#its because Ed is brown pete is disabled and conventionally unnattractive and jack is gross and offputting

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

You know after thinking about it I think my main problem with Izzy stans once you get past the obvious one, which is the way that they are racist to Ed, (Clearly my main problem but not the problem I’m here to talk about) is that they don’t even like Izzy. They like Ed, and they like Black Pete, and they like Calico Jack, but they can’t admit that they like those characters for some reason? (you know why they can’t admit that they like Ed and Black Pete)

Like the ways Ed’s back story gets cannibalized for Izzy in a lot of fics and the way people will swap Izzy and Ed’s personalities is well trod territory. Ed is treated as enjoying violence and having a toxic masculinity problem and Izzy is treated like someone who’s trying desperately to make his working relationship with Ed beneficial when in the show those rolls are switched. You’ve heard this meta before. I just made a whole post about the way that Jack’s roll in Ed’s backstory (i.e. like 90% of the reason he exists as a character) gets ignored in favor of giving that roll to Izzy. And don’t even get me started on Black Pete. Both Izzy and Black Pete struggle with toxic masculinity, are obsessed with Blackbeard, and desperately wants to be in a leadership roll and aren’t very good at it. But so far at least Black Pete is the one undergoing the redemption arc and getting better, and Izzy is the one getting worse. I see people wanting a relationship with Lucius to redeem him and I’m like girl you have that. That’s Black Pete. Like Black Pete chose to get better and he’s still working on it but when he realized that Blackbeard wasn’t who he thought he was he minded his business and he went from complaining about sewing being womens work and worrying about what Blackbeard’s crew would do in episode one to learning through his relationship with Lucius to be sweet and vulnerable. And while Izzy in canon is attracted to Lucius i guarantee you that Lucius will not be playing that roll in his narrative, because it’s the roll he plays for Black Pete. That’s not to say that Lucius fixed him, but they will give Lupete’s dynamic to Izzy for no fucking reason.

So I’m gonna do something I don’t usually do and that’s defend Izzy here. If you’re gonna like Izzy there are tons of things about him that you can like. His psychosexual obsession with Blackbeard and his and Ed’s weird codependency is juicy enough to drive the plot at times. He’s a little freak to the point where he got his toe cut off and he liked it. He’s stubborn. He’s driven. He’s manipulative. He’s plotting and conniving. He sees other people as caricatures of themselves and DOES NOT react well at all to people falling outside of the box he’s made for them. He’s angry all the time. He can’t identify love. He’s jealous of Stede in the way that a child is jealous of their friends’ friends. All of these are wonderful traits in a blorbo (and terrible traits in a person, but a blorbo is not a real boy) They make him interesting and they give him layers. It’s very fun to theorize what happened to him to make him this way. There are many reasons to like Izzy Hands. But it’s kind of annoying when other characters’ cool stuff is ascribed to Izzy and those characters are ignored and maligned in favor of Izzy, especially when those characters are the brown romantic lead and the bald kinda frumpy guy with a lisp, who in 99% of media doesn’t get to be seen as hot but in this media gets to be desired. And it makes me feel bad for your Izzy that you cant like him for him.

#its because Ed is brown pete is disabled and conventionally unnattractive and jack is gross and offputting #I will accept that their reasons for disliking Jack are valid #however they're gonna need to get over the things that are making them dislike Ed and Black Pete post fucking haste #I even saw someone describe Izzy as flamboyantly gay (they used more words than that) #and I had to read over their paragraph a few times to figure out where Izzy was fitting in to this description of stede #before I realized they weren't talking about Stede at all they were describing Izzy #but that was one individual where as the thing with pete and jack and ed is a fucking pattern #I like Calico Jack for Calico Jack #It's not his negative traits that are the problem #put some fucking respect on Black Pete's name now