Luminosity (Twilight fanfic) discussion thread

I can't help but notice that Bella's feelings of social awkwardness about trying to proselytize her fellow vampires not to eat people are exactly identical to how I feel about the tradeoff between social awkwardness and human life when it comes to persuading people to sign up for cryonics. Did you think that too while you were writing it?

Being a transhumanist puts you into sympathy with the strangest people, doesn't it?

Chapter 39 will introduce a character named "Eleazar". He's canon and in no way inspired by or related to Eliezer. Just wanted to provide a heads up about that because I know someone would ask.

Chapter 32.

As a rabid fan of Emily Short's Galatea, I squeed uncontrollably at Bella pretending to be a statue in a shipping crate.

It occurs to me that Antarctica would be a ridiculously well-suited place to establish a long-term vegetarian vampire settlement, once that community grew to about a hundred or so. It's very well-separated from any human settlement and likely to remain so for a long time, so it's safe for newborns, unlikely to invite accidents, and little chance of needing to move. It's totally habitable to vampires, and there's plenty of local fauna to munch on. If the politics with the Volturi could be worked out, it could become feasible to start turning people systematically.

While I enjoyed the start of Luminosity quite a bit, I really didn't like the last chapter (55). I suppose it's where my misgivings about the story came to a head. Full disclosure: I have gotten consistent reports that I would not enjoy the Twilight novels, and so have not read them (but have checked out the twilight wiki to write this post), and this will weaken my first objection, but I still feel it worth making.

The premise is that it's Bella with a brain; the personality is the same, most of the limitations are the same (I imagine Meyer's Bella gets pointlessly upset when interrupted), but she's got rationality training and thus behaves rather differently. I was genuinely pleased at the mention of the journals and the acknowledgment that thoughts and emotions change- that's such a great example of knowing your limitations and rationally responding to them.

Except, Bella also plans to take over the world.

That isn't a rationality boost. That's a core personality overwrite. The main reason that bothered me is while I wasn't surprised to see HP:MoR become Ender's Game (for a time, at least), I really didn't expect the same "one genius takes on the world!" stuff in Twilight. It was a domestic fantasy, and now it's going to be The Punisher? Great.

Does every rationalist protagonist come out of the box thinking they're the queen or king? It makes sense for the ten-year old whose INT far surpasses his WIS; it doesn't make sense for the family-centered teen. What could possibly possess Bella such that she decided to risk everything important to her for political gain when she learned of thousand-year old vampires who ruthlessly enforce vampire law? Idiocy? I thought this was Bella with a Brain, not Bella with Revolutionary Aspirations.

Which, I suppose, leads to the main reason this bothered me: for the first ~20 chapters, I was planning to recommend this to my friends and family who enjoyed Meyer's Twilight; after that, my desire to do so gradually waned; now, I would not recommend it. Which is such a shame, because the start really was promising, both as an interesting story and as a rationality teaching tool.

The phrase "Twilight for boys" is bouncing around my head- both because of the plot changes and the style changes. Meyer describes things the way she does for a reason; that's part of what makes her books interesting to her audience. The sparseness of Luminosity really got harsh after a while- it was palpably obvious that all of the details of Bella's life were being drained away. (By her political aspirations? Foreshadowing?) I haven't gone back to check, but every personal description I remember came in the first few chapters. After that, no one is distinctive- only their names, powers, and affiliations come up.

Another way I'm thinking about this: are there any romance novels (or something similar enough) that you really like? Because that's what Twilight was, and replacing it with something else kills it in a way that's hard to explain if you don't like any romance novels. One of the books I cherish is a romance novel about a gay football player and his boyfriend. I read it whenever I'm feeling down or lonely and it cheers me up. There's still conflict- it's a story, after all- but the conflicts are ones I care about as a gay guy looking for a mate. Reading about byzantine power struggles is sometimes entertaining, and I suppose possibly it's training for a future as a leader or in a bureaucracy, but not what I care most about in my life. I'm not a plotter, I'm an optimizer.

