#I am exceptionally good therefore at assuming there is anger or about to be at literally any given time

[stardustedknuckles]

Me: Maybe I’m not actually autistic and I’m making it up.

Also me, around 25: WAIT when people say someone’s eyes narrow they actually mean the skin AROUND their eyes holy shit -

[rogue-assassinspy]

Chapter 24: Remembering Cedric Diggory

The sky outside was dark, echoing the somber blanket that surrounded the school today. Holding hands with George we enter the Great Hall slowly making our way down the center aisle to find a seat. The tables have all been removed and the benches now face the front where Dumbledore sits in his chair, the podium before him. Flags hang from the ceiling, dark green with a large "H" in the center and small stars placed around it. Students and Professors from the three schools have mostly filled the Great Hall. We spot an opening beside of Ginny and make our way over to her. Draco watches us as we walk past and I feel the panic, anger, and sadness run through me all over again. I keep my gaze forward trying to resist the urge to look back at him. I know if I do I won't make it through this memorial. We take our seats just as Dumbledore begins to speak.

"Today, we acknowledge a really terrible loss." He stands from he seat and moves forward. "Cedric Diggory, as you all know was exceptionally hard-working, infinitely fair-minded, and most importantly a fierce, fierce friend." George never lets go of my hand and I am so thankful for that. I feel a tear fall down my cheek. "Now, I think, therefore, you have the right to know exactly how he died." My heart beats faster in my chest anticipating what I already know he is going to say. "You see Cedric Diggory was murdered by Lord Voldemort!" My eyes sting as the tear fall faster down my face. I feel George give my hand a small squeeze and he kisses me gently on the crown of my head. "The Ministry of Magic does not wish me to tell you this. But not to do so, I think, would be an insult to his memory." I can hear the sniffles and hushed weeping all around me. "Now, the pain we feel at this dreadful loss reminds me and reminds us that while we may come from different places and speak in different tongues our hearts beat as one. In light of recent events the bonds of friendship we've made this year will be more important than ever." I can't control myself any longer and look over to where Draco is sitting across the aisle. He keeps his eyes focused on the ground and twiddles his fingers lost in thought and looking almost sad. Draco looks up and over directly to where I'm sitting catching me watching him. My heart stops beating for a moment as the night before flashes through my mind and I turn my view back to the front. "Remember that, and Cedric Diggory will not have died in vain. You remember that and we'll celebrate a boy who was kind and honest and brave and true, right to the very end." Dumbledore finishes and releases us to go back to our dorms.

"How about some fresh air, love?" George leans down and whispers to me. "Yeah, that sounds good." I say and hold his hand as he leads me out of the Great Hall. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them trying to push the last tears out so I can try to stop myself from crying any longer. As we exit through the doors with a crowd of students I suddenly feel someone grab my free hand. I look down and feel a piece of folded paper. The hand is gone. I lift my head up to see Draco moving past looking at me from over his shoulder before he is lost in the crowd. I close my hand around the paper with a shaky breath and slide it into my pocket. George leads me to the courtyard and sits us down at the base of the tree where we had our first date. I lean back and rest my head against the hard wood of the large tree letting out a heavy breath. George mocks my motions and leans back as well. We stare off into the distance. "Are you alright, Althena?" I laugh a little, "no, not at all. You?" I ask turning my head to look at him. He chuckles as well, "Oh yeah, fantastic actually. Thank you for asking." He says sarcastically as he looks back to me and winks. I turn back to the empty courtyard in front of us, "Do you ever speak in anything other than sarcasm?" I smile. I see his cheeks rise out of the corner of my eye, "Nah, other than English I'm only fluent in sarcasm. Have to use what I know." This gets me to laugh again and I lean my head on his shoulder. We sit in silence and let the time pass by. Classes have officially ended and all of our finals are done. We will all leave Hogwarts for the summer in just a couple of days. "What do you say, love? Ready to head back to the dorm?" George says as he stands extending his hand to help me up. "Yeah, I need to start packing anyways." We take our time walking back to the Gryffindor tower. There are only a few people in the halls and we pass by multiple people quietly crying to themselves. Either friends of Cedric or students devastated at the news of Voldemort's return. Once we reach the common room George and I say our goodbyes and make our way up to our rooms. Hermione and Ginny were no where to be seen. I can only assume they are with Harry and Ron. I move over to my dresser and pull out my grey sweatpants and a black t-shirt to change into. As I remove my robes I hear the piece of paper rustle inside of my pocket. I pull it out, a small torn piece of paper that has been folded in half. As I open the note I only see three words, my room tonight. I crumble up the paper and toss it to the side. If there is one thing I can agree with Draco it's that he's right, I can't run from everything. So I guess I'll challenge it head on, like a Gryffindor. I change my clothes and lay down in my bed staring up at the canopy, running through all the scenarios of what could possibly happen if I do, or don't, go to Draco's room tonight.

 Chapter 25            Master list

[hufflly-puffs]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Chapter 19: Elf Tails

“Hermione gave an almost inaudible sniff. She had been exceptionally quiet all day. Having hurtled, white-faced, up to Harry outside the hospital wing and demanded to know what had happened, she had taken almost no part in Harry and Ginny’s obsessive discussion about how Ron had been poisoned, but merely stood beside them, clench-jawed and frightened-looking, until at last they had been allowed in to see him.” – It is hard that it took Ron almost dying for him and Hermione to make up and speak again and rekindle their friendship. Not to be melodramatic on main but whenever you fight with someone, whenever you feel like you can longer talk with each other, the reasons for it are usually not worth the fight. Don’t get to the point where you regret you never made up with someone. And I think this is what Hermione has been thinking about all day: how she almost lost Ron without the chance to make up, with all the anger and hurt feelings between them, and how trivial the reason for them fighting seems now. Something to consider before you throw away a friendship.

