I did not intend that interpetation, and have been repeatedly surprised to find people espousing it. There is a reduction in Luminosity's didacticism over the course of the book as I got caught up in the plot, and it's possible it happens to undergo a particularly noticeable drop around when Bella turns which people are reading this way. However, I didn't intend to show Bella's various errors as being consequences of any abandonment of her interior luminosity, however much less narration I spent on it. She has plenty of other personality flaws and resource shortages to drive her mistakes.

Oh man, Syzygy. That started closer to a decade ago, though I guess it did end around seven years ago. I don't hate it enough to break my rule that what goes up, stays up, so when I recovered the files from the unexpected cataclysm that caused the comic's end, up they went. But it's embarrassing, very noticeably amateur, both in the art and the writing. I'm still pleased with a couple of particularly nasty turns of plot, like Kulary's backstory, but they weren't presented to their best effect.