Elcenia

No harm done.

Warning: massive post incoming!

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I. Comments on Luminosity + Radiance

So, I just finished a re-read of Luminosity + Radiance (haven't gotten to the Flashes yet, but will in the next few weeks). I thought they held up pretty well on a second reading. I continue to be impressed by your world-building skill (disclaimer: I have not read any of the source material, but I assume most of the stuff I'm impressed by is yours )—you do a very good job of making the setting seem lived-in and detailed.

On a similar note, you do an excellent job of portraying secondary or tertiary characters. In particular, none of your characters seem to realize they're not the protagonist (with one exception that I'll get to below). They have motivations and personalities independent of Bella and Elspeth! In particular and off the top of my head, let me mention Maggie, Rachel, and Sue (especially Sue) as tertiary characters in Radiance who actually acted like they had their own agendas. And this got better in Radiance—Cody, Nathan, Razi, Pera, Allirea, John, and of course Addy.

Now for two paragraphs of (hopefully constructive) criticism—feel free to skip, and/or let me know if you want to talk about this via email rather than here. First, a writing style thing. The one exception I mentioned above is that there's a particular type of heavy exposition that you have a bad habit of falling into, where one character just info-dumps at the other. This tends to crop up you're trying to introduce us to a bunch of people at once—e.g. Bella's conversation with Eleazar about the Volturi on her first visit to Denali, Edward telling Bella about the Amazon coven, Elspeth seeding the vampires in the Volturi dungeon (I actually really enjoyed this scene, but it would have been better without long paragraphs of exposition). (I can provide more examples on request). Usually your dialogue is very natural, but in these places it becomes stilted or you drop dialogue all together and just info-dump directly. There's also a separate but related habit your protagonists have of telling a secondary character in detail something both they (the protagonist) and the audience already know. (I've noticed this happens a lot in interactions between Bells and secondary Pyth characters in Effulgence as well.) Often in these cases I think you'd be better served by cutting the scene and time-skipping, or at least glossing over the scene rather than writing it out explicitly.

Second paragraph of criticism, and then I go back to praise. Again, feel free to skip. This is character-related: Elspeth is an incredibly boring protagonist. Let me immediately clarify that. First, I mean this about Radiance—I think she's been a really enjoyable character in every scene in Effulgence she's appeared in. Second, there are long stretches of the novel (the entire stretch from the beginning until she gets captured by the Volturi, all of the interactions with Addy) where she has a distinctive inner voice which is very compelling to read. But for most of Radiance, Elspeth seems to be drifting and directionless, just following other people around. Of course, for most of Radiance, Elspeth *is* following other people around, and I don't have an issue with that. The problem is more how her narration reflects that. Let me use as an example the last chapters of the novel, after the Volturi have been defeated. Here Elspeth is transparently being used as a framing device to wrap up everyone else's stories. And frankly I think the framing device makes the end chapters much weaker. You have a bunch of strong stories to tell—Bella's reunion with her parents, the fate of the wolves, what happened to Chelsea and Caius and Marcus, the blasted humans, Marcus and Didyme, Cody and his parents, etc, etc. And in most of the cases it's just not as interesting through Elspeth's perspective as it would be from the point of view of the actual participants.

Okay, criticism over. Frankly, any weaknesses in Radiance are more than redeemed by the tale of Marcus and Didyme, which I thought was incredibly powerful. I think you could make a strong argument that Marcus is just as much the protagonist of Radiance as Elspeth is.

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II. Questions about Luminosity + Radiance

Either Watsonian or Doylist answers are acceptable—I prefer both, when applicable. And I apologize if any of these are answered in the Flashes—haven't gotten there yet.

1. There's a statement in Chapter 50 of Radiance that "there are surprisingly few vampires in China." Is there a story there?

2. Is Renata really that boring? I find it really hard to believe that anyone actually has a personality like that. Did she have brain damage before she turned? Or does she secretly have a really exciting mental life and just doesn't show it? I have a headcanon that once she got blasted she decided to work her way through *all* of the new memories and is totally absorbed in that. And maybe before that she was revolutionizing physics and mathematics in her head, or something. Either that or the flippant remark in the last chapter of Radiance is actually correct and she really is a pagan deity...

3. So I actually read the first chapter of Twilight as a result of the last few posts in this thread. I see that the stuff about Bella being clumsy is taken from that. But, to my surprise, there's nothing there about Bella getting annoyed when interrupted. So I conclude you introduced that. Why?

edited 21st Mar '14 12:51:13 AM by jalapeno_dude

Oh, and one more thing which is Effulgence-related:

Have you considered doing a Bella who is an emergent AI? Some combination of Jane, the AI-box experiment, and the AI in Valuable Humans in Transit by Sam Hughes (I think you said you'd read Ra, by the same author, so maybe you've seen this already?) It occurred to me when reading Luminosity that the Three Questions (What do I want?, What do I have?, and How can I best use the latter to get the former?) seem to fit really well with an emergent intelligence.

