My favorite three questions are, What do I want?, What do I have?, and How can I best use the latter to get the former? Actually, I'm also fond of What kind of person am I?, but that one isn't often directly relevant to decision making on a day-to-day basis.
—Bella establishing her character.
Luminosity is a Twilightfanfic by Less Wrong contributor Alicorn, available here or in a slightly less well-edited form here.The story begins with same set-up as the Twilight books; however, Bella is, rather than the clueless canon character, an intelligent, extremely introspective rationalist who is constantly investigating the reasons for her thoughts. The first lines of the story detail that a bit.Some of the original plot remains intact early on, but by the time the first book ends, Bella's different decisions have stacked to the point that the plot is completely unrecognizable. The author has finished a sequel, Radiance, also available here, and a series of seventeen short stories called "Flashes".There is an active Luminosity discussion thread.There are even some Recursive Fanfictionstories set in the same continuity, one finished, Never Forgotten and one ongoing: SkyAlicorn is currently writing a series called Elcenia.
Ascended Extra: Many characters, including Gianna, Rachel, and Santiago.
Author Tract: The fic is designed to explain the concept of "luminosity", i.e. self-awareness.
Or it was, until the plot got in the way. Now it's mostly just a story.
Badass Abnormal: Vladimir and Stefan. They have no powers to speak of whatsoever, yet they're some of the oldest vampires in existence, and Elspeth thinks either of them could defeat Siobhan in a fair fight. Even though they're physically smaller, have ancient, brittle skin, and Siobhan has witchcraft.
Badass Boast: Delivered by Elspeth of all people in Chapter 49 of Radiance.
"That's right. I am the princess of the Golden Empire. I can erase a human personality with my thoughts. I remember more centuries of experiences than you can even count. I can resurrect the dead. And you are going to calm down and listen to me."
Also, earlier in the story. Chapter 31, when Elspeth blasts Demetri with the memories of the last five and a half years of his involuntary mate's life:
"Pay attention when I tell you things," I hissed at him.
Bad Liar: Elspeth, sort of. She's so good at telling the truth, due to her power, that people notice when she stops.
Bald Women: Bella. Overlaps with Bald of Awesome because the reason she's like that is because vampire hair grows extremely slowly, and Bella's survived being set on fire twice.
Barrier Warrior: Bella is a mental version and Renata is a physical version.
Berserk Button: You really shouldn't interrupt Bella when she's speaking.
It's notable that as an application of her luminosity, Bella controls this so well that it really isn't noticeable, even when she's a newborn vampire and could more or less kill anyone.
Also, Siobhan and using the wrong name for "these isles".
Brutal Honesty: Bella's policy towards herself. She admits she is attracted to Edward for shallow reasons like his good looks and his wealth, which enables her to avoid needless romanticizing.
Elspeth's Magic's policy toward everything.
Buffy Speak: All non-ancient characters use this to some degree, but especially Bella, Elspeth, and Cody Clearwater.
Calling Me a Logarithm: Bella explains in Chapter 1 one reason why she doesn't use her notebook in front of her peers.
I'd been cured of that particular hypergraphic urge when a classmate of mine in the eighth grade had looked over my shoulder, been confused by my description of her as "wee", and thrown the notebook into a lavatory puddle.
Catchphrase: Chelsea constantly thinks 'Everyone must love me.'
Cessation Of Existence: What Edward believes will happen to all vampires if they are killed, in contrast to humans, who get an afterlife. Bella, on the other hand, thinks that no afterlife exists, even for humans.
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.
Diabolus ex Machina: Most of the many turns for the worse for the protagonists are logical consequences of events set in motion earlier, but Pera turning out to be Bella's singer at the worst possible moment is clearly this.
Distracted by the Sexy: Common side effect of the mate bond when the vampire mates first meet.
Domestic Abuse: Allirea gets an especially horrifying version from Demetri.
