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Luminosity (Twilight fanfic) discussion thread
In the vein of the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion threads this is the place to discuss anything relating to Alicorn's Twilight fanfic Luminosity. The fanfic is also archived on Alicorn's own website <strike>(warning: white text on black background)</strike>.
Previous discussion is hidden so deeply within the first Methods of Rationality thread that it's difficult to find even if you already know it exists.
Similar to how Eliezer's fanfic popularizes material from his sequences Alicorn is using the insights from her Luminosity sequence.
Spoilers for the fanfic itself as well as the original novels need and should not be hidden, but spoiler protection still applies for any other works of fiction, except for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality chapters more than a week old so we can freely discuss similarities and differences.
EDIT: Post-ginormous-spoiler discussion should go to the second thread. (If you have any doubt on whether you have reached the spoiler in question you have not.)
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Comments (435)
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
I don't think I have any business forbidding people from translating my work. Please feel free (although kindly check spelling on words that won't translate readily, like "Denali" and "Quileute").
Well, it is polite to ask before attempting to do it ;3
And thanks ;3 I'll try my best.
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
Nope, I can't update every minute of every day, but if you want a more continuous drip of Radiance rather than three chunks weekly, you could consider joining my contingent of beta readers.
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!
Here's a mobi version through chapter 37.
Added a link to this to the current discussion thread; will put it on my site and ff.net profile soon too.
I could make PDFs of the text, but I'm far too lazy to update them every time I post a new chapter, and I don't know how to creat mobi files or anything else more fancy.
I'm volunteering myself to make PDF's of both books. I'll keep them updated as well.
EDIT: And if I can figure out what mobi is and figure out how to convert it, I'll do that too.
EDIT2: Never mind, I just saw Zack M Davis' message.
For the record, I just used Auto Kindle on an HTML file.
Luminosity: http://www.mediafire.com/?b77o68xf0srak58
Radiance chapters 1 through 38: http://www.mediafire.com/?54q4sqpss3dwfwc
If there is anything wrong with them, just tell me and I will fix it. I'll be updating Radiance as Alicorn does.
Added links to these to the current discussion thread; will put them on my site and ff.net profile soon too.
Every now and then I find a typo or want to change wording in Luminosity, too, so that could stand being updated once a month or so too.
I'll do that then. Also, what is the font you've used for the website banner? Was thinking of using it for the title's on both files.
It's called "Zephyr", or "the Twilight font", the latter of which is a useful search term if you wish to obtain it (ARRRRRRR).
Thanks. I've updated Luminosity just now.
Another question, would Bella have the same handwriting as she had in canon? Because I found the font SMeyer used online and was wondering if I should use it for the places where she's writing in her notebooks.
I see no reason why the handwriting should be different - go ahead, it's a cute idea :) I'd recommend doing that in lieu of the italics I used to signify notebook passages, rather than in addition to them.
You might want to download the PDF Luminosity and see if you like the way the font looks. I'm unsure. I had to make it a bit larger than the rest of the text, because you couldn't really read it when it was smaller.
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.
It looks like that isn't possible in the default safari browser, but your best bet would be to go to the app store and download "Atomic Web Browser" (it seems like they support font re-sizing and text reflow) or some other browser. Good luck.
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.
Jasper being that insane, instead of more like Marcus, Irina, or Bella, is a direct consequence of his personality, the nature of his and Alice's relationship, and the exact circumstances surrounding his particular situation, including particularly the experience he refers to when he says he felt Alice die.
Everyone reacts to their mate's death differently, and how said mate dies matters a lot. (For instance, Maggie would have had a unique reaction if she'd eaten Gianna when they met, versus if Gianna had died trying to carry Elspeth to term. And if Maggie had finished crushing Gianna when Gianna was turning, that'd be a whole nother can of worms yet.)
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?
The sequel will in fact be narrated by Elspeth.
Huh. Guessed that.
As a calibration exercise - do you remember why/how you guessed that?
...no clue at this distance. It's possible that I went on the heuristic that Bella was now too powerful or had too many of her conflicts resolved, and that transferring the viewpoint to a younger and less powerful character seemed highly likely.
It had more to do with the fact that occupying Bella's head would have been depressing and tedious until the reveal of the thing.
If you know who Elspeth is, you've read at least 15,000 words of the fic (or skipped a whole lot); where's my review? ;)
Well, score one for me! Too bad this leads me to believe most of the Cullen's really are dead, will die, or become otherwise unsalvageably crazy. If there's any indication that Bella survives Jasper in the last chapter I'm going to bet on Edward being alive too, though. It seems an awful waste if she were to die just when she has learned to sense her shield and may be able to be taught or teach herself to extend it to others, which is kind of crucial in a fight against the Volturi, unless more original characters are involved.
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.
Bella's never heard Demetri speak; what are you talking about? And Chelsea and Addy don't change anyone's voice. The guy Addy's talking to is Demetri. That's not a big deal, it's just not something Bella could have figured out.
Oh. I don't know where I got it from that Bella had heard Demetri. Maybe I confused the brief meetings with the Volturi with that of other stories'. I'm going to hang on to my hunch that Edward is still alive and that the ashes are Irina's, though.
Spoilers for Chap. 55.
Ba gur fbegvat nytbevguz bs qrnqarff, V'q chg guvf ng 2.5 (pbeerfcbaqvat gb na 0.5 punapr bs eriviny, ohg bayl nsgre fbzr qrynl). Rqjneq'f qrngu jnf abg npghnyyl jvgarffrq, bayl fhttrfgrq ol n pbairefngvba gung qvqa'g hfr uvf anzr, naq ab obql jnf sbhaq. Vs ur ernyyl qvq qvr gurer, vg'f fgvyy n uvtu-zntvp havirefr, naq ng yrnfg bar onpxhc pbcl bs uvf zrzbevrf rkvfgf, va Neeb'f oenva.
Ba gur bgure unaq, gur ernyvfgvp qverpgvba sbe gur fgbel jbhyq unir Oryyn riraghnyyl trg bire vg (creuncf nsgre gnxvat fbzr eriratr, be abg), naq riraghnyyl erzneel. Gung'q or pbzcyrgryl vapbafvfgrag jvgu gur fcvevg bs gur bevtvany Gjvyvtug, ohg va n tbbq jnl.
I strongly shared your inclination to start commenting with rot13, but wanted an area to talk where it would not be necessary so I started Discussion Part 2 for post-chapter-fifty-ish discussion.
Lbh... ernyyl pna'g qrznaq gung cnegvphyne cebbs, jvgu inzcverf. Vs ur nva'g nfurf ur nva'g qrnq.
I just realized that I was primed to the possibility of a false alarm, by one that happened to me in real life a few weeks ago. So my reaction may be quite atypical of readers in general.
Actually, a lot of people seem to think that I wouldn't really do it.
The question shouldn't be, Would she do it? The question should be, is that actually the most pain she can put her characters in? :)
I suspect that far more painful would be to later eha vagb Rqjneq nyvir, cnve-obaqrq jvgu fbzrbar ryfr, jbexvat sbe gur rarzl, naq (yrtvgvzngryl) shevbhf ng Oryyn sbe univat frg vagb zbgvba gur Phyyraf' qrfgehpgvba. Rfcrpvnyyl vs lbh pbhyq neenatr vg fb gung Oryyn unq gb pubbfr orgjrra xvyyvat Rqjneq naq yrggvat Ryfcrgu qvr.
