#needing help learning to read or being an illiterate adult in circumstances like ed’s

[electric-friend]

i never REALLY cared one way or the other wether or not ed was illiterate but by the time they revealed he could read i was honestly a bit annoyed by it, for no other reason than that i had gotten really fucking sick of people saying it was racist or classist to assume that ed couldn’t read because they were conflating illiteracy with stupidity and saying it was an insult to ed’s intelligence which was always so frustrating to me. ed can be very smart and still be illiterate. maybe he wasn’t able to teach himself because he was too busy trying to survive or because he had trouble reading for some reason and he didn’t have the money to access the education for it as a kid. there are adults who can’t read or write in the world and that doesn’t make them stupid and it was never racist or classist to assume that ed might not be able to read or write. at first i didn’t care but the fandom’s attitude towards illiteracy made me hope that ed was illiterate just so people would stop treating illiteracy as a sign of ed being stupid or people being bigoted in their interpretation *because* it was being seen as a sign of ed being stupid. so that when it was revealed ed could read, just because of the fandom’s attitude, i was like “well that’s annoying”. cause now nobody is going to talk about how dumb the attitude towards illiteracy was in the fandom.

#not saying ed needed to be babied and taught to read by stede or anything #but though that narrative has weird vibes and i’m not a big fan #needing help learning to read or being an illiterate adult in circumstances like ed’s #truly not the insult or infantilism towards ed that people think it is #and i wish they’d at least been given the chance to figure that out before ofmd confirmed that ed can read #without giving us any reason for why he signed the document with an x or where he learnt #which wasn’t necessary. fully ready to believe ed can read #it just would have been nice to have a character who was neurodivergent and quite clever and also illiterate #without that being an insult to his intelligence #ed could very well have been very smart and only semi literate #and i just think that would have been cool #obviously i PERSONALLY am literate #but the way people were talking as if illiteracy as a character trait is insulting or infantilising or bigoted #was really pissing me off #and if ed had been confirmed to be only semi literate for example #firstly more people would be applying critical thinking to their watching of ofmd #and secondly more people would be realising that literacy isn’t an automatic hallmark of intelligence