Exact Words: One side effect of Elspeth's power is that she is a bad liar. She gets around this several times with half-truths, technically accurate but misleading statements, and the truth that could easily be mistaken for metaphor.
"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."
Faceless Eye: Aro keeps one of these on a necklace. Even creepier is the fact that it belongs to Marcus
Faux Affably Evil: Aro fits, he is powerhungry and does nothing to hide it, also he has a tendency of killing everyone that slights him even a little bit as seen with the immortal children. Still, Bella notes that he does behave like a doting uncle when he gives her Gianna (to eat) and has an annoying tendency to refer to people by unwanted endearments even while sentencing them to death as shown with the Denalis mother.
For Science!: Addy claims to be motivated by this, but until the fall of the Volturi, she seems equally likely to be a Hidden Agenda Villain.
Addy:Until and unless you actually try to leave, I'm not going to interfere. I'm a student of witchcraft. If you can learn to beatChelsea, well, wouldn't that be interesting?
For Want of a Nail: As noted earlier, at the beginning of the fic, the main divergence from Twilight canon is that Bella has a different personality - there are also characters introduced who don't exist and Chelsea is more powerful than she's implied to be in Twilight - most other of the departures from canon happens as direct result of Bella's decisions.
"It would be sort of hard to have the Volturi after us more than they already are. I mean, I guess it's technically possible, we could kill one of their wives or something," he mused.
Not to mention carefully selecting truths to avoid Maggie could be taken as foreshadowing for Elspeth's power.
Regarding Nathan's power:
"Nathan, the one from the Isle of Man, is [a witch]," I told her, "but he won't say what it is that he does."
"That's obnoxious," my mother pronounced. "Is he planning to enlighten us at any point in the future?"
Also, Allirea's witchcraft. She's briefly mentioned in Luminosity, where it's said that she can divert notice from herself. She doesn't actually make herself invisible, just uninteresting. Probably not useless, but nowhere near as cool as, say, Alice's magic. And then you actually meet her.
I peered at him. He looked like he was in pain, but I hadn't hurt him, he hadn't touched the door, I would have heard if he'd hit himself against the stone of the cell... I supposed he could have had a heart attack, but that didn't seem likely in someone his age. The drops of his blood perfuming the air didn't have any scent of disease on them. It was peculiar, really. The only thing that had happened to him since he'd started his description of Heidi was that the stranger in the cell had sunk her teeth into his neck and started sucking his blood.
Marcus's power to see relationships doesn't get a great deal of use in canon, and is often mocked by the fandom or hatedom. In Luminosity, Marcus is a lynchpin for the Volturi — according to Elspeth, losing Marcus would make the Volturi fragment within weeks. It also happens to be a way to notice Allirea's presence, if only indirectly. He also was effectively immune to Chelsea's power, but then Didyme died and he stopped caring.
Heterosexual Life Partners: According to Elspeth, Vladimir and Stefan are without mates, but they've spent the last few millenia hanging around each other.
Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All the chapters in book two are words for a person, ending in an "er" sound. (Liar, Runner, etc.). The thirty-fifth chapter went as far as to invent the word "genealoger" in order to fit this pattern (the actual word is "genealogist").
Interspecies Romance: Bella/Edward, and werewolf/imprint relationships, from Twilight itself. Several vampire/human relationships, hence the existence of hybrids, who tend to have relationships with members of the other species.
Last-Second Word Swap: Jacob, talking to some vampires who are on his side about some vampires who aren't:
I want those lee...ders of the supernatural world gone.
Lesbian Vampire: Maggie is a lesbian and a vampire, but otherwise doesn't fit the archetype. Rather than a sultry seductress, she's only interested in finding true love. Which she does, in Gianna.
Lipstick Lesbian: Gianna. To the extent nobody even suspected she was gay.
Elspeth can also play this straight, but needs time and guesswork.
Love at First Sight: Both vampires and werewolves are biologically subject to this.
