#OFMD fandom racism

[averyhollow]

Some people jump at the chance to reveal they think characters that are BIPOC lose their humanity if they behave in acceptable ways. The tiniest bit of deviation from the narrow path of righteousness, and POC become unfeeling brutes.

Any hint of violence and anger that isn’t in response to direct and immediate threat? Any reaction to something that might be perceived as a disproportionate? If a BIPOC does it, they’re a brute and a savage unfeeling animal that needs to be leashed and muzzled. Therefore, if the BIPOC on the show engage in the kind of violence and displays of anger that white pirates can revel in without remark because they’re seen as human by default, it must be explained away or mitigated because BIPOC can’t be both traditional pirates and people you root for or want happy endings for.

In that light, it makes sense the people in question don’t accuse Izzy of wanting Ed to be more like Calico Jack. They don’t say he wants Ed to be a typical pirate, or some archetypical party bro, or whatever. Nah. In wanting Ed to be the Ed he knew when they started, in wanting Ed to be Blackbeard, in wanting Ed to be the guy who sailed and had dalliances with Calico Jack, he must want Ed to be a beast, a savage, an unfeeling mindless killing machine. Calico Jack gets to be a jackass, a douchebro, fratbro Jack Sparrow, etc.

Ed? Ed must be a victim/survivor whose past violence is justifiable and/or exaggerated, and who wants nothing more than softness and serenity in the future. There’s an assumption made by some that to think of Ed otherwise, is to think of him as an animalistic stereotype.

And the people who think this and proudly say that it’s what they think, do so while claiming to be pushing back against racism. They’re trying to confine Ed’s humanity and the ways in which he can be viewed by the people who cheer for his happiness - on a show where Ed isn’t a token nonwhite character but part of an ensemble cast filled with BIPOC and therefore there’s no reason to project onto his portrayal the requirement of adhering to standards of respectability - and they’re doing it under the guise of antiracism in fandom. What’s scary is that I think they really believe it too.

Note: I’m not talking about when people express their interpretations and leave it at that. I’m talking about when people claim that disagreeing Izzy wants Ed to be a “savage” stereotype or claim thinking Ed is mercurial or violent - not especially so, but at all - is to ignore racism or to commit a microaggresion.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

ngl the "im white so i dont talk abt any characters' race ever bc im afraid of accidentally saying something racist" approach to fandom is like. very weak. imo.

like first of all: i get that "i dont incorporate race into my media analysis because i'm afraid of messing up" comes from a different place than "i don't incorporate race into my media analysis because I Don't See Race 😊 there is only The Human Race." but it has the same functional effect, right? that effect being that your analysis of [INSERT MEDIA HERE] ignores the very real way that race impacts people.

second of all: it feels kinda lazy! like ur saying "i dont know enough abt race to feel comfortable commenting on how race affects this show and i dont care enough to learn." the only way to become more comfortable discussing race is to actually practice discussing race. but when i see people saying this it feels like they're saying "i'm white, which means i don't know how to talk about race, and i don't have to know how to talk about race, and i don't ever have to know how to talk about race, so i'm choosing to never learn how to talk about race."

third of all: just because you don't openly talk about race doesn't mean you're any less likely to accidentally say or do something racist. implicit biases run deep, y'all. it's probably already there in your interpretation of the show. but the "i don't want to accidentally say something racist" implies that you are positive that your interpretation of the show isn't racist. and i'm not saying you're wrong. but i'm saying that if a person of color tells you that something you said about [INSERT MEDIA HERE] was racist, you better be prepared to actually listen and not just brush them off because "i can't be racist! i purposefully never talk about race just to make sure i'm not racist!"

which brings me to my final point: if you do accidentally say something racist... literally just apologize. if someone says you've been doing something racist, apologize and stop doing that thing. it's literally not that hard. i've done it. i've seen other people do it. "i'm scared of being called racist!" is such a weak excuse im tired of it. getting called racist is not the end of the fucking world. calm the fuck down and grow a spine. jesus.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

Alright, so there's been a lot of chatter about some of the most common racist takes in the fandom lately, and I know most people aren't engaging in good faith but I'm gonna spell some things out anyway. Here's a handy-dandy White Fan's Intro to Racist Fanon 101

Why is it racist to depict Ed as uncontrollably violent?