“‘Who’d want to kill Slughorn?’ ‘Dumbledore reckons Voldemort wanted Slughorn on his side,’ said Harry. ‘Slughorn was in hiding for a year before he came to Hogwarts. And …’ he thought of the memory Dumbledore had not yet been able to extract from Slughorn, ‘and maybe Voldemort wants him out of the way, maybe he thinks he could be valuable to Dumbledore.’” – I think this is the real reason Voldemort is after Slughorn – right now he is the only one who knows about the secret of his immortality and therefore how he could become mortal again.

“‘But you said Slughorn had been planning to give that bottle to Dumbledore for Christmas,’ Ginny reminded him. ‘So the poisoner could just as easily have been after Dumbledore.’ ‘Then the poisoner didn’t know Slughorn very well,’ said Hermione, speaking for the first time in hours and sounding as though she had a bad head-cold. ‘Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he’d keep something that tasty for himself.’” – It is the same pattern as with the Cursed necklace – there was a big chance the necklace would never make it into the castle, just as there was a big chance the poisoned mead would never make it to Dumbledore given Slughorn’s nature. Both times Dumbledore was the actual target, both times the execution was sloppy and careless.  And this is something Dumbledore points out later in his final conversation with Draco, that perhaps Draco never wanted to succeed, that he might have even hoped Dumbledore would put a stop to it.

“‘Well, for one thing, they both ought to have been fatal and weren’t, although that was pure luck. And for another, neither the poison nor the necklace seems to have reached the person who was supposed to be killed. Of course,’ she added broodingly, ‘that makes the person behind this even more dangerous in a way, because they don’t seem to care how many people they finish off before they actually reach their victim.’” – If we do believe Dumbledore that Draco secretly wanted his plans to fail, I don’t think it was his intention to hurt others in the process, or even kill them. If Katie hadn’t touched the necklace then surely Filch’s Secrecy Sensors would have detected the necklace. And he might have assumed that either Slughorn or Dumbledore would have tested the mead of poison before drinking it. Draco is, as Dumbledore tells him, not a killer.

“‘I mean, it’s always bin a bit of a risk sendin’ a kid ter Hogwarts, hasn’ it? Yer expect accidents, don’ yeh, with hundreds of under-age wizards all locked up tergether, but attempted murder, tha’s diff ’rent.” – Is there a compulsory education in the Wizarding World or is it up to the parents to decide whether they send their kids to school or teach them at home? Hagrid’s wording makes it sound like home-schooling is an option, because surely not just Hogwarts but every Wizarding school is a bit risky for the same reasons (though clearly the weirdest stuff always happens at Hogwarts).

Also by now it is an established plot device that whenever Harry needs to know something he isn’t supposed to know to just let Hagrid accidently tell him.

“‘I’m a ruddy teacher, aren’ I, yeh sneakin’ Squib!’ said Hagrid, firing up at once.” – Using the word ‘Squib’ as an insult is not very cool, Hagrid.

“‘I’ve been waiting for you to come back,’ said McLaggen, disregarding Harry’s drawn wand. ‘Must’ve fallen asleep. Look, I saw them taking Weasley up to the hospital wing earlier. Didn’t look like he’ll be fit for next week’s match.’” – Leave it to McLaggen to use the first chance he gets to get a place in the Quidditch team. I mean Ron, Harry’s best friend, has been in the hospital wing for hours, clearly Harry has other concerns, but all McLaggen cares about is Quidditch and his chance to play. Jerk.

“Harry, however, had never been less interested in Quidditch; he was rapidly becoming obsessed with Draco Malfoy.” – A sentence straight out of a fan fiction, I am sure.

“‘Yeah, I’m really going to tell you, because it’s your business, Potter,’ sneered Malfoy. ‘You’d better hurry up, they’ll be waiting for the Chosen Captain – the Boy Who Scored – whatever they call you these days.’” – The Boy Who Scored. THE BOY WHO SCORED. I mean it does sound like the porn version of Harry Potter, just so you know it.

“Then Cadwallader scored again, making things level, but Luna did not seem to have noticed; she appeared singularly uninterested in such mundane things as the score, and kept attempting to draw the crowd’s attention to such things as interestingly shaped clouds and the possibility that Zacharias Smith, who had so far failed to maintain possession of the Quaffle for longer than a minute, was suffering from something called ‘Loser’s Lurgy’.” – As much as I am not interested in Quidditch I would love to hear Luna comment matches.

“‘Ginny came in to visit while you were unconscious,’ he said, after a long pause, and Harry’s imagination zoomed into overdrive, rapidly constructing a scene in which Ginny, weeping over his lifeless form, confessed her feelings of deep attraction to him while Ron gave them his blessing …” – Confirmed: Harry James Potter secretly reads romance novels.

“‘Dobby is a free house-elf and he can obey anyone he likes and Dobby will do whatever Harry Potter wants him to do!’ said Dobby, tears now streaming down his shrivelled little face on to his jumper.” – I had wondered about this last book. After Dobby had warned the DA about Umbridge Harry had forbidden him to hurt himself and Dobby had accepted that order. Now we know why. Dobby is free to choose his master (Dumbledore) and apparently he can obey more than one person, based on who he likes and respects.

[rogueassassinspy]

Chapter 24: Remembering Cedric Diggory

The sky outside was dark, echoing the somber blanket that surrounded the school today. Holding hands with George we enter the Great Hall slowly making our way down the center aisle to find a seat. The tables have all been removed and the benches now face the front where Dumbledore sits in his chair, the podium before him. Flags hang from the ceiling, dark green with a large "H" in the center and small stars placed around it. Students and Professors from the three schools have mostly filled the Great Hall. We spot an opening beside of Ginny and make our way over to her. Draco watches us as we walk past and I feel the panic, anger, and sadness run through me all over again. I keep my gaze forward trying to resist the urge to look back at him. I know if I do I won't make it through this memorial. We take our seats just as Dumbledore begins to speak.

"Today, we acknowledge a really terrible loss." He stands from he seat and moves forward. "Cedric Diggory, as you all know was exceptionally hard-working, infinitely fair-minded, and most importantly a fierce, fierce friend." George never lets go of my hand and I am so thankful for that. I feel a tear fall down my cheek. "Now, I think, therefore, you have the right to know exactly how he died." My heart beats faster in my chest anticipating what I already know he is going to say. "You see Cedric Diggory was murdered by Lord Voldemort!" My eyes sting as the tear fall faster down my face. I feel George give my hand a small squeeze and he kisses me gently on the crown of my head. "The Ministry of Magic does not wish me to tell you this. But not to do so, I think, would be an insult to his memory." I can hear the sniffles and hushed weeping all around me. "Now, the pain we feel at this dreadful loss reminds me and reminds us that while we may come from different places and speak in different tongues our hearts beat as one. In light of recent events the bonds of friendship we've made this year will be more important than ever." I can't control myself any longer and look over to where Draco is sitting across the aisle. He keeps his eyes focused on the ground and twiddles his fingers lost in thought and looking almost sad. Draco looks up and over directly to where I'm sitting catching me watching him. My heart stops beating for a moment as the night before flashes through my mind and I turn my view back to the front. "Remember that, and Cedric Diggory will not have died in vain. You remember that and we'll celebrate a boy who was kind and honest and brave and true, right to the very end." Dumbledore finishes and releases us to go back to our dorms.

"How about some fresh air, love?" George leans down and whispers to me. "Yeah, that sounds good." I say and hold his hand as he leads me out of the Great Hall. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them trying to push the last tears out so I can try to stop myself from crying any longer. As we exit through the doors with a crowd of students I suddenly feel someone grab my free hand. I look down and feel a piece of folded paper. The hand is gone. I lift my head up to see Draco moving past looking at me from over his shoulder before he is lost in the crowd. I close my hand around the paper with a shaky breath and slide it into my pocket. George leads me to the courtyard and sits us down at the base of the tree where we had our first date. I lean back and rest my head against the hard wood of the large tree letting out a heavy breath. George mocks my motions and leans back as well. We stare off into the distance. "Are you alright, Althena?" I laugh a little, "no, not at all. You?" I ask turning my head to look at him. He chuckles as well, "Oh yeah, fantastic actually. Thank you for asking." He says sarcastically as he looks back to me and winks. I turn back to the empty courtyard in front of us, "Do you ever speak in anything other than sarcasm?" I smile. I see his cheeks rise out of the corner of my eye, "Nah, other than English I'm only fluent in sarcasm. Have to use what I know." This gets me to laugh again and I lean my head on his shoulder. We sit in silence and let the time pass by. Classes have officially ended and all of our finals are done. We will all leave Hogwarts for the summer in just a couple of days. "What do you say, love? Ready to head back to the dorm?" George says as he stands extending his hand to help me up. "Yeah, I need to start packing anyways." We take our time walking back to the Gryffindor tower. There are only a few people in the halls and we pass by multiple people quietly crying to themselves. Either friends of Cedric or students devastated at the news of Voldemort's return. Once we reach the common room George and I say our goodbyes and make our way up to our rooms. Hermione and Ginny were no where to be seen. I can only assume they are with Harry and Ron. I move over to my dresser and pull out my grey sweatpants and a black t-shirt to change into. As I remove my robes I hear the piece of paper rustle inside of my pocket. I pull it out, a small torn piece of paper that has been folded in half. As I open the note I only see three words, my room tonight. I crumble up the paper and toss it to the side. If there is one thing I can agree with Draco it's that he's right, I can't run from everything. So I guess I'll challenge it head on, like a Gryffindor. I change my clothes and lay down in my bed staring up at the canopy, running through all the scenarios of what could possibly happen if I do, or don't, go to Draco's room tonight.

Chapter 25        Masterlist

[anti-onion-posts]

Onision and Narcissism

Prepare yourselves, this is long. 

At the end of this it seems as if I am being sympathetic towards Onision, in a way I am but he is still a garbage human being in my opinion. 

When it comes to Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) like every other psychological disorder there are certain criteria that need to be filled for an individual to be diagnosed. 

10-13% of the general population have some form of a personality disorder as suggested by a study done by Weissman (1993), these people can merge into the general population. Most have more than two personalities disorders. There are three clusters when it comes to PD's, Cluster A - odd and eccentric, B - attention seeking and selfish and C - anxious and fearful. Narcissistic personality disorder falls under cluster B - attention seeking and selfish.

Traits of NPD:

·         Has a grandiose sense of self-importance.

·         Preoccupied with fantasies; success, beauty, power or love

·         Believes that they are unique and can only be understood or/and associate with others that have a high status.

·         Needs to feel excessive admiration; they will fish for compliments and will be highly susceptible to forms of flattery.

·         Feels entitlement.

·         Interpersonally exploitative; they will use others to achieve their goals.

·         Lacks empathy; they are either unwilling or unable to recognize or identify with others feelings.

·         Envious of others or believe that other people are envious of them.

·         Arrogant and shows rude and abusive behaviours and/or attitudes.  

 Now, I touched upon something on one of my firsts posts which is something I’d like to go in more detail about.

Onision is what I like to call an insecure narcissist.

Recently there has been some advances in clinical and empirical studies for NPD which recognized that narcissism can be co-occurring with vulnerability; inferiority, insecurity, etc.

(Note: Personally, I believe that an insecure narcissist can be/is more dangerous than an individual with NPD. Unfortunately, it is hard to back up this claim as research in this area is hard to come by.)

Let’s have a look at some of these traits and how easily it is to tie them to Onision.

Criticism

When it comes to criticism or anything that is remotely assumed to be an interpreted as negative whenever that be evaluating personality, performance and behaviour. Individuals with NPD will be highly reactive to it.

Even if it is constructive criticism.

Why?

From this they will be forced to come to terms with admitting some form of vulnerability and in return they will act defensively. Whenever that be through attempting to falsify evidence, lying, attempting to change the subject or respond to it in a way that they have been asked something that is not relating to the subject.

The ability to accept criticism comes from how secure we feel as a person as well as our resilience.

