#telepath keith

[skygemspeaks]

borderline telepaths can't get insights from a telepath who hasn't had their abilities unblocked by lottery yet

But we know that true telepaths must be able to read them, because morton's unit rescued amber after she was kidnapped by elden as a child, and he definitely would have noticed if there was something off about her. But that could just have been because of how young she was

Would signs start showing up as amber got older?

Claire died when Amber was 15...I wonder what Amber's life would have been like if her dad was raised by his birth parents, and Amber got to know that whole side of the family.

Would Claire have known?

Would Amber have grown up as a pampered golden child?

I can imagine Keith's grudge against her would have been so so much worse.

[skygemspeaks]

Does anyone wanna play a game? This is gonna be a long post so feel free to scroll past if you're not interested but I'm gonna put you in the mind of a character and I want you guys to vote how you think you'd feel in the given situation

This is about Keith from the Hive Future, so feel free to skip straight to the poll if you've read the series (Hive Future readers, your vote counts double, so tell me in the replies what you voted for and why)

For those who haven't read it, here's your context on Keith as a character:

He's cishet

He's one of only 5 telepaths in a city of 100 million people

It's the job of the telepaths to keep peace in their city and stop crimes before they happen. Because there's so few of them, they're very very highly valued, meaning they get whatever they want in exchange for their cooperation. They're basically above the law and can get away with just about anything up to and including keeping a woman imprisoned against her will because one of the telepaths wanted to marry her and wouldn't take no for an answer (Keith was NOT the one that did this, I'm just providing this as an example of just how much power they have in this situation)

Keith has a MASSIVE inferiority complex due to multiple reasons, one of them being that he's the least powerful of all the telepaths so he constantly feels like he has to prove himself

The telepaths all have their own team of bodyguards (called a Strike Team), and part of their job means that they have to regularly be carried around by those bodyguards and obviously there's a lot of physical contact with their bodyguards, who will in some cases have to use their bodies to shield their telepaths. Keep in mind that as telepaths, they can see what their bodyguards think and feel about them

(Further context below poll)

So here's my question:

If you're Keith, what gender distribution would you prefer in your Strike Team (team of bodyguards)?

Predominantly Men

Predominantly Women

Predominantly Nonbinary folk

An even mix

Less Men, even mix of the others

Less Women, even mix of the others

Less Nonbinary folk, even mix of the others

Nuance

See Results

Voting ended onJan 24, 2025

Further context:

The bodyguards are chosen to fit the telepath's standards of beauty, and for those that are of the telepath's preferred gender, they're chosen to have the potential to be attracted to their telepath (so in the case of Keith, none of the women would be lesbians)

The author has stated that Keith wanted his bodyguards to be mostly women as he finds the thought of having so much close physical contact with men to be disgusting

I, personally, feel like the combination of Keith's very fragile ego and his massive inferiority complex (as well as just his general shittiness as person) means he would find it emasculating to have to be carried around by women and have them putting themselves in harm's way to protect him. The question here is whether that would be more emasculating/humiliating than the discomfort/shame of being carried around by men who are stronger than him

[skygemspeaks]

given keith's telepathy has a tendency to cut out without warning, having him go out on emergency runs is pretty dangerous for his strike team.

i understand that they don't exactly have much of a choice given the whole KASIA thing, and also the fact that until they found amber they needed as many telepaths doing emergency runs as possible

but i feel like if keith was less of a shitstain and was more thorough, the hive could really benefit from having him do as many check runs as possible, before passing the cases on to one of the other telepath units once all the preliminary work is done

check runs in general tend to be safer than emergency runs (for obvious reasons) and i understand the logic of trying to keep one case with the same telepath unit all the way through to the end, the method of keith's unit doing a majority of check runs could go a long way to preventing unnecessary deaths like Dean's, as well as avoiding a stressful hand-off to another telepath unit in the middle of an emergency run if his telepathy suddenly cuts off.

like i understand why he would have such an inferiority complex, but there are ways he could work around it, if only he got his head out of his ass