Reminds me of something Lois Bujold once said:
This may also serve to partially answer Vaniver's very perceptive complaints as well.
Thank you for that link, by the way: it's a fascinating read, and expertly handles many of the points I was fumbling around.
Gehr. Gur arprffnel cebbs jbhyq or gb urne vg sebz n jvgarff, naq fcraq fbzr gvzr, pyrne urnqrq, frnepuvat gur zntvp flfgrz sbe ybbcubyrf gung zvtug nyybj erfheerpgvba. V qba'g ernyyl xabj gur Gjvyvtug havirefr rabhtu gb xabj ubj svany qrngu vf gurer, ohg fbzrubj, zl fhopbafpvbhf jnagf zr gb guvax gung Rqjneq qvqa'g qvr, ng yrnfg abg creznaragyl.
Bu, jnvg. Gung'f zbgvingrq pbtavgvba fcrnxvat. Erfheerpgvat fbzrbar sebz fgbyra zrzbevrf va Neeb'f urnq vf ernyyl, ernyyl vzcynhfvoyr; jul qvq V guvax bs gung? Bhpu, cbbe Oryyn.
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?
Well, a steel box with no seams wouldn't do the trick, but say you marooned a vampire on the Moon, I think lack of blood could eventually kill them, but it would take a very long time.
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.
I stated elsewhere that the shield isn't omnipotent. It also won't prevent injury that isn't mind-threatening. For instance, if she were broken into pieces and not set on fire, this wouldn't be immediately life-threatening, so nothing would happen. Then, by the time she'd be in danger of death by starvation due to being unable to eat while in fragments, she wouldn't have enough energy left that the shield could draw power. She can be killed by anyone who's paying attention. It's just harder for her to be killed accidentally or carelessly.
So, "If they can hurt me, they'll rip me apart and set me on fire until I die" won't work to make herself nigh-invulnerable?
Or, for that matter, "I need allies if I am going to survive the Volturi, therefore I need to join the still-free pack's hivemind"?
The shield's native ability is to protect Bella's mind from direct magical intrusion. Anything she adds to it has to follow pretty directly from that, although she can modify it in any or all of several directions from there (canon Bella focused entirely on making her shield extend to other people, which never occurred to luminous Bella). She managed to make the shield protect her mind from direct physical destruction, but indirect physical destruction would be something else entirely. Especially since her mind's survival is never going to be necessarily dependent on her avoiding any single injury that isn't being set entirely on fire (and she's got limits as to how much she can stand being set on fire, too).
She'd have to fight against her shield to join the hive mind, not to mention that the hive mind wouldn't readily have her.
...and who understands how her shield works and is clever enough to think of a way around it.
Still, this significantly lowers the probability that she could bring Edward back by convincing her shield that she can't remain sane with her mate dead, which was my previous top candidate strategy for resurrecting him.
Nah, attention alone would do it. Even someone who wasn't very clever could have noted, "Oh, she's not on fire any more. I'd better set her on fire again." That would've done it.
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 dunno, but I've never read one that doesn't.
If you considered yourself able to take over the world (which all ultra-rationalist characters (whether pro- or antagonists) seem to) then actually taking it over would be one of the most rational things you could do.
This is the part that confuses me, though. Maybe it's just because I've studied economics and/or am a libertarian, but as soon as you realize that the world is ordered by systems instead of by people then the idea of taking over the world is ludicrous. There's a great Steve Jobs quote-
And so, when I see someone who thinks they can, let alone should, take over the world, the first impression I get is the "d'awww" that mature adults feel when they see a pretentious teenager. And maybe stories about pretentious teenagers are valuable? But I found that I became a mature adult by, among other things, reading about mature adults. And it seems to me that a pretty important precondition to rationality is being a mature adult (or, perhaps more correctly, the idea of being rational and the idea of mature adulthood are strongly connected).
I agree on all points. But tales of ultra-rationalists (at least when they're protagonists) are wish-fulfillment stories. That's why they're fun to read. If they were realistic then they'd quickly end up with the protagonist shattered, her loved ones killed or scattered, and the ruling systems just as entrenched as ever (if not even stronger).
Which is why I'm pretty sure Elspeth will succeed where Bella failed. These sorts of stories aren't meant to be accurate reflections of the real world, they're meant to give a vicarious thrill as the hero finally brings down all those bastards that are screwing things up for the rest of us. If I wanted a realistic story that ended in the crushing of the human soul under the heel of an inhuman system I'd watch the news.
There is, of course, a third option. The rationalist who sets their sights on something human-scaled instead of humanity-scaled is likely to do very well for themselves.
And so, in some sense, it's worth examining the scope and effect of wish-fulfillment stories. If I play a lot of video games where I'm the only relevant character who reshapes all of reality around him according to my whims, what does that do to my empathy? My narcissism? My ability to reshape reality, and my satisfaction with the changes I attempt? If I read a lot of books about the lives of software pioneers and their companies, what does that do to my empathy? My narcissism? My ability to reshape reality, and my satisfaction with the changes I attempt? If I read a lot of books about successful relationships, how people work, and how to control myself, what does that do to my empathy? My narcissism? My ability to reshape reality, and my satisfaction with the changes I attempt?
It's difficult to write a story about start-ups. (Either the idea is good and has been done, so you're writing history instead of fiction, or good and not done, in which case you should be doing it not writing about it, or bad, in which case disbelief will be hard to suspend.) But it's easy to see someone using rationality to turn around their relationship or their life or a school or business.
The author's problem is twofold: those problems are hard, and those problems are local. Stories tend to go for the cheapest thing: the cheapest/simplest plot is one person punching another, and the cheapest emotional hook is the fate of the world.
But those problems are solvable. And I, as suggested, would love a rationalist story where the hero devotes their time to solving useful, even if they are limited, problems instead of figuring out the best way to punch someone. You can see this in HP:MoR: compare the chapters where Harry is trying to figure out magic, or convert Draco, to the Azkaban chapters. (I am in the early early stages of starting a rationalist work on these lines; I abandoned fiction writing ~6 years ago and do not expect to be good at it, but we'll see if I get happy enough with it to show the public.)
My thoughts here are that, for Elspeth, succeeding is having an accurate idea of what scope she can change the world at. That was Bella's core failure: her delusions of grandeur. For Elspeth, who has a less useful power, no ultra-rich family with several massively useful witches, and only half-vampire status, for her to defeat the Volturi where Bella failed seems to me to be impossible (unless she does the "well, I'm going to steal a bunch of money, buy a bunch of explosives, and burn Volterra to the ground" plan, which is definitely not the utilitarian way to conduct regime change).
I don't mind that this lesson, which is of critical importance, is a really painful one. Pain is the best teacher. I mind that Bella didn't know it beforehand, but it's a reasonable flaw to give a character (especially if you're writing for the LW community, apparently). But if Alicorn has the second book narrated by Elspeth and she makes the same mistakes as Bella (especially if she lucks into a win), then I will stop reading in disgust.
Unless it's been done in the real world but not in the world you're writing in, in which case you may be Terry Pratchett.
