History FanFic / Luminosity

** When Rachel tells Bella about using the Alpha voice, she responds: "[[Franchise/SpiderMan ...With great power, comes great responsibility?]]"

* DiabolusExMachina: Most of the many turns for the worse for the protagonists are logical consequences of events set in motion earlier, but Pera [[spoiler:turning out to be Bella's singer]] at the worst possible moment is clearly this.

* DramaticIrony: Bella's first impression of Emmett is that "he looked like he was planning to go to college on a weightlifting scholarship, or like he'd done it a few years ago and was only sitting in a high school cafeteria for kicks". This being a ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' fanfic, the audience probably knows full well that all the Cullens do indeed go back to high school after college, repeatedly in fact.

-->Edward promised me that it wouldn't bother Esme that some of her furniture would need replacing. We arranged to be out, swimming around in the warm water, when the cleaning crews came through to pick up the remains of feather pillows and the splinters of bedframes.
** This actually sets up a major plot point, because one of the cleaning crew goes on to recognise Edward for what he is from a local legend. [[spoiler: The details of said legend are the first clue that Edward can still father children even if Bella can't bring them to term post-transformation.]]

* HasTwoMommies: [[spoiler:Maggie and Gianna eventually have a daughter named Molly.]] Suffice to say, the frozen gametes paid off.

''Luminosity'' is a ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' {{rational|Fic}} [[{{fanfic}} fanfiction series]] by Alicorn, which can be read [[http://luminous.elcenia.com here]].

* MercyKill: It's common for humans in the throes of the three-day [[PainfulTransformation vampire transformation]] to beg to be killed to escape the pain. [[spoiler: Gianna almost persuades Maggie to do it, too, because Maggie's power lets her know that Gianna was sincere about wanting to die.]]
* MetaphoricallyTrue: Flash 17 shows that, when Bella asked Edward how long vampire marriages last, he had considered answering "as long as they want to". This would have been technically accurate, but avoids the somewhat important detail that vampire mate-bonds are ''eternal'', which Edward was scared might freak Bella out. Alice sternly reminds him that even a lie-by-omission like this one would ''definitely'' drive Bella away, so he gives her the unvarnished truth.

* WhamLine: When Elspeth is brought to the wolf village:

%% * MayflyDecemberRomance: All the wolves with human imprints will be stricken with this (unless the imprints turn, which would cause other problems). The issues that can arise from this are explored in Flash 13 ("Staying Human").

* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands: Bella's mental shield conveniently becomes capable of protecting her from physical damage just in time to save her when she's [[spoiler: set on fire]]. Justified in that previous chapters foreshadowed this by showing Bella pondering the nature and limitations of her powers and experimenting with how flexible they could be.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: The Volturi are overthrown, notable sympathetic characters like Didyme and the Clearwaters are resurrected, all the main good guys make it out alive, and vampires are forbidden from snacking on humans. However, there's no way to restore the relationships Chelsea cut away, including Elspeth's once-close bond with her "mama" -- the closest they can do is offer to use her power to create new artificial relationships in their place, which many people refuse. Although at least the final chapter implies Elspeth is on the road to building new relationships with her parents from the ground up.]]

* ExpositionBeam: Elspeth eventually learns how to make her power do this.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: After Addy successfully [[spoiler:talks Elspeth into helping her get most of the captive witches emotionally tied to the Volturi via Chelsea's power]], her life is threatened because [[spoiler:Caius, having been informed by Chelsea that Addy is letting Elspeth work against her, no longer trusts her enough to keep her around when the formerly-captive witches are now available to provide their powers directly]].

* YouWereTryingTooHard: [[spoiler:Elspeth]] finds a way around a power-restriction this way. Considering that witch powers are personality-based, it makes sense.

* WeaselWords:
** These help hide [[spoiler:whether Elspeth's telling the truth]].
** Also used to hide things from Maggie.

** Addy is almost a paragon of this trope. She's completely amoral, possesses an [[PowerCopying ability]] that is uniquely suited for making things more chaotic, and follows an inscrutable agenda, sometimes working against the protagonists, and other times working against the Volturi, to the point that it's almost impossible to predict what she'll do next.

* CruelToBeKind: While enduring the pain of vampire transformation, and failing to persuade Edward to MercyKill her, Bella instead asks him to ''break her spine''. Which he does, with surgical precision, giving her a few hours of reduced pain until the venom fixes it again (and it would be too risky to re-break it). Bella appreciates the relief so much that when she's later talking to another potential convert, she blithely talks about breaking their spine as a pain relief option without thinking about how that sounds to them.

--->"My interest is... professional," I said, choosing my words carefully. "I'm not a relative, but I'm not some random person off the street who wants to stare, either. I've seen symptoms like theirs before, although not so prolonged."
--->She raised an eyebrow at me. "You look seventeen."
--->"You're more than a decade off," I told her.

