Girl, how ARE you?

i'll start with kylo ren because this won't be an exhaustive analysis of that character, mostly due to 1) i dont really like star wars 2) this isn't about star wars its about how this specific character kinda swept through peoples brains,,, but, kylo ren is a white man with a lot of power who demonstrates little interest in controlling his emotions (makes them the burden of other people), violates the boundaries of other characters, betrays those closest to him while blaming them for that betrayal, and violently lashes out when circumstances and situations don't go his way. he torments Rey, the female lead of the sequel trilogy, both physically through torture and emotionally through continuous attempts at manipulation.

a significant portion of the star wars sequel trilogy fanbase sympathizes with him to an excessive degree, denying his responsibility for his actions, blaming his parents and uncle Luke (despite the fact that he's like thirty) for his choices, minimizing his responsibility for his actions and at times minimizing the extent of his violence, even when its on screen. a tactic often used for this is displacing kylo ren's violence onto the leading man of color, finn, in an effort to make finn look like the real misogynist, the real villain, the real tormenter, all so that kylo can walk away looking better.

this is because pretty much all of western media is geared towards asking the audience to sympathize with white men. with white violence. with (white) emotional expression as violence.

we see this in american cop shows a lot, where we the audience are prompted to sympathize with violent cops violating the law because they just feel so much about the crime, it touches them so emotionally that they can't help but rough up a suspect who's been accused of such a horrible thing (this is essentially the bread and butter of chicago pd but that's another story). it's this idea that violence isn't just violence, violence is sympathetic and an expression of emotion, and it's understandable, and it happens, and critically, of course, all of this is  only if the perpetrator is white or acting in service to whiteness.

kylo ren murders his father, and people talk about how sad it is he lost his dad. kylo ren destroys planets, and we talk about how sad it is that his uncle wanted to kill him for seeing he would grow up to destroy planets. kylo ren tortures and torments rey and we get posts about how it symbolizes her womb and their sexual congress (god i wish i was joking).

kylo ren is a dream boy to huge swaths of tumblr and his every flaw and crime is softened under the gaze of understanding, sympathizing, and minimizing.

now, what does this have to do with israel izzy hands, you might be asking?

well, you see, izzy hands is also a violent white man. he also blames other people for his actions (and failures), he makes assumptions about people's motives and their true purpose in life because he believes he innately understands them better than they do themselves (and in doing so, izzy hands works to uphold the colonizer mindset of the british navy, even as blackbeard himself's first mate), he harasses and insults and demeans. he betrays the person he considers himself closest to, and then blames the betrayed for the betrayal. he has delusions of grandeur and overestimates his own skill and importance. and a good portion of the fandom buys into all that he says hook, line, and sinker, all the while minimizing his violence and sympathizing with it. 

now this is a good amount of claims, so i'll go through them one by one, and discuss ways that i've seen them brought up in fandom specifically to minimize the negative impact and sympathize with izzy. 

firstly: izzy as a violent white man

violence can be a confusing thing, in some people's eyes. to a certain type of person, violence can only be defined in the realm of the physical, in laying hands or weapons on another person with intent to injure. but to many more people, particularly marginalized people (in my experience), violence can also include verbal and emotional attacks, bigoted remarks, and the undercutting of boundaries. 

izzy does engage in at least two direct acts of physical violence, first when he grabs fang by the beard and yanks it to punish him for asking a question and then again when he challenges stede to a duel for the explicit purpose of separating him from ed (against ed's wishes!) and then stabs him rather than call it a draw. and note: there's no evidence that izzy WASNT trying to kill stede with that stab. we don't have reason to believe that he knew ed had taught him about being run through, not when the joke of the run me through scene hinged instead on izzy thinking ed and stede were fucking on deck. 

but izzy's violence is chiefly of the other varieties. he is verbally and emotionally, homophobically, violent towards lucius, ed, and to an extent, stede himself. i’ll describe these events in detail in the section about him harassing and demeaning others!

