I read up to chapter 10. It seems the whole game was decided before Bella ever got the chance to use her luminosity skills—the important factor was her being opaque to Edward, am I wrong? (I never read Twilight so this is my first exposure to the characters.)
Sorry if my standards are too high. I just get a little frustrated when Eliezer claims Harry’s successes are due to his rationality, when they obviously aren’t. How many of us have prophecies about us? So too with Bella, her rationality isn’t what makes her special.
So too with Bella, her rationality isn’t what makes her special.
It does seem to become progressively more relevant. While it isn’t luminosity that made Bella a witch or Edward’s pseudo soul-mate, those skills become relevant when she uses them to navigate the world from that starting point. We can see Luminosity diverge from canon as Bella makes sensible decisions. For example, I think she wiped out the whole plot line for book two while simultaneously navigating herself and the Cullens away from the most idiotic decisions they made in book 1.
“Luminosity” isn’t Bella’s only skill and it isn’t responsible for determining her starting position but it is worth following her along as she models approximately sane decision making skills while encountering progressively more difficult challenges.
She gave forewarning to expect a half-vampire birth. Obviously Bella isn’t going to give birth to a child herself but if she does in fact use the eggs Rosalie harvested then the child presents the same risk of being misunderstood. If the Volturi have forewarning it will not be necessary to call witnesses to prove that Edward and Bella’s surrogate offspring is not an immortal child.
I had wondered whether Bella would want her children to be (biologically) fathered by a sperm donor or by Edward. While a half-vampire pregnancy does seem problematic the alternative would be to have a child that is vulnerable to death for 17 years and then must endure 3 days of living hell. I assume Bella would prefer the half vampire child if a suitable surrogate volunteered.
On the other hand Bella man not want to put a human through a traumatic pregnancy and prefer a human child that will later be turned. In that case it would be time for Edward and Bella to tour the world, with Edward scanning every male they encounter, looking for the most powerful man-witch they can find!
Note that in this point in Luminosity, Bella has absolutely no reason to believe that half-vampires are possible—and neither have the Volturi.
Just whatever her prior is for that sort of thing working (maybe 0.3 or so). It’s the sort of thing I would expect her to test before she tried anything herself!
Although it sounds more practical to hold off on that sort of thing until you have taken over the world.
Ok. Is that something to do with getting the Volturi on side and avoiding a lot of the trouble there by becoming vamped? I picked up on Victoria creating an army of newborns for the purpose plotting vengeance but only loose impressions of the plot thereafter.
I’ve just been listening to the early parts of Twilight, by the way, and I can see why luminosity!Bella was so adamant with her boundaries regarding pointless mysteriousness. Cannon!Bella rewards obnoxious behaviour with the granting of status and signals of attraction. Fairly believable of an exaggerated gender typical female character but still somewhat pathetic in large doses. Really, being vague, communicating abysmally and being generally inconsistent needn’t be all that impressive.
Victoria is the Big Bad in books 2 and 3 both. In Luminosity, she dies before she has the chance to make a nuisance of herself. No one’s kicking around in Luminosity at this time who seriously wants vengeance on Bella (at least now...)
Yeah, canon!Bella is much more tolerant across all sorts of dimensions than luminous!Bella. The latter is more selfish, more prickly, more inclined to wash her hands of things that don’t seem worth the trouble. Alice didn’t have to give canon!Edward strict instructions about how to treat canon!Bella, because there’s basically nothing he could do to drive her off.
Even if she weren’t opaque, she’d still be extra-yummy-smelling and still have caused upheaval in Edward’s life. Whether her opacity is really the reason she didn’t get turned into a tasty snack is a question I’ve chosen not to address. I think the opacity exacerbated, but was not necessary for, Edward finding her romantically compelling.
Given Bella’s inquisitive nature it seems likely that she would have found a way to immortality even without being super-vamp-bait.
It may also have been interesting if Luminosity was written from the perspective of a different character altogether. Perhaps Amanda. Not having been spoon fed immortal connections from day one while still being likely exposed to the risks of vampire attacks would be something of a challenge. Then she could develop her own more custom made vampire talent rather than inheriting Bella’s (rather boring) one.
While it arguably contradicts canon, I like to think it’s Bella’s luminosity in Luminosity that caused the weird vampire talent. Her mind is just special.
While it arguably contradicts canon, I like to think it’s Bella’s luminosity in Luminosity that caused the weird vampire talent. Her mind is just special.
