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On Telepathy and Empathy and other YAYBRAIN talents in fic and RP
I know I've ranted about this in short form in the past but I've finally got a full post's worth of material about it now!
Hokay, so. MIND TALENTS! They've been around in literature and stuff since way, way before Spock made his debut on the scene. My first encounter with them in fiction that I can remember was - okay. In books, it was Monica Hughes's The Dream Catcher and then again in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door. On TV, it was that old 1990s X-Men cartoon (hey shut up, it was fun XD) and Counselor Deanna Troi. It's The Dream Catcher that's really the inspiration for how I write societies of people with mental talents; I wasn't really a Trekkie although I have a tone of friends who are. I don't doubt there's some Vulcan influence in my work too - but I digress.
The point of this post was not navel-gazing, it was how to write or RP mental talents in a way that doesn't annoy the bejesus out of people.
This is all my opinion, of course, and I know my way isn't the only way, but the examples I'm about to give are largely in the category of 'this is how NOT to do it well'. Discussion's more than awesome but pls refrain from talking to me as if I were a mentally defunct jumping bean XD
Of course every universe has its own rules; the examples I've given are from my own games and writing and from stuff I've seen myself. These deal with characters who have control over their gifts for the most part.
ETA: It occurs to me that I totally left out any stuff about n00bs. A n00b psychic is prolly going to get an eyeful of brain by accident OFTEN and end up flailing around because they would rather not have seen that dude thinking about that thing that time. This can ALSO be RPed or written annoyingly (along the "OH TEH MELODRAMAZ AND TEH WANGST AND TEH SORROEZ, and so on" lines of things) but for the most part I've dealt with developed psychics, so it's them I'm rambling about mostly. I'll likely deal with n00b psychics at a later date. This is principally about psychics who can control their stuff.
1) PSYCHIC EAVESDROPPING: I'm constantly amazed at the number of people I've gamed with and proofed for who will have their telepaths or empaths do this. They see no problem with their hero (male or female) poking around in someone's head for information, reading someone's mind to get the upper hand or get more info, listening in on a private conversation between two other telepaths, answering questions that a character has not spoken aloud, 'just knowing things' (read: reading minds behind the scenes) - and they have no earthly idea why other PCs might lose trust in theirs completely, and have no idea at all why I say it makes their hero look skeezy.
Basically, at best, psychic 'skimming' or casual mind reading is eavesdropping. At worst, it's B&E and criminal trespass. Your character, in listening in to others' conversations, is picking up the spare receiver like a bratty kid who doesn't want to be babysat (at best) or wiretapping illegally (at worst). They're going through someone's recycle bin for credit card and SIN numbers. That is what casual mindreading is. I'm not being a drama lord either.
Empathy is the same. I've seen a lot of people try and fail to be Deanna Troi. Why things more or less worked for her was that she stated what she was picking up without judgment, and she seemed to be mentioning things that the person she was reading might not be aware of. (This wasn't always the case, and I know it. My memory is spotty, mea culpa.) Where other RPers and writers fail is in having a character be a judgmental knowitall about someone's emotions, or get butthurt/go flouncy/ run away weeping pretty sparkly shoujo tears across a field of cherry blossoms.
AGAIN, YOU ARE INVADING PRIVACY. I will admit to having had characters blurt things out before, or pick up emotions and be aware of them, but when they do either (a) I'm playing them as little kids with far less control over their third eyelids and shields, and no brain-to-mouth filter; (b) the emotion is overwhelming because the person feeling it is a projective empath and thus there's a "holy crap, VOLUME DOWN PLOX" effect; (c) their mind is wandering and they notice but don't say anything. And again, this is accidental, and there are consequences to the blurting (wall to wall WTF, flailing, "HEY HOW THE" etc.) and amends need to be made after.
Going "OH NURF HURF YOU FEELS TEH RAEG :O" is like announcing any other personal information. It's rude. Don't expect characters to react well to this in RP. Don't expect me to give your hero a pass just because they're a hero, in writing. Sketch is sketch, rude is rude.
