Sympathetic Telepathy

Out of town again today! It's been a busy couple of months. And I expect the next couple will be busy too. Not sure how, it’s just how things have been going lately.

Facebook doesn’t seem to display Blogspot links properly anymore, which is, uh… frustrating, though at this point it’s not as if I’m going to pick a new blog site over that.

This Note was inspired by Spider-Man: Brand New Day. I’ll still try to avoid major spoilers.

Sympathetic Telepathy

Alright, we all understand how messy it would be to be able to read minds, right?

What we think is private. We decide what we say or don’t say, but a lot of times thoughts come to mind without prompting, without us really wanting them there. And even if we do want them there, they’re often messy–unfiltered. There’s a reason that the sort of person who says what’s always on his or her mind is generally regarded as a doof.

Now imagine that someone can hear those thoughts of yours.

Not so much fun!

For drama and comedy, telepathy is often depicted as involuntary, or at least difficult to control. That way you have a character who reads a bunch of minds and has to figure out what to do with that information, or reacts in a certain way to it all. There’s an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer about this! There’s also a fantastic episode of Justice League (“Tabula Rasa”) in which Martian Manhunter, after a mission, has a bit of a breakdown because he reads a bunch of people’s minds and decides humanity just sucks. Don’t worry! He gets better! During a brief self-exile, he comes across a search party looking for a lost little girl, and he regains faith in humanity by hearing their selfless thoughts of concern.

But if you’re actively going around, trying to read strangers’ minds–that’s pretty sketch! Imagine going around reading everyone’s diaries! You don’t do that! You can’t do that and be a good guy!

Which makes the antagonist of Brand New Day kind of awkward–her telepathy often involves what seems to be actively possessing people! Going into people’s minds, rooting around in there, and then using that person to walk around and do whatever you want? I mean, she makes one guy walk into traffic, and it’s unclear if that guy survives. That’s not to count all the people that may have been hurt or killed when she does things like have someone drive a tank through New York City, shooting at cops and Spidey.

The fact that said villain is treated sympathetically in the end doesn’t make the writing of the movie terrible–the telepath in question is clearly quite mad with understandable grief and rage over something done to a family member. I don’t think that the movie does enough to point out that she’s done lots of horribly, horribly wrong things in her pursuit of her goals, I also don’t think I agree with critics who claim that the narrative views her actions as acceptable. Frank Castle was willing to shoot her, and though the film frames his actions as wrong, they don’t portray that as a particularly misguided decision, either. It’s one born out of the facts as he has them available.

There’s also a scene in which the villain in question mind controls someone close to Peter, and he goes near homicidal with rage over it. So no, I don’t think the movie really views this as an okay thing.

Still, more fiction should go into the fact that there’s something very invasive about telepathy of any sort, and it’s not great to go around using it without people’s permission. Some fiction does! Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist (not the example you were expecting, huh?) has one of Zoey’s love interests incredibly upset to find out that she knew he was in love with her long before he said anything and didn’t do anything about it–though in that case she didn’t know this on purpose. 

In Dresden Files, going into people’s heads is explicitly against one of the Laws of Magic, right up there with necromancy and reaching beyond the Outer Gates. It’s using your power to gain something from someone else that they don’t want you to–so like all black magic, it becomes addictive and it’s hard to make someone stop doing it.

So when you have a power like telepathy, something inherently a bit invasive, and it’s used purposely–you’re going to have to do some work to make characters using that as sympathetic. I suppose you don’t have to make the character sympathetic; there’s something to making characters who are just massive raging douchebags, as long as you know that’s what you’re doing. Most writers aren’t trying to do that, though, so they’ll need to put some effort into making us care about someone who would read our personal thoughts without asking permission first.

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