‘’But aren’t narcissistic secure? They have huge egos.’’

That would be correct, yes, however their ego maybe oversized and/or artificially inflated this can’t be viewed as being either secure or resilient. It can be very easily punctured so when they are criticised they show themselves to be poorly incapable of holding any emotional poise and receptivity.

(Receptivity: able or quick to receive knowledge, ideas.)

However, despite not being able to accept criticism they will demonstrate an abnormally developed capacity to criticize others. There are two common terms that are using in psychoanalytical literature and these are; narcissistic injury and narcissistic rage.

Injury:

Results from childhood; deficient parents not being able to nurture them. They don’t feel parents love which is prerequisite when it comes to self-love. Meaning that a parent’s love is needed to build a basic understanding of what ‘love’ is.

Therefore, they need to contently prove themselves by claiming superiority over others by doing this it can condition them to feel as if they are ‘good enough’ to be loved. In return this simply in time alienate them.

(Just as a note, not all children will react in this way not every child with bad parents will grow to become narcissists.)

This is also the same when it comes to rejection and we all know that Onision doesn’t handle rejection well. An example of this would be when Shane Dawson refused to collab with him it’s was insulting to him, and he took it extremely personally. ''How dare this person not want to work with me'' easily translates into, ''How dare this person reject me?''

Watch his video he made on his patrons leaving after his comments on the Manchester bombings, them taking away their pledge to him = them rejecting him.

Rage:

Due to being incredibly sensitive to criticism as this can bring feelings of anxiety, so to safeguard themselves they will react with defiance or with verbal violence. This is narcissistic rage.

They go to great lengths to invalidate the person criticising them; to achieve such dismissal of the individual criticising them, they'll do everything possible to negate their viewpoint. And this can include much more than blaming or challenging them.

‘’You did this wrong.’’

‘’Show me, show me the evidence of what I did wrong. Oh, you don’t have evidence on you? Well you are the one who is wrong, not me.’’

Narcissists are prone to these rages and will sacrifice others for personal gain - His multiple videos on Billie which ultimately lead to her public humiliation, so he could have something to talk about in his YouTube videos. He sacrificed her confidential information, so he could get monetary gain.

Check out his video when it came to him reading his book reviews he couldn't handle the negative criticisms that was left. He will deflect, and he will divert until he can escape that feeling, that notion that everyone gets when they are rejected. This leads to the second stage of his psychosis; The superiority complex, which is an extreme defence mechanism to remove himself of all criticism and responsibility while pinning it on others.

It's the ''It's not my fault, they're stupid because they don't understand, no it's not me, right?''

When their position has been exposed as false they will become evasive and articulate lies or half-truths and will flat out contradict themselves (sound like someone we know?) this can be to such a degree that it can leave the people watching this happen sit back in disbelief.

A big cause for the feelings of anger and rage in a moment is that they will externalise the more painful anxiety or shame related emotions. They will feel these types of emotions, or remembering a time in the past where they have been humiliated and transfer these unwanted feelings to another.

‘’I’m not stupid, you are!’’

‘’You can’t say I have NPD, are you a doctor? No? Exactly, stupid.’’

If the individual that the rage is aimed at has no idea why the outburst took place a sudden explosion of this rage will more than likely leave them feeling confused and maybe even frightened to express their opinion again.

Low self-esteem

Being constantly driven to prove themselves to both the people around them and them, this leads to a low self-esteem. This is the self-doubting and recessive part of them and they try hard to make sure that it is well hidden from sight. Once again this is coming with the feeling of fear of inferiority.

They will use many defence mechanisms to hide this:

·         Posturing exceptionally high self-esteem.

·         Fishing for compliments.

·         Bragging about their (exaggerated) achievements.

The ‘misunderstood special person’ which include notions such as:

·         ‘’I’m special.’’

·         ‘’I’m one of a kind.’’

·         ‘’I’m ahead of my time.’’

·         ‘’I’m so unique no one understands me.’’

·         ‘’I’m so much smarter than everyone else.’’

These are coupled with the common traits of NPD and construct a superficial belief that they are exceptional and for insecure narcissists it creates a reassuring role a second skin that they can live in which hides their true self.

Self-righteous and defensive

Needing to protect an overblown but incredibly fragile ego their defense system can be very easy to set off. When they are challenged the survival depends on being right or justified instead of just admitting that they are wrong or apologising.

‘’Onision has apologised before!’’

Yes, yes, yes but look at the circumstances of the apology everything that Onision does is a strategic move even when it comes to apologising.

He will say something bad.

People will be outraged.

He defends what he said.

Loses subscribers/patrons = losing money.

Onision: ‘’Hey guys, I’m sorry for what I said.’’

He apologises when he needs to do damage control because he has been pushed to do so, not because he wants to genuinely apologise for what he said. This pulls back his fans into defending him again.

‘’Does anyone remember what he said about (X)?’’

‘’Yeah, but he apologised!’’

I will admit and say that this is a very smart strategy and it clearly works it’s just a shame that his fans don’t see this move; they don’t see that he uses them as his first line of defence when it comes to protecting himself from criticism.

Furthermore, individuals with NPD have a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude they are stubborn, completive and insistence that their point of view is correct coupled with their feeling of being self-righteous.

This is to hide their underlying doubts about not being good enough and the more self-righteous (mostly exaggerate and puffed up by themselves) they are the more they will feel endangered by a conflicting opinion.

Projecting

To hide that they are insecure they will redirect any unfavorable traits that they have to someone else. As they cannot deal with being imperfect as their emotional capability is underdeveloped.

Hint: Social repose.

Poor boundaries

They view people as objects that exist primarily to serve their own needs – putting their own needs in front of others as well, even their own children – this is known in literature as ‘narcissistic supplies’ since others are regarded to cater to their personal desires.

Their boundaries are unevenly developed and will prompt them to dominate in conversations where it is inappropriate and share intimate details about their life. Such as over sharing their private life and disclosing information that others wouldn’t; as what they are sharing would be humiliating.