izzy blames other people for his actions 

on two (maybe three) different occasions, we see izzy displace blame onto other people for his own actions and failures. the first time is when he's explaining how he came to have one hostage instead of two when talking to ed - this one isn't really about violence, just about establishing a bit of personality and character with izzy. ed points out that stede bested izzy in swordplay and izzy displaces the blame for his loss onto stede, saying that it was an ambush, completely unprofessional.

they are pirates, a good 90% of their job is ambushing people

being ambushed isn't a good excuse for losing a fight! especially when it wasn't actually the ambush that lead to izzy's loss. i've seen people dismiss what happens a lot as stede getting by with luck or plot armor or romantic comedy genre shenanigans, but what it ultimately comes down to is that izzy was overconfident in his ability to handle the situation. when ivan took a rock to the face and went down, izzy took his eyes off the man standing in front of him with a knife and because of that ended up with said knife pressed to his face. he took his eyes off the threat before him because he didn't see stede as a threat.

but he's not going to admit that to ed, so he blames stede for being unprofessional and ambushing him.

his second displacement of blame also involves stede, is an attempt to provoke violence - he lies to ed and says that he specifically told him blackbeard desires his company, despite the fact that he did no such thing, and actually avoided (twice!) saying who his boss was. this is clearly because he's hoping ed will get angry and he'll be allowed to take care of/kill/thrash stede around for the embarrassment back when they first met.

if not for the fact that ed is BORED and looking for something new and different, he might have taken stede's unknowing insult as mockery and we see what happens to people who mock blackbeard. (they get skinned with a snail fork and tossed overboard.)

izzy was hoping ed would give him permission to dish out violence, and he's visibly disappointed when ed is fascinated instead.

this leads us to the third time he displaces blame, and this is not an attempt at violence, this is an act of violence. izzy sells ed out to the fucking british navy, and he can play it off as selling stede fucking bonnet out all he wants, but he was prepared for the chance that ed would be there at the mercy of the british. he was prepared enough that he clearly made a deal to have blackbeard remanded to the custody of "captain hands" if he was found with stede bonnet. he could have gotten the crew of the revenge and ed killed, all because he couldn't accept that ed is capable of making his own choices (he thinks ed is being seduced, that something's been done to his brain. he doesnt allow that ed could have different priorities or different choices, its his way or the high way)

he used his knowledge of ed and his past to plot an intimate betrayal, not just in selling him out to the navy but by summoning up his old buddy calico jack to be the distraction to try and lure him away from the rest, specifically so he can hurt people that izzy doesn't like and ed does (stede and the crew of the revenge). if ed hadn't come back, stede would have had the crew to open fire on those navy ships and its probable that they would have done it. they probably would have been sunk then and there, attacking three navy ships with just the revenge on their side.

and the whole time he’s still trying to convince edward that he’s doing this for edward’s sake, that he’s not really betraying him he’s just getting rid of stede, that this is for the best and it will be painless, and then when ed steps up and makes the choice to sign the act of grace to save stede, izzy comes at him again with “do you really want to lick the king’s boots”, as if ed would be at a position of considering it without izzy’s betrayal limiting choices.

a significant fandom response to all of these events has, for the most part, been to minimize and sympathize. i've seen posts about izzy being a housewife abandoned by his spouse for a new model. i've seen posts discussing how cruel ed is for abandoning izzy for a fresh interest. how izzy was just trying to help ed in all this because the navy would have found them eventually. there are plenty of posts about how izzy is definitely super competent and only lost to stede in the first place because of the genre change, never mind that genre changes don’t explain why izzy lost to stede the first time. izzy literally sells ed out to the british navy for petty spite and because he doesn't respect ed to make his own decisions, and the discussion hinges on devotion.

come now. we must see that this is the same kind of minimization and sympathizing that was done with kylo ren, when he murders his own father and then makes it out that it's han solo's own fault he killed him, that han gave him no choice. izzy is implying that ed left him no choice but to sell him out, even though izzy had every choice. all he had to do was walk away. he already had walked away, thanks to the duel he INSISTED on having.