Because he's not actually depicted that way in the show. OFMD goes out of its way to depict Ed's relationship with violence as complex and intensely traumatic for him. Because he has so many hangups around violence, Ed is one of the least violent characters in a show full of violent characters. He is always shown giving people many chances before they're able to push him into reacting with violence.

Even if you think you're just doing a character study on a guy who is really very complex and nuanced, please take the time to consider if you're assigning more weight to Ed's violent actions than those of other characters or assuming he's worse than he actually is (for example, Ed never physically hurt the crew during his kraken spiral, just Izzy. His crime was being a shitty boss, not going on mindlessly violent rampages).

What do other common fanon depictions of Ed that are racist look like?

The biggest ones are depicting Ed as untidy/messy, as illiterate, and as needing a white man (most often Izzy) to clean up after him. I hope I shouldn't have to spell out why these are racist, but please keep an eye out for them in the fanon you consume so you can be critical of how you respond when they pop up.

Are you saying that all Izzy fans are racist?

Liking a character is morally neutral. Insisting that the viewpoint of an antagonistic character is the lens through which the show should be understood, though, especially when that antagonistic character's whole deal in the first season of the show was trying to control the behavior of the brown lead so he could gain power for himself, however...

Just please consider - why do you find Izzy's tears more deserving of sympathy and compassion than Ed's?

But my hot take/fic/meta doesn't say anything about Ed's skin color!

It doesn't have to. Most of the racist takes/fic/meta out there don't mention Ed's skin color explicitly. Racism doesn't just look like saying "this character is a brown man so he's bad." Everyone who grows up in a racist society (that's everyone on the planet, btw, you included) has biases to unlearn, and those biases impact how you interact with the world around you, including with the media you consume.

The thing is, OFMD isn't a subtle show. It's very consistent with telling us who Ed is, how he responds to situations, and why he behaves the way he does. If you find it easier to throw all that aside in favor of believing what a white antagonistic character tells you about him, then you should really take a bit to examine that.

And here's the most important thing to keep in mind:

This is not about you.

Trust me, it has to be pretty damn bad for fans of color to call out racism in fandom. Every time we do, we know we're gonna harrassment and just some truly awful shit in our inboxes. But you, random white fan who Did A Racism? No one is out to get you. No one thinks you're an awful person for including a racist trope in your stuff, we just wish you'd examine it so we can make this fandom a better place for everyone.

I have had amazing discussions with white fans who saw my posts on fandom racism and wanted a sensitivity read or a check so they could fix an instance where they uncritically included a racist trope. But most people who make similar mistakes will just double down and insist they didn't do anything wrong, and that makes fandom a worse place for all of us.

Fans of color deserve to feel safe and included in this fandom, and we're just tired of feeling like we have to beg to get some circles to see poc as people. You can do your part by being critical of these tropes and your reactions to them when they pop up.

[naranjapetrificada]

if you plan to talk about Ed and Stede's bodies in fic look at this image first

so that I never have to read someone describe Ed as "several inches taller than [Stede] and at least a stone heavier" or anything like it again.

now where is that post about how with interracial couples fan artists twinkify white characters and depict their nonwhite partners as taller and larger than they are

[alexibeeart]

hey real quick while I'm eating breakfast, while we're out there doing allsorts to Save Our Flag Means Death what we're NOT going to do is visit irl Stede Bonnet's grave to take smiling selfies, have parties at Teach's hole, and so on and so on. we're not going to confuse and glorify slave owning rapists with fictional characters from a fictional show, especially with how hard the writers have worked to make this story inclusive and safe, especially not in front of a fandom of real actual poc and women. we've already been through this but I guess we need a refresher.