Perhaps I'm burdening you too much with my expectations, but I find myself worried when the primary plot you and EY have come up with is "death has to go." There's really a lot more to life than trying to prolong it, guys. That's what makes spending any effort at all on prolonging life worthwhile. With Harry Potter, there's enough other stuff bouncing around that it doesn't take over the story- there's still magic to figure out, and Voldemort to oppose, and the Dumbledore-Malfoy war to deal with- but with Twilight, there's really only Bella, Edward, and family. And so when you add "Bella's plan to replace the Volturi" to the mix, you unbalance things so massively that the flavor of family is entirely overpowered and we're left with a Punisher story. Not only is that a distasteful bait and switch, it misses a great target: how to behave rationally with your loved ones to maximize their and your happiness. That's something that would be immediately enlightening in the minds of readers (particularly Twilight readers), and instead we get vampire politics and war.

I want to say that this fic is what finally persuaded me to read the Luminosity sequences, which are extremely grounded, sensible, and level-headed. I had been pattern-matching against new-age self-help, and it's not that at all.

Good show, reduced my Harry withdrawal a bit, though not hitting all the same achy spots.

Here's to Rosalie totally having thought of offing Bella and conveniently appropriating, err, adopting, her eggs.

Finally started reading "Luminosity". 26 chapters so far. Very well done, Alicorn. I never read Twilight, so I may be missing some allusions and things, but I just like the story-telling. Even better than HPMOR. Plus Luminosity:Bella is not so completely over-the-top 'Mary-Sue' as is MOR:Harry. She is actually pretty believable. Though, I have to admit, MOR delivers a lot more lulz.

Keep up the good work.

I love the fic. HP:MOR is alternatively brilliant and cringeworthy but this is consistently well-written. And sometimes poignant. Hopefully I'll get around to write a review at some point. For now, just some thoughts on blood.

I would expect Bella to try hard to find ways to satisfy her hunger more satisfactorily. Some things she could plausibly look into:

• Since some animals taste better than others, which one tastes best? Do hominids taste any good? Or maybe some predator which vampires might rarely encounter? Killer whales?

• Are there any ways to process/cook/spice animal blood so that it tastes less bad?

• Is there a way to synthesize a yummy blood substitute? This would be an ambitious research/engineering project but with immortality, you might as well get started.

• Are there any ways to obtain human blood which Bella might find ethically satisfactory? Edward used to kill bad guys, maybe that's worth at least thinking about? What about people that are dying anyway? People in a permanent vegitative state? Braindead people?

• How about blood donations? Humans can, and frequently do, donate a significant amount of blood without negative effects on their well being. If stealing blood intended for medical purposes is too unethical, then perhaps you could get some human friends to donate yummy blood now and then? I'm sure the world has a lot of vampire fans who would be happy to do that. If the Volturi keep human fan girls around, then maybe there is some realistic way for you to do it too? And if it's hard to get a significant amount of blood then maybe you could at least have enough to indulge on special occasions? Or maybe you could mix a little human blood with a lot of animal blood and get something that tastes significantly better than your normal meal?

Of course there are reasons why none of these ideas might work out (e.g. gorillas might actually taste pretty good but they're rare and somewhat unethical to kill; a bit of human blood now and then might just drive you crazy for more etc.) but Bella is the kind of person I would expect to look into things like this before accepting a life (an eternal life, no less) of unsatiable cravings. We already know that there are fairly obvious things (like drinking water) which her vampire family has never thought of trying so she probably wouldn't just think "someone would have noticed".

Edit: I see the point about donated blood was already raised below and explained away in the way I guessed.

It is a real shame that Alice's power doesn't work on hybrids. That would have been perfect for eugenics.

"I'm going to pick this one!"

"No, she's a brat."

"This one?"

"Bad temper. Eats her classmates in temper tantrums."

"How about..."

"Dude. Down syndrome. Count the damn chromosomes! Hey, the next one. Use that. He'll be able to shoot laser beams out his eyes!"

But even with the no-hybrid limitation on foresight it will still be worthwhile pursuing Alice based genetic research. A simple option is collecting various sources of human sperm and getting foresight into how each egg of Bella's would turn out with each of 100 possible fathers. That will give plenty of scope for selecting in favour of useful traits, even if you still have to rely on luck with respect to selecting Edward's sperm.

If Rosalie wants to eventually become an adoptive parent too she will have the chance to create a real 'designer baby'.