Sounds interesting, you should put it up somewhere regardless. Because A) it can't be that bad, and B) unless you've got a public reading it and demanding more, you'll very likely never actually go forward with this. :)
Put in a separate post: I am strongly considering writing a top-level post about the failings of utilitarianism, because I see that as very strongly linked to Bella's scope failure (the utilitarian goal is the Volturi gone, thus I should eradicate the Volturi). I'll also write it for people, not for fictional characters, if that's a worry.
If you are interested in seeing my thoughts on the matter, vote this up; if disinterested, vote this down. (But not negative, please, my karma is tiny!)
I would strongly prefer that my characters not be used as examples in non-fiction didactic works at least until I announce that I have finished with the story. (I currently expect Radiance to be the last work I do in the universe.)
Understood and anticipated, though I certainly could have been clearer. I would write what I know- anarchism- not what I don't know- your characters.
This is a reply deep in a thread on a relatively old post, you won't likely get many people that even see this request. :) If you're nervous about publishing a top-level post, at least float something on the discussion side. I agree that utilitarianism is severely flawed. My reason is that humans simply don't have enough computing power to ever implement utilitarianism decently, it would take an entity with orders of magnitude more intellectual strength to be a utilitarian with falling into a Bella spiral.
Deontology that is steered by utilitarian goals and occasionally modified by utilitarian analysis, OTOH, seems very workable and keeps the best of utilitarianism while factoring for human realities (but I've been plugging Desirism for a while now).
That indeed looks exactly like what I was looking for: I had seen people use the pattern I modeled reading through comments, which were probably from before that got implemented.
But not one of the wisest (because most people who have taken over suddenly realize exactly how much of a pain it is to actually run the world that you've just taken over)
Exactly; Baron Wulfenbach from Girl Genius comes to mind, or the The Onion article entitled "Black Man Given America's Worst Job."
I changed Bella's personality too. She's got the same basic resources as canon!Bella, but she made some different choices a few years ago and has become a different young lady.
I'm sorry you're not enjoying the story anymore. That's a pity.
The closest thing to romance novels per se that I like (besides the Twilight canon itself, which I did enjoy) would probably be the works of Sharon Shinn. I am very puzzled about why you are trying to compare Luminosity's fulfillment of this genre to Twilight's when you have not read Twilight at all. (The wiki is a useful reference but I think it was mostly written by twelve year olds with untreated grammatical disabilities.)
Well, yes. Bella also does other things. I'm surprised that they didn't stand out to you. I thought I might be being too heavy-handed with the massive clues about how often she gets laid, just as one example. But... seriously... I started working with a canon where there are immortal freakin' vampires who can make more of themselves. Since death is bad, and my character was handed a tool to make it not happen so much... yes, lots of the action is going to be happening in that neighborhood. Not making the story even sort of about that would be like having a novel about a cancer researcher, who has cancer, and whose entire family has cancer, who then discovers the cure for cancer, but that's just a side plot because all the actual drama is about how to break the news to Grandma Betty that no one likes her fruitcake.
First off, thanks for responding! As well, Archangel looks interesting; I'm assuming that's a decent place to start on Shinn?
"I am very puzzled about why you are trying to compare Luminosity's fulfillment of this genre to Twilight's when you have not read Twilight at all."
I'm comparing it to optimal; literally every book on my shelf is more readable (to me) than Twilight. The point of fanfic as I understand it is to be what the book could have been. The main reason I did make comparisons is that I get the feeling your work overcorrects on some things that are deficiencies in the original, and it's worth analyzing the relevant continua.
I felt the opposite. The first piece of writing advice, for good reason, is "show don't tell." (I understand you're shooting for teen, and so getting laid is not something you can show, but you can make up for it everywhere else.)
The first time- the "Among the enhanced vampire senses is touch" line- was well done, and you deserve props for it. But in the work as a whole the most memorable time Edward touches Bella is when he breaks her spine. Anyone can use the words "comfort" or "caress," the challenge is evoking the emotions. Indeed, the only habit I can think of peculiar to them is that they just say "I love you" instead of "I love you too," which is justified only by vampires being super-emotional.
For example, in the first section of chapter 45, there are ~8 lines about Bella rationalizing about her and Edward's disappointment, and then ~2 lines about exchanging comfort that didn't depend on rationalization. The reader's impression is that rationalizing is at least four times as important as comfort: you gave us a walkthrough of Bella's thoughts on the matter, but no details about her and Edward's actions. Italicizing the "our" doesn't capture why Bella wants Edward's baby, and why Edward wants Bella's baby. It would have been easy and effective to write eight lines there so the comfort took up more of the page than the sour grapes.
If you make a habit of that- giving even equal description to emotion/perception than you do to rationalizations- then it'll stand out. (Since action/rationalization tends to happen more, I mean equality in paragraph-lengths, not number of lines on each.) There are exceptional cases where the emotion is treated with the same level of depth than the rationalizations are- but for most of them, even more would help.
(On the subject of perception: the primary description we get of vampire senses is essentially "they're too high-level to describe." This is the Vizzini method- "Have you ever heard of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle? ... Morons," and it's worse than just overwhelming. Write a paragraph or two or twelve about what it's like to run through the trees, seeing their branches and twigs turn and dance all at once, able to focus on more than just one small bit. Ultraviolent is her new favorite color- why not tour botanical gardens, and get the full bee experience? The reason that "show don't tell" is convincing is that the author demonstrates they have extra information: they don't just know "love" is the symbol to call upon, they have an experience to describe to you.
I'm not saying immortality shouldn't be part of the story- it should. I'm saying that the scale of Bella's ambitions needs to be sensible. Why would any sane person do more about overthrowing the Volturi- who at that point had done nothing but help her- than convincing her parents to become immortal? I'm convinced my government is evil on a stupefying scale but I spend more time trying to create wealth and improve them than overthrow them. You'd have drama far more interesting than Grandma Betty's fruitcake, but be operating on a level that doesn't strain credulity or naturally lead to defeat.
I think another thing that bothers me, when it comes to Bella Guevera, is that neither of her stances have strong backing / she doesn't rigorously examine them. There are strong reasons to prefer the Volturi to their absence (beyond their ability and inclination to murder those who think otherwise), and arguments against utilitarianism (I'm thinking of the Utility Monster here) demonstrably apply for vampires. Eating humans might be the most moral thing to do, from the utilitarian perspective. And counterarguments against that could also apply to animals- why don't the Cullens have a ranch and drink the blood of their animals instead of hunting? Among other justifications, that's already an accepted practice in some lactose-intolerant parts of Africa.
And so if the fic's Bella sets on a violent path than requires risking her most cherished desires to achieve political goals she hasn't fully examined, should we really call her rational or luminous? And if this a morality play where she does everything wrong and learns the error of her ways too late, why write that?
Yeah, Archangel's a fine place to start, although it's a little hard to say in what order you ought to read the angel books because they were written out of chronological order.
I actually explicitly address this one in the fic. I'm starting to doubt that you've been paying much attention.
Anyway, my point isn't that Bella does everything wrong, or that she isn't really luminous or smart or rational. She made mistakes, which stemmed more or less directly from flaws in her personality, and bad things happened.
I remember you addressing why a butchering facility is impractical. I don't recall you addressing why it's morally acceptable to hunt animals but not morally acceptable to hunt humans; if you did and I missed it, then I apologize sincerely, as that's solid evidence I wasn't paying attention.
