#hyperlexia is a hell of a thing

[beezelbubbles]

Kiddo was 2 the first time they wrote their name unprompted. I honestly didn't realize they had even been attempting letters. (They did this on my birthday, which is why I remember it very clearly.) So fast forward to 5 years old and at the meet the teachers night for kindergarten. Kiddo has now been reading for quite a while. Their teacher hands us a sheet of sight words and says the kids would be expected to be able to read all of those words by the end of the year. "Okay, but they can already read those." I got the spiel about no, kids just parrot, a 5 year old can't read. I handed the paper to Kiddo and said, "Hey, read these words please." Kiddo rattled them off. "Okay, so now that they've completed their reading for the year, can we talk about a plan to keep them engaged this year?" Again, that woman hated my kid, who was absolutely bored out of their skull and so like gifted kids do, made their own entertainment. We pulled Kiddo out first week of November. I had asked for a meeting with the teacher about some concerns I had, but when I got there the principal was also there, and the teacher said first we're going to talk about Kiddo's behavior issues. She then proceeded to lay out a bunch of classic ADHD symptoms. The principal backed her up. Neither of them cared about anything I was worried about. Kiddo cried tears of joy when we said they didn't need to go back.

[xianjaneway]

So, here's the thing.

I was in a cult.

I had no idea I was in a cult, because NO ONE KNOWS when they're in a cult. I thought I was just REALLY devoted to Jesus. 🙄

I got out of the cult. I got my husband & my kids out of the cult. I helped a lot of other people get out of the cult.

After a while, though, I just wanted a life that didn't involve cult-y things. What would I be like if I'd never been in the cult? Would I have still been a musician? Would I have had as many children? Would I ever have been diagnosed w/ADHD? What would my career have been? Would I have married the same man? Would I have healed from my upbringing in some different way?

We'll never know, but we can know what life is like AFTER the cult. THAT is the option open to me now.

You know what I didn't do while I was in the cult?

Read.

I didn't read fiction books anymore.

And I had a degree in Creative Writing!

Know why?

Because I was supposed to, "....take every thought captive, & make it obedient to Christ!"

Thoughts lead to actions, and sin in real life begins with your thought life.

Aaaaaannd, if I were to read a book with, let's say, a sex scene in it, & it made me have sexy thoughts about someone who was NOT MY HUSBAND, then that's a sin.

Not just against God, but against MY HUSBAND.

Yep. My sexy thoughts are supposed to start AND end with him & him alone. Anything outside that is like bringing other people into our marriage. It's LIKE ADULTERY.

Folks, as you know, most fiction books don't have a rating system like AO3.

You can't filter them quite as easily.

I could be reading a hardboiled-detective noir mystery set in Appalachia in 1987, thinking we're about to explore a hidden robotics lab that's tucked behind a waterfall, but SUDDENLY, SEX!!!

And, regardless of how I reacted to the words on the page, by letting myself read any of them, I was (seriously!) giving the Devil a foothold.

To my neurodivergent brain, (which was also raising up to 4 small children & working night shift) it was simply easier to stop reading fiction written for the secular market, than it was to try & research which authors would do a fade-to-black.

A researcher named Steven Hassan came up with the "B.I.T.E Model of Authoritarian Control." He shows how cults control:

Behavior.

Information.

Thought.

Emotion.

Look him up, if you want to understand why your Trump-loving relatives have lost their minds. 💔

I'm just sorry.

On behalf of all the Christian nationalists who are making life hell for everyone now, I'm TRULY sorry that I ever believed any of this bullshit.

Cults get ahold of you when you're vulnerable. It can even be argued that the churches (yes, plural) that I was in were at one point NOT a cult, & slowly became a cult, over a period of decades.

As I'm trying to live my non-cult-y life, I'm just so damn thankful that fanfiction exists.

See, there are only so many things I can talk about in therapy, & there are only so many experiences I can go have in any given day.

However, I have HYPERLEXIA, baby, & a job with plenty of boring-AF tasks!

I read over 700 wpm.

And since I'm a woodworker & eBay seller, (who also has Long COVID--thanks Anti-vaxxers!) I work by myself a lot.

