Twilight Velvet blinked, confusion saturating every part of her being. She sat back in the plush chair she was seated in and set her daughter down on the floor gently. “What do you mean you’ve reached a diagnosis? Is my little Sparkle sick?”
Next to Twilight, her husband Nightlight cleared his throat as his eyes widened. “We won’t have to see some expensive witch doctor for whatever she has, right?”
The doctor sighed and smiled. She was a unicorn mare with a gray-streaked mane and a worn, easy smile. A pair of round spectacles rested easily upon her muzzle, but Twilight Velvet watched as she drew them into her pale orange magic and slipped them into the front pocket of her white coat.
“Your daughter is physically a very healthy filly,” Doctor Missing Piece said, her tone filled with a levity that was downright deceptive to Twilight’s ears.
She felt her husband sigh in relief next to her, resisting the urge to elbow him sharply. Did he not notice that omission?
“Well, then what part of her isn’t healthy?” Twilight asked. Something in her tone was enough to get the receptionist to snap her head up, startled. Twilight paid no mind to the mare; she was the only other one in the waiting room. The office’s closing hours were soon, and she and Nightlight had been assured that the only reason that they were not brought into another room for the talk.
“It is my understanding that your daughter has been showing atypical behavior ever since early fillyhood? That she was late to talk and can’t talk around non-family very well?”
Twilight’s withers rolled with the brunt of the frustration she was suppressing. Her lips pursed into a thin line, and next to her, Nightlight was eyeing her with concern. “I’m very aware of this. We were told that she was a mute of sorts by the last whitecoat… something about it being elective?”
“Selective,” Nightlight corrected gently.
Twilight looked in his direction for a moment and gave a tiny nod. “Yes. Barely any talking. No eye contact. Our little Sparkle has been afraid of noises and textures for pony’s sake… we’ve admittedly been at the point where we considering taking her to an exorcist stars-darned zebra doctor next just to rule out some kind of enchantment being placed upon her.”
“We don’t know that much about magic,” Nightlight said, sheepishly scratching the back of his head. “Everypony in our family has always scored above average on Arcane Evaluation Reports and our son — little Twilight’s big brother — has been studying at a guard academy.”
“He shows a lot of promise,” Twilight said dreamily, modestly clasping her forehooves in front of her, “or so we’re told. Military school has been a good choice for him. To hear that our Sparkle is… well, when we had to pull her from the public magic kindergarten after all the meltdowns—”
“—and bullying,” Nightlight said, adding his own whispering interruption with a shudder.
“Yes… I… it was so hard to believe that she couldn’t make any friends or… do anything that other foals her age could. Shiny is a normal colt with such normal interests — oh, and maybe a pinch more than normal magic levels — but we thought Sparkle was going to be so special. You and your other whitecoat folks have been talking to her for a few hours — can’t you see how smart she is? None of us understood how she couldn’t be doing well in school when school used to be the only thing she ever talked about!”
“...Until we enrolled her in our local magic kindergarten,” said Nightlight, shaking his head sadly. “Right after her first day, all her excitement was replaced with refusal and fear. Our little Twilight Sparkle never so much as thought about putting her hoof out of line, and she cried about going to school when she used to cry about not being in school like her brother was.”
Twilight looked to Missing Piece, unable to keep a small measure of pleading in her tone. “Surely you can see why we started to think something was wrong? There aren’t any chapbooks or materials we could find at the library about what could be causing this behavior…”
“And our family physician did assure us that it was purely behavioral,” added Nightlight.
“So,” Twilight said tersely, “what is wrong with Sparkle? What has to be done differently?”
Doctor Missing Piece cleared her throat calmly. She gave the two a distantly reproachful look before finally seating herself across from Twilight and her husband. From the unusually relaxed position she took on the cushioned bench, Twilight was able to see the rainbow of question marks that dotted the mare’s flank. Their arrangement was a lax sort of infinity loop — something that was far too telltale of uncertainty, which was the last thing that Twilight wanted to see on the flank of any whitecoat, let alone a developmental pediatrician.
“Absolutely nothing is wrong with your daughter — that doesn’t mean she isn’t going to struggle, though. There are many adaptations as parents that you two will have to make in order to continue and make sure that Twilight Sparkle is the happiest, healthiest filly that she can be.”
