#Augmented Experiences

[mochasucculent]

Was looking at refs and since Viktor has two different leg braces I was wondering, do we think he wears them simultaneously?? The refs don't perfectly line up perspective-wise so it's hard to tell but parts of the one he wears during the Hexcore scenes look like they could maybe line up with the brace that he wears over his clothes, but also some parts really don't and look like they'd be super uncomfy. Also HOW does he take these on and off. Experts weigh in

[scipunk]

Latency (2024)

See: Serial Experiments Lain

[youngpettyqueen]

Miles calling Julian 'Jules' one (1) time is probably a writing fuck up and yet it lives rent free in my head 24/7 and its gotten to the point where I do need to write a super niche fic about my hyper specific headcanons about how that comes about that maybe 2 other people would read

I have visions of a Rascals-esque episode where Julian gets de-aged due to a time anomaly or some fuckshit but unlike Rascals Julian is just fully a 5 year old. no memories of his adulthood or anything. pre-augmentations, pre-enhancements, pre-everything little Jules Bashir is now on the station and they've gotta deal with it. and I mean, who better to care for Jules than Miles and Keiko- who are both very good parents, and also they've dealt with this sort of thing before

this entire thing is self-indulgent on every level because I want an excuse to get into my really specific headcanons with Julian and disability. like we know I hc Julian as being audhd. but as a kid, as Jules, I think he was non-verbal. I also think he had dyspraxia. he doesnt name anything when he talks about what he was like pre-augmentations, he keeps it vague, and leaning into that I think Miles would only have a vague idea of what to expect when interacting with Jules, and he finds himself completely unprepared for what Jules is actually like. and also trans Julian supremacy and I dont think he really tells people he's trans so Miles is also not expecting Jules to be a 5 year old girl

I imagine Miles is maybe expecting Jules to be very similar to Julian and to be very chatty and extroverted, but more awkward, and maybe just not understanding a lot of things. instead, Jules doesnt speak beyond a few words and vocalizations. she moves constantly, but its mostly fidgeting and stimming- she doesnt like to walk, and shes very clumsy and bumps into things and falls down a lot. Miles and Keiko spend most of the time carrying her around on their hips, like they would Molly. she doesnt like being around lots of people, and is very easily overwhelmed. they figure out very quickly that shes a very good hider, because she scares the absolute shit out of them when she takes off and it takes a solid 3 hours to find her

they do figure things out pretty quickly. she gets overwhelmed by noise easily, so Miles has some headphones replicated for her- smaller versions of the ones he has for ear protection. Jules communicates mostly through body language, pointing at things and smacking things and grunting a lot, but they cant figure out what she means. Keiko roots through her old school supplies and gets Jadzia to turn a PADD into a communication device. Jules absolutely fucking LOOOOVES the PADD and they make a strap for it so that she can carry it everywhere. turns out shes very inquisitive- shes constantly using the PADD to ask 'whats that? what's that? what's that?' about basically everything

the thing they have the hardest time with is that things dont stick easily for Jules. Miles and Keiko are answering the same questions over and over, but she just cant retain a lot of what shes taught. she gets things mixed up a lot, and is confused easily. she cant read at all and has a hard time figuring out what pictures are depicting. the PADD is very helpful, but also very basic with visuals, because Jules just cant comprehend words or more complex visuals. she gets frustrated really easily and cries, and its really hard to calm her down. she has a lot of sensory issues and cant communicate exactly what upsets her about how things feel, leading to a lot of trial and error, and several thrown utensils and spilled plates and bowls

still, Miles and Keiko handle it all. Jules feels safest with Miles and clings to him a lot. he does a lot of his work during this time with Jules in one arm, her headphones on, big curious eyes watching him work. but, in the evenings, when Jules is tired, she curls up close to Keiko on the couch, and Keiko strokes her short hair, while Jules runs her hands over the soft material of Keiko's skirt. Jules and Molly get along- they dont play together, but Molly will read little stories to Jules, and makes silly voices that make Jules laugh. Jules is so gentle with Kirayoshi- she won't hold him, but she gently strokes his hair, and hums at him, and Keiko recognizes the lullaby shes trying to echo

sure, she isnt the easiest child. but at the end of the day, accommodating her isnt the hardest thing Miles and Keiko have ever done. Miles thinks back to how Julian described himself as a kid, thinks about the fuss his parents made about how they couldnt deal with the guilt and heartbreak of watching their child fall behind. he thinks of after that, Julian quietly wondering if maybe his parents were just trying to make things easier for him. maybe they did have good intentions. he's wondered the same thing himself. maybe in their own way, they thought they were doing the right thing

he's thinking about this while he's holding Jules, curled up against him and asleep. he's barely slept these last few days, he's about at wit's end trying to handle all of this, he misses his Julian and he wants him back. but when he looks at Jules, theres no resentment. he isnt even annoyed. she drives him up a wall, but shes a kid- thats her job in life. as for the cognitive piece, well. they can figure all that out if they need to. he laughs at himself a bit- thinking ahead about Jules' future already, those dad instincts kicking in. doesnt hurt to be prepared, he tells himself. just in case

it occurs to him, as he's dozing off himself, that genetic enhancement and DNA re-sequencing dont cross his mind. not once. and when he looks at Jules with tired eyes, feels the peaceful rise and fall of her back under his hand, he finds that he cant imagine himself doing it. cant imagine taking this child in, and telling people how to cut and paste and re-arrange her DNA. he cant imagine wanting to make her into anything but the child she already is. he cant imagine thinking that she was so difficult, so far behind, that she had to be changed into an entirely different person. he loves Julian, he wouldnt change Julian for anything, but he finds himself loving Jules, too. he wouldnt change her, either. not a single thing