Canon has her with the same talent (although luminous!Bella will develop hers along a different trajectory now that she’s been vamped). It’s not because she’s luminous. It’s just a magic thingamabob.
Right, that’s the aspect that I thought contradicted canon. I can just pretend that canon doesn’t exist, and the real reason in Luminosity isn’t a magic thingamabob.
You don’t think there could be a some kind of talent that is more directly associated with luminosity than being unreadable? Bella’s thoughts, motives and feelings do not appear to be at all hard to read by conventional means. In fact, she seems to make a more than typical effort to make herself transparent.
Something Bella does seem to be good at is analysing the future impact of her decisions. That could lead to a more self-focussed version of Alice’s talent. You could quite reasonably just palm off Bella’s ability to Alice and use a modified version of Alice’s talent for a fanfiction protagonist. Of course, if Bella’s ability actually was closely related to luminosity it would defeat a lot of the point of the story. If she was luminous via super-power then we wouldn’t be able to watch her putting in the effort to be self aware and rational manually. She would probably also experience a similar effect to Edward. He lost his ability to empathise effectively when he became a mind reader.
I was implying that she was super-powered via luminosity, which I don’t think informs the same concern.
In that quote I was referring to my own suggestion.
Do you suggest that Bella should just not be given any witch power at all? (As a matter of personal preference I tend to like the protagonist to be given something apart from ‘not acting like a moron’, assuming the world is one that tends to include superpowers.)
I think the general principle is that the protagonist shouldn’t have more than maybe one important advantage over most other characters. If most of the characters in the fic are non-morons, or superpowered, then that one’s free. Luminous!Bella gets to be a vampire “for free” because she mostly interacts with other vampires; Rational!Harry gets to be rational because everyone else in MoR is smart too; but for Bella to be both luminous and a witch, without most of the other main characters in the fic being one or the other as well, wants a single cause.
Alice and Edward are the most significant Cullens, and have witchy powers. The antagonists include a large proportion of witches. Does this get Bella a witchcraft pass? Particularly since her power is one that only works in the context of other powers—it would simply not do anything in the absence of other witches.
Bella definitely gets a witchcraft pass… her power is boring. It’s mostly there because female protagonists in romantic vampire fantasies usually get an immunity to the mind tricks of their vampire suitors. Basically so it gives them an excuse to be in a thrall that can only be explained by overwhelming sexual dominance.
I hadn’t thought about it like that, but on reflection, I think that it does qualify for the pass. It helps, too, that it’s not a general immunity to witches—she’s still vulnerable to Alice and Jasper, for example.
What about her control as a newborn? Does that count?
Her control as a newborn is her luminosity, so far as I can determine—she has a set of generalized techniques to influence her desires and emotions, and takes advantage of the specific knowledge which she acquired from the others in her coven to focus these techniques on the precise alterations she needs to be a well-controlled newborn.
No, she had control in canon too. Luminous!Bella is only a touch more self-possessed. My explanation—maybe I haven’t played it up enough? - is that if you know something about what to expect, you will do a better job of handling it. This is borne out by Carlisle being immune to wanting to nom humans, and having known vampires existed before he was bitten. The others have more trouble, and the one who has the most trouble is Jasper—who also was turned the most unexpectedly and traumatically, while the others at least expected to die of injury/sickness or had amnesia.
No, she had control in canon too. Luminous!Bella is only a touch more self-possessed. My explanation—maybe I haven’t played it up enough? - is that if you know something about what to expect, you will do a better job of handling it.
It surely also helps that luminous!Bella has been spending years practising emotional control!
If we’re talking about wish-fulfillment fiction, I’d like most of the fulfillment to be causally attributable to rationality rather than some other quality (especially inborn).
It seems I made this point on LW many times, but few people agree. Oh well. The first time was my response to Yvain’s recommendation of R. Scott Bakker. So I’m not singling you out for criticism, if that makes any difference.
Just as Harry, without a prophecy, would have grown up to found the Singularity Institute. You just wouldn’t be reading a story about him.
Is this a Harry with or without the magic genes and magical parents?
Either way I would like to think that a rational Harry would end up becoming aware of the magical world and explore the potential of magical means to fulfil his universe optimising objectives.
I read up to chapter 10. It seems the whole game was decided before Bella ever got the chance to use her luminosity skills—the important factor was her being opaque to Edward, am I wrong? (I never read Twilight so this is my first exposure to the characters.)