Yet with insensitivity to how others will react to their words, they’re highly likely to blurt out things or even boast about them; even if it will be views as tasteless and/or offensive. To add on to this, they will often ask other questions that are far to person or intimate. Such situations can be particularly difficult for the other person if the narcissist is in a position of authority over them so that not responding could, practically, put them in some jeopardy.

Someone with NPD will share with pride how they have chewed someone out and expect the people around them to be impressed by what they have done.

Relationships

Narcissists have issues (or they are in able) when it comes to connecting with people; they will instead focus on something else whenever that be:

·         Work

·         Social networking

·         Books

·         Games

·         Fantasies

During relationships though they will ‘set things up’ this is common in intimate relationships and if they are married they can be incredible hard on their spouse. They need to see themselves as perfect so when their spouse makes a mistake in that moment they will attempt to remove themselves from their partners and can be extremely unkind even brutal when they react to them.  

Conclusion

When an individual with NPD has these defences, they will not grow as a human being and will not take responsibility for their lives. They are bound in a stagnate two-dimensional world where they only see black and white; grey areas do not exist.

They remain empty emotionally and lack the strength that would let them be genuinely vulnerable to others. There is a consent need to fill what they never had as a child, the relationships that they have when older show a strong level of detachment.

They are not free to change so Onision is a lost cause trying to change the way he thinks will never work. He is unable to change as he doesn’t want to be wrong, he can’t stand to be wrong. He is a text book case of a multiple of the cluster B personality disorders; displaying characteristics of Histrionic, Narcissistic and Borderline personality disorder.

He has a strong desire for attention and the continuous change in his persona - therefore he can't keep to an opinion and is often seen as a hypocrite - and his strong reactions to rejection is what leads him to a vicious cycle that deteriorate him as a person. I personally believe that he is afflicted with a mental disconnection, he is not aware of his illness and can't be made aware of it by normal means. He is emotionally dangerous to anyone that interacts with him. It is because of this mental disconnection is why when people mention that has some form of a mental disorder he defensively denies the claim. He is in this consent cycle and will never be a complete person.  

Narcissists are victims but at the same time they are the perpetrator too.

Narcissists are made not born.

[centaurrential]

The first.

The nice thing about blogging is that one doesn’t need to follow a strict academic essay structure: the issues and concepts I want to write about are always architectures built upon some underlying causal, foundational plot. It would be nice if we could hyperlink the written representations of our thought processes, but alas, that is one domain in which modern technology has fallen short. You might see that I jump around between topics, but I promise there are connections everywhere. So, here we go!

I’ve been hesitant to write about what ignites my passion the most.  

There are a couple of reasons for this.

For one, save for some semblance of a university degree I attempted to put together years ago, I have little in the way of ‘respectable’ credentials. I rely on my own observations of what is happening around me. A high school friend once revealed to me a technique in visual arts that has stuck with me since. “Draw what you see, not what you know to be there.” I have applied this not only to achieve realism in the scant visual artworks I have produced and which have gone unseen by most others, but also to compose a coherent understanding of my world--or in other words, everything I feel. This “motto” of sorts shows that we often ignore details about our experience that are in plain sight. Despite holding this key, I am well aware that I have not necessarily earned any institutional authority to write on the matters that compel me so--yet, as a person who has simply lived and observed, I still feel that I should express myself, for what ever it may be worth.

Second, though my risk of legal and political persecution in some form or another is not as dire as was obviously the case in the past with established thinkers, I’ve felt compelled to dress my thoughts in verse, marching what I think are critical ideas down the runway, letting the audience gently scrutinize the layers of different conceptual fabrics in motion rather than to place what is thought to be controversial on a podium, open to the personalized savagery of modern “progressive” critique. Misunderstanding is a very real fear of mine as I believe it is one of the greatest tragedies of the human condition. I suppose, as a sensitive person who is deeply emotional and deeply invested in my own thought as a means to a better world, my intent up to now has been to create a buffer of some sort between what I theorize and the ideology-driven hate that tends to characterize Internet culture (which, incidentally now, always carries a ‘social media’ component with it). But I don’t wanna hide anymore.

Something I’ve noticed about that very vehicle for thought is how utterly unforgiving it is. Someone uncovers a person’s past involving a stupid, ignorant mistake along the lines of political incorrectness and suddenly all the good they may have recently put into the world evaporates because there is some sort of twisted expectation of social perfection we’ve adopted--even though there is some overlap between this absolutist, impossible approach to other, equally fallible human beings and the tendency to wax poetic about one’s own cathartic emotional experience, along with a new awareness emerging from the remnants of self-destruction, and forcing ‘compassion’ toward oneself in light of one’s mistakes.

The message is that “I” can learn, but “you” cannot. It seems that people are so volatile these days, they’re ready to pounce without really thinking about what a person is trying to say in earnest. And while I believe that we should work hard at our collective and individual duties to skepticism, I cannot condone, to the furthest reaches of any influence I may have, the deadlock of pseudo-critical thinking when it involves scapegoating and self-righteousness.

I sense (and feel) a lot of (justified) anger, and many well-meaning individuals are looking for a place to which they can direct such intensity. The unfortunate thing is that the fire mutates into hostility toward people who don’t deserve it. Shuffle formless anger into boxes designed to look nicely and glamorously radical, and chuck it at those who--excluding the really terrible people in the world--are honest and serious about answering the questions of “how to achieve the maximum possible distance from pain”, and, “what is, essentially”, and you’ve got a problem on your hands. Nothing is ever as simple as we’d like it to be.

And by the way, I find the dismissive “ok, boomer” attitude reprehensible. Like, OBVIOUSLY there are going to be differences among generations in “opinion” and lifestyles and so on. And obviously past generations have made what we now deem to be ‘mistakes’. But just like any individual who may regret past actions, whether personal or professional, one makes decisions supported by the most convincing reasons they can muster, and so they do the best they can with the knowledge they have at hand, at some particular moment. Maybe some visionaries in the past were able to extrapolate from the contemporary and predict what would happen in the future. Even if their equivalents exist in society today, we will not know for certain the downright traumatizing effects current societal mechanisms could force to manifestation in the years beyond, until they actually become fact. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And, there is wisdom that only comes through living life. That, I’m afraid, is not up for debate.