Twilight was about ready to bite the inside of her cheek. Their daughter wasn’t able to watch a color-coded stack of blocks be put in a toy chest without bawling her eyes out. When Twilight decided to do some spring cleaning in her daughter’s room to welcome in the grand new year of 989, little Sparkle had stumbled into her newly tidied room, bookshelves, dresser, and desk, what followed had been one of the greatest nightmares of all their lives. Sparkle had what Twilight and Nightlight later learned was called a panic attack at her mother rearranging the furniture and doing spring cleaning for the first time since the littler Twilight had left her crib.
Anything not noted in a calendar or having the predictability of a pendulum’s sway was clearly something that could set Sparkle off. For a mare with two growing foals and a lifelong love of interior styles, this was unthinkable. For Twilight’s little star, it was unspeakable — she had only started working on really verbalizing the year before, and kept her muzzle too stuck in books to articulate what problems she had. While Twilight understood this was the common nature of all foals at that age, the severity with Twilight Sparkle was enough to make a grown mare want to have her own private tantrum sometimes. Shining Armor had never been like this, and it wasn’t in Twilight Velvet’s heart to punish a foal for something that was likely beyond their control.
“What does my daughter need?”
“Well,” Missing Piece began, her tone cautious and more relaxing than Twilight wanted to admit, “it does appear that your daughter is neurodivergent.”
Both Twilight and Nightlight blinked like a moth staring at their first lantern.
“She has two brains?” Twilight asked.
“Oh, good gods!” Nightlight exclaimed, forehooves flying to his muzzle. “Does she need surgery?"
For once, the ever-patient warmth of Missing Pieces fell just a bit. The self-assured way she held her withers sagged with the same momentary sadness that stole her smile. “No, that isn’t what it means. ‘Neurodivergent’ means that your daughter is autistic.”
Twilight cocked her head to the side. “I don’t really think she likes drawing that much.”
Nightlight nodded in agreement. “We did get her an art kit a few Hearth’s Warming Day a few years ago. We thought it would help her exercise her magic and use ways to communicate with us when her words failed her.”
Missing Piece’s ears swiveled back dejectedly. “What I said was autistic Missus Velvet and Mister Nightlight. Autism spectrum disorder is a very misunderstood condition that lasts a pony’s whole life.”
A cold clench immediately gripped Twilight’s chest and she gasped at the sudden pain. Her mind was already galloping with every horrible possibility — hospitalization, mountains of medication, an untold amount of stitches, and gods knew what else. How was their little Twilight Sparkle going to live her whole life with this debilitating, mysterious illness?
“No, no, no,” Nightlight whispered, gulping visibly and letting his ears swivel back. “It can’t be so that somepony like our little Twilight Sparkle is going to be sick forever. You told us that she was physically alright, for pony’s sake!”
One forehoof was raised abruptly before either of them could protest further. “No, she isn’t chronically ill. It is a developmental disorder with a whole spectrum of severity. Twilight does appear to be on the higher functioning side, seeing as her language comprehension is excellent. Her intellectual, magical, and cognitive abilities range from being fine to prodigious, if I do say so myself. However, she is emotionally and socially very, very behind her peers. I would take her to somepony else just to be sure she doesn’t have anything else going untreated alongside her autism.”
Twilight Velvet had been wringing her hooves enough to visibly rub her white coat into a ragged display. “Just what does autism even do? We’ve never even heard of that before, so what can we do to help our daughter if we don’t even know her affliction?”
“We have some pamphlets and other helpful materials to take home,” said the doctor with her usual breezy tone returned. She brushed her Prancian braid away from where its loose strands had escaped their confines. “I'm sure you'll find them much more helpful than the chapbooks about the usual earth-pony-devised methods of 'quiet hooves' hogwash and scolding magical stimming. But I imagine you two would like a little more of an explanation before we bring Twilight Sparkle out from the playroom and send you all home?”
“Yes!” Twilight and Nightlight both hurriedly exclaimed. “Yes! Of course!” By now, both of them were clutching one another in an embrace born of anxiety.
Missing Piece nodded and sat back, readying an explanation she had clearly given so many times before. Twilight spotted the practiced ease in which the doctor returned her spectacles to her muzzle and the calm way she spoke.
“Autism impairs some of the more basic social response a pony can have. Missus Velvet, you said that your daughter often had a hard time understanding your tone and reading the expression of her teachers before you pulled her out of public schooling. This is a common manifestation of autism found across all areas of the spectrum. Autistic ponies are capable of living just as happy and long lives as anypony else, they just need an extra guiding light sometimes in order to help understand themselves and others. This is usually in the form of school accommodations and real therapy, not the kind of stuff they're peddling in Manehattan institutes and other places like them.”
