Luminosity (Twilight Fanfic) Discussion Thread 3

Is Elspeth going to try using her sending power for general education? If she could turn a human into a passable doctor by sending them someone's memories of medical school, for example, she can solve several broad classes of societal problems very effectively by mass-producing various types of professionals from volunteers.

Announcement:

After Radiance ends (I currently expect #52 to be the last, maybe the second-to-last, chapter), I have two projects that will be lined up to go next.

However, both of these projects need significant amounts of preliminary work out of the way before I can even start writing the prose, let alone publishing it.

I don't want to go stagnant during this downtime, so while I'll definitely use the time freed up by no longer writing Radiance to hurry those preliminaries along, I also want to be, yanno, writing stuff as well as preparing to write stuff.

Solution: Luminosity/Radiance short stories. (Working title for the collection thereof: "Flashes".)

I'm not going to do a third novel. Two is enough, and I do have other stuff to get to that isn't fanfiction. But I can produce a short story (roughly the size of a Radiance chapter, i.e. more than 4,000 words but usually fewer than 5,000) once a week to keep in writing practice, and to offer additional perspectives on the Luminousverse, until Elcenia's relaunch and/or Dreamward are ready to go.

I've made noise about doing omake/other extras before, and people have given me suggestions, but I wasn't collecting the suggestions in any systematic way and don't have them stored anywhere. So, if you've already suggested something, suggest it again and this time I'll make a note; and if you haven't, this is a good time to present an idea. I'll come up with my own if I don't get reader submissions I like. Ideas should be "canon" (comply with the Luminousverse; e.g. no telling me to write a story about, I dunno, Addy having a torrid affair with Nathan during the twenty minutes or so she spent on the Isle of Man or Alice creating an immortal child or something, because that didn't happen). Suggestions could be as specific as "tell me how Aro and Sulpicia met" (I'm actually thinking of writing that one first to have ready to post before Radiance wraps up) or as vague as "something from some Volturi's perspective sometime when something was happening".

They gave him his mate's murderer, then they gave him a new mate. I think this pretty much seals Marcus' undying loyalty to the Empire.

In an earlier thread there was a comment asking about the timeline; I replied there and will crosspost here.

These are the broad strokes. (Let me know if you want the dates of other events.)

January 17, 2005: Luminosity opens.

October 2005: Assorted hell breaks loose (partial list in order: Irina finds out who killed Laurent and tips off the Volturi; the Volturi descend upon the wolves; Jacob summons Bella; the Volturi send Demetri looking for Nahuel's sisters; he finds them and helps himself to Allirea).

November 4, 2005: With Allirea in tow, the Volturi nab Alice.

April 4, 2006: Bella encounters Jasper.

May 10, 2006: Bella finds Elspeth.

May 20, 2011: Radiance opens.

May 26, 2011: Last date of Addy touching Aro. Aro was reasonably up-to-date (within a month or two) on the Volturi and Volturi guard at this time, including Allirea. He doesn't keep quite so up-to-date, temporally speaking, on the wolves, but as of this date he has read all the then-in-village alphas and imprints (as they came in, to determine how to cover up their disappearance to the wider world), and about half of the village wolves who were activated when first brought in.

May 27, 2011: Elspeth and Jacob's pack are captured in New York.

May 28, 2011: Elspeth and Allirea jailbreak.

May 30, 2011: Elspeth & co. arrive in Denali. IT'S A TRAP! Some hours afterward, Bella shows up, encounters Allirea and Eleazar, and gets the former out of there.

June 8, 2011: Elspeth is first recruited as assistant brainwasher.

July 1, 2011: The events of "Weaver" take place.

July 3, 2011: Demetri starts looking for Allirea.

July 4, 2011 (no pun intended): Addy is sentenced to death and memory-blasts the Volturi compound and escapes with Elspeth and Jacob.

July 8, 2011: Elspeth's current party arrives in Alaska.

Nathan, I'd like you to drum your fingers on the table. After each tap, choose the best time in the next second to tap again.

Tap tap ... tatap tatap ... tatap tap ... tap tap tap ... tatap tatap ... tatap tatap tap ... tatap tap tatap tap ... "I think now would be a good time to stop."

IMNSMGC ... I am N.'s magic?

I've just started reading Luminosity because I haven't read the Luminosity sequence (starting it seemed mentally difficult for one reason or another) and I figured this would be a good introduction. It's quite engaging. Bella's habits do seem quite excellent and she's kind of (edit: definitely) a badass.

Can Elspeth grant a subagent other than the main one control of her body? If so, then she can become much more formidable thus: she has the memories of many, including of course many who are very good at combat, so create a 'Melee' subagent (in keeping with the tradition of names beginning with M) that is in charge of knowing vampire melee combat in and out, and when necessary grant it bodily control. In general, Elspeth+memories is a really powerful combination; with subagents she can process the knowledge in ways unavailable even to vampires, and do fun stuff with it.

I find myself really relieved that mother love is allowed to be at least on par with the mate bond in this world. I was ready to accept Elspeth's line of thinking--that because the mate bond is magic (and not just magic, but Super Magic, in that it tends to trump even other magic) it would override any "mere human" sorts of bonds. In my head, I could see that. But emotionally, no way. It would have made Bella impenetrably alien to me, and sort of monstrous, if that was the way her emotions worked. I'm glad she remains recognizably human in this way--it makes it much, much easier to sympathize with and root for her.

And I have a lot of sympathy for Bella in this chapter. She's doing really just remarkably well, dealing with regaining a post-Chelsea Elspeth, but Alicorn gave us enough of a window into her emotional state that I can really feel the immense strain she's under. She must have been wild with fear for her daughter this whole time--and now she's got that daughter back, but broken in one important way: all her social ties cauterized. In other words, her daughter has actually been terribly hurt, but hurt in a way that Elspeth herself can no longer perceive, and if Bella flew into a rage about it, that would only serve to drive Elspeth further away.

