How To Read Effulgence
Aug. 31st, 2013 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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belltowerEffulgence is an RP (role play) hosted on Dreamwidth between Alicorn (me) and Pyth (a.k.a. "kappa"). We each play many characters; all of my RP accounts belong to this community, the Belltower, and kappa's can all be found at binary_heat. The short version of what Effulgence is about is that we put alternate universe versions of Bella from my fanfiction Luminosity in a wide variety of settings, mostly fanfictional in nature, and see what happens, then cross everything over with everything else. (Luminosity is canon for Effulgence, but the reverse is optional.) Kappa also has several recurring character templates, most commonly AU versions of her oddball interpretation of the Nolanverse Joker. The start is slow - it's earthfic right up until it's not, but then it's really not. Here appears a list of the canon(s) for each world.
You may track new/resumed-after-dormancy Effulgence threads via the forum updates thread. Effulgence is similar to Incandescence, by me and a different coauthor Aestrix, and to other "glowfic", by a variety of authors. If you like any one of those things, you should probably try the others. Effulgence is by far the longest.
Content warnings: Effulgence contains rape, torture, and parental abuse; these are generally not described in gory or graphic detail (people have proven able to blink and miss two of the instances of rape; we're apparently too good at euphemisms) but definitely present. It's a pretty long work and was, at first, written without thought of public consumption, so chances are it contains some other things we're failing to think of. Proceed with caution. Basically, if you can think of a way to be mean to characters, we've done it or gleefully intend to.
The index that kappa maintains at this post will show what posts to read in what order if you intend to read the whole thing. (The early stuff is not the best part, but it is unskippably prerequisite if you plan to read it all.) Most posts have comment threads under them; kappa prefers to read them in threaded mode, where they keep drifting off to the right, and this is the only way to correctly read threads that are indexed with bullet points (read each bullet, in order, in thread mode) but many people otherwise prefer to read in "flat" (just click "flat", and the comments' left margins will all line up and they will be arranged in pages).
Most posts are marked with one or more "symbellas" - symbols that indicate which Bells appear in which threads. These are in many cases exotic characters that might not render correctly on your computer, but they shouldn't be strictly necessary to enjoy the story. A Roll Call chart of each Bell, symbella, nickname, and world is available.
Threads with a plus sign next to them are in progress, as are sections with plus signs in their subchapter listings. The "chronological order" of the last several sections relative to each other is up in the air until they interact with the core plot, and may rearrange when that occurs. Additionally, there are a few spots where reading the threads in order will involve temporal confusion because they were written concurrently without anticipating third-party readers (for instance, 14.2 and 18.1 happen together); just keep reading through these and you should be fine.
If you do not want to read all of Effulgence, or want to read it out of order, you can do this. The settings don't cross over immediately in most cases, and you can read up to the crossover point with no prerequisites (although having read the rest of Effulgence would provide enriching context, it is not plot-necessary). You are welcome to ask us how to find what sections to read, but as a general rule of thumb: if a section is the first instance of a symbella anywhere in the index, and there is only one symbella in the first of those threads, it is probably standalone. (This is not foolproof: 38.5 is the first appearance of Tab's symbella, but her introduction does rely on a crossover. A more central example would be something like section 22, which contains four threads, each of which has the same single symbella; or 28, which may be read without prerequisite until the last thread where another symbella appears.)
Due to limitations of Dreamwidth, we cannot edit any comment that has replies under it. Please don't submit notifications of typos in Effulgence unless they're on the top-level posts or the last comments in a thread. Or if you can't understand what was meant and you need clarification.
Both I and kappa are eager to hear comments on the RP. You may comment here, and ask characters questions here and receive answers in-character, and I have a forum for discussion of this work (among my others), but please don't make comments on the story threads.
A note on "canon-puncturing". Characters, as people, sometimes consume and refer to fiction. The problem is we keep adding AUs of the fiction in question, and so sometimes these are universes that characters from other universe have mentioned in the past. In the overwhelming majority of cases, this is just a lack of foresight and it is retconned insofar as it can be when we can't edit things. Please assume, for example, that when you reach the Harry Potter AU, that all previous references to Harry Potter were instead describing some equivalent but not particularly reminiscent story. The exceptions are as follows (may contain spoilers, depending on how finicky you are about spoilers):
INDEX POST: Click here to start reading.
