Is Annie dyslexic?

[kittygirlhazel]

So I've seen this one batted about over on Tumblr, and I think it's a point worth raising here. Namely, does Annie have dyslexia?

Or, heck, any other learning disorder?

Annie was homeschooled throughout her primary education and for a bit of Year Seven. We can presume that Surma and Anthony were her main teachers, with Anthony handling most of her education himself. If he had the qualifications to privately tutor his daughter, that would explain why he's able to come and teach at the Court now. This means that she had no other students her age to measure against, so there was no way for her to "fall behind" in a noticeable way.

Flash forwards to being at Gunnerkrigg, and her undiagnosed learning disorder starts being more noticeable. Annie realises that she's starting to fall behind in her more academic subjects. Remember way back in chapter 2, when Winsbury remarks that Annie spends all her time "swotting in the study hall"? What if she was trying to force herself to be more academic? (Of course, some of that "swotting" was likely studying robotics and working out where she could get parts before she stumbled upon the No Spare Robot Parts room.)

Then she makes friends with Kat, who's a genius, especially in the sciences... and so Annie, scared of falling behind, and scared of asking for help, starts cheating to try to salvage her grades.

...At this point I'm being more speculative than the above, but: Anthony is a perfectionist and a very strict parent. A lot of such parents don't like the idea that their child may have a learning disorder like dyslexia because they don't want to consider that their child may be "imperfect". Anthony as Annie's only proper teacher may not have considered the idea that any of his daughter's struggles with academia might come from a disorder.

(I'd also like to point out that while she speaks various languages pretty well, have we ever seen her read a language other than English?)

It's just a theory, but I quite like it. Any thoughts?

[machival]

I don't buy it, personally. To me it seems more likely that Annie's difficulties stem from being unprepared for the advanced material taught at the court, which likely go beyond what any UK regulatory authority would expect Antimony to learn and include subjects well outside the scope of Anthony and Surma's specializations. Especially given that Antimony has been doing well in biology and history without cheating. If she had a learning disorder, it'd be reasonable to think she would also have run into problems in biology and history due to the added challenge of engaging with the new course material she would be expected to learn. Since she's doing fine in those subjects, my personal theory is that Antimony simply lacks sufficient prior education to perform well in the advanced courses taught by the court. It's a bit like transferring from a poor quality public school to a good quality one (Public school being used here in the American sense of the term). You can quite easily go from a school with very low standards of education to one with very high standards, and a student can easily be overwhelmed by the sudden increase in complexity, even if they were a straight A student before.

[kelantar]

I actually had kind of a similar idea. Although I would say she looks more dyscalculic. Most of the advanced sciences they take at Gunnerkrigg probably rely on mathematical abilities, except for biology. Without knowing what other classes they take, though, it's hard to say, and since they probably have English class and others that don't rely on math, that might not be the case. But it would almost make sense that being an etherical being of sorts, her brain might literally not be suited to particularly "human" fields of knowledge.

[Refugee]

I want this to be about people, not about their diagnoses.

[zbeeblebrox]

I don't think we've seen any evidence for this. Transposing numbers is not only a common occurrence for dyslexics, it's also a problem you'd expect to arise at some point in the story if it afflicted her. It's pretty tough to hide that sort of thing without generating plot holes.

[quark]

Apr 16, 2015 21:57:55 GMT Refugee said:

I want this to be about people, not about their diagnoses.

How would it be? If Annie has a learning disorder, it would still be about her.

Apart from that:
I don't think this is a learning disorder; Annie does well in History and Biology, which are both classes that rely heavily on acquiring knowledge through reading. I am pretty convinced this has to do with her being homeschooled; it also explains her being behind on social skills. She didn't have anybody her age at the hospital (just her parents and the guides).



It also explains why she can't do physics or maths - her mother was more interested in magic, alchemy and legends (Annie knows a lot about that), and her father is a biology teacher. While I doubt that he was her teacher (she said that her mother taught her which would be an odd thing to say if both were equally involved in her education), she could have learned from the hospital staff.



What supports your theory, though, is that she actually tried to do the work herself (Reynardine complains about her work being in 'shambles', which he wouldn't if it was non-existent.), but then just copied it from Kat the day before she had to hand it in which means she probably understood what was said in class, but lacked the skills to put it on paper.

[The Anarch]

Y Kant Annie Read

[Refugee]

Apr 17, 2015 3:35:33 GMT quark said:

Apr 16, 2015 21:57:55 GMT Refugee said:

I want this to be about people, not about their diagnoses.

How would it be? If Annie has a learning disorder, it would still be about her.

I like stories to be about the choices characters make, and the feelings they have for each other. It is in this case more interesting to me for Annie to have copied because she was having trouble with her studies because it required honest work of her, or because she was accustomed to the easygoing style of her mother (and father, when he was present), and then cheated because she didn't want to ask for help.

A story about how a person copes with a disability can be...interesting, I guess.

"Oh, Annie! You're just dyslexic! There's exercises you can do to overcome that. I can help! La la la, let's go make ourselves sick on cheeries!" Bleagh.

