#drugs nexus

[valtsv]

headcanoning improbable bonding activities for the terrorism trio

[basilbots]

Also rip Nexus lost to negative star power addiction 😔

[guard-en]

can we get jackie beating the everloving shit out of someone

Hey... if it's what the people want...

[brekwrites]

Nexus Redemption Through the Unconditional Love of an Animal Real Not Fake in VRchat!!

Content Warnings for drug abuse and related topics (in the context of dark star power) and physical abuse (NOT to the animal!!, Nexus gets punched in the face).

[governmentmandatedryujinstan420]

I regret to inform everyone we're back in the white space. Expect the fire alarm to go off periodically in typical fashion of whenever it detects a steaming pile of garbage on the way. Like me! [i'll give a cookie to whoever recognizes where the sfx is from!!]

[autisticjoshrusso]

man i forget we get the first will appearance and then whatever the hell reid has going on with this old rival of his all in one episode... crazy...

[2strangecrows]

some drugs graphics for funsies

[bambiraptorx]

People need to stop making me hate big mama so much! I'm supposed to love her! She's evil. Shes a giant spider lady. And she's voiced by Lena Headey!

But also...yeah sounds about right...she totally would:(

-🔮🕸

I read somewhere at one point that one of the potential plans for Rise S3 would have been to have Big Mama essentially take over the Hidden City and become that season's main antagonist. And while I don't know if that was actually how that season would have worked out or if it was just something they were considering and might have eventually scrapped, I started thinking about how she would use her influence to control an entire city like that.

Clearly, she already has a ton of power and influence given the Battle Nexus New York shebang (that she was advertising throughout season 2, so it's not like she was hiding it). And while canon doesn't address it exactly, we know from Draxum that potentially exposing the yokai to the humans is considered an extremely serious crime but she just?? does that for personal profit??? And there's no way she didn't think that through, so she either decided the potential profit was worth the criminal charges, figured that she'd be able to get the charges dropped, or knew that the Council of Heads wouldn't even prosecute her.

As I mentioned in this post, I've given her a lot of sway over the yokai education system as one of her avenues of building her power. But education isn't the only pie she's got her finger in: basically every industry in the Hidden City either has her direct influence on it, or people who owe her something in it. So for a lot of the lore I've built around Big Mama, she doesn't need to take over the Hidden City. She already runs it. If she did ever outright seize power from the Council of Heads, it wouldn't be taking control so much as openly acknowledging the power she already has.

//CW Drug Use, Substance Abuse, Addiction, Manipulation//

And as for her letting the Nexus fighters maintain substance abuse issues like I mentioned in that last lore post, it's just one of the many, many things she uses to control people.

Fighting in the Nexus is incredibly stressful, so many people who do it long term end up with serious substance problems (alcohol, drugs, etc) as coping mechanisms. If they want to get clean, she'll help them get clean (and lord it over them every time they try to defy her, that without her, they'd still be an addict). If they want to keep using, she'll help them keep using (and by providing them their drug of choice, legal or illegal, by letting them work for her, she becomes the safest and easiest source).

And if the Council is aware, they turn a blind eye to it: after all, addicts who have a safe, legal source for their substance of choice are much less likely to end up committing crimes, so really, she's just making society better, right? And honestly, that's what a lot of what she does to gain power boils down to: she makes it look like she's trying to make society better. She funds schools, medical research, housing developments, and so much more, but at the end of the day it's about making people feel indebted to her.

As far as the Hidden City is concerned, it couldn't function without her, and that, not the title of leadership or obvious political power, is what really matters to her.

[thaorins-gate]

Ether - Lore

So, a while back I made this awesome piece to visualize the most common drug of my world, Ether. While I am still well in the process of building the Prime Nexus, and I swear I am getting a website made so that I can share all the lore I have of this world like I have my own personal wiki, I'm gonna give you guys a little taste of what I have cooking. Specifically the lore on Ether. Enjoy!

Manufacturing

The Manufacturing of Ether is done by the Rolni. The Rolni have manufactured this drug since before the Gamaian Empire. When it was discovered, the Rolni would put small doses into potions in order to subdue pain and make healing potions taste better. This practice is still done by harvesting Neuterium and grinding it to a fine powder. The powder can be consumed directly or converted into a pill. Pills are less volatile as they have stabilizing casing. Some claim that pills are less effective, as the casing diminishes the quality. Testing by the Rolni has confirmed that this is not true.

Effects

Low Doses

Ether is traditionally consumed in low doses (these are small pills or pinches of powder). At low doses, the user gains a mellow feeling of euphoria, as well as a burst of confidence and feelings of sexual prowess. Inhibitions are reduced, impairing judgement, and their anxiety is diminished. This makes them more subdued and more likely to make illogical decisions, making them more complicit. Users can be more easily agitated. The effects usually last for a few hours.