My biggest issue with the fic so far is that the bizzare way Alice's precognition interacts with peoples decisions (I have no idea whether it works like that in the original novels since I haven't read a word from them) doesn't seem to puzzle Bella at all.

If people are just a physical system like any other Alice's powers should be able to predict them just like any other physical system. Since they are strangely unpredictable for her exploring what other physical systems are similarly unpredictable should provide information on how people work. For instance if Alice can't predict anything influenced by quantum events that would be a big clue that quantum events are involved in cognition. if she can't predict anything sufficiently chaotic (in the chaos theory sense) that would give away how chaotic people's decision making is.

If nothing inanimate poses similar difficulties that points towards either a psychological limitation she might be able to break out of, or the existence of some sort of magical free will in that universe. Do any animals have it? In addition to humans vampires obviously also do. And pointing this out to Edward (who apparently believes in the existence of souls, but also that he doesn't have one) might be useful.

Rachel had nominated Leah to test the pack's range, and Leah had run all the way to Canada (but not near Denali, thankfully). There was no noticeable delay, static, or loss of fidelity to the telepathy.

This is just begging for more tests! ;)

And the Maggie thing is just incredibly cute!

"Of course, Bella." I felt so accommodated. I'd told Aro that my coven didn't revolve around me, but in some sense, since I'd entered their sphere of attention, it had. Bella asked to see vampires doing tricks; Bella wants us to perform egg extraction surgery on her; Bella has been targeted by an unstoppable tracker; Bella needs to be picked up in Italy; Bella has rendered it necessary that we move to Norway; Bella's turning; Bella's a newborn; Bella's a special snowflake; Bella needs a test human; Bella's getting married; Bella needs a private South Atlantic island on which to honeymoon; Bella wants to rescue a human she met once; Bella wants to throw in the human's brother; and now Bella's traipsing around without telling anybody what she's up to...

Bella probably needn't worry too much. I suspect that after hundreds of years of vampire speed enhanced and sleep-free years I'd relish the chance to borrow someone else's goals to achieve for a while if they were willing to share them with me!

Bella has counterfactual speed dial. I love the Alice character. :)

I'm looking forward to Bella getting into a fight. It occurs to me that Bella has one of the most significant combat oriented powers around, at least for the next year or so. Newborn strength without loss of control. It'd be a shame for her to waste that by not getting attacked unawares at least once!

So Bella is actually stronger than the Cullens? That's a new twist! I've never encountered a vampire myth in which newborns were not significantly weaker than vampires a couple of decades old and those vampires in turn not significantly weaker than centenarians.

How much of this greater strength relates to the Cullen's self-sabotaging diet? None of the Cullen's seemed particularly intimidated by James, Laurent or Victoria so I take it that the difference between 'vegetarian' and carnivorous vampires is less significant than the difference between carnivores and newborns.

Is there any particular advantage to being a 1,000 year old vampire in this world? Just the experiences, skills and allies you have accumulated? Gradually improving witchcraft powers?

Is it a net disadvantage to be ancient? Some deal with translucent skin and bad eyesight? Or were the Vorturi weird in some different way?

To be honest I find the prospect of a world of vampires in a female targeted reality not gaining power with age rather surprising!

So, assuming that I found Twilight movie moderately lame and haven't read the novels, would you recommend I take a look at this fanfic?

It occurs to me that this fanfic would make the worst feature of Twilight bearable. Vampires that glitter and sparkle in the light at least do justice to the title "Luminosity" even if they are a disgrace to the vampire myth.

I want to write a fanfic about paperclips.

Maybe I could also use it to teach correct reasoning.

(warning: white text on black background).

This class of problems has a general solution: the Readability Bookmarklet. It adjusts the colors, font size, margins, and so on, with the press of a button. It's useful all over the place.

Hypothesis: fairy tales originally come from accounts of vampires.

Assuming that fairy-tale nobility are Twivamps explains so much. They can "live happily ever after" because they're genuinely deathless; they're supernaturally beautiful; the beautiful peasant-girl that the noble prince falls in love with is turned, the magically healing kiss is actually a bite (or maybe just a kiss -- vampires have venom instead of saliva, right?); they fall in love at first sight and stay that way forever.

