The example below I posted in another thread, and then thought a general thread on this topic would be valuable. One question I do see popping up from time to time, is just how the Gift, or Blatant Gift changes how people regard you. It would be fantastic to see what other examples people have. I suppose comics or short segments from a novel could do as well.
This scene from the Witcher comes to mind as an excellent example of how a parent might feel about their gifted child in Mythic Europe.
X-men has many examples of a child becoming unwanted due to a mutation. It seems a very similar parallel. The family often don't look back when the child runs away, or are incredibly grateful when someone takes their abomination, I mean misunderstood problem child, away from them.
Add to that, the Mythic Europe vibe where the much harsher environment means cold calculations about where to spend scarce resources results in favoured children and unwanted children.
A magi coming along like Dr Xavier and taking the child away? The parent may wonder what's wrong with this creepy guy wanting the child, but the desire to get rid of the problem child would override most other considerations.
I always imagined the actual feeling of encountering a gifted person to be something like the Uncanny Valley effect. There's nothing actually different about a gifted person - they look normal and they say and do the same things as a normal person. But somehow people still interpret them as being wrong in some way that's hard to articulate. In fact it's the very fact that they are normal in every way bar one thing you can't put your finger on that makes them so creepy.
Puts me in mind of stuff like this where it's very realistic but not quite convincingly human:
The same goes for CGI that's realistic enough to trigger the parts of our brain that recognise other humans but not good enough to actually be convincing (anyone remember that creepy Final Fantasy movie from the early 2000's?). Or very humanoid robots.
Another bit of media would be the "That thing is not my daughter!" dialogue from the Exorcist where the mother says you could show her a perfect replica of her child but she'd still know something wasn't right:
Or one a bit out of left field seeing as it's sci-fi is the entire movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The weird conflicted mix of revulsion and sympathy in the abandonment scene in it is probably a good model for the mixed feelings parents of gifted children have when a magus says they'll take them away:
