#she’s a professional people

[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)

#actuallynpd #signal boost #actuallyautistic #mental health awareness #narcissistic personality disorder #people also need to realize that mental health professionals aren't immune from bias #(it really shouldn't come as a shock that the mental health field has a longstanding pattern of misunderstanding and mistreating ppl who ar #mentally ill or otherwise ND) #the first therapist i brought up NPD to like. literally pulled out the DSM bc she could barely remember the criteria. then said that there' #no way I have it because I have low self-esteem lmaoooooo #anyway throwback to being at work and chatting with a co-worker. and the conversation turning to mental health. and him saying that #he tries to stay informed and be aware and supportive of mental health conditions & that he doesn't want to be ignorant or spread harmful #misinformation. and then i mentioned that i do a lot of research into mental health stuff and i listed a bunch of things. which included #several personality disorders. one of which was NPD. #and after listening to my whole ass list he zeroed in on the NPD and immediately started talking about how narcissists are abusive and #he knew someone who had NPD and how the person who had it had an addiction and died from the addiction in a horrible way and he #was glad he did #fun times #or when i decided to be vulnerable and talk abt my self-criticism/self-hatred bc i knew my friends also struggled w that and i wanted to #support them by sharing my own coping methods. and they both(separately!) started picking and prodding at my npd through the lens of stigma #bc i'd recently opened up to them abt having it. they recognized self-hatred as a symptom and still jumped on me for it. despite me #trying to share hurt vulnerable parts of myself to help them and connect with them. #again..... fun times

[taxinealkaloids]

i love the tower princes. i love that there’s absolutely no way in hell that this friendship is even remotely good for either of them. love that they assuredly are making each other SO much worse with every second they spend together. 

#tlt #the locked tomb #ntn spoilers #my art #anyway ever think about how the empire of the nine houses is pretty much singlehandedly being run by ianthe #and not only are the 2 people who are supposed to outrank her no help at all #they're actually actively detrimental to the empire's functioning as they are both deep in their depression spirals #and won't stop trying to start the apocalypse like they wanna start the apocalypse so BAD!! and ianthe doesn't even want to #be saving the world. girl wants to be villainous. she's stopping the apocalypse with an air of 'UGH i have to do EVERYTHING around here' #you really can't blame her for needing a chew toy. luckily kiriona is right there and she's basically a professional chew toy. #she's used to it. who knows what she'd even do with herself if no one was chomping on her. so it works out!! (not)

[comradekatara]

some possible career paths for toph to go down that are not fundamentally antithetical to her character and everything she stands for:

sculptor

architect/construction worker (she designs it and then erects it, all within an hour)

earthbending teacher but if u have bad vibes she kicks u out of her school

zuko’s personal lie detector / court politics navigator

sokka’s research assistant

(mean but highly effective) therapist

idle rich public intellectual

anarchist private investigator who gathers a bunch of suspects in a room and gleefully exposes all their secrets (even the irrelevant ones) just to stir up drama. and then leaves

badgermole whisperer

#toph #postwargaang #toph&zuko #sokka&toph #like toph COULD MAYBE be a cop if she was like. a cop in the way poirot is a cop #basically just a professional shit stirrer who uses her uncanny people reading skills to solve murders #but then she’d quit after like a year bc the thought of ppl getting arrested due to her intervention upsets her #so she then mostly just sticks to exposing husbands cheating on their wives #bc she LOVES being responsible. for divorce :)

[occudo]

hiiiiii just wanted to say that I absolutely adore the way you draw Melanie. I am a humble lesbian and the one you did of her in Alternate Archives of her in business casual did things to my heart.

Ah, office lady Melanie my beloved

#I liked designing her #so #I'm glad you like her #I imagined that in this AU she really wants to look professional #and wants people to take her seriously #but she has no idea what she is doing #this is her first “normal” job #BA in media didn't serve her well #I wish I can draw all my 6 AUs at once #anyway #occudo's art #tma fanart #melanie king #alternative archives #archivist!georgie au

[notbecauseofvictories]

My best friend and I had a call recently---she’s back with her family for a bit helping out with some hometown stuff. As part of the stuff, she’s been going through a (deceased) relative’s scrapbook, compiled in the American Midwest circa 1870-1900 and featuring mostly cut-out figures from the ads of the day.

