I want to know what effect Elspeth’s other self will have on being Chelsea’d. If her other self can somehow propagate her love for her mother back to her, then that would take out a major chunk of the damage Chelsea can do to her. (Who else does Elspeth have a relationship with that Chelsea can nuke? Several people, Edward and the Denalis mostly; however, they aren’t nearly as close to Elspeth. It would put even more of a crimp in her possible future relationship with Edward, though.)
On a side note, Chelsea’s power is scary. Not just for its obvious nightmare-fuel, but for the cognitive implications. If it doesn’t affect memory but still affects a person’s evaluation of another’s importance to them, then it must be either fundamentally changing their moral values such that even after reevaluating their memories, they do not feel that the other is important, or forcing the relationship-evaluating bit of their mind to evaluate to ‘false’ (or “Chelsea’s chosen value”, whatever) regardless of memory. But if it was the simple latter case, then a victim once they had left her immediate presence could undo most of the effect simply by reevaluating their memories and noting the things that make the other person important, which is evidently not the case. Thus, Chelsea is either fundamentally changing your sense of morality, or introducing irremovable inconsistencies into your relationship evaluation. Either way is awful.
I’m wondering if the other person Elspeth sees when she tries to ‘talk’ to herself is the manifestation of her witchcraft, which simply wants to tell the truth. If so, she should be able to use that to start doubting the way Chelsea has tweaked her to evaluate other people much quicker than if she were to begin re-evaluating her memories; memories that she may not trust with her new values. She has no reason not to trust her witchcraft however, so if she asks it about herself and what she thought of others before being Chelsea’d, she may recover very quickly. Once she’s done this, she may also be able to help the Quileutes recover their original values. If not, then at least she can order Jacob around.
Perhaps more awful, and perhaps not, depending on how you evaluate these things, is the fact that this sort of cognitive modification happens to people in the real world every day as a result of brain damage of various sorts.
Agreed. To me Chelsea is the second-most-creepy thing about this series (mate bonds and imprinting being the most creepy, for reasons Alicorn has neatly illustrated).
Actually on second thought, Chelsea is number one. She can make a parent forget to care about a lost child. The mate-bond/imprinting thing is something I have to take on faith—it’s magic, got it—but I have two sons, and so for me mother-love is the strongest, most all-consuming force I can possibly imagine. If it was stripped from me I would not be me any more. What Chelsea does is terrifying. If I had to choose, I would choose a lifetime of being raped by Demetri over losing my love for my sons. Chelsea is worse.
If I were your son, I’d unequivocally tell you to choose the mind-alteration over the endless rape. They’re both horrible, but at least under the first circumstance you’d be happy.
I agree that Chelsea is terrifying in this story. In canon her gift is rarely ever talked about, and the narrator (Bella) never really experiences it in any way. The effects of Chelsea’s witchcraft have been felt all through late Luminosity and Radiance though, and it’s certainly terrible. I have hope though that those affected can restore much of their previous personality and relationships by way of re-evaluating their memories, and even quicker with help from Elspeth, who is very hard to doubt. If precious friends and lovers have been killed or otherwise lost though, they’ll never be the same.
The Volturi always had the capability of being horrifying in canon Twilight, but because SM was writing it as a love story they had to take a back seat and be very inactive and stupid when present, despite all their experience.
I’m one of the Luminosity readers who never actually read the Twilight books. So I’m only dimly aware of departures from canon. Were people at least afraid of Chelsea? Did they consider her a major threat?
Well, sure. They suspected that should the Volturi force them to join, she would start brain-frying them into liking their superiors and want to please them. It was later revealed she would do this to any talented vampires the Volturi wanted that they came across, while breaking their ties to outsiders. But this was mentioned maybe once or twice out all four books. Eleazar and Carmen leave the Volturi unhindered, which isn’t really the case in this story. I suspect the choice they were given here was to have severe restrictions on their freedom or be completely altered by Chelsea. I think she may be more powerful in this story, but like I said it wasn’t really discussed in canon.
In canon, Bella developed her shield by learning to share it, instead of by adding immunities to it. By the time Chelsea actually appears, nobody we are supposed to care about is left vulnerable. She never does a single thing that we are supposed to find more than vaguely unsettling.
Does indeed seem like Elspeth put in her love for her mother in deep storage to be retrieved later, with the full force of the truthfulness that she’s so good at conveying.
That “Forces of the Universe” spiel was a good sell, though; too bad that the alternative is, as you say, quite the monster.