this leads into the next point:

izzy making assumptions about people's motives and their true purpose in life, and the ways that izzy acts to uphold the colonizer mindset of the british navy.

there have been multiple posts about the possibility of izzy having a background with the british navy due to his behavior - specifically how he handles discipline, and posts exploring the racial (and racist) dynamic to izzy and ed's relationship to each other. here i intend to argue that izzy’s similarity towards the culture of the british navy and the racial dynamic to izzy and ed’s relationship are in fact inherently tied together.

because see, izzy claims that he does this stuff for ed, he claims that he wants his captain back, he claims that lucius is a proper seductress sleeping around behind his partner's back, he claims that ed is washed up and posing and blackbeard is the real man - and all of these elements are about izzy enforcing his world view, derived from toxic masculinity as enforced by the dominant oppressively expanding white culture onto the people around him. the world of OFMD, contrary to some beliefs, is not a muppet world of the romance genre, nor is it a world free of homophobia. it is our world, its just not solely centering the white experience. it doesn't treat racism as a source of voyeuristic trauma porn, and it doesn't treat homophobia that way either.

somewhere along the line, izzy hands clearly became the sort of man who thinks the only real power is violence, the way a man leads is through fear, that power makes a man into a god, and that punishment and humiliation are the way to create fear and from that fear, power. these same mentalities are centralized in the british empire and its navy (as well as the fancy folk on the party boat), where the clearly doesn’t respect people of color and specifically black people, where izzy’s tactics are taken from the navy - that whole show he puts on, fine dining while the crew works? that’s a navy tactic. the no rations for a week also calls to mind military tactics for breaking rebellious recruits.

we see the punching down, the establishment of power through fear and punishment, in the way that izzy talks to the people around him, the way he grabs and yanks fang's beard to stop him from questioning blackbeard even while he himself calls ed half-insane/half-mad (there are things izzy is allowed to do that the other men aren’t), the way he moans oooh daddy, daddy and snaps bitch to try and shame lucius for being the penetrated partner (but notably has nothing to say to pete), the way he labels ed a nonhuman and says he's better off dead and then infantilizes him as a gay man by saying he's pining over his boyfriend as if ed, a middle aged man who's had previous relationships, is a naive child. again, we see it in the way he sets himself up to eat a fine meal while the crew works and sets fang and ivan (two men of color) to be his dining servants, salting his food and standing by for his orders. we see it in the way that only roach, frenchie, and oluwande are actually being put to any hard work, trying to heave up the anchor, while the rest of the crew is on light duties!

izzy claims he was honored to work for blackbeard because he respected his skill as a sailor, essentially, his mind. but he constantly dismisses ed and his creative process and his feelings and his opinions and literally anything ed does that doesn't fit with izzy's own preconceived notions of what it means to be Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach. this simultaneously infantilizes ed - implies that he doesn't know what's best for him, that he can't take care of himself, that the decisions he makes for himself are the wrong choice - and lionizes him, makes him not a myth rather than a man, makes him someone who has to constantly win, who can never enjoy a fine fabric, never admire a library, never cry over an abandonment, never express himself with anything but violence.

and frankly, this simultaneous infantilization and lionization pattern is nothing unique or new. this is a classic tool of white supremacy and a classic tool of colonization from european powers.

it's the assumption that non-white people are inherently more ""savage"", more wild, more aggressive, less intelligent, less rational, less capable of strong emotion. izzy is disgusted by ed's softer side, and this is UNIQUE to izzy. fang and ivan, they both approve of ed's softer side, of ed bonding with the crew of the revenge. ivan says he's never seen ed so open and available and he doesn't sound bothered by it.

but izzy is upset. and in the finale, when ed is mourning and grieving his hopes and romantic dreams, izzy is disgusted. he says that ed would be better off dead than what he is now, clearly considering him emasculated and dehumanized if he can't be the peak of masculinity that's expected of him, not just as blackbeard but as blackbeard who is a man of color. izzy cannot tolerate that this person he respected only on the grounds of ed presenting as the man izzy expects him to be, in the identity izzy expects him to have, no deviations, no stops, no breaks, is not just that persona.