She talked about how painstaking this relative’s work was. (Apparently the relative was careful to cut out every finger, every cowlick; this was by no means carelessly or hastily assembled.) But she also she talked about how---the baby on the baking soda ad is ugly, it is so ugly, why anyone would clip this heinously ugly illustrated baby and paste it into a scrapbook? Why would you save the (terribly told, boring) ghost story that came with your box of soap?

(Why include these things in the first place? we asked each other. ”There’s a kind of anti-capitalism to it,” she mused.)

And we discussed that for a bit---how most of the images, stories, artists, and ads were local, not national; they’re pulled from [Midwestern state] companies’ advertisements in [Midwestern state] papers, magazines, and products. As a consequence, you’re not looking at Leyendecker or Norman Rockwell illustrations, but Johann Spatz-Smith from down the road, who took a drawing class at college.

(College is the state college, and he came home on weekends and in the summer to help with the farm or earn some money at the plant.)

But it also inspired a really interesting conversation about how---we have access to so much more art, better and more professional art, than any time in history. As my bff said, all you have to do to find a great, technically proficient and lovely representational image of a baby, is to google the right keywords. But for a girl living in rural [Midwestern state] of the late 1800s, it was the baking soda ad, or literal actual babies. There was no in-between, no heading out to the nearby art museum to study oil paintings of mother and child, no studying photographs and film---such new technologies hadn’t diffused to local newspapers and circulars yet, and were far beyond the average person’s means. But cheap, semi-amateur artists? Those were definitely around, scattered between towns and nearby smallish cities.

It was a good conversation, and made me think about a couple things---the weird entitlement that “professional” and expensive art instills in viewers, how it artificially depresses the appetite for messy unprofessional art, including your own; the way that this makes your tastes narrower, less interesting, less open.

By that I mean---maybe the baby isn’t ugly! Maybe you’ve just seen too many photorealistic babies. Maybe you haven’t really stopped to contemplate that your drawing of a baby (however crude, ugly, or limited) is the best drawing of a baby you can make, and the act of drawing that lumpen, ugly baby is more sacred and profoundly human than even looking at a Mary Cassatt painting.

And even if that isn’t the case....there was this girl in [American Midwestern state] for whom it was very, very important that she capture every finger, curl, and bit of shading for that ugly soap ad baby. And some one hundred years later, her great-something-or-other took pains to preserve her work---because how terribly human it is, to seek out all the art we can find that resonates with us, preserve it, adore it.

It might be the most human impulse we have.

#I of course went on a tangent about henry darger because I love darger and he was also pulling/tracing/finding inspiration in local ads #I was also thinking of the scenes in banshees of inisherin where gleeson plays the fiddle in the bar and the woman sings #clearly not professional! nowhere near mozart. #but you know what? those people are making art. they are engaged in the most human thing you can possibly do #my mother once talked about how when she was growing up in the chicago area the irish immigrants would sing and play at parties #and her mother (one generation removed from immigration) would scoff #because who did they think they were! they weren't professionals. they were making a spectacle of themselves. #''and then it died out. no one sings and plays at parties anymore'' she said quietly #celestial emporium of benevolent knowledge

[mekammin]

now what i really love about bad blood (besides everything else about bad blood) is how EXPRESSIVE scully is when we see her in mulder-vision. maybe because they're so in tune, maybe because he's a phenomenal profiler, maybe because he loves her. he just sees through all of the guards she puts up so easily

like this is what he sees whenever shes not chewing him out

#she's also so CUTE!!! from his POV ugh. hes a stronger man than me #like i fully believe the show is thru her POV and she is as guarded as she perceives herself to be. he just sees thru people like that #and he imagines himself so meek and professional. everyone is just so mean to him all the time for no good reason poor meow meow #x files #txf #scully #<- i might need a scullyposting tag for the remainder of this hyperfixation cause im scullymaxxing rn. absolutely danapilled ouroborocel #the x files

[blackbackedjackal]

As a Gévaudan Lycan, June’s design is supposed to give off an unknowable and melancholy energy.

