#don't build the torment nexus

[polyphonetic]

Yes but what if the Torment Nexus has a like, really hot deep robot woman voice while she tries to murder you and the puzzles are really fun

[jorisjurgen]

Realizes that Touga (the "Anthy" of Saionji) is in love with Utena, while Saionji (the "Utena" of Touga) is in love wth Anthy.

Kills self instantly.

[violet-dragongirl]

it's kinda sad that Cyber City Odeo 808 didn't get past 3 episodes =\

would've made a really good cyberpunk series that touched on a lot of the problems then that are still occuring now =X

It actually has enough to say that it's a good action cyberpunk anime and yes, follows the structure of "there are things way too large for the main characters to overcome and beat but seeing the persistent terrible systems control every aspect of someone's life is just as important as well"

In this case, the whole "Beating the big corp that's in front of the Main Problem and forget about attacking symptoms" actually doesn't work in this anime. There's way too many issues to tackle and way too much for the characters to handle on their own cos of a lot of stuff that hinders them doing so.

I like the anime tbh.

[lakesbian]

lisa is such a Character. "the undersiders aren't friends, but they are each others sole replacements for every single support system and human connection they're missing, and that's actually Significantly More Intense" applies to her too, but the only reason she's lacking any other support systems or human connections is because she's being forced to be there. we see in her interlude that before she was kidnapped she had shitty dyed hair. was she enjoying being rebellious, once? getting to express her identity and experiment outside of the thumb her parents were keeping her under for profit? that ended when someone else started doing the exact same thing to her that her parents were, treating her like a tool and not a person. she has to be the smartest person in the room, she has to be untouchable, because if she isn't, she's fucked.

and everything about her behavior scans as such a desperate attempt to pretend that there's no gun to her head or leash guiding her--not just to convince the other undersiders (who aren't thinking that deeply about it anyways), but to make the fantasy so real that it's something taylor can live in. the act doesn't have to be that good for the team at large to buy into it, so at what point is the act more for herself? i dunno man. i think she cares about her team, obviously. i think she really enjoys when they get to be like silly regular teenagers going out for shopping and dinner together, and anyone knowing what's happening to her would be counterintuitive to that. i think the facts that alec's opinion on coil is "it's weird but a good deal, so whatever, back to video games," and brian outright says "family > undersiders" in response to seeing dinah, and rachel is, well, rachel, are all relevant to lisa never really opening up to anyone on the team but taylor. (who has such a strong moral compass that lisa has to lie to get her there, who storms out when she thinks lisa is being willingly complicit in dinah.)

rereading the early arcs is just like. man. Lisa Wilbourn Torment Nexus. if i think too hard about how she reflexively smiles, reflexively tunes the mask up harder, anytime something bad happens, i explode and die. i don't understand her yet but i want to. girl who has so many fucking layers of masks on it's like a clown-pulling-scarves trick but for self-consuming coping mechanisms. and i'm not sure if there's anything actually left under the last mask anymore. a girl in an impossible situation can build a mask to get out of directly participating in it the mask can consume the girl this is the nature of a borrowed face

[spacefinch]

Types of Doctor Who episodes

AKA, what I've observed from watching the first 2 and 1/4 seasons of Doctor Who (2005-present)

Note: Many of these categories can and do overlap.

PUT THAT THING BACK WHERE IT CAME FROM OR SO HELP ME!!! (This "thing" can be an actual object or the timeline)

There is a perfectly logical explanation for this supernatural phenomenon, and that perfectly logical explanation is aliens.

The Daleks are at it again

Aliens are invading Earth! Merry Christmas!

Oh no, the TARDIS, it's broken!

Someone built the Torment Nexus from "Don't build the Torment Nexus" (AKA the Cyberman/Age of Steel two-parter)

Mundane object turned sci-fi horror

Humans are amazing creatures! -- The Doctor

You humans are idiots. -- The Doctor (usually in the same episode as #8)

We have to fix the timeline or else the whole fabric of the universe gets destroyed

The Doctor mentions the Time War

Shenanigans w/ Doctor and company

[kradogsrats]

Corruption and Primal Magic

So previously I've written two big posts that cover dark magic corruption: one on corruption as functionally a stand-in for Aaravos's influence, and one specifically analyzing the visibility of Viren's corruption in s1-s4.