I found a lovely app called Evie, which lets me download fics, & it READS THEM ALOUD to me.

And, as I've re-discovered fiction, I've realized that I'm processing a lot of emotions that simply HAD NO LANGUAGE OR OUTLET before I read your stories.

Yeah.

If I left you a bunch of weirdly-vulnerable comments in your fics, THAT'S WHY.

Because that's what cults do: they take your language away, your emotions away, & your choices away, & then, to add insult to injury, they use your energy, your fucking life-force, to further their own agenda, whatever it is.

And yet you people....

You brain-rotted, fandom-obesessed, encyclopedias of pop culture that you are, have churned out incredible, moving, healing, BEAUTIFUL, SKILLFUL pieces of fiction that are HELPING ME HEAL FROM IT ALL.

I'll never forget the day my husband said something that irritated me, but I'd read the sweetest Good Omens fic earlier, where Aziraphale had responded to Crowley's grumpiness with a funny quip. I'd invited something *kind* to be planted in me, & was able to respond to my husband in kindness.

I'd spent such a long time marinating in the cult's expectations, & their promises for eternity.

It's so damn nice to read about real human emotions, experiences, struggles, relationships, or whatever, just to wash my brain with a different perspective.

Maybe it's old news to all of you who didn't spend the last 25+ years in a cult, but fiction helped develop my under-nourished empathy. It lubricated the rusty gears of my brain, with new words & new experiences. It gave me a new dictionary & thesaurus worth of words to describe my experiences & inner life.

Limiting information limits language, which limits thought, & ultimately limits action.

Every time you write, you help set someone free.

[tsunflowers]

"this is crazy bc it’s like 'how to medicalize your child once you suspect they aren’t neurotypical.' if the kid is nt you can call them 'gifted' but if they’re nd you diagnose them with hyperlexia syndrome"

I assume that the discrepancy in perception is perhaps partially caused by U.S. gifted education actually just being Advanced Placement (AP) at best, instead of actually being designed for gifted students' needs, but you can absolutely be both gifted and neurodivergent: it's called "twice-exceptional". I was in a congregated gifted program (not in the U.S.) for all of elementary/middle school (and took the "gifted" section for all the courses it was available for in Highschool*, but that is less relevant for my anecdote), and I'd say at least a third of my class had some sort of learning disability, or had ADHD or Autism. And that only based on the ones I KNOW for sure, either because, like me, they had technology and/or extra-time accommodations in class for their learning disability, or I heard directly from them or indirectly through our parents talking that they had ADHD or Autism.

That specific definition you posted for Hyperlexia definitely seems like BS though (like, that definition is literally just "is a gifted reader, but also is on the autism spectrum & has a special interest in reading/linguistics). But that leads into a bigger issue that I want everyone who thinks all psychology is BS to know about: the problem with these definitions isn't the psychologist, it's the people who write the DSM. For example, when I went to get reassessed so I could continue to get my accommodations for my learning disability in University, the Psychologist that I had been seeing since I was in kindergarten informed me that the people who write the DSM had changed things so now my learning disability, which impairs my WRITING and TYPING, now had to be classified as a READING disability!?!?! She even mentioned how she had gone to a convention or something, where the DSM people where soliciting feedback from Psychologists about their various proposed changes, and nearly everyone in the room told them that their proposed changes did not at all reflect the reality they were seeing in patients, but the DSM people went ahead and made the changes anyways!

*(these "gifted" sections of the courses were separate from the AP sections. I specifically never enrolled in these AP sections because I knew my learning disability would make them hell, leading me to take regular 4th year math, despite being gifted in math, because my school only offered an AP section & no gifted section)

I've been thinking about this bc you're right that there isn't always a line drawn between gifted and neurodivergent but I think there are often attempts to separate expressions of neurodivergence into "good" and "bad." there's some nd kids who get sorted into gifted classes and others who get sorted into special education. we know neither of those is "good" or "bad" but one is definitely seen as more positive by society. so I think the people who wrote that website wanted to be able to sort nd kids into the gifted column as long as they didn't have "bad" nd traits

