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Luminosity (Twilight fanfic) Part 2 Discussion Thread
This is Part 2 of the discussion of Alicorn's Twilight fanfic Luminosity.
LATE BREAKING EDIT: Part 3 exists now, so new comment threads should be started there rather than here.
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.
Here is Part 1 of the discussion. 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.
The fic is really really good but there is a twist part way through that makes the fic even more worth reading than it already was, but that makes it hard to talk about because to even ask if someone is twist-aware with any specific hints is difficult. The twist is in the latter half of the story. If you are certainly not post-twist and want to save the surprise, then you should stop reading here and fall back to Part 1 discussion or to the fic itself.
If you think you're pretty sure you are post-twist and are safe to read the rest of this, try reading this rot13'ed hint and see if what you've read matches this high level description of the twist...
Rqjneq unf qvfpbirerq gur frperg gung Vfnoryyn jnf xrrcvat sebz uvz "sbe uvf bja tbbq" bhg bs srne bs Neb ernqvat Rqjneq'f zvaq. Va gur nsgrezngu, fbzrguvat unf punatrq nobhg gurve eryngvbafuvc gung znl unir pnhfrq lbh gb pel sbe n juvyr, naq juvpu znlor urycf gb rzbgvbanyyl qevir ubzr gur pbzovarq zrffntr bs YJ'f negvpyrf nobhg "fbzrguvat gb cebgrpg" naq "ernfba nf n zrzrgvp vzzhar qvfbeqre" naq gur jnl gurl pna fvzhygnarbhfyl nccyl gb crbcyr jub unir abguvat zber va gur jbeyq guna fbzr fvatyr crefba jub gurl ybir.
If the answer to the hint is obvious, then just to be sure that there is not a double illusion of transparency at work, here is the cutoff point spelled out explicitly:
Gur phgbss cbvag sbe cbfgvat urer vf gung lbh unir ernq hc gb puncgre svsgl svir (va gur snasvpgvba irefvba) be puncgre gjragl rvtug ba Nyvpbea'f jrofvgr jurer Rqjneq jnf cebonoyl vapvarengrq, Vfnoryyn fheivirf na nggrzcgrq vapvarengvba, naq fur unf gb ortha gb jbex bhg jung gb qb jvgu gur jerpxntr bs gur erfg bs ure "rgreany" yvsr.
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Comments (420)
I don't think it's still necessary to warn about the text color. You can change it by clicking the correct part of the sidebar.
I just copy and pasted from the first discussion thread. Fixed now :-)
I'm going to re-number the chapters in edits, so I don't advise using current chapter numbers as reference points. There might not even be 25 chapters after I'm done.
The goal was to use the least contentful method of referencing the part of the story with the twist. Send me an email or a PM and I'll change things however you prefer, at the time you prefer :-)
I'm afraid I'm dreadful at keeping spoilers from people. I hate it when it's done to me, so I've never developed the skill at that particular brand of torture. Just keep an eye out for the edits - they won't go live till after Friday - and then adjust it.
The twist now occurs in chapter 28 as I've re-numbered them. However, I'm afraid to do the same thing to the instantiation on fanfiction dot net, lest it cost me half my reviews. I'm not sure what the best way to refer to it is.
Created wiki page.
good job
I just wanted to say that Chapter 55 made me go from "the luminosity fic is good" to "omg I need to get people to read the luminosity fic!".
One rule for emotionally compelling stories is "make a character you love and then torture them" and Alicorn has done that very very well. At this point I don't know if the story can have any kind of happy ending, but the story has transitioned from one where the default happy ending can pretty much be assumed (because most stories have so much wish fulfillment), to one of the rare stories where implacable reality is described by the author in the way you would expect an implacable reality to work.
And I love the way it is the "rationalist character" who, in retrospect, was sort of "blithely rational" who got hurt. This is a lesson that is meaningful for me, helping me to emotionally internalize the real risks of experimenting with one's life, rather than a lesson that I can imagine is meaningful for normal Harry Potter fanfic readers. When the pack was expanding and things were clearly getting out of control I had a bad feeling and wanted to warn Bella, but I didn't really expect negative outcomes.
Thank you, Alicorn, for writing this.
I want to register amusement that "Methods of Rationality" contains a Bella and "Luminosity" contains a Harry.
Crossover shipping?
But Harry Clearwater is married, and also now he's learned his lesson about dallying with mortals. Gung naq V xvyyrq uvz bss.
j/k. i still have to read up to the current chapters
I loved the first half of this story. But since Bella became a vampire, I found myself liking it less and less. But it was only with Chapter 55 that I realized why.
Bella went FOOM.
I hate it when that happens.
Maybe Elspeth will take it slower. Something more friendly, a bit more in line with the Collective Expectations of Vampiredom.
Looking forward to the sequel.
Ha!
(what? that's just how I laugh)
I had the same reaction - and I love the crazy spiraling-out-of-control in HPMoR, but it just doesn't feel right in this story. Luminous Bella does need flaws for the story to work, but really shouldn't have the same blind spots as Rationalist Harry.
All the same, even though the second half is somewhat less engaging for me, I'm still loving the story, and it's helped me make more sense of the LW Luminosity sequence.
Wait what? If I did that I made a serious mistake. What blind spots do they share?
Not all the same blind spots - I exaggerated and I shouldn't have.
But in particular, I would expect Bella to have take quite a bit more time to think about the question, will awakening the Quileute really help them? She rightly realizes that the Quileute are in a dangerous and precarious position, but immediately panics and pulls the first lever she can find, instead of thinking for a week or so - or at least a solid hour that the reader sees - about whether that will really make things better.
She should have a pretty significant prior expectation that there's going to be some major consequences to Awakening, given what happens in the closest analogue she's experienced, Turning. A newborn vampire is darn hard to restrain - so why should she assume she has a good chance of experimenting on Rachel without being detected?
She doesn't really strike me as impatient in this way in the first half of the story. I guess it's plausible that the high stakes spook her into uncharacteristic haste, but really, the fact that Aro could "remember" the Quileute at any time doesn't quite imply a "something must be done/this is something/therefore this must be done" kind of response.
Of course, she makes this mistake in her own, distinctive personal style. For example, she does actually bother talking with at least one of the people who would be affected before actually going out there. But two of Harry's most distinctive flaws are Extreme Other-Optimizing and Experimenting Before Thinking, and Bella makes both of these simultaneously by awakening the Quileute.
Actually, it looks to me like that mistake happened because turning shook her out of good habits. She stopped writing journal entries, supposedly because she has perfect memory; but the main benefit of that was consolidating and analyzing thoughts, not preserving them. On top of that, she didn't consult with anyone, because of the mind-reading issue. She thought vampiric super-memory was a substitute for her old cognitive toolkit, but it wasn't, so she ended up doing something very stupid.
This kind of insight is why, from a rationality perspective I love the twist in this story. This is so good at showing the causal density of real human systems and the disasters that can come from falsely concluding that you have a causally correct theory about why you won when you win and why you failed when you fail.
How could she have been sure of this? Where would she have needed to direct her rational faculties to pull this hypothesis up out of all the other hypotheses about what went wrong?
It seems plausible that what Bella needed might have been some specific insight applied at or before a specific chapter, but the menu of things it might have helped to adjust is enormous and any particular fix might have had its own negative side effects that we aren't seeing in the story because they weren't applied.
For example, one of my own personal heuristics is that I should generally delay any action that has "epistemically irreversible" consequences until I am either (1) forced into the action by external circumstances and the need to "make a bet for survival one way or the other" or (2) I have identified post-change mechanisms that will allow the new situation/framework to identify its own flaws and dismantle itself if it isn't actually for the best.
Based on this pet theory and post hoc rationalization about Bella, I might argue that the place where Bella went wrong was in becoming a vampire and accepting apparently permanent modifications to her mind despite not being forced into it by a true emergency or verifying that the post-modification state passes the "self critiquing reversibility" test.
As Vaniver pointed out in the previous comment thread, now she appears to be trapped in a Punisher comic book that's almost certain to have an unhappy ending rather than living in a romance novel. Instead of living for pointless revenge she could have still been flirting with a dangerously hot boy who will magically be a good husband when the relationship is magically made permanent.
Of course, in a rationalist universe where magical thinking runs into implacable reality even the romance novel may have been a bad outcome for luminous!Bella. Romance novels have to stop when they stop, because otherwise the end of the story arc would be about a woman married to a mobster or a sociopathic nobleman or a pirate or (ahem) a vampire, and that is totally not what traditional romance novels are about.
Possibly, but keep in mind she has evidence that this irreversible transition would make her better at improving. Not wanting to become superior because that might make you overconfident is a pretty self-defeating strategy; though constantly checking plans for signs of overconfidence is a good plan. (That is, if she thought about it beforehand and was more self-aware, she would understand journaling is valuable as more than a memory aid, and keep it up or find a substitute as a vampire. But she'd be able to journal / self-critique way better as a vampire than as a human.)
...is not what I'm talking about.
The self-critiquing-reversibility test is designed specifically to prevent apparent self improvements which are not actual self improvements and from which you cannot retreat. If the test is passed then it should give you more room to play and explore because you actually have a safety net in the form of a "bailout option".
The test is designed to prevent you from, for example, getting addicted to a purported nootropic that turns out to be more like crystal meth than like caffeine. Avoiding "belief in the value of irrational belief" is another place where the heuristic might be applied.
For Bella, thing vampires can't do include turning off their desire for blood, or changing their emotional connection to their mates. These are, in some sense, "permanent utility function tweaks" rather that simple "optimization power upgrades".
