Finders Keepers

[all_too_familiar]

Sometimes witches have powers before they turn. But this is rare, uncommon.

More often, a potential witch displays almost nothing out of the ordinary at all. Just, say, a little more skill with people, a little more natural charisma. An extra dose of something that could almost be called luck, if one were paying attention and on the lookout for witches.

There is one such maybe-potential, right over there. He's not from around here, but he is fluent in Italian and French and German and he professes that English is his first language and laughs when people call him a liar because of his perfect accent. He might not be the most powerful, but a polyglot witch could be useful for something. And who knows, maybe there's more to it.

Maybe someone would care to find out.

Comments

[honey_twining]

"I don't think I can get my power to do any filtering for me, and increasing my range would be more curse than blessing."

[all_too_familiar]

He doesn't know the specifics of how Edward's power works, but it might be possible to have intentions instead of direct thoughts be louder? To tell from a - not a glance, but from the mind reading equivalent of it if a person's thoughts are worth paying attention to, if they might be dangerous or not.

But Blair can't really get a good idea of what direction his powers might go if pushed, what are Edward's thoughts on why this is his witchcraft?

"Stop me if this is getting annoying and you'd like me to stop bugging you about it."

[honey_twining]

"I was always very good at reading people. I don't remember it very clearly, but... I could tell if they were lying, distracted, angry, manipulative. And now I get more detail and more distance. It's already a remarkable stretch. I suspect it doesn't go any farther and that it's incompatible with the nature of the power for it to only work when I try, because social reading is so automatic."

[all_too_familiar]

It's magic. Nothing's a stretch. Sure it's based around personality, but it can grow from there. His started as a vague personality-teller and loved-ones tracker and weird bizarre plot device finder, and now he's pretty sure he's better at tracking than Demetri.

So personalized off-switches got rejected and an ordinary off-switch got rejected and filtering's a bust and range is a bust and extra detail seems to not be a thing Edward wants to aim for, social, social -

(He is getting the impression that Edward seems to want to be a bit tortured by his power, and this seems like a thing that might be mildly unpleasant and like something that Edward might like to stop, Blair is kind of confused.)

Ah-ha. Okay. Hear him out. Social is more than just reading other people. It's not just a thing that happens automatically. The thing about social is that it's communication. Proverbial reading goes hand in hand with proverbial writing. They are literally using this for communication right now. What's stopping Edward from gaining the other side of this social interaction? That is, telepathy. Or if that's too far, figuring out how to word things so that Edward will be easily understood.

He clarifies that he is brainstorming and that if Edward thinks there is a direction his power can jump, then they should definitely do that.

[honey_twining]

"Oh, I did try sending messages back, when I was new and didn't know quite what I had. It didn't work."

[all_too_familiar]

"Okay, what did you try specifically?"

[honey_twining]

"You seem very fixated on this," Edward remarks. "I 'hear' thoughts, but it's synaesthetic; I composed messages in the same medium and tried to aim them at people. Nothing happened."

[all_too_familiar]

Blair doesn't quite understand why Edward isn't fixated on this, but Blair has a way to possibly improve Edward's life permanently, he would like Edward's life improved, why wouldn't he? They're cousins. It's the obvious thing to do. He'll shoo if Edward wants him to shoo but if this doesn't bother him hell yes he's going to stand here for two hours brainstorming how to improve Edward's power. Longer, probably, he's got nowhere to be. Why wouldn't he?

Also, Blair has ideas for why that wouldn't work. Edward's getting thoughts in his synaesthetic format. But thoughts don't work like that, there isn't a universal thought language. Some people think in the color of music or the texture of trees or a number of other things, just shoving what Edward gets at people in the same format doesn't seem like it would work, it seems like Edward might need to know who he's talking to. That just makes sense for social interaction, it's all translation from all of the different ways people think, and language is just the major medium used.

[honey_twining]

"Yes, believe it or not, I know that people think differently, Blair. It was more complicated than what you're thinking; verbalizing it is simply challenging in a language that was not designed for discussing all the possible flavors of telepathy. It still didn't work."

[all_too_familiar]

Okay, fair enough. He apologizes for assuming that Edward's simplified explanation was the whole story.