I already forgot what the website was but it was obviously not reliable. I just thought their list was so crazy

the dsm is really a top-down problem for the field of psychology as much as it is an essential tool. I think this kind of thing happens in all fields where there's a gap between people in academia writing manuals and people who are "on the ground" so to speak but in other fields it doesn't impact people's lives and mental health so directly. it is truly wild to reclassify a writing and typing based disability into reading based but I guess it made sense in their arcane system based on the literature and not the people

[mossy-thing]

15 Questions for 15 followers

Thank you @tathrin for tagging me! I know that it has been literal months, but I forgot I had screenshotted the questions and couldn't find them on your blog. Oops. Anyway!

1. Are you named after anyone?

Indeed I am! Alexander the Great, to be precise! Why would my mum name her child after a colonising murderer? I kept kicking her. Like, in uterus. I was a very agressive fetus. And also a very agressive baby, I just kept. Biting her. Like I was angry she gave me life. (Which on second thought, considering the people I've had to deal with so far... understandable, little me.)

2. When was the last time you cried?

Tonight! I had a recurring nigtmare of a zombie chasing me. I escaped, the thing that made it a nightmare was that I had locked it in with my family. And when I woke up, I was convinced I had killed them.

3. Do you have kids?

No, and I hopefully never will! Fun fact about 8 year old me, when a teacher told us that every girl would find a boy to settle down and have kids with one day in sex ed, I very confidently announced that I would never start a family because it would hold me back in my career. This is like one of those moments I should have realised I'm aroace, lol.

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Kind of. The issue is that people often think I'm serious.

5. What's the first thing you notice about people?

When I see them, what they look like. When I talk to them on the phone, it's their voice. Is there another option?

6. What's your eyecolour?

Green.

7. Scary movies or good endings?

Both, as long as I get to analyze the living hell out of them. (Example: when watching The Menu for the first time, I kept bothering my mum like: Look, she said she doesn't want an intellectually callenging dinner and he literally crushes meatballs that look like brains for her cheeseburger! Mum look! Mum isn't this amazing??) I also really love tortured characters, so scary movies or stuff with a lot of angst potential is what I usually gravitate towards, but I really like some happy movies too.

8. Any special talents?

First and foremost, I don't really believe in talents, and get irrationally angry when people tell me I must have a natural gift or something because to me, that implies I didn't work my ass off for years to get to a good point but that Fortuna just emptied a bucket of goods over my head as soon as I entered this world kicking, screaming and biting everyone. The only thing that I would count as a talent (in a very loose meaning of the word) is that I started reading whole books about 3 months after getting to school. I think that's hyperlexia? Might be wrong, I never really researched it.

9. Where were you born?

Not in switzerland, despite my elementary school certificate saying so.

10. What are your hobbies?

Reading, writing, drawing, playing the lyre, at the moment everything Tolkien, though that can change in like a day to something completely different.

11. Do you have any pets?

I do!! She is a cat, her name is Indira, she is very cuddly and sounds permanently pissed, to the point that a friend who was watching her while we were on vacation sent us a very concerned message because she had actually meowed like a normal cat for once. She hates other animals of all kinds, had to be kept in a seperate room in the shelter we picked her up from, was born on the same day as me (though two years later) and has a habit of sitting in a spot in the garden where she can be seen by the dogs on both sides of the fence and meowing very provocatively. The people in the shelter actually wanted to name her Diva because she is such a little bitch, but they decided on Indira since they thought people wouldn't take her in if her name was Diva. I love her very much.

12. What sports do you play/have you played?

I was forced to play batminton in 7th grade because of a stupid rule that said that all band kids had to do a sport thing too. I hated every second of it.

13. How tall are you?

1,63m. At my birth, people calcualted that I would never get over 1,45, and I was the shortest kid in everything until I was 16, when I grew 20 centimeters at once without warning. I very much enjoy telling people I am taller than them.

14. Favourite subject in school?

Art and English.

15. Dream job?

A published author. I am actually working on a trilogy right now! It might take a while until I actually get it done though. Does anyone know how cold it has to be that your fingers have to be amputated? Google is failing me.

