#Nexus Series

[aerialworms-art]

Lifespans.

(ID under cut)

[Image ID: A three-way venn diagram floating against a starfield. The circles are coloured; one yellow, one light blue, one a darker shade of blue. The yellow is the smallest, the two blue ones over double its size, with the darker blue the biggest. The yellow is half covered by the two blue circles, while it takes up a small amount of the two blues. The centre overlap between all three is labelled "the precious few years we three were together".

There is very little overlap between the yellow and the darker blue without the lighter blue.

The work is signed 'aerialworms'./End ID]

[the-crooked-library]

season 2 ep 7 of severance is like. what if the first 5 minutes of Up were an hour long and the pain compounded exponentially with every extra five minutes that they lasted

[cimicherrychanga]

do NOT approach this guy at the pub they WILL talk about ninja turtles for two hours

[docopurr]

I hvae completed the Ultra Major Arcana Series :3

[briabooknerd]

Nexus talks to Aliens

Nexus talks to people

Nexus at Space Academy

Nexus On Pfaffen Skylands

Ginger Booth

[crow-caller]

rewatching your nightbane review and getting genuinely mad about how much the concept of a magically-bound divine right of kings (and how the populace can’t overthrow their rulers without all dying) fucking rules and how alex aster WASTED it. begging another fantasy author to please write this idea but like. good

(also your proclamation in that video that grim has “ice-cold yaoi hands” has haunted me since it came out. why did you speak that into the world social media user crow caller. why)

1. was there when the yaoi hands reigned. I know the signs and know them well. never call me a social media user ever again.

2. The divine right of kings thing Aster backward stumbles into IS very cool conceptually, you're right!! I nearly brought this up in my Skyshade review, but then realized it'd be the weirdest pull: Fallen London has an extremely good version of the same concept. I'm so so so sorry FL for referring to you as anything similar to Lightlark, but if you're interested in how 'magically bound divine right of kings which keeps a populace under control, treated as innate to the world but secretly artificial' can be done well.... well. let me tell you about The Chain.

The Great Chain of Being is a concept that the world is divided into a strict hierarchy, with some above others. In FL, the beings at the top are Judgements- cosmic gods who burn as bright as suns (okay, they are suns). They sit at the top of The Chain with the understanding This Is The Way The World is- they are often referred to as 'Kings', because they are analogous to them in many ways. Why do the Kings rule over us? Because the Chain is a facet of the universe, the Chain is true and says they are better than us. Why does the Chain say this? Because it is true.

.......Except, of course, it isn't. The Judgements created the chain, as kings created the Divine Right of Kings- to excuse their excess of power and abuse of it, they create the lie there is a divine truth to the world which just so happens to put them at the top. The universe doesn't make some people better than others, but some people will say it does in order to get away with heinous acts*. In FL, the Judgements abuse their power in far wilder cosmic horrors ways, able to enforce this division with their ability to rewrite reality with burning words. This power is again not necessarily something innate to them because they are sooo special- it is something they have because The Chain they've created to control reality says so.

This is key worldbuilding to fallen london, and is Sick As Hell- though quite Deep Lore, not apparent or relevant when you first begin playing.

(*The Great Chain is a real concept originating from medieval Christianity, which very much places all the world into a strict hierarchy with God at the top- followed by man, descending through various animals, and even including plants and minerals. A key aspect of the Chain was that this 'Absolute Hierarchy' was real, innate, holy, and... of course, an excuse for all kinds of racism. Sure, maybe they did think it mattered to decide lichen was closer to god than mushrooms, but ultimately an obvious reason the philosophy took root was to justify why certain humans mattered more than others.)

[deernozone]

Thingy I made for the 22 years anniversary

[s0dabeach]

"yeah of course I watch squid game for the plot"

the plot:

[wavingwings]

they are besties 2 me

[ender1821]

she deserves jail for this

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.

I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.

The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...

Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.

I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.

And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?

It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.

To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.

In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.

Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.

So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.

What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.

Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?

[pendragonsclotpole]

why are all the big “insert name slash ship is canon” events always four years apart in november? like it’s only happened twice so far but twice is more than i expected

what’s on the slate for the end of the month in four years, a ten episode merlin series reboot with a merthur confirmation and reunification in the modern day??????

fuck, imagine if it’s hannibal season four. double fuck, what does that mean for the election??

[bogwarg]

Roommate had the most INSPIRED Star Trek: Generations headcanon… She said that Kirk’s world in the Nexus is like that because in his perfect reality he’s straight. Kirk is never fully out to himself and he’s never been able to accept that part of himself that loves Spock romantically. So, that’s why we don’t see Spock in the Nexus with Kirk. Kirk uses the Nexus to live the “perfect” life he thinks he SHOULD have, not the one he desires.

[harveybwabbit92]

[Don't repost without permission, if you see this posted outside of Tumblr please report it and have it taken down.]

[deernozone]

I FORGOT TO POST MADNESS DAY HERE WELP

I need to post more in tumblr, sorry for kinda leaving it abandoned 😭

[taravangians-storming-balls]

the fact that I've talked to multiple people that were afraid to make or engage with moash content for fear of backlash is actually pissing me off so much rn. like this is what you're doing when you're playing along with your little joke harassment campaign. it's not cute, all you're doing is making people uncomfortable and alienated