Most of my worldbuilding in Luminosity/Radiance is smoothing out and filling in. I invented virtually nothing from scratch there. I like compliments on my worldbuilding, but this isn't the best showcase.

I drop dialogue when I want to deliver large amounts of exposition to shorten the section in which that's all I'm doing. I should probably work harder on blending expository sections with other events so that's never literally all I'm doing, but sometimes there's nothing convenient and I just trundle through it in narration until I am done and can proceed with whatever the exposition was a prerequisite for.

In Effulgence, when Bells tell purple moiety characters things that the audience already knows, it's either because me and kappa find it amusing to register the purple's reactions, or because Effulgence is a massive sprawl and we're concerned people will forget things, or both. Kappa also often has trouble playing characters as having learned things without knowing something about what exact presentation of the information they received, and once I produce in-character exact words, we might as well put them up. I'm thinking here of when Pat summarizes various plot events for Ripper, is that the kind of thing you had in mind? I don't think I was aware of doing that in particular in my solo writing, though, can you point me to an example in Luminosity/Radiance?

Elspeth definitely has her weaknesses as a protagonist. This is actually why I separated her from Bella at the beginning - Elspeth had to do a lot of growing before she'd be able to carry a story while her mama was right there being Bellish. I was being strict about perspective-character-ing. Both books are firmly in the first person of a single person (in Radiance I cheat with the memory blast and a little with borrowed-Edward, but it's all still accessible from Elspeth's head). You're making a good case for perspective-hopping, and/or writing in third person omniscient, when I have a flimsier protagonist - but I didn't actually notice Elspeth being flimsy once she'd gotten to the point where I let her back within arm's reach of her mama.

There's no story behind a lack of vampires in China. I just like the idea that vampire density varies regionally for non-obvious reasons.

Renata's really really boring. She finds vampire sensory experience overwhelmingly interesting - even Bella was briefly distracted right after she turned, and Bella's got lots to do and also self-preservation concerns that Renata can largely ignore. Renata never got un-distracted. I waver on whether I want to classify her as being somewhat autistic, though I definitely don't want to say that all autistic vampires are either boring or inclined to lose themselves in enjoying the sophisticated senses vampires have available, just that it could dovetail nicely with Renata's established traits.

Luminosity was originally intended to have a higher didacticism to story ratio than it wound up having. I introduced the annoyance at interruptions to give something concrete to hang the applied luminosity walkthrough on.

I hadn't considered doing an AI Bell, and to be honest the idea doesn't really grab me. It'd probably be contaminated by ideas I've picked up from the LW/MIRI/etc. community and I find those notions very much at odds with the particular kind of power trip I like to send Effulgent Bells on. (Jane doesn't have this problem because I have a canon to draw on for her; likewise when we get to Wormverse I'm green-moietying Dragon but I have a framework.)

Haven't read Valuable Humans In Transit. I like Ra, but couldn't get more than a few paragraphs into Fine Structure - too lost, too fast - and haven't systematically gone through the other work on the site; do you specially recomment VHIT?

edited 21st Mar '14 8:51:57 AM by Alicorn

Will respond to the rest of the stuff this afternoon, but in regards to the last point: yes, I specificially recommend VHIT. And re Fine Structure: it's possible the prologue ("Unbelievable Scenes"), which is entirely unlike the rest of the fic, is turning you off. If that was what you couldn't get more than a few paragraphs through, consider reading the next chapter ("On Digital Extremities") and seeing if you like that better. If so you can safely get through at least the first half of FS without needing to go back and read the prologue (and by the time you do, it will make more sense in context). I freely admit this is special pleading, but I think it's worth it because FS is one of my favorite fics ever.

edited 21st Mar '14 11:56:30 AM by jalapeno_dude

Okay, response to the rest of :

Ah, but the "smoothing out and filling in" is what I meant by "making the setting lived-in and detailed." Of course this is fanfic and thus takes the basic setting from Meyer, but it's impressive how much you build on that edifice. (That said, of course I agree that the worldbuilding in Elcenia is much more impressive.)

The only example I can find in my quick scan is the reunion with Charlie in Chapter 53 of Radiance, but I'm aware this isn't a great example. It's possible I'm thinking of Effulgence, where this happens a lot (but for reasons which you've justified).

