#(Ed's not an abuser cause he punched Izzy for selling out Stede)

[autisticwriterblog]

Izzy, Ed and abuse

okay, so I’ve seen a few people talking about Izzy and Ed, and it genuinely disturbs me that I’ve seen people deny that Izzy is a victim of abuse. By most definitions, physical abuse is categorised as causing physical harm to another person’s body with intent to hurt them. Some things, like punching Izzy for selling Stede out, or choking him for saying hateful stuff when Ed was at his lowest, whilst not acceptable in the real world, are perfectly normal reactions for a pirate to have toward a member of his crew, so I’m not talking about things like that.

But the toe scene and the early parts of season 2 are clearly abusive, and only by sheer character bias (framing Ed as someone who could never do anything wrong) can you look at the way Ed treats Izzy and not consider Izzy a victim. Izzy and Ed have had a mutually toxic relationship for a long time, judging by their interactions, but I personally only see abusive behaviour starting with the toe scene. And the abusive one is Ed. Which shouldn’t be a controversial thing to say, considering what we see on screen, and yet…

Even at the end of season one, we saw Ed cut Izzy’s toe off and force him to eat it, and it is confirmed in season 2 that he took two more toes. He is even about to take a fourth toe when Izzy reports that the crew refused to throw their treasure overboard, and Izzy doesn’t argue, much unlike in season 1, when he often bitched at Ed for his decisions. Now, Izzy just takes the punishment.

Things between them come to a head when Ed shoots Izzy in the leg, leading to infection, and the amputation of his leg. He even puts a gun in Izzy’s hand, directly leading to Izzy’s suicide attempt. And in the end, all Izzy gets is a mumbled apology and that's that.

I know many people don’t like Izzy, but do they not sympathise with him? I’ll be first to admit that I don’t like Ed and Stede (I used to, but season 2 made me dislike them more and more for reasons too complicated to go into now), but I feel bad for them when bad things happen to them. I got bullied as a child, so I sympathise with Stede in the flashbacks to his childhood, and I was horrified when I learned what Ed's father was like. I don't particularly like either of them, but I feel bad for them when they're suffering. Which is why I found it so strange and appalling that people who dislike Izzy seemed to find it funny when Izzy was crawling along the floor, or died a painful death.

Even ignoring Ed's treatment of Izzy, the way he treats the crew is abusive too. He overworks them, pushing them into three months of consecutive raids (assuming they did one raid a day), leaving them all so stressed that Fang seems to always be crying. He forces Jim and Archie to fight to the death for no reason other than he said so. He expects Frenchie to kill Izzy, and it is clear how terrified Frenchie is the entire time he lies to Ed. The whole crew walk on eggshells around Ed because they don't know when he'll explode again. Basically, even if Izzy isn't being mentioned (and he should for the record, because he got the worst treatment - and he didn't deserve it, despite that some people seem to think being mutilated is a fair punishment for yelling at Ed), Ed was still abusive towards the crew. During that time period, Ed is incredibly unstable. He wants the world to burn and doesn't care who gets hurt along with him. Which is why the crew still show signs of trauma after Stede returns. Because they are traumatised by Ed's behaviour.

I know that Ed is a victim of abuse, and I have seen people bring this up when his abusive behaviour is mentioned. The thing is, it's perfectly possible for a victim to become an abuser themself, because they're a human being and are capable of doing bad things. Yes, survivors don't have to become abusive (see: my mum, who was smacked as a child but never raised a hand to her own children, because she didn't turn out like her parents), but it can happen. And that is what happened with Ed. There is even a direct parallel between Ed's dad throwing a plate against the wall, scaring Ed's mother, and the scene where Ed throws a chair against the wall, making Stede visibly flinched. If you want someone to be annoyed with about this comparison, don't pick the fans who are just noticing something in canon - blame the show for writing Ed doing the same thing his abusive father did.

In conclusion, Izzy fans aren't just making things up. We're pointing out things that canon showed onscreen and how Ed's behaviour toward Izzy is abusive. I wanted to like Ed this season, but the way the show wrote him made it impossible for me to tolerate him, because he treated everyone badly and they were expected to just move on. I understand that Ed is a romantic lead, but perhaps it wasn't a good idea to make your romantic lead act so abusive toward his subordinates and then never show any real consequences of that.