#IT'S A PIRATE SHOW EVERYONE IS VIOLENT ALL THE TIME YET IZZY BEING SHOT IS THE END ALL BE ALL FOR THEM

[portraitofadyke]

this show is literally about growing up in a cycle of abuse and toxic masculinity, having someone breathing down your neck and constantly pushing you back into it even if you want to break it. it's about getting that need to break it and do better, even if you think it's too late. it's about recognising your own wrongdoings and being reborn.

but according to some part of the fandom, it's about ed being an abuser just like his father and ed being destined to be abusive to stede, meanwhile izzy is a victim. the same man who shot down every chance at breaking away sooner.

nobody is saying ed is flawless. nobody is saying ed didn't do terrible things. nobody is saying izzy deserved to get his leg amputated. it's one thing to say 'in his spiral, ed ended up hurting a lot of people and causing them trauma and dragged them down with him in his suicie mission' and another to say 'ed is a canon abuser who abused izzy and the ed fans don't think izzy can be a victim bc he's portrayed as tough. oh, and he will absolutely abuse stede.'

this dynamic is not played by the book. how hard is it for some people to grasp some more complicated forms of abuse? how hard is it to recognise emotional abuse? how hard is it to comprehend the power another person can have over someone who is perceived as invincible? piracy is a constant cycle of violence, and ed wanted an out. now he has it, with someone who's very much the opposite of everything he was told to be. Izzy breathed down his back and tried to knock him back into the perfect Blackbeard he wanted, going as far as killing his significant other, and he got the worst of it, and he got to grow. they were both dependent on blackbeard, and they let him go. it wasn't too late, izzy got to be just izzy, despite being the breathing walking epitome of piracy. that's it, that's the show. it tells us you're not your past trauma and even if you fucking lose yourself, because life is a dick and you probably will lose it, you can get back up, it's never too late

(source https://blakbonnet.tumblr.com, i'm not sure if it's loading in the gif)

[plantsjustwannahavefun]

Theories on how Izzy lost his leg

Okay so we're all very interested in Izzy's leg, obviously, but so far everyone else seems to assume it was caused by his toe getting infected. I don't buy it, though, for several reasons.

For one thing, I'm not a doctor but is this really how infections work? How would a toe infection spread so far and so quickly that they had to cut his entire lower leg off? Yes, we know Izzy isn't inclined to accept help or allow himself to appear weak or sick, but he's not stupid either. He's an experienced pirate, he must have seen enough amputation or deaths from infections to know what's at stake. He's much too practical to let it get this far without seeking medical help or at least getting it amputated sooner so that he only had to lose a foot and not his entire calf or even his knee (can't tell from those few frames in the trailer yet).

And besides, we already saw his foot get better at the end of S1, it seemed like several weeks had passed and he was walking just fine, wasn't even using his cane anymore. From what I know, if a wound gets infected, it typically happens within the first few days of an injury. In several weeks it would either have got infected already or healed enough not to be a problem anymore. For much of the S2 trailer Izzy is seen taking part in attacks, with his leg still whole, so it seems like he only lost his leg in the second half of the season. We don't yet know what sort of timeline the season follows, but it's safe to say it's going to take place over a period of at least 3 weeks. So that's several more weeks. That makes it even more unlikely for Izzy's toe to suddenly get infected towards the end of the season after all this time.

And secondly... it would just be a bit boring from the narrative perspective. Losing the toe was already punishment enough. Even if it had healed fully with no physical consequences at all, the whole experience of being woken up in the middle of the night to the pain of having it sheared off and then forced to chew and swallow it is was definitely traumatising enough not to be forgotten that quickly... This show doesn't shy away from graphic injury and violence, but it's never gratuitous. That's why that toe cutting scene was so powerful - it already stood out as one of the most seriously violent moments in the show. Adding more to it would only diminish its impact rather than strengthen it.

Now you might want to mention Lucius losing his finger, and the way it didn't happen immediately and went from a minor injury played for laughs to a serious infection with a significant time gap, but that's a very different case. There was a comedic contrast here, a very minor injury that happened in comical circumstances (Buttons accidentally biting Lucius's finger) unexpectedly turning into something serious. But Izzy losing his toe was taken seriously from the very start, there was nothing comical about it. There already was an expectation that it could turn into something worse... but it didn't. And Lucius having his finger cut off wasn't portrayed as a punishment, just bad luck, a realistic moment on a 17th century pirate ship. It led to a cute and significant moment between Lucius and Black Pete, but other than that it could have happened to anyone. And he only lost that one finger. If he got a finger bite and ended up losing his whole forearm, that would have been way too cruel and out of character for this show.

So, what's my take then, you ask? Well, I don't really have anything concrete. Except, we know that the real Blackbeard shot Izzy in the knee. I know OFMD isn't trying to be historically accurate, not when it comes to the characters at least, but they could still use that bit for inspiration. Maybe Ed does shoot at Izzy. Or maybe Ed tries to shoot at Stede, but Izzy gets in the way. Or maybe Stede does something really stupid and Izzy gets shot or injured trying to protect him - no really, think about it, they're practically glued at the hip in the trailer. They're having a friendly banter. They're gonna be friends. Getting himself injured while trying to protect Stede would be a major milestone in Izzy's redemption arc. It would even explain that bit in the trailer where an already peg-legged Izzy punched Stede in the gut. It wasn't a hateful punch, you could tell he wasn't really trying to hurt Stede. It looked more like punching your buddy out of anger when they did something really, really stupid that got both of you in trouble.

Honestly, I'm open to pretty much any theory, except the toe infection because it's boring af and makes no sense.