The annoying part is that these players get OH SO TANTRUMMY if someone does the same thing to their PC.
Which leads me to the next point -
2) MENTAL SHIELDING: Look, please lay down the damned rules for how shielding works and stick with them? If you MUST bend the rules, have a damn good reason for doing so. And for heaven's sakes, please consider potential limitations! Perfectly unbreakable one-way-mirror shields - where you can see everything and no one can see you - is cheap and godmodey and obnoxious, and inevitably used by someone who's going to have a villain go smashy-smash through the shields later as a spotlight-jockeying tactic...
My personal approach - which you do NOT have to use and which I know is not the only RIGHT way - is to have empathy or telepathy be a two-way exchange. If you can see someone's thoughts clearly, they can see yours. If your third eye is wide open, someone will be able to look into it as a window to your soul. Shields being up in fortified/defensive renforced mode means one cannot send or receive as clearly. It's like window glass blocking UV rays. Someone's shields in normal/standby mode would be like having a window open about a third of the way, maybe.
Either way, shields ALL THE WAY UP IN DEFENSIVE = cannot read or send clearly. Special permissions can be given to trusted people (forged mental links and such - kind of a psychic walkie talkie) but in general, most input and output is blunted.
Again, this isn't the ONLY way to do things, but all perks and no drawbacks is cheap and it turns the character into an ass out of which the author can pull any number of hackneyed plot twists and Deus ex Machinae.
3) MENTAL SPACE: This is connected with 1 and 2 above - I personally run it that a mindscape is vaguely visible from the outside, but in order to get a really clear look at it one has to - look at it. Done without permission, this is trespassing at worst. At best it's peeking into someone's bedroom to see if it's messy. Again, gawking without permission is rude.
Wandering into someone's mental space or dreamscape without permission is another big no. I've had characters stumble in like idiots and apologize profusely; the only ones who will walk uninvited into someone else's mind/dream, or BREAK IN, are the assjack wankers. It's a big violation of trust and privacy.
'Just guessing' or 'just knowing' what someone's mental space looks like falls into the category of supremo bullshit. In RP it's gonna be metagaming if the player denies reading minds on the sly.
Allowing someone into one's mental space is a big sign of trust, on the flip side.
4) SOCIETAL RULES: Any race or culture or society where telepathy and empathy are common is going to have rules and laws and mores about it. What is legal and what is not. Penalties for being a choad. Acceptable and unacceptable uses of talent. Precautions that should be taken, and so on. In Babylon 5 for example, people with mental talents wore gloves. That was both a 'hey I'm a telepath' sign, and protection for them. Psychometry (picking things up from objects) relies on touch, and empathy and telepathy is often associated with touch. See also: THE VULCANS! The mind meld. Ponn Farr. Touch can possibly bring really unwanted accidental readings. Therefore, gloves, or a society that doesn't do much touching of unclothed places.
In The Dream Catcher you have a whole society of telepaths, and so they teach the kids how to use their talents through meditation and lessons. (It doesn't work well for Ruth, the protagonist, but she has a dang good reason why she's getting so distracted!) According to talent, kids who come of age start pursuing one of three usual categories of job. (The fourth is unusual.)
I'd like to go more into detail about all of this but this entry is unwieldy anyhow. So I'll cut it off here.
tl;dr if you're going to be writing someone with a mental talent, TAKE THE TIME TO DO IT RIGHT thxbai.
Hokay, so. MIND TALENTS! They've been around in literature and stuff since way, way before Spock made his debut on the scene. My first encounter with them in fiction that I can remember was - okay. In books, it was Monica Hughes's The Dream Catcher and then again in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door. On TV, it was that old 1990s X-Men cartoon (hey shut up, it was fun XD) and Counselor Deanna Troi. It's The Dream Catcher that's really the inspiration for how I write societies of people with mental talents; I wasn't really a Trekkie although I have a tone of friends who are. I don't doubt there's some Vulcan influence in my work too - but I digress.
