#the izcourse

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

"killing off izzy after he went through all this growth and finally got to be happy means all that healing was for nothing"

goddamn that is a bleak way to look at life. we all die, man. healing is still worth the effort.

[something-about-sunflowers]

Oh shit, worm? Like. Rip to people who don’t want to make an account for whatever reason but this is fucking great. Izzy Hater Anon eat your heart out.

[jaskierx]

i’m just going to pop this here for anyone who might find it relevant (x)

[we-sail-ships-here]

I wanna talk about Izzy’s death. This will by no means be the only post I make about this, I just wanna get my feelings out, while my initial thoughts are still fresh in my mind.

I think his death was perfect. And this is coming from someone who loves him so fucking much. Everyone who is saying his death was unnecessary and cruel needs to listen and I mean ACTUALLY LISTEN to what he said to Ed while he died.

“Blackbeard was us”

“I wanna go”

“Just be Ed”

How do you listen to that and then call his death pointless and say it’s “burying the gays” and a cheap narrative choice.

FUCK OFF

Izzy had a life, he spent time with the people he loved, he made mistakes, he was forgiven, and he got closure from ed and stede. He was always going to die the way all pirates die. Because deep down that’s what he is. A pirate.

He’s not like Ed and Stede, who both have a complicated relationship with piracy and all it involves. He’s a pirate. He’s been narrowly avoiding and escaping death every day of his life up until this moment.

Izzy is piracy, it makes sense for him to die like a pirate, gunshot wound to the stomach, wooden leg and all.

Now that I’ve got all that out of my system I’m going to grieve on my own in the darkness of my room.

[bingo-bumbles]

"I want complex queer characters!!!" Some of you can't even handle Izzy Hands

[bougiebutchbinch]

"But Lucius is physically disabled and he survived, so it's fine to kill Izzy -"

As most of you know, I am physically disabled. Have to use a lot of very visible mobility aids, get stared at in the street, have kids asking uncomfortable questions, etc.

If you are also physically disabled and cannot see that there is a WORLD of difference between Lucius losing his finger and Izzy having a hugely traumatic, majorly life-changing disability thrust upon him, becoming suicidal, using alcohol to cope, crawling along the floor, hating himself and feeling useless and worthless, thinking he's a burden to the people he cared about because of his physical inability to protect them...

Then getting built up again by that same crew, given a beautiful prosthetic that they made for him, accepted and loved, and learning to accept and love himself specifically as a queer disabled man....

THEN SAYING EXPLICITLY THAT HE WANTS TO DIE, AFTER ALL OF THAT BEAUTIFUL GROWTH

If you cannot see how that might be JUST A LITTLE upsetting to other disabled cripplepunk folks....

I honestly do not know what to say to you.

His arc was about self-acceptance and self-love as a disabled queer man. To have him declare that he wanted to die after coming to terms with his disability and queerness is, in fact, going to upset a lot of disabled queer people.

If you are not physically disabled, feel free to reblog but don't say a word unless it's in support.

[Edited to remove the parts about Ed being canonically disabled, as someone kindly pointed out to me that they were incorrect. I hadn't realised that his knee brace was just fanon! The creators shouldn't get credit for creating a 'disabled' main character if the disability is only really acknowledged by fans.]

[a-sassy-bench]

the way his eyes go soft, then he sighs, shrugs, and smiles before he speaks

he knows what he's doing and he knows exactly what the consequences are

but he makes the choice to do it anyway so the gun is pointed at him and not the crew

izzy was the main character of this season and it's wild to me that david jenkins didn't see that

[edscuntyeyeshadow]

this has been said before but the fact that so many people take what izzy says about ed at face value is so ??????

like one of the first times ed is mentioned in the show, izzy says “the man’s half insane”

but then we meet ed and he’s just…not. he’s sort of bored. tired. relatable. likes the new guy because he’s doing things differently. apparently that’s equivalent to insanity to izzy.

we’re shown right away that izzy has a wildly inaccurate perception of ed. and yet…

[bookshelfdreams]

Saw a Take earlier today like "Ed stans have only 1 argument and it's accusing everyone who likes Izzy of being problematic" or something to that effect

and it made me think "Nah babe, you're not problematic. You're just wrong."

