How does mind reading work in AS? Because I have my own theory, but can you present your ideas? Like, for example, how would Noel learn mind-reading? Would he really need Pietro for it? Would Pietro be affected in some kind of way after training with Noel?
Iām going to answer this one because itās actually interesting and important world building stuff.
Ok so, mind reading as a power is very, very weird. There are various streams of thought in a beingās mind, and the person whoās being the reader can very easily get lost in them. When that happens, the reader AND the read person both get a massive headache if the reader doesnāt stop trying to force his way into the personās mind, because it would be like charging a wall constantly, slowly breaking it down but also getting injured in the process. Both parts end up in pain.
Thoughts are presented as connected sets of images that detail one stream of thought at a time. Take that as sort of keyframes from different movies: depending on the setting and the characters in them, you can identify which movie theyāre from. Thoughts work in the same way for a mind reader, theyāre keyframes taken from a stream of thought. The mind reader, to successfully extract the information they need, has to identify the correct keyframe to access to the entire set of thoughts behind it, and correctly read the personās mind. Depending on how important (see as how often the thought or memory is recalled in the personās mind in the last 10 minutes or so) the thought is, their keyframe will seem larger. Itās more prominent and easy to identify, while old memories and on-the-fly thoughts are harder to grasp.
There is also the problem that in a personās mind, voices belonging to various streams of thought all play in the background as a low but still present and irritating noise. It distracts the reader and itās a natural protection of the mind! When the reader accesses a certain train of thought however, all the voices but the one connected to that thought are silenced, allowing the reader to hear only whatās necessary.
Learning this skill is a VERY difficult process, but there are ways to make it easier. One of them is reading the mind of someone who speaks a different language. Identifying all the background noise as senseless gibberish makes it not distracting to the reader anymore, as they will focus on the keyframes only.
Another skill is having the mind read person focus on a single simple thought (for example, a picture, a colour, a pet) so that the thought is much easier to identify in the many streams, because itās prominent. Itās like a blaring red light in the darkness.
Because of those two reasons, Pietro is the PERFECT person to learn mind reading with. Heās foreign, and heās very willing to help a friend like Noel. And for Noel heās kind of a life saver because his parents arenāt often home, and thus canāt help, while Sheilaās mind was kind of a clusterfuck after she took Zane in, so finding thoughts among the stream of anxiety and āI HOPE HE HASNāT DESTROYED MY KITCHENā kind of thoughts is very difficult. Pietro was a blessing for him in that sense.
And since Noel is very gentle when it comes to mind reading, often worrying about his friendās health and possible migraines, their sessions are often very short - ranging from 10 to 20 minutes at most - and heās very delicate when he reads his mind. If he finds himself stuck or confused, he stops the reading so that neither of them gets hurt. The worst heād give Pietro is a light headache, but then heād treat him with ice cream or go to the park to feed the ducks as a way to apologize for the discomfort heās caused him.