The point of this post was not navel-gazing, it was how to write or RP mental talents in a way that doesn't annoy the bejesus out of people.
This is all my opinion, of course, and I know my way isn't the only way, but the examples I'm about to give are largely in the category of 'this is how NOT to do it well'. Discussion's more than awesome but pls refrain from talking to me as if I were a mentally defunct jumping bean XD
Of course every universe has its own rules; the examples I've given are from my own games and writing and from stuff I've seen myself. These deal with characters who have control over their gifts for the most part.
ETA: It occurs to me that I totally left out any stuff about n00bs. A n00b psychic is prolly going to get an eyeful of brain by accident OFTEN and end up flailing around because they would rather not have seen that dude thinking about that thing that time. This can ALSO be RPed or written annoyingly (along the "OH TEH MELODRAMAZ AND TEH WANGST AND TEH SORROEZ, and so on" lines of things) but for the most part I've dealt with developed psychics, so it's them I'm rambling about mostly. I'll likely deal with n00b psychics at a later date. This is principally about psychics who can control their stuff.
1) PSYCHIC EAVESDROPPING: I'm constantly amazed at the number of people I've gamed with and proofed for who will have their telepaths or empaths do this. They see no problem with their hero (male or female) poking around in someone's head for information, reading someone's mind to get the upper hand or get more info, listening in on a private conversation between two other telepaths, answering questions that a character has not spoken aloud, 'just knowing things' (read: reading minds behind the scenes) - and they have no earthly idea why other PCs might lose trust in theirs completely, and have no idea at all why I say it makes their hero look skeezy.
Basically, at best, psychic 'skimming' or casual mind reading is eavesdropping. At worst, it's B&E and criminal trespass. Your character, in listening in to others' conversations, is picking up the spare receiver like a bratty kid who doesn't want to be babysat (at best) or wiretapping illegally (at worst). They're going through someone's recycle bin for credit card and SIN numbers. That is what casual mindreading is. I'm not being a drama lord either.
Empathy is the same. I've seen a lot of people try and fail to be Deanna Troi. Why things more or less worked for her was that she stated what she was picking up without judgment, and she seemed to be mentioning things that the person she was reading might not be aware of. (This wasn't always the case, and I know it. My memory is spotty, mea culpa.) Where other RPers and writers fail is in having a character be a judgmental knowitall about someone's emotions, or get butthurt/go flouncy/ run away weeping pretty sparkly shoujo tears across a field of cherry blossoms.
AGAIN, YOU ARE INVADING PRIVACY. I will admit to having had characters blurt things out before, or pick up emotions and be aware of them, but when they do either (a) I'm playing them as little kids with far less control over their third eyelids and shields, and no brain-to-mouth filter; (b) the emotion is overwhelming because the person feeling it is a projective empath and thus there's a "holy crap, VOLUME DOWN PLOX" effect; (c) their mind is wandering and they notice but don't say anything. And again, this is accidental, and there are consequences to the blurting (wall to wall WTF, flailing, "HEY HOW THE" etc.) and amends need to be made after.
Going "OH NURF HURF YOU FEELS TEH RAEG :O" is like announcing any other personal information. It's rude. Don't expect characters to react well to this in RP. Don't expect me to give your hero a pass just because they're a hero, in writing. Sketch is sketch, rude is rude.
The annoying part is that these players get OH SO TANTRUMMY if someone does the same thing to their PC.
Which leads me to the next point -
2) MENTAL SHIELDING: Look, please lay down the damned rules for how shielding works and stick with them? If you MUST bend the rules, have a damn good reason for doing so. And for heaven's sakes, please consider potential limitations! Perfectly unbreakable one-way-mirror shields - where you can see everything and no one can see you - is cheap and godmodey and obnoxious, and inevitably used by someone who's going to have a villain go smashy-smash through the shields later as a spotlight-jockeying tactic...
