tuesday de

[inlovewithwords]

Riffing off yesterday a little, and definitely not originally posted to my personal journal like a dumb:

Is your character particularly gifted with one sense over another? Does your character have a sense that isn't one of the five regulation Earth humans have? Is it stronger or weaker than their regular senses or just in addition?

(... apologies to all the telepaths, empaths, and Force-sensitives, and those like them...)

Comments

[bjornwilde]

Ahsoka is Force-sensitive and has a passive sonar sense, which together I think gives her a near-perfect and instinctual awareness of her surroundings. This applies to solid structures around her, as well as people or attacks. She doesn’t have to think so much as just react when attacks occur.

I think she is also empathic but it isn’t as developed. Or at least this is why I believe she never quite picked up on how Anakin likely feels about being called Master. Or something. It could be she does know it’s a conflicted thing for him but prefers to give him the respect the title has for her. I honestly just think she has a blind spot when it comes to Anakin’s deeper struggles.

Jessica has heightened hearing and smell. She usually tunes them out because they can get damn confusing, but they do lend themselves to being early warning triggers for danger. I don’t think either really comes up in the comics much anymore. Neither is as acute as Wolverine or Dare Devil’s. Her sense of smell does get her in trouble at times as it is part of why she is vulnerable to pheromone-based powers.

She has also recently been said to be empathic, which I love. Only thing is it hasn’t really been touched on since Secret Avengers. Still, I love the idea and it fits for her.

Unlike all other spiders in the comics, she does not have a danger sense.

Viv has mostly normal senses it seems. She does have a Bluetooth/WiFi/Comic-Book-tech connectivity to any broadcasting computer system. If it is there, she will know of it. She is also good at parsing information and situations, but I don’t know if that fits here. By this, I mean that she is the one who triages emergency or criminal situations for the Champions to determine which to handle first.

[dreamingofelectricsheep]

D'oh. I forgot Viv also has a passive sort of radar, that warns her systems when something is coming at her with speed enough to possibly be an attack.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato appears to have excellent senses of hearing and smell, although they aren't supernaturally good, just on the really high end of the human range.

All the Chosen appear to have the ability to see things that are out of dimensional phase, and to perceive dimensional distortions to one extent or another. There also seems to be an element of Schrodinger-ing afoot there, where a Chosen seeing an out-of-phase Digimon (or Lovecraftian fish monster) grounds it and lets it pass completely between worlds. Similarly, while it gets filtered through Digivice functions, they all seem to be able to sense each other over medium distances, and read Digimon kernel data.

[thebattycakes]

Cisco - At the moment Cisco's senses are all baseline human, although his sense of sight is pretty good considering all the intricate work he can do without glasses.

Eventually (After he's murdered by Dr. Wells and then brought back when Barry accidentally time travels) his latent abilities caused by the Particle Accelerator explosion will be triggered and he'll be able to vibe. Vibing allows Cisco to have visions of past and future occurrences. It starts off with dreams, and then develops so that he can use his powers by physically touching objects. It's an interesting power in the way that it works. Cisco can 'see' a specific person through an object, but he isn't seeing as that person. Rather, he's more in the moment with them, able to see them and the world around them like he was physically there himself. He'll also be able to take people into the visions with him.

Barry - Barry doesn't really have enhanced senses as such, but by using his powers his perception can come out to being better than others. By using his speed to slow the world down, Barry can observe things around him at an accelerated rate, meaning he can take in a scene in an eye blink, process and react accordingly.

Not that he always does, casing environments is something he's going to be working on.

Matt - While Matt is visually blind his other senses are cranked up to 12 and he uses these to navigate the world better than a sighted person. His sense of hearing especially helps him in both day to day living and vigilante antics. His sense of taste is acute enough that he can taste things on the air, and his sense of smell means he can pick up odors better than any bloodhound. His sense of touch is heightened enough that he can read newsprint with his fingertips and feel currents and temperature variations in the air.

All of these four senses combine into his 'Radar Sense' which paints a full picture of the world around him (minus visual cues that would be impossible to perceive without seeing them such as colors, flat screens, etc.). Most people only see whats in front of them, Matt takes in everything.

