First off, thanks for responding! As well, Archangel looks interesting; I’m assuming that’s a decent place to start on Shinn?
“I am very puzzled about why you are trying to compare Luminosity’s fulfillment of this genre to Twilight’s when you have not read Twilight at all.”
I’m comparing it to optimal; literally every book on my shelf is more readable (to me) than Twilight. The point of fanfic as I understand it is to be what the book could have been. The main reason I did make comparisons is that I get the feeling your work overcorrects on some things that are deficiencies in the original, and it’s worth analyzing the relevant continua.
I’m surprised that they didn’t stand out to you. I thought I might be being too heavy-handed with the massive clues about how often she gets laid, just as one example.
I felt the opposite. The first piece of writing advice, for good reason, is “show don’t tell.” (I understand you’re shooting for teen, and so getting laid is not something you can show, but you can make up for it everywhere else.)
The first time- the “Among the enhanced vampire senses is touch” line- was well done, and you deserve props for it. But in the work as a whole the most memorable time Edward touches Bella is when he breaks her spine. Anyone can use the words “comfort” or “caress,” the challenge is evoking the emotions. Indeed, the only habit I can think of peculiar to them is that they just say “I love you” instead of “I love you too,” which is justified only by vampires being super-emotional.
For example, in the first section of chapter 45, there are ~8 lines about Bella rationalizing about her and Edward’s disappointment, and then ~2 lines about exchanging comfort that didn’t depend on rationalization. The reader’s impression is that rationalizing is at least four times as important as comfort: you gave us a walkthrough of Bella’s thoughts on the matter, but no details about her and Edward’s actions. Italicizing the “our” doesn’t capture why Bella wants Edward’s baby, and why Edward wants Bella’s baby. It would have been easy and effective to write eight lines there so the comfort took up more of the page than the sour grapes.
If you make a habit of that- giving even equal description to emotion/perception than you do to rationalizations- then it’ll stand out. (Since action/rationalization tends to happen more, I mean equality in paragraph-lengths, not number of lines on each.) There are exceptional cases where the emotion is treated with the same level of depth than the rationalizations are- but for most of them, even more would help.
(On the subject of perception: the primary description we get of vampire senses is essentially “they’re too high-level to describe.” This is the Vizzini method- “Have you ever heard of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle? … Morons,” and it’s worse than just overwhelming. Write a paragraph or two or twelve about what it’s like to run through the trees, seeing their branches and twigs turn and dance all at once, able to focus on more than just one small bit. Ultraviolent is her new favorite color- why not tour botanical gardens, and get the full bee experience? The reason that “show don’t tell” is convincing is that the author demonstrates they have extra information: they don’t just know “love” is the symbol to call upon, they have an experience to describe to you.
Not making the story even sort of about that would be like having a novel about a cancer researcher, who has cancer, and whose entire family has cancer, who then discovers the cure for cancer, but that’s just a side plot because all the actual drama is about how to break the news to Grandma Betty that no one likes her fruitcake.
I’m not saying immortality shouldn’t be part of the story- it should. I’m saying that the scale of Bella’s ambitions needs to be sensible. Why would any sane person do more about overthrowing the Volturi- who at that point had done nothing but help her- than convincing her parents to become immortal? I’m convinced my government is evil on a stupefying scale but I spend more time trying to create wealth and improve them than overthrow them. You’d have drama far more interesting than Grandma Betty’s fruitcake, but be operating on a level that doesn’t strain credulity or naturally lead to defeat.
I think another thing that bothers me, when it comes to Bella Guevera, is that neither of her stances have strong backing / she doesn’t rigorously examine them. There are strong reasons to prefer the Volturi to their absence (beyond their ability and inclination to murder those who think otherwise), and arguments against utilitarianism (I’m thinking of the Utility Monster here) demonstrably apply for vampires. Eating humans might be the most moral thing to do, from the utilitarian perspective. And counterarguments against that could also apply to animals- why don’t the Cullens have a ranch and drink the blood of their animals instead of hunting? Among other justifications, that’s already an accepted practice in some lactose-intolerant parts of Africa.
