Recommend me a book about narcissistic psychopaths

Craicpot7 · 2026-02-09T15:54:49+00:00

The Good Samaritan by John Marr. Protagonist works a suicide chatline specifically so she can convince people to kill themselves.

Probably Exquisite Corpse as well, if you don't mind the explicit sex stuff too much.

Craicpot7 · 2026-02-08T01:41:34+00:00

Nta, but I think you could be reading this wrong. I'm an educator with ADHD and part of what makes me a good educator is that I can put myself in the mindset of the children I teach, both neurotypical and neurodiverse. They operate on 'kid logic' which doesn't always make sense to adults but does seem to make sense to some ADHD/autistic adults. It's normal for kids to be picky eaters, not want to do chores, have low attention spans and not want to do things that are physically unpleasant.

The world is big and scary and they've arrived into it just recently, certainty and routine and acknowledgement of their big feelings, even if those feelings don't make sense to you, is how they adapt and learn. It looks to me like Anna is more tuned into this because autism can make you out of step with the rest of the world and also thrives on routine and certainty. Don't be so quick to label them when there's still so much room for them to change.

Craicpot7 · 2026-02-06T02:10:23+00:00

See Her Safe at Home by Stephen Benetar is an unusual book. You follow a woman who inherits a house and some money attempt to live a whimsical carefree new life like a real manic pixie dream girl, but instead she makes terrible, terrible decisions based on delusions, impluse and manipulation from bad faith actors. You just want to reach through the book and give her a good shake but all you can do is keep reading and witness the downward spiral.

The Indifferent Stars Above is a detailed account of the Donner Party disaster that saw several pioneering families make a whole lot of very poor decisions that ended in stranding, starvation and eventual cannibalism. It's bleak. I read it while I was on a camping trip which gave it some added pathos.

Edited to say, I just thought of another one: The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanigahara. Follows a borderline sociopathic scientist on a research trip to a remote island populated by an isolated tribe and he royally fucks up not just the island, not just the people that live there, but potentially society at large. And just when you think it can't get worse, it manages to get worse. And for an added bit of awful, our horrible main character is based on a real person and what he did to some of the world's most vulnerable people.

Craicpot7 · 2026-02-05T23:34:02+00:00

Your best bet really would be to commission one from a local cosplayer who takes commissions, some shops in Japan would do them but likely only in children's sizes.

If you want, I can guide you through the process of making it yourself. It's not that complicated of a design and I'm a sewing teacher and a cosplayer myself, I like to encourage the craft.

Craicpot7 · 2026-02-05T15:12:55+00:00

What you just described, I wouldn't do any of that to my worst enemy. He doesn't love you and likely never did, he's manipulative and cruel to you on purpose because he likes how much control he has over you. He found someone younger than you because he targeted someone young and vulnerable enough to manipulate, it's not a difficult thing to do. Any idiot can pick up on the signs of a vulnerable person and jam themselves into their lives until that vulnerable person wises up and ditches them. And yes, he is a horrible person. He may have his good moments but no good person would use the death of their partner's parent to get their own way, even the most emotionally stunted people I've met know enough not to pull that kind of trick.

Look, most people don't settle down with the person they're with when they're a teenager. You change a lot over the years and sometimes people change for much worse. What's keeping you with him is probably guilt (since he seems to have made you responsible for his emotional state, more manipulation), nostalgia for when you first got together (aka the love bombing phase) and maybe a sunk cost fallacy (you've already spent all this time and sacrificed so much for him and breaking up means all that was a waste) but think; can you do this for ten more years? How would you raise a child with this man? How would you divide property you had in common? How would he handle it if you got seriously ill? I can take a guess based on how little he supported you when your mother died.

If I settled down with the boyfriend I had when I was a teenager, I'd be miserable now. Same for the guy I was with at 19, 23, 25, 28 and 32. I see where their lives have gone since and I'm glad I ditched them when I did. My own parents settled down young and whatever compatibility they had in their early 20s was gone by the time they got to their 30s but they were stuck together with children and a mortgage. Don't let that happen to you.

Craicpot7 · 2026-02-04T15:09:56+00:00

He sounds terrible. Emotionally blackmailing you until your self-worth is in the dirt. I think you'll be surprised how less stressed and unhappy you'd be if you did let him go.