If Harry had applied the test in the first handful of chapters of MoR, he would have asked McGonagall if it was possible for him to explore the wizarding world but then back out somehow if he decided it was better to be a muggle instead of a wizard after educating himself about the costs and benefits of both states. The best answer from McGonagall (though I don't think she can actually do this, which may be relevant) is "Here, let me take veritaserum... Now... Yes, easily, because memories can be erased with an obliviation spell and returning to a naive state will be basically the same as never having learned about the wizarding world in the first place, but you'll find that the cost benefit analysis is unambiguously positive because of things like X and Y which appeal to you right now. The biggest downsides are P and Q and similar issues which are obviously negligible in the face of X and Y."
Absolutely. Resilience and naive optimization are often in conflict.
The highest expected value strategy in investing is to put all your money in the single investment that itself has the highest expected value (assuming the opportunity is large enough that your whole contribution doesn't push the project very far down its marginal utility curve so the last dollar invested will have lower return on investment than some other investment). Nonetheless an index fund can be a better strategy based on variance estimates and more or less sophisticated risk of ruin calculations combined with the value of "avoiding ruin". Nearly all billionaires are massively "over invested" in their own companies and they frequently stop being billionaires for this very reason. The fortune 500 has substantial turnover decade-over-decade in part because a company has to sacrifice some resilience to get onto that list and in the long run (since corporations are potentially immortal), a lack of resilience catches up to them.
This is what I was trying to get at with the link about causal density. Applying the epistemic reversibility test too diligently can be inferred from first principles to hurt you if you are in a "get big fast" regime where the only survivors are lucky risk takers. Or maybe it can hurt you for some other reason I don't know about yet that will make more sense to me if I apply it some day and then get hurt in a novel way...
And, honestly speaking, for any given heuristic I consciously apply, I expect to gain some benefit, while generally expecting to get hurt sometimes. If I keep doing novel stuff with an eye towards rational self improvement it seems inevitable that I'll get hurt in a way I wasn't expecting - however it seems reasonable to suppose the damage will be limited because I'm on the lookout for it. In working in this area at all I'm either implicitly or explicitly guesstimating that there is an upside to "rationality in general" that beats the downside.
Rationally speaking, it would make sense to make the risks of active rationality cultivation explicit and then subject the the calculation to conscious analysis, and then abandon active rationality cultivation if the expected value is honestly negative. It is precisely the fact that rationality basically demands this kind of bailout analysis at some point that has generally helped me to feel safe(ish) when experimenting with this particular package of memes.
I wanted to comment on this example: the benefits to index funds are more than in variance. Trading costs make it a superior long-term strategy to managed funds / researching your own stock picks (the highest expected value investment will change from moment to moment), and the fact that stock prices are not independent means a well-chosen larger subset of stocks will have higher expected value than a poorly-chosen smaller subset of stocks.
To reword that last sentence (and explain what I mean by well-chosen and poorly chosen): if I sort stocks by expected return over the next month and pick the top five, my expected value is worse than or the same as if I also model the effect stock prices have on other stocks, and then pick the set of five stocks whose expected return over the next month is highest, even though I have access to the same set of stocks.
That is to say, the EV of a single stock being highest is due to the rudimentary nature of that EV. You can improve the EV without discarding that method of analysis, and without touching on utility concerns (where risk of ruin comes into play in a big way).
I agree with you that irreversibility should raise giant red flags and suggest that an EU (or however you want to abbreviate expected utility) calculation is a better choice than an EV calculation, and plans which are reversible significantly decrease the risk of ruin. But I think Bella's overall risk of ruin decreased with the transition to a vampire (and then massively increased with the transition to a revolutionary), and she had good reason to expect that would be the case.
That is interesting to think about, though, the optimal way to manage a transition like that- hmm.
Ooh, good point. Objection withdrawn.
I think this is the thing that bothers me most about Bella's plan. It's plot-induced stupidity (but I don't blame Alicorn for it, since Meyer came up with Aro's power). If Bella vocalized or wrote down her plan, even once, I find it hard to believe she wouldn't have subconsciously examined its assumptions and been struck by its idiocy. Maybe that benefit is particular to me- I find the moment I try to explain my thoughts to someone, the holes become readily visible in a way they wouldn't be if I just examined them myself- but I imagine many people experience that.
If Edward weren't lovestruck (and/or optimistic), he might have warned Bella "look, I trust you, but just in case you're planning to make Aro, the guy we've been talking about, unhappy in any way, he has the experience and the history and the malice necessary to ruin all of our lives. Don't mess with Aro."
If Alice weren't blocked by the La Push shapeshifters, then she might have noticed horrible events on the horizon when Bella decides to activate the werewolves. "Bella, is there a reason I suddenly can't envision myself?" Not sure about the future-blocking and the temporal range of Alice's visions, but it seems likely she would note blankness spreading from Bella to everyone and say "hey, Bella, what's going on?"
It seems likely, from the way it works in canon at least, that Alice would be able to figure out something horrible is going to happen- she sees Bella jump off a cliff (and doesn't see Jacob catching Bella). Similarly, she might see Bella burning in a pit (but not Leah hunting Bella), but the similarities there are somewhat strained.
(Also, sudden thought: what if the "this one" they killed was Alice? Seems tremendously unlikely- Edward is the only one the follow-up statement makes sense for- but isn't contradicted by any evidence so far.)
Upvoted for the phrase "plot-induced stupidity".
Useful concept. On analysis, I find that a lot of my own stupidity occurs because, if I had thought it out a bit more, my more rational choices would spoil the dramatic narrative that I construct by behaving more intuitively and less rationally.
Plot Induced Stupidity is a trope.
Dooohhh!
Does that mean I should take back my upvote? But it seemed so right to make a big deal of how cool the phrase was.
It also makes sense for Irina. She would be dead set on eradicating the very useful new servants of the Volturi, a sufficient reason to kill her. I haven't read the Twilight books but I think that in canon they kill her for wasting their time.
I was under the impression it was for the more serious offense of bearing false witness, but really, those are just different ways to spin the same thing.
I'm also fairly sure Irina was the one burned above the pit. Alicorn provided many hints that Edward may still be alive: he is never mentioned after Bella is shredded by the wolves; Bella can find none of his jewellery, in the ashes or anywhere else; Bella's widowed depression is by comparison far from as extreme as Jasper's, Marcus' or even Irina's.
He only had the one ring.
This is not to be taken as evidence for Edward's survival. Vampires do not have mate-sensing ESP above and beyond their normal ability to detect the world around them.
The end of the latest chapter manages to be even bleaker than the one before it.
I'm officially scared now.
I agree. I didn't expect that it would get that deprressing when Alicorn wrote we might not read the sequel because of our deep hatred for her.
It's even more tormenting that she leaves hints that usually in fiction would mean that Edward isn't dead (not directly mentioning the name during the burning scene and the missing ring).
I don't think that will happen in this story.
A minor nitpick/question:
In what is currently chapter 12, tricks, the eyesight of Vampires was established (being able to read very tiny handwriting from across a baseball field). I imagine that to be about as visible as Jasper's scars, which are described in chapter 28 as unobtrusive, faintly raised crescents to human sight.
So what's up there? Why does Bella have to get closer to see these scars?
Or am I just drastically overestimating the size of the clearing "Tricks" takes place in (Standard Baseball field is about 300 feet long)?
Bella can see Jasper's scars (and other identifying features) from quite a long way away. She can see his eye color from an even longer way away. Exact distances are irrelevant; relative distance is all it takes to make it work.
Is the ratio of visual-acuity-to-movement-speed among vampires higher or lower than humans? That is, assuming average vampires and average humans, is the time to cross the distance across which you can positively identify someone about the same? (To put it another way, when Bella identifies Jasper, does she have a better or worse chance to escape than if a human saw another human who they wish to run away from?)
The limiting factors in human chases (losing the person, getting tired, giving up) don't apply here, so all that matters is that Jasper is faster than Bella.
Would someone be so kind as to message me what this apparent 'twist' is? I don't remember much as far back as chapter 25 and can't think of anything in particular that would be required by that circumstance that would make me overwhelmed with awe, hint or no hint. (And if spoilers were good enough for Shakespeare's prologue's then they are good enough for me!)
It's in chapter 55 (according to the current chapter scheme), not in or near 25.
Ahh, now that makes sense. I think. Kinda. I'm still kind of hope someone sends me a message with a blatant spoiler so I can see if I guessed right!
The recent chapters are dark. Love it.
That's one way to keep things balanced. Give Bella a new power (minor physical shield and flame retardation) but take away her lover and best friend (incidentally the two most powerful witches she has at her disposal). Oh, and while you're at it have the enemy recruit her greatest brute-force allies to their side. Maybe have her brother in law try to kill her. Perhaps a good way to set up a "rationalists don't always win!" moral. :)
I wonder if Bella may not be able to make use of Jasper. She should have a decent chance to defeat him in combat. She should be slightly stronger than him (residual newborn strength vs carnivore) while a whole heap more strategically competent. Apart from being somewhat more dominated by bloodlust he is also barely sane and his combat advantage from witchcraft is missing. Their current injuries are comparable (torn off arm vs 'left his hand back there somewhere').
Assuming she can tear him apart she could possibly send him against the Volturi. Talk to his disembodied head and remind him that he must hate the Volturi almost as much as he hates her and that killing all of them may be as pleasurable as killing just one of her. That and remind him that he'll never be able to find her anyway.