Prince Charming is a vampire.

With respect to 'alpha of the pack' considerations am I right in inferring that Twilight 'Wolves' differ from actual wolves in as much as they actually have an 'alpha' rather than an 'alpha pair'? Descriptions I've seen from the Twilight universe seem to be more in line with, say gorilla social structure than wolf social structure.

I would blame any tendencies towards patriarchy on the primate side not the 'wolf' side of the magic (or just on Meyer).

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn.

I certainly wasn't expecting that. Still, I'd like to congratulate you on actually going through with it, most people wouldn't have the guts to do something this big.

Anyway, is my interpretation - that Luminosity!Bella's shield also has some sort of an enhanced-immortality power - correct? If so, that would be an interesting turn of events.

What I've never understood is why nobody ever rates Chelsea as a genuine target. Think about it, how many members of the guard only stay there under Chelsea's power. Marcus has defiantly been defined as one. And who else acts emotionless because of her power making them stay and act like slaves. Alec, Demetri, Reneta, they all act just as emotionless and subservient as Marcus. If I was trying to take out the Volturri I would so schedule an all out blitz to kill her. It would really help Bella out if half the Volturri guard came back to themselves and ether helps or ran after her death. And before you say that Chelsea isn't that powerful just look at how they talk about her in the book. Aro's whole strategy relies on her. Losing Alec or Jane would be an enormous loss but Aro all out depends on Chelsea forcing everyone to stay on his side.

I have discovered that this fanfic makes for an excellent Cliff Notes to Twilight. The other day I had a whole conversation with my friend about werewolf imprinting! Thanks Alicorn! ;)

I suspect that Bella's problems trying to figure out how to control vampires would probably solve themselves once she removes the Volturi from power; if the vampires get out of hand, the human governments would notice, and they'd wind up bringing ever-escalating amounts of hardware to defeat them.

If she uses her father to make the appropriate connections with the US law enforcement agencies, she could probably make the transition from vampiric vigilantism to human law enforcement as smooth and painless as possible. He's a police chief; odds are that he knows how to contact the FBI, and they won't play around, especially once she demonstrates her vampiric superpowers.

Sounds like Gianna will be the one to persuade Maggie, though feel free not to confirm or deny ;]

Wonder though how a vamp would be so sure of her eventual preference, given that it's a one-time mystical bond. Ah well, perhaps it correlates well.

Are there any turned too-old-to-become-Quileute-werewolf vampires in canon? Because I'm hoping that Mr. Clearwater will have some interesting powers... :)

"Links" on the luminous.elcenia.com site is broken.

Good internal conflict between her wanting to die during the change in 27, and not wanting to be dead afterward. Reminds me of some interesting ethical questions about assisted suicide and cryonics... Just because someone in pain is asking to die, does that really mean they want to be dead? Should we respect their wishes?

Chapter 56.

Things certainly aren't looking good for the Cullen's. I imagine Aro must be absolutely giddy, considering how well his attack went. The fact remains though that neither Bella or Jasper actually saw Edward and Alice die. I'm quite sure Edward still lives, since Bella didn't find any of his jewellery. I'm not too sure about Alice though. It would make sense for Jasper to be able to distinguish Alice's emotions from that of others, and a burning death is probably quite hard to fake. Alice's gift would also be hindered by all the wolves and halflings the Volturi are now surrounding themselves with, and therefore not be as useful.

I wonder how Bella can survive Jasper - maybe he'll be careless and she can put out the flames again. But at the rate things are getting more depressing, maybe she really will die and the sequel will be narrated by Elspeth, like I thought for a moment last chapter. My biggest question this chapter is: why would the Volturi leave Jasper alive after they had supposedly killed Alice? Why didn't he just chase them until they killed him?

Ahh, the shit is hitting the fan. (Incidentally, hopefully Harry also will get kicked into a bit higher gear with the next installment... Time-travel with Quirrel is promising.)

Anyway, back to the matter at hand: I bet Elspeth is going to end up weaponized against the twins, turning their powers against themselves. With lots of drama.

While it isn't on the order of irony of 'Buffy', if you name a daughter that is likely to develop telepathic powers Elspeth you had best make sure she doesn't start doing anything suspicious around fantasy fiction enthusiasts. (Was that coincidental?)