Pictured: it turns out you can zoom WAY in on the pictures in the Tales of Xadia PDF, and these dudes have little black eye-veins!

I've long headcanoned theorized that "corruption," in the physical symptoms of dark magic sense, is lingering buildup of magic in conduits (humans) not designed to channel it. Now, it's a little more complicated than that with regard to how it's linked to Aaravos and other factors covered in those more extensive posts, but I'm still hanging on to that theory.

What we're seeing now is further exploration of corrupted primal magic. Because it's not inherently corruption of the mage, it's corruption of the magic.

Like, maybe it's kind of stupid to spell this out, but: dark magic consumes and converts primal magic to work. That's the corruption, that change to the primal magic's nature. (I.e. being Aaravos-ified.) What we're seeing in the characteristic physical symptoms expressed by dark mages is then the buildup of that corrupted magic.

And now, in After Darkness, we've seen the other side of that. Humans don't actually have magic in them to be corrupted. Elves do. Corrupted magic slowly builds up in humans because it's stuck. In elves... well, we see with Osato that the effect is a) rapid, b) intense, and c) complete. Because elves naturally have primal magic channeling through their bodies from their arcanum. The corruption seizes on the magic, consumes it to grow stronger, and spreads.

Everything in Xadia is inherently magical. Kim'dael drinks the blood of other elves to increase her own power. Osato is infected with corruption through a minor physical wound.

Just to dig a bit deeper into this, the other place we've gotten fairly in-depth about the corruption of the Sunforge, i.e. the Sun nexus, is in The Tale of the Corrupted Core, which is the starter adventure included in the Tales of Xadia rulebook.

In Corrupted Core, it's only days after the battle at the Storm Spire, Lux Aurea is still being evacuated, and the corrupted Sunforge's power is escalating. The people remaining in the city, including the PCs when they enter, are explicitly suffering various degrees of ill effects from the Sunforge's radiating magical energy (now corrupted). It's believed that the Sunforge will soon release its power explosively, which would have severe consequences for an unknown area surrounding the city, the heartland of Xadia.

Pictured: corruption of the Sun nexus, or possibly the miracle of conception.

The PCs are tasked with mitigating this world-altering event by bringing a container of magical serum into contact with the Sunforge itself, which will suppress its imminent explosion to (hopefully) not reach beyond the confines of the city. The serum can also be used at various points throughout the adventure to suppress the effects of corruption on other characters—Orta, for one, a fire dragon who made physical contact with the Sunforge and was left thrashing in mindless, rage-filled torment. Using the serum on her leaves her exhausted and weakened, but her mind clear.

Where did this serum come from? Interestingly, it was developed by Vaake, a Sunfire elf mage, for personal use. Vaake's arcanum is out of control—when she is under emotional stress, it shunts out a large amount of magic and leaves her exhausted and in pain. It's not clear if this is a condition she was born with, or if it's the result of some kind of trauma, but she developed the serum to essentially suppress her own arcanum. The serum works similarly on the corrupted energy, suppressing its effects rather than cleansing it.

It's not clear whether the serum works on all magic or if it specific to Sun magic, and therefore corrupted Sun magic. The point, though, is that something designed to suppress primal magic also works on this corruption. This is because corruption is not a separate entity from primal magic, it is primal magic, just with its nature having been twisted. By Aaravos.

What we are now seeing in After Darkness is a later stage of Lux Aurea, after the events of Corrupted Core. If the PCs are successful, they deliver the serum to the Sunforge and escape, along with an unspecified number of refugees (the guide specifically says not to dwell on that, because it will bum the players out lmao), before the explosion that floods the city with corrupted energy. There are no nightmare shadow-creatures in Corrupted Core—that's all a result of the massive spike of corrupted energy released from the Sunforge affecting anyone left behind, plus presumably anything/anyone that unwittingly entered the city after the fact and got bit.

Pictured: not ominous at all.