Gévaudan Lycans are mimics, and their emotions alter their form, especially if they have little to no control of themselves when they shift.

The way June was changed into a lycan and her experience during first shift were extremely traumatic, and over time, her lycan form reflected her feelings of loss and self-loathing. She fronts as this charming and confident woman, while holding back her deeper emotions that eventually leached into the form that reflects her true self.

Fear, sadness, loss, and rage all mixed into this one entity she cannot control. Once a month, she's forced into facing all of those emotions, reliving that trauma again and again for nearly 30 years.

#so when people say they like her design #it makes me so so happy #I put lot of thought into it #as I really wanted to reflect a top very near and dear to my heart #which is the lack of access and resources for black women (especially queer black women) for mental health #there's this kind of cultural thing #where your hairstylist is also your therapist #and June’s design and lore is a reference to that culture #all these hardworking women in the community who will just be TALKING about their experiences at hair salons #it's cathartic but also like #it happens because of how little professional help is available and accessible for the community #anyway June is a big sad cryptid werewolf and needs to not be sad :[ #she can still be a big cryptid werewolf but she needs lycantherapy #june kingston #strawberry moon

[teplejtrouba]

a detective who has a partner🔍 and a partner💕 who are friends so the three of them end up doing a lof things together and the detective refers to them as "my partners" and doesn't realise this makes everyone think they're polyamorous (they do end up polyamorous by the end of the story)

#once people start making remarks and they do realise they're apprehensive to the idea at first #(the detective that is. the partners just find it funny i think) #in a shocked and confused way #like “why would you think that! a is my best friend and b is... also my best friend. but one of them is my colleague and the other my spous #“i do not have an unprofessional relationship with my colleague! ...well i do #but a completely platonic one!“ #(they do get up to a lot of hijinks together and it wouldn't be true to call them completely professional) #the detective doesn't stop calling them 'my partners' they just have a monologue about the nature of their relationship locked and loaded #it's a friends to lovers very slow burn to get to the throuple part but we do get there eventually #character concept #yes i initially imagined the detective as a man because i love men and most famous detectives unfortunately are men #however this would work very well in any gender scenario. all three of them are non-binary in different ways. all of them are women. #i think the main detective would be really fun if she was a Philomena Cunk type of character. very smart but So dumb and self-assured #really the main thing the detective needs to be is autistic

[c-rowlesdraws]

hey there bud. Life is hard, and there is so much to worry about. But maybe watch Julia Child make Sole Bonne Femme and just have a nice time for half an hour.

#julia child #the french chef #food #this show is so good and the first time I actually watched it archived on the PBS youtube channel it blew my mind #people made (and still make) lots of jokes about her mannerisms and voice but she was amazing #one take!! She had to do these episodes in ONE TAKE! #she was a professionally-trained cook! #she was badass #Youtube

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID: a piece of digital art depicting Luz, Willow, Amity and Vee from the owl house at Luz's quinceñera. The piece takes place outside the owl house at night with the characters all dancing. Willow's dress is blue with yellow and pink flowers as decoration. Luz's outfit is based on the good witch azura with a white and purple colour scheme. Amity wears a pink dress shirt and a dark blue skirt with transparent fabric both on the skirt and acting as the sleeves. Vee wears a yellow dress with white trim on the bottom. Light glyphs float in the air, the dancefloor lights the scene from below, and Hooty extends across the background. End ID]

on today's episode of "pieces I put way too much work into realistically!". Since it's unlikely we'll get a quinceñera for Luz at this stage of the show, I wanted to draw a cute scene of it, which slowly turned into posing and lighting practice

(Small disclaimer: I'm not a part of a culture that does quinceñeras! I hope that there's no glaringly inaccurate details here. As far as I know there isn't hard and fast rules for the dresses or dance floor? so hopefully everything here is plausible. Feel free to let me know if there's any egregious errors here. There's some doodles under the cut that are slightly more detailed, so same goes for those)