In moments like the one where Bella hauls off and kicks the mountainside, I feel like we're seeing someone who is putting up a good front, but is really a long way from being okay with the situation. I actually think the audience might be able to perceive it better than Elspeth does--because even though she's making significant progress toward maturity, Elspeth still has some of the natural self-centeredness of a child. And, of course, she doesn't particularly care about Bella anymore.

Assuming I'm not just projecting things onto Bella that aren't meant to be there, I have to say Alicorn's pulled off a really neat authorial trick. It takes good and subtle writing to show us things in first-person narration that the narrator herself is unaware of.

Anyway, Bella seems to be handling her daughter really, really well--respecting the changes that Elspeth's gone through in their time apart, demonstrating her willingness to accept Elspeth's new priorities as important, but at the same time guiding her daughter towards the sort of memories she'd need to be able to start reconstructing their relationship on an emotional as well as an intellectual level. I feel moderately confident that Bella will succeed in winning back her daughter's love if she continues to take this tack.

Wow! Just.... Wow!

The latest chapter is excellently written. It stands out in a work that already sets high standards. I was deeply immersed when reading, and it was very suspenseful. Thumbs up!

I wonder what the consequences of Jacob phasing will be...

I'm still wondering about the 'arbitrary numbers of sub-agents' aspect of Elspeth's power. She found Magic there the first time she meditated, but apparently created Memory intentionally for the purpose of dealing with her Del-induced memory banks. Could she create other sub-agents with particular purposes? Could she create a 'Math' sub-agent that was really good at calculus? If she creates multiple sub-agents that then explicitly argue the truth of a point, could she become noticeably better than usual at discerning the truth from opposing clever arguments? This is the sort of mental power that seems like it could do just about anything (inward-directed), depending on the constraints.

Has Chelsea gotten a power boost from canon?

The Twilight Saga Wiki has this to say about her power:

However, as stated by Eleazar, she cannot as easily influence the emotional ties of people when those ties are stronger than just friends or acquaintances. She could not have changed the way Bella and Edward felt about each other, for example, or the ties between a true family. (emphasis added)

If this is accurate, she shouldn't have been able to cut the tie between Bella and Elspeth, although Edward and Elspeth weren't nearly as close.

The part 2 discussion links forward to this page now :-)

The description of Marcus pre-tragedy is superawesome.

"Heart Is An Awesome Power" added.

Question to Alicorn: how big does a chunk of a vampire's body have to be for Addy to borrow power from it, and how long will it continue to work if the vampire remains alive?

Because if a small enough chunk works for long enough, Addy really ought to work out some way to offer some kind of service to selected vampires in exchange for the ounce of flesh furthest from their heart.

That way she could assemble a charm bracelet with her favorite powers, and not have to keep them around.

Bella's law regarding no non-consensual turning of mates seems like it would be hard to enforce. If a vampire finds their mate and bites them before the Golden Empire can interfere, then even if the Empire finds out before the turning is finished, there's no real way to prove that it was nonconsensual. The mate will be incoherent during the turning process, and after turning will a. have fuzzy memories of right before the turning, and b. be more than willing to lie on behalf of their own mate. The only real way around this is for the Empire to isolate the mate during turning, perhaps applying Alec in order to help them, and then quiz them before they see their mate. However, it also seems that this could be gotten around by simply making sure that the turning is finished before the Empire finds them. It is mentioned that Alice's weekly check for eye color might find the turning, but I should imagine that turning through a syringe should not affect eye color. How might this be enforced?

I'm troubled by Elspeth's new power in ch36, where Magic seems to have suddenly jumped from being solely about Elspeth's own personal subjective error-filled beliefs to being a royal road to objective Truth.

At least, I can't put any subjective spin on things like

"Well," I said to Magic, while everyone watched me to see if I was done thinking, "would it make sense to use that story as an analogy to what Alice and Jasper are doing? If I compared those things, would it make them understand something true?"

(What, Elspeth has to ask what she thinks about such a comparison?)

This turns Elspeth into an oracle who can answer any computable question. Memories are heavily fictional (at multiple levels, from not including all perceptions, including inferences and assumptions built into 'mentalese', to wishful thinking and biases, to simply what one pays attention to and doesn't, when the memories aren't outright false as in experimentally demonstrated induced memories by suggestion). Elpseth can compare memories against a question. That's all that's needed. Now Elspeth can have any question, and either already has a relevant memory from millions of years of memories or can just think of a fiction (a story), which lets her answer it.

Nor is there any obvious mechanism to defeat this. She can only compare memories? Fine, she compares against a memory of the story she just wrote to answer her question. Memories have to be vampirically good? Now she can't compare against her own memories, all the humans from Aro, werewolf memories, and this is an ad hoc & unmentioned limitation - which can probably be gotten around anyway. (All you need is some telepathic communication and editing ability, of one's own or another person's abilities. For example, hire CGI artists to render a needed fiction, watch it, and send Elspeth the memory - shorn of the memories of entering and exiting the theater. Or edit Elspeth directly. Or maybe memories of lucid dreaming would work, or maybe memories of hallucinogens.) And so on.

I just thought of something. Given Alice's precog, could she, for instance, guess passwords? Assuming a numeric entry code, could she do something along the lines of 1. decide to press 0 first; 2. if she sees the door opening in her precog set, press 0 and then go to 1; 3. if not, then try 1 with the number 1 instead, etc. (i.e., does her precog give her a set of possibilities based on future decisions, or does it give her only one possibility based on what she has in mind at the time?)