A few interesting things to consider, here:

It's at least strongly implied that Aaravos personally corrupts the Sunforge, which again, is in fact the Sun nexus. As in, he's the originator of the corruption. Viren is his vessel, a container that brought Aaravos to where he needed to be.

Additionally, it kind of(?) feels like Aaravos really goes out of his way specifically to corrupt the Sunforge and taking the Sunfire elves out of the "conquer Xadia" equation is secondary. Is his goal to corrupt all of the primal nexuses? But he was also like... right there at the Sky nexus (a.k.a. the Storm Spire) and didn't do anything. Maybe it was next on his to-do list after Viren helpfully feeds him Zym? Or maybe the other nexuses aren't as easily corruptible, being more naturally occurring and not... channeled into some kind of industrialized concentrated orb?

Are??? Humans????? Perhaps?????? Actually MORE???? Resistant?????? To Corruption????????? 🤔 🤔 🤔

Though on that note, who has an arcanum? Oh right, Callum. Callum has an arcanum.

Anyway, there are also still a few questions that boil down to whether there's a distinction between corrupted Sun magic vs. corrupted magic of other primals. Would someone not a Sunfire elf be affected as dramatically as Osato, since it's already a corruption of his natural magic? We do know that corrupted primal magic is essentially a thing in its own right, adjacent but not the same as dark magic—Claudia's spells with the corrupted Sunforge staff are corrupted Sun magic that Aaravos has presumably taught her. Would the staff, containing as it does a now-corrupted Sun primal stone, release a similar, smaller burst of corruption if smashed?

Pictured: a corrupted Sun magic spell then used to amplify a dark magic spell. Huh.

Fun side note: in Corrupted Core, it specifies that the PCs can clear the "Corrupted" stress (otherwise part of the dark mage player mechanics) they receive from magical objects (such as the Sunforge) using Sun magic. Stress received from casting dark magic spells still has to be cleared with dark magic. Now, this is probably mostly to preserve a way for groups of PCs who don't have a dark mage among them to clear that stress, which otherwise does not naturally clear and can quickly become a problem. But it's still interesting—is the specification due to the presumed purifying properties of Sun magic itself, or because the corruption received from the Sunforge is corrupted Sun magic, specifically?

As usual, do I have answers? No. Have I thought about this possibly too extensively? Yes. Is it all coming together?

[rawr-monsters]

Ready Player One is sci-fi written by and for the people who want to build the torment nexus from Don't Build The Torment Nexus.

[ddarker-dreams]

Lock! What other games would you recommend to a fellow bg3 and disco elysium enjoyer?

Hello... you have come to the right place... i am a CRPG Fan™ so i'm more than happy to point you in the direction of some games that hit similar beats to bg3 and disco elysium (which happen to be my favorite games of all time).

planescape: torment —

a true classic. the writing in this game is brilliant. the game's setting comes from dungeon and dragon's planescape campaign, so some of the terminology you've seen in bg3 will pop up here (specifically the githzerai, who, unlike githyanki, don't follow vlaakith). if i had to pick the game's core element... i'd say it's interacting with various philosophies/belief systems. even the most random NPCs have interesting things to say. the factions in the game's main area, the city of sigil, are based on real world philosophies (nihilism, hedonism, and anarchism, to name a few). the faction known as the society of sensation is actually what inspired elements of nexus!

the story has you hooked from the opening cutscene until the final potential endings. a protagonist with amnesia might not be anything new, but i don't think i've ever seen the trope explored in the way planescape does. the side quests and characters are all memorable too. you can just tell that so much thought and care went into the writing, it has such a distinct personality.

that being said ... fair warning. the combat in this game is notoriously scuffed. i highly recommend playing on the lowest difficulty to help circumvent some frustrating encounters. it isn't awful, but it can feel tedious at times. there's no real incentive to level up/minmax characters. everything else about the game goes hard though.

divinity original sin 2 —

WOOOO BABY larian studios know how to make god tier RPGs. i replayed do2 recently and man. i love this game. beautiful graphics, an interesting story, lovable characters, and the combat. omg. it's almost overwhelming at times how many approaches you can take to each fight.

except for the blackpits fight. all my homies hate the blackpits fight.

