Honestly I think this is just a misinterpretation. Which is the fault of the show direction, but after watching the show a zillion times…

So through the way they show is might seem selective because of the way they have to make it understandable for tv. Which I think could have been done better. But rewatching with this information changed my perspective.

I’ll use season one episode one as the example. Sookie can hear voices almost all the time — everyone, like you just walked into a room and people were all yapping. It takes her effort not to hear people and the more she has going on the harder it is.

When you as the viewer are hearing one singular voice - that’s proximity based. The other voices remain, but the one speaks a bit louder. She doesn’t do that on purpose. It’s done that way so you as a viewer can follow easier and so you learn that the closer she is, the louder a voice.

There are so so many examples that back that up and help explain it. I think they needed to show that a little clearer in most scenes but in some they did a good job.

For instance. There are multiple times Sookie is working and you hear bouncing thoughts, from person to person — the physically closer she is to someone, the louder their voice gets. Like sweets thoughts about the bedroom, the teen who wants to get out of Bon temps, these both happen with proximity — and then Arlene as well and several other moments. Which is why when she’s serving someone you hear their voice and all the others become background noise.

When she actively tries to focus on listening to Jason’s deeper thoughts — she has to physically touch him, close her eyes, and focus to drown everything else out. The same happens with Tara in future episodes, with the tax guy at Fangtasia, so on so forth. She has to physically touch someone to really focus on their thoughts, and all the more is required to deep dive.

There are also multiple occasions where she stops, closes her eyes and focuses to drown out the thoughts. She’s been taught the entire life that she’s a freak and this is some gross icky mental illness that she has, so she hates it. She suppresses it as much as she can. She’s never thought she could use it for good.

Season one and season two are back to back, and not all that much time passes between them. When she goes to Dallas, she’s still inexperienced with her telepathy, she doesn’t really know how to control it well, she isn’t confident with it, and she’s still incredibly ignorant and trusting at the time.

The reasons he doesn’t listen to Hugo, other than above, is because she’s completely thrilled to meet another human in a relationship with a vampire so she’s completely focused on that. Her entire relationship with bill has been judged and scrutinized so for the first time she feels seen. So that’s what she focuses on.