(In finding the link I just discovered she has written another two books in the series. Here I was thinking a 9 year break was a good indication that it was over!)

Chapter 47.

Regarding the cliffhanger (you're quite good at those, I've noticed): Oh yikes.

Epileptic Trees*: I wonder if at some point (or already!) a vampire threesome will appear.

* "Epileptic Trees" is a TVTropism for "implausible plot speculation", like asserting that the waving trees in the early episodes of Lost were, well...

I hope you guys don't mind if I ask this here, but I've asked several people who have read Twilight and nobody has been able to explain this to me.

The word "werewolf" itself is an Old English word meaning "man-wolf". Yet as far as I can tell, all werewolves mentioned in the story are American Indians. So are there European werewolves that are just unmentioned (perhaps they were exterminated by humans/vampires?) Or are we to believe that the existence of the myth of werewolves in Europe came about independently, and coincidentally there just happened to be people who can actually turn into wolves on the other side of the planet? Perhaps there was some kind of pre-Columbian contact between the shape-shifting tribes and ancient Anglo-Saxons? Is any of this explained in-canon? Have fans come up with other explanations?

Ilario didn't scream. In fact, he didn't do anything. He held perfectly still, though I could hear his heart beating steadily. Had the morphine eliminated the pain as effectively as my coma had? If so, and if it lasted longer than thirty hours, it should be the new gold standard for humane turning in the future - I'd have to ask him about it later.

The first thing I thought when Ilario wasn't showing too many signs of pain was that he was just used to being closer to the threshold of pure agony than Bella was. He's been slowly dying of cancer for years and endured cancer treatments. Those aren't pleasant. The increase in pain may not seem all that bad, especially when it is accompanied with the knowledge that now the pain is actually going to end!

I've just started the Luminosity series. Reading a whole 30 chapters online was slightly daunting so I'm experimenting with listening to it in audio format so I can listen to it at the gym, etc. I found a suitable high quality voice that sounds like a young female. The 'Daniel' voice I had just sounded too bizarre reading a female first person narrative.

Once I'm finished with Luminosity I may try listening to some of Eliezer's sequences - the non illustrated ones obviously!

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The problem with vampires drinking human blood isn't the "drinking human blood" part, it's the "killing people to get the blood" part. The obvious solution seems to be to drink donated blood from blood banks and such. Are there any reasons why this wouldn't work? Is preserved blood no longer edible? Would it drain the local blood bank faster than people normally donate? Is the scent of humans still tempting even after consuming a large amount of blood?

General question about biology in this fanfic: What would happen if a vampire was just completely deprived of blood? Say they were trapped in a steel box with no seams and couldn't get out. Would they just sit there suffering forever? Or would a lack of blood for that long eventually kill them?

Is it just me, or does it look like Bella's true power is that she can do anything so long as she can imagine it and honestly justify it as necessary to maintain the integrity of her mind?

If so, when she inevitably goes for revenge for Edward's death against the Volturri, she could very possibly just deprogram the werewolves and splatter the vampires because if she doesn't, they'll rip her to bits and then light her on fire and not stop until she's properly ashes.

At the very least, she should be able to think "If my body is damaged, my mind will be destroyed when I inevitably lose the fight; therefore, my body cannot be damaged" and become nigh-invulnerable physically.

"Oh, lord, Jacob," moaned Rachel. "He's got the gene if I do, doesn't he?

Not necessarily. Especially if, say, the relevant gene turns out to be X-linked and dominant. Surprisingly, if that was the case then finding out that their dad was also a wolf would actually lower the probability they should assign to finding that Jacob was a wolf!

Slightly forced discovery on Edwards part, but understandable that one wants to introduce the hybrid stuff somehow, and there's little room for a happy accidental discovery in this storyline. "Hey, let's test it for the heck of it" maybe, but that'd also be going against a rather strong base assumption that's hard to plausibly question, since the whole thing, well, is rather implausible anyway. ;)

Good to have some more, anyway, and nice going with the compartmentalization and getting into touch with Billy. Swell way to put "I'd very much like you guys to eat them for breakfast" at the end. Looking forward to the "friendship" blooming.