Logan - Logan has heightened senses thanks to his mutation. His sense of smell is the most enhanced of these. Like Matt, Logan can pick up traces on the air and track them down. His sense of hearing is also pretty damn good, though not quite comparable to Matt's. Logan also has a predator's eyesight, very keen and sharp, but not as relied upon as the other two.

[skyhigh_seance]

Klaus' senses are all bog standard.... except for the ability to see ghosts. Despite the press, he doesn't really summon ghosts, he sees the ones that are there, always.

And they're horrible, thanks, he hates it.

[irish_vagabond]

And now, a short study of different vampire species:

Cassidy's senses for the most part are normal, except when he gives in to his vampirism and becomes hyper-focused on his prey, which rarely happens because he knows how to repress it. But when it does happen, he can hear a person's heartbeat and their blood flowing in their veins. I think the ability is always "on" in the background; he just chooses to mute it and ignore it. The smell of fresh blood is sometimes a trigger, but he gets over it fairly quickly with liberal application of drugs and alcohol, yay.

Pam has heightened senses all around. Her smell and hearing are that of a superhuman apex predator. She can tell almost anything about a human by their heartbeat and scent, if they're scared, aroused, sick, etc. She can hear quiet conversations from down the hall and can see perfectly in the dark. She can taste the difference between blood types and the "flavors" of the people she feeds on. Touch is rarely focused on, but vampire skin is as sensitive as being able to feel individual drops of rain. I imagine you can't think about it too much or you go crazy, and some newly made vampires do go mad.

[for_everyone]

I made up that Twi'leks have different/heightened tactile senses compared to humans, which allow them a greater sensitivity to movement, and is especially pronounced in their lekku. The idea was that Twi'leks aren't apex predators on their planet, and this heightened sense helps them avoid predators and hunt prey. It also conversely can make them more sensitive to pain.

Kanan is Force-sensitive, which gives him a general heightened awareness of his surroundings, including the ability to navigate them after he's blinded. In the scope of "Strong With the Force" we like to put him as pretty average for a Jedi, but this still lends him a variety of preternatural perceptions, including sensing others' emotions, places and people in which the Force is particularly strong, and his physical surroundings more acutely than possible without them.

[sticktothemission]

Gabriel's senses are fairly average for a human. At most his sense of smell and taste are good enough for cooking well and he hear well enough to play music decently. He could probably improve them if he spent any time practicing them. Nothing about the SEP changed this.

Reaper has not been portrayed as having any extra or potent senses. I would headcanon that the ones that aren't necessarily all that important (taste, smell, touch) don't function as well as they used to.

Khadgar can sense magic and is able to determine its type from how it feels. He can visualize magic to a degree by enhancing his sight and it's a common side effect when casting powerful magic. Other than that, he is a standard human.

[configuration_birdwatcher]

Bastion has wireless connectivity as a secondary sense, similar to Viv; they won't be able to pick up every signal if it's, say, outside their frequency range, but they can still detect encrypted ones that they don't have any way to access the contents of.

By human standards, their senses of hearing and smell are average or slightly above average, though mild human-originating smells stand out to them and disappear into the background for humans, whereas Bastion wouldn't notice a mild smell of metal, plastic, machine grease or so forth; they'd only pick up on mechanical smells with an intensity equivalent to severe BO or spilled blood or whatnot. They have no sense of taste at all, not having anywhere to mount the receptors for that. Their sense of touch is probably a bit below average for a human but pretty good for a robot. Their vision is very good; their primary optic can zoom about as well as a point-and-shoot camera and they have more eyelights than a human has eyes, although the one in their face gets priority and the others are mostly there for depth perception and to make up the difference when their head is tucked away in sentry configuration.

Most of my other characters have unremarkable senses, except for Aradia, who can see/hear/perceive ghosts but canonically doesn't draw their attention to the extent Klaus does. (On the one hand, on Alternia her powers are quite common so the ghosts probably aren't as desperate for attention/advocates, but on the other hand, it hasn't been an issue in her previous bar appearances either.)