If the latter holds, and hence the above algorithm won't work, then how long a password is it feasible for her to guess by exhaustive mental search of the command space (i.e. resolve to type 0000, then if she sees door opening type it, otherwise go to 0001, etc.) with vampire mental speed? The advantage of this over simply trying each password is 1. that it's likely to be faster, with physical bottlenecks removed, and 2. it doesn't trigger anti-brute-force alarms in the system.

Ch 24 - So I'm assuming that Bella is with Allirea. I've been wondering about Allirea -- it's kind of a neat reading experience to have this important knowledge that the characters themselves can't retain in their heads.

Smart of Allirea to go and find Bella once she got loose. So Bella knows about the trap in Denali, and probably knows that Edward is alive (unless Allirea chose not to tell her that for some reason) -- but that also means that Bella and Allirea must be dealing with Demetri, which is dangerous and could take a while.

When Allirea extends her field over somebody, does it have the kind of range that Allirea's own shield does? In other words, if she happened to cloak Bella, would it then cause Siobhan and Elspeth to forget about their plans to contact Bella for as long as the cloak was in place?

First post on the site- please excuse any nonsensical aspect of the following, as it is rather late and I am a bit muddled from sleep-deprivation. However, this issue has been bugging me for some time, and I would greatly appreciate a response.

I apologize if I'm reading too much into this sentence, but the last line of Radiance disturbs me a bit.

"I still usually can't remember my dreams, but I'm told, and have every reason to believe, that they are happy ones."

If the goal of achieving radiance is similar to that of being luminous (aka living logically), or at the very least is to achieve knowledge of one's self in order to best interact with the outside world, then I can't help but feel disappointed in Elspeth. If Luminosity!Bella had dreams visible to anyone who cared to look, she would have hoarded it and analyzed it (much like her notebooks)- yet Elspeth is merely content to take the word of others when they say she is content? (That is, if we assume that dreams are subconscious manifestations of our waking minds, which to be fair, not everyone believes.)

It merely seems as if she is stuck in endless cycles where she is defining herself and acting according to others' heuristics. At the beginning, she is living according to Bella's rules. After a brief period in which she independently decides she cannot be independent, she is captured by the Volturi; enter Chelsea's brainwashing. While Elspeth's magic was a deprogramming agent, it seems that it cured everyone but her of the reliance upon others' advice/guidelines/rules. Elspeth follows Addy and Siobhan wherever the wind takes them, content to be the magic eight ball of esoteric lore, until she once again lands with Bella, the new queen of the world. While the Golden Coven offers her a degree of autonomy in her position, she is still comfortably wedged in a position where she is not required to, or is even encouraged, to develop her own heuristics. How can she, when her intellectual growth has been impacted by thousands of other vampires, as well as most of the authority figures whose reason she has trusted more often than her own?

And then to have the ending depict that she cannot determine for herself if she is happy....

Is it possible to live a life based upon logic while still being a dependent? Is luminosity solely reserved for the independent individual?

Ooh, the latest Flash is interesting...

Do we know why Adelaide (presumably) killed those people? How did she kill those people? Did she in fact get super martial arts skills (or assassin skills, or whatever) from somewhere? What's with the head trauma?

Is this backstory at all canon, or just made up here? Either way, human!Adelaide driving people off with a violin is awesome.

Another plotbunny: statistical authorship tests. Any vampire whose writing career spans much more than a human lifespan...

Plotbunny that recently occurred to me: would the new murder-free regime cause a statistically-significant drop in the murder rate? I gather there are several thousand vampires who eat ... how many humans a week? Might not be visible on the level of statistics for cities or states, but someone looking at worldwide statistics might notice the sudden change.

Some thoughts about heredity.

Alicorn, I believe, has said that half-vampires can breed with either vampires or humans (or, presumably, other half-vampires) and create hybrids of different fractions of vampire-ness. Thus, any children Elspeth has will be at least one-quarter vampire, which if I recall correctly is above Alicorn's threshold for "still technically part-vampire" as regards the on-or-off abilities of hybrids (males venomous, immortal are the ones I can think of). It is also hypothesized that male wolves imprint because their imprints are capable of passing on the wolf gene. I'm not sure of the degree of certainty attached to this, but it seems a reasonable supposition. Given these questions, what happens if Elspeth and Jacob have a child? It's quite probable that the child would be a wolf, since Jacob imprinted on Elspeth. The child would also be at least one-quarter vampire. Can you have a hybrid wolf? If the child is male, presumably he would also be venomous--how does this interact with the wolves' very negative reaction to vampire venom? This seems to be a question that would come up even in canon Twilight, and I wouldn't necessarily expect Meyer to have thought about it, but it would be interesting if Alicorn had a perspective.

from chapter 48:

I'm prepared to consider you sufficiently self-controlled even on a human blood diet that I'll give you dispensation to get it in a less sentient package. Ransack whatever the Irish equivalent of the Red Cross is, if you decide that you'd prefer to go on living in Ireland after all regardless of where I set up. But I think it was fairly predictable that I wouldn't be allowing murder.

Doesn't the amount of blood in a human body in a blood bank go towards saving much more than one person, in which case stealing from a blood bank is killing more people than stealing the same amount of blood directly out of a human?

Ch 46 - ah ha ha, excellent plot twist! But I can't see how it really helps Marcus, since the mate bond magic won't be in place. I suppose with Addy's help he might be able to craft himself a pale replica of the bond...

Nathan is a very likeable person/vampire. He's my new favourite character. Like to know more about him. :)

(CH 36 SPOILERS)

Either I have completely misunderstood what Elspeth just did, or Elspeth's power is quite a bit more useful than anyone is considering. I'm hoping it's the former.