Leave his body in a great vat of fresh blood, with his neck attached remotely to his head via strained elastic. Have his head suspended above the vat ready to be released by a call from a mobile phone. Leave him in Italy. Leave a vest loaded up with a (literal) ton of explosives, napalm and an 'on release' trigger. And a map saying 'you are here' and 'them'.
I wouldn't risk it myself. There is a chance that he will just tell them Bella is alive. He seems stupid enough to do something that will mostly hurt the rest of his adoptive family and not Bella at all.
If I actually was in Bella's shoes I'd probably just kill Jasper. Stop pretending I'm a boy scout earning pocket money and start stealing cash. Like whole ATMs, that sort of thing. Then I'd move to Italy and start preparing to kill the Volturi. Rigging all the surrounding area with explosives, creating walls of fire. Firebombs of a suitable weight and with suitable payloads that I could lob them inside said ring of fire. That sort of thing. Witchcraft is overrated. :)
Should I read Luminosity if I disliked Twilight? Does it matter why I dislike Twilight? Can I read it if I never finish Twilight?
(I tried reading Twilight this week. Got halfway through it. The writing style is very workmanlike - good at describing the surroundings, and just enough other important details to move quickly from point A to point B in the plot. Descriptions of Edward are limited to monotonous repetitions of "perfect" and "beautiful", and descriptions of Bella are absent. None of the dialogue is clever. All the boys fall for Bella, who is not interesting; and her reaction (only wants what she can't have) is repellent. The central love story is unconvincing, but is a little interesting because Edward is unpredictable. So far, it is an efficient vehicle for romance-novel cliches. I may finish it, but will feel guilty if I do.)
I'm told that Bella's heart is basically a separate character, as it's forever obtruding into the narrative with its pounding, racing, throbbing, etc.
... I'm pretty sure she got over that eventually. ;)
Maybe.
Yes. If you hated the vampires, don't read Luminosity. If you hated the writing, read Luminosity. If you hated the supporting cast, don't read Luminosity. If you hated the protagonist, read Luminosity.
Yes. You can also read it if you never started Twilight.
What? That sounds odd.
I'm going to guess that it's because Bella's actions in Twilight are sometimes frustratingly illogical, and that Alicorn remedies this. (Though illogical isn't really the right word - my problem with Bella is more that she has no direction, no goals; if not for Edward, what would she ever do?)
But I don't know how she's going to make Edward and a rational Bella stay together. Seems like it would make for a short story. "He's a distant, socially-reclusive vampire who says he's dangerous and bad for me? Okay. Next!"
(I'm afraid I'm on Team Jacob. Please don't tell anyone. I'll lose my guy card.)
That's what I originally thought. But closely reading Midnight Sun gave me the material to faithfully render Edward, while changing enough as a direct consequence of Bella's revised personality that her choosing him wasn't insane. (Or at least I think I've managed that.)
Yes, there is something to be said for having a sexy super-powerful immortal who is totally whipped. I don't think anyone could be called insane for considering that somewhat appealing.
The protagonist's character is the point of divergence for the fic; I substantially change her personality and voice.
I think one could say the same for MoR, but it would sound wrong. I read MoR because I like HP and because it contains LW material.
Reading a fanfic because I hate the protagonist sounds like he/she is about to get tortured. I guess what was meant is: 'if the personality of the main character kept you from enjoying the book, do not worry - it has been improved'.
Oh, that too. But I'm writing it, so that should go without saying, I hope.
Lrnu, ohg jr unq orra ubcvat sbe cflpubybtvpny gbegher, abg qvfzrzorezrag.
There's some of both.
There is a thought. I wonder if anyone has written a Merlin fanfic in which the protagonist gets tortured then moves on to focus on Morganna. Preferably with one of her assassination attempts being a success.
I identify a story with its protagonist. But there are also stories where the main guy is not supposed to be liked. (If that does not work you get the trope of misaimed fanbase)
A twilight fic for haters could show the real world consequences of whatever Bella does in the books. But i would guess that someone who hates the books just does not read any more of it. Which is reasonable.
I've sometimes read romance novels, more a function of my reading appetite at the time, plus no books remained in the house except those, I've also read a couple of -video-game stories, including some vampire ones to be relevant for your example, I agree that they have mildly interesting twists, enough for guilt pleasure level.
I can't put a name to it, but it doesn't require such a leap to see the relation between reading things like tvtropes and then to an extent Twilight? on that note, what do you read for fiction generally?
Is the Chapter 57 that's up now the official ending?
Yes, but there will be a sequel. The first chapter of the sequel will go up on Monday, November 8, and update on the same schedule that Book One did.
Well, with the story over, I've just got to say - I'm massively impressed.
It actually encouraged me to read your sequence(far more than MoR) simply because of how insanely productive you were. Eliezer has an exceptional update schedule, but you're like a machine. Post-singularity.
What surprised me the most was, perhaps, that the story forced me to take sparkly vampires seriously. Previously, I had an instinctive /facepalm reaction to them, whereas now I've got to admit, that a more skilled writer than Meyer can certainly make it work.
All in all, there's only two things left to say: Thumbs Up and I Need My Luminosity Fix Plx!!!111oneoenoe
Your enthusiasm is heartening. The sequel, Radiance, will start updating Nov. 8, and I plan to stick to the MWF updates with 4k+ words/chapter.
Seconded.
I really liked this:
The sequel to Luminosity has begun. Chapter one on my site; on ff.net.
Cool. Do we discuss Radiance here, or will it get its own thread?
I don't have a strong opinion. People other than me have been making the discussion threads for it anyway.
Well, my comment compares Luminosity with Radiance, so I'll make it here.
I really like the contrast between Bella and Elspeth. Bella is skilled at knowing herself and has the special power of keeping others from knowing things about her. Her tragedy was heightened by the fact that she had kept her actions secret from her family - hence many of them felt betrayed.
Elspeth on the other hand has the power of letting other people know her. She is skilled at communicating, and presumably particularly skilled at communicating her feelings. In contrast to her mother, she simply cannot easily get away with lying.
I'm looking forward to any lessons that Elspeth (or Alicorn) might present on achieving "radiance" as a piece of instrumental rationality. But I am even more interested in seeing how Elspeth makes use of her radiance to get things done with the assistance of friends and acquaintances in a way that Bella could never have gotten things done by herself, even with vampire superpowers.
Two person game theory provides examples in which the ability to conceal information is beneficial to the agent, as well as cases where being trusted not to be hiding anything is just as beneficial. Opacity vs transparency. The thing is, as the number of players in the game increases from 2 up to dozens, the personal characteristic of transparency becomes more and more valuable, and the characteristic of opacity becomes more and more of a liability. Or at least that is my understanding. It is hard to acquire allies when nobody can really trust you.
Based on the first chapter, Elspeth seems to be someone I would like. Bella, on the other hand, struck me as someone I could respect. Elspeth is 5 1/2 now and Harry is finally out of Azkaban. I'm psyched!
The sequel's off to a great start! You might want to post a notification that Radiance exists (or its first chapter) at the end of Luminosity on fanfiction.net, so that people who subscribed to new chapter notifications there will see it.
Posting chapters that don't contain story content is not allowed on ff.net, and no one will get an alert if I merely modify the existing last chapter.
Is there a rule against duplication? You could post the first chapter of Radiance as an extra chapter at the end of Luminosity, with a note and a link to the rest of it.
Unique stories are supposed to appear in only one place (and no links in stories; the site eats them). I'm not sure if that applies to "teaser" chapters of sequels, but I did announce Radiance in advance, so hopefully people interested in it will know to look.
If you modify the end of Luminosity to mention the sequel is available, then post a new blank chapter to Luminosity, then delete that blank chapter... you haven't broken the rules (or at least, nobody is going to notice that you broke the rules), people still get the notification, and the modification to mention the sequel gets noticed.
Tried this, but I'm not sure if the alert will go out for a chapter I deleted immediately. Somebody signed up for the alerts please let me know.
Well, unless they can see the future, they couldn't have known you were going to delete it before you did :P. If there is some delay baked in, and it cares about whether the chapter is still there, all it takes is a little experimentation (or data-gathering on how long it takes to get an alert from when the chapter is posted) to find the length of time you need to leave it up for. That said, I am unfortunately not signed up for the alerts, so I can't confirm for you whether it worked.
I did get an alert for Chapter 58 (nonexistent by the time I followed the link). Did you put a mention of Radiance in the FF copy of Chapter 57? I don't see it there (maybe a caching issue).
More importantly (I think), I got an alert for "[FF New Story] Twilight: Radiance, by Alicorn24" yesterday. Edit: I realized that this is because I have an author alert for you, and the problem you're trying to solve is notifying people who have a story alert for Luminosity.
By the way, though I'm signed up for the fanfiction.net alerts, I'm following your recommendation to read the story at http://luminous.elcenia.com/.
No, I didn't edit chapter 57. The problem is that I can't directly edit an existing chapter: I'd have to upload a new document, edit that, and replace the chapter with it. But since I re-did the chapter numbering, I don't have the content that was 57 in its own file anymore. As with every other deficiency of the ff.net version, it's just too annoying to fix.
There's a thread about Luminosity on TV Tropes, and one person had a bundle of questions that I answered there; crossposting here in case anyone's interested.
Unspecified in canon; in Luminosity, no, everybody winds up mated to someone of approximately the correct "type" for non-magical attraction.
Again, unspecified in canon. My ruling: If you have a person A and a person B, and they are vampire mates (or one is a vampire mated to the other, a human), then A is attracted to B's whatever-mishmash-of-sex-and-gender-characteristics and vice-versa. Once the actual magical bond kicks in (i.e. once they meet), then even departures from this mold will not affect it. For instance, a vampire who is attracted to female personalities but not female bodies would have to meet a MTF transgendered mate before significant biological intervention took place, but if they met first and then interventions happened, this would not bother the vampire.