High Doses

Large doses of Ether result in vivid, prophetic visions. Religious leaders use Ether to receive "the word" of their God(s). These visions cannot be dictated or swayed by external factors; they are random jumbles of events with no way to predict when they may happen. High doses also subdue their users for an hour, rendering them unable to control their bodies. When they resurface, they experience at least two of the negative side effects (most often migraines and vomiting).

Negative Side Effects

Ether's ability to lull its users into being complicit has been used by many powerful leaders, such as the Gamaian Empire, The Prism Convocation, and even internal political leaders. While this keeps the peace, it often lulls people into submission, making them poor leaders who do not make effective judgements for the benefit of their people. It has kept many poor leaders in power.

Ether is also addictive, and withdrawal from it - even the day after it leaves the system - can negatively impact the user. It can cause memory loss, insomnia, diarrhea, vertigo, vomiting and migraines.

Legality & Cost

Due to the difficulty of Ether's creation, Ether is considered more valuable than currency. While currency trade still exists, a few grams of Ether is significantly more valuable. This has resulted in some contaminated Ether on the market (Ether cut with similar-looking substances - often other drugs - to create "more"). It is nearly impossible to check if Ether is contaminated beyond having a Rolni examine it, which makes trade in Ether more limited to upper-class citizens able to afford a Rolni's services. Not that this has stopped lower-class drug deals; they simply treat it with the same value as regular currency (unless it has a seal of Rolni authenticity).

As for cost, Ether can vary from seller to seller. Contaminated ether tends to be cheaper and more easily accessible by the public. Large quantities of ether tend to be more expensive, making them more accessible for the upper-class/wealthy. This is largely to do with their manufacturing, as Ether requires specific skills and training to safely create.

Overall, the sale of Ether is legal and somewhat unregulated.

Seal of Rolni Authenticity

This is a magical seal permanently fixed onto the Ether pouch. If the pouch's seal is broken, so is the magical seal, letting the buyer know that it is possibly contaminated. Seals can be forged, but this is a difficult task that requires a magic user intimately familiar with Rolni casting patterns.

Societal Outlook

Ether is a commonality in Omuin. It is normalized for the wealthy to use and seen as a status symbol by the general public. However, those who abuse it are viewed in a very negative light. They are commonly more impoverished, spending all their money on their Ether addiction, unable to live without their prophetic visions and the gentle repose that Ether brings to its users. They cannot view the world without it. This addiction is also very common in wealthy users, but it gets much less attention and is kept very quiet. As far as the general public knows, the wealthy and their world leaders are not addicted to the substance, and if used in moderation, it has no adverse effects (this is propaganda). The same goes for religious leaders; the public is told they use it sparingly to avoid adverse effects and dependency. Yet, they use it frequently.

Due to the negative light that Ether addicts are viewed in, there is little support for addicts. They live on the streets in most cities, with the exception being the Oxevia Empire, who have support systems in the form of group homes and clinics that aid in the withdrawal symptoms. No system is perfect, though, and they do implement other "treatment" methods the Sol'ver and Rolni have developed: assisted suicide when the patient is seen as "too far gone." Ether addictions are possible to recover from at every stage, even if worldviews do not reflect this.

Withdrawal & Recovery

Ether withdrawal is a painful process. The subject can experience nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, anxiety, insomnia, muscle cramps, hot and cold flashes, elevated blood pressure, and general aches and pains throughout their body. This typically lasts up to three weeks as the body adjusts to no longer having a constant input of Ether. Ether withdrawal can be more manageable in colder climates or inside antimagic fields, and is made worse near Neuterium stashes and areas of highly concentrated magic. Long term withdrawal symptoms may linger for months, such as loss of appetite, insomnia, impaired judgement, and hot and cold flashes.

The most common form of withdrawal treatment is isolating the patient on a comfortable bed with their limbs bound so they can't hurt themselves. Gags are sometimes used, especially if the patient has fangs, to prevent them from hurting themself. However, this is ill-advised as the patient can asphyxiate on their own vomit. Patients should never be left alone for longer than an hour. Antimagic fields can be placed around the patient to limit their exposure to the Cord (this helps reduce the reliance on magic, and prevents them from casting dangerous spells). Patients are fed according to their symptoms: vomiting patients get intravenous spells, and non-vomiting patients receive bland, calorie-heavy food. Patients inside an antimagic field take an additional few days to ease back into magical exposure.