That is: OK, yes, Magic cares about whether "Alice and Jasper are doing something kind of like what Del did to Pera" is true or not. But how does Magic have that information to query in the first place?

It's essentially a question about the strength of Alice's alliances, which means memories from before Alice was Chelsead are pretty much irrelevant, and I can't think of any other mundane source of information from which that datum derives. So either I'm missing something significant (entirely possible), or Magic itself is the source of that datum.

If it's the latter... doesn't that suggest that Magic can detect not only whether what Elspeth is saying (or considering saying) is honest, but also whether it is true?

That seems like it can't be right. At least, if it is right, Siobhan ought to immediately hand Elspeth a list of useful true/false questions to have Magic answer.

And I don't follow why the trick with using Memory to extract analogous situations from the past is even necessary. Wouldn't asking Magic whether it would allow Elspeth to say "Alice and Jasper are still loyal to the Volturi" and similar tests achieve the same result?

I will say one thing, while it's not as good as MoR, its plot moves much faster, which helps compensate. I think Alicorn also handles the emotional stuff better than Eliezer (unsurprisingly); I felt far less cynical and contemptuous than I might've.

On the other hand, Eliezer is much better at lacing in the didacticism since it feels like the lessons has for the reader are abandoned toward the end of book 1; and there isn't much one could learn from book 2 with Elspeth.

I particularly loved the writing for Allirea; not so much an interesting character but reflected very nicely.

In some respects I am disappointed by characters' thinking & planning. They seem very... humdrum, straightforward, and locked into magical thinking. This could be explained in some cases, but not all. Very rarely did I find myself thinking, 'ah, clever!' or 'oh, they're right, that wouldn't work'.

I came into Luminosity expecting Bella to sort of be like Harry in MoR; but she's not very much like him. Harry with Bella's advantages and obstacles would have taken over the world in the first few years. Bella is running and hiding as a data entry clerk? I mean, I may be echoing some comments I saw go by in the comments feed, but I feel the Volturi are just not much of an obstacle.

Vampires die easily of fire? Splendid, Bella spends a few months reading and developing a fuel-air bomb and there they go. (Easily justifiable, too, consequentially.) Or steals a nuke. Or maybe she has the Cullens buy up some hospices and builds a newborn army while they develop a more-fun turning process which could be mass deployed. Or something! (Creating some werewolf packs was a remarkably stupid thing to do, even if we largely go along with Bella's analysis. And if we judge by the consequences, even more stupid.)

So what is Siobhan's power? We have Del's actions to confirm that she has one, but what evidence did Carlisle have that he was so convinced? If Carlisle only saw Siobhan herself carrying out her plans, then it could be that Siobhan is simply of the mindset that puts together elaborate plans in a way that emphasizes fallback positions, and her actual power is something like a supernatural talent for Indy Ploys. However, if Carlisle saw others carrying out Siobhan's plans, and they still worked well enough to convince him that she was a witch and not merely a good planner, then that power must affect others as well as herself, invalidating the theory that Siobhan is simply supernaturally competent at achieving her goals in a way unrelated to plans. The obvious conclusion is that her power is the mode of thought that attempts to put together plans with great regard for the possible holes therein; the alternate hypothesis is that her power somehow contaminates plans she devises with Essence of Success, or something, which is really reaching and not consistent with how witchcraft has so far worked here.

Having read Luminosity, but not Radiance:

If you set out to write a story in which someone tries to be rational and it absolutely backfires, you have succeeded. The majority of Bella's problems are caused or aggravated by her own insufficient luminosity and her perception that she is better off in that department than she actually is. In particular, she doesn't seem to gain any benefits from her above-average rationality at any point after she has fully transitioned to being a vampire; many of her problems are caused by overestimating her abilities and insufficiently analyzing her decisions to keeping things secret. In short, she lives for almost the entire story in the valley of bad rationalism.

Since that was not the stated purpose of the story, I don't think I can even reasonably consider this rationalist fiction. Which is highly disappointing.

Are the people in Alice's visions simulations that wink out when she's done foreseeing?

I'm wondering if there have been any speculations on the potentially realistic physical composition/metabolism properties of vampires in the canon or this fanfic.

Off-hand, the canon description is consistent with the vamps consisting of mostly carbon nano-fibers, with the sparking parts being traces of carbon in the diamond form. The conversion process appears to be a form of virus-based DNA rewriting. The metabolism could be based on catalytic cold fusion, with blood acting as a combination of a catalyst and a power source (human blood is a better catalyst).

"Why," I asked, "did he come back to school? I realize it's a hassle to move, but if he's likely to lose it around me, why didn't he just stay wherever he went that week he was gone? I think my life ought to be worth some hassle."

I wonder if I'm the only one, in that I could hear Professor Quirrel burst out laughing as I read this.

Some thoughts on the New World Order.

(1) Very little attention seems to have been given to the problem of how to peel back the masquerade without various major world governments trying to make vampires extinct. I infer that this will be the primary conflict of book 3.

(2) What is the best choice of long-term dominant species? The known species so far are vampires, half-vampires, possibly other fractions of vampire, werewolves, and non-wolf humans (let's call them muggles).

Muggles have the major disadvantage of being mortal. Werewolves can't reproduce without help from muggles or half-vampires. Male half-vampires may or may not be able to reproduce at all, as there appear to be several sex-linked issues relating to half-vampires, such as vampire fertility and half-vampire venom.

Vampires have three different Chelsea-level-creepy major psychological changes: the Thirst for human blood, the mate Bond, and the Freeze in personality and personal development. Male werewolves likewise suffer from imprinting.

Creating a population that can never reproduce, such as everyone being a vampire with no muggles left, pretty much guarantees extinction eventually. The average vampire lifespan is probably well under ten thousand years. Even if the Golden Empire somehow manages to improve that by, say, a factor of a million, we still have a finite expected-time-to-live for People In General.

