#Augmented Experiences

[travelling-bird]

Discover how technology enhances your travel experience with virtual previews, smart gadgets, & more, making your adventures unforgettable.

[scipunk]

Ghost in the Shell (2017)

[thecoffeecrew404]

Reblog this post with information on ANY AAC resources <3

Apps, boards, cards, etc

[clownrecess]

Please do not laugh if I misspell something or if my device pronounces a word wrong. I am doing my best. It tends to make me feel self-conscious about using my device, which can make it harder for me to communicate effectively in the future.

I understand that mispronunciations and misspellings can be funny in some contexts, but when it's happening to me, it's not funny at all. It's actually quite embarrassing and it makes me feel like my communication efforts are not being taken seriously. Communication is such an important part of human interaction, and when you have to rely on a device to do it, it can already feel like a barrier. So when people react negatively to something that's already a struggle for me, it can be really discouraging.

I'm not writing this to shame anyone or make anyone feel bad. I just wanted to raise awareness about how these little moments can have a big impact on AAC users.

[comic-sans-chan]

I adore how unhinged Garak is about the people he likes, because there's this theme of them being similarly unhinged. Like that colleague from the Order in Second Skin that he had to shoot and was like, "Aw :( ...Well Anyway" about. Or like Tain and Mila, both crazy bitches, imo. Or his last remaining contacts on Cardassia who he called up in In The Pale Moonlight who were all down to raid the Dominion’s underwear drawer at the drop of a hat. Like that's what Garak is used to. He likes excitement, he likes a bit of malice, he likes some cunning. And that's part of what makes Garashir so goddamn funny is Julian is actually a bit of a cunning, malicious little shit sometimes. If you watch the series knowing Julian's an augment, these moments come up all the time where it's clear he's fucking with people for his own amusement. Taking people for a bit of a ride just to see what happens. Then ofc there are all the gross incel fuckboy moments, but. 

I just love the idea of Julian going on some insane borderline villainous monologue about something or other and Garak sitting there with hearts swirling around his head. Don't get me wrong, Garak loves Julian for his goodness first and foremost, but Julian's not perfect and I think that makes the ship so much more interesting because I can't really see Garak finding most of Julian's worst flaws anything but thrilling. We go on about Garak loving Julian's infodumping and argumentativeness, but after the augment thing comes out, I think he equally enjoys watching Julian play dumb with people and Knowing he's playing dumb. It compliments his own Just a Simple Tailor routine so perfectly. They're just normal men. Just innocent men.

[bijoumikhawal]

I am constantly thinking about "Unnatural, Mummy? You tell me, what's Nature's way? If poisoned mushrooms grow and babies come with crooked backs, if goiters thrive and dogs go mad and wives kill husbands, what's unnatural? Here stands your lamb. Come cover him with kisses. He's all yours." from The Lion In Winter vs Julian's "The word you're looking for is unnatural, meaning not from nature. Freak or monster would also be acceptable. I was six. Small for my age, a bit awkward physically, not very bright...."

[kivaember]

Do you think Walter ever recieved augmentation surgery? Also, given how he sees it as part of the "carnival of horrors" his father created, do you think that he would've been against Michigan getting it?

(It's never directly stated, but I'd assume Michigan is augmented because he ranks directly behind Freud in the arena, so it would kind of make Freud less of an anomaly for being so good despite never recieving the surgery.)

okay i went on a long ramble by accident so cut it is!

In APV, Walter and Michigan are baseline humans! In fact, Michigan briefly considered getting augmentations when the "safer" Gen Seven augmentations came out after ironing out all the fatal flaws in the previous two generations, but Walter went on an anti-augmentation screed so intense that Michigan was just like "whoa fuck okay fine I won't get them."

(Later, Michigan was genuinely grateful Walter talked him out of it, because he realised that the augmentations didn't really give much benefits to a pilot's capability. Yeah, it gave them faster reflexes and better synergy with their AC, but that didn't trump good old experience and skill, which Michigan has in bucketloads. He found a lot of vindictive delight in trashing Arquebus pilots who had the most "modern" augmentations when he remained as a baseline human).

but as for a serious answer/ramble: AC6 is pretty upfront with who has augmentations in their arena profiles, so really it's just up to personal headcanons for those where it's not explicitly said (Michigan, Flatwell, etc). But usually I assume that if the arena profile doesn't say anything about augmentations, I consider them a baseline human... unless they're Flatwell and I augmented him for plot reasons in apv dhdshdf

like, it's my personal hc that late Gen augmentations are overhyped, likely due to aggressive corporate marketing to conceal how the late Gens are inferior to the Coral-augmentations. The hint to this was with Swinburne's arena profile, where it stated that the Gen Sevens didn't give the "usual" drawbacks to its user... but also gave negligible benefits ("This granted him enhanced aptitude as a pilot without the usual complications—but with no obvious indication of either efficacy or potential side effects, Swinburne's fears and doubts turned into an overpowering paranoia.") - and also V.VIII Pater's low ranking in the Arena.

