mmk. my thoughts on your thoughts on my thoughts
1. Ok, no problem - as long as you're aware you've made the Skills commonplace and ubiquitous enough to be taken for granted, you grasp the fundamental difficulty in making the story more otherworldly.
2. A "not" is simple and powerful expression ("John was the guy who'd never learned to dance"), but pile 3 into one paragraph...
Mark walked to his door and didn't look up. He didn't put on his shoes and decided not to drink a glass of water
At some point it becomes clear that the writer is visualizing a lot of action and has either overlooked that the reader can't or is being deliberately cagey.
A more realistic/relevant example: "John didn't believe in the war" in a book set in 1980 probably means Vietnam and works because the modern reader knows what to compare against. In a fantasy novel, this becomes a footnote that the reader is expecting will join up later (big war? Small war? Recurring war? Relevant war? What was the cost? Recent?).
Better: "John lost his wife in the war eighteen years ago" (War occurred once, is not still occurring, and is distant past - here's how it affects John now, and we can expect John to react certain ways because of it).
This is really a snippet of a broader discussion related to the old "Bob saw something" structure. I'm not suggesting don't use them - but rather think about what questions each one raises.
