Emotion Reading 2

“Tell me what you’re thinking, and I’ll tell you if you’re wrong.”

“She’s really good at reading body language, right?  She could read Brian even when he was blurred by his darkness with a mask on.  It’s, what, some kind of minor power of hers?”

“Some of it’s natural ability.  Some of it’s, yeah, that her power adjusted how she thinks.  So she can communicate better with her dogs.”

“Right,” I glanced down the hall to where the others were talking.  Or rather, where Brian and Alec were talking and Bitch was standing there.  “That’s the thing.  What I’m thinking is… maybe when her power gave her the ability to understand dogs, it overwrote something else?  Fucked up her ability to deal with people?”

Lisa turned and got some mugs out of the cupboard.  She gave me an apologetic half-smile. “Yeah.  Something like that.”

“So, what, she can’t read expressions, or tone?”

“All the cues we give to others as a part of regular conversation?  She doesn’t get them, she probably couldn’t learn them with a year of concerted effort.  It’s not just that she doesn’t get it… the most basic interactions are messed up by the canine psychology that’s hardwired into her head.  You smile at her and ask her how she’s doing, her first thought is that you’re baring your teeth at her in anger, and she has to remind herself you aren’t.  But even after that, she’s probably wondering if you were being sarcastic, or condescending, or kind, or whatever.  She knows you aren’t shouting at her from your tone of voice, but we don’t always raise our voices when we’re angry, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“And she falls back on the one thing she does get, canine behavior, because it does work on a level.  Bids for dominance, eye contact, pack heirarchies and establishing territory, all adjusted and adapted to her human life.”