A somewhat buggy HTML mirror of Effulgence is available. You can download an EPUB or a MOBI, more recent and suspected more complete.
binary_heat. The short version of what Effulgence is about is that we put alternate universe versions of Bella from my fanfiction Luminosity in a wide variety of settings, mostly fanfictional in nature, and see what happens, then cross everything over with everything else. (Luminosity is canon for Effulgence, but the reverse is optional.) Kappa also has several recurring character templates, most commonly AU versions of her oddball interpretation of the Nolanverse Joker. The start is slow - it's earthfic right up until it's not, but then it's really not. Here appears a list of the canon(s) for each world.You may track new/resumed-after-dormancy Effulgence threads via the forum updates thread. Effulgence is similar to Incandescence, by me and a different coauthor Aestrix, and to other "glowfic", by a variety of authors. If you like any one of those things, you should probably try the others. Effulgence is by far the longest.
Content warnings: Effulgence contains rape, torture, and parental abuse; these are generally not described in gory or graphic detail (people have proven able to blink and miss two of the instances of rape; we're apparently too good at euphemisms) but definitely present. It's a pretty long work and was, at first, written without thought of public consumption, so chances are it contains some other things we're failing to think of. Proceed with caution. Basically, if you can think of a way to be mean to characters, we've done it or gleefully intend to.
The index that kappa maintains at this post will show what posts to read in what order if you intend to read the whole thing. (The early stuff is not the best part, but it is unskippably prerequisite if you plan to read it all.) Most posts have comment threads under them; kappa prefers to read them in threaded mode, where they keep drifting off to the right, and this is the only way to correctly read threads that are indexed with bullet points (read each bullet, in order, in thread mode) but many people otherwise prefer to read in "flat" (just click "flat", and the comments' left margins will all line up and they will be arranged in pages).
Most posts are marked with one or more "symbellas" - symbols that indicate which Bells appear in which threads. These are in many cases exotic characters that might not render correctly on your computer, but they shouldn't be strictly necessary to enjoy the story. A Roll Call chart of each Bell, symbella, nickname, and world is available.
Threads with a plus sign next to them are in progress, as are sections with plus signs in their subchapter listings. The "chronological order" of the last several sections relative to each other is up in the air until they interact with the core plot, and may rearrange when that occurs. Additionally, there are a few spots where reading the threads in order will involve temporal confusion because they were written concurrently without anticipating third-party readers (for instance, 14.2 and 18.1 happen together); just keep reading through these and you should be fine.
If you do not want to read all of Effulgence, or want to read it out of order, you can do this. The settings don't cross over immediately in most cases, and you can read up to the crossover point with no prerequisites (although having read the rest of Effulgence would provide enriching context, it is not plot-necessary). You are welcome to ask us how to find what sections to read, but as a general rule of thumb: if a section is the first instance of a symbella anywhere in the index, and there is only one symbella in the first of those threads, it is probably standalone. (This is not foolproof: 38.5 is the first appearance of Tab's symbella, but her introduction does rely on a crossover. A more central example would be something like section 22, which contains four threads, each of which has the same single symbella; or 28, which may be read without prerequisite until the last thread where another symbella appears.)
Due to limitations of Dreamwidth, we cannot edit any comment that has replies under it. Please don't submit notifications of typos in Effulgence unless they're on the top-level posts or the last comments in a thread. Or if you can't understand what was meant and you need clarification.
Both I and kappa are eager to hear comments on the RP. You may comment here, and ask characters questions here and receive answers in-character, and I have a forum for discussion of this work (among my others), but please don't make comments on the story threads.
A note on "canon-puncturing". Characters, as people, sometimes consume and refer to fiction. The problem is we keep adding AUs of the fiction in question, and so sometimes these are universes that characters from other universe have mentioned in the past. In the overwhelming majority of cases, this is just a lack of foresight and it is retconned insofar as it can be when we can't edit things. Please assume, for example, that when you reach the Harry Potter AU, that all previous references to Harry Potter were instead describing some equivalent but not particularly reminiscent story. The exceptions are as follows (may contain spoilers, depending on how finicky you are about spoilers):
- The Sherlock Holmes stories (and miscellaneous adaptations thereof) exist most Earth-typical places, except for Strat's universe of origin (and at least one forthcoming world).
- In most Earth-typical universes that do not contain actual live Matildas, the Roald Dahl book "Matilda" (but not its movie adaptation) exists. This book never coexists with a Matilda, however. (The fact that it has taken some characters such a long time to notice this is mostly poor communication on our part, although there is an adequate thread of causality covering it.)
