Man, that would be a weird way to wake up. “Hi, you got killed by Aro, he read your mind, I got a bunch of your memories dumped on me, and by the way you exist only in my head.”
alethiophile
Karma: 199
Another thing I’m wondering: what was it, precisely, that deleted Benito’s original human memories? Was it the experience of any higher-fidelity vampire memories, or was it the overload caused by all of it simply overwriting the least vivid? If the former, then Elspeth has an easy way to resurrect an arbitrary dead vampire, but needs to be careful sending anything to a human lest their mind be lost (wouldn’t it purely suck to have only the vampire memories of a single event Elspeth showed you, and nothing else?). If the latter, then Elspeth needs to blast a human entire and hope they reidentify as the vampire she actually wants to resurrect; which is more chancy.
It now seems that the thorny ethical problem is resolved with the fact that the human person caught in the blast no longer exists. (Unless that’s just Addy lying, but she’s still in range of Edward and one would assume that he would tell Bella if Addy lied about something of that magnitude.) I’m very curious to see what happens if one of the human!vampires is turned.
I grew up just east of the Rocky Mountains, which are, being in my area more or less straight north-south, always to the west. No fictional landmarks required. You might be able to do something similar with a coastline, though that’s quite a bit less visible.
So what happens to someone who is vampire-memoried and then turned? Do they still have the same memories? What if the current John-as-human was turned, and then Elspeth/Addy gave him another dump of just John-as-vampire’s memories? Also, will the mate bond work on Didyme-human turned with Marcus, since she “remembers” it so? If not it would be awfully traumatic for both, probably.
I would call this one unfair as well. As I read the quote, he’s saying that the rules of evidence as applied to criminal trials, where the goal is simply to determine the truth or falsehood of the accusation, are not really applicable to the goal of determining what the policy should be. Which is entirely defensible.
Yay, stuff is happening! Siobhan is cool, and having her on one’s side is a major asset. I’m still very nervous about what Addy is doing, though. It’s not like her to let this major an upset happen without her input. More generally, the second shoe has yet to fall. I wonder what it’ll be?
I was all bummed by the apparent missed update on Friday, but then now there’s two. Yay!
Jacob still has alpha-voice powers over whoever is in his pack, right? If so, couldn’t he simply order everyone who can hear him not to tell anyone about anything as soon as he phases? That would work unless a packmate happens to be near Aro at the time. (Or runs into him in future; but is Aro making a habit of reading all the wolves regularly, given the stress this is likely to induce? Or would they be keeping a packmate of Jacob’s near Aro at all times? Someone suggested this, and it’s certainly a good idea to get info.) Also, Bella could shield Jacob before he phases; if they’re keeping a packmate near Aro, then a shield would negate that particular threat, though Aro would have to become aware of the fact that the wolf is suddenly shielded if he happened to try to read him during the conversation. Also, it might have occurred to Aro that keeping one of the few creatures that can credibly threaten a vampire right nearby and susceptible to the mind-control of a known enemy is a bad idea. Unknown whether this could sway him more than the potential intelligence coup. My sense is that even with a surprise, shielded attack a single wolf probably couldn’t take out Aro, given the likely quick response by every other vampire; he wouldn’t have time to set a fire, certainly.
As far as I can tell, what Elspeth is doing is, in talking to Alice, seeing if her magic, which helps her communicate the truth to people in ways they will understand, would suggest analogies between the current situation and previous situations. I.e., if Elspeth were trying to explain the situation of Addy and Pera to Alice, would her magic suggest Alice and Jasper’s own situation as an example? If so, then that means that Alice and Jasper’s situation is analogous to that of Addy and Pera, and hence it implies something about their motives. Magic has a mind-reading power, kind of, whose intent is solely to determine how to comprehensibly explain the truth to someone. Elspeth is using this for a method not originally intended, in order to determine something about Alice and Jasper. Thus, it’s not an oracle; it depends critically on Elspeth currently being in communication with someone who knows the answer.
Maybe not as useful, then. I still think that Bella’s shield-pack ability has to be significant in the future; it’s too blatant a foreshadow not to be.
Wait until the wolves are on a mission with their Volturi handlers, then do it. Have the wolves kill the handlers and run. Doesn’t have the same shock value as an attack on Volterra, but may well hurt the Volturi fairly badly depending on who of the guard is in the party and adds the wolves to the rebels’ side rather than the Volturi’s.