But what I really care about is who a person is, the moral choices she makes. There doesn't have to be a diagnosis for that.

This story in particular doesn't need a diagnosis. It is very much about moral choice.

Dyslexia, or anything else like that, would only be a distraction.

Let me put it this way: Annie cheated off a friend. That's an important moral choice. The cause is nowhere near as important or as interesting as the choice she made, and the reasons behind those choices.

Who is Antimony Carver? How does she treat her friends? Her enemies? How does she turn enemies into allies, if not exactly friends? Who is Anthony Carver? What has he been doing since Surma's death? Why does he treat his daughter the way he does? Can Annie heal her relationship with her Father? Should she even try? How does Kat feel, really, about Annie having used her? (Ask: What is the pigeon on her head saying?) Despite her words, does she feel Annie's breached a trust? What must Annie do to heal that breach?

Antimony has taken off her Mother's makeup, and cut her hair. These are real life counterparts to the mask Zimmy saw her wearing. Who will she now present as? If she's taken herself back to who she was when her Mother dies, who will she choose to rebuild herself as?

Now that we, and she, and Kat know she's not the emotionless robot she's been playing, what else will we see? Surma decided to have a child, will her daughter as well? Is Annie willing to let herself be vulnerable enough to fall in love and marry?

Compared to those questions, "Is Annie dyslexic?" is lifeless. I can't turn the gain up on my interest meter enough to even make it twitch.

[speedwell]

I vote that her "disability" is actually anxiety and depression resulting from all the huge changes in her life and a childhood spent with a distant, controlling father and (what in a non-fire-elemental would be) overidentifying with her mother.

[SilverbackRon]

Apr 17, 2015 4:55:43 GMT Refugee said:

Compared to those questions, "Is Annie dyslexic?" is lifeless. I can't turn the gain up on my interest meter enough to even make it twitch.

And I feel the same about "does Anthony have Asperger's?"  Yes, we can force what we see to fit the diagnosis in either case, but the story of why these people make the choices they do is more interesting.  This is a fantasy webcomic and so far there has been only a single mention of someone having a "real world" illness (and that was an entirely off-screen comment by Tom at the bottom of the page)

[Refugee]

Apr 17, 2015 8:16:13 GMT SilverbackRon said:

Apr 17, 2015 4:55:43 GMT Refugee said:

Compared to those questions, "Is Annie dyslexic?" is lifeless. I can't turn the gain up on my interest meter enough to even make it twitch.

And I feel the same about "does Anthony have Asperger's?"  Yes, we can force what we see to fit the diagnosis in either case, but the story of why these people make the choices they do is more interesting.  This is a fantasy webcomic and so far there has been only a single mention of someone having a "real world" illness (and that was an entirely off-screen comment by Tom at the bottom of the page)

Very much so. Anthony, too, is responsible for the consequences of his moral choices.

[Nepycros]

The Rosenhan Experiment lends to the idea that people like to diagnose completely normal behaviors as super-manic or hinting to disorders of the brain. I'm drawing close to the idea that the same bias toward forcibly diagnosing personalities and characters is being expressed here. A character does not need mental deficiencies to be troubled, nor should that be the standard expression of mental disability.

[theleakingpen]

i would say its in large part focusing on the classes she DOES find interesting, and things having to do with the forest. It looks like shes spenta good portion of the last year playing with and learning about her blinker and other things magical. She's rationalized the cheating as not caring about subjects that wont be important to her in the future.

[Sadie]

I'm solidly in the camp of Annie not having a learning disability.

As someone with a learning disability, I'm far away from the 'blegh, way to dull up the story' camp.

There isn't a functional difference between Annie cheating because she had a disability and was afraid to ask for help, and Annie cheating because she didn't have a strong childhood education and was afraid to ask for help. The key factor here was AFRAID TO ASK FOR HELP. Afraid to fail, afraid to look stupid, afraid to be caught out as somehow lesser and imperfect. This is the mountain that she has to climb.

(Incidentally, I cheated once, in the 2nd grade, on a spelling test. I knew I didn't know the words, because I couldn't read and I didn't want to look stupid by asking for help, so cheating it was. The joke was on me, because not being able to read made me an ineffective cheat, too; the teacher would call out the words and I couldn't even find them on my cheat sheet. Then I got caught and punished, first by the teacher, then physically by my mother. Now, I never cheated again... but I also got better at hiding my inability and was passed through to 4th grade before my grandmother found out.)

[todd]

Apr 21, 2015 20:06:59 GMT theleakingpen said:

i would say its in large part focusing on the classes she DOES find interesting, and things having to do with the forest. It looks like shes spenta good portion of the last year playing with and learning about her blinker and other things magical. She's rationalized the cheating as not caring about subjects that wont be important to her in the future.

I'd wondered myself if Annie's investigations of all the weirdness around Gunnerkrigg were partly responsible - that it took time away from her studying (though in that case, all of her classes would most likely have been suffering from that) - causing her to fall behind and resort to cheating.