What I'm talking about is not the Scottish method of making a blood pudding out of a butchered animal, but the Maasai method of bleeding a cow- essentially similar to the European method of milking cows or Canadian method of collecting maple sap. Since they're doctors, they'd use syringes instead of arrows and plugs, but the basic idea would be the same: have a 'dairy cow' whose relevant organ is their marrow, not their udder.
They already considered this, but dismissed it, when it came to humans- they would be able to get the blood without killing, but would lose the benefit of calming animal blood.
(Since I'm thinking about this, the way I'd introduce it is not Bella thinking "wait, why are we killing them when we don't have to?" or suddenly being interested in animal rights- but as a product of a debate where Bella raises the issue of vegetarianism with a human-eating vampire and the human-eater (particularly if it's one that buys blood to consume, rather than killing) points out that Bella's really not any better than the human-eaters or humans in general, and asks why they don't put their morals into practice and abandon hunting- which Bella might then adopt as a great idea.)
I think the two main things that bother me about her mistakes are that, as far as I can tell, they come from flaws that you introduced and those flaws are unrelatable. Bella's flaw is that she thinks that assassinating the world government is a good way to go about things (another way to think about this flaw is she considers politics more important than people). What's the moral, here? Don't try to assassinate world governments? I already knew that one, thanks.
What's the deeper moral? If you're vapid, the consequence is spending eternity telepathically beaming love at your husband, who is overcome by emotion and distracts you with the physical manifestation of that love. If you're thoughtful, the consequence is spending eternity bound to a pile of ash while every day your husband's ghost eats your liver anew. Why choose to rewrite the Prometheus myth?
The reasons I give for not having a butchering facility apply to any other facility that would keep domestic animals. The animals would still need a place to live that would be hard to pick up and move when the vampires got suspiciously youthful-looking for their claimed ages. Also, if the vampires were trying to keep animals alive, they would suck at it. The poor cows would die of stress from having to be around them.
As for your other criticisms: I'm sorry you aren't enjoying the story I have chosen to tell. That's a pity. I suggest you don't waste more of your time on a story you don't like. Hopefully you will be able to find something more worthy of your attention.
Why would vampires put themselves in charge of keeping the animals alive? It's been established that the Cullens have staggering amounts of money. Just find a small, publicly-traded company that does something related to what you're looking for, and buy up a controlling share of the stock. Make some unreasonable demands, ratchet up relevant salaries until those demands start sounding very reasonable indeed, then add layer after layer of nondisclosure agreements just in case. Once it's set up, you never need to visit again. They mail the packaged, refrigerated blood to an entirely separate institution whose sole purpose, in this context at least, is to keep track of your forwarding address.
Routine problems can be handled by professional investigators of the appropriate sort (would Temple Grandin qualify as a witch in this setting?) and severe/bizarre/supernatural problems can be handled by divesting yourself of the shares, starting over from scratch with a different company, and leaving just enough lawyers in your wake to remind those involved that the nondisclosure agreement still applies.
As often as necessary, packages of animal blood arrive in the mail. If someone notices, you mumble something about medical research; if they call you on it, explain in shameful tones that your spouse has a weird fetish, you found a company that sells the stuff, all very humane, it's expensive but who can put a price on a happy marriage, and (depending on how the situation develops) follow up with either an indignant rant about the rights of consenting adults within the privacy of their own home, or pleading and an appropriate bribe.
I've stated elsewhere under this post that I've ruled that animal blood is impossible to tolerate when it isn't fresh. This is to explain the canon fact that the Cullens do not keep any preserved animal blood in their home, which would make immense sense if it were drinkable that way.
Even with that constraint, it would be financially feasible to create a 'filling station' within half a night's walk of any given house, and the technicians still don't need to see any 'customers' face-to-face. Just run the IV pipe through an opaque wall, and set up appointments by calling ahead.
True- but one can buy animal blood much more easily than human blood. As far as I can tell, the sites I found googling only require a credit card, and your only contact will be the FedEx deliveryperson. The prices (about ~$150 to get as much sheep's blood as it would take to fill a person) seem like they would be nowhere near troubling for vampires, and a front corporation doing medical research would be trivial to create.
Indeed, if Bella's primary objection to vampires consuming blood is that it has to come from people, why not sell packaged blood to vampires? They still get the tasty blood they prefer, and people don't have to die for it. They miss out on the calming effect, and more importantly miss out on the hunting, but I imagine there must be some vampires out there who don't live to hunt, or would prefer being able to reside more permanently by hunting less frequently.
It's possible anyone willing to take that option would already be taking that option- but people are more willing to make changes the easier you make those changes. Again, directly relevant experience for people- "I'm going to help my neighbors switch to vegetarianism by grocery shopping and teaching recipes" over "I'm going to murder Jim Purdue."
There is no need to apologize: you've written a story that you wanted to tell and it is no offense against me that it's not the story I wanted to read. I think it's mistaken, though, to consider time spent on things one doesn't like a waste. I am still interested by the story, I am still attracted by the story's potential; I just think the choices you've made are suboptimal, and believe it's better to explain to you why I responded that way than fling my hands up in disgust and silently fade away.
I do feel the need to mention I do not expect you to change the story to suit my tastes- if I lend weight to any changes, I expect the most likely would be you deciding to beef up some descriptions. But I hope the feedback is useful even if not reacted to.
The story isn't finished yet...
Sure, Herakles comes by and kills the eagle. Even the Greeks weren't that cruel.
The motivation for that objection is that the only non-pathological reason to be rational is it improves your life. So, when a story shows characters making worse decisions and leading worse lives than normal, I find it hard to swallow that they're behaving more rationally or living more luminously, and I become skeptical of the author's models of rationality and luminosity.
Yes, rational agents should WIN. But, as Eliezer explains
If you care about improving the entire world, you just might end up multiplying small probabilities by large utilities, and concluding that you should take chances that are likely to go bad for you personally.
Also, it doesn't seem right to compare the results of Canon!Bella to Luminous!Bella, who is facing tougher challenges. It wouldn't be right to say that Frodo's Jedi powers were actively harmful when his greater problems came from Sauron's Death Star.
First off, thanks for the link- that was a rather informative read, though I feel it supports my position rather strongly.
That's an argument for becoming a cancer researcher instead of an investment banker, and I agree that can be commendable. That's an argument for signing the Declaration of Independence, and I agree that can be commendable.
That is not an argument for deciding to swim across the Atlantic and kill King George with your bare hands.
My complaints about Luminous!Bella's personality and plans are twofold: first, her motivations are nonsensical, and second, her plans are idiotic.
I won't bring up any of my complaints about utilitarianism proper, but just comment that it is entirely self-defeating and out-of-character for Bella to adopt it. What does she have, and what does she want? She and her sole, destined mate are both vulnerable to other vampires but not to age, and she enjoys his presence more than any human can enjoy life. She should want to preserve herself and her mate at almost all costs.
I put in the 'almost' because it's feasible that Bella would prefer some goal to her and Edward's personal survival. It would make sense for her to sacrifice herself to save Edward (if he didn't prefer the opposite), say, or to save a massive number of people. We know, though, from her thoughts in Chapter 23, that human Bella explicitly prefers herself to other people. She might change her mind when it's a large number of people, but I wouldn't bet on it, and the odds go lower when she turns into a vampire, because her life is then that much more valuable.