Does Bella’s shield extend through the telepathy between different alphas, or not? If not, the utility of the plan is lessened, though the mission variant could still work if the alpha there forwards Elspeth’s deprogramming to his/her pack. (Who are the alphas? Still Rachel, Rebecca and Jacob only?)
If Bella shields phased Jacob while another alpha is also phased, does the shield extend to that alpha and/or his/her pack? It’s mentioned in Luminosity that there can be cross-talk between wolves in different packs to some degree if both alphas are phased. Will this allow Elspeth to transmit to all the wolves at once if the alphas are phased? If both are true, then they can carry out a surprise attack with the wolves by having them all phase, Bella shield Jacob, and Elspeth disillusion them all with the Volturi at once; they would then presumably yield to their general instinct to attack vampires, and with the shield in place they could well be immune to most of the powerful witches in the compound (Jane and Alec certainly, possibly Aro’s shield (Renata?) as well). With some intelligent use of Elspeth, the wolves could know just as much about the compound, village, town as the Volturi, and if this was timed in conjunction with another attack (by a newborn army, perhaps), it could cause major damage.
Can Elspeth grant a subagent other than the main one control of her body? If so, then she can become much more formidable thus: she has the memories of many, including of course many who are very good at combat, so create a ‘Melee’ subagent (in keeping with the tradition of names beginning with M) that is in charge of knowing vampire melee combat in and out, and when necessary grant it bodily control. In general, Elspeth+memories is a really powerful combination; with subagents she can process the knowledge in ways unavailable even to vampires, and do fun stuff with it.
There would be little to no plot-relevance either way; it would just be incredibly amusing if the available method of FTL signalling involves someone conditioning on whether or not they can remember Allirea’s existence.
Stuff is happening.
I really like the writing for Allirea, but it’s incredibly frustrating having important plot details constantly being hidden behind a power curtain. Elspeth’s reactions are very funny.
Could Allirea use her phasing as a signalling mechanism? For instance, someone she’d met could reasonably often check if they can remember her existence (if doing it mentally is prohibited by the power, then have a PDA or something that sets off an alarm with the word ‘Allirea’ every five minutes) and if so, take some action. (The relevant question here is, I suppose, whether Allirea’s phasing immediately affects everyone on earth who knows her, or not. If the former, is there a lightspeed delay?)
I think it’s because vampires can’t reproduce. If everyone was immediately turned, then you’d have a static population. I didn’t read it as a slur on vampires.
So what is Nathan’s power? He seems to think telling Siobhan about it would impair its effectiveness on her, and she notes knowing he was on the island but never quite being around where he was. Something like Siobhan’s that induces things to go his way?
New chapter is up.
Alicorn, lately the updates have been becoming later and (unless I’m imagining things) getting shorter. It may be worthwhile for you to switch from a M-W-F update schedule to a whenever-it’s-ready schedule in order to prevent them from becoming work that is unseemly to contemplate, because that’s the easiest way I can think of for this to end prematurely. And that would be sad.
In Luminosity, Alice was able to see her future conversation with Bella about how blood smells to her, even though after she told Bella her results there was no reason for her to ever have that conversation. However, getting arbitrary information by resolving to write it down once she knows it, then seeing herself write it down, seems different. It would also be an absolute game-breaker, so for narrative reasons it probably won’t work out that way. (Maybe it wouldn’t work if the information pertained to someone that blocks her. That would be less game-breaking, but still bad.)
Some thoughts about heredity.
Alicorn, I believe, has said that half-vampires can breed with either vampires or humans (or, presumably, other half-vampires) and create hybrids of different fractions of vampire-ness. Thus, any children Elspeth has will be at least one-quarter vampire, which if I recall correctly is above Alicorn’s threshold for “still technically part-vampire” as regards the on-or-off abilities of hybrids (males venomous, immortal are the ones I can think of). It is also hypothesized that male wolves imprint because their imprints are capable of passing on the wolf gene. I’m not sure of the degree of certainty attached to this, but it seems a reasonable supposition. Given these questions, what happens if Elspeth and Jacob have a child? It’s quite probable that the child would be a wolf, since Jacob imprinted on Elspeth. The child would also be at least one-quarter vampire. Can you have a hybrid wolf? If the child is male, presumably he would also be venomous—how does this interact with the wolves’ very negative reaction to vampire venom? This seems to be a question that would come up even in canon Twilight, and I wouldn’t necessarily expect Meyer to have thought about it, but it would be interesting if Alicorn had a perspective.