An all-werewolf-and-vampire population might or might not be able to reproduce, if the females never activated and were turned after menopause.

If half-vampires can mate with each other to produce more half-vampires, then they would seem to be the best choice. Unfortunately, the half-vampire population is at present critically low. Perhaps, as the unmasqueing starts to bottleneck, preference should be given to women who are willing to carry a half-vampire child to term before turning.

While Allirea makes a very effective bodyguard in the combat sense, she is less helpful in the intimidation sense because, of course, no one can remember that she's there. What would happen if a vampire who had a reasonable expectation to win against Bella alone, and was not talked by Elspeth into believing that he could not win a fight, attacked Bella and was taken apart by her and Allirea? Would he know what was happening? What would his relevant memories suggest? Would said memories become clear while Allirea was unfaded? Is this a valid method to control the vampire population? (It might actually be quite effective--anyone who attacks Bella is taken apart by something they can't remember happening. Great creepy factor.)

All that Bella-for-Queen! talk in the latest chapters again made me wonder how the state of vampire society and its influence on human society will be handled after the inevitable fall of Volturi rule. I don't think Bella as she is now is most equipped to realize any ambitions, be it on the planning stage or in practice. She is perhaps most ambitious though, although I would argue how healthy they are, for both vampire and human society.

I think it would be very interesting if Alicorn didn't stop with the fall of the Volturi and instead continued with the story until Bella's ambitions are realized, or the societies of Earth are relatively stable (and human society is currently doing a good job at eliminating life on the planet...).

Vampires are far from eternal, and have a lot of self-interest in the survival of humanity, even if they can permanently survive on the blood of other creatures. A certain amount of population of either humans or vampires is needed to achieve goals such as harnessing solar energy to create matter, or interstellar travel. Both or either of which will be necessary to avoid extinction when the Sun dies, and to have access to more resources than the Earth can provide.

If the Big Bang is a pulsating phenomena, I wonder if it's possible to alter it or outright stop its cycle. I imagine such a task would require massive amounts of resources applied by incredible technology, and would probably be the result of much of the universe's sentient beings' cooperation. Humanity is very primitive in that we do not apply scientific thinking (which has proved to produce results) to adapting in the most healthy way to a constantly changing environment.

I doubt we would claim ownership over anything other than our bodies if we did; instead cooperatively striving to understand ourselves and the environment so that we can best use it to be healthy, and ensure our race's survival by reaching out into the stars.

One another note, the reactions of all Bella's past acquaintances when she makes her come-back as Vampire Queen of The World ought to be amusing.

When Elspeth destroys the bonds that Chelsea has forged she makes people realise that those feelings are false and to forget them, right? So to re-connect bonds that Chelsea has snipped would it not be possible for her to "remember the truth"?

So, if she said to Magic "I love my mother" it would be false at that moment but surely "I should love my mother" and "If not for Chelsea's tampering I would love my mother" would be true and could help re-connect the bonds, maybe?

(Do you think there are stubs of threads where Chelsea has cut, or if they wither away? With the stubs left it feels like it should be easier to re-connect them.)

DARN YOU!! Having just finished reading Luminosity I have now dissolved into a snivelling pile of salt water and mucus that you would probably be loath to poke with a stick. Definitely more crying when heard about Alice than Edward but then she's infinitely more likeable that he is...was...sniff

Wow, what a cliffhanger! And I was listening to Daft Punk's TRON Legacy soundtrack when I read the chapter. Brushing your teeth is dramatic when listening to that score.

I though of many potential plots for future outtakes in this chapter, here's one: How did the Cullen's react when Elspeth 'disappeared', did they look for her long? Is there any tension between some of them now that they know Bella took her, and how did their reunion work, from their own perspectives?

I'm most interested in Rosalie, who displayed canonical possessiveness of Elspeth at the end of Luminosity, when it became apparent that she may become parentless.

If Bella shields phased Jacob while another alpha is also phased, does the shield extend to that alpha and/or his/her pack? It's mentioned in Luminosity that there can be cross-talk between wolves in different packs to some degree if both alphas are phased. Will this allow Elspeth to transmit to all the wolves at once if the alphas are phased? If both are true, then they can carry out a surprise attack with the wolves by having them all phase, Bella shield Jacob, and Elspeth disillusion them all with the Volturi at once; they would then presumably yield to their general instinct to attack vampires, and with the shield in place they could well be immune to most of the powerful witches in the compound (Jane and Alec certainly, possibly Aro's shield (Renata?) as well). With some intelligent use of Elspeth, the wolves could know just as much about the compound, village, town as the Volturi, and if this was timed in conjunction with another attack (by a newborn army, perhaps), it could cause major damage.

You know, it occurs to me: it should be obvious that the Volterra would leave one pack member in Jacob's pack - all Chelsea has to do is leave that attachment, rather than weaken it, and they have someone with split loyalties who probably wants Jacob to rejoin the guard.

Actually, something that I've been wondering about is, could we get a breakdown of the Volturi numbers? The impression that I've been getting of their size seems to vary depending at the time.

I understand if you can't, due to spoilers, but even a general outline would be nice. Are there a dozen of them? Two? If you include the witches Elspeth helped seed?

So it looks as if Demetri is finally going to kick the bucket over the next few chapters? I hope they manage to kill him before he can contact Volterra with the news that there are a whole lot of more vampires in Denali than the traitors have reported.