I don't have a way to confirm the hypothesis in the story (exactly how would anyone verify what the imrprinting is for?), but yes, that is what it's Officially For. Imprinting can override native homosexuality (in fact, there is a character for whom this happened; I'll go into that a bit in Radiance). It would not "override" transgenderedness in any meaningful sense (wouldn't give the physically male, mentally girly wolf a different, masculine personality), but it could make her attracted to (a) woman if she weren't already. Werewolf super-healing and wonky body chemistry would make any attempts to physically transition intractable before quitting one's wolf. Quitting the wolf doesn't end the imprint, and neither would hormones/surgery/whatever; once it's there, it's there.
Once the imprint is there, it's there. Imprinting can override native asexuality like it can override native homosexuality. A werewolf born infertile would not imprint; one that was sterilized later would keep an existing imprint if there was one but not make a new one if there wasn't.
Unspecified in canon; I rule yes and yes, although it'd be a difficult sort of relationship.
Yes, but it'll traumatize the wolf rather a lot.
In case anyone's wondering, I find this entirely plausible. (I can't speak for any other asexuals, though.)
I wish this sequel had long phase where things just flow peacefully. First chapter was fun, but I fear that things are gonna get messy after that sort ending.
Read chapter 2.
Oh dear.
And chapter 3. Talk about messy.
I have some thoughts on chapter 2 of Radiance. It's very interesting that Jacob's pack has a former 'kept' wolf. He should have a lot of information on the Volturi and the 'kept' packs. It's unfortunately also quite probable that he should know whether Edward was actually killed or not, and since Cody said Elspeth's parents were both killed it's safe to assume Brady either somehow doesn't have any information on that or that Edward really was killed.
I guess we'll also see if Elspeth is Jacob's imprint next chapter. Personally I'd like it if her mate was female.
I suppose it doesn't matter too much given that vampires and, I believe, female half vampires are infertile but surely there is scope for one of the luminosity specific romances to be heterosexual. The Gianna match is going to be hard to top in cuteness after all.
Come to think of it what I would like to see is a mystically enhanced but non-monogomous relationship. As a hybrid herself Elspeth is a perfect candidate for being in both forms of Twilight's magical codependency. A 'pair' bond with a vampire and an imprinted wolf. Could be fun. Could even allow for some novel applications and extensions of Elespeth's power.
Given the fic's interpretation of what imprinting is for, Jacob's imprinting is in fact proof positive that Elspeth (at least) can have (wolf!) children (at least with him).
That is good to know. Was it just full vampire females who were infertile?
What was it that distinguished male and female hybrids (apart from the obvious!). Something to do with venom?
Yeah, it's just vampire women who are infertile. In the available set of (six) half-vampires, males are venomous and females are not.
Since venom seems to play a significant role in the vampire healing does that give the males an advantage when it comes to regeneration? Or do the females have suitable internal reserves of a relevant nature?
Male half-vampires have venom in their mouths, but not throughout their systems like vampires do (half-vampires have blood and heartbeats and stuff). It doesn't play a role in their healing, and so they are not at an advantage relative to female half-vampires. Hybrids do heal super-fast, but this is more like werewolf fast healing (tied in with their fast metabolisms).
Were half vampires in the wolf imprinting mechanism's training data?
Doesn't matter. It's magical.
Ah, a magical classifier for a magical category. ;)
I'm starting the sequel, and mostly wanted to say thank-you to Alicorn for writing this: I think Radiance has the potential to be even more interesting than Luminosity, mostly because it's almost entirely original. Also, Elspeth is really very likable, which is very important for this story to "work."
I would echo the comments of the reader who wrote earlier that the story seems to lack much in the way of sensory description. Since we're seeing through Elspeth's eyes, I wish we got a lot more of how things look, feel, taste, sound to her. For instance, I was wondering through the end of Chapter 2 and most of Chapter 3 whether Elspeth was attracted to Cody. Up until she kissed him, I had no idea--and for a character whose superpower is "making herself clear," that's being pretty opaque. It's mostly because the only physical description we got of him was that he's Native American and wearing a ponytail. Nothing about whether his features were blunt or keen, his eyes lively or soft or guarded, his build broad or skinny, his hands strong or delicate -- none of the things, in summary, that girls tend to notice about boys when they're interested.
Just as another example, I don't have a picture in my mind of the werewolf camp AT ALL. We're told there are "tents" but are we talking about individual-type camping tents, or big military tents, or what? How are they handling trash--is there a big midden heap nearby? Are they burying their waste? What about recreation & social space--do they have sporting or sparring areas? Are the tents organized around a central campfire or other social space? If this is a semi-permanent enclave, knowing how the wolves are organizing the basic requirements of communal living can tell us a lot about them and their organization, and this is the kind of info that we can get a lot of just by really seeing through Elspeth's eyes as she glances around.
Again, though, the story is really enjoyable so far. The sensory descriptions would just help it be more immersive (and I think they'd be appropriate given the nature of Elspeth's powers).
Just wanted to note that Chapter 4 gave me more of the description I'd been missing--I have a better image of Cody now. I also really liked Cody's run-down of the pack dynamics because I'd been thinking that social tensions could get completely insane in a situation like the one Jacob's pack is in. Elspeth's concerns about kidnapping seemed perfectly reasonable to me too.
It also seemed "realistic" given the situation and the character that Elspeth couldn't keep her mom's secret, though I'm sure Bella wouldn't be pleased to know it.
Ok, I know I'm late to the party, but I feel the need to comment about the Norway chapters. First a minor nitpick: You would not need to learn Norwegian to interact with people working in an international airport, nor indeed with people working on a remote farm in the uplands. (Although it is, of course, courteous to do so.)
Second point: Wolves? In the vicinity of Bergen? Ah... no. Not at all. Norway is not very densely settled by European standards, but come on; it's not the Canadian outback. There are something like 150 wolves in the whole of Scandinavia, mainly around the Swedish border and up north. The Norwegian wolf population is about 20-30 individuals and they're all in the eastern part of the country. And what's more, it's an endangered species. Where does Bella get off killing one?
I share your sentiment. I would go as far as to say that I would respect her more had she opted to eat a human by preference. Not that it would be necessary. For crying out loud, eat someone's pet cat.
Were I myself a part of Luminosiverse I would, it would seem, look down upon Bella with the same sense of moral superiority that she has for 'carnivores'. I wouldn't go as far as fighting her over it - her threat to worthwhile novelty in the environment is still trivial compared to humanity and she would have at least some usefulness in achieving other worthwhile goals. It also isn't like she has a fundamentally unacceptable overall goals. Just messed up priorities when it comes to sorting between lesser evils.
Are you actually saying that according to your values the life of a sapient human is worth less then the life of an endangered wolf?
My values, transposed into the position of a vampire in Luminosiverse, yes. I would be a predator, choosing among prey of two species that are not my own. There isn't anything magical about humanity and there is real value in maintaining a whole species. Particularly something as awesome as wolves. More so in a universe in which the species has magical significance.
As I mentioned, I'd eat someone's pet cat instead. But if it came down to a pure choice between eating wolves to extinction or eating a human then vampire wedrifid would eat a human.
Ultimately, if you bite the bullet on "Shut up and Multiply" then it turns out that you have to Shut up and Divide as well. A single human just isn't worth six billion times as much as the wolf species. In Bella's case she isn't doing a whole species worth of damage in one feed (which is, of course, hard to imagine) so the multiplicative factor isn't quite so large. But even so, her choice isn't a good one. Particularly given the ridiculous number of alternatives she had available.
Bella also can't be expected to Shut up and Multiply. If she follows in the author's footsteps she does not even implement consequentialism. But Bella's reasons for behaving unethically are not important.
Yes there is. Humans are sapient.
BTW, what do you find so magical about maintaining a whole species?
I almost commented on that the first time. It struck me as a red herring. Sapience is not even a universal feature of humanity. There are animals that I have known who are 'possessing of more wisdom and discernment' than the least among the humans I have known. Sapience is not the greatest distinguishing feature of humanity and I seriously doubt that you value humans in proportion to their degree of 'sapience' in practice.
I like wolves. I like novelty. No other reason is needed.
Having been a human seems to be a strong argument in favour of unfairly privileging them over other species, even endangered.
Out of curiousity, could you give some examples and (ideally highly detailed) evidence? I'm curious to know, particularly how you managed to measure it.
Wait, why should your values change just because you're suddenly immortal? Or is it because of the magical value of wolves in the luminosiverse? This doesn't make sense.
Although I don't, my best guess is that he puts a value on biodiversity.
You don't put any value on biodiversity? As in, if you had the choice of destroying all biodiversity in the world that isn't directly necessary to human survival for benefit to you of one cent you would take it? That is cold.
I think his values change because he changed from being a human into being a vampire: by many measures of species, vampires are a separate species from humans.
Immortality is not the only change.
That plays somewhat of a part.
Sense? What is this 'sense' and how does it relate to human values? :P
I didn't think any change would be enough. Isn't morality subjunctively objective? What doesn't make sense is that you look like you're saying wedrifid_vampire's values are good according to wedrifid_now's values. If I were expecting to be "turned" I would do everything I can to maintain my current values after the event, because to do otherwise would be against my current values.
And my current values say that if it's a human or an endangered wolf, I'd save the human.
That doesn't preclude self reference. (sp. subjectively)
Does this apply in the extreme case? That is, species vs individual?