This just occurred to me: is Bella breaking her spine a reference to the original?

When the Luminosity vampires carry someone, in particular when they accelerate to a high speed, do they accelerate their passenger using conventional force or is the acceleration magic applied directly to the load? If unspecified I usually assume that superhumans can accelerate objects via implicit magic. That eliminates all sorts of potential irritations reading most such stories.

There's a typo in this chapter: "Leah Clearwater, who had the sort of eyelashes that other women medicated themselves to get, was skeptical. But she followed Leah into the forest readily enough, shook my hand with only the barest hesitation..." Unless I'm misparsing it somehow.

Hey, I just wanted to say I'm on Ch. 10 and really like the fic so far.

Also, I wish to clarify that I am Definitely Not A Vampire. Look, I even eat garlic ice-cream!

(Pay no heed to kodos96's vile slander.)

...I have to say that the only thing that can make me feel less shell-shocked by the latest chapter (55) is imagining this exchange (rot13ed for the spirit of the thing, and because this is a joke instead of insight and therefore not worth accidentally reading):

Rzzrgg: Bu zl tbq, gurl xvyyrq Rqjneq!
Wnfcre: Lbh onfgneqf!

I just read through the first few chapters and have the same quibble that I had with HP:MOR. Namely, the protagonist's successes don't seem to be caused by her rationality at all.

Hiyah!

I'm a somewhat big fan of Twilight universe. And rare adult male breed that enjoys this kind of thing, lol. From all ppl I know only my close friend who twisted me into this like it. For eg first thing I saw was movie, wich made me in love with Alice character. Watching movie and few cool ideas from it like vampire baseball forced me into reading it both in polish and english, as I came from Poland Kingdom ;p

To be honest I don't really like fanfics, mostly they are just dumb excuse to position one in world they love more then our own... and usually it ends bad. Really bad. Like, I am sure You know - dozens of bad fan fiction wich shouldn't exist as it just proves that age of global network ruined whole "art of word".

BUT, I really enjoyed Luminosity. The ideas you've came with are just ingenious. The way Alice reacted to whole 'car out of control' situation was epic. By big, shiny capital 'e' letter. Or Carlisle acting like baboon shaman from Lion King 3, where he just listened to Timons monologue and by that helped him solve meta-physical issue. Or gettin' Victoria dead and luring James into certain-death. Maaan... if all other ff were so cool as yer's I would enjoy my life more.

Still, there are things I just don't like at all. Like... such short lovely show ;p just as we got end of book one, we, the readers, are thrown into cold-blooded full-scale war and many sad things. I understand why you did this. I mean as you described things Volturi just saw potential threat in Cullen coven... mind-reader, mood-shifter, future-seer, calm and blood-immune leader... AND now shield that is invulnerable from witch-power... at least those threatening...

Still... one more book, a book describing vampire life through eyes of someone like your Bella... in such interesting coven like Cullens AND Quilette trive allies/friends. Like someone earlier said, your art lacks vampire-side. Like... I dunno, you should at least go with Bellas colegue in Alasca, wich also would get us beter opinion on Dali coven.

But meh. I'm not ungrateful. I really appreciate your work. Wich also leads to my primary goal in writing here. Could I obtain your blessing with translation? The fan-made one, that will of course be in your crafty hands. I just think your ff should be in more then one language, to be enjoyable by far bigger audience <3

Discovered Luminosity and Radiance about two weeks ago. Have since read both books in their entirety and just flipping LOVE them! I know its completely unreasonable to expect you to update every minute of every day Alicorn, but ....Could you anyway? lol. BTW My Girlfriend requests that you ignore my request, lest she leave me and take our computer with her! :D FF

Will Luminosity and Radiance ever be available as e-books like "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" is? Because of an accidental reload, I lost my place on the Radiance webpage (one-page text of story, "article view" in Kindle so the margins wouldn't jut out of the screen), and now it's pretty much impossible to scroll back on my Kindle.

Now I'm trying to figure out if I can copy-paste the text onto my computer and convert it into a mobi file myself, but I have the sinking feeling I'm just going to have to suffer eyestrain reading the rest on my computer instead. I'm really caught up in the middle of Radiance and wish it were more technologically accessible!

