Reading People

Tyson isn’t good at reading people.

However, he isn’t as bad at reading people as he seemed to be.

When Tyson is acting on his gut instincts to make it out of a situation safely, Tyson will make the right call over ninety percent of the time, but he can never ever explain why or how it was the right decision.

When his back isn’t to the wall, Tyson overthinks and second-guess himself too much; musing on every possible contingency until its too late and he panics out whatever thought was the last one rattling around his head; sometimes he gets it right and sometimes it blows up in his face.

Though Tyson grew up with an isolating childhood that meant he missed several key socialisation skills as a child, he also survived an abusive childhood and, relatively, safely navigates his way through a criminal empire.

The social intricacies don’t go over his head completely, but Tyson ends up feeling as though he’s projecting rather than reading the situation - further compounded by the ways his thoughts and feelings are literally projected onto people by his Synesthesia - and then he talks himself out of the right answer.

He has built up hundreds of phrases to fall back on, so Tyson can usually navigate his way through a conversation with those.

Complicated situations with many factors pouring together with multiple people are actually easier for him, because he can trust his reading of the dynamic and tone much better than his reading on an individual. Tyson survives. That is what he does. He knows how to carve out a niche for himself and thrive there. To do that Tyson has to know where niches exist.