If I had a single use switch that could be used to either save the wolf species or save an individual human I'd flick it to 'wolf species'. The only reason I would even consider the other option is because humans lose their grip on perspective when it comes to morality - it is sometimes necessary to signal to them.
Unless you can provide an objective reason why your values should prefer eating the wolf, I will assume it's because you have a rule saying that you should treat members of your own species specially.
Once you become a vampire, the extensional interpretation of this rule changes. It now says that you should treat vampires specially.
I place value on sapience/sentience/self-awareness whatever you want to call it.
It may be worth pointing out that it is only the Scandinavian wolf population that is endangered, not the species as a whole; there's a lot of wolves in Russia. But still, given that the declared policy of the Norwegian state and, presumably, people (disregarding the dang farmers, who ought to get with the gains-from-specialisation program already and stop trying to farm in subarctic conditions) is that we want to preserve a wolf population, it's rather rude, as well as illegal, for a guest in the country to eat one. Not to mention unrealistic, in that finding a wolf anywhere near a fjord is really quite unlikely.
If it came to a choice between a wolf and a human, I would definitely eat the wolf; but that's not the choice Bella faces. Let her find a moose.
On another subject, I'm not quite sure about the ecological impact of 'vegetarian' vampires. They are clearly apex predators, and they are pure carnivores. There are not that many moose in any given area, much less killer whales; you would think they'd hunt out the local populations pretty quickly, and someone would notice. I suppose they can eat rabbits and lemmings, which nobody would miss, but if Bella can drain the blood of a killer whale in one sitting (!), how many rabbits does she need in a day? Something is weird about the energy flows in the Luminosiverse.
I apologize for the imaginary depredation of endangered species. I just googled "Norwegian wildlife" and picked something. It became a minor conversation topic later so I don't want to edit it out. In fairness, Bella has no reason to know the conservation status of the Scandinavian population of any megafauna, and Edward is trying desperately at that point to get her to eat and knows carnivores to be more appealing than herbivores, so in the (perhaps wildly unlikely) event that he smelled a wolf near a fjord, he would encourage her to eat it and she'd have no reason to reject it because it has few friends.
Good point.
It has vampires that look 'graceful' while at the same time accelerating at inhuman rates despite near-human mass. Vampires have vulnerabilities to other vampires and to wolves yet resistance to other physical attacks that is in no way proportionate with respect to physics. Yes, it's best just to consider the energy flows 'magic' and leave it that.
Up to Radiance, Chapter 4:
Did anyone else think "oxytocin!" when they read this? :-)
...
I'm trying to imagine what to expect when the two "werewolf chromosomes" are sequenced and this helps clarify those expectations a bit. The really crazy part about the chromosomes is that is seems likely that the "compatibilism genes" seem to be woven into a regulatory structure, hooking some "as-yet-uncharacterized magical physics" to "well studied biophysical systems" in ways that are obviously complex adaptations and substantially implemented in the genes themselves.
In MoR the in-story working compatibilist hypothesis is that there is a single compatibilism gene that is blindly pattern matched by a very complex magical system, which gives organisms with two copies of the compatibilism gene privileged access to a magical interface of some sort. All the regulatory elements of the magical system in MoR are, by hypothesis, fixed in some magical medium that is outside of the "atoms in motion" mechanisms that modern science is making intelligible. Casting spells accesses the interfaces. Learning the interface may ultimately be the only way it is possible to gain information about the magical medium. Building a spell casting robot without using DNA may simply be impossible.
With the vampire and wolf chromosomes (and witch genes?), there's a distinct possibility that there are things like "mind sensing proteins", "atemporallly sensitive proteins", "telekinesis proteins", "magical neurotransmitters", "clairvoyance organs", or something with physical structure and magical function that interacts by simple physical means with simple physical systems. If a werewolf chromosome was sequenced, and bacteria were used to grow werewolf proteins, I have no idea what precisely to expect, but it seems at leat 50% likely that however things turned out to work, the mechanisms could be learned and re-used so that engineers could eventually create designer proteins/organs/whatever that were more magical than existing magical proteins/organs/whatever and these could be integrated into biomechaincal(?) systems to create "supermagical tools".
Or not depending on what the microbiologists discover :-P
And then in the meantime the existence of all this complexity sort of demands an explanation as to the source. How could such chromosomes evolve? Are they artificial chromosomes? Maybe there is a whole new hidden species ("science gnomes"?) that create the artificial chromosomes which are still hidden or extinct? Or maybe theism is the only intellectually honest answer? Maybe an entity (a god/demon/ghost/author/whatever) instantiated in a purely magical medium gained access to the world by calling complex physical structure into existence ab initio, and the compatibilist mechanisms are complex because it didn't occur to the entity to produce something other than chromosomes?
Being honest and genre-aware, my sense is that the author of twilight just said "chromosomes" because she thinks of chromosomes as semi-magical entities anyway, so mentioning chromosomes just seemed to add magical plausibility for similarly minded readers rather than raising a thorny nest of scientific and philosophical issues for the smaller group of people who intuitively grok materialistic reasoning.
Hints like the oxytocin thing keep reminding me that there's a lot of physics and a lot of open questions left to be worked out in this universe!
It would be neat if Elspeth is forced to work out more rationality than her mother had, with her mother serving as inspiration and warning, and then Elspeth might stumble into some of this. This site probably has a lot of material that could be borrowed to show a plausible rationalist origin story if that's where the story is headed :-)
I'm in the market for a second beta reader for the fic. [EDIT: I have found one, but I don't object to acquiring a greater number if someone else finds the prospect appealing.] Job description:
Be on an IM client a lot (bonus points if you keep different hours from the beta I already have)
Receive pastes of drafts of Radiance sections as I write them (in raw HTML)
Listen to me hammer out future plot details (including those which will actually come to fruition and therefore constitute spoilers)
Be discreet about any fic contents or information that I haven't published yet (for some unfathomable reason, there exist people who don't like spoilers, and I don't want them harmed, so I prefer to handle spoilery inquiries personally and in private)
Supply (via aforementioned IM client) feedback on the fic pastes and outline, in the form of comments, questions, attempts to point out plot holes, gentle critique of prose, silly jokes, &c. (Key here isn't making the fic better; I can mostly handle the quality to my satisfaction. Quantity is trickier and requires that I feel like my writing is getting attention, which is what the beta and this feedback is for.)
Interested parties can PM me or find my contact info on the fic website's About page.
Glad to see Luminosity continuing on (the quite insanely productive) schedule.
Speaking of insane, Pera is quite a munchkin, but yeah, wouldn't have much of a resistance anymore without something like her what with the shitstorm that was the end of episode one, ergo not much of a story.
Sounds like they should try hiding stuff overlapped with other stuff. I mean, sure, it could have explosive consequences, but hey, nothing too funny happens when it comes to interaction with the displaced air, so it's probably not too dangerous. And if it's dangerous only to the subject, it'd be insanely good for picking out Volturi.
...so I doubt that, would suspect some sort of compelentary displacement going on automatically as a safety feature - it'd be too easy otherwise. Though, could one embed a vamp into a hidden steel block? If the whole block would shift back, what would happen with a hidden pile of earth? One would suspect that for storytelling reasons it'd just fail if there was lots of solids overlapping.
Which still leaves one with the possibility to create steel enclosures where a vamp fits in, place them strategically and/or lure the subject in and tap them on the back. Should be able to keep one restrained long enough for a good flamethrower job, yes?
'course, the opposition, if in group, has the option for immediate indirect attacks covering the area, but seems to me like a relatively solid, if limited, offensive regardless.
I say it's insane not to be a munchkin! :)
She seemed like just about the minimum entity I could postulate and still have Jacob's pack running around as they were.
I was surprised that lighting trees on fire would trump her ability: it suggests to me that the Volturi ought to try explosives instead of (comparatively) slow forest fires. Some sort of napalm wall?
That doesn't sound too discreet. I suspect the Volturi think humans might notice if they started bombing the forest with napalm. And hiding the vampire world from humans is the main reason the Volturi exist (or why they claim to, anyway).
A forest fire's a forest fire: I guess napalm is out, but enough accelerants to catch the wolves off-guard could be plausibly covered up.
Hiding knowledge of the existence of the vampire world, yes.
Hiding knowledge of any activity performed by vampires, no.
Widespread awareness that someone bombed a forest with napalm ought be of no more concern than widespread awareness that someone blew up the World Trade Center. As long as nobody figures out who actually did it or why, the Volturi are fine.
That being said, the only way the Volturi make any sense to me at all is if they have a thousand-year-plan for world domination and don't want to be rushed. And if I assume that level of conservatism, it's not unreasonable that they only exert enough force to keep everyone in hiding, but not enough to actually wipe out the rebels.
Very clever! The minimum entity powerful enough to somewhat hide Jacob's pack; also the minimum entity powerful enough to draw the Volturi's interest more than their ire. In retrospect, the experience with Alice ought to have taught us that Volturi like to collect witches if at all possible. And the phrase "if at all possible", for a vampire council with probably-infinite patience, stretches over years.
I'm liking Luminosity! I'm even tempted to read Twilight to find out what's different.
Not a big criticism, but I have to say something regarding the passage where Bella hunts a wolf.
Some current animal populations in Washington State:
Far more ethical to hunt a human.
Bella hunts a wolf in Norway, not in Washington State.
Which is still a problem.
I'm not as much concerned with Bella's ethics in a fictional world, as I am with correcting the impression many people in the real world have that predators are common. This wrong impression kills predators.
