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 People who know extra stuff (my betas and people who have requested specific spoilers) should keep mum about unpublished information they have.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.
So it looks as if Demetri is finally going to kick the bucket over the next few chapters? I hope they manage to kill him before he can contact Volterra with the news that there are a whole lot of more vampires in Denali than the traitors have reported.
This chapter further solidified my infatuation with Allirea. I'm not really sure why I like her so much--probably because I associate her with most of the sparse humorous moments in the series. I believe the killing of lifeforms can often be selective, and think that the more sentient should especially not be killed. Therefore I don't approve of Allirea killing humans when she has many options to survive without doing so. But I also believe we are our consciousness and personality, and that that is shaped by the experiences our environment gives us. I don't believe in punishment as a way to make things "better". I think people can change to be happier and healthier (which is my definition of "good" and "right") and to want that for other people, too, but punishing them for how their environment has shaped them is not the way to do that. I think you do that by exposing them to the beliefs you want them to endorse, and encourage them to inform themselves about it.
Still, I'm not naïve enough to think that everyone will be willing to commit to that change, or that there will always be an opportunity to introduce it. If someone is trying to hurt or even kill me and I've exhausted every other option, I'd probably hurt or kill them back. Maybe I won't even have time to think about my options, or I do but I don't because I'm not infallible to fear or greed and other emotions that may make me think and act differently than I otherwise would, once faced with an unusual situation.
In the case of Demetri arriving in the recent chapter, I'd probably approve of killing him. He would be a huge risk to extremely many lives in so many ways should they incapacitate him and try to help him change his ways.
Me, too. But kudos to Alicorn for making him, and the killing itself, tragic. Hell, it was effectively in part a mercy killing at that point.