[glamaphonic]

people watching a romantic comedy about pirates, who are all murderers, full of slapstick violence and the presentation of said violence as a standard part of the job

yet somehow holding the indigenous male lead and only him to real world standards of morality so that they can paint him as an unstable abusive monster victimizing poor unsuspecting white men

but it's totally not bcs racism tho!!!!

k

[scarrletmoon]

you know, the more i think about s2 and izzy specifically , the more let down i feel and it’s not a good feeling bc i love this show so much

i think they really did try to do too much in one season with less time and it means that izzy got a spotlight that he didn’t really deserve

i feel like i’m digging through a massive stack of files to piece together a mystery and just getting “we decided that izzy is special” in return which

doesn’t feel good! as a POC and as someone who’s been shouted down, harassed and pushed out of fan spaces for trying to raise the issue of how white antagonists are given preferential treatment in fandom. because now the show is doing it too and it feels like i’m being told to just. accept that it’s happening? he’s really sorry about it (we assume) so can’t you just play nice? why are you trying to argue that no one deserves forgiveness unless they grovel first

(i didn’t say that)

well he FEELS REALLY BAD and LOST A LEG what more do you want??

(idk, the word “sorry” from his actual mouth?)

this is getting away from me bc i’m tired but im like. it feels like the luster is rubbing off and the potential is being wasted and it’s not a good feeling

[bougiebutchbitch]

I'm not in the ofmd fandom but I am intrigued by the drama. spill the tea?

OH GOD OKAY

Where do I begin lksdlgkfds

Okay so

There’s this nasty little gremlin-man in ofmd called Izzy Hands. He’s a sour, mean, skrunkly, disabled little cunt who is a firm believer in Respect and Discipline (in a very queer subby way).

This is to say: he is. Explicitly. Queer. He does drag on the show, and has a whole coming-out scene. He is a kinky masochist. He confesses his love for another man, and basically ruins his own life & everyone else's, because he is sooooo pathetically jealous about this man (his captain!) falling for some milquetoast loser white rich guy, when Izzy, a badass leather-wearing working-class sword-swinging swashbuckler, is right there making puppy-eyes at him.

He's wrong! He's horrid! He's a bastard, pickled in piss and vinegar! He's five-foot-nothing of spite and gay self-loathing! He's very fun to watch, and very, very queer.

People still insist that he’s straight. And racist. Despite there being 0 textural evidence to support this, and the creators of the show repeatedly saying that this is absolutely not what they wrote.

Why do people hate him so much? Simple! Because he ‘got in the way’ of the main ship.

Yup. It’s basically ‘bash the girl who gets in the way of our m/m otp’ only the girl is a grizzled 50-something year old pirate.

The main ship, btw, is between Ed Teach, an awesome complex flawed hopeful beautiful character of colour; and Stede Bonnet, another awesome complex flawed character. Who is a white guy. And who happens to be a rich plantation owner from the 1700s. Based on A LITERAL SLAVE OWNER. Who is explicitly shown to be a Problematic White Guy with fucked-up racist views.

Like. He’s not a perfect guy. The show makes this very, very clear - to the point where Stede pushes Ed into sex super-fast immediately after Ed says he wants to go slow, and this makes Ed run away and freak out.

But somehow, Certain Fans still insist that Izzy is to blame because :checks notes: he makes one cheeky, friendly joke about them finally getting together that is clearly given & received in good spirits.

Yeah.

There's a lot of this cognitive dissonance going on. And it's very, very wilful.

Basically: a certain subset of people who ship Ed and Stede refuse to exercise the slightest bit of critical thought of Stede’s views and actions (which are a representation of the white landed gentry!) but insist on maliciously twisting literally everything Izzy says or does to cast him as The Ultimate Villain. Whereas anyone watching the show can tell that he starts off as an antagonist-with-a-deeply-hidden-heart-of-gold, whose entire arc is about growth and redemption.