* TalkingToThemself: This is what ends up happening when Elspeth tries using her power on herself.
* TalkingYourWayOut: Part of Bella's "SummonBiggerFish" plan.
* TimeAbyss: Aro falls into this, not by being alive for that long, but because he has so many memories of so many vampires that, going by remembered time, he may be older than humanity. [[spoiler:By extension, Addy and Elspeth.]]
** [[spoiler: …and by extension again, Siobhan, and everyone caught in the memory blast, with the exception of the humans who are physically incapable of processing millions of years’ worth of memories in high-definition.]]
* ThrowTheDogABone: Marcus spends most of the story (and the preceeding two thousand years) brooding over Didyme (and being forced to see his severed half of their mate bond, because of his power). He finally gets thrown a bone in one of the final chapters of ''Radiance'', when [[spoiler: she is reincarnated in a human’s body and their mate bond reforms]].
* TokenEvilTeammate: In ''Radiance'', [[spoiler:Adelaide]].
-->[[spoiler:'''Maggie''']]: Jesus! Wow, I've killed a lot of people, but I never [[spoiler:coerced a five-year-old into provoking somebody into torturing her so I could get my jollies playing with her power]]. Most Evil Person In The Car Award goes to [[spoiler:Addy]].
* TooMuchForManToHandle: Addy discovers you can use Elspeth's power to broadcast a lifetime's worth of memory. Later on, [[spoiler:she has to take advantage of this by broadcasting her ''entire'' set of memories.]] She's several centuries old, and [[spoiler:has used Aro's powers to absorb the comprehensive memories of ''hundreds'' of other vampires. This means that some ten thousand years of memories get uploaded to every nearby vampire in an instant.]]
** Not just metaphorically breathtaking, it [[spoiler: proves deadly]] to a couple of humans caught in the blast.
** And some of this information is politically very delicate.
* UnreliableNarrator: Whenever Allirea is discussed, Elspeth elides over the conversation with "This is unimportant; why are they discussing this?"
* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: This is Allirea's power. Except when she's actively suppressing it, everyone (except Demetri, her stalker, whose mate bond overrides the power, and Bella, who is immune to all mental powers) forgets about her existence, even when looking right at her.

* TheWatson: Bella.

* WeaselWords: These help hide [[spoiler:whether Elspeth's telling the truth]].

* WhatCliffHanger: Nearly every chapter ends on one.
** Chapter 35 of ''Radiance'' has an amazing one, though. [[spoiler: "'Quite a story,' agreed Alice's voice, softly."]]

** Addy is almost a paragon of this trope. She's completely amoral, possesses an [[MegaManning ability]] that is uniquely suited for making things more chaotic, and follows an inscrutable agenda, sometimes working against the protagonists, and other times working against the Volturi, to the point that it's almost impossible to predict what she'll do next.

* SpiritualSuccessor: The fic is attempting to do something similar to the ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' series as ''Fanfic/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality'' does with ''Literature/HarryPotter''. Luminosity's author is a part of the same community blog, Blog/LessWrong, as Methods of Rationality's author Creator/EliezerYudkowsky.

* StoryBreakerPower: Bella's mental shield [[spoiler:grows powerful enough to put out fire and reassemble her pieces]], thus making her virtually indestructible.

* SympathyForTheDevil: Chelsea's far too amoral to be a {{woobie}}, but when you see her memories, you have to wonder [[spoiler:''why'' she thinks 'Everyone must love me'.]] She's showing signs of being one of the more tragic variants of the StepfordSmiler.

* RapidHairGrowth: Elspeth, due to her mother's "neuroses", and the fact that her hair grows "like bamboo," usually has hair down to her ankles; it's often pointed out how amazing it is that she can work with it.
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: vampires, natch.

* ReduceAggro: [[spoiler: Allirea's power is this combined with PerceptionFilter, unless she's concentrating people will forget about her. Sometimes with disastrous results.]]
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: In Chapter 31 of ''Radiance'', Elspeth delivers one to [[spoiler:Demetri]]. Due to the nature of her power, it results in a CriticalHit.

* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: [[spoiler:Alice]] predicts some form of this as a possibility, should [[spoiler:Marcus]] ever find out about [[spoiler:Aro's betrayal]].

** To Creator/LarryNiven and his essay ''[[http://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex]]''.
** To Franchise/SpiderMan in Chapter 18: "Uh, wow," I said. "...With great power, [[ComesGreatResponsibility comes great responsibility]]?"
** To Series/{{Buffy|the Vampire Slayer}} in Chapter 25.
** In the original, Bella interrupts herself a lot, as {{Lampshaded}} in [[http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/tagged/For-the-love-of-all-that-sparkles%2C-stop-interrupting-yourself Blog/ReasoningWithVampires]]. Rational!Bella ''hates'' being interrupted.