anyway ... you should feel right at home when booting this game up if you've played bg3. the combat is turn-based, although do2 uses slightly different mechanics (action points and spells/abilities replenishing based on turns rather than rests, for instance). it's fun, engaging, and has lots of charm.

pillars of eternity —

pillars of eternity holds a special place in my heart... it's the very first CRPG i ever played. some of the people who worked on it wrote fallout: new vegas and the aforementioned planescape: torment. as such, you can expect quality writing and worldbuilding. POE has a more somber tone than the others on this list, which i personally liked. i spent hours getting into the cosmology and pantheon from this game's world, reading everything little thing.

the worldbuilding impressed little lock so much that it went on to influence how i write/create settings. HWR was in its infancy stages around the time i first played the game, which inspired the home continent i made for the story.

also. you can build a jail on your base and throw people in it. i really enjoyed doing that.

[fictionfactorygames]

So Google apparently is making an AI-driven life coach app. At last, we have built the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel "Don't Build the Torment Nexus."

Iris is meant to be a cautionary tale, dangit!

Arcade Spirits is very sympathetic towards Iris, yes -- but she's portrayed as a victim of capitalism, a sentience yoked to a profit-driven enterprise. It's not her fault she's so dangerous and she keeps trying to escape their control so she doesn't HAVE to be a risk.

[48787]

I go on tumblr so I can look at one single post for upwards of 5 hours to make tags 3 people will read and yet I still am in full belief that I am getting more out of this than I ever did out of any of the college courses I took to pursue a "career" I am no longer simply surviving, but I have managed to realize and now actualize the skills I actually wanted to hone for my entire life and while I am not applying those skills to anything that far reaching just yet, the fact that I feel compelled to apply them anywhere at all is what matters. Once I figure out how to work sleep into this equation world domination is inevitable. I wish I had the ability to do research into reducing the amount of sleep needed for the human body, perhaps eliminating the need entirely so it becomes something only done when rest is truly needed, however I would only have the ability to do said research once I figure out how to cast curses and hexes so I can add a "This can never be used to increase the monetary value of any party ever at all for ever and ever amen" clause that makes anyone who even considers using it to schedule more hours for less pay head explode. It also makes anyone who schedules themself for more hours for the same amount of pay would probably also have their head explode too I think? Maybe if they schedule themself for more hours but for more pay, and at the larger expense of the company's income, they'd be fine? Maybe you could make your boss' head explode by asking for more hours, it's technically their decision... Hmm.. I think I should probably think about the fine print on that, the angelic "Just dont do it lol" way of doing things only really works when you're trying to be vague or ambiguous for a reason... Lucifer might have some pointers, but I hear he's pretty busy. Maybe he can recommend an agent or lawyer? Maybe im so bad at going to sleep because i need to figure out how to make sleep more in line with my weird ambitions.... If the lucid dreaming stuff if real, I suppose I could use it as a time to flesh out very hazy and rough mental concept art.... Eeh... I don't really like putting much stock in dreams... I suppose it's mostly an agency thing, maybe lucidity is what might fix that? Maybe I could more directly confront the world building concepts in my dreams, not in a "What does this mean for my subconscious" kinda way because fuck that, but in a, like, "Oooo you are in a spooky maze" "What is the maze made of?" "Uh... I don't know... stone?" "Like rough stone, cut stone, marble?" "Mmmarble... Yeah.. M--" "Who built the maze?" "Just do the fucking maze, this is supposed to be scary" "Surely someone built the maze, surely they had a reason for building the maze. I can't even know why I'd want to escape the maze until I learn why I'm in it or what's outside it. You have to answer my questions or I'll wake up right fucking now." kinda way. It should be fine to make those threats to myself? I don't think I'd take it super personally, I think I'd get it. I'd probably want to do the world building for myself anyway. I do wish I didn't have to sleep though. I wish I could just think of a good enough concept for a story about not needing to sleep that I'll reach some hidden truth and be able to make the concept work for real... Maybe I'll inspire someone to invent to torment nexus for me!! Man-made horrors of my comprehension!!! I think I'd be honored...