Pater's a Gen Ten, the most modern augmentation that's commonly practiced by AC6 time, and Pater is... a painfully average pilot amongst the other named characters. He's sits at 16/C, where Chatty, Carla and Honest Brute rank higher than him, and they're not career mercenaries. In fact, quite a lot of augmented humans rank low in the arena comparatively to other pilots who don't have augmentations - Thumb Dolmayan doesn't have them, even, he's just a Doser who gained enlightenment by huffing so much Coral he accidentally made Contact, and he's 4/A.

tl;dr Freud is probably a notable figure for being a baseline human in the Vespers, because Walter introduced the Vespers as Arquebus's "in-house augmented human AC squad". The fact that V.I is a baseline human probably throws people for a loop, since the group is commonly known as a group of augmented humans - no doubt to showcase Arquebus's augmentations.

The corporations probably do a lot of barking about how augmentations make the AC pilot, because it's a marketing thing. But when you step outside of the neat lines of corporate warfare, it becomes more apparent that augmentations mean nothing if you don't have the experience or skill to back it up. A Gen Ten pilot used to conducting harassing operations against poorly armed union workers would find themselves floundering against n independent mercenary who's a baseline human that's cut their teeth against various opponents across the galaxy.

Oh hm this turned into a pretty big ramble but... this topic interests me, tbh! It's fun to think that the corporations make a big thing about their super special augmented humans, but it turns out that unless you put in the effort to properly train them or give them experience, they don't measure up against an ex-Doser running around in a souped up BASHO. The fact that people commonly think that augmented humans are superior pilots is because it's a shortcut to a boost in capability, and because the corporations are aggressive in their marketing and publishing successful results to ensure there's a demand for it.

anyway i hope all that rambling made sense sdhffh im very sleepy right now...

[iridescentscarecrow]

transcribing a twt thread again (i apologise) but people often quote fujimoto's oneshot just listen to the song as proof that csm doesn't offer itself up to interpretation and exists to be absurd and zany and completely meaningless but i think that's a severe misreading of jlts's themes, and since a lot of similar threads crop up in fjmt's body of work, it's a take that obscures csm's own themes as well. because the song in just listen to the song is never devoid of meaning! it aches of human expression and this is also why it manages to resonate with so many people and take on a life of its own.

when i read jlts, i felt most strongly the thing it was trying to put into words was the tussle between the artist and their creation. barthes' death of the author, their creation forming interpretations in other's minds, being taken out of their hands, morphed, appropriated;

i don't think fjmt's commentary on this is normative in the slightest; he's rarely preachy. taking jlts as an indicator against fans engaging with a work seems fallacious when this is a statement you're deriving from the work too! to me, jlts is about human feeling when conveyed.

and this is a common line of thought in fjmt's work. i've earlier mentioned part one's metanarrative and makima's struggle mirroring an artist's. there is a bit of commentary here about symbolism and its connotation. fritters of symbols which add up to nothing.

this quote from sontang's "against interpretation" is one i often come back to. art's what is conveyed to us, the reader, what strains of meaning it carries with it:

and i think fjmt takes this thought further with the commercialisation of art. meaning as bestowed through the production process in goodbye eri, molded through capitalist forces in csm part 2.

the chainsaw man, falling out of denji's hands. the song, falling out of the mc's hands in his oneshot. this transition to fiction, art as a product residing in social consciousness is consistently something fjmt engages with and is interested by. boiling it down to the surface level discourse of "the curtains were fucking blue" is fairly reductive, because art exists and has always existed to narrativise, to be told and felt as an interplay between the author and their audience. and that exercise in itself forms meaning.

[damconcha]

Shaka referring to King as a “guinea pig” is making me so mad

[airyairyaucontraire]

I haven't finished season 2 of Prodigy yet, but I don't understand how getting Protostar back to Tars Lamora closes the time loop when they've already changed the course of Gwyn's father's life so he won't become the Diviner and spend all that time searching for the hidden ship and enslaving orphans to work in his mine and decide to have a baby who will get grow up to get abducted by the plucky trafficked orphans who will find and steal the ship.

I still wonder what Solum's civil war was originally supposed to be about - and if in fact it wasn't a very nice civilisation to begin with.

[birthmark-poetry]

fulfilling my many-year (tumblr-started) dream of visiting OmegaMart // few spoilers but there’s so much more to see than I’ve shown — it’s incredible.

if you want a less-crowded experience, choose an 18+ night (seems to be most Thursdays).

[scipunk]

Ghost in the Shell (2017)

[thecoffeecrew404]

i need ideas for what to put on my aac board

[vaticinatrix]

me: yeah idk i have some trouble with unreality type stuff. 100% thought that goncharov was a real movie. tried to figure out where to watch it. i just have such a hard time telling when people are messing with me

also me: omg hi new arg!

[red-dragon-archfiend]

Kirby Star Allies is one of, if not my absolute favorite Kirby games, and I recognize while it's on paper one of the weaker entries in the core series, it appeals to me personally on multiple levels and I think I should revisit it more

[musical-chick-13]

Sometimes I periodically think of that one "article" about how Doctor Who finally has an attractive cast again(???) so it's easier to Care™ now(???????). For a variety of mocking reasons, but mostly because the woman who wrote it had this whole thing about her teenage shame at being attracted to DTen. and how Embarrassing™ that was for her when he was like. The most BASIC celebrity crush you could have.