Mad Love: Demetri loves Allirea, and does not understand that she doesn't love him back until right before he is killed.
Mayfly-December Romance: All the human imprints and male werewolves with be striken with this unless the imprints turns. Which would cause other problems.
Meaningful Echo: Vampires and shapeshifters agree, vampire bites are not fun.
Mind Rapist: Chelsea. To a heartbreaking extent. Also Elspeth, of all people, if briefly.
Mood Whiplash: Any vampire without his/her mate will approach/cross the Despair Event Horizon. Any vampire with his/her mate is euphoric. This happens.
Mythology Gag: According to Addy, Bella's magic tastes like apple.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Most of the decisions Bella and Elspeth make have directly contributed to the continued worsening of the situation. This finally starts to turn around towards the later chapters of Radiance.
Not Growing Up Sucks: The immortal children kept and later killed by Aro are a heartbreaking example. So is Alec, eternally fourteen and likely unable to mate due to his youth even after his twin sister, who has basically been his sun and moon for centuries, is killed, leaving him totally alone in the world and extremely unlikely to make new friends.
Note to Self: one of the defining traits of this version of Bella is that she records, organizes and analyzes her own thoughts. 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.
Siobhan uses this, as a way to get around Allirea's power.
Offered The Crown: 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.
Becoming “queen of the world” was actually Bella’s plan from the time she found out about the Volturi early on in Luminosity. It just ended up taking way, way more time, heartbreak, and effort to get there because of the huge hole in her original plans.
Ominous Latin Chanting: Elspeth offers to provide some in 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.
Rapunzel Hair: 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.
Chelsea was a particularly monstrous one in the past. Obsessed with one particular boy, she severed his ties with his family with her power, ate the entire family and bound him to her before turning him.
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.
Starter Villain: James and Victoria. They both wind up dying fairly unceremoniously.
Summon Bigger Fish: When Bella runs out of other options, she ends up using this method to escape from James.
Superpower Lottery: As per Twilight canon, there are humans (and vampires) with unusual powers, including Edward's mind reading, Alice's precognition, and Bella's mental shield. In this fic, people with such powers are called "witches".
Switching P.O.V.: The first book's narrator is Bella, in keeping with Twilight tradition, the second's is Elspeth, with Addy taking over for the chapter where Elspeth is comatose and delusional.
Sympathy for the Devil: Chelsea's far too amoral to be a woobie, but when you see her memories, you have to wonder why she thinks 'Everyone must love me'. She's showing signs of being one of the more tragic variants of the Stepford Smiler.
Time Abyss: 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. By extension, Addy and Elspeth.
…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.
Throw the Dog a Bone: 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 she is reincarnated in a human’s body and their mate bond reforms.
I've killed a lot of people, but I never 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 Addy." "
Too Much For Man To Handle: Addy discovers you can use Elspeth's power to broadcast a lifetime's worth of memory. Later on, she has to take advantage of this by broadcasting her entire set of memories. She's several centuries old, and 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. The resulting information overload is breathtaking.
Not just metaphorically breathtaking, it proves deadly to a couple of humans caught in the blast.
And some of this information is politically very delicate.
Unreliable Narrator: Whenever Allirea is discussed, Elspeth elides over the conversation with "This is unimportant; why are they discussing this?"
Unusually Uninteresting Sight: 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.
Addy is almost a paragon of this trope. She's completely amoral, possesses an 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.
To a much lesser extent, since he hasn't actually appeared in the fic (but been mentioned a few times,) Joham is this as well, due to his solitary tendencies, as well as his scientific curiosity and stated goals of creating a Super SoldierMaster Race.
Yaoi Guys: The telekinetic vampire Hao and his mate Kazuo from Radiance.
You Were Trying Too Hard: Elspeth finds a way around a power-restriction this way. Considering that witch powers are personality-based, it makes sense.
or in a slightly less well-edited form here
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