I stated elsewhere that the shield isn’t omnipotent. It also won’t prevent injury that isn’t mind-threatening. For instance, if she were broken into pieces and not set on fire, this wouldn’t be immediately life-threatening, so nothing would happen. Then, by the time she’d be in danger of death by starvation due to being unable to eat while in fragments, she wouldn’t have enough energy left that the shield could draw power. She can be killed by anyone who’s paying attention. It’s just harder for her to be killed accidentally or carelessly.
She can be killed by anyone who’s paying attention.
...and who understands how her shield works and is clever enough to think of a way around it.
Still, this significantly lowers the probability that she could bring Edward back by convincing her shield that she can’t remain sane with her mate dead, which was my previous top candidate strategy for resurrecting him.
Nah, attention alone would do it. Even someone who wasn’t very clever could have noted, “Oh, she’s not on fire any more. I’d better set her on fire again.” That would’ve done it.
The shield’s native ability is to protect Bella’s mind from direct magical intrusion. Anything she adds to it has to follow pretty directly from that, although she can modify it in any or all of several directions from there (canon Bella focused entirely on making her shield extend to other people, which never occurred to luminous Bella). She managed to make the shield protect her mind from direct physical destruction, but indirect physical destruction would be something else entirely. Especially since her mind’s survival is never going to be necessarily dependent on her avoiding any single injury that isn’t being set entirely on fire (and she’s got limits as to how much she can stand being set on fire, too).
She’d have to fight against her shield to join the hive mind, not to mention that the hive mind wouldn’t readily have her.
I stated elsewhere that the shield isn’t omnipotent. It also won’t prevent injury that isn’t mind-threatening. For instance, if she were broken into pieces and not set on fire, this wouldn’t be immediately life-threatening, so nothing would happen. Then, by the time she’d be in danger of death by starvation due to being unable to eat while in fragments, she wouldn’t have enough energy left that the shield could draw power. She can be killed by anyone who’s paying attention. It’s just harder for her to be killed accidentally or carelessly.
...and who understands how her shield works and is clever enough to think of a way around it.
Still, this significantly lowers the probability that she could bring Edward back by convincing her shield that she can’t remain sane with her mate dead, which was my previous top candidate strategy for resurrecting him.
Nah, attention alone would do it. Even someone who wasn’t very clever could have noted, “Oh, she’s not on fire any more. I’d better set her on fire again.” That would’ve done it.
So, “If they can hurt me, they’ll rip me apart and set me on fire until I die” won’t work to make herself nigh-invulnerable?
Or, for that matter, “I need allies if I am going to survive the Volturi, therefore I need to join the still-free pack’s hivemind”?
The shield’s native ability is to protect Bella’s mind from direct magical intrusion. Anything she adds to it has to follow pretty directly from that, although she can modify it in any or all of several directions from there (canon Bella focused entirely on making her shield extend to other people, which never occurred to luminous Bella). She managed to make the shield protect her mind from direct physical destruction, but indirect physical destruction would be something else entirely. Especially since her mind’s survival is never going to be necessarily dependent on her avoiding any single injury that isn’t being set entirely on fire (and she’s got limits as to how much she can stand being set on fire, too).
She’d have to fight against her shield to join the hive mind, not to mention that the hive mind wouldn’t readily have her.