I met a hunter in New York State in the early 1990s, near Corning, who encountered the first wolf pack seen in the state in maybe 50 years, and immediately shot one of them, because "they kill too many deer". He wasn't making it up. He showed me a photo.
I'm assuming you're joking, but the idea of assigning ethical value based on scarcity still makes me cry.
Not only that, it makes me inclined to assert that I be designated part of the smallest conceivable category that is plausible while also lumping everyone else into groups as general as I can get away with.
I'm a special unique butterfly, leave me alone!
Which leads to the reductio ad absurdum "You're unique, just like everyone else."
The fact that you can make a wrong conclusion from a position, by using bad reasoning, is not an argument against that position.
"Ethical value"?
The ethics here are within Bella's mind, not within the wolf's. The ethical dilemma is that to realize the value of her continue life, she needs to destroy other things of value. The ethical problem is to minimize the value she destroys. And the fact that value depends on scarcity is a fundamental economic principle.
It's a value calculation. Don't confuse things by inventing a new category of "ethical value".
Excellent reply. Upvoted. But there several problems with the position you are staking out. One is your over-the-top claim that it is more ethical to hunt a human. Agreed, the wolf has more value as a carrier of biodiversity, but that is not the only kind of value to be considered.
A second is your acceptance of "scarcity" as the word for the characteristic making the wolf valuable. As if the value arises by the same process as does the value in a rare coin. Supply and demand. No, actually the wolf is valuable as a carrier of information. Killing one of only a handful of wolves probably extinguishes several dozen alleles from the species gene pool and greatly increases the risk that the entire species will be extinguished. At least in Washington State.
And therein lies your third mistake. If you had been quoting wildlife populations in the entire Pacific Northwest, including B.C., then they might mean something. But the last wolf in Washington state has almost no biodiversity value if there are still plenty of wolves in Idaho or in Canada. Conducting a wildlife census based on human political boundaries makes no sense at all.
Yes.
No. You're claiming that Bella should place a higher value on members of scarce species than on members of more common species. But she could instead assign value to other entities based on their intelligence, or in inverse proportion to their tastiness, or by any other standard. Economics doesn't have anything normative to say about ethics.
But the descriptive part of economics definitely pairs up with ethic's normative statements. It seems like if wolves are more valued by others than deer, the statement "destroy as little of what other people value as you can" needs to have an answer of the economic question "how much do other people value my options?" to function properly.
I disagree with PhilGoetz that wolves are valuable due solely to their scarcity- I think that some things, like smallpox or mosquitoes, should be endangered or extinct - but I think it's pretty trivial to put together the argument that killing a wolf for pleasure is much, much more wrong than killing a deer for pleasure.
I think you're confusing things by conflating ethical value and economic value.
Edit: Also, even assuming you want to equate ethical and economic value, a human still has more value since he can create things of value much better then a wolf.
I reversed my vote when I saw the edit. While the conflation point is undeniable the 'can create value' is not especially relevant to Phil's discussion of scarcity and changed my impression of the comment to 'just throw soldiers for the Rah Humans side'.
It is by no means assured that the eaten human from the margin would have created more value than is lost by damaging a hypothetical endangered animal. In fact, someone who particularly values biodiversity the net value that would have been created by the human is almost certainly negative.
Since we're equating ethical value and economic value here, there's a simple way to test this: how much could you get paid to save the human vs. the wolf. Given that this is Norway and not some third world country, the human presumably has a decent amount of money he'd be willing to pay to save his life, not to mention his family and friends and the potential to take out a loan against future earnings. As for the wolf, you might be able to get something out of an animal-lover but not nearly as much as from the human.
Except PhilGoetz is trying to use this argument to justify valuing biodiversity.
I'm not. That's why I said I agree with your pre-edit point.
(Indirectly relevant: I am equating ethical value with personal utility which is something not everyone does.)
My point was that even if we grant PhilGoetz's equation of ethical and economic value, it still doesn't imply what he wants it to.
I think you're confusing things by postulating the existence of two different kinds of values.
If you had two kinds of values, how would you ever make a decision?
I think you're supposing that when I say "value", I mean dollars. I didn't say that.
You use economic principals to justify assigning value to biodiversity when you said "the fact that value depends on scarcity is a fundamental economic principle."
I think the most reasonable interpretation of that sentence is: more me biodiversity/scarcity is an instrumental value and my terminal values are based on economic/market value.
If this is incorrect could you explain what you meant, since the only other explanation I can think of is that it was a flimsy attempt to rationalize your valuing biodiversity.
Value is value. You can't have two separate types of value if you're going to make a decision. You can't say, "I'm going to use economic value for economic decisions, and ethical value for ethical decisions", because decisions don't break down nicely for you into those categories.
Economic value and ethical value need to be merged. And the result will look more like economic value, because economic value is well-studied and quantified, while the main point of the category "ethical value" is to be vague and slippery, so that people can avoid actually getting answers about ethics.
Economic value, a.k.a., market value, is how much something would be worth on the market. Ethical value is my personal utility function.
Data point: I maintain both concepts and yet don't feel confused.
Am I the only one who, having not actually read Twilight, thought that the character of Eleazar was a shoutout to Eliezer?
Before I introduced the (canon) character Eleazar, I actually posted a comment stating that he was canon to forestall exactly this reaction.
Even aside from that it is hard to imagine that a witchcraft talent of deep insight into the abilities of others as something that would fit with an Eliezer shoutout.
Chapter 6.
Oh boy! So let me try crystal-balling: Bella either kills or turns Pera or is stopped before she can do fatal harm or bite. It's also possible Elspeth could suck out her venom should Pera be bit, I guess. Brady is sure to attempt steam-rolling Bella in any scenario, but Jacob should be able to halt that attempt quickly. Even if he can't or won't, Bella is very unlikely to die considering they'd have to be chill with dismembering her and then continuously lighting her on fire, all the while ignoring Elspeth fighting for her mother; something Jacob cannot do.
If Bella is somehow stopped before she can get at Pera, and is thwarted from trying to so again, then everyone except Elspeth will most likely be quite peevish with her. It's also very likely that Pera just so happens to be Bella's yummy singer. Either that or she was extremely hungry, which is also a possibility if she was stupid enough not to feed after reassembling herself. Elspeth also noted that Pera's blood smelled very good. Maybe mother and daughter have similar tastes. I imagine Bella will have some difficulties travelling with the pack should Pera be her singer, though it will do wonders for her self-control should she learn to resist her.
If Bella kills Pera, it is likely that either Bella or Brady will have to die, since Brady won't stop trying to kill her. The pack or what is left of them after this confrontation obviously lose the ability to 'hide' with Pera in this scenario; cue Volturi slaughter and slavery.
If Pera starts turning, and Elspeth either can't or is too late to suck out the venom, then they most likely lose the ability to 'hide' during Pera's transformation due to her not really being in a state to concentrate, and may also find themselves with quite a large contingent of Volturi on their heels during that time. When she wakes up she'll maybe be all kinds of more awesome than she already is, have a sudden desire to chew on all humans present, relationship issues with Brady and be a little peeved with Bella and life in general.
In both above scenarios, they're all very likely to suddenly pop up in a relatively seclusive location in the middle of NYC with a woman screaming her lungs out - or a dead woman, and a ravenous vampire doing her best to devour said woman. I'm going to bet on the latter scenario of Pera being turned vampire because Alicorn has already gone out her way to explain what would happen to a wolf-imprint relationship should the imprint be turned vampire. That and the PeraVamp and BellaVamp combo could be verrrra awesome should Bella actually learn how to use her witchcraft in any other situation than playing dead, and Pera could probably help her with that.
I believe that the traditional way to do this is to tear her limb from limb. And then keep the limbs and stuff separated. Well, that presents us with both a TV Trope and a LessWrong Trope.
Interesting, but I'm getting a little tired of all the mayhem. I mean I'm all in favor of Lois McMaster Bujold's idea of how you create plots in character driven fiction - "You ask yourself 'What is the worst possible thing I could do to these people?' and then you do it." But the worst possible thing you can do to vampires and five and a half year old half-vampires is just not comparable to the worst possible thing you can do to Captain Cordelia Naismith. She escaped with just a few broken bones and the loss of her government job.
Sorry. I expect there to be less mayhem starting around chapter 10. At least for a breather.
First prediction that came to my head: Volturi learned about Elspeth and Bella from Cody and sent some sort of magical impersonator to ambush the pack. But that would require two different powers -- first reading Cody's mind to learn Bella's appearance and then doing the impersonation. So it's Del who's the ambusher. Which also makes sense strategically, because instead of having to take out Pera before getting ripped to shreds, she just has to touch her, get the hell out of there and hide the reinforcements waiting nearby (but well beyond the range of Pera's feeble senses). Or maybe unhide Pera and then kidnap her -- the wolves could be dealt with later. Or, for extra nightmare fuel value, be left forever trapped in the hiding place.
Normally, when reading fiction, I come up with optimistic predictions. This story must radiate some sort of aura of doom.
This would be significantly more awesome than the singer hypothesis, but suddenly jumping on Pera instead of safely approaching and touching her is stupid in that scenario.
YAY!
And now my image of you has been altered to be ever so slightly more like GIR.
*googles, watches a 2-minute video of clips of the character*
...Yeah, I get like that sometimes.
I briefly considered the possibility of this Bella being a Volturi impersonator too, but I didn't delve into that hypothesis as much as the others - probably because I don't really like how the Volturi has all these original characters with awesome gifts. It definitely makes sense to send Del if they have an agent with a gift capable of impersonation though. It would be another great move by the Volturi, even though this situation and the one in La Push more or less fell in their laps, and they just proceeded to do the obvious with what they had. Playing on Cody's loneliness was a smart move though, if that is what they did.
