What Might Have Been: Incandescence

[Alicorn]

Alli and Al wouldn't have any particularly interesting relationship, I think, at least nothing I anticipated in advance. They would go platonically dancing.

I'm willing to have the BDSM AU crop up somewhere else but it would have to be a high-commitment situation because it would involve making new accounts and becoming attached to a new twist on the Bell backstory.

BDSM AU (in general, possibly not the Stargate ripoff in particular but maybe) is a good candidate for an AUSJ, now that I think of it. Cycle is very likely to see re-use, in whole or in part (servantmaking is already a recycle). Superluminal (Effulgence) and Myth (Witchlight) are both Skin Deep 'verses, though they feature dragon Bells instead of sphinx ones. Ravel might come up in modified form. I like the conceit of spellbinding but am not attached to the underlying traits of the world we put it in.

[modrony]

The boot thing would have been so awesome..

I am a bit sad. Incandencence was my favourite glowfic.
Guess I will follow your sandboxes then.

Kinda glad the Prime plot was cut short thou.
I really disagree with necklacing being an optimal solution and it's not like they lack the time to find something better.

[Lambda]

I agree that necklacing feels like a Bad End. (They lived happily ever after.)

[DanielH]

It’s a lot better when he does already love her and he’s doing it voluntarily (he’s not even doing it for mental privacy reasons or desperation reasons like Treasury’s local Bell and Adarin did), but yes.

[Marri]

I will now summarize roughly what Aestrix told me when I asked her about the Prime necklacing thing! So, the problems with Prime trying to necklacelessly Fall In Love:

1. He's quite sure he cannot emotionally keep up with Aya. Pretty actually incapable. And he knows this and finds it depressing and also feels horribly guilty about it (and has baggage about an ex who was crazy at him for being emotionally distant).
2. He has spent five hundred years emotionally distancing himself from everyone, doing his own thing, and generally using people as pawns because a) that's what he needed to do and b) he kept being burned by people. He is now seriously lacking in ways to turn this off. It does not come with an off switch.
3. He is emotionally exhausted. Having no connections to anyone or anything is really lonely and sad, and he's tired of fighting to Do The Right Thing but still being alone and miserable at the end of the day. The necklace is appealing because it will just work and then he will finally be happy.

'Emotionally' kind of no longer looks like a word, but that's the gist of it.

[anthusiasm]

...I want to give Prime a hug.

[DanielH]

I’m not sure it would help. I do too, though. I also want to give him a dæmon; Cypress is right about him needing one.

[Aestrix]

Marri's spot on with her explanation - also added is the fact that he keeps being told his way of handling Aya is wrong because he was treating it as a thing in her head that was something other than Aya herself. Forcing himself to think of it as Aya in love with him and not Aya with a necklace thing that's made her fall in love with him makes poking the necklace more appealing. It is not subjecting himself to a necklace, it is making himself fall in love, the end result of which he has proof turns out well. See: literally almost any Bell and Adarin pair ever. And that makes it better.

Prime doesn't dislike hugs, they might help a little if you explained why you wanted to hug him first. The daemon would be much more helpful, Cypress was completely right when he said a daemon would help. Cypress was also right in realizing that he was the most emotionally stable of all of the Adarins. Adarins don't handle their Bells being taken away very well regardless, but he would handle it the best out of all of them.

[DanielH]

I guess if you think of it as a deliberate self-modification, being more the person he wished he were, it seems a lot different.

[Aestrix]

Essentially, yes! But it's debatable over whether he's right or not.

I certainly wouldn't want to touch the necklace until I was already in love, personally.