Uhhhhh meta power for guarding his own social equivalent of 'body language'? Protect himself against other mind readers? ... That's damned impossible to test, not the best idea.

Ferrying thoughts he gets to other people? Something to get the general feel of a crowd without having to personally read every single mind present? Not that this is a problem, he's a vampire, nevermind there. Range extension for people he knows? Blair almost thinks 'way to tell if they're vampires or not' and then recalls that Edward wouldn't have the same problem he did, so he quickly skips over that.

... Is he sure he doesn't want to try for the thing that lets him turn it off for certain people of his choice? That seems just useful without the stated downsides he's mentioned so far.

[honey_twining]

"If my power wanted to orient defensively I could try it against you," Edward points out. "But it might be a drawback if the Volturi visit. Wouldn't want to look like I have something to hide. My range for people I know did grow over time. Though it's hard to disentangle from my knowledge of people growing while the span of possible ranges was fixed, I suppose. And - emergencies are seldom, but if I had been giving Carlisle privacy when he found Rosalie, I would not have been able to warn you and Yvette. As an example."

[all_too_familiar]

Oh right, he is a test for that, isn't he, with his privacy invasion power. It's easy to forget, it's sort of just part of him now. Even as he practices it at least two hours a day. If Edward wants to test it with him, they can.

Blair gets the implication that the thing to worry about for the Volturi is not them thinking he has something to hide, but them thinking that they would like him to join them. And if he makes a defense, assumingly he could drop it, in which case, they'd see it as a sign of trust. ... Of course, he could always figure out how to just hide certain things, make everything else look ordinary... Bad Blair, don't go thinking of ways to subvert the Volturi, that is how you get set on fire.

Personalized off switches unless a person thinks his name? He doesn't have to use it if he doesn't want to, but there might come a time when he would like to, and it'd be a shame if he couldn't.

[honey_twining]

"Sounds... finicky. But if it really did work like that I suppose it would do."

[all_too_familiar]

Okay, he thinks they need to do this in two parts, the getting the name thing down, and getting him an off switch. Once both exist they seem pretty easy to combine. So - it manifests as hearing. And is based around how well Edward can read people.

Well, Blair doesn't know about Edward, but Blair sure notices when people say his name, or occasionally syllables that are close to his name. Just a - psychological thing that's built into one's brain. Recognizing important syllables that coincide with oneself. Since Edward's power manifests as hearing, doesn't it make sense for it to carry over to it?

[honey_twining]

"I do wind up paying attention to anyone who thinks of any Edward by name."

[all_too_familiar]

Good, that's already mostly-there, then. Other part first, he supposes.

How does his tuning out work, what are the specifics of it?

[honey_twining]

"It's just attentional. Like ignoring a mote of dust. A little harder than that, but I've practiced."

[all_too_familiar]

Well that seems a bit strange - the power is his. It's already doing so much impossible stuff by doing what it's doing, why is turning it off difficult? Or, to be specific, why does Edward think it's difficult?

[honey_twining]

"I was very good at reading people, and you don't have to try to do that. It's automatic, all on a lower level. If you can hear someone you know their tone, if you can see them you can read their expression."

[all_too_familiar]

Yes, but you can choose to look away, or choose to cover your ears, or even - sometimes his sister has had moments where she completely ignores anything anyone says, not even realizing anyone's said anything at all. This is different from ignoring the information one gets after hearing or looking at someone in the form of automatic reading. This is not getting the information to be automatically interpreted at all. Which Edward can't seem to do - that seems incorrect. If this is a secondary effect of a primary sense, he should have the ability to not have to have that primary sense turned towards the person, like any other sense. Does Edward see what he means?

[honey_twining]

"You can close your eyes, but covering your ears doesn't work as well. I can't actually hear unfamiliar minds from farther away than I can hear voices, what with vampire senses. Even if I put my hands over my ears."

[all_too_familiar]

Okay, but it's obviously not actually connected to hearing. He can read people from further than that. And - has Edward tested this, can he read people when he's deaf?

[honey_twining]

"Haven't been outright deaf since turning but I doubt it makes a difference."

[all_too_familiar]

So this is not actually connected to the senses he seems to associate it with. Why does it need to follow the same rules at all?

[honey_twining]

"What makes you think I know?"