Subtlety is the grandeaur of life. The ability to understand someone from just one look. The feeling of knowing someone without a spoken word. It rules our lives, the little things that we never really think about, or that some of us spend their lives thinking about.
What I'm really talking about here are manipulation skills, that I will spend a lifetime refining, no matter how unsociable I am. I watched that episode of Bones (S1 Ep4 or 5 or something) when Angela drops her purse next to Booth's girlfriend and starts a conversation to get to know the woman and poke deeper into their relationship (the nosy little dudette, I can so imagine doing that myself if I ever got the chance) and I thought: I want to be able to do that. But the hardest opponent for me is female, beautiful, drinks alcohol, about thirty, loves children and majors in women's rights. Picking those parts apart, one would find that my perfect victim is male, my age, average in appearance and physique, teetotaller, haven't given children much thought and majors in some kind of technical subject like science or computers. Huh.
But everyone has manipulation skills, more or less. People use them in different ways and to different ends, but we all do everything we can to change our surroundings to the most profitable possible. I am a perfectionist, especially in the matters I learn only by myself (not from school or other people) and so I want to know what people do to me, how, why, what I do to them and how to do or not do that. A million lines of tripwire rigged around my whole beeing, mixed with tripwire illusions, tingling, tangling and tickling people where I want them.
As for the matter of the thirty-years-old woman, I would like to try sometime. But I am aware of that to do that I would need makeup, more classy clothes, a purse full of stuff I pretend to use and a purpose. Mostly the clothes.