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?
Demetri is also immune to Allirea’s power. Due to the magic bond he never sees her as unimportant.
Allirea wouldn’t be sensing how well her fading works on Elspeth. She would just be sensing how well Elspeth’s “counter-fading” power is working. And it seems like she can sense that.
Elspeth doesn’t need to feel the effect of lies, she can just remember what worked better and what worked worse when she lied to people in the past, based on the reactions of those people.
I agree that it would have been wiser for Elspeth to take some time to confirm that she could carry out plans (of varying complexities) while faded and thus not remembering the reasoning behind her actions. But hey, she’s 5. Probably a lot more brain power than a human child, but brain power doesn’t necessarily equal sense. She can have the idiot ball for awhile.
Hmm, I suppose it’s also possible that Allirea didn’t really give her the option to think things over and be cautious. She told her the plan and then they did it, and once Elspeth was faded she couldn’t think about that stuff. So maybe it’s all on Allirea? Well, but speed of thinking actually is one of those things that would come with brain power, so if Elspeth was going to think of it at all, she probably could have thought of it in the time she had.
Allirea could have been more conscientious about confirming Elspeth’s ability to hold up her end of the deal. Then again, if they found that Elspeth couldn’t do it, maybe there’s no alternative. Perhaps it’s this or nothing. Experimenting wouldn’t allow them to alter the plan to make up for Elspeth’s inability, because there just isn’t any other possible plan. So, it might be reasonable to just go for it, and if it doesn’t work, oh well, not that big a deal, in Allirea’s mind.
Possibly Elspeth, if she thought she couldn’t carry out the plan, would have preferred not to do anything at all, for fear of harsher repercussions from the Volturi. But maybe not, if she is confident that they want to use Jacob and that that will limit how harshly they treat her.
Yeah, it’s all maybes with me. :)
I didn’t select my friends from (a conservative Christian) college for lgbt-friendliness or non-conformist dating styles or really anything at all, besides maybe an enjoyment of genre television or some connection to friends I already had. And yet it turned out that at least a third of the women in my social circle share my love of hot bi guys and m/m in general. Also, m/m fanservice for the benefit of female fans seems to be rather a common thing for hot young male celebrities to do in certain cultures, such as Japan.