what kind of useless power is empathy, anyway?

[weiss_nine]

So, as everyone and their mother is probably aware: Weiss' first power was empathy. It works as follows:

• Weiss can feel other character's surface emotions, as long as they're in the same general vicinity ("general vicinity" is currently one mile). This cannot be turned off, but how much Weiss notices a specific character's emotions varies greatly. Basically, the stronger a character feels a particular emotion the more Weiss herself feels it and most of the time people's emotions are white noise to Weiss. Strong negative emotions give her headaches if they're unexpected, as does lots of people in the same place feeling similarly. Additionally, when what someone feels is not their own emotion (such as the heart gem's implanted "I want to stay"), Weiss can tell. She's also insanely good at interpreting body language now.


• If she concentrates, Weiss can "read" a specific person's emotions. When she does this, she sees a bunch of colors overlaid on the person and so the more complex someone's emotions are, the less this skill actually helps her. The colors are related to Weiss' perception, so she can interpret them more easily, but honestly Weiss is crap at emotions so she rarely uses this except on people she knows well. When she does this, she'll be able to tell if someone is lying about what they're feeling.


• Eventually, Weiss will unlock the empathic inundation, aka "mind bullets." Essentially, she'll be able to read someone's emotions, find the most incapacitating one, and crank it up to eleven until that's all someone can feel. At a less powerful level, Weiss' negative emotions might accidentally affect other characters if she doesn't get a grip on them.

As you can tell, her power can get kind of infomod-y so that's what this permissions post is for! Basically, comment below and tell me whether or not I can do the thing and everything will be a-ok. If you're one of those people who likes answering specific questions, here's some of those:

1. Does your character have some kind of ability (psychic shields or the like) that would prevent Weiss' empathy from working?
2. Do I have permission for Weiss to pick up on any hidden feelings you mention in brackets? (Any emotion Weiss would be able to interpret from body language is fair game, even if your character can block her empathy.)
3. Can Weiss "read" your character's emotions? How much would she be able to understand?
4. If, god forbid, a situation ever arises where Weiss might need to use a mind bullet on your character, can she? What emotion would be most incapacitating for your character?

Comments

[nailed_it]

Does your character have some kind of ability (psychic shields or the like) that would prevent Weiss' empathy from working?

Haha, not even and I don't see her getting anything like that in the future.

Do I have permission for Weiss to pick up on any hidden feelings you mention in brackets? (Any emotion Weiss would be able to interpret from body language is fair game, even if your character can block her empathy.)

Absolutely. Especially if she's trying to lie or mess with somebody (please don't snow too hard on her parade, Weiss :[ ).

...Although, Yang may try to play around with this and see if she can influence what emotions Weiss is picking up from her if she catches on, probably mostly by thinking about things that bring up certain emotions. ...Assuming that's okay. Yang just likes to mess with people. XD

Can Weiss "read" your character's emotions? How much would she be able to understand?

I'd imagine all or at least most of them, even if Yang's trying to fun with her? She tends to be pretty straight forward with her emotions.

If, god forbid, a situation ever arises where Weiss might need to use a mind bullet on your character, can she? What emotion would be most incapacitating for your character?

Just to be safe, I'm gonna say it'll probably depend on the situation. However, risky as it sounds, if this is during a fight or conflict, making Yang angry might actually do Weiss some favors. The reasoning behind this is that, while Yang can take strength in her anger and use it as an advantage, it might be easy to slip her into overconfidence or so much sheer rage that she makes a mistake. ...Just don't let her hit you first. XD

Another emotion that might work would be "calm/peace" or perhaps "apathy"? Something that would just chill her out and/or make her not feel like pounding somebody's face in.

If it ever comes to that though, we can just plot something out. X3 For sure, she's probably not going to be happy after the fact about being incapacitated or having her own emotions used against her though. Oops.