So, it is possible that Bella would decide to sacrifice herself to save everyone else, but that's not something humans (particularly female humans) do very frequently, and it's not something Bella has a history of doing. It's also not terribly relatable because few people have a chance to sacrifice themselves to save the world; at most, people can divert their time and resources towards improving their local world. Bella is even more attached to her local world than most humans, and humans are already very attached to it.
Those discussions of motivation all assume Bella has a chance of being effective. If she knew it was her life or 6 billion human lives, I hope she would pick the 6 billion human lives. If she knew it was her life or a one billionth chance of saving 6 billion human lives, why would we expect her to put her life on the line for six lives?
I'm not saying the odds are against her because she's an idiot, or that it's unfair for Alicorn to give her a one billionth chance of success- that seems pretty realistic to me. The thing that's idiotic is that she doesn't even think that there might not be a way for her to win until she's already lost. Victorious warriors win first, then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
So, again, the story works as a morality play. If a plan requires you to not talk to anyone else about it, then it's doomed to failure, and you shouldn't try. But morality plays strike me as inferior to positive stories: teach that preparation leads to victory by showing someone who prepares and wins, not by showing someone who fails to prepare and loses. They may have lost for a number of reasons.
I think the word "tougher" there is obfuscating, because there are changes on several different levels. Everyone is smarter, but Bella has hubris in the Greek sense.
Essentially, this isn't Frodo having to use his Jedi powers against the Death Star. This is Sauron using his Sith powers to send the Nazgul to kill Frodo before he leaves the Shire. Then Sauron flies the Ring back, and game over.
While realistic, it makes for a poor rationalist story. Especially when Frodo is the rationalist and Sauron is a murderous autocrat.
I keep on bringing up the Greek myths because the Greek myths are horrible life lessons for modern people. "Don't taunt the gods" is bad advice for scientists. And so when I see a new story forged in the model of a Greek myth, I try and dig deep and figure out why. When I see someone associating their protagonist with hubris- not justified confidence, but hubris in its full sense- I get worried. Why not imagine a world without hubris- a world where cleverness allows you to bypass the gods? Why not imagine people clever enough to see the trap of hubris and ignore it? Why choose hubris?
Maybe Alicorn can give us both: tragic failure here, analysis of the failure in the "media res" introductory chapter, and the positive lesson in the promised sequel. Works for me.
Just checking: your standard of "than normal", for Bella, is the plot of canon Twilight, which you have not read, in which canon Bella only survives her many insanely stupid decisions via Plot Armor, and in which canon a confrontation in which the Volturi drew out unprecedented resources in order to attempt to deal with the Cullen family and their witnesses ended with no fighting, no casualties, and no unhappy endings whatsoever except for the part where the overwhelming majority of vampires go on murdering humans several times a month but that's okay because nobody Bella likes is hurt?
Yes. Because every fanfic, by its nature, invites comparisons with the original before all other works. Even if the reader has only read the fanfic.
My consequentialism may be showing through a bit more than it should, but it seems reasonable to me that someone who reads two stories with the same source will compare their endings, and will make judgments based on those endings. (For reference, the "canon Twilight" I have read is checking the wiki, not slogging through the books.)
If your argument is that canon Twilight was a Promethean story where Bella should have been struck down for stealing Vampirism from the gods and bestowing it to men, and the only reason Aro and company failed to do so is because they're idiots, I have neither the experience nor the inclination to counter that argument.
Because that's not what interests me. What interests me is the choice presented: if canon Bella made stupid choices that should have gotten her killed, and our Bella is different, will we make her make smarter choices or have worse luck?
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.
If you want to phrase it that way, I suppose it's an okay label. When the existence of her mind is in danger, the shield will force her body into the minimum adequate configuration for her mind to go on existing, but it's not omnipotent. She would have died if it had been a long time since her last feeding, or if her pieces had been scattered over a square mile or more before being set on fire, or if she'd just been ignited again after the flames went out.
This is awesome writing. I totally didn't see it coming.
...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!
MwhahahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHA :D
Although I cling to the hope that Bella has been misled, the way you phrased your author's note makes me highly doubt it. D:
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.
All Bella needs to do is take out the two vampires with incapacitating powers. Once she does, the wolves can act as the anti-vampire killing machines they were born to be and take out the rest of them.
Once they do, her position's a lot stronger; Bella and the packs might be able to negotiate a peace treaty with/unconditional surrender from the Volturri, assuming they don't go onto the offensive and wipe them out once their big guns are gone. IIRC the werewolf packs outnumber the guard by, what, two or three to one, while being physically superior to boot.
One wolf versus one nonwitch vampire will tend to result in a win for the vampire. The wolf advantage is in their better ability to coordinate and to come in numbers.
I really doubt Bella will be able to take out Alec and Jane, even with Edward's help. Both are old vampires with way more combat training and experience than even Edward. Jacob also said there are some hard-core Volturi fighters there, probably including Felix.
Bella and Edward may be able to take them with the help of Jacob and the imprinted wolves, though; either by using the free wolves as a decoy for the fighters, - should the Volturi not be hostile to Bella and Edward - or just attacking them together. I'm guessing Jane will be unable to keep a pack incapacitated while fighting, and maybe Alec, too.
Hmm. Actually, if they pretend to be friendly, none of the werewolves has talked, and Aro hasn't arrived yet, they might be able to dupe the Volturri into thinking that they were sent there by the Cullen coven to look into something going down on their territory, so as to get close enough to the siblings to be able to sneak attack and disable or kill them and allow the werewolves to polish off the rest.
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 will definitely be handling Chelsea as a major threat when her part comes up, never fear.
Or, if you're the kind of person who doesn't like to see characters in soul-ripping agony... fear! Fear lots! :)
Thank you for responding, I review dozens of my favorite stories and you are the first to actually respond. I'm not sure if Edward is actually dead or not, but like it or not I have to give you points for doing something no one else has ever done. I wonder how the remaining Cullens are doing with the loss of Elspeth. I mean the Cullens love family a lot right? I thought It was rather out of character to let Edward and Bella go on a suicide mission, And THEN Alice and Jasper go missing. At that point I wouldn't have let Elspeth out of the house. Some childish part of me really hopes their suffering, I mean after all "Lets let the man that has been my son for one hundred years and his new wife he loves more than life itself die, after all its dangerous, and I don't want to get hurt." And don't even get me started on Rosalie. Was I the only one that felt betrayed beyond reason during that seen? I don't know how you are going to build an army to beat the Volturi, especially your stronger version of it. Although I'd try to find someone like Eleazar and use them to find witches with useful powers.
They do more or less that in canon, too (Breaking Dawn).
At the time Elspeth was found out of the house, the Cullens had an (in fact accurate) belief that no one wished her harm. The Volturi had been and gone, deeming baby Elspeth fine to leave alone.
Bella and Edward did need a safe place to stash their baby. The four remaining Cullens provided that. The combat itself hinged entirely on the possibility that Bella would be able to take out Jane and Alec. Without her managing that, it's hopeless even if they bring four more vampires and the reinforcements they'd provide would just be so many more ashes; with that, they (as far as they knew) would be able to bring to bear a large number of werewolves, easily enough to defeat the contingent of Volturi onsite.
All right I get it, but I'm still a little uncertain about how nonchalant they were with the idea of Edward and Bella dying. But your right and I'll say no more.
