As promised in Awkward Attraction vs. Everyone, this is the rant-ish advice-y part about the privacy of our minds and the filter that is our brain to speech functions as humans.

I, personally,  have a very rude mind, and I am very glad no one ratches around in it on the regular. They might die. I don't know, but the possibility of death of shocked horror hasn't been ruled out by the World Health Organization, so until then, it's a plausiblity.

I've written my share of Twilight fanfiction,  (hopefully) and I do plan to finish it, because,  hello, I'm human too and sexy people take up serious brainspace, running around and talking and living and me without the typing skills to keep up with them, so in order to get them out of my brain, I've gotta finish what I've started,  after they've built up considerable raw material for me to buffet into the shape of a story.  And the focus of my fanfiction was the effect the ability (or as I put it, the gift/curse of reading minds) and how the ability to read minds is actually a pretty terrible one.

In my fic, I point out that Edward is rather unable to escape the minds of his family, even during the attraction... and subsequent... actions taken. And his only way to drown his family getting it on all round him is the piano, which adds a interesting twist to mind-hearing.

If mental hearing can be ignored/shouted down by physical noise, then what other aspects of mind abilities can be numbed, or turned down to a dull roar?

And my answer is, well, not many. If your skill is long distance, you'd have to have that white-noise buffer the complete distance.  So in the case of Edward Cullen and his piano,  it neatly drowns the goings on, within the reach of the piano's sound, leaving the rest of his mind to listen in on all the mental noise beyond that distance, meaning,  in short,  he's not third-wheeling with all three couples... coupling, in the house.

(Could you imagine the cringe-y-ness?)

"Ayy, bro! You're charming her with that really crap Batman impression."
"Shaddup!"
Mortified, "Please don't do that, Edward! "
"Nah, bro, seriously. She's freaked, and not in a good way."

*opened can on whoop - ass  dumped on Edward by the two in conversation, resulting in massive destruction *

*Esme throws all three out on the lawn*

Excuse me for that lapse... I just figured y'all would enjoy the mental picture.  *winks enormously*

But the idea of Mind vs. Mouth wasn't really about that adorable little family altercation. 

It's about the fact that all point s of mental extraordinary powers/skills/gifts are always presented in a positive way, with a handy on/ off switch that cuts the nightmare of actual mind to mind communication out, or worse, it's mentioned in passing and then conveniently never mentioned again in the whole novel, because then the entirety of your novel would take place inside your character's head, (which honestly would be a much cooler way to read a novel, but the cleanup of the mental narrative would be a bitch to edit) and no one has really that much interest in a stream-of-consciousness story, which is completely understandable.
I mean, who would wanna read a novel where you get to the steamy kiss, and then ah, shit, I've lost my keys!, and a wild discord of related half panicked thoughts that accompanies that... only to resume the novel and have a 'previously on' recap of the interrupted steamy kiss, which, of course, would annoy the hell out of you, the reader, because you were perfectly aware of where they'd been, until you'd very irresponsibly lost your keys, and the recap was just icing in the super-crapola cake.

Which brings me to the next mental extraordinary skill classic....

The irreplaceable information that magically gifted person picks out of person B's unsuspecting,  innocent and guileless mind, that saves the metaphorical day whether it be MGP picking the mind of their mother making brownies, and that means MGP will have a fast-track to licking the brownie batter out of the mixing bowl, or whether it be the MGP picks the knowledge of a secret back entry into the fortifications around a besieged city, it's always so handily available and then snap, the Magically Gifted Person is hailed as a hero, (or licks the whole of the brownie mixing bowl and makes themselves sick) and the magical abilities downside is never mentioned.
 
Like for example,  if Brownie Mother had been just thinking about her taxes and the absolute terror that induces in taxpayers, and MGP opened the mental skill into that scene in Mother? Total chaos, and inadvertent trauma that the MGP will probably need three years of therapy after a mental collapse thirty years later.

Or, alternatively,  the besieged city tipper-offer is actually a sicko, who had just come back from smearing human turds on a dead rabbit and singing 'Humpty Dumpty' stark naked, and was happily reliving their jolly time in this stressful information seeking moment with the MGP, to calm down,  and the MGP pulls a knife and kills the tipper-offer,  or themselves,  to get the terrible memory out of their minds.

(Someone,  write that. I'll read the ink off of that. )

*stares at phone, shocked that naked, humpty dumpty, and feces just lined up in my head for the 'sicko' tipper-offer  to suffer from...*

*shrugs because I'm a writer and that's the trouble with our crazy asses...*

The human mind is a complex and delightful instrument of unbelievable disorderliness and chaotic clamor of memories,  with the stimulus of sight, smell, feel, and taste adding to the deafening roar of data that passes through it every moment of life, and it sorts through what it keeps and  discards in milliseconds. 

If you can't bring in that, at least give me the satisfaction of a private thought prior to the information  that the MGP is picking for, please? That extra layer of realism in classic and popular literature going forward will make my life so much easier,  when trying to explain why I think it's entirely possible that a horny teenager with the power to compel others without reprimand, would come to the 'is it rape?' line that was put forward in Awkward Attraction vs. Everyone, without instant defensive action taken by fans and fic writers.
Because the complexity of life is wound up in those 'is it <[enter disturbing action]>' lines. It's not neatly black and white,  easy-greasy, no cost for good, sold-my-soul for the bad, and all who make the 'good' are the greatest, and those who make the 'bad' are the scum of the earth. 

It's so easy to judge when it's black and white.  It's so easy to step back and say, " It's just a story."

But when stories incorporate the reality, with real issues we all face, I want you to show us the difficulty in making those decisions, without that aura of fictional safety - net, the distance bought by it. Don't clean them up into those easy-greasy ones, take us into the tumultuous and redlining mind of the decider.

Nothing in life is ever easily decided.  Hell, not even a young dating pair trying to decide where to eat is easy.
Don't you fucking trivialize a situation,  a decision-making persons  overwhelming thoughts cut into those easily definable slots, slot A, good, slot B, bad..  show me the struggle.

Laziness here is most often the reason fiction is written as trite, candy-fluff, useless.  Because it is. And all fiction is not created equal, and it's not right for one lazy person to take the thunder from those who do put the effort in, the sweat and the tears and the downright teeth gritting  work.