Can someone with ATR “enjoy a movie”?

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Varyon

You don't need photosensitive epilepsy for an entire movie consisting of nothing but flashing screens to be a problem.

Hmmm, not really. As I mentioned earlier, plenty of the original movies had frame rates below the accepted 24fps for smooth motion, and people watched them just fine. The brain adapts. It knows what the real world should look like, based on experience, and it compensates for most people.

We already have digital technologies that introduce mechanical switching. DLP projectors, for example (using the tech designed by Texas Instruments), can, for some people, result in a visible "tearing" of the image even though it's digital with 60+ FPS. But very few people find it distressing in any way and mostly once they stop focussing on it, they don't notice it. Other digital technologies for projection, such as LCD, don't have this effect, but other limitations can be seen by some people (the "screen door" effect was certainly noticeable in lower resolution LCD at larger screen sizes, for example, because individual pixels because more obvious - not really an issue these days - but not everyone saw it and those who did could still enjoy a movie as after a little while their brain just adapted the image).

Most photosensitivity triggers at specific rates and intensities, too. It's not that all flickering will do it.

Also, remember that a "blank" frame isn't as long as a "full" frame. So what you're really doing is changing the ratio, not suddenly making the blank frame as persistent as the full frame (or even as persistent as a "normal rate" full frame).

[Plane]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If ATR always affected your perception of time that would be disadvantageous; it wouldn't just limit your enjoyment of video, but hinder your interaction with other people ("Whymustyoualltalksoslow?"). I'd at least make it a Nuisance Effect, and I might add on Temporary Disadvantage: Odious Personal Habit for always talking fast. And if you had multiple levels it would get worse; imagine someone with ATR 4 giving 5x speed!

But such problems aren't intrinsic to ATR.

We're told that unlake Innate Attack, other leveled advantages are inherently Variable, so if you have ATR 9 you can just opt to use 5 levels, 2 levels, 1 level or even 0 levels if you want to (be like a normal person).

this means if you want to enjoy a conversation you just need to set yourself at 0 levels so it doesn't throw you off.

This should also mean you're not "actively using" the ability so in P163's "Detecting Abilities" it should not be possible to tell you're a speedster, whereas observers should get a Sense Roll to detect ATR1 once you ratchet that up (with a penalty if you have Low Signature).

Not being able to turn ATR1 off (always perceiving at double-time, always being an obvious speedster) is "Always On" which yeah is on the level of a Nuisance Effect since it's not exactly dangerous, just makes it hard to keep your secret identity and interact with people pleasantly.

Existing at double-time doesn't actually prevent listening to people or speaking to them, it just makes it very annoying to do since you have to stand around listening to them speak in slow-motion or learning to speak in slow motion. It'd almost by like learning a new language...

Maybe we should just treat communicating w/ the power turned on as different languages you learn at each level of ATR ? You could argue that they default to each other to some degree, like if you're a human with English (Native) at ATR0 (the default) you could have "accented" understanding of ATR1 (or of Decreased Time Rate), "Broken" understanding of ATR2, and "No" understanding of ATR3?

Whereas at ATR1, you could view ATR0 as accented (like a normal person trying to understand a DTR speaker) ATR1 as normal, ATR2 as accented also.

Someone permanently at a certain rate (like permanently having Decreased Time Rate, or Always-On ATR1) should be able to choose whichever rate is convenient as their "free" language though.