[quote=QuietThinker]
Holy crap, him and Wire would be the best freaking partners.And is there a limit to his ability, or is his limit just being normal physically? How much time does it take to sift through memories? Does he get all their memories at once, or just the ones that he needs to access at the time? Is it harder to read from an organic than an inorganic? Does the age of the object/organic in question make it harder to read their memories because there are more memories attached to them?Some things to think about? I like this guy!
[/quote]
I'm glad you like him, Eugene is one of my favourite characters to use, powers or not, and a major protagonist in an online novella I am working on (daresay the protagonist overall). ^^
The problem with his power is that the memories attached to anything tend to come all at once, and they're like images; imagine just flashes of words, colours, etc, hence why he's in a constantly confused state; he's being bombarded all the time. So, he's constantly seeing things, sometimes simultaneously; he might step into a room and see it as it is now, 10 years ago, and 1000 years ago all at the same time, which can make it difficult for him to comprehend the information. Afterwards, he can sift through and look at what he needs more in depth, but by that point any organic is usually like "lol wtf" and he has to get off them, LMAO. Not really a problem with objects.
Age plays a factor due to a larger memory stock, and organics are slightly harder to focus specifics from because they're constantly absorbing new data and therefore creating more and more memories per second, whereas objects tend to sit and not too too much happens to them unless it's something that is used a lot.
There's not much of a limit I currently have on his power besides requiring physical contact, experiencing any emotion attached to memory (such as pain or anger) while "looking" at it, and the obvious really crap physical prowess. He's, in general, not supposed to be a particularly strong character, since he's so easy to injure and kill, LMAO. Which is why I need strong characters like Bolo (who, with the use of his density/gravity/mass abilities, can actually f*ck you up pretty well) to go with him. He's good at disabling other supers or people in general for a short period through intense pain and at gathering information, but he's useless in any real combat scenario. I like making supporting characters a lot, even though they usually die or are seriously injured very quickly...^^;
Also, a lot of characters in this are at a much higher meta level than Eugene; Wire basically negates his magic ability entirely, as does that undead guy as he "can't feel pain" and he doesn't have anything besides that, unlike characters like that Saint Elijah guy, who is not only fast and can fly but also has healing, high physical prowess, a weapon, etc.. He's basically useless in the long run, but I like his power too much, and changing it to something similar to Raindancer's would be horribly OP, LMAO.
Anyways, I hope this clarified some of the things you asked!~

Edit: Just looked at some of the other profiles and his magic is basically one spell for another character.
Eugene is [b][i]f*ccccccccccccked[/b][/i] :D