#izzy critical

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

honestly tho. the balls of izzy to suggest talking it through as if he didnt literally threaten to kill ed the last time ed openly shared his feelings

[caughtafishie]

saw art yesterday that pmo so bad. im not trying to put anyone on blast or anything but i need to rant about this bc it truly rubbed me the wrong way.

i'll just start by saying that i dont mean any malice toward this artist nor do i want ppl jumping down their throat but i do think we need to have a conversation about why ed is being interpreted like this. (also sorry if someone has made a similar post, i saw this art for the first time yesterday)

...like where do i begin. the racial implications? the izzy victimization? sorry but why are we portraying a brown man as this crazed, red eyed beast whose totally inevitable violence has to be taken on by some white martyr who "takes it for the team"? i kind of can't even begin to understand where this line of thinking comes from when we literally never see ed in a state like this in the show.

its like literally kind of a huge plot point that ed isn't murderous, and is only violent to those extremes when he is pushed. and izzy is usually the one pushing him, so yeah he faced the brunt of the violence ed inflicted. but we honestly really only see ed physically harm izzy, not the rest of the crew, during blackbeard 2.0 era.

like lets think about it. ed harms the rest of the crew in very indirect ways i.e. making them fight each other or sailing them into a storm. he doesn't ever pull a knife or gun nor does he throw a punch. the most he really does is push lucius off the ship, which is bad of course, but not something i'd call a super violent attempt on someone's life. even though he did think he killed him, it's still passive, letting the sea take care of it. the only other people we really see ed beat or kill are colonizers and his abusive father.

and then there's izzy. i wrote a post before about izzy and ed's dynamic during this era, and oh boy am i not done. people have a hard time understanding that their cycle of abuse and retaliation is perpetuated by izzy, not ed. ed isn't this feral wild animal going around harming everyone he sees. he's not an inherently violent person. i feel like the show does so much to make that clear. izzy, however, thrives on violence, specifically blackbeard's violence. which is why he pushes ed, he's a sadist and a masochist. he is putting ed through suffering to gain his own suffering, and that's what he wants. and he wants to keep ed right there with him, even though he acknowledges that ed has moved on.

as for the racial implications, i think maybe we steer clear of drawing poc as big scary monsters who you are inherently unsafe around? so much so that a white man feels the need to take on his rampant violence so no one else has to? sorry but we did not watch the same show if that's how you view ed.

like i said, ed is not a violent person. ed is an emotional person. he doesnt get any more angry than he does sad or happy, he just feels his emotions intensely. and if a mentally ill brown man having emotions screams "danger" to you, especially when he is otherwise shown to pose no physical threat to those around him, im gonna need you to think about why. why would he be any more dangerous than izzy, who has put the crew in more precarious situations than ed did? who has killed more people? the only person on the ship ed ever tried to actively kill during this era is himself, everything else was collateral. but no yeah, lets demonize him and make his abuser the white savior here..

[summerlinenss]

ohhhhhhhhhhhhh boy. the essay i could write relating ed’s thought process here to the complex trauma response of grief and guilt that comes with the death of an abusive loved one/family member.

[emeraldharbingerraider]

Am I the only one who feels, like, zero emotion when watching Izzy die every time I rewatch ofmd? Just me? Okay.

[celluloidbroomcloset]

I do think Izzy has the potential to have an interesting backstory if you take the idea of a self loathing gay man who is deeply embedded in white patriarchy and desires men at the same time as he reinforces his toxic masculinity, and who becomes obsessed with the hypermasculine persona of an indigenous man whom he both envies, hates, and desires, and whose identity he slowly absorbs because he cannot reconcile or form his own identity. Who’s a failure at every marker of masculinity he’s set for himself, and throws himself into proving that he’s NOT a failure by trying to subjugate other men. There’s a lot of conflict and chewy, fucked up stuff there, but no Izzy stan will explore that.

And one of the undercurrents of white supremacy is jealousy! “We want to be you, but we also believe we are superior to you, and your excellence is an affront to that!” That’s why racist white men still venerate Black football players, and why white society steals from BIPOC cultures. And that is fundamental to Izzy as well - he hates Ed, he wants to be Ed, he wants Ed to fuck him, and all of it is shameful to him.

The only way he can really barely reconcile it all is by keeping Ed in this precarious position of a caricature and idol for Izzy to worship and draw secondary authority from. Then it topples, because Ed is a human being, and Izzy loses his shit as the paper thin nature of his own identity - which he conceives as SUPERIOR to the femme, and Black, and indigenous men who surround him and which is only defined in terms of them - crumples completely.

ALL of that can be fascinating, and it’s a fantastic indictment of white supremacist thinking and the violence it does to everyone INCLUDING the white men who think it. But no. Instead we get people just reinforcing the view that Ed and Stede SHOULD exist solely to support Izzy. Because they are not as human as the masc white man.

[dimplyowl]

Okay has anyone written any meta about the differences between our two first mates, Auntie and Izzy? Because I just finished rewatching s2 and was struck by how similar their situations are, and their temperaments, and yet how very completely opposite they behave in nearly identical situations.

Cause like. Both their captains are insanely infamous, badass pirates who have an image to uphold, Ed as Blackbeard obviously, and Zheng as the pirate queen who conquered China. They both become romantically interested in someone who honestly has no business being a pirate: oluwande and Stede, both described as soft, not masculine, yes in the end willing to do violence if necessary, but it’s not their preferred way of handling conflict. People who, maybe rightly, the respective first mates consider potential threats to their captain and crew.

But just the way that auntie handles the situation compared to Izzy. Auntie doesn’t meddle. She is vocal about what she thinks of Oluwande, about her concerns about Zheng being distracted, “compromised”, not focused on the mission. But she’s ultimately acting as an advisor for Zheng, which is exactly what her role is. She doesn’t try to control Zheng, she doesn’t remove Zheng’s agency, she doesn’t threaten Zheng or tell her that she’s pathetic for mooning over Oluwande (I know we never get to see any mooning onscreen but cmon, there has to have been some). When the Revenge crew escapes her ship, and she knows she fucked up, Auntie doesn’t run salt in the wound the way that Izzy would take pleasure in doing. She starts to say “I told you so,” and Zheng very firmly tells her “Don’t”, establishes a boundary that Auntie respects, because ultimately Zheng knows she fucked up and she’s not a child who needs to be taught a lesson or managed. Auntie respects her and her personhood.

And compare that to Izzy, who consistently manipulated Ed to get in between him and Stede, threatened Stede’s life on multiple occasions, essentially mutinied against him, sent the cops after them, and then berated and threatened Ed over being heartbroken.

Like, even down to nearly dying. Auntie has a severe gunshot wound in her shoulder that she will clearly die from if she doesn’t accept help. She’s spent the entire season being tough, unwilling to show weakness, equating softness to weakness, but in the end she decides to accept help, to accept a little bit of softness, to change and accept that softness can be good. Izzy in contrast, declines help, knowing that he’s done. He knows he can’t fit in to this new world, this new piracy, where people can be soft and vulnerable and still fucking kick ass. He’s been resistant and outwardly aggressive to this idea, and he chooses to die rather than accept that softness. Ofmd is ushering in a new era of pirating, and Izzy doesn’t fit in it, and doesn’t want to fit in it, and ultimately, narratively, that’s why Auntie survives and Izzy doesn’t.

[o-wild-west-wind]

you know, I’m just gonna come out and say it. reason 182639302 why I’m sad ofmd was canceled: I would’ve liked to see a post-Izzy world.

you can stab me in the face now.

[theoneandonlynikki]

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