My personal approach - which you do NOT have to use and which I know is not the only RIGHT way - is to have empathy or telepathy be a two-way exchange. If you can see someone's thoughts clearly, they can see yours. If your third eye is wide open, someone will be able to look into it as a window to your soul. Shields being up in fortified/defensive renforced mode means one cannot send or receive as clearly. It's like window glass blocking UV rays. Someone's shields in normal/standby mode would be like having a window open about a third of the way, maybe.
Either way, shields ALL THE WAY UP IN DEFENSIVE = cannot read or send clearly. Special permissions can be given to trusted people (forged mental links and such - kind of a psychic walkie talkie) but in general, most input and output is blunted.
Again, this isn't the ONLY way to do things, but all perks and no drawbacks is cheap and it turns the character into an ass out of which the author can pull any number of hackneyed plot twists and Deus ex Machinae.
3) MENTAL SPACE: This is connected with 1 and 2 above - I personally run it that a mindscape is vaguely visible from the outside, but in order to get a really clear look at it one has to - look at it. Done without permission, this is trespassing at worst. At best it's peeking into someone's bedroom to see if it's messy. Again, gawking without permission is rude.
Wandering into someone's mental space or dreamscape without permission is another big no. I've had characters stumble in like idiots and apologize profusely; the only ones who will walk uninvited into someone else's mind/dream, or BREAK IN, are the assjack wankers. It's a big violation of trust and privacy.
'Just guessing' or 'just knowing' what someone's mental space looks like falls into the category of supremo bullshit. In RP it's gonna be metagaming if the player denies reading minds on the sly.
Allowing someone into one's mental space is a big sign of trust, on the flip side.
4) SOCIETAL RULES: Any race or culture or society where telepathy and empathy are common is going to have rules and laws and mores about it. What is legal and what is not. Penalties for being a choad. Acceptable and unacceptable uses of talent. Precautions that should be taken, and so on. In Babylon 5 for example, people with mental talents wore gloves. That was both a 'hey I'm a telepath' sign, and protection for them. Psychometry (picking things up from objects) relies on touch, and empathy and telepathy is often associated with touch. See also: THE VULCANS! The mind meld. Ponn Farr. Touch can possibly bring really unwanted accidental readings. Therefore, gloves, or a society that doesn't do much touching of unclothed places.
In The Dream Catcher you have a whole society of telepaths, and so they teach the kids how to use their talents through meditation and lessons. (It doesn't work well for Ruth, the protagonist, but she has a dang good reason why she's getting so distracted!) According to talent, kids who come of age start pursuing one of three usual categories of job. (The fourth is unusual.)
I'd like to go more into detail about all of this but this entry is unwieldy anyhow. So I'll cut it off here.
tl;dr if you're going to be writing someone with a mental talent, TAKE THE TIME TO DO IT RIGHT thxbai.
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Though valid points, unless the Mun is aiming to make someone look skeery. (See: Heero above).
A lot of psychic tricks feel cheap, though. (Wait. *Looks at NS and her Dark Energy senses* .... Does that count being instinct?)
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it don't work like dat.
And NS's thing struck me as like, she has a radar XD
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Actually her core reacts tyo it so.
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Otherwise, the closest thing I do to that is characters who can sense and see auras, but I usually run that by the other muns first, if I even mention it at all.
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Most people are okay with her seeing SOMETHING because she's pretty much a paladin and because they wanna see me do this synaesthetic weird shit. XD But if they say "My chara's pretty closed off psychically, but their body language is kind of stiff, so she might see that if she's looking for things," I'm cool with that.
RESPECT IS FOR TEH KEY.
And I lol'd at the semi thing. "Yeah, she can hit you with the semi from over THERE. While not driving it."
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1) PSYCHIC EAVESDROPPING
Most Normal People do not think loudly enough for this to come up. Unless someone is OMGPROJECTINGLIKEMADZ it isn't an issue. Also, since all my dudes are Good Guys, they abide by the "knock first" policy.
2) MENTAL SHIELDING
Agreed. Also, there are DEGREES thereof. Ray is strong, Charles is stronger, Alex is merely average (he doesn't have mind p0w3rz anyway).
