Elaine can’t do much on the Paranet as she suffers the same technology restrictions of all Wizards.
Well... kind of.
First: I don't think "all wizards" suffer the same.
Harry's magical Gift is unusually strong, and he's not much into subtlety & delicacy. Elaine isn't as powerful, but is *MUCH* better with subtlety & delicacy. I'm sure she can manage more with tech than Harry can.
That said... I doubt she could be very active "on" the Paranet (i.e. the internet), you're spot-on there!
Still, she might be able (for example) to sit back and watch a big-screen monitor from 30 feet away, and have a mundane or a weak-talent person operate the computer on her behalf...
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HOWEVER, she can do a tremendous amount for them on the magical side of things. She can disseminate a solid, shared, theoretical foundation, instead of hardscrabble hedge-witchery lineal-descent oral traditions.
She can teach what methods the Paranetters
are capable of using, and better ways to spot young talents, train them, etc.
She can give them safety-courses -- less-known (but not less-common) things to watch out for, etc.
But more than anything else, she can act as a nexus for everyone else to rally 'round -- Elaine isn't part of ANY of their groups, so they don't have to fear favoritism.
... Elaine could only be nemfected if she was not a Starborn ...
I don't think that's clear at all.
Justin had Elaine enthralled; but (even with Elaine-thrall to help) failed to capture Harry's mind.
We saw Harry immobilized by Outsider magic in the Raith Deeps; only the secret knowledge of a Fallen Angel helped him break free; no Lasciel in that scene = dead Harry.
I think Young-Elaine was vulnerable, and could have fallen to Nemfection... possibly Justin even infected her!
But also -- in the post-Justin time, but before she found Summer -- her psychic shields would have been in shambles(*) and a powerful assault could have broken her.
(*) - I think Justin deliberately didn't teach much psychic-defense, so he could take them easier; remember how much Harry & Molly had to figure out by trial & error!
I wonder if Elaine isn't Nemfected, still!
... What if that was the plan?, a pregnant Elaine would throw herself on Summer using her baby, a child of two powerful wizards as bait to get close to the Summer Lady, the ultimate target of that scheme.
...
The old Summer Knight would have known, but he was killed by the old Winter Knight Lloyd Slate, who was working with Aurora. They wanted to capture the Mantle and pour its energy into Winter, but what if a secondary reason was to kill a potential source of information ? Ruel lived in Chicago, he might bump into Harry and have accidentally disclosed the Elaine/Nemesis connection without realising what it was.
That’s my conspiracy theory of the day.
Oooo.
That's a doozy! I don't much
LIKE that plan. But it has a certain screw-Harry-over morbidity to it, that I fear might appeal to Jim in one of his more-twisted moods. And it gives Harry a "Mordred" figure, an "illicit" fairy-nurtured child who has been raised to oppose him. That sort of folkloric link is like catnip for Puss-in-Butcher...
... The events of Justin’s death took place around 1991. Any child would likely have been born in 1992. That child (effectively owned by Summer ) would have just turned 21 in 2014 the furthest forward in the narrative we are.
Except that the Faeries are utterly capable of using time-flow in the Nevernever to tweak things however they want. If Jim is going with this, Harry's "21-year-old" son could be anything from a newborn, to an old man...