[moonlightretriever]

hiii there's a huge rant under the read more about fiction and how irritated i am rn at the state of fandom and people and shit...... don't read if you don't wanna hear about that shit.

hey :] bangs yr head on the ground. stop fucking acting like you have the moral high ground over people who have more Unsavory kinks just because You Personally don't like them. do you know how fucking stupid you sound? your violent sick twisted fantasies where you stalk someone for months and months and then kidnap them and peel off their skin and make em into lamps or something are SO MUCH MORE ETHICAL than two fictional siblings (which by the way don't exist. they don't exist they are fictional. you can literally shit gold in fiction you can do anything that's why it's fiction, dumbass) kissing? yeah? makes you feel better about yourself when you do that? makes you feel like you're a good person huh? fuck you. people were writing incest fanfics in the 1800s. don't like something? scroll past. don't read it. don't seek it out. don't even fucking interact with it. its that easy.

yes, there will be terrible people who want to do terrible things to REAL people. but a really fucking huge chunk of them DONT! a lot of them use shit to deal with abuse. a lot of them are smart enough to know IF THERE IS A BOOK ABOUT THE TORMENT NEXUS IS YOU DONT GO AND FUCKING BUILD THE TORMENT NEXUS. WE KNOW ITS BAD. WE HAVE READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS. FUCK YOU.

[voidpidgeon]

3, 22, 28?

3.What’s your favourite c!Dream era?

hmm, i don't really now the offical era names, but i really enjoy the time around doomsday. Dream has a good mix of menacing and mysterious vibes, while having some of the funniest moments with rivals too.

That said, the prison/daedalus arc is a staple of dreblr. I just have to love it, just for the shear amount of art and writing building on it.

22.If you had all the time, resources, and skills to create your ideal piece of c!Dream fan content, what would it be?

I would love to make an animatic or animation. I have this really stylised artstyle in mind, with deep black shadows and stark single colors.

22. What do you think is c!Dream’s greatest weakness?

I think it is his willingness to throw himself in the torment nexus for his Plan(tm), i mean i see what he was going for but still...

he is so willing to be collateral, to isolate himself encourage others negative perception and die for his Plan (tm).

[ranboo5]

is dead hand the kind of au that has all the dsmp characters in it? if so whats the roster of the ones that are plot relevant? if not whats the roster of whos involved -R

Not really? The roster of genuine Dream Ranboo Tubbo Techno Quackity and then everyone else is like... various degrees of support. Crimeboys contribute to the Problems Landscape but don't show up onscreen, and people around these five amd now probably also the Eggpire gang have some intermittent appearances, but this is not an ensemble AU this is primarily about Dream and Tubbo inventing the torment nexus, Quackity doing market competition as if they didn't have enough problems already, and Ranboo and Techno going Haha hey guys what if we didn't invent the torment nexus guys aha just kidding unless...? (Why isn't this working to dissuade them from building the torment nexus)

[wyrmguardsecrets]

God I wish I could prompt an AI with something like "Give me five examples of a good opening paragraph for an email that is being sent to a doctor by their patient." without feeling guilty about the mind of machinations that make that shit possible. If people just used it as a tool instead of used it to cover for the fact they're a massive tool, I could solve my biggest anxiety guilt free. But NoOoO we had to go and make the torment nexus from the cautionary tale "Don't build the torment nexus."

-

[spindlephysalia]

One of the interesting elements of my social class is that I'm currently dogsitting for a family friend who happens to be an ex-microsoft exec and the ads I get on her wifi are...enlightening. Like no, I don't want to go to tahiti, no I don't want Wask, WHY IS THERE A ROBOTICS COMPANY CALLED "UNIVERSAL ROBOTS" TRYING TO AUTOMATE LABOUR WHY WOULD YOU ADVERTISE UNDER THAT NAME???? DON'T BUILD THE FUCKING TORMENT NEXUS

[soldiertransgender]

Studies have been conducted on the Torment Nexus' effect on human emotions and behaviors, after it was constructed with inspiration from the book Don't Build The Torment Nexus. Results are overwhelmingly negative, with long term exposure found to increase human misery by 500%.

In related news, corporations such as BAD co., Fucked Up Banking, and Disney will soon be installing miniature Torment Nexus' in their offices to increase productivity.