[ID: black and white digital doodles of owl house characters at Luz's quinceñera. The first doodle shows luz, Gus, Hunter and king, and is labeled "Gus, king & hunter = chambelands". The next shows willow, Vee, and Lilith with Luz and is labeled "Lilith, Willow and Vee = damas". There's a doodle of amity where's she's labeled "escort". There's a small full body doodle of Luz in a suit labeled "she gets a costume change!". The last doodle is Luz and hunter dancing together, labeled "Luz + hunter sibling dance". The background is purple. End ID]

#the owl house #toh #luz noceda #EDIT: I FORGOT THE FUCKING TAGS #willow park #amity blight #vee noceda #sigh. i won't tag anyone under the cut #lumity #okay that's good #feel like the id might not be up to scratch? if anyone has any suggestions I'll edit it! #same if the small text proves inaccessible #i know some screen readers pick it up and others don't but that no matter what it's hard for visually impaired people to read #if it proves troublesome i won't do it again #anyway in case you're wondering where eda is (bc realistically she should be here)- i like to think she'd get her own role in the ceremony? #not sure where though because I'm not sure which roles are/can be performed by family vs family friends vs a priest/professional #and thus i don't know what would be fitting for eda #i also know that father/daughter dances are traditional at quinceñeras and I've seen a few suggestions for who luz might dance with #since obviously her father's passed away #while the idea of dell (as her surrogate grampa) or one of her friends dads filling in is sweet #part of me thinks luz would go very non traditional and dance with eda? as a parent figure alternate to her mother? #i don't know if that's like. totally out of whack for a quinceñera/where the line between non-traditional and inaccurate is #since the tradition has obviously evolved a lot over the years and I'm just an outside observer #if anyone has hcs or suggestions feel free to let me know #(tho you'd probably prefer to discuss them with fans who have a bit more knowledge on the subject/are actually latino) #i should do more reading on this I'm just swamped rn (I. should really do some research for art class soon) #uhh i think that's everything i had to add??? yeah m #just reiterating the disclaimer uptop. please tell me if I've been silly or insensitive i do not want to be either

[marzipanandminutiae]

"Lucille is hiding her true deranged evil self behind a fake ladylike exterior!"

sometimes Ladies are just deranged and evil and that does not invalidate their intelligent conversation, well-modulated voices, impeccable manners, and many genteel accomplishments okay. how dare you. the impertinence etc.

Ladies can have a little brother-fucking and murder and martyr complexes. as a treat

#lucille sharpe #crimson peak #I feel like she has a complex relationship with being A Lady anyway. in my headcanon #she wasn't exactly brought up to see it as For Her given her status as all-around household drudge who everyone but Thomas hated #but she IS a baronet's daughter. and a woman in that society #it SHOULD be For Her. only the people she hated most denied it to her #and her interests are actually VERY lady-coded for her society: natural sciences But Not Professionally. poetry But Not Professionally #music But Not- you get the idea #she puts her household and its Designated Man first in all respects. she's endlessly self-sacrificing (until she's not) #Angel In The House energy. it's not fake- that's The Real Lucille as much as when she's killing or banging Thomas

[the-knife-consumer]

If sidon ever swears in a fic it is immediately immersion breaking and leads to the giggles

#he would not fucking say that etc etc #hes been a prince for 100+ years surrounded by old people and forced to be professional so much that it becomes an integral #part of his personality. if someone swore around him his brain would have to take a minute to catch up #if HE swore hed start apologizing profusely. yona says fuck though. i know she does. i know this

[dollarstoreartsupplies]

yo girl, feel a bit punchy?

~

redraw of some ollllllddddd art:

#my art :) #redraw #heathers #heather chandler #I’m genuinely thrilled by her #she’s DELIGHTFUL #the other one is so funny to me because I was like 13 and CONVINCED because I scanned it through an app it looked like digital art #and people would think I was a Professional Digital Artíste #like hell yeah baby me I love u #heathers the musical

[onionprincess97]

hear me out y'all. emo juri arisugawa.

like her ass sits up all day writing poetry about shiori and uploads them on livejournal. she's going on myspace to complain about her life, all while listening to paramore & mcr. she's posting corny ass evanescence lyrics to her facebook status. she doesn't dress the part because she has to keep up with her professional front but when she's alone? trust, the horrible eyeliner and the side bang is coming out.