I think I'll be disappointed if your hypothesis turns out to be true. I think the only thing that even slightly speaks against it is that Bella's/Del's eyes turned black when Pera hid her. I don't know if Del would react that way, but Bella certainly would if Pera is her singer. I can't wait for tomorrow's update!
They don't have that many original witches. (Although I did have to make up Corin and Afton's powers because they weren't specified in canon.)
Just ran across this comic strip. Relevance is borderline (see last panel), but I thought I'd share anyways. :)
New chapter (7).
Will you stop ending on cliff-hangers already!
Speculation: The stranger is Pera, turned; Elspeth has been somehow kept unconscious (maybe Alec, or just repeated blows to the head) for the three days required, and Pera's power evolved enough to make Elspeth not recognize her. It's a bit of a stretch. Maybe instead the stranger is just another Volturi witch? I don't think any of the so-far-named ones have had powers that let you do that. It's a bit annoying to keep having these new powerful witches introduced just in time for their powers to be used.
Props for the writing on Elspeth's reactions to the stranger. I did a few double-takes there, wondering if I had missed something.
No :P But I will keep updating on schedule so you don't have to wait forever for each cliffhanger to be resolved (...and immediately replaced).
Note: If anybody shares my love of spoilers, aversion to surprises, and hatred of the itch of not knowing what's next, you can contact me privately with questions and I will actually answer them, if you agree not to independently spread the information.
The character and power have been named before, but one could be forgiven for forgetting them. (Pun intended.)
And that is the great frustration.
Don't get me wrong. It's a great story, and I thank you for writing it.
Would it be too spoilerish for you to point me in the direction of the reference? (Am I correct in assuming that once I saw it I would recognize it? I don't feel like rereading all of Luminosity and Radiance at this time.)
See chapter 21 of (condensed) Luminosity, and chapter 1 of Radiance. I don't know enough about your skill at catching stuff to know if you will catch it.
Thanks for the reply. The only common thread I can see between Luminosity 21 and Radiance 1 is Joham, and I can't see any mention of his power. Maybe I'm just missing it.
It seems you are. Nahuel's eldest sister is mentioned to have witchcraft that diverts notice from herself by becoming uninteresting, so the stranger is probably her. Again I wonder how the Volturi captured her. Jasper said the Volturi had one of Nahuel's sisters with them to block Alice's vision of the attack, so either that was her or they searched for Joham and captured some or all of the sisters. If the eldest sister has been in Volturi possession for over five years, then maybe she recently did something that got her sent to the cells, or she got captured recently and isn't willing to cooperate.
As old as she is, she probably has a pretty good grasp on her witchcraft, so if it's possible then she should be able to escape by herself, if not then perhaps Elsepth can help her. It will be interesting to see what kind of personality you have going for her. In canon I think it's said that Joham has made them think of themselves as goddesses, although that belief may have been stunted by their capture and - I presume, Joham's death.
I read the first chapter of Radiance again and I assume the only reference to the stranger is that Alicorn provides names for Nahuel's sisters for the first time: Allirea, Noemi and Iseul.
Wow. This is so awesome. I've never seen an author offer to do this before.
Chapter 7.
I'm going to assume almost the whole chapter isn't meant to be in cursive font and that you made a typo somewhere there. I'm only going to write a few thoughts I had on the chapter. First off, Bella is hella quick to come up with very possible hypotheses on what the Volturi will do, how and why. I really hope she got away this time too, or at least survived. Now, if I understood this correctly (it was really confusing to be honest), then it seems to me that Elspeth is most likely in a cell with a witch who can make those around her ignore hers and maybe others' presence. Elspeth notices this person but seemingly decides she's of no importance at all, even though she certainly should be. Her mind probably went all over the place trying to ignore the stranger killing Carlo while also trying to figure out what was happening to him. He didn't know what was happening either even though he could most probably plainly see her feasting on his neck.
If the stranger has this witchcraft, then I wonder how the Volturi are keeping her captive, and captured her in the first place. It seems unlikely that they would have someone like Bella who can shield against such mental illusions or attacks. Perhaps the guard can counteract it if he knows she's there and focuses on her all the time from when he opens the door until he closes it. If that's the case, then Elspeth may be able to help her by taking his attention off of her.
I also noticed that it took quite some time for this stranger to attack Carlo; maybe she was 'vegetarian' or a newborn who tries her best to resist. If she's newborn it's quite possible she was captured by the Volturi to be changed, or was in the process of being transformed when captured and then forgotten or assumed to have somehow escaped when her witchcraft got a power boost with her change. This may explain why they put Elspeth in a cell with a vampire, but they may also just not have cared about the safety of their prisoners. If she's newborn maybe she is too confused to escape, and isn't aware of what she can do.
Elspeth also seems unhid, or else the guard, the stranger and Carlo are all hidden (and I don't believe that for a second), so if her hypothesis that Del can't unhide her because she'd copy Elspeth's gift before she can use Pera's, then we must assume the Volturi made Pera unhide her and most likely everyone else who didn't manage to avoid capture. Unless Pera died and her witchcraft was nullified of course.
It will be very interesting to see how Elspeth manages to escape together with this stranger who may be even better at hiding than even Pera. After all, what better way to hide than being able to stare those hunting you in the face only to find them walking past you, continuing the search. I wonder how that would work with Demetri. He'd probably breach whatever the range of her witchcraft is, proceed to ignore her presence and look under every stone in the area, knowing she's there somewhere, then inevitably stumble outside her range and try to figure out what in the hell just happened. Maybe he'd tip-toe in and out and eventually find the answer to if vampire's really can go crazy (not counting Jasper).
The most similar witch I can think of at the moment (it's 04:33 here so I'm rambling) is Renata, only the stranger is more powerful if she can project over an area or other people. From what I've gathered about Renata her witchcraft simply rejects anyone with an intention to harm those under her protection; they still know the target is there, they just can't attack it. The stranger seems to make you think you don't want anything to do with her when under her spell. You don't want to sense her or think about her, and you certainly don't have any intention to interact in any way with her. It's an extremely powerful self-preservation ability that also has the potential to make her very lonely. If Edward really isn't alive, then I demand that this girl become Bella's second mate!
Hmm. That ended up being more than a few thoughts...
EDIT: After reading this, I've decided that 'the stranger' has a nice ring to it. Please please please make her be a newborn with little to no memory of her human life. :)
Fixed.
Yep.
Wouldn't you like to know.
That is not a thing that happens.
I really liked the paragraphs describing "the stranger" -- I thought it was a nifty bit of writing.
I figured out who the stranger is, but I won't spoil it :P
C'mon, at least rot13 it.
If you are really curious and really want to know what's actually going on, you can ask me and I'll answer. (If you just want to know someone else's speculation then I can't help you.)
Most likely she's Nahuel's eldest sister: Allirea, Noemi or Iseul. Alicorn hasn't yet written which one of them is the eldest.
That's their age order.
I thought it might be, but I couldn't be sure without asking you.
Chapter 8.
Surprise! Well, not actually surprise, given the usual dramatic cue of Bella never having found his jewelry in the ashes. Presumably, the vampire they burned there was Irina, who would have caused problems for the Volturi if they seemed to be in the way of not killing the wolves.
So in the future: Edward still has the mate bond to Bella, presumably, because it's stated somewhere (I think) that Chelsea is not powerful enough to harm that. Is Chelsea+Chelsea!Del enough? I somehow doubt it. In that case, if Edward can see Bella, then they will immediately align. So in the long term we probably don't have to worry about the psychologically-traumatised-Edward storyline, or at least he's unlikely to be killing people of it.
How does Chelsea's power work? It is stated that she killed all the relationships that the captive witches had with others; how does this affect their memories? Will Edward realise that Elspeth is his daughter? Will he if she tells him so, or shows him? Will his attachment to Bella spill over onto Elspeth and overcome the indifference-bomb? In any case, it seems to me that the best thing for Elspeth to do right now is (assuming she can get close enough) to immediately show Edward the highlights of Bella and Elspeth's life while he was captive, roughly: "Bella is alive", "I am your daughter", and "Bella wants me alive." This seems likely to get Edward out of any homicidal-vampire mode towards Elspeth, anyway. At that point, they can escape and finish the exposition later.
Not at all. Chelsea doesn't alter memory or even personality, just adjusts how people evaluate other (non-mate, non-imprint) people as important or un-. Chelsea-plus-chelsea!Adelaide are faster and stronger, but the same basic rules apply (no snipping mate or imprint bonds, no creating new relationships without any foundation).
Edward is probably completely indifferent to Elspeth right now, but as you said she simply needs to show him that Bella is alive and that she really wants Elspeth to be alive and well. She shouldn't have to show him this through visualization with her witchcraft; he can read her mind and she can talk with absolute sincerity. If he snaps out of it quick enough, he'll probably recognize the threat of Adelaide and either kill, incapacitate or keep her busy while Elspeth and Allirea flee.
The revelation that the Volturi can keep prisoners and make use of their witchcraft like this begs the question of who they have actually killed; is Alice alive perhaps? I'm not sure Elspeth would have time to recognize her in the pandemonium of the prisoners escape, and with all the potential witchcraft present (one could seemingly turn invisible), there's no telling how someone could help her escape unnoticed. Her witchcraft is very powerful so the Volturi would be interested in keeping her, but then again Jasper claims to have felt her die. She may have been considered too powerful and uncooperative to let live.