I think 99% of this is projection. Stede and Ed are not perfect by any means, but these people are so dead-set on shipping a Cute Fluffy Romance (when that. Really isn’t what the show gave us) that they have to create a villain out of Izzy and blame all of Stede and Ed’s fucked-up choices and actions on him, in the most contrived ways. Which has the added bonus of them deciding that Izzy, a white guy, is somehow responsible for literally ALL of Ed’s genuinely awful, abusive, and interesting choices in S2, where he went on his villain arc. Even though Izzy was the main victim of this villain arc. Rather than, y’know, giving Ed the agency to make his own damn decisions and acknowledging that he is a flawed and fascinating character who Hurts People but still deserves a happy ending, like literally every other main character on ofmd. Nope. Gotta infantalise that man of colour and pretend he has no control over his own life and his morality is goverened by the white men around him!

Then, they get to portray Stede as his white saviourTM who swoops in and saves Ed from ‘his own darkness’ with the power of love. 😊 because that’s not Problematique in the slightest 😊

It’s… fucked up, to put it plainly. But honestly, as much as there is a problem with their dogged insistence that Izzy is the root of all iniquity on the show, and that Ed and Stede are pure perfect angels who never did any wrong... what was worse was the relentless harassment enacted by that side of the fandom against anyone who dared show a liking for Izzy’s character. Like, it’s not the worst fandom out there by any means, but it really did make the fandom feel hostile to anyone who didn’t ship the main ship.

SO - yeah. That's the tea! OFMD was a fun show with lots of cool flawed characters. But the fandom was a cesspit, fuelled mostly by a Certain Group Of Fans' desperation to make their ship Perfect and Morally Pure - which resulted in them throwing an interesting, well-rounded, morally grey queer disabled character under the bus, and harrassing anyone who enjoyed him.

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

Stede didn't fix Ed btw y'all are fucking insane I said from the beginning that if Ed thought he was lovable he would stop lashing out at the world and low and fuckin behold the it was as simple as Stede saying "I love everything about you" to get him to stop Krakening. Ed doesn't need to be fucking fixed and even if he did you won't believe the bob the builder project Stede is.

[averyhollow]

Darth Ed?! Say it ain’t so!

I see people worrying about how fans will treat and characterize Ed in S2 if he goes to as dark a place as some advance viewers have claimed (and the show’s creator alluded to), and can’t help but laugh my ass off. If only there was a section of fandom that already saw Ed as having anger issues and less than healthy ways of addressing conflict and stress; but didn’t think it made him less than human, undeserving of love, in need of being saved by someone else, any worse than any of the other characters, or any less babychild. And among the subsection of that subsection, might be those who personally didn’t think he has what can be described as anger issues and/or a bit of a sadistic streak, but still didn’t automatically dismiss that view as inherently racist.

If. Only.

Because I’m sure those fans would be, generally speaking, more prepared to go into S2 (if it’s as dark as some claim/worry) without doing a complete 180 on their feelings for Ed or constantly scrambling to find ways to mitigate his actions in order to make them less horrible. Because those people been liked/loved that Ed, and/or accepted a dark-gray and complex view of him, and/or at the very least didn’t outright reject such views as inherently racist.

If. Only.

Ed already had fans (and people who dislike him but begrudgingly accept that he and That Other Creature are the leads and appreciate his layers), willing to show and argue that someome can think of him as having traits that manifest as “anger issues” without being racist about it or having arguments rooted in unexamined expectations towards non-white characters. They might even be more well-positioned to pick up on any 180-views of Ed that might be rooted in racism and double standards applied to non-white characters, since they’d have experience examining underlying arguments instead of making blanket dismissals.

If. Only.

Oh well, too bad no such fans exist.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

the second worst part of the “ed eats soap” joke is that it distracted the whole fandom from how funny it is that not only is ed upset that he isn’t given any of the ship’s fancy soap after breaking up with stede, he verbally expresses his disappointment about it. like, out loud. he says it like he’s hoping that maybe it was an accidental oversight and they just forgot to pack him some. like what did he think would happen, that lucius would just go “oh shit, my bad, i’ll be right back with that!” hello??????