Tagging (only if you want, also yay I have nearly enough followers to actually do this now!) @strawberriesinmoominvalley @dirtmuse @babybat98 @eight-ball-juice @liamwinters @harmoniousworld @hyperlexia-1 @daeron-the-flautist @mistergandalf @the-sewerrats @slowdeathhymn @suuzzzzzzannnnn otherwise this is an open tag.

[eimearkuopio]

I think the existential dread is honestly different than it used to be. Let me explain. I was a precocious kid. My undiagnosed ADHD resulted in hyperlexia. If I didn't have stuff to read, I was not okay.

My parents were scout leaders when they were younger, and holidays up to... at most about age 8, so the early 90s, consistent of the four of us accompanying the local scout troop to Guernsey. One of the scouts lent me the book she was reading. This was a mistake, because that book was Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence. The first part, which was the only part I managed to get through, was told from the perspective of a schoolchild living in... Bristol, I think? Nuclear bombs fall. Her father doesn't make it home. She's stuck at home with her stepmother and her younger (half? step?) siblings. They gradually succumb to starvation and radiation poisoning before the stepmother euthanises herself and two of the kids. (The third one didn't have radiation poisoning. They gave her to some healthier survivors to raise.)

I remember learning about the ozone hole, and how terrifying it was. I remember when the Kyoto Protocol started, that things changed and freezers and fridges didn't work the same any more but that it was for a good reason because we had inadvertently damaged the whole atmosphere and if we didn't change our ways it would cause serious problems.

That was some existential dread. But the bombs would only drop if someone pushed the button. The ozone hole is actually doing really well these days, relatively speaking.

But the climate... Well. We're all responsible, in that every action we take contributes to it. And yet, we're not, because most of the world was on lockdown for ages there and emissions didn't drop by very much at all, so what the hell is causing the emissions? We have a problem that is bigger than the ozone hole, but nobody is willing to enforce the kinds of changes that will be needed to fix it... And when the world enforces it externally, still, nothing happens. So that's why I think our teachers had no idea what kind of existential dread we would experience, and couldn't have been any more prepared for it than for packing robots and passwords.

[thyfavouritegay]

task failed successfully: a tale of growing up around d&d.

so you guys know the phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”?

yeah, so as a kid i was stupid.

well, no i wasn’t stupid, i had a very select and specific set of knowledge and information about the world. specifically, although i could not compute the word “beholder” as “one who beholds”, i could understand it perfectly fine as the monster from dungeons and dragons, the beholder.

Example of the beholder:

yeah, this bad boy. that’s a beholder.

anyways, so as a kid with autism and hyperlexia who liked to read a lot and spent a lot of time alone thinking, i encountered many a turn of phrase, including the aftorementioned “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.

but instead of taking it to mean “beauty is subjective”, i took it to mean “beauty is subjective for specifically the view of Beholders”. 

needless to say, this was confusing as hell. i was bewildered. puzzled. baffled.

but i finally scrounged up a meaning for it. “Beauty is irrelavent, because in the eyes of Beholders, we are all just prey, and so it doesn’t matter what you think is ugly or not, it (like you) is only an obstacle and plaything for a Beholder. :) enjoy things, the Beholder’ll kill you eventually.”

anyways needless to say, i wasn’t right.

BUT I WASN’T FULLY WRONG ABOUT THE MESSAGE IN THE END EITHER SO HAH

[angelcloves]

The Lights From The Sea, Chapter 6: When you mentioned that you were upping the rating to "T", I about had a heart attack! I thought that we were about to see Philip dissect Vee (Or at least, threaten to do so) or something!

XD So I was extremely relieved when the worst thing that happened was Hunter help Vee take a bath.

Vee's struggles with reading are valid, I had the absolute worst time learning to read in school. Hell, I didn't quite get the grasp of it until third grade! Dyslexia will do that to 'ya. I'm intrigued by the idea of Vee being so interested in humans that she wants to be able to read (One of) their language(s). Normally I wouldn't peg Vee as being that daring and curious (Girl stole some books! Right from under a bunch of peoples' noses!), but I'm liking it so far.

And Hunter...