Twilight Velvet drew in a deep breath and unwound herself from the hug of her husband. The cushy waiting room chair welcomed her as she plopped back in one, drawing a deep breath and disturbing the elegant simplicity of the way she rolled up the waves of her mane. “You mean she just might… need a headshrinker?”
“I would recommend a family therapist who specializes in autism to help you two work with little Twilight — and vice versa,” said Missing Pieces with an approving nod. “Twilight Sparkle needs to know that you are there for her. Sometimes, her world is going to feel very strange and scary, and she will want to stick with what is familiar to her more than most foals. Have you noticed any interests she holds more passionately than any other foal her age?”
Tension melted away from the room as the awkward laughter of Nightlight and Twilight drowned out the burble of the fish tank. However long it would take to explain autism, they knew that it would take twice as long to explain the odd fixations of their daughter. There was not a pony alive who would not be able to pick up on them after thirty seconds of talking with her — and Doctor Pieces had spent hours with their little Sparkle.
Doctor Pieces smiled more authentically, the gesture as warm as her peachy coat. “It’s good that you two are aware of your daughter’s special interests. They’re going to be a great source of fun and comfort for her, and it is extraordinarily rare that an autistic pony has an unhealthy special interest — and the same goes for their fixation on it. We rarely see anything so dysfunctional that you should be concerned, just make sure that you let her know she gives others space to express themselves too. When you consider how hard it is going to be for Twilight Sparkle socially and the love she has for their special interests, she becomes extra vulnerable to bullies. She is very likely to not know if somepony might be trying to use her with false niceties, even when she is at an age where her peers will learn to have seen past a fake smile.”
“I have been doing homeschooling lessons with her since the kindergarten debacle,” Nightlight chimed. “Vel and I talked… we’re not going to be able to do it forever. I can make spyglasses from home, at least for a while. But we’re never sending her back to public school… I’m afraid we just can’t think of where she might be able to go. The truth is that it is hard to imagine what Twilight Sparkle’s future would be like when she has no friends outside of the family, is not involved in community herd behavior, and refuses to even play in the garden. Neither of us has tried to force anything upon her beyond what is reasonable — eating her veggies, no late-night reading, and remembering to brush her teeth. Past the next few birthdays, the idea of raising her is… so uncertain, Doctor Pieces.”
In response, the doctor’s posture straightened and she nodded somberly. “I understand that, but you are in luck. Canterlot is full of resources once a pony understands what autism is, which is a breath of fresh air. The disorder is actually most common in unicorns, and we know that those considered magical prodigies — regardless of their ability in other areas — are often more likely to be autistic, though not necessarily why. Being able to understand the notable impact autism has on magic beyond splinter spells would be a breakthrough. Unfortunately, we’re barely anywhere different with research into the condition itself than we were seventy years ago. That’s unlikely to change, even if it would be a leap and a gallop in educating parents and teachers about what a crisis under-diagnosis and no autism awareness is doing to Equestria. Unfortunately, you try arguing for the importance of magical-cognitive research in a nation with an earth pony majority and their long-standing ideas about the nature of magic, along with a goddess who agrees with them on the throne.”
Twilight Velvet caught the sound of Nightlight awkwardly clearing her throat and nodding along absentmindedly. She had been rubbing at her hooves again, letting her mind wander to if she would benefit from having bracelets to fidget with. Both her and Nightlight could never comprehend how anypony could be critical of Princess Celestia, especially not if they ever were at the level of education that Doctor Pieces had to be. There wasn’t a doubt in Twilight’s mind that this mare had taken a history lesson at some point in her life, and likely in some grand, polished place instead of the usual array of quaint schoolhouses that Twilight Velvet’s Equestrian art books had informed her were the norm outside of all larger cities — the kind that had neither magic schools nor flight camps. Even though both her and Nightlight were Canterlot natives, they couldn’t imagine such a vastly different educational situation, much less what might be wrong with it.
And still, this mare whose academia experience easily outshone all of Twilight’s own was probably three steps and two leaps for what could sound like heresy instead of venting out of context.
“Thank you,” Twilight said quietly, sincerely as she kept her eyes lowered demurely, ”for all that you have told us. Nightie and I were so scared about what might be happening — and if we would have to find a way to break gods-know what kind of terrible news to Shiny if something had turned out wrong. I… I think we’re ready to see our little star now.”
