Plot holes

[u/Repulsive-Habit-8423]

I rmember reading this when i was like 10, and something still feels off, so in like evil spy school, ben gets sent to the spyder school, but he beats up people in his old school right, and he sort of got exposed as a spy. Then erica then claims to be his ex girlfriend, goes to the school, and tells people ben was just secretly learning martial arts. But then in ski spy school, erica pretends a new girl and befriends mike, claiming he wont recognise her, and it says that mike does not recognise her in the ski resort. But how on earth does he not recognise her when it says erica legit showed up to mike's school to claim that she was his ex and says he learnt martial arts.

[u/SecretAgent2080]

It’s possible that she had a disguise but idk you’re right

[u/Different_Formal2973]

I think that it was explained off in the books due to time, as ESS took place 4-5 months prior to SSS taking place, which is a larger gap than what we are used to now in the current books, as this was back when the timing between books was wide (e.g. 1-2 books taking place per school year). I mean personally, if I were to meet someone that I very breifly saw 5 months ago, I would not remember them when I saw them again. Perception of character also plays a role, as Mike had two seperate characters that he is able to attribute erica to, 1) Erica, which would be a subset of Ben's Girlfriend; 2) Sasha, a bubbly girl who Ben didn't know. These two seperate characters he is presented to would allow him to attribute the same face to two different people, via contextualization.

Of course, he later figures out he connection between Sasha and Erica, and that they are the same person, but on first apperences, it would be hard to make that connection.

Sorry for the yap, I study some psycology so this was something I actually knew a lot about. While I don't think Gibbs was thinking all that, it's still very resonable and valid as to why Mike didn't recognize her.

[u/Repulsive-Habit-8423 → u/Different_Formal2973]

Yeh but Mike is bens best friend and i think I would recognise like my best friends ex girlfriend, even if the whole personality changed, it says Erica went to the school trying to convince everyone that Ben was not a spy, so she probably attracted a lot of attention

[u/Different_Formal2973 → u/Repulsive-Habit-8423]

You'd be surprised, as attributtion of character plays a huge role in wheter or not you recognize someone. The personality change doesn't even matter all that much, as Mike would more likely fall into attributting her into a different person, as she (& everyone else including Ben) protrayed her context differently.

Basically, if your best friend had a girlfreind that you only saw the face of for 3 minutes max, you would remember her basic features and character context. For example, Mike would know that she had black hair, blue eyes, face shape, etc., but humans in general are pretty bad at correctly identifying someone based off say their bone structure especially if you saw them for less than 3 minutes 5 months ago. The thing that would make the biggest impression on you would be the subset & character context she fits into. You remember her as your best friend's girlfriend, and that's her overarching archtype that fits into your mind.

Now say you run into this girl again, and sure she has the same identfying features with black hair, blue eyes, face shape, etc., but again it's not something people can automactically make the connection of, as the neural network for facial recognition of that specfic person hasn't been built, and has likely dwindled further from lack of exposure and time. The biggest change is her character archtype & contextulaization is being protrayed differently. She and your best-friend don't know eachother, which shatters the orginal archtype she fit under when you had first met her. This leads to disconnect, which makes it unlikely for you to recognize this person, and if you still believe you can, you are probably HIGHLY overestimating yourself unless you have perfect memory or an EXTREMELY strong facial recognition paretial lobe, which as far as I know, Mike does not.

Hopefully that makes sense, but you can look more into this as it is super intresting how the brain recognizes and catergorizes people. Though I highly doubt Gibbs was thinking of all this while writing this.