this is racist. i will say again, this is racist. this is izzy expecting ed to be beyond human and other because izzy will not respect him as a whole and complete person. this is the white colonizer mentality that expects people of color to be superhuman and always on their a-game and never have a bad day. this is izzy ignoring the new white men under his command barely working as he puts the new black men to the hardest work the ship has.

this is izzy, embodying the toxic, racist culture that the golden age of piracy represents - mass colonization, empire building, the invasion and conquering of native peoples all over the planet.

what is the fandom response to these scenes, these events? well, once again, big on the minimization, huge on the sympathy. posts abound about how izzy isn't ACTUALLY homophobic he just hates femininity, he just hates laziness, he just hates people who cheat on their partners. posts about how izzy isnt racist, the show probably didn't think twice about how they had people working! izzy isn't racist and you're overly sensitive if you think he is! izzy isn't racist, YOU'RE the racist who must hate white people.

the response is to talk about how izzy is on the breaking point, how he’s afraid, how he’s losing his stability, how he’s lashing out to try and get back the man he trusts and loves and doesn’t realize the damage he’s doing to ed because he just doesn’t understand what’s happening. 

the classic fandom response, really. it happened with kylo ren too. kylo ren isn't a misogynist, he just respects rey as an opponent. kylo ren isn't racist, the stormtroopers come from all over. its not racist to like kylo ren more than finn, i just think kylo is more sympathetic and nuanced, and besides finn was being the REAL misogynist by holding rey's hand -

people say ed's the real problem too, for not talking to izzy, for liking stede, for hurting the brand. there are posts theorizing about how blackbeard is izzy's creation too so ed can't just give it up. that ed owes his crew (izzy) to be blackbeard even if it makes him miserable. posts about how ed is threatening izzy more than actually expressing suicidal ideation, because why listen to the man of color when you could sympathize with a white man, right?

after all, ed is so erratic and tired and half-insane, he's leaving all the real work to izzy (never mind that ed had a plan, never mind that ed invited izzy into the plan by asking him about the clouds, never mind that izzy rejected this invitation by being disgusted by what he views as a digression because even now he doesn't care about ed's process and that ed’s sigh about izzy lacking imagination shows this isn’t a one-off-)

never mind that izzy says he was excited to work for blackbeard, implying ed was already a legend when izzy began working for him, rather than izzy having a hand in creating the blackbeard legend. never mind that izzy doesn't actually do anything to come up with another plan besides ask how fast the ship can sail when its already too late and ask about the munitions as though they can take on a fully armed spanish navy vessel (and then doesn't have the canons prepped, or follow through on those questions)-

what matters is that izzy SAYS he's trying to keep them all alive and that izzy SAYS he's managing ed.

never mind what the actual text, the show, reveals to us. fandom takes izzy at his word even as ed's own words are dismissed. ed says he feels like he's drowning? ed says he hasn't tried dying yet, maybe he should give it a go? he's threatening izzy with killing himself, not expressing his feelings. he's just talking about wanting to retire. he doesn't mean it. he's making izzy stress by not sharing his plan, never mind that izzy is instantly dismissive the moment he starts to tell him about how he got to the plan.

dismissing the male protagonist of color in favor of the white antagonist - a classic fandom move. classic white supremacy and defense of whiteness too - to believe white people and question people of color.

izzy harasses, insults, and demeans and also just because i can fit it here, izzy has delusions of grandeur

i already talked about this a good amount in the last segment, but i think this is really critical here in discussing how the fandom minimizes the impact of what izzy does and says in the name of sympathizing with him. izzy's actions are aggressive, his words violent, intended to cause harm, intended to HURT, intended to make people feel small and ashamed, because as izzy himself put it - he's first mate hands, or god to you.

that's the high he's riding on. being god as far as he's concerned.