Hmm...
Okay, please know I say this with love, but... I don't think this is your best work, my dude. Some of the dialogue felt a bit stilted, and I never really got a grasp of the characterization you were going for. Like, you seemed to be setting up a dynamic of Night Light being a little lovably dense and Velvet the sensible one with him mentioning zebra witch doctors and not catching the Doctor's mention of "physically" healthy. But then Velvet brings up a zebra exorcist and thinks "two brains" with the word neurodivergent, plus her line about, "Twilight doesn't like drawing that much!" So... are they both dumb? I can get not knowing what autism is, but even beyond that they kind of come across as "airhead suburban parents" and not "raised an alicorn princess, one of the best shield mages on the planet, and an adolescent dragon."
Then there was a lot of exposition. The doctor asks about Twilight's abnormal behavior, and Velvet and Light then just word vomit like seven paragraphs of backstory. A better way to do it may have been having the doctor ask questions about specific symptoms, and then they answer. Or maybe a previous scene of them two in the waiting room, discussing things until they get called in.
And then there's the overall "feel" of it. You had the doctor give them a pamphlet. Well... this feels like a pamphlet. Maybe an after-school special or Hallmark movie event are better comparisons. Obviously this is just the first chapter, but I get this vibe that it's not, "Here is a story about Twilight being autistic," but more, "Here is a story about autistic people." Do you see the difference? One is character driven, the other is message driven. And it's not a bad message, of course not! But it just feels... iunno, artificial? Especially after this line:
I'm sorry... what? "Earth pony majority?" Since when? Other than Ponyville, which has been specifically called an earth pony village, every other town and city we've seen has been a roughly equal mix. Moreover, pretty much every pony in Canterlot, the seat of power, is a unicorn. Shit, the only earth pony i can remember seeing in Canterlot is fucking Hayseed Turnip Truck. And what is this about their, "long-standing ideas about the nature of magic?" I mean yeah, Applejack snapped at Twilight for using magic during Winter Wrap-Up, but that was because it broke tradition, not because "t'ain't natural." Plus, earth ponies have lived, worked, and been families with unicorns and pegasi for centuries, hell, thousands of years depending on your head canon. And look, I know people love to dunk on Celestia, and she kinda deserves it. But ignoring the pleas of doctors for 70+ years because ostensibly, "lol not real," isn't incompetent. It's cruel. So yeah, this feels like yet another instance of someone shoving real world human politics and agendas into My Little Pony, even though it doesn't really make sense, because the message demands it.
Look, despite my snarky writing style, I hope you don't take this as me being cruel or mean. You know we're cool, my dude. I mean, I only write these big long comments on stories by people I like and respect that I feel is beneath their usual level. But then hey, who am I? Just some random asshole in a brown hat. Other people seem to dig it, and that's awesome. No story is for everyone. Having never been affected by autism in my life, the message isn't going to resonate with me very well. So maybe it's like a country music fan going to Wacken Open Air and complaining that it's too loud. "Old Man Screams At Cloud," and all that. No downvote, because I'm an asshole, not a fucking asshole. Just ain't my cuppa joe, ya know?
Cheers.
liked everything here but the whole two brains and art kit bit.
Really cool can’t wait for more
Sorry, it took so long for me to reply y'all! I just survived finals and I'm in the middle of moving. This was released because it was polished up and just sitting around for months, I just put a few final tweaks on it and decided to give it a release well ahead of
the Day of the Beasttomorrow in order to not get it confused for a holiday story.10801167
I have some notes and snippets of future chapters, so it shouldn't be too long, though I do have some higher-priority stories on the update line first.
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I'm glad you like it! As for why those bits were included, I'd refer to the reply to Jake below. Spoilers are for heavy tangents on my part, not so much discussion of future chapters, it's for readers who might be checking comments first w/o wanting stuff too spoiled for them. If there is anything else that you feel could still be discussed or improved for clarity, lemme know.
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Full disclosure: I would have legitimately not given a fuck if this comment had come with a downvote from you or been angry in any way. Why? Because this comment was (okay, first of all, it's longer than many I've gotten on my latest stories in a while) filled with lots of legitimate critique and reasons I wouldn't be angry at a downvote. The ones I've generally gotten so far tend to be for writing ships people don't like, writing mature stories that aren't gross porn, writing trans characters/themes, generally writing non-lesbians, and having stories that don't have happy endings. At least, as far as I've been able to gather over the years. Most don't comment.