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

Please don't tell me I've got people in the notes of one of my "please don't be racist about Ed's hair" posts insisting that it's "actually canon" that there are times Ed doesn't take care of his hair 😭

Like, okay. On the surface I get the impulse to insist that neglecting his hair was one of the ways Ed was neglecting himself at points. I get it, if someone struggles with that themselves it makes sense to project it onto a fictional character. Except the way we talk about poc hair matters, and Ed's never shown to actually do that. Like, I am struggling to think of a single instance where I'd get anywhere close to describing Ed's hair as messy or gd forbid "greasy."

The single (1) instance I'll admit Ed's hair was a bit messy? When he's chained to the railing in s2e4, but he obviously can't do shit about that, and it looked absolutely fine the rest of the episode! He doesn't have it up in its usual style but it's still very clean and neat.

In his blanket fort era? It's fine. It looks gorgeous, zero difference from his usual hair style.

Start of the kraken era? He's just wearing it down. It's maybe a bit frizzier than normal? It's fine.

It looks exactly the same as always deep in the Kraken era at the start of s2. And Red Flags, the episode where he's at his absolute lowest mentally? He literally went out of his way to put it up all special because it was apparently important to him to spend his last day with pretty hair.

There are ways that Ed neglected himself at his lowest points. He listed booze and drugs as things that he over-used to the point of upsetting him. He forced himself to act like a caricature of himself. He denied himself comforts and made his environment actively hostile to himself (by things like nailing caricatures of himself to the wall and allowing messes to build when we know he prefers a clean space. Ed can be self-destructive and actively deny himself things he wants when he's hurting - these are all canon.

But insisting that he neglected his hair...it kinda proves my point, that brown guys can wear our hair literally perfectly presentably 100% of the time, and we'll still have people calling us messy.

[naranjapetrificada]

No, you're not "secretly evil" if you write certain ships and tropes and with certain plot or genre conventions. Tag appropriately and play in the gd sandbox.

Thing is though.

If you uncritically (as in "critical thinking", not "you have to criticize the thing") write things into your fic that reinforce endemic problems in fandom (and society) like racism, it might reflect unexamined biases that reinforce external shit that makes fandom less safe for everyone.

This all goes back to that divide between people who take it as a personal moral failing or an indictment of their character when someone says they've behaved in a ____ist way and the people who understand ____ism words to relate to larger, structural dynamics that aren't about individual morality.

If you uncritically write an OFMD fic where Ed is uncontrollably violent or illiterate or unable to groom himself, a reader might take that to mean that you have some unexamined biases about race to unlearn.

If you uncritically sideline characters of color in favor of making white characters get together, a reader might take that to mean you have some unexamined biases about race to unlearn.

If you uncritically write an OFMD fic that celebrates Stede embracing the kind of traditional, toxic masculinity that characters like Izzy and the Badmintons represent, a reader might take that to mean that you have some unexamined biases about gender to unlearn.

And they could be right. That doesn't mean you're "secretly evil" because your moral character is not even the topic of conversation here. It just means that you're living in this same shitty fucking system as the rest of us, beset by constant social and political and physical reinforcement of the dynamics that system wants to perpetuate, and that there are behaviors that indicate you might be helping to perpetuate that system.

Not all objections are censorship or purity culture or anything else like that. It's not wrong for people to point issues out when they see them. Especially if they're not tagging you, or derailing the comments on the fic in question, or harassing you with unsolicited messages. Especially in their own spaces, whether those spaces are a public blog or a private chat.

And it will continue to feel necessary to me to make caveats like this to "don't like don't read" as long as people continue to be so reactive and defensive about this stuff. Because as many people as there are out there willing to (correctly) drop reminders that writers are real people and fictional characters are not, it would be nice to see someone say the same thing about readers. No, the situations you put that fictional character in aren't going to harm them (meaning the characters), but it's certainly possible to reinforce racism or misogyny or homophobia by perpetuating biases that turn fandom into a hostile place for people of color, women, queer people, people with disabilities, and so on.

