudge against the other letters. When N goes to help them, F tries in vain to make him stay, soon leading to them to part ways once again. And when N goes back to rescue F, the latter no longer wants anything to do with him.
  • Q also holds the burden of being much too slow to even catch up to the other letters, despite clearly wanting to help them. In both arcs, he is the first to realize the dangers unfolding and only arrives to tell the others when it is too late.

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