I'm thinking in particular of 45 and following of Radiance, after Bella has won. Let me summarize a bit of this in a particularly unsympathetic way to get my point across. Chapter 45 starts with Elspeth kidnapped by Addy. They go to the throne room and there's a long conversation between Addy and Bella that Elspeth watches. Then Bella stands around giving orders to lots of people and Elspeth watches. Then Bella tells Elspeth she should go to bed, and Elspeth's response is: "I wasn't sure whether to say "Yes, Mama" or "Yes, Your Highness", so I simply nodded and went with Jake out of the compound." Then Chapter 45 ends. In Chapter 46, Elspeth and Jake walk back to the village. Then Jake starts negotiating about the wolves, and Elspeth goes to sleep. When she wakes up, Bella and Jake have a conversation about wolves while Elspeth watches. Then Bella suggests that Elspeth goes back to the throne room: ""Want to come witness the historical moment?" my mother asked me, and I shrugged and followed her and my father out of the village." Finally Elspeth actually has an idea on her own, to visit the blast victims, and she does so. Chapter 46 ends. In Chapter 47 Elspeth acts as a protagonist. Then Chapter 48 starts, Bella tells Elspeth to come back, and she goes to the throne room and watches a cutscene between Bella and Siobhan. Then she gets tired and goes to sleep. You get the idea. I totally understand why this happened—there's a structural problem, in that you need to get in all of these cool scenes from the point of view of one protagonist, but the solution means that Elspeth just seems to wander back and forth listlessly, watching other people do things. As you've said, I think perspective-hopping (or maybe a different framing device) would work much better.

edited 21st Mar '14 2:18:40 PM by jalapeno_dude

Fic rec details noted :)

Elcenia's actually slightly embarrassing spaghetti code, and that's after I stripped it down for the reboot, though I'm glad you like it.

Your support for my perspective-hopping solution is also noted. (I wonder if this is going to come up in Goldmage, which has been third person limited and tight-focused on Meea so far.)

My deltabeta is doing wizardry to install a messageboard on my website, so that should be up some time probably.

http://alicorn.elcenia.com/board/index.php forum! Post in it pretty please. Even silly Miscellany topics.

1. But I can't Square food into existence when I feel like it (nor can I make the resulting weight gain disappear)

2. Okay, I am currently in the bit where Janine shows up.

3. I mostly asked because just the other day, Anna and I were discussing a Luminosity RP idea that included something similar for a witch (he moved between dimensions thought).

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I understand the point where Elspeth is too passive in Radiance, but I think that the universe around her makes up for it. When I was writing Never Forgotten I noticed how hard was to come up with conflicts because humans protagonists are too fragile and Bella is one-of-a-kind.

Why Kappa didn't want to make this public? The torture/pain scenes?

EDIT: HEY! Look, a new forum.

edited 22nd Mar '14 3:30:02 PM by Bluelantern2814

"Here to welcome our new golden-eyed overlords," said Addy promptly.

I'm just going to second that Fine Structure rec - it's one of the better stories I've read.

Squee! Pony Tony and Alice are so cute! Finally a second Elspeth!

Joy's a Joker and Streak's a Sherlock, but I haven't yet noticed who the filly in the Library is...

EDIT:

King Charly is just HILARIOUS! Oh my GAWD! That character as a KING. Oh, boy, and these Pictures of him... I'm dying here...

Oh GOD and his name is Sundayfish! All hail king Sundayfish.

EDIT 2: This popped into my head:

"Let's make the most horrible thing possible!" "We'll torture babies." "Worse." "For decades." "They won't be Babies after a few years." "So we'll make them a fantasy thing that grows really slowly." "If they are a fantasy species anyway we can make them really cute. And we make the non tortured ones capable of speech, so they can be more sympathetic." "They'll constantly remind people how cute they are. Fishing for compliments and everyone will indulge them, because they are really ridiculously cute." "Good. Now, how can we make it worse?" "Nobody will love the tortured babies." "What? How do we do that?" "We'll make them contagious. If they come too close to a non tortured baby, that one will start." "Not good enough, parents with tortured babies will move into the quarantine." "The parents can under circumstances catch the sickness too, but adults can circumvent the hurt, which is why they aren't all mercy-killed." "But they can still spread the sickness somehow, so they'll be shunned." "Perfect! Now, let's make the non tortured ones something really awesome! And the Tortured ones cannot do the awesome things, because that is what makes them contagious!" "Like flying!"

AGAIN:I really loved that the coach knew that Aether was going to become a Bell... The whole butterfly thing and all that stuff.

I would LOVE it if some gods from Door would be like:"Oh. My. Fucking. ME! You are a BELL! Oh, Me, we have a Bell in our world now. ... Hahahhaahahahahahaha!" "What? Why are you laughing?" "Hahahahaha... there... hahaha... there are... hihihi, Plague Gods! Hahahahaha... and Death Gods... Hahahahaha oh Me, Azzathra is so fucked!

Vorkosigan Bell is adorable. I imagine that some metaphysical threshold has been passed and she can randomly distribute torching. When someone who is fairy-magiced dies... Questions will be asked.

On a more serious note, I am looking forward to her and Linya meeting and their Mileses talking to one another.

edited 19th Sep '14 1:07:23 PM by theonebutcher

*casually bumps a three year old thread*

After rereading Summons for like the third time, I finally noticed that Elcenia is, in fact, a square planet — not a cube.

she her hers hOI!!! i'm tempe