Sorry if my standards are too high. I just get a little frustrated when Eliezer claims Harry’s successes are due to his rationality, when they obviously aren’t. How many of us have prophecies about us? So too with Bella, her rationality isn’t what makes her special.
It does seem to become progressively more relevant. While it isn’t luminosity that made Bella a witch or Edward’s pseudo soul-mate, those skills become relevant when she uses them to navigate the world from that starting point. We can see Luminosity diverge from canon as Bella makes sensible decisions. For example, I think she wiped out the whole plot line for book two while simultaneously navigating herself and the Cullens away from the most idiotic decisions they made in book 1.
“Luminosity” isn’t Bella’s only skill and it isn’t responsible for determining her starting position but it is worth following her along as she models approximately sane decision making skills while encountering progressively more difficult challenges.
And book 3. And some major details of book 4, although she hasn’t precluded the broad contour of the story.
Did Bella just eliminate a whole other plot with a single sentence? (At the end of chapter 32.)
The only plot I can think of which that sentence would have eliminated, was already up in flames the minute Bella turned.
She gave forewarning to expect a half-vampire birth. Obviously Bella isn’t going to give birth to a child herself but if she does in fact use the eggs Rosalie harvested then the child presents the same risk of being misunderstood. If the Volturi have forewarning it will not be necessary to call witnesses to prove that Edward and Bella’s surrogate offspring is not an immortal child.
I had wondered whether Bella would want her children to be (biologically) fathered by a sperm donor or by Edward. While a half-vampire pregnancy does seem problematic the alternative would be to have a child that is vulnerable to death for 17 years and then must endure 3 days of living hell. I assume Bella would prefer the half vampire child if a suitable surrogate volunteered.
On the other hand Bella man not want to put a human through a traumatic pregnancy and prefer a human child that will later be turned. In that case it would be time for Edward and Bella to tour the world, with Edward scanning every male they encounter, looking for the most powerful man-witch they can find!
A man-witch: it’s more than a sandwich!
Note that in this point in Luminosity, Bella has absolutely no reason to believe that half-vampires are possible—and neither have the Volturi.
Also, it’s Rosalie, not Rosemary.
Just whatever her prior is for that sort of thing working (maybe 0.3 or so). It’s the sort of thing I would expect her to test before she tried anything herself!
Although it sounds more practical to hold off on that sort of thing until you have taken over the world.
Ok. Is that something to do with getting the Volturi on side and avoiding a lot of the trouble there by becoming vamped? I picked up on Victoria creating an army of newborns for the purpose plotting vengeance but only loose impressions of the plot thereafter.
I’ve just been listening to the early parts of Twilight, by the way, and I can see why luminosity!Bella was so adamant with her boundaries regarding pointless mysteriousness. Cannon!Bella rewards obnoxious behaviour with the granting of status and signals of attraction. Fairly believable of an exaggerated gender typical female character but still somewhat pathetic in large doses. Really, being vague, communicating abysmally and being generally inconsistent needn’t be all that impressive.
Victoria is the Big Bad in books 2 and 3 both. In Luminosity, she dies before she has the chance to make a nuisance of herself. No one’s kicking around in Luminosity at this time who seriously wants vengeance on Bella (at least now...)
Yeah, canon!Bella is much more tolerant across all sorts of dimensions than luminous!Bella. The latter is more selfish, more prickly, more inclined to wash her hands of things that don’t seem worth the trouble. Alice didn’t have to give canon!Edward strict instructions about how to treat canon!Bella, because there’s basically nothing he could do to drive her off.
“The whole game”? What in particular are you referring to?
Edward wouldn’t have become interested in her, and nothing would have happened.
Even if she weren’t opaque, she’d still be extra-yummy-smelling and still have caused upheaval in Edward’s life. Whether her opacity is really the reason she didn’t get turned into a tasty snack is a question I’ve chosen not to address. I think the opacity exacerbated, but was not necessary for, Edward finding her romantically compelling.
Given Bella’s inquisitive nature it seems likely that she would have found a way to immortality even without being super-vamp-bait.
It may also have been interesting if Luminosity was written from the perspective of a different character altogether. Perhaps Amanda. Not having been spoon fed immortal connections from day one while still being likely exposed to the risks of vampire attacks would be something of a challenge. Then she could develop her own more custom made vampire talent rather than inheriting Bella’s (rather boring) one.
While it arguably contradicts canon, I like to think it’s Bella’s luminosity in Luminosity that caused the weird vampire talent. Her mind is just special.
