#is mind fuck a tag

[paingoes]

Destroyer - In Shadows

(Masterlist)

another pretty short section, had to do a little check-in on delta

(Content: dissociation, conditioning, guilt, past trauma, implied child abuse, nightmares)

================

Delta struggled to remember a time he had felt worse in all his life. He was sure there were times. In his early, early childhood, when he was first broken in. He barely remembered those days anymore. It was too painful to think about when he didn’t have to. But the memories did come to surface, sometimes. He had internalized an alien way of being and had been made to hold it permanently if he wanted to live. He must have been more pliable then. The act took on a life of its own and whatever might’ve been there otherwise would never — could never — be known. It was a soft wrongness. He did not remember it well, but he imagined it must’ve felt very similar to the way he did right now.

He sat folded up in his room, clutching his head, struggling to breathe. He was drawing, which he never did. He drew out the forms he had seen in his dreams. Some of them were of real memories, but just as many were images sliced together from a life at war. He drew them over and over again, then tore them up so that there could be no evidence of his distress. He wanted to scream. He wanted to be good. These two impulses chafed at each other in his mind. He tilted his head forward and blood poured out of his nose. 

His body kept producing these reactions against his will. He kept getting sick. He choked down his own symptoms in front of the others, not wishing to be sent to the doctor’s unwillingly. He didn’t want to take pills. The shivers, though, they wouldn’t go away. No matter how much he tried to calm himself, he kept flinching abruptly. Each shadow seemed deadly and alive and inert.

He hated it here. He could admit it to himself now, but it didn’t lead him anywhere. He hated everything on the ship and everything outside of it. He hated the Empire, selfishly. He hated what his life had become, the way it never could have turned out any other way, the thousand ways it could all come to an end. He didn’t hate Paris, exactly. Though that would be easier. When he thought about the prince, his chest just got hollow and achy. Loyalty felt like an open wound.

Delta wished he couldn’t feel anything. That was the idea. That was always the act. But when Simon — or god forbid Paris — started to talk to him like he was a person, how was he supposed to keep it up? How could they speak to him like that and still-

Maybe he did hate them after all. He wished he couldn’t feel gratitude. He could’ve drowned in it. 

“I’m sorry,” Delta said, so many times that it lost its meaning.

“Will you knock it the fuck off already?!” Paris yelled. Because it had become self-indulgent, really. He didn’t know why he was apologizing. He just wanted to make things right; that’s all it stood for. But it was hopeless. It was all fucked. Delta was so, so confused.

He kept going back to the forums. His hands shook when he opened the laptop, but this time it wasn’t fear. It was guilt. Paris had spared him once already. Delta had begged his forgiveness. He had sworn not to do it again. Still, late at night, almost every night, he got back online. He was a lurker; it was a natural progression of what he’d been all his life. 

Delta had never been outside of the Empire’s walls. It was vast, yes, but it was not everything. The internet was an artifact left mostly untouched by its dominion. Delta studied it with a kind of numb curiosity. People spoke so differently there, so casually. A lot of them were just as cruel and as angry as Empire’s players, but then a lot of them weren’t. Again, he felt a strange ache. The world felt so far away from him.

That night, he got the strongest urge to remove his collar. He couldn’t, of course. That would defeat the point of having it. But he still felt with certainty this was the thing that would fix him. If he could just see without senses, feel the pulse of all the energy around him, let the light out…he was sure it would help. It always did a hard reset on his mental state and he needed badly to stop feeling the way he did right then, to let some new and overwhelming force come to replace it. His wish went unfulfilled. Instead, he just went to sleep, sinking back into the unconscious world. The shadows rose up to meet him.