And then there’s Allirea, whose fate was left unclear as a surprise to no-one. Maybe she’ll be there to meet the Cullens and Bella (who might have a bit of an advantage with being able to pay attention to her when others aren’t, except whatever Eleazar manages with his “there’s someone there” trick). They may be able to get some resistance going on after all.
Or, Allirea gets dragged back again, lather, rinse, repeat.
Have you heard of Capgras syndrome? For people who have this (according to Wikipedia), “their conscious ability to recognize faces was intact, but they might have damage to the system that produces the automatic emotional arousal to familiar faces. This might lead to the experience of recognizing someone while feeling something was not “quite right” about them.” Possibly similar?
But apparently Chelsea doesn’t just change how you feel about someone, but how important you think they are?
But apparently Chelsea doesn’t just change how you feel about someone, but how important you think they are?
Chelsea can destroy relationships. If Chelsea walks up to some person A and goes “snip snip” on A’s relationship with some other person B, then A no longer emotionally distinguishes B from any demographically similar person that A has never met or seen who lives far away and isn’t related to A’s social network.
So, for example, no one who Chelsea has “snip snipped” with regards to Natalie considers Natalie more interesting or important than some random baby in sub-Saharan Africa who has died of iodine deficiency. Yes, it is mildly saddening to think of any dead baby, but this dead baby is not special to you; why think about or grieve for this dead baby first?
Of course, some kinds of social importance “grow back” immediately. It’s a form of social importance just to be physically nearby—you will care more about someone who dies in front of you than about someone who dies on another continent, even if you have the same facts about each case. Someone biologically related to you, or who is a friend of a friend, will “grow back” a little bit too after the snipping—just like you’d care a little bit about a long-lost sibling you just suddenly discovered you had as compared to an unrelated stranger—but with regular maintenance from Chelsea, native consistency effects (“for the last five years, I have seemed to be the person who does not care about relationships of type X”) will slow and eventually halt this regrowth.
then a victim once they had left her immediate presence could undo most of the effect simply by reevaluating their memories and noting the things that make the other person important
Note that Chelsea does a fair amount of maintenance work.
Darn you, cliffhangers!
I want to know what effect Elspeth’s other self will have on being Chelsea’d. If her other self can somehow propagate her love for her mother back to her, then that would take out a major chunk of the damage Chelsea can do to her. (Who else does Elspeth have a relationship with that Chelsea can nuke? Several people, Edward and the Denalis mostly; however, they aren’t nearly as close to Elspeth. It would put even more of a crimp in her possible future relationship with Edward, though.)
On a side note, Chelsea’s power is scary. Not just for its obvious nightmare-fuel, but for the cognitive implications. If it doesn’t affect memory but still affects a person’s evaluation of another’s importance to them, then it must be either fundamentally changing their moral values such that even after reevaluating their memories, they do not feel that the other is important, or forcing the relationship-evaluating bit of their mind to evaluate to ‘false’ (or “Chelsea’s chosen value”, whatever) regardless of memory. But if it was the simple latter case, then a victim once they had left her immediate presence could undo most of the effect simply by reevaluating their memories and noting the things that make the other person important, which is evidently not the case. Thus, Chelsea is either fundamentally changing your sense of morality, or introducing irremovable inconsistencies into your relationship evaluation. Either way is awful.
I’m wondering if the other person Elspeth sees when she tries to ‘talk’ to herself is the manifestation of her witchcraft, which simply wants to tell the truth. If so, she should be able to use that to start doubting the way Chelsea has tweaked her to evaluate other people much quicker than if she were to begin re-evaluating her memories; memories that she may not trust with her new values. She has no reason not to trust her witchcraft however, so if she asks it about herself and what she thought of others before being Chelsea’d, she may recover very quickly. Once she’s done this, she may also be able to help the Quileutes recover their original values. If not, then at least she can order Jacob around.
Wow, this turned out to be a stunningly accurate guess. Alicorn, did the above comment influence your writing process at all?
Nope, Magic being the second subagent was already my plan.
Perhaps more awful, and perhaps not, depending on how you evaluate these things, is the fact that this sort of cognitive modification happens to people in the real world every day as a result of brain damage of various sorts.
Sacks writes fairly poignantly about this.
Agreed. To me Chelsea is the second-most-creepy thing about this series (mate bonds and imprinting being the most creepy, for reasons Alicorn has neatly illustrated).
