#i knew i shouldn't

[kindnessoverperfection]

Please, if you can, take a moment to read and share this because I feel like I'm screaming underwater.

NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) stigma is rampant right now, and seems to be getting progressively worse. Everyone is using it as a buzzword in the worst ways possible, spreading misinformation and hatred against a real disorder.

I could go on a long time about how this happened, why it's factually incorrect (and what the disorder actually IS), why it's harmful, and the changes I'd like to see. But to keep this concise, I'll simply link to a few posts under the cut for further reading.

The point of this post is a plea. Please help stop the spread of stigma. Even in mental health communities, even around others with personality disorders, in neurodivergent "safe" spaces, other communities I thought people would be supportive in (e.g. trans support groups, progressive spaces in general), it keeps coming up. So I'm willing to bet that a lot of people on this site need to see this.

Because it's so hard to exist in this world.

My disorder already makes me feel as if I'm worthless and unlovable, like there's something inherently wrong and damaged about me. And it's so much harder to fight that and heal when my daily life consists of:

Laughing and spending time with my friends, doing my utmost best to connect and stay present and focused on them, trying to let my guards down and be real and believe I'm lovable- when suddenly they throw out the word "narcissist" to describe horrible people or someone they hate, or the conversation turns to how evil "people with narcissistic personality disorder" are. (Seriously, you don't know which of your friends might have NPD and feels like shit when you say those things & now knows that you'd hate them if you knew.)

Trying to look up "mental health positivity for people with npd", "mental health positivity cluster bs", only to find a) none of that, and b) more of the same old vile shit that makes me feel terrible about myself.

Having a hard time (which is constant at this point) and trying to look up resources for myself, only to again, find the same stigma. And no resources.

Not having any clue how to help myself, because even the mental health field is spitting so much vitriol at people with DISORDERS (who they're supposed to be helping!) that there's no solid research or therapy programs for people like me.

Losing close friends when they find out, despite us having had a good relationship before, and them KNOWING me and knowing that I'm not like the trending image of pwNPD. Because now they only see me through the lens of stigma and misinformation.

Hearing the same stigma come up literally wherever I go. Clubs. Meetings. Any online space. At the bus stop. At the mall. At a restaurant. At work. Buzzword of the year that everyone loooves loudly throwing around with their friends or over the phone. Feels awesome for me, makes my day so much better/s

I could go on for a long time, but I'm scared no one will read/rb this if it gets too much longer.

So please. Stop using the word "narcissist" as a synonym for "abusive".

Stop bringing up people you hate who you believe to have NPD because of a stigmatizing article full of misinformation whenever someone with actual NPD opens their mouth. (Imagine if people did that with any other disorder! "Hey, I'm autistic." "Oh... my old roommate screamed at me whenever I made noise around him, and didn't understand my needs, which seems like sensory overload and difficulty with social cues. He was definitely autistic. But as long as you're self-aware and always restraining your innate desire to be an abusive asshole, you're okay I guess, maybe." ...See how offensive and ignorant that is?)

Stop preventing healthcare for people with a disorder just because it's trendy to use us as a scapegoat.

If you got this far, thank you for reading, and please share this if you can. Further reading is under the cut.

NPD Criteria, re-written by someone who actually has NPD

Stigma in the DSM

Common perception of the DSM criteria vs how someone may actually experience them (Keep in mind that this is the way I personally experience these symptoms, and that presentation can vary a lot between individuals)

"Idk, the stigma is right though, because I've known a lot of people with NPD who are jerks, so I'm going to continue to support the blockage of treatment for this condition."

(All of these were written by me, because I didn't want to link to other folks' posts without permission, but if you want to add your own links in reblogs or replies please feel free <3)

[mangosteen]

bro get a grip fr

[marauderswolf22]

for remus the finest joke would be saying the dumbest shit imaginable about sciense or chemistry and every pure blood (sometimes even half bloods) would nodd and act like experts (they've never heard about chemistry)

[ms-demeanor]

Since some people might want a Mac, I'll offer a Mac equivalent of your laptop guide from the perspective of a Mac/Linux person.

Even the cheapest Macs cost more than Windows laptops, but part of that is Apple not making anything for the low end of the tech spectrum. There is no equivalent Mac to an Intel i3 with 4 gigabytes of RAM. This makes it a lot easier to find the laptop you need.

That said, it is possible to buy the wrong Mac for you, and the wrong Mac for you is the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar. Get literally anything else. If it has an M2 chip in it, it's the most recent model and will serve you well for several years. Any new MacBook Air is a good pick.

(You could wait for new Macs with M3, but I wouldn't bother. If you are reading these guides the M3 isn't going to do anything you need done that a M2 couldn't.)

Macs now have integrated storage and memory, so you should be aware that whatever internal storage and RAM you get, you'll be stuck with. But if you would be willing to get a 256 gig SSD in a Windows laptop, the Mac laptop with 256 gigs of storage will be just as good, and if you'd be willing to get 8 gigs of RAM in a Windows laptop the Mac will perform slightly better with the same amount of memory.