This chapter further solidified my infatuation with Allirea. I'm not really sure why I like her so much--probably because I associate her with most of the sparse humorous moments in the series. I believe the killing of lifeforms can often be selective, and think that the more sentient should especially not be killed. Therefore I don't approve of Allirea killing humans when she has many options to survive without doing so. But I also believe we are our consciousness and personality, and that that is shaped by the experiences our environment gives us. I don't believe in punishment as a way to make things "better". I think people can change to be happier and healthier (which is my definition of "good" and "right") and to want that for other people, too, but punishing them for how their environment has shaped them is not the way to do that. I think you do that by exposing them to the beliefs you want them to endorse, and encourage them to inform themselves about it.

Still, I'm not naïve enough to think that everyone will be willing to commit to that change, or that there will always be an opportunity to introduce it. If someone is trying to hurt or even kill me and I've exhausted every other option, I'd probably hurt or kill them back. Maybe I won't even have time to think about my options, or I do but I don't because I'm not infallible to fear or greed and other emotions that may make me think and act differently than I otherwise would, once faced with an unusual situation.

In the case of Demetri arriving in the recent chapter, I'd probably approve of killing him. He would be a huge risk to extremely many lives in so many ways should they incapacitate him and try to help him change his ways.

Is anyone else out there interested in a Luminosity pod-cast? Unfortunately I can't volunteer, as I have a terrible voice and bad recording equipment. But I would LOVE to have a pod-cast of it, in the same vain as the HPMOR podcast.

Something bugs me just a little. In the original series, Bella kept still through her turning despite the pain in order to spare Edward, in Luminosity she did the opposite and hoped to hurt him enough that he'd kill her. Is this somehow a logical consequence of having started the story with a different Bella? Or is it simply that Luminosity is meant to be less idealistic about such things (pain matters more, love matters less), and if you had to work with original!Bella it'd still come out that way?

So, its probably not going to happen anywhere except my head. But does anyone else feel this ends in a way that parallels the God Emperor of Dune?

I've just got this rather imaginative image of a global vampire regime ruled from the Golden Throne and all this interesting intrigue and corruption and various groups vying for power, and the very fate of humanity itself?

Random suuuuper minor question. Was re-reading some of the flashes cause I love them to pieces, and- anyone know why Kim is "Mrs. Kim Connweller-Cameron"? I thought Jared's (and Vivian's) last name was Norton.

When she wasn't sucking down as much blood as they could get her (and damned if it didn't feel bizarre slurping down a mug of red liquid that had been coursing around in Charlie's veins minutes earlier), she was devouring eggs and everything else that was brought to her.

Um, Charlie's veins? Shouldn't that be an animal's?

Ha, dunno if my earlier speculation had a part in it, but nice that you ran with the resurrection thing.

Wonder if Irina will mate-bond again for the first time...

A fan is translating Luminosity into Portuguese!

I got the impression that Elspeth and Jacob's relationship remains non-romantic. Is that correct?

So Adelaide was always that disturbing.

What does Razi need to know about a place before he can teleport there? Alice can see anyone, but if there are no visual cues as to the location nearby she can't tell where they are (as in Luminosity, in which she is fooled into thinking James is in Florida when he is in fact on a movie set). Does whatever information Alice has on the look of a location suffice for Razi to go there? If not, then a vampire can evade Empire justice for some time simply by staying in a dark room, or being in an undifferentiated forest somewhere. Not long-term, maybe, but enough time to turn a mate and ensure the bond is established.

Yay, final update! Now I can put it on my Kindle and not feel like I have to replace it three times a week.

Two questions.

First, are the chapters in Radiance going to be rearranged the way the ones in Luminosity were?

Second, to what degree does Benjamin have control over the classical elements? Can he, for instance, summon fire from the air? If so, then he should be easily the most formidable fighter around, with the possible exception of Pera, and even she would be vulnerable to a less-metaphorical firewall. Can he put himself out if he's on fire? If so, why were the Volturi so blase about igniting Bella and assuming her death, multiple times? (This one I could believe as basic laziness when they have no reason to believe her power makes her immune to fire, but it's a thought.)

Now I want to hear more about this nontrivial skill component to War. Unless it's skill at cheating, I really can't imagine what it might be.

You mix up Grace and Gwyn in the scene in Jane's room. It should be Grace following Elspeth, but halfway through you start writing Gwyn and continue doing that throughout the chapter. Good chapter!

Ch. 45 spoilers!

Huh, so that's it for the Volturi. I wonder what the conflict will be from here on out. There's bound to be some vampires who won't be pleased with the new diet rules, and I'm also wondering what Bella will do with regards to humanity; will she let them in on the secret, or try to influence them without doing that?

I'd also like to see what she does with her parents. Renée and Phil may be interested in vampirization. And what will the wolves do? I hope Alicorn doesn't cap it off soon, even if there's no immediate threat to the current reign and the Cullen's.

Ch. 44 -- Wow. Very visceral, very dark chapter... Elspeth putting her father back together was grisly, and because we saw Bella's Revenge from Chelsea's perspective, it became more gothic tragedy than asskicking vengeance.

And now Addy has Elspeth! So even though things are going well for Our Team, I'm left with a strong sense of foreboding.

Chapter 44 spoilers!

Wow...that didn't go anything like I had expected. Adelaide will have to have one hell of a trump card or suddenly have fallen in like with Bella's ambitions (and I doubt those include her holding Elspeth hostage) to have some hope of getting out of this.

Maybe she does have someone powerful enough to make a difference working for her in the insurgency, like I speculated in my last comment, or some immense leverage over the entire group. Whatever it is, it will have to be big to ensure they won't become a threat to her later on.

Is there, or could you add, a "characters" page with short summaries of every (known) witch's power?

Somehow I don't think things will go quite as planned. Infilitrate, break Volturi members; decide who lives, who dies and who rules the world. That sounds too easy, and I doubt Adelaide will make her move after the vampires who don't particularly like her research have assumed a stable reign of the world.