Unintended Properties

Unbeknownst to those who manufacture or take Ether, Ether inflicts a hivemind onto its users. This hivemind is caused by Cord-mutated microbes that live solely in Neuterium, which the degrading Mother Tree AI mutated in an effort to repair itself that ultimately failed. Any creature that takes Ether is tied into this hivemind and depth of the connection depends on the dosage. Lower dosages allow users to connect to the subconscious hivemind that all Ether-users share, transferring feelings, knowledge and attitudes to each member. Higher dosages caused vivid hallucinogenic visions of experiences from Ether-users in the past and future due to time being cyclical. This hivemind effect can be easily manipulated by pre-existing hiveminds, which is what allowed the Gamaian Empire to control the continent of Omuin effectively - by tying them into their own hivemind.

[asrarblog]

Healthcare Landscape in Pakistan – Pharmaceuticals & Medical Devices – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #986

[summertimesadnessirl]

Yes. You can also demotivate hustlers to chase carrots if the carrots look like carrots but actually are not possible to get. Also, a lot of craftsmen are RIGHT, particularly at low levels of organizations with a lot of middle levels, about bad policies or procedures causing long term issues that are going to shoot you in the foot later, and the most demoralizing thing for them is a consistent pattern of watching those things destroy other things in real time and not get dealt with or changed.

Looking at the world from a manager's perspective, you can productively model the pool of workers as being divided into a few basic groups, which are defined and characterized by their driving motivations.

Insert all the usual disclaimers for this sort of thing - this is the roughest type of rough typology. I pulled these categories out of my raw intuition, and possibly a few more would crop up with some additional thought. In reality, the boundaries of these categories are incredibly fuzzy, and almost every individual is actually going to be motivated by a complicated mix of all the relevant motivations; we're talking REALLY SIMPLE HEURISTICS here. Etc.

There have been other well-known worker typologies that share a lot in common with my thoughts here; this is mostly not novel, it's mostly meant to refine a few ideas for particular purposes.

Hustlers are motivated by concrete personal advantage. Most commonly, and most straightforwardly, they want money - as much of it as they can get. They may also be interested in fame, idiosyncratic perks, etc. They do whatever they have to do in order to get what they want.

No surprise: you see huge preponderances of these guys in fields that provide outsize concrete rewards, e.g. finance, the upper echelons of management, etc. But not every natural-born Hustler is in a position to enter a glitzy high-paying field, and in fact you find Hustlers all throughout society and all throughout the economy, finding or making hustles wherever they go.

Having Hustlers working for you is mostly pretty great. They get shit done. They can be induced to work incredibly hard - probably harder than anyone else, under most circumstances - and they'll shank their own mothers if the price is right. If you need anything really important from them, anything at all, it's just a matter of bribing them enough.

...they will also, of course, cheerfully shank you if the price is right. Hustlers aren't the only wellsprings of institutional politics and infighting, but they're the most dangerous ones; they're always potential rivals to everyone around them. Also, you need to keep the tangible rewards flowing in a steady stream in order to get anything out of them, or else they'll put most of their effort into jumping ship (one way or another).

Craftsmen are motivated by the desire to do good work in their chosen fields, for its own sake and for the sake of their treasured self-image as people who do good work.

As you'd expect, for the most part, they're excellent workers and should be prized. But they're not perfect workers. Common weaknesses and downsides include:

They tend to have their own ideas about How Things Should Get Done; they're often resistant to externally-imposed product/service requirements or process changes (and bad at implementing those things) (no matter how important or well-conceived they are), and they're very resistant to "just get it out the door, right now done is better than good."

Being driven chiefly by internal motivation is great, but sometimes it's useful to be able to push things along with external motivators, and Craftsmen are pretty resistant to those. They don't like working more or harder than they're naturally inclined to work, they mostly sneer at carrots, and sticks make them sad and unproductive.

It's important to note that, while noteworthy skill within a field correlates with having a Craftsman temperament and motivation suite - for obvious reasons - those things are not identical at all. Plenty of Craftsmen are bad at their jobs, or just average, and plenty of the best workers are most motivated by things other than the Excellence of the Work Itself.

Fanatics are a relatively rare and specialized group, whom you find mostly within a few specific sorts of culturally-valorized fields. They're motivated by a desire to be part of something Important and Good in a Broader Sense: to Save the World, or some smaller-bore version of that.

They make amazing front-line soldiers, in the sorts of institutions that have "front-line soldiers." They work super hard, and you don't even need to bribe them, you just need to keep them hopped up on inspiration.