- We are treating Pokémon about like we treat vampires: some universes have fiction of them. Other universes have real ones (too). The details like region names, organized crime team names, and city names that we use for the Pokémon AU and are taken from the games or anime may be assumed to be replaced with comparable but not particularly reminiscent versions in the fiction about Pokémon from other worlds.
- In some worlds ("Sunshine family" worlds) various Marvel Cinematic Universe events began to unfold, but did not complete the process. In at least one, they were cut short very early (specifically, Captain America existed but the project did not work very well and there is fictionalized media about what might have been). There are some worlds where the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe is approximately taken as canon, except our obvious changes as described.
INDEX POST: Click here to start reading.
A somewhat buggy HTML mirror of Effulgence is available. You can download an EPUB or a MOBI, more recent and suspected more complete.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 01:58 am (UTC)Once a person is all caught up, the way that works best for me is to read the reading pages of the belltower and binary-heat. They're at http://belltower.dreamwidth.org/read and http://binary-heat.dreamwidth.org/read
no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 05:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 12:08 pm (UTC)I like the reading pages because it tells you at a glance the number of comments on all the recent posts.
If you view the reading pages in the sitescheme ( http://belltower.dreamwidth.org/read?
no subject
Date: 2013-09-09 05:51 pm (UTC)Someone should get accidentally trapped in morph form like Tobias did. They can fix it later with wish coins once they're pealed.
it would be super risky but if they could get some hork-bajir morphs that would help infiltrate the yeerks.
I think it would be really funny if the peal met the original non-luminous bella from twilight in millways. but i understand why that probably won't happen.
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Date: 2013-09-10 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-10 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-24 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-24 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-24 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-24 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-24 02:26 am (UTC)Addy
Date: 2013-10-14 08:40 pm (UTC)To be quite honest, she reminds me strongly of the more interesting career academics at my university; I'd have expected the Bells, with their rational and information-based approach to things, to get along with her very well. Instead she has been limited, denied access to magic on which she may have a useful view, and essentially exists on sufferance. Why?
Re: Addy
Date: 2013-10-14 08:50 pm (UTC)And if the best way to get magic to play with ever changes, like if I got enough accumulated power and momentum that nobody could stop me if I wanted to... oh, now you've got me daydreaming about not having to stop playing with my toys just because they're tired, or they're bored, or they want to do other things with their time ever, or they miss their magically boring friends and relatives who were in my way, or... sigh.
Anyhow, I would probably pause long enough to see if my current boss could produce a tempting counter-offer to just taking what I want with any unrestricted magical access I got hold of! Professional courtesy of sorts. Wouldn't do to let it go to my head if I got hold of just a little and I could get even more by asking nicely.
If.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-17 03:14 am (UTC)(is she a template?)
no subject
Date: 2013-10-17 08:59 pm (UTC)As for whether I'm a template, now, that would be telling.
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Date: 2013-10-17 10:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-17 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-19 05:22 am (UTC)All jokes aside, this is pretty great. I'm most amused by the complete story threads (Stella, Downside, the Pokeverse, the Animorphs verse), but the RP as a whole is pretty close to the top of the list of "things I've read this year." Watching the Bells ... /emBellish/ things is something of a treat whenever it happens, too, particularly in a world that needs optimizing like Panem. (And somehow, giving the fairytale Bell narrative-causality-sight is just appropriate, though I wonder if there's a Discworld Bell out there somewhere.)
The one thing that does bug me is - warning, I'm a YW fan so I'm biased - I feel like the Powers That Be could've gotten a more charitable reading. It seems pretty easy to interpret the metaphysics such that all the Powers but the Lone versus the Lone is a fair enough fight that everyPower's too busy fixing false vacuum collapses or whatever to worry about iodine in Africa. Of course, I don't know what you have planned, so this could just be Campbell's impression based on what little he's got.
Anyway, I'm going to go figure out how to remind myself to check pages for updates. Obviously you don't have deadlines but roughly, what's the average rate of updates per storyline per... month, say?
no subject
Date: 2013-10-19 12:42 pm (UTC)We are usually always working on at least one thing. Which thing or things is not subject to prediction.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-19 10:34 pm (UTC)Especially Juliet & T'Mir worlds.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-19 10:56 pm (UTC)And fair enough again; I'll just start keeping notes or something.
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Date: 2013-10-21 09:54 pm (UTC)Also, for everyone who wants a good way to track the story in progress: I use ChangeDetection.com to track the "Adventures in Effulgence" index, set to send me daily emails when the page changes. It's worked very well so far. It's in the public directory at https://www.changedetection.com/log/
no subject
Date: 2013-10-29 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-29 10:30 pm (UTC)