And so if the fic’s Bella sets on a violent path than requires risking her most cherished desires to achieve political goals she hasn’t fully examined, should we really call her rational or luminous? And if this a morality play where she does everything wrong and learns the error of her ways too late, why write that?
While I enjoyed the start of Luminosity quite a bit, I really didn’t like the last chapter (55). I suppose it’s where my misgivings about the story came to a head. Full disclosure: I have gotten consistent reports that I would not enjoy the Twilight novels, and so have not read them (but have checked out the twilight wiki to write this post), and this will weaken my first objection, but I still feel it worth making.
The premise is that it’s Bella with a brain; the personality is the same, most of the limitations are the same (I imagine Meyer’s Bella gets pointlessly upset when interrupted), but she’s got rationality training and thus behaves rather differently. I was genuinely pleased at the mention of the journals and the acknowledgment that thoughts and emotions change- that’s such a great example of knowing your limitations and rationally responding to them.
Except, Bella also plans to take over the world.
That isn’t a rationality boost. That’s a core personality overwrite. The main reason that bothered me is while I wasn’t surprised to see HP:MoR become Ender’s Game (for a time, at least), I really didn’t expect the same “one genius takes on the world!” stuff in Twilight. It was a domestic fantasy, and now it’s going to be The Punisher? Great.
Does every rationalist protagonist come out of the box thinking they’re the queen or king? It makes sense for the ten-year old whose INT far surpasses his WIS; it doesn’t make sense for the family-centered teen. What could possibly possess Bella such that she decided to risk everything important to her for political gain when she learned of thousand-year old vampires who ruthlessly enforce vampire law? Idiocy? I thought this was Bella with a Brain, not Bella with Revolutionary Aspirations.
Which, I suppose, leads to the main reason this bothered me: for the first ~20 chapters, I was planning to recommend this to my friends and family who enjoyed Meyer’s Twilight; after that, my desire to do so gradually waned; now, I would not recommend it. Which is such a shame, because the start really was promising, both as an interesting story and as a rationality teaching tool.
The phrase “Twilight for boys” is bouncing around my head- both because of the plot changes and the style changes. Meyer describes things the way she does for a reason; that’s part of what makes her books interesting to her audience. The sparseness of Luminosity really got harsh after a while- it was palpably obvious that all of the details of Bella’s life were being drained away. (By her political aspirations? Foreshadowing?) I haven’t gone back to check, but every personal description I remember came in the first few chapters. After that, no one is distinctive- only their names, powers, and affiliations come up.
Another way I’m thinking about this: are there any romance novels (or something similar enough) that you really like? Because that’s what Twilight was, and replacing it with something else kills it in a way that’s hard to explain if you don’t like any romance novels. One of the books I cherish is a romance novel about a gay football player and his boyfriend. I read it whenever I’m feeling down or lonely and it cheers me up. There’s still conflict- it’s a story, after all- but the conflicts are ones I care about as a gay guy looking for a mate. Reading about byzantine power struggles is sometimes entertaining, and I suppose possibly it’s training for a future as a leader or in a bureaucracy, but not what I care most about in my life. I’m not a plotter, I’m an optimizer.
Perhaps I’m burdening you too much with my expectations, but I find myself worried when the primary plot you and EY have come up with is “death has to go.” There’s really a lot more to life than trying to prolong it, guys. That’s what makes spending any effort at all on prolonging life worthwhile. With Harry Potter, there’s enough other stuff bouncing around that it doesn’t take over the story- there’s still magic to figure out, and Voldemort to oppose, and the Dumbledore-Malfoy war to deal with- but with Twilight, there’s really only Bella, Edward, and family. And so when you add “Bella’s plan to replace the Volturi” to the mix, you unbalance things so massively that the flavor of family is entirely overpowered and we’re left with a Punisher story. Not only is that a distasteful bait and switch, it misses a great target: how to behave rationally with your loved ones to maximize their and your happiness. That’s something that would be immediately enlightening in the minds of readers (particularly Twilight readers), and instead we get vampire politics and war.