Buy a small external hard drive and hook it up so Time Machine can make daily backups of your laptop. Turn on iCloud Drive so your documents are available anywhere you can use a web browser. And get AppleCare because it will almost certainly be a waste of money but wooooooow will you be glad it's there if you need it.

I get that you are trying to help and I am not trying to be mean to you specifically, but people shouldn't buy apple computers. That's why I didn't provide specs for them. Apple is a company that is absolutely terrible to its customers and its customers deserve better than what apple is willing to offer.

Apple charges $800 to upgrade the onboard storage from a 256GB SSD to a 2TB SSD.

A 2TB SSD costs between $75-100.

I maintain that any company that would charge you more than half the cost of a new device to install a $100 part on day one is a company making the wrong computer for you.

The point of being willing to tolerate a 256GB SSD or 8GB RAM in a Windows laptop is that you're deferring some of the cost to save money at the time of purchase so that you can spend a little bit in three years instead of having to replace the entire computer. Because, you see, many people cannot afford to pay $1000 for a computer and need to buy a computer that costs $650 and will add $200 worth of hardware at a later date.

My minimum specs recommendations for a mac would be to configure one with the max possible RAM and SSD, look at the cost, and choose to go buy three i7 windows laptops with the same storage and RAM for less than the sticker price of the macs.

So let's say you want to get a 14" Macbook pro with the lowest-level processor. That's $2000. Now let's bump that from 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD to 32GB and 2TB. That gets you to $3000. (The SSD is $200 less than on the lower model, and they'll let you put in an 8TB SSD for $1800 on this model; that's not available on the 13" because apple's product development team is entirely staffed by assholes who think you deserve a shitty computer if you can't afford to pay the cost of two 1991 Jeep Cherokee Laredos for a single laptop).

For $3000 you can get 3 Lenovo Workstation laptops with i7 processors, 32GB RAM, and a 2TB SSD.

And look, for just $200 more I could go up to 48GB RAM and get a 4TB SSD - it costs $600 to upgrade the 14" mac from a 2TB SSD to a 4TB SSD so you could still get three laptops with more ram and the same amount of storage for the cost of one macbook.

I get that some people need to use Final Cut and Logic Pro, but hoo boy they sure are charging you through the nose to use products that have become industry standard. The words "capture" and "monopoly" come to mind even though they don't quite apply here.

"Hostile" does, though, especially since Mac users end up locked into the ecosystem through software and cloud services and become uncertain how to leave it behind if they ever decide that a computer should cost less than a month's rent on a shitty studio apartment in LA.

There's a very good reason I didn't give mac advice and that's because my mac advice is "DON'T."

[starry-bi-sky]

I'm having incoherent thoughts about clone danny again from the clone/clone^2 au (when am I not?) but more specifically I'm thinking about his reaction to finding out he's a clone. The standalone clone au digs into that a little more than clone^2, which is more focused on Danny and Damian's relationship. But neither (so far) really get into Danny's issues about finding out he's a clone after 15 years of thinking he wasn't.

Because he resents his parents for not telling him for so long. He resents the way he found out; through a trivial school project rather than a sit-down talk. He resents the fact that, apparently, they had meant to tell him sooner. But forgot. He resents the fact that they never told him because finding out feels like something was stolen from him when it had the chance to not be.

Danny Fenton, just fifteen, cloned not even half a year ago, knows what that personal violation of autonomy feels like. He knows what it's like to be cloned and while he loves Ellie, he does, she's his sister, and in this au his twin. But he is still left with that feeling of unsafety after realizing he'd been cloned. Being cloned is violating. The onset realization that it's so easy to get DNA without the other party noticing, and that what was stopping someone from trying to clone him again?

Followed only after with the rest of the inexplainable mix of feelings of being cloned, the rest of that inner conflict and panic that's an ugly mocktail of emotions that range from horror to fear. Trying to imagine what it's like to be cloned from the cloned party, and I imagine that it leaves you with the feeling of needing to crawl out of your own skin with discomfort.

And then he gets put on the other side of it. Danny Fenton, only fifteen, was cloned not even half a year ago, finding out he is a clone. And reactions, I imagine, can vary from person to person. But to him, it feels like something got stolen from him, like someone took a hole puncher and stuck it right into his chest and stole a chunk of himself from him.

It changes nothing about him and yet it changes everything. It's a betrayal on it's own to just find out he was a clone and they didn't tell him for fifteen years -- it shouldn't mean anything, because he's still Danny, and yet it means everything. It's him, it's him, it's about him. It's his personhood. It's about the fact that a load-bearing rock in his identity just crumbled beneath his feet and now there's a rockslide.

Because then he finds out that they used the wrong DNA. Its like pouring salt in an open wound. He's not even related to his parents or his sister, when for years he thought he was. It's the fact that pieces of his identity that he's been so secure in for so long just got ripped away from him in an instant. Then they tell him -- only through his own horrified prompting -- that the person whose DNA they used -- Bruce Wayne -- didn't even know he existed. That they accidentally used the wrong DNA, then didn't tell the person whose DNA they used.