So Edwards alive after all, I have to admit that I'm relived. And I have to give you props, what you've done was ingenious and opens up so many new questions. Is Alice alive? Did she also escape the room? Is Bella alive? What will Elspeth do to bring back her fathers love for her?
Oh god I should cheesy. Any way I have a question. How does imprinting work? I assume it has something to do with how wolves naturally imprint on powerful people. Although that means that Jacob imprinting on Elspeth had nothing to do with love, because if that's how it works the first non imprint wolf to see her would have imprinted on her.
And the questions about Cody, Can he morph? Can he imprint? Or does his wolf heritage not show up at all? Or was him saying hes the most boring hybrid in the world have some fact to it? I'd be a shame if it was true.
Second paragraph: gotta ask me stuff like that in a private medium or I won't answer, since there exist weird people who don't want to know unless I wrap up the information in a particular sort of package.
Third paragraph: Wolves imprint on people well-suited to pass on their wolf genes. There's nothing about power involved (Pera and Elspeth are the only witch imprints). It's arguable whether imprinting has "anything to do with" love. Certainly Jacob hadn't spoken a word to Elspeth before he imprinted on her and her personality was irrelevant to the process.
Fourth: No, no, he doesn't really have "wolf heritage" because Harry Clearwater got a genetic overhaul when he turned into a vampire, and all things considered I think I'd call Iseul the most boring hybrid in the world, but she's so dull you'll never even have reason to meet her.
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.
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! ;)
Ha, you should be aware that while I'm canon compliant, I'm not limited to canon. So I fill in a lot of blanks. For instance, on the subject of imprinting, canon never explicitly rules out the possibility of female wolves imprinting (Leah's the only one in canon, and it could just as well be coincidence that she doesn't happen to see her imprint during the course of the story).
Reminds me of a nice LW quote:
--Annoyance, http://lesswrong.com/lw/4z/hyakujos_fox/3gj?c=1
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?
Do you notice how people that actually believe their religion have pretty much the same effect going?
That particular analogy hadn't occurred to me - I usually think of turning into a vampire as the cryonics insertion and the whole "don't eat people" part as a more straightforward disagreement on ethics, rather than prudence. Still, if I got the feelings realistic enough that they map onto something in the same neighborhood that you experience, yay!
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.
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!)
I've never read those books and hadn't heard of the character. I just like the name "Elspeth", and had an in-story excuse for them to pick something in that neighborhood.
The name reminds me more of Mercedes Lackey's novels, actually. The name seems to "feel" somewhat fantasy-esque, somehow...
Oh? Should I read them? I've been looking for new authors.
It's also sounds really cute. Perhaps I've forever been biased by the first fantasy books that I read in my formative years...
What sort of fiction are you looking for?
Generally light fantasy. Magic, magical creatures, adventures and an epic battle here and there. Recently I've been focussing on series with badass female protagonists with the usual magical powers and monster fighting tendencies.
I cannot claim sophistication is as much as I'm not enthralled by books that centre on intricately detailed political intrigues.
Actually, there's another set of books that I should have remembered some time ago: Mickey Zucker Reichert's Renshai series.
Ok, that's the first wikipedia page on someone that looks like it was written for OkCupid:
That's probably copy/pasted from an author bio on a book jacket.
Agreed, I would also recommend her Nightfall books. Just for the love of Bayes don't look at any of the other ones, especially the new ones unless you like characters bursting into tears every five pages.
Another set of books you might want to look into: The "Young Wizards" series by Diane Duane. It's technically "young adult" fiction; I read a compilation of the first three books a long time ago and enjoyed it. I don't know how strongly to recommend them because I read them years ago, but it might be something you'd like.
Young adult fiction. That stuff is relaxing. I'll take a look.You can't go wrong with wizards. (Even if Nicholas Cage gave it a damn good shot recently. Or at least his co-star did.)
Duane is especially good about the universe being full of interesting things and the pleasures of being intelligent.
I'd say that the series started losing narrative drive long about book four or so-- too many subplots, perhaps. However the first few are excellent.
And you might want to try out her Door into Fire series, too. (Adult fiction, more magic.)
She also has a couple of books set in the same universe as the Young Wizards with cat wizard protagonists. It's got more technical gobbledygook but it's the same fluffy goodness underneath. Oh and the focus s less on redeeming the universe over and over again and more about business as usual, assuming that business involves dinosaurs and travel to alternate timelines and stuff :)
May I recommend Jacqueline Carey? I don't know if her writing is quite what you'd like, but it's some amazing stuff. (Eliezer is a fan too!)
And, of course, if you've never read any Terry Pratchett, you need to fix that.
I've wondered about Jacqueline Carey. The Kushiel books seem, well, hard. I'm not sure how much I could empathise with a character whose defining feature is that she takes sexual pleasure in pain, even to the extreme. Yet they do seem to come with some strong recommendations. Eliezer, no less! I expect I'll have to read her eventually just to see what the fuss is about.
Haha. That would be tantamount to sacrilege! Probably my favourite author. Although in a sense his books seem to fall into a qualitatively different category. They are just different enough in nature that they don't occur to me when I'm considering fantasy stories except as an afterthought.
I gave up on the Kushiel books because the world-building had defects that got on my nerves, in one case unfairly. IIRC, they do have a lot of political intrigue.
The world-building issues were that Kushiel is a very rare and valuable sort of person, and this is marked by something (a red dart?) in one of her eyes. I find it impossible to believe that everyone would have forgotten about the type of person and the marker, though perhaps I'm applying unduly modern standards.
The thing which was definitely unfair was being annoyed that Kushiel doesn't make sense as a masochist. Masochists have very definite preferences for the sort of pain they want, and Kushiel doesn't. I've since been told that she's a sub, not a masochist.
I don't get what you mean: there was actually a poem handed down through the ages to describe the mark. I only remember the last line, "pricks the eye of chosen mortals"; the other lines were about Kushiel and something about rod and weal and portals. Anyway, it wasn't forgotten, it just wasn't widely known.
Kushiel was the Terre D'ange god of redemption through punishment; if you're talking about the main character of the Kushiel's Dart series, that would be Phèdre.
The point of the dart-mark in her eye was that she was blessed by Kushiel with essentially the ability to turn any pain into pleasure. She's not a normal human masochist, like the adepts of Valerian House, but rather an anguisette -- something that doesn't exist in real humans, so far as we know.
(For the most part, however, the character is written as a realistic human with strong masochistic and submissive desires, and only a few pivotal scenes in the novels actually require her to have pain-transforming abilities beyond those that a human could achieve with sufficient warmup. In truth, her gift seems to be the ability to instantly transform pain levels that human masochists have to "warm up" for with lesser quantities of the same type of pain.)
Anyway, the Kushiel's Legacy series is set in a parallel world to ours where gods and magic exist, so it doesn't seem especially egregious to have a character here or there with a supernatural talent, especially the main character.
I find complex political intrigue hard to follow myself. I don't know whether liking it is a measure of sophistication.
You might like T A Pratt's Marla Mason novels. They're a mix of humor and horror, and intelligent. The battles are quite dramatic.
I've liked the most recent two Pratchett novels Unseen Academicals and I Shall Wear Midnight.
What's frustrating is that I recently read some urban fantasy/paranormal romance which had a small unit battle rather than individual combat, but I can't remember what it was. It might have been Skinwalker by Faith Hunter, but even if not, it's a pretty good book.