Maybe she has someone working for her on the inside. There have been remarkably few protests about Bella running for Queen of the World, despite her ambitious future plans regarding vampire conduct. I'm quite sure no one has thought to have Maggie ask everyone in the insurgency whether they've ever had contact with Adelaide, and if they have, what relation they have and how that may affect the plan.

I suppose she has been listening in on most conversations and could point out any lies, but she herself may be suspect. IIRC, Gianna is still guarding Molly, who may be taken hostage should Adelaide gather some friends. Then we would have no way of knowing who is working for her, as Maggie would cover their lies.

We learned this chapter (43) that all wolves and puppies are present (as far as Elspeth remembers), so we can safely assume Adelaide is in the presence of one or more of Allirea's siblings or her children. If she has one or more of Allirea's children as a hostage, it may of course upset the plan. She knows of them, and also that Allirea is a big threat, so why wouldn't she try to get some leverage on her? She may not be able to plan around her fading though.

Yay, stuff is happening! Siobhan is cool, and having her on one's side is a major asset. I'm still very nervous about what Addy is doing, though. It's not like her to let this major an upset happen without her input. More generally, the second shoe has yet to fall. I wonder what it'll be?

Chapter 42 spoilers.

So, we're finally getting close to the actual battle. Their current plan seems sound, but I really wonder what Adelaide is doing that might derail it, or what the Volturi themselves have done to counteract any attack; they're not stupid, as Siobhan said.

It would seem that Pera remembers enough of Bella to be quite irrationally afraid of her. :)

It's amusing to see Siobhan become more and more exasperated with being the leader of this operation. I'm beginning to understand why she doesn't want to be "Queen of the World", even though she's very qualified for the position. She has little ambition beyond being the chief vampire of Ireland, and quickly becomes bored with the people around her, when in a leadership position.

Chapter 39: Did Elspeth dial into the conversation twice? Or are those two different conversations? Also, "wewaited" should be two words.

I am unable to update the old files anymore. So here is the new Radiance PDF link. http://www.mediafire.com/?qg0qqphqkl1mq36.

I'll try and find another file sharing program that I can use for free, and am able to update files.

I was all bummed by the apparent missed update on Friday, but then now there's two. Yay!

Jacob still has alpha-voice powers over whoever is in his pack, right? If so, couldn't he simply order everyone who can hear him not to tell anyone about anything as soon as he phases? That would work unless a packmate happens to be near Aro at the time. (Or runs into him in future; but is Aro making a habit of reading all the wolves regularly, given the stress this is likely to induce? Or would they be keeping a packmate of Jacob's near Aro at all times? Someone suggested this, and it's certainly a good idea to get info.) Also, Bella could shield Jacob before he phases; if they're keeping a packmate near Aro, then a shield would negate that particular threat, though Aro would have to become aware of the fact that the wolf is suddenly shielded if he happened to try to read him during the conversation. Also, it might have occurred to Aro that keeping one of the few creatures that can credibly threaten a vampire right nearby and susceptible to the mind-control of a known enemy is a bad idea. Unknown whether this could sway him more than the potential intelligence coup. My sense is that even with a surprise, shielded attack a single wolf probably couldn't take out Aro, given the likely quick response by every other vampire; he wouldn't have time to set a fire, certainly.

Random thought/question.

Will we be seeing the vampire Maria?, aka Jaspers maker and the leader of the vampiric army in the south.

Is there still a army in the south? I'm not sure if you mentioned it in the books, and I can't remember if they were still there in canon...

(Chapter 38 SPOILERS below)

Ah, was that a small moment of affection for her mother Elspeth had at the end there? It would be great if Elspeth came to enjoy her mother's presence in different ways then she did before Chelsea robbed her of all relation she felt with her.

I don't think it's particularly healthy to feel very dependent on another person, so I think it would be a good thing if she developed independence and confidence in herself, and affection for those she believes deserves it.

That would probably be more difficult to do had her subconscious dispositions towards her mother not been erased; and nearly impossible to completely alter. Chelsea could definitely use her witchcraft to make people happier and healthier. Only first you'd have to research what makes people--both in general and in specific individuals--happier and healthier.

If the deprogramming of Chelsea's witchcraft causes different behavorial reactions in its subjects, based on whatever original intent and emotion it has repressed and how relevant that is to the present, then the wolves will most likely be more willing to completely exterminate the Volturi than anyone else.

Under the influence of Chelsea, they have done and have things done to them that they by their original beliefs and behavior would consider extremely horrible, all of which will be very relevant to the present if Siobhan's plan is carried out as discussed in chapter 38.

Forget stopping them from sounding any alarms or restraining Elspeth; the real problem may be stopping all their howling and any crazed attempts to race into the compound. I knew stacking all that unwilling manpower would eventually quite literally bite the Volturi in the ass.

How voluntary is Alice's control over what--or rather, when--she sees?

I thought that she had control on whether or not she looked into the future, but the way she describes playing games, it seems like she doesn't have a choice whether or not she's looking to see how the game turns out.

I'd think she could at least focus her visions at something irrelevant while playing the game, if she didn't want to "cheat" badly enough, but I suppose that might interfere with her ability to play the game.

Spoilers chapter 36!

Seeing all those future possibilities was very interesting. And all that just by deciding to do something, even if there was an uncommonly high amount of possibilities resulting from this particular decision. I wonder if they'll tell Genevieve anything more, now that they've already established contact and what seems to be an alliance with Alice and Jasper.

If Alice and Jasper ever meet with Bella again, and I assume they will, that would make for a very interesting reunion to read from their own perspectives.

Of course, it occurs to me, Siobhan just mentioned that blocking Alice was still visible to her...so perhaps Alice went there because she saw that that location was being blocked?