This is me being totally dumb, but I'm guessing you mean that in the 'it needs another round of editing for non-technical bits' instead of just it not being up to your taste? I'm not getting the clearest read on your sentence here 'cause my brain is telling me it could go either way.
Are they dumb? No. Ignorant of the subject matter entirely? Yes. Part of this was done to avoid a darker, non-E rated thing that happens with parents in this situation. They're not airheaded per say, both are perfectly normal and healthy suburban unicorns without anything to hide. Both Velvet and Nightlight are in an extraordinarily awkward situation that has flipped their assumption that they are perfectly informed and doing well as parents on their heads. This is exactly why they're fumbling here: not because they're neurotypical, but because they're neurotypical individuals who have been blessed with easy lives and are completely unfamiliar with mental health being something beyond normal behaviors and life experiences. They are the hump of the Bell Curve couple, the Jane and John Doe horses and they're being confronted something that happens to other ponies if it happens at all (and not in a malicious way, it is purely a lack of experience). Velvet and Nightlight are the kinds of ponies/people who aren't really uncommon to find. As an autistic fella (well, originally Aspie before they consolidated the diagnosis to be a spectrum) the number of parents like Velvet and Nightlight that I've met, seen on the news, or read about is stupidly high. They're completely well-meaning, unabusvie types who want to take care of their kids, but are the ones who will be informed of their child's condition and while they never deny that their child has it, will be the first to say (and repeat) that they just 'don't get' autism/ADHD/depression/special needs/early diagnosed mental conditions/learning disabilities. It doesn't mean they won't try and take care of their children and be good to them, just that they're never going to be able to remotely understand the needs of their child (especially the 'why' and 'what' type of explanations) and in really extreme cases the child themselves.
I wanted to show that Velvet and Nightlight weren't bad, because there are way too many parents who will hear their child has a disability/condition or isn't neurotypical and get all flabbergasted with the "But what do you mean, my kid isn't retarded, they just need to try more! That isn't real!" spiel and things get worse from there. I wanted to avoid this outcome of ignorance, both Velvet and Nightlight aren't cruel or ableist, they don't mistake autism for "retarded" but they've never heard of anything like it. To them, health and disabilities are visible things, not something that is in your head. They mistake "autistic" as 'artistic' and "neurodivergent" by interpreting it in the only way someone unfamiliar with the word could: using the root words (and possibly mixing it with parent theatrics of leaping to the Worst and Wildest Possible Thing). Though, ponies have been shown to also have extremely bizarre illnesses, like cutie pox and the gaggle of not-always-equine-accurate ailments from Leap of Faith.
This could be a consequence of my in medias res writing having a range of turn-outs, the typical non-chronological vignette shuffle I give a lot of my pre-S1 novelettes, or that I was deliberately trying to make them come across as rather panicky, rambly types. Having them speak a lot was the best way I thought that could be shown, and hopefully, the voices I gave them came across as concerned and frazzled enough. Maybe that wasn't the case?
Also, sometimes people (er, ponies) can be talked through to arrive at a diagnosis, or to bring them to a point of understanding. Dr. Pieces has already spent time with Twilight, so she knows what's up. She's trying to extend that to Velvet and Nightlight, and talked-through approaches generally mean reviewing the symptoms and connecting them to a bigger picture. (If you've already had this experience before I'm so sorry for rambling about it so much, then.)
(I just base my doctor horses on the behavior of actual doctors, at least most of the time.)
I think the only thing that would make me hesitant to use this otherwise really good idea was that I've had issues in the past where readers didn't catch on to, ah, characters being infallible, biased, or unreliable narrators. Some of the theatrics of Twilight Velvet and Nightlight might have been taken as totally true without a character outside of their perspective to offer contrast in dialogue and reactions.
Doctor ponies are also fun to write okayThe two reasons I specified Twilight's symptoms were because a) it varies from individual to individual what those on the spectrum are like even if you're in a more defined realm like "high functioning autism" like Twilight is b) this isn't actually a story about Twilight; it's about her parents dealing with having to accommodate something (autism, obviously, Twilight isn't a thing) they never expected in their lives and what that means for them as parents. Twilight isn't tagged. If Twilight appears at all, it will be briefly/as a minor character. I wanted to write something from the perspective of two ordinary neurotypical adults who deal with ordinary parent problems.