The big problem with them is that they're mostly motivated by a feeling - the feeling of Being Righteous - and it's not easy to control where they get that feeling, in any kind of precise way. They're just as resistant to external motivators as Craftsmen are, or even more so, but they're also not being guided by an ideal of effective quality. (No, not even if their chosen cause is theoretically all about an ideal of effective quality, hem hem.) They will happily waste vast amounts of time and money doing useless things, or even counterproductive things, so long as they're engaged in tasks that hit the right psychological buttons for them. There's also a constant risk that a Fanatic will decide that his employer is unrighteous, or that one of his coworkers is unrighteous, and start an internal conflict; the risk scales in a more-than-linear fashion with the number of Fanatics you keep around.

The biggest group, unsurprisingly, is the Normies. In most fields, it is much the biggest group. Normies are motivated by the desire to be members in good standing of their communities, to have positive relationships with the people around them, and to live up to basic norms and expectations.

Managerial skills, in the traditional sense, are incredibly important with Normies. If you want them to do good work for you - and you should want that, as a manager, you've almost certainly got a whole bunch of them - not only do you have to keep them pointed in the right direction, you have to make sure that they're supporting each other. With Hustlers, you just have to throw money at them (and avoid their power plays); with Craftsmen, you just have to let them do their thing, and occasionally badger them into giving you what you need; with Fanatics, you just have to be inspirational; but with Normies, you have to lead, and construct a productive community. You have to set reasonable, achievable norms and expectations that will get you what you need.

This wouldn't be complete if I didn't talk about the Defectors. The Defectors are motivated by not working. They don't want to be there, they resent having to do their jobs, and their primary goal is to shirk as much as possible. They will, by default, put much more effort into shirking than into their assigned tasks.

Obviously, managers don't want to have to deal with them, for good reason. But they're out there, in large numbers - not always in the places and fields where you'd expect to find them - and learning to manage them is sometimes more viable than trying to get rid of them. ("Moving Heaven and Earth to find them jobs that will change their attitude" is often a good plan, although of course it's not always possible and not always worth it.)

Crucially, Defectors are not Normies. If you start with the assumption that the average baseline worker is lazy and sour, you will make some incredibly stupid decisions. There are some fields where, for structural reasons, you can expect that a very large number of your workers will be Defectors; this is a huge and complicated challenge, well beyond the scope of this post, and good luck to you if you have to handle it, but it's not the default.

----------------------

Once you have those categories in your head, and can play with them, a number of obvious-seeming ideas present themselves. Just a couple, for now:

Most high-level executives are Hustlers, or have strong Hustler tendencies, for obvious reasons. Most of the people around them are Hustlers, or have strong Hustler tendencies. This means that they tend to overweight the Hustler outlook, by a lot, when they try to model what their workers are like. More specifically, I'd wager that a lot of them intuitively divide the world into "good workers" ( = Hustlers) and "bad workers" ( = Defectors). This will lead to a heavy overreliance on tangible rewards, a systematic shortchanging of community-building, etc. Which is in fact just what we see.

In particular - crucially - Hustlers and Defectors are the only worker types who ever become more productive under heavy stress. Hustlers actually benefit from it, because it raises the stakes of the game that they're already playing. (If you succeed, you'll be king of the world! If you fail, you'll be shark food! Go go go!) Defectors suffer terribly from stress, of course, but they can sometimes be spooked into doing their jobs as opposed to doing nothing, and sometimes that's the best/easiest way to get something out of them. But stress is terrible for everyone else. Craftsmen lose their focus. Fanatics lose their hope. It's worst of all for Normies, because they take all their cues from the vibes around them; they're productive when they learn to associate work with comfort and happiness, and when you fill their working world with frantic desperation, you just put them in a permanent cringe state.

stop trying to pit your Normies against each other in competitions for status and rewards dear God what are you stupid

To some extent, you can control your institution by controlling what types of workers you have. But only to some extent. There are only so many Hustlers and Craftsmen to go around, and if you want them, you will have to (a) be able to identify them reliably on little information [HINT: you are probably very bad at this], and (b) provide them with what they want [tangible rewards / comfortable security and interesting work]. "We are going to employ only the good special people" is feasible if you're an outfit of four workers; at a dozen, it's already become a stretch; at a few hundred, uh, pfffffffft. If you want to operate at scale, you need to be able to make Normies do good work, there is no substitute for it.

[biodiversityday]

Biodiversity's contribution to good heath and well being

Biodiversity is not just a matter of beauty or money, but also of health for everybody.

[goodolddumbbanana]

Typical Moon's models: Main Character energy and Self destructive tendency.

if I have any coin for anytime a Moon model experiences a s+icide idea, neither intentionally or not, It's weird but I will have like five coins. (Moon sarcafire himself for KC, KC takes an L when confronted by BM, BM actively tries to die by fighting Puppet and Monty, Nexus actively drugged himself with negative start power, Lunar wants to jump off the pool to water his head and in different timeline, fuse with Moon.)