I must say this here, now. I realize I’m walking on eggshells with what I’m about to say.  But, while it is clear that there is a significant degree of ‘white privilege’ in North American society, I’d be careful to declare ‘privilege’ an inherently white experience.  It is an historical reality (and is therefore biased). Not all ‘white people’ are the same; and it is CERTAINLY not the case that it has only been ‘white people’ that enforced slavery, for example. And it is definitely true that different members of different religions and different races and different ethnicities and different cultures and different dialects have, historically, perpetuated evil across many axes. Furthermore, I believe that the explicit and intentional denigration of ‘white people’ MADE BY WHITE PEOPLE THEMSELVES is probably one of the greatest expressions of white privilege. How secure must one feel if they can freely diss their ‘own kind’ and know that nothing diabolical will happen to them? We owe justice through opportunity to people we have marginalized, but that is not the way. I just think that people are either willfully ignorant, accidentally ignorant, or have forgotten that all kinds of people can be villains, and further that a truly corrupt person will even torture people with whom they may have a great deal in common.

I tend to think that ‘intersectionality’ is a seriously important concept and is most empirically aligned with individualism. People move around more, cross-cultural contact happens more; global connection ushers cuisine, rituals and traditions, spiritual beliefs, and languages into landscapes that were previously barren of particular social technologies. The result is a person who may have many characteristics sort of in common with others who share those qualities in a scattered manner, but unless one of those forces was exceptionally prominent in the person’s life, the commonality is negligible.

Emergent from this phenomenon is the serious tension between individual self-actualization and the requirements for so-called proper functioning of the broader ‘community’ to which one feels they belong. The needs of each can often be at odds with one another, and it doesn’t appear to be an easy task to resolve this conflict. I do know that sacrifices will have to be made, as there is always a price to pay; I almost think of that as a universal law.

When I was 19 and took a philosophy of feminism class, I started noticing what problems arise when a mode of thinking is assumed to apply to a particular “community” (loosely speaking), just because its members all share some intrinsic quality. In the particular case I’m talking about, it was “being female”. When someone speaks the word ‘feminism’, it is loaded. You have liberal feminism, eco-feminism, radical feminism, third-wave feminism, black feminism, post-colonial feminism, and so on. The relevance of these various types is stretched so thinly throughout the human landscape that one could legitimately wonder why those theories should even be considered to have anything in common. In other words, how can you possibly come up with an ethic of revolution that applies universally to, I dunno, how many billion people in the world? Here’s a situation: women in the West, particularly in the Deep South, are fighting for their choice to have an abortion. Meanwhile, in some parts of India and China, female infanticide is more common than a decent person should like to admit, and that’s not because Indian and Chinese women want it! Asking someone who is thoughtful in ANY respect if they are a feminist is like asking someone if they believe in God, and that is not, nor should it be, an easy question to answer.

To be clear: what I am talking about is definition, and if you break down the etymological components of that word, you see that it is about deciding what sorts of conceptual boundaries must be drawn (the finiteness)--to determine what is included, and also what is excluded. My belief is that it is actually the interplay between those qualities intrinsic to a person and external forces placed upon us that dictate the degrees of self-satisfaction and happiness we experience.

That pain is to be avoided is generally unquestionable, though the finer details of rational action (because I do see the treatment of pain as an issue of rationality, and as something more fundamental to the exercising of rational action than market economics is) are still up for debate. And, I suppose, that is the case for many injustices that an active, voluntarily thinking society wishes to eradicate. I’d like to return to that topic some time in the future, but what concerns me today is the issue of essentialism.

Essentialism has been a problem for philosophers for a really long time. Often it is conceptualized as “what makes something that thing”, but in my view, Essence seems to lie in the realm of the experiential. In one minor paper I wrote for a metaphysics class, I argued (incompletely) that an object’s ‘essence’ could be partly defined by the function one identifies when they come into contact with said object. For example, because even though chairs can be made up of different numbers of legs, or be of different colours, or be upholstered or not, we place them into a category of ‘something to be seated upon’. But then again, there are many things that can be sat upon, and, on the other hand, one does not look at a real life dog and think of it as an object that innately serves a purpose, let alone is built for one.

So why am I talking about what seems to be an obscure and useless topic?

It is the utility of Essence that gives form to our experience. And for those who believe that we erroneously categorize and judge every single damn thing we come across in our lives, go ahead and try to reverse neurological evolution through time of geologic scale. I mean, this mode of existence came to be before we even defined what ‘values’ were.

Tangentially, my introduction to the study of philosophy started with the great divide between ‘rationalism’ (ie. some inherent structure which creates the capacity to ‘know’ already exists in a person at the time of birth) and ‘empiricism’ (the school of thought where a person only collected knowledge through experience after they were born with a ‘blank slate’ of a mind). I never understood why the distinction between rationalism and empiricism was so important, because it seemed so obvious that our system of moving through the world was a combination of the two. We see now that the belief in one to the exclusion of the other is just plain stupid: genetics, epigenetics, logarithmic counting in BABIES, education, debate, and research, all contribute to an individual’s understanding of the world. (It is this idea, too, that contributes to my belief that free will is an illusion [though a helpful one at that] and that ‘luck’ is an epistemological concept. I will also use this idea to, eventually, communicate my argument that astrology is theoretically plausible, but that involves discussing archetypes and the cyclical nature of our known world...) Note: “Epistemology” is the study of knowledge and how we come to accumulate it. I went on this tangent because I think we need to demonstrate a great deal of respect for both pre-existing neurological realities and the staggering potential of science to teach us about our environments and ourselves. There are some core things about us that we would be wrong to ignore, and unforgivably so if the sound science is right there.