And then I thought. Huh. Why do I think that?

It's a perfectly respectable thing to read a text in a way it wasn't intended to be read. In fact, "reading against the grain", doing critical readings, shifting perspectives when engaging with a text - all of thee are important skills! You can, and should, do feminist, antiracist, postcolonial, queer, etc readings of texts that were never intended to be read that way. Hell, all fandom (often) is, is doing queer readings! Ask the text uncomfortable questions it doesn't want to answer!

However. It's pretty difficult to do a queer reading when the text already is a queer narrative. The questions you would ask the text if you did a queer reading, or a reading focused on gender roles, or similar things - those are questions the text is already actively exploring.

If you want to do a subversive reading of a text that is already quite subversive - what do you end up with?

"What's the story like from Izzy's perspective?" is a question ofmd deliberately doesn't focus too much on because Izzy's perspective is the default and ofmd wants to challenge that. There's a reason the angry white man is the antagonist in this show, and if you ask "Okay, but could he be right though?" you're missing the point.

Or rather, you're turning everything that's interesting about ofmd back around. You're asking "Okay, but why don't we focus on a white perspective that strictly adheres to oppressive power structures?" of a narrative who already asked itself this question and gave the answer "Because that's been done enough and there are other stories worth telling."

And I think people are aware of that, which is how we end up with completely bizarre takes like "Izzy has the only queer character arc". He hasn't, but he has the only arc that a queer reading can be done on - for everyone else it's text, plain and simple. Refusing to engage with that text in favour of centering Izzy is basically doing a heteronormative reading without being willing to admit it to yourself.

And no, interpreting Izzy as a queer man doesn't change that.

[uselessheretic]

i don't understand the "izzy is just as much to blame if not more as stede for ed becoming the kraken" thing. like stede is the one who flayed ed open, izzy just threw salt in the wound. sometimes i'm like "do y'all even like gentlebeard" because i don't understand why people minimize the impact that stede had on ed. david jenkins has said multiple times that ed's never been hurt like this before and that this profound rejection is deranging him. like how are y'all not lapping that shit up because stede making ed go crazy is one of my fave parts of the ship 😭

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

actually can we stop talking about “deserve” when it comes to characters dying in fiction. not everything is a fable with a moral lesson to be learned. romeo and juliet didn’t “deserve” to die. bambi’s mom didn’t “deserve” to die. izzy dying in the finale doesn’t mean ofmd is saying that certain types of queer people “deserve” to die. fictional death can serve more narrative purposes than just punishment for the character doing the dying.

[carrymelikeimcute]

Honestly at this point the insistence from certain corners that Ed is an innocent babygirl who only ever did bad things because he was made to, is making me so sour on the character.

I feel like most Izzy fans I interact with acknowledge that he is a cunt, a cunt with layers, but still - he's a garbage lil rat man who 100% stabbed Stede and would probably have gotten away with it to, if it weren't for that meddling crew. But the narrative of 'Saint Ed the Toe Slicer' and 'the mean words that made him do it all' is really starting to bug me.

[jaskierx]

anyway i for one welcome our new meme format (x)

[blqckbeard]

like many people have already pointed out, if a good chunk of the fandom cares more about a side character than the two main characters, then the writers did something wrong.

[fahbee]

"their entire dynamic was izzy trying to make ed happy" "izzy was always just trying to make ed happy" "everything izzy did was for ed's happiness"

LMAO WHEN??

I've seen variations of the above repeated over and over again by izzy stans and what i want to know is - when??? when did izzy "try to make ed happy" in season 1??? Because there's example after example after example of Izzy acting against Ed's explictly stated wishes and desires, in other words, acting in ways that izzy knows will not make Ed happy.

