Agreed. To me Chelsea is the second-most-creepy thing about this series (mate bonds and imprinting being the most creepy, for reasons Alicorn has neatly illustrated).
Actually on second thought, Chelsea is number one. She can make a parent forget to care about a lost child. The mate-bond/imprinting thing is something I have to take on faith—it’s magic, got it—but I have two sons, and so for me mother-love is the strongest, most all-consuming force I can possibly imagine. If it was stripped from me I would not be me any more. What Chelsea does is terrifying. If I had to choose, I would choose a lifetime of being raped by Demetri over losing my love for my sons. Chelsea is worse.
If I were your son, I’d unequivocally tell you to choose the mind-alteration over the endless rape. They’re both horrible, but at least under the first circumstance you’d be happy.
I agree that Chelsea is terrifying in this story. In canon her gift is rarely ever talked about, and the narrator (Bella) never really experiences it in any way. The effects of Chelsea’s witchcraft have been felt all through late Luminosity and Radiance though, and it’s certainly terrible. I have hope though that those affected can restore much of their previous personality and relationships by way of re-evaluating their memories, and even quicker with help from Elspeth, who is very hard to doubt. If precious friends and lovers have been killed or otherwise lost though, they’ll never be the same.
The Volturi always had the capability of being horrifying in canon Twilight, but because SM was writing it as a love story they had to take a back seat and be very inactive and stupid when present, despite all their experience.
I’m one of the Luminosity readers who never actually read the Twilight books. So I’m only dimly aware of departures from canon. Were people at least afraid of Chelsea? Did they consider her a major threat?
Well, sure. They suspected that should the Volturi force them to join, she would start brain-frying them into liking their superiors and want to please them. It was later revealed she would do this to any talented vampires the Volturi wanted that they came across, while breaking their ties to outsiders. But this was mentioned maybe once or twice out all four books. Eleazar and Carmen leave the Volturi unhindered, which isn’t really the case in this story. I suspect the choice they were given here was to have severe restrictions on their freedom or be completely altered by Chelsea. I think she may be more powerful in this story, but like I said it wasn’t really discussed in canon.
In canon, Bella developed her shield by learning to share it, instead of by adding immunities to it. By the time Chelsea actually appears, nobody we are supposed to care about is left vulnerable. She never does a single thing that we are supposed to find more than vaguely unsettling.
Agreed. To me Chelsea is the second-most-creepy thing about this series (mate bonds and imprinting being the most creepy, for reasons Alicorn has neatly illustrated).
Actually on second thought, Chelsea is number one. She can make a parent forget to care about a lost child. The mate-bond/imprinting thing is something I have to take on faith—it’s magic, got it—but I have two sons, and so for me mother-love is the strongest, most all-consuming force I can possibly imagine. If it was stripped from me I would not be me any more. What Chelsea does is terrifying. If I had to choose, I would choose a lifetime of being raped by Demetri over losing my love for my sons. Chelsea is worse.
If I were your son, I’d unequivocally tell you to choose the mind-alteration over the endless rape. They’re both horrible, but at least under the first circumstance you’d be happy.
It might or might not affect this calculation that Allirea is immortal.
Errrrgh. It probably would.
Allirea has children, anyway. There’s nothing incompatible about the horrible fates here ;)
I agree that Chelsea is terrifying in this story. In canon her gift is rarely ever talked about, and the narrator (Bella) never really experiences it in any way. The effects of Chelsea’s witchcraft have been felt all through late Luminosity and Radiance though, and it’s certainly terrible. I have hope though that those affected can restore much of their previous personality and relationships by way of re-evaluating their memories, and even quicker with help from Elspeth, who is very hard to doubt. If precious friends and lovers have been killed or otherwise lost though, they’ll never be the same.
The Volturi always had the capability of being horrifying in canon Twilight, but because SM was writing it as a love story they had to take a back seat and be very inactive and stupid when present, despite all their experience.
I’m one of the Luminosity readers who never actually read the Twilight books. So I’m only dimly aware of departures from canon. Were people at least afraid of Chelsea? Did they consider her a major threat?
Well, sure. They suspected that should the Volturi force them to join, she would start brain-frying them into liking their superiors and want to please them. It was later revealed she would do this to any talented vampires the Volturi wanted that they came across, while breaking their ties to outsiders. But this was mentioned maybe once or twice out all four books. Eleazar and Carmen leave the Volturi unhindered, which isn’t really the case in this story. I suspect the choice they were given here was to have severe restrictions on their freedom or be completely altered by Chelsea. I think she may be more powerful in this story, but like I said it wasn’t really discussed in canon.
In canon, Bella developed her shield by learning to share it, instead of by adding immunities to it. By the time Chelsea actually appears, nobody we are supposed to care about is left vulnerable. She never does a single thing that we are supposed to find more than vaguely unsettling.