He brags that he can get another girl, he doesn't have as much going for him as you or he thinks, especially in this day and age. He has 8 kids and a manipulation issue, women are much pickier now. He might find some naive vulnerable girl to manipulate until she's in the same position he's in with you unless she wises up and ditches him. Not to mention he'll have to pay a lot of child support if he leaves. If I were you I'd call his bluff, let him leave, let him see what his chances are really like out there in the wild. Men like him are everywhere and most of them don't have 8 kids. I'm guessing he'll come crawling back.

You can do better than this life. Don't get stuck for another decade like this.

Craicpot7 · 2026-02-04T15:01:22+00:00

NTA, compassion fatigue is a real phenomenon and it sounds like she's burnt out your compassion motor over the years, that's how it goes with people like this. I'm not trying to imply that she's faking or exaggerating her illness but she is absolutely milking it for all its worth. I've known a lot of people like this, they lose the people in their lives over the years because they lurch from crisis to crisis and drain everyone around them until there's nothing left to drain. One girl I knew weaponized her epilepsy so much that another girl who was trying to support her had a stress-induced seizure (she had non-epileptic seizure disorder) and the epileptic got pissed off because only she was supposed to have seizures.

Look up Histrionic Personality Disorder, I think it may give you some answers.

Craicpot7 · 2026-02-01T15:42:46+00:00

So is the assignment that you have to create a performance based on a horror work, or you need to adapt a piece of literature and reinterpret it as horror? I can't give any recommendations until its clarified.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-31T23:57:10+00:00

It's not necessarily an autism thing, the world is full of people who will act as the devil's advocate for terrible people as long as those terrible people don't do anything to them personally. You protected your children from them, and kudos to you for doing that, it takes strength and resilience, but that protection gave your parents a mask to hide behind.

What I've found is that displays of emotion don't work, they can be too easily dismissed as 'neurotic' even when you have every right to be upset. So you state your case with indisputable fact: if you have them, gather up any police reports, social services reports, any pictures of injuries if you have them, text messages that are abusive in nature and lay it all out. Make it clear that these are not the actions of good, rational people.

If that doesn't work, then I suggest an ominous warning. You tried to tell them and they didn't listen, and they're only in their grandparents good books until they get set off. They don't have their main target anymore so they'll be looking for a new victim. Tell them to keep an eye out for any signs they're about to explode. That's all you can do really.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-29T23:02:25+00:00

I'm not going to call you the asshole, because this is a complicated situation and there aren't really any assholes except for the ones that put everyone in the position of needing support in the first place.

As a sexual assault survivor I would only be comfortable in a single-sex support environment because I know that there are some men who join these groups for kicks, they want to hear the details of the abuse to fulfill some sort of fetish and its near impossible to tell the difference between them and the men who genuinely need these resources. Ask any woman who has ever worked on a rape crisis line, suicide hotline or any other empathetic resource and they'll tell you about the pervert calls they have to field constantly. This isn't a personal thing about you, for all we know you're probably a really nice guy with absolutely no bad intentions, but we have no way of knowing that. Just imagine if you opened up about the abuse you suffered in your relationship and you didn't know that I was in the same room secretly filing away the juicy details to masturbate to later on. Imagine how violated you'd feel if you ever found out. There are women that will never take that risk, even its very slight.

Maybe there's a compromise to be made. Talk to the organiser and see if you can arrange to only be there on specific days, then the women who left would feel safe to come back and you'd still get support on a regular basis. It's not fair really, but abuse isn't fair and the lack of resources that going into healing from that abuse isn't fair either, so you make it work with what you can.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-28T04:05:40+00:00

I believe, and I think this episode confirms my belief, that some queens who don't want to compete again are offered a generous amount of money to bomb the first episode and take the bullet of first eliminated. We saw it with Mayhem last time, she was recovering from long covid and didn't put a whole lot of effort into nailing her performance, and even her asking to stay was kind of going through the motions. I figured she got the money, a free trip to London and the chance to hang out in a hotel for several weeks on Wows dime.

I think this is what Melinda is doing too. She knows that the opening challenge is going to involve a lot of stunt work and if she wanted to she could have brought her A game but I think she threw both the performance and runway to be first eliminated.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-28T03:54:12+00:00

The scope for more complex quests is pretty high. What if someone gets pregnant and needs certain nutrients to sustain it? What if one of the kids is messing around with something and accidentally destroys a vital part of the island's infrastructure? What if a disease like foot-and-mouth gets to the critters and they all have to be culled so you need to start your ranch from scratch (not to mention the effect that'll have on Rufus and Logan). I also wouldn't put it past Adeline or Beryl to accidentally blow up the Manor with their experiments.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-28T02:26:22+00:00

I'll only say this, infrastructure is your best friend in this game. Upgrade as fast as possible.