Maybe she wasn't tracking Elspeth/Rose/Emmett, or her human family. Maybe Alice was tracking down the areas in which she was inexplicably blocked.

edit: Well, my theory was completely off. Oh well.

Chapter 32

"Now my shield thinks you're a threat. Probably because the blast would have been incapacitating."

I'm rather confused. In canon, Elspeth was born with an anti-shield gift that allowed her to ignore Bella's shield. Here...I'd have to go back to Luminosity and check, but now it looks like she's suggesting that it was voluntary the whole time? That Elspeth doesn't have a shield-busting witchcraft? This is...odd.

Actually, was the shield-busting confirmed by Eleazar in canon, or was it just assumed?

Chapter 31.

Something is going on regarding imprinting, mate bonds, and half-vampires. Contrast Elspeth's feelings on Jacob c31

My wolf, my wolf, my wolf.

With Allirea's feelings on Demetri c31

"You will have to kill me to stop me from killing him,"

and I am confused.

Elspeth cares for Jacob normally, and expresses her caring more directly and powerfully due to her power, and more rapidly due to her sped-up hybrid brain and body? But she seems to care too much, on the order of a mate-bond.

Werewolf imprinting gradually activates the vampire mate-bond phenomenon, which is present in Elspeth despite her hybridity?

Half-vampires have the vampire mate-bond phenomenon, but their humanity lets them retain choice in the matter, and either Jacob's imprinting has silently overridden this choice, or Elspeth has actually fallen in love with him?

I have conflicting emotions. On one side I feel really bad for Allirea, and what Demetri has done to her. But on the otherside I feel really angry at the matebond for making Demetri feel that way about Allirea and therfore inflicting him upon Allirea.

I'm not sure that makes sense.

Another question about vampire not-biology: Say a vampire consumes the blood of someone who has just partaken in some drug - like heroin or alcohol. Is that any different from regular blood? Or do these substances just count as regular food does to a vampire, i.e. completely void of their regular delicious, nutritious, mind-bending nature? How different would this be for a half-vampire?

Stuff is happening.

I really like the writing for Allirea, but it's incredibly frustrating having important plot details constantly being hidden behind a power curtain. Elspeth's reactions are very funny.

Could Allirea use her phasing as a signalling mechanism? For instance, someone she'd met could reasonably often check if they can remember her existence (if doing it mentally is prohibited by the power, then have a PDA or something that sets off an alarm with the word 'Allirea' every five minutes) and if so, take some action. (The relevant question here is, I suppose, whether Allirea's phasing immediately affects everyone on earth who knows her, or not. If the former, is there a lightspeed delay?)

So what is Nathan's power? He seems to think telling Siobhan about it would impair its effectiveness on her, and she notes knowing he was on the island but never quite being around where he was. Something like Siobhan's that induces things to go his way?

New chapter is up.

Alicorn, lately the updates have been becoming later and (unless I'm imagining things) getting shorter. It may be worthwhile for you to switch from a M-W-F update schedule to a whenever-it's-ready schedule in order to prevent them from becoming work that is unseemly to contemplate, because that's the easiest way I can think of for this to end prematurely. And that would be sad.

Aww...That's some cliffhanger Alicorn! Any theories on who the two unexpected vampire visitors are, anyone?

(Rch25) Given that Siobhan is interested in the motives of various key players, I am surprised that she's not asking Elspeth what Elspeth would say to them in order to communicate to them the value of turning against the Volturi. (At least the ones Elspeth has met; I'm not clear on whether merely having memories of having met them counts, for purposes of Elspeth's power).

Were it anyone but Siobhan, I would assume she just didn't think of it, but given Siobhan that seems to imply that it wouldn't actually be useful to do.

But I can't figure out why it wouldn't be. Given how Elspeth's power seems to work, Magic is a far better judge of what a given target would find convincing than Elspeth is, and that seems almost a royal road to the sort of information Siobhan wants.

What am I missing?

New chapter. I wonder if Elspeth's dreams will be interesting. I wonder if Elspeth's range exercises affect her dreaming.

I've been thinking about something for the past few days. One of Bella's ambitions in Luminosity was to reveal the existence of vampires to humankind and offer their version of immortality as a way of preserving life. I would argue that our planet Earth has a limited amount of resources and though vampires require less nutritional intake than humans, it can only support so many before there's a limited amount of species of which to feed from. This holds true even if they feed without killing; Earth is a limited space, even if its lifeforms manage to occupy nearly every crevice and still maintain the necessary resources for survival.

Of course, if humanity--especially turned vampire with the inherent thought-capacity boost--universally put their minds to colonizing other planets and galaxies in a search for resources, then perhaps we will succeed and ensure our species survival for a very long time.

Another possible problem that may arise if vampirism were to be revealed and made available is that all of humanity may want to be made vampire. Even if vampires feed from other species, or feed in a non-fatal way, there will eventually be no humans. This problem can of course be prevented if humans have children before they are made vampire, but then follows the problem of over-population.

If it were me, I would probably do my best to solve vampire issues first. I would ask myself and vampire society how to best ensure our (the vampires) survival and simultaneously be happy and healthy, and to think about this in a rational way. Hopefully it will be concluded that when there is a unity moving towards a goal, the more people that form that unity, the more likely it is that the goal be met. Vampires are made from humans, so making an enemy of them will be inconsistent to meeting that goal.

Once vampire society has reached a unity at that conclusion, I would introduce the same question to human society, and try to make them reach a unity with the same goal as the vampires have, then reveal vampirism and that we want the same thing and provide them with whatever information they want so they can decide whether to cooperate with us or not.

If vampirism should be revealed to the current state of humanity, it would simply be another resource in the game of the monetary economy, where gain and loss is not measured in how healthy and happy our species is, or even individuals.