This is a thread for discussing my luminous!Twilight fic, Luminosity (inferior mirror here), its sequel Radiance (inferior mirror), and related topics.
PDFs, to be updated as the fic updates, are available of Luminosity (other version) and Radiance. (PDFs courtesy of anyareine). Zack M Davis has created a mobi file of Radiance.
Initial discussion of the fic under a Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality thread is here. The first dedicated threads: Part 1, Part 2. See also the luminosity sequence which contains some of the concepts that the Luminosity fic is intended to illustrate. (Disclaimer: in the fic, the needs of the story take precedence over the needs for didactic value where the two are in tension.)
Spoilers are OK to post without ROT-13 for canon, all of Book 1, and Radiance up to the current chapter. Note which chapter (let's all use the numbering on my own webspace, rather than fanfiction.net, for consistency) you're about to spoil in your comment if it's big. People who know extra stuff (my betas and people who have requested specific spoilers) should keep mum about unpublished information they have. If you wish to join the ranks of the betas or the spoiled, contact me individually.
Miscellaneous links: TV Tropes page (I really really like it when new stuff appears there) and thread. Automatic Livejournal feed.
I've been thinking about something for the past few days. One of Bella's ambitions in Luminosity was to reveal the existence of vampires to humankind and offer their version of immortality as a way of preserving life. I would argue that our planet Earth has a limited amount of resources and though vampires require less nutritional intake than humans, it can only support so many before there's a limited amount of species of which to feed from. This holds true even if they feed without killing; Earth is a limited space, even if its lifeforms manage to occupy nearly every crevice and still maintain the necessary resources for survival.
Of course, if humanity--especially turned vampire with the inherent thought-capacity boost--universally put their minds to colonizing other planets and galaxies in a search for resources, then perhaps we will succeed and ensure our species survival for a very long time.
Another possible problem that may arise if vampirism were to be revealed and made available is that all of humanity may want to be made vampire. Even if vampires feed from other species, or feed in a non-fatal way, there will eventually be no humans. This problem can of course be prevented if humans have children before they are made vampire, but then follows the problem of over-population.
If it were me, I would probably do my best to solve vampire issues first. I would ask myself and vampire society how to best ensure our (the vampires) survival and simultaneously be happy and healthy, and to think about this in a rational way. Hopefully it will be concluded that when there is a unity moving towards a goal, the more people that form that unity, the more likely it is that the goal be met. Vampires are made from humans, so making an enemy of them will be inconsistent to meeting that goal.
Once vampire society has reached a unity at that conclusion, I would introduce the same question to human society, and try to make them reach a unity with the same goal as the vampires have, then reveal vampirism and that we want the same thing and provide them with whatever information they want so they can decide whether to cooperate with us or not.
If vampirism should be revealed to the current state of humanity, it would simply be another resource in the game of the monetary economy, where gain and loss is not measured in how healthy and happy our species is, or even individuals.
If it were me, I'd want a clearer explanation of why vampires aren't human before I worried too much about wiping out humanity by spreading vampirism.