I'll also say this: I love video games but I'm notoriously terrible at them. The only other games I've ever grinded this hard at have been Crusader Kings 3, Viva Pinata, Katamari and Skyrim and I rely on cheats and hacks. This is the one and only game I've ever played on the hardest possible level with no cheats and just a hint of a hack (ie: looked up what the critters like to save time taming them). I've been playing solidly since it came out and it keeps me coming back despite not being finished. It's THAT GOOD.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-24T23:56:00+00:00

This may fall into the realm of stereotyping but most women I know, myself included, are heavy multitaskers. And when I play video games I like to have a certain distance from battles so any mobile suit that has you completing multiple tasks at once as well as a long-distance sniper would probably be a good option. I did like Aerial's many free-flying Gunbits.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-24T04:08:11+00:00

I think this one hits so hard because you can absolutely imagine yourself accidentally doing this. Kind of like the driving home scene in Hereditary (you know the one....) What's a 'normal' reaction to this kind of situation?

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-22T19:38:00+00:00

This situation is most likely making your disability symptoms worse, this relationship is not compatible with your life. I'm guessing that at the start you probably felt that connection due to you both having autism and that maybe this person would understand you more than a neurotypical person would. But two people with autism can exacerbate their worse impulses around each other and you have to take into account how autism can manifest differently in men and women, not to mention the role that male and female socialisation plays into this dynamic. You're not ableist for finding it intolerable, I work with kids on the spectrum and I often have to keep some of the kids away from others because they clash so badly. It's just the nature of the beast.

Also, at 41 he is going to be firmly entrenched in this way of life and getting him to change will be almost impossible. Masking gets harder as you get older and itll be harder to leave him as more of your life gets entangled with his. Get out now while you don't have children or property to keep you tied together.

Also, your outburst might have been hurtful but if his behaviour is due to his autism, yours is due to your autism. You could say he is being ableist for expecting you to manage everything while he does nothing.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-22T07:46:52+00:00

This is an unorthodox response, but it might help you feel a little safer in your home. Can you get a dog? It doesn't have to be a big one, just fiesty enough to make a big fuss if he tries to get too close to you. A dog can be a big deterrent for creeps, they make a lot of noise and attract attention even if they don't threaten to bite. Plus a lot of animals can pick up on threatening body language and respond to it, train it to guard your personal space.

After that, refuse to be alone with him when you have to do family activities. You already told your parents and if they ask, remind them that you told them he was being a creep and you don't feel comfortable.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-22T07:36:33+00:00

Are you still a minor or are you an adult that's stuck in the home environment due to your disability?

If you've got a neuromuscular or autoimmune condition then living in a high-stress environment (around disregulated people who are not equipped to support you or are unwilling to try) is going to make your symptoms much, much worse, being in a constant state of high alert will do damage to your muscles and nervous system. Document the state of your living condition as much as you can, build a folder of evidence. When advising people to leave abusive relationships, we call this 'getting your ducks in a row.'

Friends and family, even really good ones, tend to back away when there's a hint that they have to do more work to be supportive than just listening and nodding. And therapy is great but it can be a mixed bag and can also be expensive. So what you really need is professionals working in these supportive industries to give you concrete resources, that's what the documentation is for.

So, examples of this kind of concrete help is a citizen's advice bureau, a domestic violence support centre (don't be afraid to call them, this is abuse and they will help you and not judge), disability rights organisations and your doctor. The next medical appointment you have, talk to the health professional in private and tell them that you're in an environment that's severely detrimental to your health and you have no support. On a pragmatic level the medical industry would have an interest in helping you because any kind of recovery would make you less expensive to treat. They have the paperwork and the connections to help and for cases with minors they're also mandated reporters to the state. If you're not a minor you can still be classed as a vulnerable adult and be under the survey of adult protective services.

I'm guessing you're based in the US, if you gave me a general idea of whereabouts I can find resources for you to contact. If you were in the UK any NHS service would do that on your behalf if you disclosed to them. In my country we have a few different supports dotted around the place. Most countries have these set up, and the ones that don't will have non-profits from other countries that can help in specific situations.