[allthinky]

Not a crazed brute

I almost, almost just backed out of the shitty fic with the racist story line. But I couldn't. Who sidelines Edward Teach so that Izzy can fall in love with Stede Bonnet (and vice versa)? I mean, that's bad enough.

To do it by making Ed vicious, insane, and brutal?

Well. I left some words.

I'm really tired of this shit.

[suffersinfandom]

Heyo, @nidmightcookies! This is my response to your reply on Atticus' post over here -- I didn't want to take away from the message of that post or the additions from other POC.

Sidenote: I'm extremely white and have no credentials that make me qualified to talk about race (I'm just a person who reads and tries to listen), and my takes are probably going to show that. That's another reason I didn't want to clutter up the original post with my reply.

In response to this

“Why is it racist to depict Ed as uncontrollably violent?  Because he's not actually depicted that way in the show.”

you talk about Ed baiting the crew to murder him and committing other violent acts. The original point is stating that Ed is not depicted as uncontrollably violent in the show, not claiming that he perpetrated no violence full stop. Yes, Ed does violence. No, he is not uncontrollably violent.

What Ed does is purposeful, not uncontrollable. He doesn’t push Lucius off the ship after he gives up all hope because he’s a violent guy who just does stuff like that, and the mutiny situation in S2E2… as allthinky said in a response, “that’s Ed at the end of his rope,” not him being uncontrollably violent. He’d been working towards suicide ever since he started baiting Low. As a backup plan, he’s been working the crew hard, disregarding their well-being, and being an overall awful boss in an attempt to incite a mutiny. 

Yes, he was “a serious, immediate threat to his crew” by the time he was out of other ideas to make someone take him out. Ed commits acts of violence -- I don’t think I’ve seen anyone claim he doesn’t -- but he always does so with some amount of reason (not necessarily good reasons) and control. 

“Upon reflection, my biggest issue may be with the people who argue that Ed's never been shown to be violent, or that any time he has resorted to violence, he's absolved of blame by the fact that someone was mean to him first. Which... I don't think I've seen you make either of those arguments at any point in the past.”

I’m really glad that you mentioned that OP hadn’t made either of those arguments (that you know of), that was genuinely very cool. As for the rest of it, I don’t believe I’ve seen anyone say that Ed is “never shown to be violent” or that he can always be “absolved of the blame” unless you want to remove all of the nuance from common talking points. 

He is never shown to be more violent than the average pirate and, due to his deep-seated trauma relating to his own capacity for violence, he’s actually on the less violent end of the pirate spectrum. He can’t be absolved of all blame for his actions because he’s a grown man who makes his own choices (and saying otherwise robs him of his agency). What I’ve seen said is that Ed’s actions are informed by things like trauma, abuse, and racism. His actions make sense. They’re not spontaneous violence committed because Ed flies into rages and homicidal spirals out of the blue.

“Not saying we shouldn't consider it [that is, are we “assigning more weight to Ed's violent actions than those of other characters or assuming he's worse than he actually is”], but I mean. If a white character on the show had cut off his employee's toes and fed them to him, shot him in the leg, ordered his death, held a gun on his other subordinates, marooned some/tossed one overboard, threatened to drown the ones that remained... because he was pushed into it, with the same combination of abusive childhood/hostile work environment... would he be equally deserving of that consideration? Would it be an overreaction to call him dangerous?”

Probably, but if everything was the same except Ed Is White Now, his baggage and his relationship with Izzy wouldn’t be exactly the same. Ed's race isn’t inconsequential. We can't really remove race from the story and end up with the same character, y'know?

Also: I do think it’s inappropriate to turn this question back on POC. I don’t think that POC are obligated to reconsider biases against a white character.

“Izzy is crew”

Ed’s relationship to Izzy is not comparable to his relationship with the crew. The crew have done nothing wrong and haven’t behaved antagonistically towards Ed. Izzy and Ed have a complicated, toxic, and difficult relationship (regardless of where you stand on whether or not Izzy’s abusive), therefore any harm caused to Izzy has to be considered differently than harm caused to the rest of the crew.