Actually on second thought, Chelsea is number one. She can make a parent forget to care about a lost child. The mate-bond/imprinting thing is something I have to take on faith—it’s magic, got it—but I have two sons, and so for me mother-love is the strongest, most all-consuming force I can possibly imagine. If it was stripped from me I would not be me any more. What Chelsea does is terrifying. If I had to choose, I would choose a lifetime of being raped by Demetri over losing my love for my sons. Chelsea is worse.
If I were your son, I’d unequivocally tell you to choose the mind-alteration over the endless rape. They’re both horrible, but at least under the first circumstance you’d be happy.
It might or might not affect this calculation that Allirea is immortal.
Errrrgh. It probably would.
Allirea has children, anyway. There’s nothing incompatible about the horrible fates here ;)
I agree that Chelsea is terrifying in this story. In canon her gift is rarely ever talked about, and the narrator (Bella) never really experiences it in any way. The effects of Chelsea’s witchcraft have been felt all through late Luminosity and Radiance though, and it’s certainly terrible. I have hope though that those affected can restore much of their previous personality and relationships by way of re-evaluating their memories, and even quicker with help from Elspeth, who is very hard to doubt. If precious friends and lovers have been killed or otherwise lost though, they’ll never be the same.
The Volturi always had the capability of being horrifying in canon Twilight, but because SM was writing it as a love story they had to take a back seat and be very inactive and stupid when present, despite all their experience.
I’m one of the Luminosity readers who never actually read the Twilight books. So I’m only dimly aware of departures from canon. Were people at least afraid of Chelsea? Did they consider her a major threat?
Well, sure. They suspected that should the Volturi force them to join, she would start brain-frying them into liking their superiors and want to please them. It was later revealed she would do this to any talented vampires the Volturi wanted that they came across, while breaking their ties to outsiders. But this was mentioned maybe once or twice out all four books. Eleazar and Carmen leave the Volturi unhindered, which isn’t really the case in this story. I suspect the choice they were given here was to have severe restrictions on their freedom or be completely altered by Chelsea. I think she may be more powerful in this story, but like I said it wasn’t really discussed in canon.
In canon, Bella developed her shield by learning to share it, instead of by adding immunities to it. By the time Chelsea actually appears, nobody we are supposed to care about is left vulnerable. She never does a single thing that we are supposed to find more than vaguely unsettling.
Does indeed seem like Elspeth put in her love for her mother in deep storage to be retrieved later, with the full force of the truthfulness that she’s so good at conveying.
That “Forces of the Universe” spiel was a good sell, though; too bad that the alternative is, as you say, quite the monster.
And then there’s Allirea, whose fate was left unclear as a surprise to no-one. Maybe she’ll be there to meet the Cullens and Bella (who might have a bit of an advantage with being able to pay attention to her when others aren’t, except whatever Eleazar manages with his “there’s someone there” trick). They may be able to get some resistance going on after all.
Or, Allirea gets dragged back again, lather, rinse, repeat.
Moer.
I really liked the disposal of Allirea. Eleazar’s interaction with Santiago there was priceless.
Agreed!
Poor Allirea, though—she’s got to be running out of time before Demetri shows up.
Have you heard of Capgras syndrome? For people who have this (according to Wikipedia), “their conscious ability to recognize faces was intact, but they might have damage to the system that produces the automatic emotional arousal to familiar faces. This might lead to the experience of recognizing someone while feeling something was not “quite right” about them.” Possibly similar?
But apparently Chelsea doesn’t just change how you feel about someone, but how important you think they are?
Chelsea can destroy relationships. If Chelsea walks up to some person A and goes “snip snip” on A’s relationship with some other person B, then A no longer emotionally distinguishes B from any demographically similar person that A has never met or seen who lives far away and isn’t related to A’s social network.
So, for example, no one who Chelsea has “snip snipped” with regards to Natalie considers Natalie more interesting or important than some random baby in sub-Saharan Africa who has died of iodine deficiency. Yes, it is mildly saddening to think of any dead baby, but this dead baby is not special to you; why think about or grieve for this dead baby first?
Of course, some kinds of social importance “grow back” immediately. It’s a form of social importance just to be physically nearby—you will care more about someone who dies in front of you than about someone who dies on another continent, even if you have the same facts about each case. Someone biologically related to you, or who is a friend of a friend, will “grow back” a little bit too after the snipping—just like you’d care a little bit about a long-lost sibling you just suddenly discovered you had as compared to an unrelated stranger—but with regular maintenance from Chelsea, native consistency effects (“for the last five years, I have seemed to be the person who does not care about relationships of type X”) will slow and eventually halt this regrowth.
Note that Chelsea does a fair amount of maintenance work.