* SiblingYinYang: Leah and Seth fit. Ilario and Gianna on the other hand are an aversion, particularly in their tastes in romantic partners.
* SingleTargetSexuality: Vampires and werewolves ''can'' have normal sexual orientations, but for vampires, it's mostly a predictor of their mate's gender (Maggie knew she was gay before mate-bonding with Gianna, for example), and for werewolves it's overridden by the imprint bond anyway.

* SorryImGay: Second-hand. Bella doesn't approve of Elspeth dating, since she's [[YoungerThanTheyLook really only five and a half years old]], so this is one of her stock lies that she tells boys who take an interest (since Elspeth herself [[BadLiar can't]]).

* SpySpeak: Several instances; for example, Bella has a coded conversation with Billy Black about vampires and werewolves.

** Chelsea was a particularly monstrous one in the past. [[spoiler:After bonding to one particular boy, she severed his ties with his family with her power, ate the entire family and bound him to her with her power before turning him. And she ''didn't even need to''; if she had just turned him, he would have bonded to her on first sight as usual, which is a connection far beyond what her power can bestow. She was just obsessive and paranoid.]]
** Demetri is a vampire, and loves Allirea. However, as a half-vampire, Allirea is not subject to the vampire mate bond (and therefore doesn't ''automatically'' love him back), and she's not human, so he can't turn her into a full vampire (which would make her love him). Allirea '''hates''' Demetri.
** Actually every vampire that ever mated to a human prior to the establishing of the Golden Coven would count.
*** Though the first vignette in ''Flashes'' indicates that Sulpicia was thrilled to be taken away from her human life by Aro.

** When Bella runs out of other options, she ends up using this method to escape from James. [[spoiler: It works, with the Volturi deciding that she's more interesting and executing James -- but it also comes back to bite her.]]
** [[spoiler: Irina]] later proves to have been paying attention, and repeats Bella's strategy [[spoiler: to retaliate against the wolves who killed Laurent]].

* SupportingLeader: Siobhan eventually becomes this in ''Radiance''.
* SwitchingPOV: The first book's narrator is Bella, in keeping with ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' tradition, the second's is [[spoiler:Elspeth, with Addy taking over for the chapter where Elspeth is comatose and delusional]].

** Siobhan uses this, as a way to [[spoiler:get around Allirea's power]].
* OfferedTheCrown: [[spoiler: Bella was made empress because Siobhan, the one that actually won the throne, did not want to deal with the hassle, and no one else was interested.]]
** [[spoiler:Becoming “queen of the world”]] was actually Bella’s plan from the time she found out about the Volturi early on in ''Luminosity''. [[spoiler: It just ended up taking way, ''way'' more time, heartbreak, and effort to get there because of the huge hole in her original plans.]]
* OminousLatinChanting: Elspeth offers to provide some in [[http://luminous.elcenia.com/radiance/ch52.shtml chapter 52 of "Radiance".]] Which leads to some amusement when they discover she doesn't really have a deep enough voice for the purpose.
* {{Omniglot}}: Many immortals, including Bella and Elspeth.

* OurSoulsAreDifferent: Edward thinks so.

* PersonalityPowers: As with the source material, even with a new personality Bella qualifys, as do the new additions.
* PetTheDog: Santiago does this a couple times; it's stated she's been teaching children how to dance.

* PowerOfLove: {{Conversed}} and {{Exploited}} Mate bond and imprinting both are immune to magical manipulation, or otherwise react differently to magic. The rebels use this to recruit key members of the Volturi.

* PrecisionFStrike: Exactly two f-bombs are dropped in the entire fic. The first one is PlayedForLaughs, when [[spoiler:Cath and Ilario mate-bond]] and Maggie is annoyed at their timing. The second one is ''not'', when [[spoiler:Bella gives Chelsea a ReasonYouSuckSpeech before killing her]].
* PrefersProperNames: Allirea sees nicknames as childish and refuses to use them. Elspeth figures out that the "Del" who [[PowerCopying copies powers]] and betrayed Pera is the same person as the "Addy" who Bella has warned her to stay away from, because Allirea insists on referring to her by her full name, Adelaide.
* PrimalScene: ''Radiance'', Chapter 20: "I ''remember'' my ''parents' honeymoon''!"

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Most of the decisions Bella and Elspeth make have directly contributed to the continued worsening of the situation. [[spoiler:This finally starts to turn around towards the later chapters of ''Radiance''.]]

* NoteToSelf: one of the defining traits of this version of Bella is that she records, organizes and analyzes her own thoughts. [[spoiler: After she becomes a vampire and has extreme difficulty remembering her mortal life, these records are very helpful in allowing her to recover much of it.]]