“Even if we say that he doesn't count, Ed still pushed Lucius off the ship.”

Yes, Ed did do that, but I think that Atticus is talking about Ed’s S2 actions in that point, not what happened in S1. Most (I think all?) meta I’ve read does consider Ed pushing Lucius off the ship an act of violence that Lucius himself did nothing to provoke. 

This might be controversial, but I’d put Ed pushing Lucius overboard on par with, like, a particularly unjust firing in a workplace that isn’t a pirate vessel. When we watch OFMD, we have to adjust our physical violence meters to account for the fact that we’re dealing with an environment that’s full of physical violence.

“Also, emotional abuse directed at the rest of the crew is still abuse”

I don't consider Ed emotionally abusive. He works the crew hard. He’s a terrible boss who doesn’t give his employees vacation days or paid time off and then throws them a sad pizza party. That sucks, it’s not okay, and his final death spiral in S2E2 is terrible and he never should have involved the crew in that. 

Abuse is a pattern of behavior that’s meant to control people. Not all harm is abuse. When I say that Ed isn't abusive, I'm not saying that he didn't hurt people.

“So... I was raised by a physically and psychologically abusive parent. I get that Ed's been hurt, is still hurting, and why. The "why" doesn't matter for the question of "did he or didn't he", though. It may or may not be his fault, he may or may not have done it because he felt unsafe. The point is, his actions did hurt people.”

Same, friend, and I'm sorry you went through that. (That’s actually one of the reasons I’ve always been wary of Izzy. What he says and does in S1 is too familiar to me, sometimes to a point where I can’t watch certain scenes.) I don’t think anyone’s saying that Ed isn’t hurting anyone, or that all of his actions can be attributed to abuse. If that’s not what you’re getting at here, apologies for misunderstanding.

“His boss that he was trying to control was brown.  Was that a factor in his power play though, or was it because Taika wound up being cast as Blackbeard? Any other (white) actor in the role, would Izzy be as bad for trying to control him? Would the scripts have gone a different way?”

Here’s the thing. In the show we have, Blackbeard is played by a Maori/Jewish man, and this fundamentally alters the character. There are things in the show -- whole episodes, if you want to look at S1E5 and the fancy party guests who treat Ed like exotic entertainment and not a peer -- that wouldn’t be the same if Ed was white. 

And yeah, Ed being brown changes the dynamic between Ed and Izzy. It would still be bad if a white guy was trying to control another white guy, but it wouldn’t be bad on the same level. Same goes if they were both brown. A white man trying to control the behavior of an indigenous man is worse.

“Izzy got permanently disfigured, crippled, and dead, while Ed came out largely unscathed in a physical sense, due to Muppet logic. Not to say one is more deserving than the other, but for a bunch of fans, there's probably a sense of Izzy getting the short end of the stick, to consider.”

That’s fine if some people feel like Izzy got the short end of the stick. It’s fine that some people feel like Izzy’s arc was kinder to him than it should have been. It’s okay to feel whatever! We connect emotionally to different characters and that biases our opinions and meta. That’s not a crime. We just need to be aware of our biases and why they exist.

The thing with OFMD is that Ed is a main character with more background and a story that, at every turn, asks you to sympathize with him. We’re given a look into Ed’s psyche. We understand at least some of his trauma and hurt and why he acts the way he does. Izzy has virtually no backstory and we’re never offered a glimpse into his mind; we don’t know why he’s like that. You can totally like a secondary character (or even an antagonist!) with no real canonical background or mental groundwork. It’s fun to ask why characters do what they do when canon doesn’t offer us any answers, and who doesn’t love a mystery box? 

But with OFMD, it can raise eyebrows when people say their main concern is the suffering of a white man who behaves antagonistically towards a brown man, especially when that brown character is a well-developed lead who also suffers (and suffers at the hands of aforementioned white character). It’s not inherently racist for someone to care more about Izzy than Ed, but it’s also not unreasonable to ask that someone to think about the possibility that subconscious racism could be factoring into their point of view.