Canon has her with the same talent (although luminous!Bella will develop hers along a different trajectory now that she’s been vamped). It’s not because she’s luminous. It’s just a magic thingamabob.
Right, that’s the aspect that I thought contradicted canon. I can just pretend that canon doesn’t exist, and the real reason in Luminosity isn’t a magic thingamabob.
You don’t think there could be a some kind of talent that is more directly associated with luminosity than being unreadable? Bella’s thoughts, motives and feelings do not appear to be at all hard to read by conventional means. In fact, she seems to make a more than typical effort to make herself transparent.
Something Bella does seem to be good at is analysing the future impact of her decisions. That could lead to a more self-focussed version of Alice’s talent. You could quite reasonably just palm off Bella’s ability to Alice and use a modified version of Alice’s talent for a fanfiction protagonist. Of course, if Bella’s ability actually was closely related to luminosity it would defeat a lot of the point of the story. If she was luminous via super-power then we wouldn’t be able to watch her putting in the effort to be self aware and rational manually. She would probably also experience a similar effect to Edward. He lost his ability to empathise effectively when he became a mind reader.
I was implying that she was super-powered via luminosity, which I don’t think informs the same concern.
In that quote I was referring to my own suggestion.
Do you suggest that Bella should just not be given any witch power at all? (As a matter of personal preference I tend to like the protagonist to be given something apart from ‘not acting like a moron’, assuming the world is one that tends to include superpowers.)
I think the general principle is that the protagonist shouldn’t have more than maybe one important advantage over most other characters. If most of the characters in the fic are non-morons, or superpowered, then that one’s free. Luminous!Bella gets to be a vampire “for free” because she mostly interacts with other vampires; Rational!Harry gets to be rational because everyone else in MoR is smart too; but for Bella to be both luminous and a witch, without most of the other main characters in the fic being one or the other as well, wants a single cause.
Alice and Edward are the most significant Cullens, and have witchy powers. The antagonists include a large proportion of witches. Does this get Bella a witchcraft pass? Particularly since her power is one that only works in the context of other powers—it would simply not do anything in the absence of other witches.
Bella definitely gets a witchcraft pass… her power is boring. It’s mostly there because female protagonists in romantic vampire fantasies usually get an immunity to the mind tricks of their vampire suitors. Basically so it gives them an excuse to be in a thrall that can only be explained by overwhelming sexual dominance.
I hadn’t thought about it like that, but on reflection, I think that it does qualify for the pass. It helps, too, that it’s not a general immunity to witches—she’s still vulnerable to Alice and Jasper, for example.
What about her control as a newborn? Does that count?
Her control as a newborn is her luminosity, so far as I can determine—she has a set of generalized techniques to influence her desires and emotions, and takes advantage of the specific knowledge which she acquired from the others in her coven to focus these techniques on the precise alterations she needs to be a well-controlled newborn.
No, she had control in canon too. Luminous!Bella is only a touch more self-possessed. My explanation—maybe I haven’t played it up enough? - is that if you know something about what to expect, you will do a better job of handling it. This is borne out by Carlisle being immune to wanting to nom humans, and having known vampires existed before he was bitten. The others have more trouble, and the one who has the most trouble is Jasper—who also was turned the most unexpectedly and traumatically, while the others at least expected to die of injury/sickness or had amnesia.
It surely also helps that luminous!Bella has been spending years practising emotional control!
No, you’re right, that’s in there. I’m not familiar with the source material, I suppose.
You’re right. Her control falls squarely under the single-cause rule.
But extra yumminess isn’t caused by rationality either! (Or is it? Maybe I’m missing some important detail here.)
Are you saying that you won’t be happy with rationalist fiction unless there is nothing else about the character that’s special?
If we’re talking about wish-fulfillment fiction, I’d like most of the fulfillment to be causally attributable to rationality rather than some other quality (especially inborn).
It seems I made this point on LW many times, but few people agree. Oh well. The first time was my response to Yvain’s recommendation of R. Scott Bakker. So I’m not singling you out for criticism, if that makes any difference.
(No, it isn’t.)
I don’t agree that nothing would have happened. Just probably nothing involving vampires.
Just as Harry, without a prophecy, would have grown up to found the Singularity Institute. You just wouldn’t be reading a story about him.
I would.
Relevant threads: 1, 2.
Is this a Harry with or without the magic genes and magical parents?
Either way I would like to think that a rational Harry would end up becoming aware of the magical world and explore the potential of magical means to fulfil his universe optimising objectives.