Ed wanted to meet the guy traveling with a brigade of imbeciles who nevertheless managed to best izzy at swordplay. Meeting the Gentleman Pirate was Ed's explicitly stated wish. In fact he tasked Izzy with the invite because it was important to Ed and he didn't want someone less competent to fuck it up. If Izzy was just trying to make Ed happy, then why did izzy lie to ed about telling stede that 'blackbeard' desired stede's company? How was this deliberate attempt to poison Ed against Stede meant to make Ed happy?

Once they're on the Revenge, Ed tries to get Izzy to play along with identifying the cloud shapes as frankfurters. Izzy is completely humorless about it. "It's like pulling teeth with you, man." Ed is visibly delighted by Stede's ragtag crew. Ed is fascinated by Stede's trinkets, by the model of the ship. He shows it off to Izzy! Ed is plainly showing interest and joy at Stede's crew and possessions. Izzy shuts him down. Yes, Izzy is worried about the Spanish catching up to them. But if Izzy really was "all about" making Ed happy, why doesn't he play along, even a little, with something that is clearly making Ed happy in this moment??

Izzy admits in the s1e6 opening voiceover that Ed appears to be "seduced" by Stede. We see the montage of Ed and Stede talking and Ed is having a great time! He's smiling, he's laughing! As Ivan (or Fang?) says, "this is the most open and available i've ever seen him. look at him, he's telling ghost stories!" Ed is HAPPY. Yet Izzy hates this. He refuses to engage with the crew. He pushes Ed to kill Stede even though Ed is clearly reluctant to do it, even though Izzy himself knows that Ed feels fondness ("seduced by") for Stede. How can this possibly interpreted as Izzy "just trying to make Ed happy"???

When Izzy challenges Stede to a duel, Ed flat out says "We're not doing this, Iz!" and Izzy couldn't care less. "No. You're not doing this. So I must." Must? Must??? Why "must" you, Izzy?? Why MUST Izzy duel Stede in an attempt to either kill him or banish him from the ship - the end result being to separate him from Ed - if Izzy's driving motivation is ensuring Ed's happiness? Taking away the person who has made Ed smile and laugh, who has improved Ed's mood and behavior so noticeably that Ivan comments on it?? How will this "make Ed happy"???

And then when Izzy is himself banished from the ship instead, he tells Ed "You will rue the day and you will rue it hard." If Izzy just wants to make Ed happy, wouldn't a better response be for Izzy to say "sorry, boss, i didn't realize how much this fop meant to you." Even if he's still banished from the ship, he didn't have to depart in anger. If he really cared about Ed's happiness, he would have been fine leaving Ed with the person who he knows has been making Ed happy lately. Instead he goes and teams up with the British in order to KILL Stede. Because that will make Ed happy??? That makes no sense!!!

Of course Izzy doesn't do any of this for Ed's """happiness."""

At BEST, he knows this will make Ed unhappy but he assumes Ed will get over it eventually and things will go back to how they used to be. At WORST, he does this out of anger, spite, and jealousy, and he doesn't give a single shit about how he knows killing Stede will make Ed unhappy.

So where did this belief that Izzy was only trying to make Ed happy come from? Why do people repeat it as if it were established fact? As if it were the obvious interpretation of Izzy's behavior in season 1?

Because to me, it looks like fanon run amok. It looks like a blatant headcannon rewrite of the show. It looks like a complete lack of visual and auditory comprehension and the inability to follow a story at the most basic level.

[the0verboss]

Look if you really thought Edward was scared of Izzy at any point you really did drink his Koolaid babe.

Lucius isn't scared of Izzy.

FANG isn't scared of Izzy.

No one is actually scared of Izzy. He's a blustering joke to them in season one.

But you want me to believe the CAPTAIN Edward BLACKBEARD Teach. Pirate fucking king in the land of pirates. Is scared....of Izzy? Because Izzy yelled at him? (something we see him do regularly)

that's not fear on his face babe, that's annoyance, indignation and probably a little bit hurt.

The way this character has convinced some folks he's just a poor little sad boy in need of saving. X.X