Hi have you ever done a post where you talk about reed being autistic coded i've seen that mentioned and i would be really interested in learning about him :)
Yes, I have! You can find it here. There’s an alternate universe version of Reed who is canonically autistic, and also let me just add that Tom Brevoort has said on his tumblr that it’s possible that 616 Reed is on the spectrum, even if it hasn’t been confirmed on-panel:
I also, in the post I linked you to, touch on the fact that probably about 99% of the hate Reed gets in fandom is transparently about his autism. Fandom makes one hell of a lot of terrible and unsubstantiated assumptions about Reed just because he doesn’t always process or express emotions the way allistic people do. I don’t know how else to explain the fact that the warm, caring, compassionate, highly moral family man that I see when I read FF comics somehow got translated in fandom into a cold, emotionless, condescending, inhuman robot who cares about himself and science and nothing else, sees people as objects, never feels guilt or remorse, and doesn’t love his family at all, which overlaps pretty neatly with negative, anti-autistic stereotypes but isn’t Reed at all and never has been. I mean, my god, canon explicitly contradicts that take pretty damn often (like….every time Reed opens his mouth?). For instance, in Fantastic Four vs the X-Men #3, when Sue discovers a diary Reed supposedly wrote prior to the spaceflight crash that makes it seem like he deliberately exposed his family to cosmic rays, Sue realizes very belatedly, after watching Reed comfort his son (who’d just had a nightmare), that Reed couldn’t possibly have written the journal because he doesn’t see people as things:
No fucking shit, Sue. You should have known that already. Sue figures out eventually that Doom – who DOES see people that way – wrote the diary in an attempt to break up the FF by making them doubt Reed, his goodness, and his heroism. Essentially, Doom was taking advantage of Ben, Johnny, and Sue’s ableist assumptions about Reed in an attempt to tear them apart as a team and a family – and it very nearly worked, too.
I’ve been thinking of doing a longer post talking about how Reed’s been coded as autistic since Lee/Kirby’s run (because he has been, for the record) and also about ableist treatment he’s been subjected to both by writers and his family, but I’m still going through and collecting panels (if anyone spots any useful ones, please let me know!). The realization that Reed’s coded as autistic made me see a lot of Reed’s interactions with his family in a brand-new light…let’s just say that they don’t always handle his autism very well (“He does have feelings after all!” – really, Ben?). That’s part of why I think making his autism canonical is so important – I want writers, fans, and Reed’s family to be called out on their ableism, which is something that is more difficult as long as Reed’s autism remains implicit rather than explicit.
The way things are now, writers – and fans – get away with bashing Reed for exhibiting autistic traits and no one ever calls them on it, and I, for one, am goddamn furious about it. People should not be getting away with being ableist jerks without facing any consequences, but so many are. Shit like this
is not fucking okay, and all of these people should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for saying that a fascist dictator who is a mass murderer, has abused, tortured, and murdered children, nonconsensually experimented on his own people with his pet Nazi scientists, and repeatedly assaulted women is a better person and more likable than Reed, who is and has done none of those things. Those people don’t fool me. I know exactly why they think that, and also fuck them.
Reed Richards is autistic, and he is also a good man who always tries his damnedest to do what’s right no matter what it costs him, he’s an excellent husband and father, and he’s a hero through and through. Anyone who implies differently can go straight to hell.