Further, just because you HAVE mental shields doesn't mean it's impossible for them to COLLAPSE or be BROKEN.
3) MENTAL SPACE
This is a double-threat with the super dudes:
a) For REALLY POWERFUL telepaths, physical contact makes it that much easier to pick up on what's going on in another person's head and lets be honest, do we REALLY want to see what they're thinking? Because odds are it's going to be about sex or cheeseburgers or something just weird and obtuse and we'd rather not witness that kthxbai. For this very reason, Charles is often "NO TOUCHIE!!!!1!" even with people he likes.
b) Even if you DO get to look at the insides of somebody's brainspace you can hit one of two problems- 1) you cannot tell what the hell you're looking at because no one thinks the same way or 2) they will only show you what they want you to see.
4) SOCIETAL RULES
OMG YES THANK YOU.
The Supers as a collective have Srs Rules about how to and how NOT to use P0w3rz, telepathy included. And if you break these rules? Um...just don't.
That got long and rambly and self-pluggy but um over all I concur. ^^;
::applause::
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See you think these things through and that WINS. Like, the way your universe works, everything makes sense! You WORKED IT OUT and it makes me happy.
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XD Well that's part of the "fun" of my superverse in that I'm always curious about how powers can affect one's daily life. Not everyone can manage them as gracefully as Superman or Bruce Wayne. :P Sometimes powers are downright annoying. So yeah. I tend to overthink stuff like that.
Latest instance: I have a character whose power is in her voice- she's about 50/50 Compulsion and Sonic Boom. I was wondering if that would carry over to say, a recording of her voice or if it would be lost. In the end, we decided that a percentage would be translated, but it would depend heavily on the fidelity of the recording.
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100TIMES WORD
Plus, 4? PLEASE JUST SPAM EVERYONE WITH THIS IF THEY READ NOTHING ELSE. is it that hard to have and follow manners? Sheesh.
In short, I agree.
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Jer's described it as "Trying to determine what kind of underwear someone's wearing by yanking their waistband."
It's just seen as rude as hell, at LEAST. Elves are similar. Empathy and such aren't as common in them, but a sort of low level intuition type of telepathy is common. And with that again, reading someone sans permission is rude at best.
And the winged people from my fantasy universe WTF thing in progress - they have a sort of Space Cases Andromedan 'linked pool of knowledge' and they will PUNT people for skimming.
XD;;; I dunno. Maybe this means I am a rules lawyer but I find it fleshes things out well.
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You know, like a godmod.
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A bunch of people I've gamed with don't bother to ask. It makes me get an eye tic.
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Though this also makes me wonder about the implications of the character Matt Parkman in Heroes because he reads minds with apparently feeling no moral issues at all and he's a policeman. At first you can argue that he can't control it, but later he seems to come to control it, yet he still will use it to try and sneak into places even if it is supposedly for the greater good. Though, he also has more mental powers than that that can be abused as his father illustrates (I just started watching the second season a few days ago, so I'm not very caught up on the show).
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Drives me batty. XD;
I do know a little about the mindreading-fu in the Harry Potter 'verse, though, and I thought that the way Rowling ran it was cool. The potential for backlash etc. That's like a 'both of you have your third eye freaking wide open and EVERYTHING is visible if you don't watch it' model done well.
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But yeah, I think Parkman is one of those characters where they really didn't think it through-- not if they wanted him to stay a hero, anyway.
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Plus I want to know what my girlfriend has been going wtf over.
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IT'LL BE A LONG LIST, heh.
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Which just leads to Interesting conversations when she replies to a surface thought out loud.
(Of course, she also has her hosts of other issues intruding on things, so even if she CAN pick up others' thoughts they are also heavily tinged with the expectation that she's Bad and Will Be Punished. Yaaaay abused kids!)