(never mind that this is clearly a delusion of grandeur because the second izzy is actually in charge he's riding high in classic british navy fashion, sitting up and having dinner in front of the crew to establish power, clearly delineating the line between white and non-white, and then punishing them with no food to regain power after they fail to respect him)

and he gets there, like i said, by punching down. he keeps fang and ivan in line with violence, he tries to have the revenge's crew kept down with violence, he tries to work lucius into exhaustion when he catches him in the submissive role of sex and lucius fails to be intimidated by him -

which again, this is motivated by homophobia and the harassment is to the bottom partner, which happens a LOT with homophobia, because homophobes tend to think the person DOING the penetrating is still a man's man while the person submitting is for lack of polite terms, "the woman", "the girl", the "bitch" as izzy puts it. It's not about hating femininity, its about hating femininity in men aka homophobia. And when words alone can't work, Izzy tries to force Lucius into submission by making him scrape the barnacles, even though he actually doesn't have authority over lucius!

and the thing about the barnacles, because THAT comes up a lot too, is that while barnacles can damage a ship's hull and paneling, the chief problem that barnacles cause is that they slow down the ship by increasing friction between the ship and the water surface. this CAN be a problem, but it's not an immediate problem, it's not one that wouldn't be better served being taken care of the next time the ship docks or comes to port and they get other repairs done. it's not the essential, immediate chore that i've seen some imply. it's scrubby busy work that izzy put lucius on as punishment for not being ashamed when izzy decided to humiliate him. izzy says, you think you're cute and lucius says i've decided to carry myself like i am.

one way that we can tell this is nonessential grunt work is the fact that izzy puts lucius, who by all accounts is the least experienced sailor, to work with minimal instruction. as was pointed out to me, in the history of pirate and sailing media, scrubbing the barnacles is generally a grunt work chore to break the newbies in. it’s maintenance, not essential work that the ship depends on. 

and this interaction? this has nothing to do with izzy thinking lucius is unfaithful. it happens before then. and he doesn't come at pete for getting his dick wet, just lucius for being the one wetting it and being unashamed about it. its about homophobia, and the fact that in the world of toxic masculinity the worst thing you can do is "submit".

now, there's subtext here about izzy not being straight, about izzy being repressed and gay and lashing out at lucius who is openly and joyously gay and that's definitely likely - but that still makes it homophobia, and its not internalized homophobia either, its externalized homophobia directed at the gay men around him that izzy sees as emasculated and emasculating. personally i have no patience for people who make others miserable to get some scrap of satisfaction for themselves, but i know other people do, have patience and sympathy.

but there's so much faith extended to izzy. so much talk about his redemption, his suffering, his sorrows, the way he hurts, the way ed hurt him, when izzy initiates the violence and disrespect, but izzy is white and whiteness is prioritized. even when the violence is white on white (izzy vs lucius) izzy’s metatexual position as a repressed gay man is placed in priority to lucius’ emotional safety as an out gay man subject to homophobic violence in the workplace he lives in. when lucius refuses to do the pointless punishment task he’s been given because he wasn’t humiliated, he’s given even more busy work for the pure purpose of burdening, exhausting, and breaking him in, and that’s why lucius is framed as the winner when he makes izzy back off with his own threat of humiliation. 

because the work was never essential and was always about humiliation and forcing “respect”. and yet there are so many posts about izzy being right about the work needing to be done and how lucius really is just lazy and uses seduction to get out of work. over on the ofmd kink meme there are SO many posts about how they just want the crew to see how cool and competent and valuable and right izzy is and to have him get hurt/comfort after being misjudged by the crew. 

how many analyses talk about the class divide in ofmd while failing to mention the racial divide? i know i've read far too many of them.