Unseen Academicals was great, I haven't read I Shall Wear Midnight yet. I've been half hearted about the Tiffany Aching since I lost my respect for the Feegles. The Kender got insecure and forbade the Feegles from protecting or assisting their most important Ally (Tiffany) and the Feegles obeyed. They went from being hilarious tough little faerie guys to a bunch of cowards enthralled by a corrupt power structure. There are a few things more dangerous than an insecure person with power and deference to such people out of respect rather than practical necessity is something I hold in contempt.
Of course, I will no doubt love Midnight when I read it. I'm also hoping Practchett gets around to a third Von Lipvig book. Vetinari was hinting about taxes.
The Fleegles present a difficult problem in plotting. They're extremely strong and numerous, and there's no way to keep them from showing up.
How does the author restrain them enough so that the bad guys have a chance to build drama?
Unfortunately, in a way that breaks the story for me this time. :)
From my point of view, it was a huge improvement to not have the Fleegles talking as much as in the previous books. I was getting really bored with their being stupid at each other. They're still strong, still chaotic and enthusiastic, and really good as a foil to Tiffany's seriousness.
I wasn't tracking the angle that's bothering you, but the witches did seem bizarrely helpless for a good bit of the book against a rising tide of anti-witch prejudice.
One thing both books had in common was that there was serious prejudice against characters who were committed to harmlessness and extraordinarily useful. It's a way of saying that prejudice is bad, but I think there's a falseness to it.
Most people are somewhat useful and relatively harmless [1], but I wonder what would happen if people said, "Everyone's a public hazard-- me, you, any people you've got prejudices against. We need to figure out how to live decently (find as many positive sum transactions as possible) together anyway."
[1] I believe that if the majority of people weren't doing more good than harm, the human race would have been taken down by entropy.
I'm pretty sure that the book with the small unit battle was Black Blade Blues by J. A. Pitts, which is a pretty good book in general.
Thanks. These recommendations should keep me going for a good while!
Her earlier works are quite good - very character driven. The morality is very black and white though, so you may not enjoy her universe if you didn't get into them when you were young. Oh and stay away from the later ones, her characters have gradually gotten more and more Mary Sue-ish.
Thanks. I'll take a look. I don't necessarily mind black and white - up until the black and white presented is wrong (typically either enforcing naivety or valuing authority over justice). I have been known to go from loving a series to being completely disinterested in reading any further when I encounter a particularly intrusive objectionable goal or value in the protagonist. If a counterfactual me in the fictional world would not choose to aid the protagonist then the actual me has no vested interest in what happens to them either.
I don't think the morality should be particularly objectionable. It's "black and white" because the heroes tend to be nice people and the villains are almost invariably dog-raping monsters.
I found Mercedes Lackey to be fun to read, but not particularly deep or profound; they seem to have a bit of the romance novel in them. If you have some free time and want some feel-good entertainment, they're fine, but don't expect anything amazing; Mercedes Lackey is no Jacqueline Carey.
The naivety could be a problem, it's been too long for me to remember though. Based on your preferences here I would probably recommend Trudi Canavan over Mercedes Lackey for stronger female protagonist and more ass-kickery.
I've read (and liked!) the Black Magician trilogy. I've just looked up Trudi and noticed that as well as having a whole other series out there she lives not just in my country, or even my city. She lives in my very suburb. I expect geographical loyalty will make the series that much more enjoyable. :)
I should note that I don't actually mind male ass-kicking either, just with the former stipulations regarding naivety. The Eregion books, for example, were borderline. I cut them some slack because the author himself was a child. An awful lot of an author seeps through into their books.
Worse than Louise Lawrence? I don't think I can take something more moralising than that.
Nice chapter, and the scar got covered pretty much exactly as I was expecting ;)
Chapter 47.
Regarding the cliffhanger (you're quite good at those, I've noticed): Oh yikes.
It's ironic that I'm good at cliffhangers. I hate them in stuff I read.
I'm actually getting a bit tired of them, myself...
(Still a good story though.)
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.
:D
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...
This is just begging for more tests! ;)
And the Maggie thing is just incredibly cute!
I'm glad people seem to be having as much fun with Maggie as I am. She's a hoot to write.
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?
Stephenie Meyer by her own description knew absolutely nothing about vampires when she started writing and did zero research. I doubt that she had any idea where werewolf legends came from. That said, there are some Native American stories that are very similar to werewolves. The idea of a "skinwalker" shows up in some cultures, and the Navajo especially have a developed set of myths that has some resemblance. So if one felt a need to retcon this one would explain it with the natives simply using "werewolf" as the common English term for what they were.
(One could imagine fanfic where some of the werewolves are unhappy with this term and see using it as buying into European cultural imperialism or something like that.)
There are werecritters all over the place. I did a paper on "fantasy convergent evolution" in college and I was finding references to werecrocodiles and werebears and weresharks and random stuff, from all kinds of cultures that had no crosspollination.
There are two species of werewolf in Twilight canon. One, the Children of the Moon, gets no screentime or detailed treatment at all. They were from Europe and are now presumed extinct, killed off by some vampires at the behest of one vampire who didn't like them.
The other, the Quileute tribe wolves, features more heavily. Their older legends don't use the word "werewolf"; the ones who show up in the story call themselves werewolves because that is the obvious modern American thing to call a person who can turn into a giant wolf. The "wolf" part in particular was an arbitrary selection made when the species came into existence; they could have been bears or eagles or voles or something instead. So the technical term for them is "shapeshifter", but this doesn't overcome the sheer obviousness of "werewolf". This is all canon or obvious extrapolation therefrom, not fanon.
Thanks for answering. I also looked up the definition of "werewolf" on a Twilight wiki, but I didn't see any explanation.
I was really hoping the canon explanation was pre-Columbian contact between Vikings and native werewolves in North America. The prequel series writes itself!
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.
I haven't stated this explicitly in the story, so that's fair enough, but I think an FBI that became aware of vampires would probably try to make them extinct, not tolerate the ones that are trying real hard now to quit the murder habit.
I sort of doubt that, actually; they're restricted by the rules and laws they're required to follow. They can't arrest someone without evidence; in order to arrest a vampire for eating people, they'd need to be able to connect a particular vampire with particular incidents of people being eaten. At most, they'd be able to kill the vampires that go on open rampages, or which killed law enforcement officers and fled over state lines.
I sort of doubt that any legal rights would be extended to vampires as a matter of course were they found out, so I'd side with Alicorn on this one. Turning and indoctrinating your own larger vamp police force on the sly would probably be more productive, but obviously also risky. Use fierce human rights activists? ;]
One could arrange to out vampires if they don't behave (including if the one threatening this is killed) and therefore call the collective wrath of the human military industrial complex upon them (see The Salvation War ;). Of course, this would require that most vamps would see the threat as credible and dangerous, and would co-operate in policing the unavoidable defectors efficiently enough for the blackmailer to be satisfied. This may be a tall order, and could lead to open war on follow-through.
That will slow them down, but I don't think it will affect their attitude.
You can't arrest a vampire unless, for some reason, that vampire is willing to be arrested. There is nothing you can do that will keep a live vampire in one place that isn't a) blasting it to smithereens so it takes a while to reassemble or b) getting another vampire to physically hang onto it for you (or if your helpful vampire is Alec, getting him to stare at it magically). Or at least credibly threatening to do one of those things or kill it. The normal rule of law just isn't something you can slap on a vampire and expect it to stick.