#bonus points if she takes pictures with a flip phone and it has the most terrible quality ever #tbh she would be more open abt being emo in middle school (to literally only two people: shiori & him) #but when she got into high school #that changed because shiori left and she felt like she had to hide it esc since she has to be “professional” and impress all her teachers #shiori would be emo too ngl #do i have to make a list of utena characters that would be emo? #revolutionary girl utena #shoujo kakumei utena #rgu #sku #juri arisugawa

[virsancte]

good days aren't easy to come by

#simblr #ts4 legacy #valentine gen 4 #fun fact for context on why i care so much abt him finally choosing to play the piano on his own #but it's gonna get Long so strap in #basically. the guitar he used to have had been with him since he was like...... my god. probably about 15 #he bought it at a yard sale for pennies from an older woman #it belonged to her late son originally and it wasn't even . supposed to be a part of the sale in the first place. she just took a liking to #devin and figured that really it's better in the hands of someone who would use it than for it to collect dust in her garage forever #and he couldn't really practice at home. his parents... are not exactly the kindest people you've ever seen #he was too afraid of them destroying or throwing it away so he'd sneak off to god knows where and learn how to play it from old #youtube videos on his busted up phone #it quickly became Everything to him. his most prized possession. and it wasn't a shitty guitar either. the son was a professional musician #that's how ellie and devin met in the first place. he was playing at the market she used to sneak out to in the evenings to #and she instantly knew . this boy is going places and really they might as well go together #enough backstory of the backstory. long story short: he was struggling to make rent eventually and was out of vinyls to pawn off #so he had no choice left. it was either that or he'd get kicked out along with his sister. who was still struggling a lot w/ addiction #so he sold it. and it broke him. he's literally just not been the same since losing it #his sister stole him a guitar from a music shop she'd go to sometimes but it just wasn't the same and he had not played an instrument since #until now anyway #still not a guitar. but maybe someday #or he can find his old one and buy it again......... #lmfao if you made it here congrats. you win nothing bc im broke but i do respect you

[mantisgodsdomain]

Finally, we get the opportunity to put our Spy Cards worldbuilding in a work. Though there are many questions about such things as "regulation" "how these cards are printed" "who approves a single spy card", and so on, we are here to present a bold new take: this game is based like 60% on obscure roach memory-reading tech that got turned into a card game with absolutely No card-game-related intentions included in the original tech and most of the card vetting is just from the fact that there aren't too many card printers out there and most of them make cards that need to be translated from Roach.

Strictly speaking, as a card game, it is not a terribly good or well-balanced one. It's popular primarily because of a mix of the difficulty involved in getting the data for high-level cards, the fun of seeing the variety of monsters that can be brought to the table, and the incredible amounts of ham and drama that goes into specifically the professional scene.

#we speak #bug fables #bold and new because we think that only maybe three people have even asked questions about the semantics ofc #notable points: professional spy cards is an entirely different thing from competitive spy cards #and the overlap between fanbases means that there is occasionally some REALLY incomprehensible beef about deck composition #also every time that carmina uses astotheles' card in one of her decks she has to pay him royalties #this is because he approached her personally about it. it was an Experience. #the roach tech thing also means that like a decent chunk of high level spy cards players know like. a handful of words in roach #competitive spy cards is generally smaller than professional and involves shit like actual deck composition and like #trying to get ahold of That One OP Card so that you can utterly crush people at the local tournament. actual card geek shit. #professional spy cards is basically wrestling in card game form and does NOT optimize the decks very well #because 99% of the draw of PROFESSIONAL spy cards is that youre gonna watch a whole bunch of people roleplay elaborate storylines #while also playing a game where most professional venues will invest in tech to read card crystals and summon appropriate effects #its a spectacle sport. specifically a spectacle sport where the actual game is mostly framework for Cool Monsters and Interpersonal Drama #carmina is a heel #this might be slightly incoherent but we'll clean it up later maybe. we are taking a break from sketching comms to write rn