as with kylo ren and every other violent white man that becomes particularly beloved in fandom, izzy's responsibility for his violence is often diminished and his sympathetic qualities (very limited in the show) are expanded upon. and just to make it clear, this isn't to say every izzy fan interprets him this way but my goodness have i seen a lot of this sentiment.  i find izzy pretty fascinating, on a meta and writing level, and scum under my boots on my personal level, and if anyone takes this post as an attack i mean. that's on you. this post is to raise awareness that this is an on-going habit in fandom that has continued for decades and will continue on for decades if people don't stop and consider, at least occasionally, why they think as they do.

izzy is made out as though he's trying so hard, but he doesn't even care that the crew of the revenge are doing work poorly and sloppily (frenchie is literally nailing his sleeve down…) and when he interrupts them having a meal he screams and shouts but doesn't actually make sure they get to work because it wasn’t about them taking a break its about the fact that they aren’t terrified of being boarded and invaded and he never does any of the oh so concerning work himself. 

fandom takes it for granted that izzy is a reliable narrator when he says he wants the work done right and he's trying to keep things running but we learn from fang that when he was last kept in charge he metaphorically (and pretty much literally) shat the bed. and this is a story fang is happy to share with people he's known for less than two weeks. izzy does NOT command loyalty or respect, he does not keep a crew running, he does not know how to manage people, and days of being in charge later he's only saved from death because ed comes back and saves his life effortlessly, because ED commands respect and loyalty.

when izzy is in charge of things without ed's backing, he's izzy the spewer shitting the bed at doing the job.

and yet his competencies are lauded! and defended! what we see that izzy is good at is fighting and selling out his boss. what we see he's bad at is pretty much everything else. (pretty similar to kylo ren, again, who is likewise held up as competent and intimidating and powerful.)

at no point does the narrative ever reward izzy. at no point is he on top in any of the jokes or the gags. izzy is another badminton for this narrative, punching down and forcibly maintaining the abusive social dynamic of the time and place, and thus like the badmintons, the narrative is never on his side.

but i guess the narrative doesn't have to be on his side, because a portion of the fandom will be, right?

when we look at the impact that izzy has on ed, we can see that its the same impact the badmintons have on stede, and here is where i’ll be adding in observations from @ who helped review and critique this analysis in the drafting stage:

The point about the Badmintons is really good because it's about the different expressions of that racist, homophobic masculinity from two different pov. The Badmintons are of course rich and have an emotional distance from Stede and his masculinity/femininity that they turn into bullying and disdain. But Izzy is up close to Ed. Izzy is in the circle and uses many of the same mechanisms the Badmintons use, just in a slightly different way, but they all humiliate, reproach, harass, and disdain the guy they don't approve of. Where the Badmintons wanted to crush Stede to stop him being who he is, Izzy is trying to control Ed to stop him being who he is. Both the Badmintons and Izzy bring up the past as mechanisms of control, they both refuse to listen when they're told No, they both reject other forms of thinking and other expressions of masculinity. The Badmintons want Stede to suffer because he can't live up to their "ideals," but Izzy wants Ed to suffer to "elevate" him to his ideals. And the racial implication of what that ideal constitutes is still there. Especially because even if this is chance, both Badmintons and Izzy are English. If that makes sense.

And if you add the reading that Izzy is gay and repressed (where the Badmintons are probably not), that also explains why Izzy is given a little more depth and screen time. Because whether this is true or not, Izzy is the eponymous crab in the bucket trying to bring down the others with him because he is too bigoted and closed minded to think there's any other way to live outside the bucket

a lot of fans depict izzy's possessiveness as protectiveness from stede bonnet, as defending his relationship with ed from stede, as being afraid that ed will be weakened and left vulnerable by exposure to stede's dangerous softness -

but izzy is the one who hurts ed for being soft

ivan and fang are both "real" pirates who come from ed's crew and they're both in full support of ed and his growth and change. they serve as balances to show that izzy is not, in fact, correct, about the way the world works. these two are hardened, battle-loving pirates who regret not getting to murder and are happy to punch prisoners. but they enjoy the softer life with the revenge and they enjoy watching ed soften up too