We do not typically go through life coming into contact with objects or people and checking off items on a list that comprise criteria for something being what it is (unless, of course, you’re prone to collect little hints as to whether a potential lover loves you back or not.....). To do so would reduce the fluidity with which we interact with externalities. That being said, I can conceive of a time when one goes outside for a cigarette in the night and watches a creature (as I just did) that may be a cat, or that may be a raccoon, cross the road. You peer at this creature for several seconds, up until the point that you conclude, and are certain, that it is, indeed, a cat. It is then that you can move on with your life. Perhaps what helped you to come to this conclusion was a short list of criteria that separate catness from raccoonness. Obviously that would be more efficient than consulting an exhaustive mental list of “cat properties” and comparing it to a similar list, but of “raccoon properties”. But even so, by the time you’ve witnessed the cat/raccoon, you’ve already filtered out any possibility that the creature might be something else, like a stray dog, or a lizard, or a floating chair. In conclusion, I propose here that context is essential to Essence. And Essence is a fully whole sensory experience, insofar as your sensory faculties work. This is why it is so hard to define.

The social relevance of the concept of Essence is becoming more important with the emergence of identity politics, the crises in feminism, “queerness”, the feminine/masculine dichotomy, and even paradigms in psychological health. Inherent to Essence is continuity, and no one can argue against the notion that we rely on general continuity to go about our daily lives.

But out of continuity develops expectation. Expectation is immensely helpful for the reason I laid out above. Additionally, in public, we rely on a common yet tacit understanding that individual members of the public will behave in a way that is safe and appropriate for everyone. The problem is, if you have experienced a good chunk of your life, well into adulthood, having never seen an unfamiliar and idiosyncratic expression of certain properties, why WOULD you do anything else other than fumble in your acceptance that that is the way something is? Your mind scrambles to organize what you are interacting with in the way that makes the most sense.

I was once accused of being an essentialist because of some remark I made referencing biological differences between men and women. I wondered if the dude was joking because I really cannot grasp why someone would think that the differences are trivial. Lately I’ve toyed with the conclusion that there must be something essential, something bounded, about the way we express ourselves, which matches what we are that isn’t seen by absolutely everyone, including exuding femininity or masculinity. If there wasn’t something essential about these “descriptions”, why would anyone make an effort to look a certain way in the first place? Or, why would anyone have a subconscious tendency to adopt certain characteristics? The point I’m trying to make is that communication in the form of appearance is just as important as a verbal explanation of something, and can in fact be more truthful than what is verbally expressed. Whether one wants to admit it or not, you are offering information that allows others to draw conclusions about you. And it’s not that you merely fulfill a checklist of the sort that I mentioned earlier. It is that, often, though not always, each separate quality supports all the others, forming a sort of “mesh-like” coherence. If there wasn’t something essentially feminine that you identified with, or something essentially masculine that you identified with--if these things didn’t matter--there would be no point in going to great lengths to change your appearance to communicate something. (And I think this holds even in the case of the non-binary person.)

Of course, judgments are made all the time about people, which have nothing to do with being transgendered or cisgendered. A person asks you your age. Why? Because they’re collecting information about you and the particulars in the category of “age” should reveal something about you that you’re not stating explicitly. And this information is only grounded in other information the inquirer has about you. And the only reason this information might be reliable is because a consolidation of an individual’s past experiences tells them that a certain age represents an axis of consistency of mentality and/or behaviour. The deductions we make are not always accurate, but if we didn’t instinctively think of this information as important, we wouldn’t seek it!

I will now apply the above problem to sort out why we are in such a mess, socially. First of all, the person is born into expectation of behaviour. That expectation depends on their sex at birth (assuming the person is not intersex), their social, economic, political class, the levels of education their immediate family members have achieved, their spiritual practices, et cetera. It seems to me that feminism arose in the first place because of the particular kind of anticipation of behaviour that swirls around whether you have a testicle-penis or a uterus-vagina combination. The traditionally ‘male’ realm was the unexplored frontier to many women; it was one of excitement, possibility, and opportunity, and arguably more freedom than the domain to which women were typically assigned: the home. Women can produce babies, and if you could produce babies then you SHOULD produce babies, and you should care for them too. And not only that, but by virtue of the fact that you are a mother you can’t even fathom leaving your babies behind. I haven’t yet come across a proper articulation of why this point is so crucial to understand. The women who have the term “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) slung at them are attacked by people who don’t understand that this fundamental difference in expectation between female-born individuals and male-born individuals is looming in the background, and how damn well important it really is, because it inevitably shapes a person’s perception of the world and quite possibly the expectations they have of other people! And the perception that falls upon you isn’t just something you can shed on a whim. And also, why are people surprised that this is still an issue? Even as advanced creatures we still succumb to evolutionary forces. I don’t think any reasonable person could say that “you aren’t female even if you feel female”, but it’s not about how you “feel”. It’s about what happens between you and people once they figure out a vital fact about you. It’s about the context in which you, a whole being, operate. You want to talk about oppression? I think your self-identity being misaligned with how other people think you should be is pretty high up there in the ranks.

So, to digress a little: the notion of changing yourself and making an impression on strangers, making a difference in the world, is intoxicating. But we enter dangerous territory when visions of child-rearing and home care become afterthoughts. Child psychologists have identified the age range between 2 and 4 to be particularly crucial in socializing children; it is at that age that they are the most impressionable with regard to how they learn to interact with others. That’s not really a huge window to make sure you ‘get it right’. I think the family unit, whatever its configuration may be, is pretty foundational to the rest of society. While many people presently carry harmful opinions about things we don’t understand, and changing those opinions tends to be rather difficult, the most radical, most powerful thing we can do to initiate reform is to make sure the children we are responsible for grow up valuing honour, kindness, and a sense of duty and justice, not just in relation to themselves and their immediate families, but to society as a whole.