“I don't think it's fair discussion to have a rule saying ‘even though you didn't directly call out the brown man, your argument is still racist’... even if it's true in many cases, it effectively means that no criticism of the character can ever be considered valid. If someone wants to argue ‘removing your employee's toes and feeding them to him is abusive behavior’, they can't, because of the unspoken skin colors involved? I don't know what the solution to this is.”

No one is saying that all criticism of a character of color is racist or invalid. As allthinky said in response, we’re saying that “those critiques have to be based on real evidence, and placed in a careful context, so that their actions can be understood as human, and not just the brutality of some brute.”

Criticize, but criticize with evidence and with awareness of the context of the criticized behavior. 

With the Izzy example, you have to consider the context of their relationship and Izzy’s actions throughout S1. Izzy isn’t just an employee: he’s a trusted second-in-command who has been insulting, controlling, and disloyal; he endangered not just Stede but also Ed and the rest of the crew; he told Ed that he was better off dead than acting as he was, and that Izzy's loyalty belongs to the violent worksona that Ed wants to shed. Is Ed being abusive when he’s reacting in response to abuse from his abuser? 

“[T]he show has layers (like an onion). Sometimes the meaning is not entirely surface-level, and everyone has a different level of comprehension. Sometimes obvious things to us aren't obvious to other fans/vice-versa. There's a whole 'nother discussion of media literacy to be had.”

I think that Atticus said it best here: “This is not a subtle show. That's not to say it's a simple one [...]. It's amazingly layered and emotional responses by characters are often extremely complex. However, when the show is trying to tell you something, it's not subtle and it never tries to hide it.”

There are a lot of things in OFMD that are subjective and open to interpretation, and those things are fun to discuss even when we have different takes. There are also a lot of things that are very clear. When people try to subvert the messages and ideas that OFMD is conveying loudly and openly, other fans get suspicious and wonder if the folks doing the subverting have an agenda, a bias, or just misunderstand what the show is saying.

I hope that reply was sufficient!

[some-anonymity-preferred]

all the good takes about that arc

Because I need them, and maybe you do, too.

Ways to Read the Arc that I Can Possibly Get Behind, Some Day

@areyoudoingthis on joining ed in valuing his own arc far more than he does izzy's

@forpiratereasons on how the arc is about the crew, not izzy

@asneakyfox explaining just how izzy's homophobia was stored in that rotten leg

@areyoudoingthis @medievill @appleteeth @maeglinthebold and @bookshelfdreams on Stede's effect on everyone, including Izzy, and Buttons flying over Izzy with the leg the crew gave him

@asneakyfox on how Izzy enjoying the behaviors he threatened Ed's life over is a means by which the narrative addresses his actions

@notfromcold on changed behavior being the best apology

@asneakyfox on how hbo's cut from 10 episodes to 8 negatively affects Izzy's arc, even if it's working for you

@doctornerdington on how ofmd's writing always asks you to read the subtext (even if I can hardly stand to look directly at this arc)

@zo1nkss with the pettiest take and I love it--Izzy doesn't deserve confrontation with Ed, let the lack of it be part of his suffering

Which is Not to Say We Aren't Suffering

@tfemteach wishing for just one line of apology and bringing all the discussion in the notes

@suffersinfandom on differential treatment of Ed's wrongs and Izzy's wrongs

Fix-Its

@asneakyfox with vision for ep 5.5, wee john, and ned lowe

@blackbonnetblog looking for a similar ep 5.5

@naranjapetrificada on izzy hungering for flesh

Mine: death without resolution is at least a rich source for fic development

Helpful Tangents

@ourflagmeansgayrights @zo1nkss and @lostakasha unapologetically appreciating Ed Teach as vehicle for revenge fantasies

@batsarebetterthanpeople on how the narrative makes it clear Izzy is one of Ed's abusers

@areyoudoingthis with a tangent that i needed, about ned lowe and ofmd still punishing racists, just complicating the aftermath

Mine (w/ debt to @naranjapetrificada): retribution vs rehabilitation vs atonement

The Very Best For Last