(and yes, they stand with izzy for the big "you have to send him to doggy heaven" discussion, but it seems pretty clearly that that's more because of the no pet rules and lingering dog murder trauma than because they disapprove of ed's changing. just him seemingly altering the rules of the arrangement.)

izzy, acting as antagonist, digs his heels in and goes in on ed right as he's climbing to his feet, because he disapproves of ed reaching out and finding community and sharing his softness with other people. he's disgusted that other people have seen the "weakness" that izzy himself dislikes so much.

there has been a lot of pushback against izzy for the way he attacks ed, i would never pretend otherwise. but there's an equally large amount of poeple who diminish what izzy does, the impact he has on ed, and even the nature of his comments. i've seen posts argue that izzy isn't threatening ed when he says "edward better watch his step", as if there could possibly be a non-threatening connotation to the phrase. i'm not going to argue about whether or not edward is afraid. what i am going to say is that its pretty undeniable by any reasonable standard that izzy is threatening ed.

again, posts about how izzy isn’t homophobic, that go about repeating that  'he's not homophobic he just hates when men are feminine' argument, are at best naive and at worst complete obstrucations of the truth because that is BUILT on the inherent misogyny within homophobia. the idea that men who cry, men who wear bright colors, men who enjoy soft clothing are feminine? is homophobia! Because its all about the fear of men being women because gay men especially men who bottom are seen as being emasculated and womanly. 

in fact, some fans characterize izzy as emotional and hurt, a housewife, a jilted lover, as being the truly vulnerable one between the two, the one facing losing everything... and never mind that izzy is doing heads and shoulders better than ed, and that izzy CHOSE to leave ed's side when he chose not to respect ed's wishes and instigated a duel that ed told him not to do and asked him to back down from, while ed is the one the narrative shows as having actually been left behind. izzy isn’t left behind. izzy leaves, because things need to be on his terms or no terms. And yet izzy is viewed as the one emotionally transgressed upon, the sad wife dealing with an absentee husband, this all, again, takes me right back to kylo ren. 

after all, kylo ren as female-coded, woman-coded, as a feminine character, was a hugely popular take in kylo ren fan spaces. people looked at kylo ren and said that his emotional nature did not make him volatile but in touch with his feelings, feminine coded. his violence was considered self-defense, and he was considered a victim, a real victim, of abandonment, the same way that izzy is even now being considered a victim of abandonment. not going to lie, the way that izzy’s implied masochistic bottom tendencies are taken and blown up by fandom to put him in this space of being more vulnerable than he actually is just reminds me starkly of the way kylo ren fans used his supposed femininity as a defense against critiques of his character.

in conclusion 

i cant believe i spent 6000 words talking about this and i guess this is my huge izzy analysis post that covers my general troubles with the way fandom interacts with the character of izzy hands. Izzy is an interesting character because he’s essentially a slightly more fleshed out badminton, he’s an antagonist who serves to kick ed when he’s down and adhere him to the corrupt and toxic mire of masculine society they both inhabit, but too often he’s not allowed to be fully culpable for his behavior.

fandom has a long habit of finding toxic white men and softening their behavior. it’s not even about condoning the behavior, it’s about changing the text to make them more palatable and i believe its to do with our societal predisposition to trust, cater to, and trust whiteness combined with izzy’s queer coding that makes people latch onto him and want to make him something better than he is. after all, if he isn’t homophobic, if he isn’t enforcing racism, if he isn’t violently suppressing the people around him, then its easier to care for him, love him, sympathize with him, empathize with him - 

easier to see this white man as a victim instead of the architect of all of his own misery. at every turn izzy can walk away and at every turn izzy chooses to take his shovel and dig himself deeper. at no one’s request, at no one’s entreaty, izzy digs his heels in and drives deeper into the fucked up mire of toxic masculinity because he doesn’t want to leave it and he doesn’t want ed or the crew or anyone else to leave it either. And that’s a fascinating character, a sad character, a hurting character, a fucked up character, and i don’t understand why so much of the engagement with this character wants to run way from that.