I've written this information because it is consistent with how I've depicted Equestria in the bulk of my work. There isn't any way to have the pony races each be born at a totally equal rate, so one pony race would end up being more common just because of how populations work. Canterlot appears to be the only contemporary all-unicorn city, Cloudsdale (and really any sky architecture) the only places where pegasus ponies are the majority, and I've always depicted Equestria as being agrarian outside of a few major cities. For Equestria as whole, if pegasi are generally depicted living mostly in Cloudsdale/cloud cities and scattered/mixed into local weather trades/residential areas more sparingly, only two pony types are left. I've always gone with earth ponies. (Though, if I've ever stated by how much they're the majority, I don't recall what story it would be in.)
I have it as for a little over one thousand years. Again, it's not saying that the other ponies are dying at an alarming rate or anything (this would be a totally different story with a very different rating/tagging/content if it were) but that earth ponies are the majority in the sense that 'Smith' is an overwhelmingly common last name, people with Scots-Irish ancestry outnumber with Moravian ancestry in the US, or that in settings with fantasy races humans always outnumber elves and dwarves.
I made sure to clarify it was known as real and currently is, or else Twilight wouldn't be diagnosed, just that the legislation on it and research is incredibly bad, which results in underdiagnosis and the like. Dr. Pieces doesn't know Princess Celestia personally whatsoever, she's just an ordinary doctor, so while inaction/a lack of awareness is there she (Pieces) isn't perfect either and could be projecting an emotion onto Celestia that the latter doesn't actually have because Pieces is nowhere at the level to be speaking for a horse goddess the way she would be able to speak of citizen peers who display counter-advocacy to what she works with.
I do like to give the ponies politics because it generally is a given if you're writing a more serious/realistic/etc. take on Equestria and want that lore. Though, I've always worked it to be for the whole fantasy world deal. So, any information in here that is political isn't meant to have a human history parallel. Underdiagnosis is a real concept, but what I put here is meant just to be realistic struggles for parents like Nightlight and Twilight Velvet. They don't fight chaos monsters, redeem lunar goddesses, or save the world with the power of love and justice and all that fun stuff. For them, it's helping their kids, being frustrated at politics, and figuring out who forgot hay bacon on the grocery list that makes up what they do because they are... well, they're not their kids. But in hindsight I maybe should have rated this teen despite it not really being teen rated because I'm starting to think that folks went into this expecting fluff but at the same time it's not my fault I didn't stick this in fluff groups aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Though, onto human world politics: I am aware that there was a time when autism was underdiagnosed severely at the ages when it is most important to have help. The problem is, I had no time when that timeframe was except that it was in living memory and well after the condition was first decided upon as "autism" in the 1940s. Since that was such a broad time to work with, you had me wondering: was I born during that time, and did I just have a wildly different experience growing up compared to the situation I've written for Twilight? I checked and suspected that the period began probably around the 1950s or 60s, since there was a lot of social upheaval at the time and generally Bad Shit happening in America's medical and psychology practices. So, of course, there wouldn't be anything like autistic advocacy movements that popped up much later, right? Or, maybe it really was some time when I was growing up despite all the practices and publishing from that era that I've found after the fact and experienced were just way out of the ordinary?
Well, both were wrong. Autism was historically wildly underdiagnosed in the 1970s and 1980s and it makes sense I didn't find this as a familiar political situation because I was born in the 1990s. This article covers it pretty well, if you're curious, and describes the situation of the "Lost Generation" who never got the help they needed when they needed it. Autism was definitely better known when I was growing up, but it sure was not treated as common or well-understood until I was in... I want to say junior high? So, 2013 onward. I know now that it is one of the most common diagnoses for children, and the autistic kids of today are growing up in very different situations than I knew. Thank fucking goodness.
TLDR There appears to be a vaguely similar (in some respects) period in American history when autism was wildly undiagnosed, but one that was well before I was born.
Oh no, I'm afraid I took it as an educational oppurtunity, which is far worse.
Detailed feedback is always my cup of joe.
I've always had the head canon that by Unicorn standards Twilight is a nero-atypical Unicorn but is a nero-typical Alicorn. Standards of what is normal would be different for each pony type thanks to brain structure having small differences to accommodate horns, wings or increased muscle. After her transformation parts of her brain would recieve proper sensory input and previously odd unicorn behavior would be replaced with typical pegasus and earth pony behaviors.