Hi all, new here- as I have transplanted from fanfiction.net at less wongs recomendation, and I love the notion of the entire book on a single page; however, how do I increase the print size for the story on my ipod touch(gen2) so that my aging eyes can see it, and still keep it within the confines of the screen(or in other words, so that I only have to scroll down rather thn down, up, and side to side)? If anyone can help me, please use small words, so I can understand-my twelve year old daughter teased me the other day about being a 'tech-tard", and I'm not so sure she is wrong! THanks.

Chapter 57.

I really didn't expect Bella to steal Elspeth away. That's great though; now she can raise her to be a rebel and an interesting character. I thought with Elspeth narrating the sequel, we would have a time jump of at least a few years, so she could set the stage for a rebellion, like her mother. With this new development though it would be interesting to read about her growing up in hiding with Bella.

It's almost obvious after this chapter that Edward is alive, but Alice isn't. It seems that while believing your mate to be dead won't be good for your mood, it's nothing compared to when they actually are dead. It would be very unlike Bella not to at least hypothesise that Edward may be alive in the near future.

I wonder why the Volturi killed Alice instead of recruiting her. Maybe they preferred the wolf packs over her visions, which would most likely have little use if they kept the wolves. I also wonder why they would leave Jasper alive after killing Alice. Maybe she isn't dead and the unknown witch Jasper spoke of somehow made him absolutely sure that she is, so that he would spread the word - maybe they did the same thing to Alice to make her docile. The only thing keeping Bella sane may be that she has no proof that Edward is dead - not that he's actually alive and her body somehow knows this - and thus she has a tiny seed of hope that she hasn't acknowledged yet.

I have my suspicions that Edward may be the man talking with Abby over the pit Bella is in, or at least survived. I don't really know why. The sheer number of times he was mentioned as "the man" made it feel to me like you really didn't want him identified. Bella didn't find a ring in the ashes, and Abby and "the man" never referred to any gender, so it could have been Irina attempting to go berserk on the wolves or Bella. The only males present were Aro, Demetri, Afton and Edward, and Bella has heard them all except Afton. It's possible Edward was subdued by Alec and extremely tweaked by Chelsea and Abby to the point where Bella doesn't recognize his voice though.

I'm certainly no Edward lover (yours was good though), so I'm fine either way. Bella won't have a happy ending even if she achieves all her previous goals if he's dead though, so that would be sad. For a moment there I thought both Bella and Edward would die, leaving the sequel to Elspeth.

Spoilers for Chap. 55.

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The last chapter (54) totally shattered Bella's unintentional illusion that her plans were without flaws that she could not fix. I'm going to assume that Bella and Edward survives, at least the rescue of the Werewolves - if not the duration of the story. As such, the most realistic way of surviving the encounter with the witch twins I can conjure up at the moment is that Bella is exaggerating the situation.

It's entirely possible that Alec and Jane have been too busy keeping the wolves incapacitated to do any interrogation - and to my knowledge; it's quite difficult to answer questions, or even hear them, when either paralyzed or gasping breaths between screaming in agony, anyway.

So the Volturi may not even suspect Bella of doing any folly - a situation she will surely use her quick wits to make the most of, both in short- and long-term. As Bella suspected, there probably are reinforcements on the way to deal with the wolves in whatever way the Volturi have decided, but Aro certainly doesn't have to be among them. If I read him right, he would rather stay in Volterra; totally confident that the witch twins and the reinforcements will bring him a few wolves to experiment on.

There's also what I think is the more unlikely possibility of Bella suddenly learning to expand her shield and using this new-found ability to make the packs immune to the twins - she did after all learn that their powers affected the packs collective minds, so why shouldn't hers? The most likely event to trigger this I can think of is if the Volturi are hostile and come close to killing Edward, making Bella desperate enough for a way to help him to subconsciously bring her ability to the next 'level'.

Anyway, great chapter that gave me much to think about, trying to predict where you'll go with it next. I love doing that. I don't love Rosalie being so eager to tell Elsie's parents to go die so she can be her mother though, but that's just Rose I guess.

Nice chapter, and the scar got covered pretty much exactly as I was expecting ;)