[word-count-bullet-count]

I've been seeing a lot of knight posts recently. pretty great

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[hoshizoralone]

reflection

[gunstellations]

rival battle ⚔️

[isjasz]

[Day 365 | Ref to Day 1]

And that's a wrap 🪻🥀

===

fhksjdkwjw ITS OVER. ITS OVERRRRR I MADE ITTTTT

Screaming and losing it. It only started to feel real as I'm posting this rn HRKSJAKSJLELH. A year... 365 pieces (probably a bit less bc I did post wips?) of desert duo... I would make a collage maybe but its prob a lot of work HJASKDHAHEHW

🫵 @vesperionnox @cherrysherin without u guys I wouldn't have been here <3 This challenge kinda became its own thing at some point, but I didn't forget where I started :D

💥💥💥 AAA I hope you guys enjoyed this challenge as much as I did!! but also WOOOOOOOOOOOOO FREEDOM. I WILL DEF STILL BE DRAWING DESERTDUO THO LOL BUT LETS FREAKING GO ONE YEARRRR

[trickstersaint]

i want to introduce you all to a project that is very close to my heart... or lack of one. anyway. for anyone who has ever wanted to play a poem. i'd like you to meet aromanticism

(link opens itch.io - she'll run on html in your browser! please be nice to her!)

[chiangyorange]

happy new year!!!! heres a batch of memes i drew last night while watching knives out on call with my friends and getting increasingly more and more wine drunk <3

edit: NO ONE TOLD ME THAT I FORGOT TO DRAW FOURS FUCKING EARS IN THE SECOND FILE OH MY GODDDDDDD ITS FIXED NOW ITS FIXED

[graye]

Rumors say this is what tipped Anakin to the Dark side.

[midoristeashop]

(Late) httyd anniversary screencap study pt. 2 <3 + process video! (I never show mine cuz they’re full of chem equations and jumpscares but this one is ok <3)

Also random toof

I’ll ever stop thinking about them ok BYEE

[yanderespamton78]

Edit since a lot of people seem confused - your "real" name is the name that you want to be referred to in real life. It doesn't have to be your legal name. So if you're trans and you have a different name to whats on your birth certificate, even if not many people call you by the name, it still counts as your real name.

Edit 2 : Holy shit guys please stop reblogging this post my poor inbox im getting like 20 notifs an hour asjfhkajshdkh /lh /srs

[chaos-in-one]

Friendly (or unfriendly if you're against this) reminder that this blog is supportive of ALL disorders. This blog does not think ANY disorder inherently makes someone a bad person, and is against any disorder being demonized. This blog wholeheartedly believes that a bad person having a disorder, yes, even if things that are also symptoms of their disorder are part of what caused harm, does not make the disorder a "bad" or "evil" disorder or excuse ableism and demonization directed towards the disorder.

Yes this includes personality disorders

Including npd and aspd

Yes this includes all psychotic disorders & disorders that cause psychotic symptoms

Yes this includes paraphilic disorders. All of them.

Yes this includes disorders that cause, or are even characterized by, attention seeking

Yes this includes disorders that directly have lying as a common symptom

Yes this includes dissociative disorders

Yes this includes any disorder with "gross" symptoms

Yes this includes physical disorders too

Yes this includes disorders that can cause loss of control of any kind- control of speech, control of body movement, etc.

Yes tis includes disorders that make someone "look scary"

This goes for literally any fucking disorder. There are not exceptions.

[ripplefields]

miserable fucking creature

[consultingfujoshi]

outie irving incessantly painting the testing floor hallway. innie irving incessantly drawing burt in his notebook. we know the images of the painting bled through, even in the most incomprehensible and abstract ways. now I wonder if the images of burt will bleed through the other way.

[lucabyte]

i feel like people are sleeping on the occam's razor situation of how buckwild it is to outright accuse a guy of being a clone of your friend even if you DO have a lot of circumstantial evidence. there's other options is what im saying. they could just be like. a guy. that's a sensible deduction. you should explore that deduction. ignore my shirt that reads I <3 RED HERRINGS.

i still think odile has the correct theory on lock but she's smart enough to know it needs like... a real smoking gun to be able to bring it up without sounding insane.

anyway. (mirabelle voice) i know its rude to speculate but has anyone else noticed the grieving? they seem to be grieving. does anyone have any thoughts on the grieving? i have some thoughts on the grieving.

[unnamed-atlas]

I would ask why he said this but honest to God I stopped asking why schlatt says anything several years ago