I think it's one of the Volturi's most stupid mistakes to have such a large collection of unwilling and vengeful witches in one place - and right in their base of operations, no less. Any enemy with knowledge of this and the capability of penetrating the castle and freeing the prisoners will have successfully detonated a bomb of witchcraft on them, and it's possible they're made more pliable by having almost all of their relationships wiped out, so it shouldn't be hard to persuade them to join a rebel army.
On a last note I must say that this story has the most interesting take on 'gifts' -or witchcraft as it's called in this story- of all supernatural Twilight stories I've read. None so far have been ridiculously powerful and they all have limits and counters. Best of all they can be explained and make sense within the Twilight universe. I'd often wondered how it was that Aro could process all the insignificant memories of a being thousand of years old in a mere few moments, and without affecting his own personality. Alicorn's take on that is more reasonable than that he would for example gain an extreme temporary boost in brain-capacity to make sense of all the intake while his gift is active, and this would very likely still affect his personality since he has in essence just experienced everything another individual has.
It's definitely a risk, but it's also a huge power boost for them. Keeping them in the base seems logical to me (they should be under the heaviest possible guard and the closest possible supervision).
Really enjoyed the cliffhanger ending to this chapter.
There's no reason for them to reassemble all of the witches at the same time. It would still be stupid even if the room was full of guards. Having only a single point of failure preventing 16 powerful enemies from waking up in a room with only 2 defenders, plus any invisible enemies that might have been brought in, is the Biggest Ball of Idiot in Minnesota.
They knew Allirea hated Demitri, could turn invisible and could wake the witches just by touching Del. Yes, that would let Del get a sneak attack, but that would only last until she touched one of the other witches, or one of them touched her. Allirea only needed Elspeth because she couldn't rely on Chelsied vampires to cooperate with her plan to kill Demetri.
They don't usually know this. She's usually too inconsequential for them to remember.
I don't know about too powerful in the absolute sense, but I do know that her power would definitely let her escape. She could effectively brute-force a plan to escape by thinking about plans to escape. The cost to test a plan's chance of success is effectively nil for her - given enough time (minutes?) she could have a foolproof escape plan.
Plus, once she's escaped and now opposed to the Volturi, she could set up traps for Demetri and other hunters - traps that are basically guaranteed to work.
Remember that there are lots of people running around who completely blank out Alice's visions.
Yes. And should Alice be alive and out and about to the Volturi's knowledge, then they would probably try to send at least one of these people with every hunting group, to prevent any forewarning visions. I wonder if Alice's visions can't be affected the same as Bella's shield though. If she started believing she should be able to see the half-kinds in her visions would she? - any comments on that Alicorn?
No public comments, no.
Radiance Ch 8.
Experiments should've been performed to make sure Elspeth can carry out plans without remembering why, because Allirea believes it's very difficult and she should be assumed to know better (by both of them), and it's very important for this to work. Instead, Elspeth just "tries hard", and Allirea expects that to work, while it's apparently something that Saeed can perform only "because he has years' worth of experience being punished by Demetri every time he ignores this sort of intention". As I see it, they are both holding idiot ball in that situation, no matter how that actually worked out.
Next, Elspeth needed to "mutter lies", but it takes away some attention to invent new lies constantly, so obviously they should've checked if muttering the same lie over and over works as well.
Allirea doesn't have much riding on the plan. The Volturi can't kill her without permanently alienating Demetri, who they need, and he's the only person on staff she can't hide from. If things go pear-shaped, she just fades and tries something else.
They also can't kill Elspeth if they have any interest in being able to use Jacob.
It doesn't, which Elspeth knows (the relevant feature of the lies is how they affect her power, not Allirea's directly).
That an error has relatively small cost (though don't forget opportunity cost), is no argument for making the error, when it could be just not made. It costs nothing to not make the error, so the costs of consequences of making the error are not relevant, as there is no tradeoff.
Edit: Also, the cost is not small for Elspeth, so this argument I disagree with doesn't even address one of the two idiot balls.
It wasn't obvious that she can reliably feel the effect of lies on her power, and that there is a reliable dependence of efficiency of hiding-into-unimportance on Elspeth's perception of her power. The direct measurement is Allirea's sense of efficiency of hiding, and it's accessible to experiment, so it obviously should be tested (unless both of my questions in the first statement of this paragraph receive negative answers, which I can't see how can be done for the second one without testing).
When Allirea fades someone else, Allirea herself is not affected by this. The test of how effectively Elspeth is hidden is how people other than Allirea react to her. Saeed lets her out of the cell, which constitutes excellent evidence that she can fade well enough to get the job done.
Yes, this tells that changing lies work. This doesn't address the question of efficacy of muttering the same lie.
Also, that "I'm 51, I'm 52, ..." works is indirect evidence that constant lies work as well, and proof-of-concept of how figuring out an efficient low-creativity algorithm can indeed bear fruit.
She noticed that Elspeth "announces her presence" loudly, which is a perception on the same scale.
Yes, but Allirea seems to effect people other than herself. And so if she hides Elspeth to everyone but Allirea, her perception of how "loud" Elspeth is won't change.
Chapter 9.
Heh. So Alice is alive too. The big question here, then, is the durability of Chelsea's influence on the witches. Will going back to Bella/Jasper and living with them as usual eventually reform the relationship bonds in question? It would be very odd if not; it would imply that Chelsea's power will permanently affect the vampire's ability to form an evaluation of the target in question, regardless of future experiences, and that's a bit more of a durable effect than is usual in this fic. If that is true, does Chelsea's power have a time limit?
Also, the wolves are still Chelsea'd to the Volturi. However, at least one imprint is free, and her wolf is quite able to split the pack in pursuit of her; I predict that a major feature of the presumable eventual plan to un-Chelsea the wolves will involve Elspeth speaking to Jacob. For that matter, what happened to the other imprints? If the Volturi have them, then that could torpedo that plan as regards all the imprinted wolves other than Jacob.
How do you quote or make HTML in general in these comments? I've looked around in the FAQ but wasn't able to find out how.
Chelsea was/is working on the imprints too, presumably so that they won't want to leave and ask their respective wolf to take them away or attack the Volturi. Now this was a very sad chapter in my opinion, even though we learned Alice was alive (which I had previously had privately confirmed by Alicorn, so no surprise there for me) and she reunited with Jasper. The effects of Chelsea's witchcraft really hurts. It's much more interesting in this story than canon, where it's barely spoken about but hinted that it isn't all that powerful - at least that's the way I saw it. Maybe that's just because the main characters never had to be subjected to the effects of her power in canon though, and consequently we didn't get an opportunity to witness it and the reactions of the characters.
It's very sad that these characters who used to love Elspeth now see her as little more than a hindrance to getting to their mates as fast and safe as possible. It's possible that will change when they are reunited with their mates and given time, and the situation with Bella won't be as bad as Elspeth makes it out to be just because she suddenly loves her second-most. She does need to grow up and work on her relationship with Jacob whenever that time comes, but first she needs to grow out of her sheltered self who relies entirely on her 'mama'.
I really really want Bella to learn to expand her shield to others. It's possible that just doing that once will erase any lasting witchcraft effects such as Chelsea's, especially since witchcraft are relative to how their owners believe they work in this story, and Bella is a master of getting her mind to do what she wants it to.
If the Cullen's (with considerable help from others) manage to defeat the Volturi and create a new vampire 'government', then I can totally see Elspeth as the radiant public figure who everyone is willing to listen to and easily understand, while Bella is an advisor who rationalises plans and presents them to others on the new government. I figure it unlikely that such a government would be willing to enforce Bella's views on killing humans, though they might be amenable to encourage it or find other non-fatal ways to drink human blood or put effort in finding an equally satisfying substitute. A new government advocating non-violence and freedom after exposing the dirtier deeds of the Volturi could be very successful, especially with leading figures acquiring their positions because of their abilities to fill it, not because they seem themselves as the masters of the universe and demand a ruling position. Of course, there will be many looking to exploit the downfall of the Volturi to gain power, but with the many witches of the original rebellion and any others who might decide to join the new government, they will be very hard to defeat in combat or penetrate with less than sincere intentions.
I truly hope that is where the story is going: the defeat of the Volturi and the formation of a new vampire government. I also hope Alicorn writes about this and doesn't call it quits when the major confrontation is over, because it would be very interesting to read about the creation of the government and the world's reaction to it, and later conclude the story when things have settled somewhat.
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Chelsea changes the attitudes people have towards others. These revised attitudes are as durable as they would be if they'd formed naturally, once Chelsea is no longer touching them up on a regular basis. So, if she's completely destroyed an existing relationship, the participants in that relationship have to start from scratch, as it were.
There is no guarantee that what they build from scratch will resemble what Chelsea destroyed.
Ch 9.
I wonder what a full conversation between Elspeth and Elspeth!Adelaide would look like. Indeed, what would a touch-conversation look like?
Just wanted to comment- I really enjoy how you're portraying Elspeth's lack of experience with making decisions and how she's reacting to it. It's obvious she's been damaged by her parents, but she's reacting maturely. That matureness was somewhat shocking- it's rare that someone is the first person to think that they should grow up- but shocking in a good way. It's hard to show damage instead of just moping, and you're doing a good job of that.
Suspicion (that I hope is incorrect): Oryyn qvq trg xvyyrq guvf gvzr, naq fb Rqjneq naq Ryfcrgu jvyy unir gb fgneg bire jvgubhg Oryyn gb trg ure. Rqjneq, qevira ol eriratr, gnxrf qbja gur Ibyghev, naq nf Tvevngu fhfcrpgf Ryfcrgu orpbzrf n znwbe svther va gur arj tbireazrag.