#its izzy apologist hours again

[urproblematicfav-arsonk]

I think a lot of people overlook that Izzy's actually a fairly meh okay person when he doesn't feel threatened. He's calm and open about his feelings with Jackie to a sort of embarrassing point lol. He's surprisingly chill during the initial Stede interaction and MOST importantly in my opinion, he's openly soft with Edward. I see a lot of fanfic that characterizes Iz has having this hyper masculine image of Blackbeard in his head and when Ed fails to meet that standard he's violent and cruel. And that's true in the last episode when Izzy is at the end of his fucking rope and is making the worse possible choices out of desperation but before that,,, its really not that bad??

There's clearly a disconnect between the two of them that's bothering Ed("you have no imagination" ect) but Izzy still shows a lot of softness towards Ed. Its mostly in his body language and exasperated housewife voice but Izzy is showing that he's okay with Ed being soft and being soft to Ed back but only in private. And this isn't to say Iz doesn't absolutely have his own toxic masculinity issues but I think these issues come more from fear then Izzy genuinely thinking being nice and having friends is bad. Something also important to remember is that Izzy knows what is probably Ed's most emasculating secret: the fact that he doesn't fucking kill people. Its not overly clear if Izzy knows the why of it but either way he respects it and actively protects Ed and takes on the burden for him because he knows that it on some level will hurt him to try to push him into it. When Iz betrays Ed he keeps saying "its humane" "its fast and clean and over" like he's trying to ease Ed's conscience and make it emotionally easier.

Izzy also isn't initially bothered by Ed playing dress up until he realizes Stede is also there. So Izzy is mostly okay with Ed wearing stupid fancy boy clothes and being a dramatic weirdo across the boat because Edward is erratic and probably has already done this before. And even though its a delete scene and I will forever hate David for this, Iz did help Ed get dressed up for the party.

I think Iz' behavior is just normal ass romcom other woman jealousy and having deeply internalized trauma and fear towards being seen as less masculine by society. Maybe I'm just having too much empathy for everything all the time again but Izzy's problem is so clearly that he knows if he's vulnerable and soft then he'll get fucking destroyed by the cishet toxic world we all live in. He's posturing all of the fucking time as a form of self defense and he tries to force Ed to use Blackbeard in the same way because he wants Ed to be safe and hidden from the people who absolutely are out there and want to hurt them. Trauma tends to fuck with you're perception of reality so we as a audience watch and go "But Fang and Ivan are cool!! They wouldn't bully Izzy for being soft" (despite the fact that the do in fact bully him in canon) but for Izzy, he's just in panic survival mode all of the time and can't easily relax and just casually trust a bunch of strangers in the way Stede (and by extension Ed) can

My point is Izzy deserves love and the space for growth just like Ed did and if you think otherwise then ur ugly and I don't like u.

also if Izzy doesn't get a redemption arc I will fully end up hating this show and i really deeply mean that im not fucking being hyperbolic lol