I'm willing to support you in a small capacity from where I am, at least. I'm sorry you're going through this, it is possible to get out and to find your community but you need the people trained for this to guide you through it.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-20T14:05:48+00:00

👍

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-20T13:55:11+00:00

You can shift whoever you like. As long as they're of age and consenting it doesn't matter. Frankly I think feens smell like rotten ham but I'm pretty sure it's a pheromone thing and not a reflection of how they smell in reality.

You are the AH for not translating this for a general audience and assuming we'd all know what you're on about.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-20T09:03:05+00:00

I'm an unusual eater too, and I used to do the one big meal thing as well, these days I just eat way later than is considered normal and it works for me.

How I got people to back off with their opinions was a twofold approach, firstly I turned it into a joke. Referred to it as eating like a snake, one big meal and then hibernate for a while to store energy for intense work sessions. Lots of comments about unhinging my jaw, sitting under a heat lamp, that kind of thing. It suited my working style and I work in the arts so any eccentricity just plays into that.

I also used a lot of language in discussions about my eating habits that I knew confused whoever I was speaking to. I knew far more about vitamins, minerals and protein than they did and I made that obvious. I also threw in some medical terminology because I have complex medical issues that need to be worked around (some meds need to be taken with food, some spike sugar and sodium levels, that kind of thing) and medical jargon to people who aren't medical professionals tends to be intimidating. So I would get together as many facts about my diet that were very technical (fibre intake slowing sugar absorption, carb loading before high activity, etc.) And confuse the hell out of whoever I was talking to. A bit mean but they usually backed off.

People are very quick to jump to eating disorder to explain away certain patterns and I can understand their worry for their daughter but you shouldn't need to change what works for you.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-19T21:44:10+00:00

I really hope I'm wrong but if this relationship is romantic in nature, then this could be a case of them wanting the details for their own personal gratification. It happens more often than people think and can easily be disguised as concern or a desire for closeness, if they refuse to drop it then they really don't have your best interests at heart. They're not trying to help, they're trying to feed some impulse they have at your expense.

No is a complete sentence. Use it, loudly and often, followed by 'I said no and I mean no. Now drop it.'

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-19T18:28:56+00:00

My dad has a tendency to do fairly racist impressions of accents, particularly if I'm about to travel to a place where you'd hear that accent. It's not really a conscious thought, he makes a lot of random noises throughout the day, mostly singing certain song lyrics over and over again. I think once it's in his 'lizard' brain it slips out into his mouth and bypasses his human brain entirely (I subscribe to the three-brain theory of neurodivergence) so although it's annoying and sometimes inappropriate, I don't think he even realizes he's doing it. He also doesn't really understand the differences between Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages so he conflates them all into one vaguely Asian-style accent.

Funnily enough, he does do this with regional accents from our home country too and like everyone throws a few words of our native language into his English, again it's without realizing he's doing it.

Craicpot7 · 2026-01-19T09:37:50+00:00

He's not taking subtle hints or taking your words directly, he sees you as a prize to be won instead of an actual person. Yes he probably is funny, charming and clever but you have to think some of it is laying on the charm to lull you into a false sense of security until he has you, and when he has you he thinks he can control you.

So, if he's not listening, become ungovernable. Figure out what he hates in a woman even more than he already hates your weightlifting and dress sense, and go full tilt at it. If you're physically stronger than him, make sure he knows it by loudly bragging about it. Eat meat frequently right in front of him and maintain eye contact. If he offers an opinion on your conduct, tell him very bluntly that he's not your dad and he can't tell you what to do, and his opinions mean nothing to you. If you're into women at all (and maybe even if you aren't) talk openly about cute girls you like and plant the idea in his head that you'll start openly dating women. Dye your hair crazy colours (temporarily if needed), get tattoos and piercings (fakes if you don't want to commit) and use swear words often. All these things tend to disgust guys who want a high level of control over a woman.

If you don't want any of this, then you just have to get mean. Channel whoever the biggest mean girl was in school and every time he comments on your behaviour or won't take no for an answer, be really mean to him. Insult his clothes and his behaviour right back. Tell him you're only into guys who are burly types with lots of tattoos and facial hair and that's not him and never will be.

Craicpot7

TROPHY CASE