(I don’t remember who I wrote this for? But @kittyknowsthings was curious, and so here it is!)
“Tinsnip, can I listen to you fangirl about doubly-imaginary people?”
WHY YES YOU CAN~~~
Um, okay, so we’re assuming DD9 takes place around now, right? So there isn’t any gengineering. But there are overachievers, and there are helicopter parents, and parents who live vicariously through their kids. Julian’s dad is kind of a fuckup, even in this world - really kind of a benign sociopath, can’t relate to people, big dreams, fucks them all up, super charming, then you get to know him and you stay the hell away. But by God, when he and Amsha had a kid, this was his chance to do something amazing, his kid was gonna set the world on fire -
And Julian really wasn’t much good at anything, just this very cute but very goofy little toddler, clumsy, slow speaker, very loving but not good for anything, how do you boast about that?
So starting at age seven, after Richard had accepted he was never going to blossom magically into a super-child, Julian got switched from the easy-going school he was in to a preparatory academy. Every day after school he went to specialized tutoring. Every day after tutoring he went home for half an hour of dinner, where Richard drilled him on how his day went, and Amsha said not much at all (she never did, she never did say anything…). Every day after dinner he went to a different class - math, music, writing, art - you name it, he studied it, whether he wanted to or not. On the weekends he had more tutoring, or engineering “camp,” or “Mini University,” - a succession of cutesy programs designed to make your child brilliant, whether they start out that way or not.
No time for friends. No time for socialization.
He started to burn out. He couldn’t focus in class. Rather than scale back Julian’s education, Richard asked around, found the right doctor, and got him a prescription for methylphenidate. Excellent: now he had to focus, because otherwise he’d climb right out of his skin. He learned and learned and learned.
By grade 4 he was doing grade 6 work. By grade 6 he was in grade 9. He was attending high school before he hit puberty, and he couldn’t relate to any of these people, and he didn’t have any friends, and he was Richard’s genius son, and it still wasn’t good enough, damn it, 98% on that exam? What the hell were you thinking? Where was your head? You knew the answers! Where is that last 2%?!
He hit puberty with a vengeance, and suddenly he was gawky and huge, bigger than his father, and - hmm - actually really good looking, and he had no idea how to handle any of that, no idea how to relate to anyone on any level other than “smarter than you”, and all he ever seemed to do was piss everybody off.
He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, but whatever he suggested to his parents was the wrong answer. Sports? Waste of your talents. Medicine? What, work your ass off 24/7 and drive a Honda Civic? No money in that. What do you mean, help people? Let’s be grown-ups here, Julian; life isn’t a fairy tale. Come on, Julian, do something that MATTERS, and he tried and tried to figure out what would matter enough to Richard to be acceptable, to make him proud, and he never ever got it right.
And when he was sixteen, he was offered a full scholarship to a university out of town, away from his parents, and he took it immediately, and got the fuck out of Dodge.
I’m not sure what he studied, but whatever it was, he absolutely excelled at it, full marks, and meanwhile he tried to figure out who the hell he was, because he didn’t want to be who he’d been anymore… He tried to fit nine years of growing up into about four years of university, and it was tumultuous and insane and almost completely unguided, and all things being equal, he’s lucky he didn’t catch anything really dangerous or throw himself off a bridge, because Christ knows he courted both quite assiduously.
And one day, he graduated, and he realized he still didn’t know who the hell he was, and now he had a degree that said he was someone he wasn’t.
He spent a few years trying to figure that out. He took dead-end jobs that required no thinking. He played a lot of tennis. He read, and read, and read, trying to find a world that felt better than the one he was in. He slept around, and dated this one girl for a while, and that was pretty good, but eventually it fell through, because he couldn’t promise her a future when he couldn’t really figure out if he had one.
And one day, he looked at his life, and figured, well, it doesn’t seem like I’m doing a much better job with it than Richard did. Time to put up or shut up.
So he did some volunteer work, in between shifts at the pizza joint, and then he applied to med school, and between his grades and his voluntarism and the charm he’d figured out how to use, they accepted him. Maybe he’ll make a difference, maybe he won’t, but he thinks he might be pretty good at it, and the idea of helping people just because they’re people, rather than because you want them to owe you something… that has a certain charm.
And he doesn’t talk to his parents. He figures they had their shot.
fishyfishyfishtimes