The betrayal of being lied to for years turns really quickly into horror at his own existence. Something very similar to the horror he felt at being cloned and the skin-crawling discomfort that made him feel like his own skin wasn't really his. And then its not. It's actually not. Nothing but his own name feels like it belongs to him anymore -- not his hair, not his eyes, not his heart or his lungs, nothing feels like his anymore and he didn't know what that felt like until it was gone.

It's a question of Nature Vs. Nurture -- where does the line of "nature" begin and where does the line of "nurture" end? What of him is actually his? What of him is Bruce Wayne's? It's not logical, it's not supposed to be. It's a load-bearing wall on the house of his identity being destroyed and now everything else is caving down in on him. What belongs to Danny, what belongs to Bruce Wayne?

[hannibard]

JASKIER IS BI CANON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[probably-a-plant-thing]

wha-oh my interests are mixing!!

angler belongs to @eerie-candid the exterminator belongs to @irregularsweater

[taka-chan]

the first thing you learn about Eragon - that he had heard all the horrific stories about the mountains that locals have constant terror of and he was still going there since he was 15yo - is all you really need to know about him

[danwhobrowses]

It shouldn't need to be said but I'm seeing a lot of vitriol towards Ashton about their actions and I have to say I don't agree with them.

At the clock tower Fearne brought up the shard, stated that in her opinion Ashton should take the shard because she didn't want it. Ashton decided then as a result they'd take it, but because it was an extreme risk made very aware to them all they knew the other Hells wouldn't allow them to go through with it. Ashton asked Fearne if she was okay with both of them going together alone with the plan, reiterating that they didn't want to put this on Fearne, that if they died Fearne would not be to blame, and that they have no intention of dying, and Fearne said yes.

Fearne having second thoughts at the Ziggurat was just worry, because she cares deeply for Ashton, Ashton kissing her was not manipulation either; it was letting go of fear, having no regret with the person they also care deeply for and taking the risk. And yeah, it was frightening, 10 rounds of perpetual fiery near-death situations and one actual death situation; Laura is fuming, Ashley cannot look, Liam is playing Mad World on loop in his mind, even Matt is completely on edge, but they survived. Accusations that Ashton manipulated Fearne to selfishly take the shard seem to misinterpret the shard saga as well as Fearne and Ashton's characters, they will get a very intense amount of chastising for sure, but it will be out of love, out of the fear that they were going to lose them, not because they thought Ash was manipulative.

[karasuneko]

OHMYGOD??!?? THE UTTER HORROR ON YUJI'S FACE

and now this means gege will only bring gojo back so he can fight a sukuna-possessed megumi DON'T TOUCH ME

[hood-ex]

I once read a book where a character who had just one of everything - one fork, one plate, etc. - because he considered more than that just pointless stuff he'd eventually have to move told another that she made him want to have two plates, and that might be the most Dick and Donna vibes I've ever gotten out of anything not actually about Dick and Donna.

Well now I'm thinking about Dick buying two mugs and keeping one for himself and giving the other to Donna as a gift, but Dick's mug eventually burns along with the rest of Dick's apartment during the Blockbuster fiasco, so then after Donna dies and there's a funeral reception at her apartment, Dick finds the twin mug in Donna's kitchen, and he takes it up to the roof with him and cries.

Teen Titans/Outsiders Secret Files

[decarbry]

a frequent visitor

[shokveyv]

transformers is the most insidious drug i have ever taken

[valleyofdeaddandelions7]

I'm literally watching the first episode of "im in love with the villainess" right now and lemme tell y'all from all the self indulgenced, isekai audience inserts there are

Rae Taylor is by far the most relatable one cuz, i too would be more than ecstatic if i were transported to another world and the pretty villainess decided to dedicate all of her attention to me (yes even bullying is attention and maybe just like Rae herself i would like to get stepped on, HARD!!!)

[simplepotatofarmer]

i'm going to say something and it's not going to be nice.

if you're weaponizing techno's death to bash his friends, you should be ashamed.

this? absolutely disgusting.

people like phil and tommy, who are being criticized by the op and others in the replies, were techno's friends. they knew him and loved him and you're going to make his death about the lack of lore? i'm sorry, that's not okay.

i know there was so much techno wanted to do and it's a fucking tragedy that he wasn't able to. but using that to shame his friends is such a low blow. this isn't parasocial, it's a horrific lack of empathy for real people who lost one of their closest friends and you're doing it over what. minecraft rp?

you have no right to speculate on what happened and assign blame to his friends. i'm appalled right now.

[commsroom]

the funniest thing about all the stuff eiffel smuggled onto the hephaestus is that he had to smuggle it onto the hephaestus. he brought twenty cartons of cigarettes on board. he had to pack them into his pockets. and he's a terrible liar. somewhere there's a mission launch photo of minkowski's crew and in that photo you can see the outline of all the stuff eiffel crammed into his pockets. he's holding his hand to his chest to keep his stack of magazines from slipping and minkowski is glaring at him suspiciously and he looks terrified. hilbert doesn't care.