Ultimately all of the law is simply the threatened use of force; "Come with us, or suffer the consequences." In this case, they simply don't bother with nonlethal force (barring vampire police officers, which is entirely possible if Bella's working with the government), and go straight to "If you resist arrest, we'll kill you."
I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was entirely possible to construct a prison capable of holding a vampire, either; it'd just take a lot more resources than any individual vampire is likely to possess. Their strength is finite, after all; sufficiently thick steel will be capable of resisting their blows, so a sufficiently durable metal cube with a trough underneath a pipe in the roof (to hold animal blood for them to eat) should be more than capable of holding one more or less indefinitely.
If you pause to make that threat to a vampire, it can probably kill you or escape. They move too quickly for humans to handle. If it can't actually escape, it can probably get a hostage or three so if you set it on fire or attack it with sufficient blunt trauma, an innocent human dies. If the only people around are the folks holding the burny weapons, and those weapons have enough range that the vampire can't get away from where they'll shoot within the human's reaction time (i.e. if you have a circle with a radius of a football field or more ready to go up in flames the instant the vamp moves), well, then you have a credible threat, but how do you transport the vampire to your steel cube without relaxing those conditions?
The steel, btw, doesn't have to break when the vampire hits it. The vampire could just claw at it and tunnel through.
It's easier to just have a death sentence for escaping. This way you can use almost regular prisons.
Which is why you make the walls out of caesium with a layer of tungsten carbide on the outside. Sure, they might be able to claw all the way through the metal... and reach the layer of water that the cage is submerged in.
This is just another example of why vampires are not nearly as scary as engineering is. They are a lot more sexy, but the reason even they don't control each other using modern science is because it isn't as sexy. Sure, Alec can anaethatise folks and they can all tear things to shreds in their immediate vicinity. Edward can incapacitate all girls and gay guys in the immediate vicinity with sultry looks and incidentally read minds and run fast. All terribly sexy and dangerous. All pale in comparison to what you can do with an ICBM or a surgical strike with napalm bombers.
Bella was playing for keeps (and not being a protagonist in an engaging fictional piece) she could have wiped the Volturi from the face of the earth in less time than it took to turn a bunch of native Americans into big sexy-but-only-moderately-dangerous canines. She could use the skills of the Cullens to infiltrate a suitable military base and use military resources to level the Volturi headquarters.
There would be difficulties to overcome and research to be done. They would need to find a way to stop Edward being shot down by fighter aircraft while doing his bombing run or a way to navigate all the security protocols protecting nuclear missile launches. These may be real challenges. But they are all challenges relating to overcoming those with the real relevant power: human military organisations.
The hard part, of course, is finding a way to replace the Volturi, sans the evil. It would take human-equivalent decades of time to develop technology for suitable non-lethal force against vampires. Then more time to arrange for suitable prisons. And the socio-political difficulties in both creating a government and in dealing with a bunch of xenophobic humans seem to be very nearly insurmountable. (So the Volturi are doing a more important public service than any other government.)
And this part would do what, exactly?
Rubidium and Cesium in water
Very serious explodey
Dismemberment.
I'm pretty sure the threat would be implicit to the act of asserting governing power over those vampires; it's pretty much implicit in the act of asserting governance over any people, so why would vampires be any different? The only real difference is the difference in the amount of force needed to cow them, which prevents non-lethal captures without their cooperation.
As for burrowing, there are likely solutions for that as well; a sufficiently hard surface treatment would be able to resist scratching by the vampire, while still possessing the lion's share of the ductility of the under-layer. Said surface layer could well also have the property of corrosion resistance, if that's needed to resist vampire venom, as well.
How hard a surface is necessary? If vampires can cut diamonds then there's nothing on earth capable of holding one.
That doesn't strictly follow. It does mean that you wouldn't be able to hold them without restricting their movement.
Right, of course. But that'll take some astonishingly strong shackles.
Not sure; I'm not that familiar with the Twilight canon. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of said canon can say what their best feats in this regard are?
It's not specified in canon. I'm going to rule that a newborn vampire can bite through a diamond. (Teeth are special-sharp, plus venom.)
It just has to slow them down enough that a system (automated or not) could detect the escape attempt and initiate explodey explodeyness.
So even comparatively cheap strong materials may be good enough for a prison so long as it slows them down sufficiently.
Oh, all this thinking about stuff that hurts vamps... Why is vamp venom the only stuff that leaves scars? Shouldn't it, at most, do nothing of note to them? (especially if pretty much all their bodily fluids are replaced with it?)
A vampire doesn't need to risk as much collateral damage to fight/contain/kill another vampire. If you've got a vamp running around in Times Square thumbing its nose at the cops, and you are a human who wants to threaten it, you have to be willing to level a few city blocks if it doesn't do what you say. Not so if you are a vampire.
This is true, which is why I'd expect that the government would probably want some of its trusted employees turned, so that they'd be capable of dealing with vampires without needing enough firepower to level the block said vampire happens to be living in.
Volunteers, of course; the process of turning is probably too painful to force someone to do it legally.
You haven't slept for a long time now. Have you made a decision? This can't go on. You have to decide.
I was trying to decide if that was feasible, but then I remembered that Carlisle was fighting vampires as a human centuries before.
And weapons technology has just been getting better and better since then. SWAT team members with antitank weapons are probably capable of wounding vampires, if they hit, and an airstrike from something like an A-10 is likely to be unsurvivable, if the vampire hasn't vacated the area before it arrives.
Well, he was trying, anyway.
...interesting!
What? I summarized Carlisle's turning in chapter 19. His dad had it in for witches, werewolves, and vampires, and got Carlisle to help kill members of that reference class. Now, werewolves and vampires are damn hard to take down, and I never said Carlisle killed any of those, but there are some vulnerable witches in the world. Carlisle did corner a vampire, who turned Carlisle, killed two others, kidnapped a fourth guy, and then got away.
I was under the impression that Carlisle's dad's organization was capable of taking on vampires - it makes much more sense to say that they had ambitions, but that they couldn't without a great deal of luck.
Carlisle's dad was painted as a fanatic who wasn't careful about sorting real vampires (witches, werewolves) from fake vampires (witches, werewolves). He probably offed somebody with porphyria at least once, and some mentally ill folks, and some real witches. Carlisle was more careful and found an actual vampire but couldn't kill it.
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.
I'm pretty sure Gianna and Maggie are going to be mated.
Although Stephenie Meyer didn't include any gay people in her canon (Maggie is canon, but no remarks whatever are made of her romantic inclinations), she has said that gay humans turn into gay vampires. Also, the whole "mystical bond" thing is never spelled out in so many words in canon, although it is blatantly obvious anyway - it's characterized as simply falling in love. So I decided Maggie's going to be gay in Luminosity, and given that she's aware of this, she has excellent reason to expect her mate to be a girl.
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.
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... :)
I'm hoping they try it! Perhaps do some blood tests first to see if their is a different reaction to a similar test on normal human blood...
Canon features no such vampires.
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!
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.
Fixed.
Another typo?
Nodded?
No, I meant "noted". Perhaps the sentence would be clear with more commas. Eleazar notes, aloud, that Heidi does not project a sexual attraction, and so notes in response to Bella's question.
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!
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).
Right, it's a single alpha, not a pair.
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.)
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.
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!