Oh Hunter, sweetheart...

Fuck Philip. Just, fuck that man up and down, left or right, however you want to do it. I just want to make him hurt for harming that sweet child! Hunter, there's no way you were enough of a "mess" when you arrived in his life to ever justify him physically harming you.

I think Vee has already realized that he's basically just as much of a prisoner as she is. When she escapes, I hope she takes Hunter with her...

oh goodness if i was doing an on screen dissection i would have gone all the way to m! coming up with ratings is hard but child abuse topics are sensitive and i like to make sure people know that things might open up old wounds especially when we came right out and just discussed it in the open like that instead of little implications

i think vee and luz would both be super into reading but i dont think its an easy thing when you have nobody to teach you how to do it! i got lucky with hyperlexia so im on the other side of the spectrum from you (taught myself how to read aged four off of leapfrog tapes...) but im glad you related to her because like yeah its hard and theres nothing wrong with struggling!

and poor hunter indeed... he deserves to just be someones son. hes such a good kid. and as much as i want him to run away with vee the lack of gills and fins does pose a problem doesnt it

[aikainkauna]

@alcoveoflove replied to your post “@alcoveoflove replied to your photo yeah about...”

oh my god i'm so sorry �� i promise i didn't mean anything weird or uncomfortable. sorry again

Yeah, okay, okay, peace. It’s all right. I figured you were new to Tumblr. But I (like all fanfic writers/graphic makers) do appreciate just... proper, honest interactions rather than likespams or something. So now you know.

But it’s really hard for me to read text that’s not properly capitalised (plus, I can’t read emoji on desktop so I don’t know what you’re saying with those either), so if you want to communicate with me at any length, I’d have to ask you to not do that. I know that’s something all the kids today are doing, but I’ve got hyperlexia (with full comprehension), and every time something’s spelled/capitalised/punctuated etc. in a non-standard way, or squashed into small size or abbreviated to txt spk or something, it’s painful for me to go through because I take in text at such a high speed and have no control over it. It’s like speed bumps on roads, or at worst, actual brick walls in the middle of highways--now imagine you’re driving through such a road at a Formula 1 car speed. It’s no longer driving but crash, crash, boom, bang, guts and splatter and pain. Or like every word’s interrupted by a sound that’s like forks on a plate or nails on a blackboard--it’s physically painful sometimes. I don’t know if dyslexics have the same thing, but that’s at least how it works out if your language centres are overdeveloped. One of those superpowers of suck--I can write elaborate, floridly poetic fic and speak five languages, but something seemingly small like that ties my brain into knots and creates a negative association with the person sending it towards me (like flinching away from them).

JSYK. I try not to go on about all this “waah, I’m triggered by this and triggered by that” stuff on here like everyone on here does (life’s too short), but it’s worth mentioning sometimes because it throws such a huge spanner into interpersonal communications. It’s not me being an arsehole grammar Nazi, but a neurological thing I can’t help any more than I could help an allergy. So if I ask someone to do that it’s not me coming down from on high with thunder and lightning bolts or whatever; more like “ow, can you turn that down, it hurts?”

But anyway. I do genuinely appreciate proper interactions and things. I know a hell of a lot of readers think they haven’t got anything interesting to say, but I doubt *any* fanficcer expects some sort of Wildean wit or highbrow academic conversations from commenters--I don’t really think there is such a thing as some sort of threshold of smartness or interestingness or whatever to a fanfic comment. Even a small comment like “I enjoyed this!” or “Hey, that was hot. Keep up the good work” can make a fanficcer’s day. Especially if they’re in a small fandom where hardly anyone ever interacts with them at all. (Last year I wrote 17 fics and ten of them got *no comments whatsoever.* Even if some of them had *thousands* of readers. Imagine how fun that was?) If there should be a proud, popular BNF person somewhere who’d be all sneering at some “plebs” and thinking they aren’t worthy to comment on their precious fics... well, they can frankly fuck off.

Trust me, even that seemingly dumb “Nice fic!” or “Unf!” is worth its weight in gold. I generally tend to... fucking drown people in cocktails and roses if they ever pipe up!