#ocweekday5

These abilities develop more as he ages, and he doesn’t have the best relationship with all of them, but they were enough to impress a dying old wealthy lady and snag his first posting!

I won’t divulge anything that’s a spoiler, but his relationship with his abilities changes throughout his character journey. I will save the meta-analysis and use of metaphors and just do a simple run-through of each ability and rate them out of 5 stars for how much control he has over it and how useful he thinks it is.

I would consider all of these to fall under the umbrella of Extrasensory Perception (ESP). There are many terms for these abilities, and by no means is this a thorough rundown of them; this is just what they mean and how they work for him specifically! Also, just because he has these abilities doesn’t mean he always listens to them; in fact, sometimes he works against them out of spite, but they come back to bite him in the ass!

Clairsentience/Telepathic Empathy

Control: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Usefulness: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is his primary ability, and it is the one that he’s had since he was a small child. Therefore, it’s the one he has the most control over and one that he thinks is the most useful. He can’t read everyone the same; some people emote more than others, while others don't at all. This one runs in the background most of the time; he can usually turn it on or off, but not always. He’s most sensitive to others’ emotions he doesn’t feel himself or has never experienced. He’s discovered that most people have a “baseline” emotion, whether happy, depressive, content, or apathetic (etc), that usually colors their emotional ranges. He doesn’t like to use people’s emotions against them, but if he needs to, he will.

Claircognizant

Control: 0

Usefulness: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This just means he has heightened intuition and usually navigates life through incoming vibes. These come to him, and he reacts accordingly; he has no control over what he receives as input. This usually comes across as him “knowing things he shouldn’t” and having a strong gut feeling to do XYZ. It can be something as simple as an inkling to grab an extra utensil. He may not know why at the time, but when he drops a fork—hey, look, he has an extra one. This one isn’t usually that deep, and he doesn’t always get them. These are more sporadic and very inconsistent. He may have a day where he gets one or two, or several, and then go weeks or months without.

Precognition

Control: 0

Usefulness: ⭐️

He occasionally gets glimpses of the future—it may not even be his future. He has no control over the visions he receives, and this ability is very weak. He does not like this one and has a lot of self-hatred about it. Visions come to him while awake or asleep. They are very unreliable and happen rarely.

Psychometry

Control: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Usefulness: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Psychometry is the ability to receive glimpses of the past through objects. This is his favorite nifty trick, but it is not one that can not be applied to all objects. Only emotionally charged things carry a memory attached to them. It takes a lot of mental discipline to get a reading, and it is not always clear, but glimpsing in the past has its rewards. This is a tough trick to master and has come in clutch a time or two.

Haunted

Control: ⭐️

Usefulness: 0

Being haunted is a bad time. It comes with no perks—well, unless he counts having his abilities siphoned out of him by the prowling sleep paralysis demon that has claimed him as its feeding ground (which he sometimes does see as a positive). As if having a personal paranormal parasite wasn’t enough, sometimes he hears disembodied voices or catches glimpses of ghostly swooshing in his peripheral. His only form of control is ignoring things or repeating an affirmation mantra and hoping they fuck right off.