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Most of the eavesdroppers I've dealt with, the players don't consider things outside I HAS A POWAR :D
It's the RP equivalent of a one year old tomcat realizing he has a wang. XD
(Absurd simile brought to you by the fact that one of the suburban kitties who lives around mom and dad TOTALLY HIT THAT STAGE SATURDAY NIGHT much to his people's embarrassment. On the upside, now they know that he CAN fit through that screen door hole, have fixed it, and are taking him to the vet ASAP so he doesn't cause Kitty Yodelfest 2010 or get his bum kicked. XD If he wasn't so cute and orange I'd be a lot more annoyed about the sleep deprivation.
I'm still kind of sleep deprived WOO)
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#2 and #3 in particular are things that need to be determined in advance about how telepathy works in your worldsetting. If the GM includes telepathy in their worldsetting, they need to decide how it can be defended against if at all, how internal mindscapes work if they exist, and so on. I suspect this sort of thing arises most strongly in games where players can submit any power and GMs don't bother to work out with those players how specific powers work.
#4 is also a worldsetting issue, and it's also the only one I tend to see being problematic in writing rather than RP. It applies to any kind of superhuman ability (or technology, or whatnot) - you need to at least gesture at figuring out what kind of culture surrounds it unless only a few people have it and they've never met each other or told anyone about it.
#1 is derived from all the others, really: a lack of physical or societal rules about how powers work, as well as people being unwilling to accept others calling an asshole an asshole. If your character can go around reading other people's minds undetectably, well, a lot of people will choose to do that. There are a lot of things that a lot of people would do if they could do it undetectably. It's just kind of an asshole thing to do and players will have to be willing to recognize that.
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Yeah, a lot of people don't like thinking their hero might be a jerk; I tend to go 'everyone is someone else's jerk by turns, roll with it and see what happens IC, it might be fun and I can always have my PC apologize for the dur' instead XD;
A lot of people WILL do stuff just because they can but not everyone has to accept it or roll with it, and - yeah, I dunno, I'm not sure where doing stuff consequence free makes at all interesting gaming. it's RP, not Wish Fulfillment 101.
4 was more the writing aspect being dealt with (since I'm asked to beta a lot, I see world building shortcuts working to people's detriment a lot) and - wasn't really detailed because I ran outta steam XD; and I don't now why I seem to be stating the obvious a lot. I blame my having run out of instant mocha and apologize for this.
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Also: Deanna Troi, when she's making observations about people's mental state? Is a trained counselor and is either doing so privately and in her professional capacity, or in order to help her superior officer handle a potentially dangerous situation. If you are an EMPATH, that means you are FEELING what the other person is FEELING. Generally that implies more than a 12-year-old's capacity to react to human emotions, ffs. Also, an empath is going to understand that people can't necessarily control what they are feeling, and will (generally) not hold it against you.
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...Uh.
Unique.
(Botan's name is not Button.)
They made about as much sense as Aya hucking a katana at a helicopter XD
I'm guessing Schuldig because that's a word; the katakana are impenetrable to my gaijin brain! Either way I remember that line, and his 'lol, loud much pfft' commentary when Weiss are trying to be WE ARE INCONSPICUOUS BISHIE FLOWERPUSHERS DON'T MIND US.
Oh the bad animation in that series!
Er XD The nostalgia gnawed my rational mind silly, don't mind me.
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IT IS SO SO BAD and Schuldig is such a treat because he just doesn't care about anyone's emo crap except to dick wiht them.
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And yes. D: word on Troi, man, like - a lot of people ape her without realizing OHAICOUNSELOR and I'm sitting here going 'hurf?'
Gah. Characters who judge people for their thoughts or feelings are like - it's like reading someone's diary and then bitching about their opinions therein! "ZOMG YOU'RE MEAN FOR SAYING MIKE'S A DOUCHE!" "WTF WHY WERE YOU READING MY DIARY?" "MIKE ISN'T A DOUCHE YOU SUCK!" "Put my diary down, you wang."
[/ridonkulous]
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It wasn't that good a story, though. The psychic talking cats kind of made it seem like A Bit Much.