I Went To A Local Metal Show With Some Friends And Not Only Was It Fun As Hell But Also It Reminded Me

Sharing is caring! Your pancreas is mine!

This beautifully and accurately reflects the burnout gifted kid experience. Turns out a psychologist clocked my adhd at a young age but because I’m AFAB and ‘gifted’ they put it down on my sheet as, I quote, “watch out for adhd” which I only found out after getting my diagnosis, nearly a decade later after **I** did my research and **I** brought it up.

i feel like before you complain about how "former gifted kids are always acting like they're oppressed because everyone doesn't treat them like they're special anymore," i think you should probably try to understand the common timeline that a kid getting funneled into the gifted program follows.

usually, a child starts getting funneled into gifted tracks around preschool-to-kindergarten. typically, what will happen is a kid will show socially unusual interest in and affinity for a basic life skill that also happens to be taught in school--usually either verbality, reading/writing, understanding and manipulating shapes, or basic numerical concepts, or some combination of the above. they might start talking fairly early, for example, or start reading complete sentences earlier than their peers, or show a lot of unusual interest in basic arithmetic. they might get IQ tested, they might not; this is pretty irrelevant because IQ both has almost no correlation with any measure of "intelligence" other than the IQ test itself, and is an extremely poor predictor of academic success.

based on this, the parents are encouraged to push this child into academic settings earlier and at a faster pace than their peers. once in grade school, they'll be funneled into the gifted track. often, they'll have to "test in" to the gifted track, but they tend to weight what the kid is showing an affinity for the most when "testing in." what the gifted track looks like is different for every school, but generally the common factors are more work, assigned at a faster pace, and dealing with concepts that their "typical" peers are not taught until a year or more later.

this is where the most common timeline becomes important, and diverges from what i think a lot of people's perceptions of gifted kids are. the kid fails. the kid does not have some kind of magical universal affinity for every aspect of academia. in fact, the kid has, in the context of their neurotypical peers setting the standard by which they have to live up to, significant deficits in areas other than the one they showed interest in at a young age. for example, maybe they started reading incredibly early, but once they get to grade school, they start failing every math test. they write numbers backwards and copy them from the board in the wrong order. they get basic arithmetic wrong.

here's the thing: the gifted kid program accidentally self-selects for developmentally disabled children with academic splinter skills. splinter skills are incredibly common in people with developmental disabilities; frequently, they don't get perceived as such because they're very often completely nonacademic (and may not be perceived as a "skill" at all, particularly in the context of more profound developmental disabilities--someone learning to use AAC very quickly, for example, is still perceived as a deficit no matter how quickly they do it, instead of a skill in developing communication methods with significantly less support and interaction than those who learn to communicate verbally). developmentally disabled people with academic splinter skills are significantly more common than abled people with an uncommon affinity for all areas of academia, or abled people with splinter skills.

once a kid starts failing, generally the timeline splits off into two possibilities, mostly dependent on how supportive their parents are, how well-funded their school is, and what psychiatric resources are available in their area of the country. option one is that they just keep failing, and get punished more and more violently over time for their perceived "stubbornness." they are perceived as obviously capable of doing the work the gifted program is assigning them, since they were tracked into the gifted program to begin with, and their grades in this other specific subject are stellar, so obviously they're just lazy and need to be whipped into shape via punishment.

the other option is that the kid's developmental disability is clocked by a teacher or counselor, or even their parents, and enough strings are pulled to get them evaluated by a school psychologist. then, they'll get dual-tracked into the gifted program and the special ed program, with classes divided along where their splinter skills and deficits lie. the special ed program is not actually a good place for disabled children and is incredibly traumatizing to be in.

either way, they come out of school with a significant amount of trauma. legitimate trauma. from being a disabled person in the public education system, which fucking sucks and is an awful experience i wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Beautiful and haunting!!

Blessed are those who listen, sacred are those who watch. The eyes and the ears will soon disappear to the face of the winding-down clock. Gone is wit and riddle, gone is the bird's best friend, gone is the angel the forest entangles and they leave the dog to ascend. The sight and the stars and the moon and the sea and the sun will welcome the top. The white forest grows and the first watcher knows how their hearts will tick-tick then stop.

No clue this happened but this is epic

Happy Valentines <3

Hannibal (2013-2015) is a love story

The duality of existing as a person on the internet!

“wow i can’t believe a trans cat girl hacked and leaked the no-fly list. the way we came about this information is so absurd, it’s funny” 🤝 “the actual information that was leaked is abhorrently racist, specifically towards middle eastern and south asian people. that is absolutely not funny and needs to be spoken about without the absurdity of the situation dominating the conversation”

Just watched all three kingsmen movies I’m chronological order and I’m thriving. Rasputins dance battle gives me serotonin. People are complaining about historical accuracy and personally couldn’t give less of a shit if it’s accurate or not. It’s an action comedy, historical accuracy was not and isn’t the goal and I think that’s fine. In other news, Harry’s nervous little smile when Elton John blew a kiss at him was a very sweet and random little moment.

its making me scream laugh

My new desktop background!

I WAS SOBBING AND THEN It WOULDN’T LOAD THE NEXT CHAPTER ALMXWKXKEKS

Edit: hng typos but ao3 seems to be fixed now woop

I literally just reached the last chapter…

Why must you hurt me like this ao3?