People are throwing tantrums because society hasn’t given itself an overnight makeover. I think that anyone involved in politics understands, either consciously or unconsciously, that even though political institutions and bureaucracies were created by real people, they’ve sort of become fragmented away from human life and are entities of their own, floating above our heads like clouds in the higher atmosphere, and which do not have any readily identifiable boundaries. It appears that the various bodies of legislation and bureaucracies have become so bloody complex in correlation with the complexity of human interaction that they seem almost impossible to disentangle. Furthermore, ideas take a long time to die...if they ever even do.

Rather than viewing child-rearing as a burden, I choose to view it as the greatest responsibility and the greatest tool we have for genuine change. I feel, honestly, that sometimes we waste energy trying to convince people of something where there is no convincing possible. We often preach to the choir because they’re the only people who make us feel heard--but our own little choirs already know and believe what we know and believe.

So. I think, once I reviewed what I said above, that I’ve attempted to illuminate a conundrum about simultaneous utility and danger found in the act of expecting. This “study” of sorts is a microcosm of a world where darkness and light are aspects of all things. I’m convinced that the formulation of potential is expressed in binaries, but unlike computers, we are able to interpret ambiguities, and in many pockets of society people are tolerant of self-expression. With so many belief systems up for grabs, and with the world as it is in its ebbs and flows, it is up to the individual to craft their own transcendent values as a way to “orient themselves”, as Dr. Jordan B. Peterson put it. Be mature and do not dismiss nuance. Challenge yourself. And for God’s sake, the next time you’re thinking of buying that innocuous avocado that’s become the symbol for the Millennial generation, ask yourself what is more important: dismantling violent and antisocial Mexican drug cartels, or supporting Mexican farmers who are trying to make their ways through life, just like every. last. one of us.

[dragonshost]

Day 36: TotoLu

Posted on FFN here.

Although I’ve long since abandoned the idea of doing these daily, I am definitely planning on working on these still.  They may not be in my original intended order, however.  Except the final one, because I have something specific in mind to wrap this project up.  Assuming I ever get there, anyway.

Enjoy!

Armada Day 36:

Notes From The Neighbor

Totomaru x Lucy

Dressed up in her latest, cutest outfit, Lucy stood outside her apartment building with her back to the doors and facing the canal.  Rocking back and forth on her heels in barely-contained anticipation, she hummed lightly under her breath.  Night was settling in, and Lucy watched as the streetlights began to turn on.  The lights on the canal bridges also flickered on, warm and inviting in the chilly, crisp autumn air.  She paused in her humming only to wave back at the boatmen that greeted her as they took their boat in for the night.

Nothing could get her down right now, for she was about to meet the person she’d been corresponding with for the past month.  Going on a blind date with someone she only knew through notes – let alone a mysterious neighbor – had not been a future she had expected to see herself in, but now she waited for it with outright eagerness.

A month ago, her neighbors in her apartment building were something Lucy had never given much thought to before.  Theoretically, she had known that she had them.  But she’d never run into them once in all the years she’d lived at her apartment. Which in hindsight was… very strange. But it hadn’t struck her as a cause for concern until the day she finally – finally! – received her first noise complaint.

Why it had taken this long was as much of a mystery as to who the neighbor was that had left it.

The letter had been received not through her landlady as she imagined formal complaints normally were, but had, instead, been left on a note on her door.  The language of it wasn’t anything special.  It was merely a polite request to please keep the noise down, as the other party had to awaken early in the mornings.  No solid clues were present as to the mystery individual’s identity.  All Lucy had was the knowledge that they were an early riser, were exceptionally slow to anger, and that she now had a sample of their handwriting should the chance to compare it to anything arise.

All Lucy could think to do (after having spent some time steaming in her mortification) was to hastily scrawl an apology back promising to try to get her teammates to be quieter when they visited (a futile hope but one she clung to anyway) to and to stick it back on her own door.  Because her mysterious neighbor had not even left her their apartment number.  It had disappeared by the end of the day, so Lucy assumed that they had seen it.

Another, angrier, note had arrived a week later, after Lucy had put Natsu’s skull through the wallpaper and into the adjoining apartment.  Which… was fair.  That one was as much on Lucy as it was Natsu.  She placed a board over the hole until it could be fixed, and was delighted at the prospect of finally knowing which apartment belonged to her neighbor.

Getting the funds together to pay for the hole to be fixed had proven problematic.  Not that that was any great surprise, but Lucy still felt bad about her neighbor having to deal with the hole for so long.  So she left them a note, explaining that as soon as she had the funds she would get it repaired.

To her surprise, her neighbor responded with another note – cracking a joke about the tight finances of a teacher and therefore completely understanding her predicament.

They were a teacher!

This had opened up the opportunity for Lucy to ask all sorts of questions via their own strange postal delivery mechanism – aka the hole in the wall.  Such as what they taught, what did they think of writing and mage work, and once “what the hell is that you’re cooking it smells freaking fantastic.”

And now, almost a month later… the hole was finally repaired.

Disappointment was Lucy’s first reaction.  She’d gotten used to the odd communication with her neighbor.

But then a new note appeared on her door – asking Lucy out to drinks.

Still over the moon at the invitation, and deep in her rumination over how she’d gotten to this point, Lucy almost missed the quiet clearing of a throat beside her.  Jumping a little in surprise, Lucy turned wide-eyed to the tall man standing beside her.  Breath catching in her throat as she recognized him – his two-toned hair and bar tattoo inked across his nose distinctive even eight years after she had the first (and the last) time she’d seen them.

It was clear that he was surprised by her, too, apparently tongue-tied as he stood in the cold, encased in a thick jacket.

For a fire mage, he sure dressed warmly, Lucy observed, a smile spreading across her face.  “Good evening, Totomaru!”

An answering smile began to spread across his face, relief shining in his eyes.  “Good evening, Lucy.”

“So… where did you have in mind to go?” she prompted him.

He hesitated for a second, and then said, “How about we take a walk and pick whatever place catches our attention?”

“That sounds wonderful,” Lucy admitted.  When he offered, she took up his arm, and they started down the street.  “So how was work, today?”

Their conversation continued on for a long, long time that night.