Typical Sun's Models: Ultimate Cockroach. Keep saying I'm fine even though everything around him falls apart.

Sun is still goofy sassy shit even when all the shit hits the fan, Eclipse still kicking and screaming, Dark Sun sees death and be like, meh, bet.

They are truly brothers.

[voidmin]

god forbid women do anything nowadays 😔😔😔/j

GENUINE QUESTION: DANCE RUSH POMNI EATS EDIBLES??? IS THIS REAL?!😭😭😭😭😭

Why can't she be just a lil whimsy?

[megamuscle885-blog]

Skitter Flow

We're so s-small in the end man.

She wanted pussy but I gave her trauma. Haha.

Opp was talkin crazy. Shot him in both timelines.

We're out here smokin the shit that'll send you to the birdcage.

I have no loyalty for anyone. Never did, never will.

My money longer than Pale. My money longer than a Grey Boy loop.

Popped a xanny and wiped out every op within the state.

Fed him spiders. Made his ass a statistical outlier.

The worms are back.

I'm on twelve vicodins smokin that shardspace bisexual warrior monk cultivated sidepiece myrrdin deluxe cauldron reserve hashish. Shit will send you into a trigger vision, it'll have you witness Crystal God Whales.

Shorty told me no tongue so I made her gag on it.

The opps cut up shorty's face so I took two thirds of his gang in the divorce. Sent his ass into a two year coma. Froze him solid in a whole other dimension. Turned that motherfucker into a footnote at his own execution.

I don't give a fuck if I go blind, I don't need to see the price tag anyway. [The Undersiders laughing in the background. Scapegoat expresses his disbelief.]

I'm wearin that darwin bark spider gucci. Haters in shambles, dressed in their mom's pantyhose. Everyone can see your gross dick son. Should get that checked out.

I love drugs. I love drugs.

This miasma got me making out with them butch puppygirls. Changed the trajectory of her life.

The bugs are back. [Long pause followed by howling laughter from the Undersiders.]

This fight was over the moment I stepped into the room, cunt.

These cops are interrogatin me about this S-Class gamer girl as if I hadn't left their new boss buried under a freshly poured concrete foundation not two hundred feet away.

I'm out here huffin those bakuda bomb brain blasters. Shit will give you a concussion. I'm numb to all forms of pain.

Ventilated that three year old nazi with the gold plated glock to spare her ass the torment nexus.

This zaza will turn your skin translucent and make your skeleton visible. This zaza will turn you into a teenage mutant ninja salamander with LSD spit. This zaza will turn you into solid carbide titanium.

I only handed back the free world cuz I was bored.

I'm eatin that premium challenger pussy juice marinated Fugly Burger meal. The Endbringers are all I think about.

All I need is a pack of newports and the touch of a woman, and I'll fight God.

AAAAH! The worms!

You keep talkin mad shit for someone who still has eyeballs. I don't fuck with warning shots, jit.

There are bugs under your skin.

I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!

Made her choke on it so hard they had to weekend at bernie's her ass.

Surrounded by pussy but I chose war. These lesbians screamin their hearts out. I'm sorry babe.

Fuck it, cut ties.

They forgot I'm her.

This shit's so small in the end man.

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

Tsams canon stop calling Nexus straight up "Insane" "crazy" or a "Lunatic" every time he's mentioned challenge.

Look, I'm not blind to his issues. He's threatened children (robotic) and called his sister collateral.

But for characters to repeatedly say "he was always insane." Even from characters who don't know him that well, or probably only interacted with him once or twice like Gemini.... I don't know.

It's like everyone is buying Nexus's hype. As if he's not deliberately pushing others away. As if he didn't miss Solar so much he lobotomized himself over it and fell into a drug dark star power addiction because of it.

As if Nexus didn't want to "show Solar the new me" as if he was hoping that Solar would accept him and come with him even if he was off his rocker.

I can't look at the entire past year of N!Moon's life and say that "oh yeah, New Moon was always toxic"

He wasn't. And I can guarantee N!Moon having a villian arc wasn't something planned from the start with them.

Enjoy the entire Year of Nexus/N!Moon being alive and a good brother.

I see someone who cared so much and had to pretend to be something he wasn't and cracked under the pressure. Nexus even says if he has no one to care about he has no one to lose. He cared and lost so much and he just didn't want to care or be told what to do anymore he broke.

Something bad will happen to Nexus. And I feel it will end like every addiction story ends.