Keiko sees the anger behind his eyes when they put Jules to bed for the night. she asks him about it after they shut the door. Miles stands at the door for a moment, thinking about that little kid inside that he cant save from what's to come. and he just tells Keiko- "Richard and Amsha Bashir can go to hell."

[thecoffeecrew404]

Reblog this post with information on ANY AAC resources <3

Apps, boards, cards, etc

[bijoumikhawal]

the discussion of Garak’s childishness and malleablity has given me the funny mental image from an AU I play around with but probably will never right of like

Garakh, from a timeline where either Cardassians didn't completely conquer Hebitians or the Union crumbled during a crisis a few centuries back, his uncle had custody and raised him to be openly mixed race and follower of Oralius, probably has a chill job as a teacher and a side gig as a minor clergy member/low key counseler, looking at the other version of himself who hates himself and is neurotic like a beaten police dog on top of denying the most basic facts about himself. And realizing this bitch has the emotional maturity of one of his students

[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.

[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...

[girlbob-boypants]

I miss Inquisition's skill augmenting so bad. It was so much more interesting than what Veilguard has going on

[shardofpetrichor]

Okay but the more I think about it, Kaya and Operator Grey are gonna be absolute besties. I don't think my operator had any siblings (I know Drifter may have said that he had some in KIM chats but that was long enough ago I can't remember what answer I made him give, or if it would be the same answer that Operator would give since I'm not sure if I headcanon any timeline differences outside the results of the handshake or not, RIP me and my memory)? If they did at all they were probably younger siblings, and I doubt that any siblings would have got old enough for the Operator to get to bond with them very well if they had them. Either way Kaya is absolutely going to turn into the (big?) sister Operator never had (despite their wide differences in experience) and Kaya I think would probably be a bit slow to warm up to them, being an alternate, much younger and childlike version of the Drifter she knows, but once she has the "oh my god, it's TRAUMATIZED" reaction and they bond over both being through (different kinds of) shitty experiences before they're even technically in their 20s? it's gonna be metal. they're gonna take the origin system by storm, or the fortuna competitive k-boarding scene at least.

[scipunk]

Ghost in the Shell (2017)

[danidoesathing]

(The Diving Suit fiasco is so interesting to me, because while League Viktor is canonically against mind control, he also designed something like that. Like, that disparity is fascinating to me.

(My own personal interpretation/HC of that whole thing is that League Viktor sees "mind control" as "directly and completely overriding someone's will and leaving them powerless and unable to consent". The Diving Suits would have only removed the diver's ability to feel fear-which, while still really sketchy and rife with potential for exploitation, doesn't technically override a person's thoughts, feelings (mostly), and desires. And to add to that, anyone who used that suit would theoretically know what they were getting into and thus have consented to it.)

(That said, it was still a sketchy as hell concept that was probably never going to fly with the Council, and I think a lot of problems could've been avoided if he gave the "fear suppression" switch to the divers instead of the supervisor.))

i mean i get it because it's not. technically mind control, or at least not at first glance. And in theory, in some ideal world where companies carried about the lives and consent of their workers, the divers would informed and have to sign a consent form. In theory, the ability to remove emotions like fear or anxiety for dangerous tasks where lives are at stake could be very beneficial. like the fear a surgeon feels when performing may make his hands shake and could cost the patient's life. Temporarily blocking out that fear could solve similar problems.

it is, however, incredibly short sighted and lacks the forethought about how it could easily be exploited and abused by other people. even if the control was given just to the divers, it could still be used for nefarious purposes. and piltover and zaun are not exactly well known for their proper treatment of the working class it is FULL of corruption and hatred towards the poor. i mean like. the chembarons alone are committing fourteen worker's rights and OSHA violations every hour! there is no way in hell it would be implemented well in our world, let alone theirs.

in viktor's defense, it was just a concept. sketchy as hell? yeah. was it ever gonna go well with the council? probably not, but he hadn't even presented it yet. (and lets be honest, if it was anyone from Piltover proposing the idea, they would've gotten a stern talking to, slap on the wrist, maybe a suspension. but since its a disabled man from Zaun whose already "caused problems with the academy", he didnt stand a chance).

[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.

[amaconcha]

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

[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...."

[philosians]

personal hc of mine is that Caleb does fully remember his life on Philos, but only after he gets blown up in the explosion 😭

[thecoffeecrew404]

i need ideas for what to put on my aac board