A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

*** To be fair, the fact that Buffy can be something of a self-righteous hypocrite is something that the series does often explicitly note, even if it's not addressed in this specific example. Plus, Buffy's case is one of the 'she can't help it' examples, so while it is invasive, getting on her case about reading their thoughts isn't something that's really going to help given that she can't ''not'' read their thoughts, even before it starts to overwhelm her. While, say, Xander is at that point aware that Buffy can read people's thoughts, so could probably make more of an effort to not think things that would embarrass him.

**** Actually, Buffy would more fall into the other category. Yes, she can't help the fact that she can read people's minds. At the same time, though, she was using the ability to cheat in class and tells what her friends are thinking out loud. She also purposely tried to use it to invade her boyfriend's privacy, but only failed because vampires' thoughts can't be read. As for Xander, he was trying as hard as he could to reign in his thoughts, but he's also a teenager. Teenagers tend to think about sex a lot. Also, if you tell someone not to think about X, then chances are that they're going to be thinking about X twice as hard without meaning to. It's basic psychology.

** This is addressed in a very disturbing way in [[Tales of MU]] by taking the opposite perspective. One of the minor characters is a natural telepath of the "can't help hearing people's thoughts" variety. We get a backstory chapter on her at one point, where when her teachers discovered her abilties, they talked to her parents, recommending that she get training to learn to control her abilities so as to not be constantly violating the privacy of everyone around her. But these are not ordinary, reasonable parents; they're basically hippie parents, and their response can be summed up fairly well as "How dare you suggest that there's anything wrong with our daughter that she needs to learn to control, you horrible evil authority figures! Our daughter's abilities make her ''special'', and if other people have a problem with it, that's their own fault!" Between the way it's written and [[Word of God|the author's statements in comments]], it's clear that the parents are supposed to be 100% in the right in this case. This being [[Tales of MU]], of course, [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]] is [[Anvilicious|intentionally in full force.]] It was [[Values Dissonance|quite off-putting to a lot of readers]] [[Fridge Horror|who actually understood the implications of it.]]

** The ''[[StarCraft]]'' example alluded to above actually plays with this a bit -- sure, Kerrigan has her moment of outrage that Jimmy's fantasizing about her, but she did ''get to see it'', and Ghost powers can be difficult or impossible to control. But given that they get over it pretty quickly (''both'' their next lines are [[Deadpan Snarker|quips about the situation]]), it seems that either they're both just [[Consummate Professional|Consummate Professionals]] or it wasn't actually a big deal for either of them, just a knee-jerk reaction.