#does Izzy have religious trauma? you decide!

[cononeillbreastingboobily]

I think Izzy has a deep appreciation for the finer things. It just looks different than the way Stede or even Ed approach them.

It's in the way he gently puts down the miniature ship from Stede's room, where he could've very easily break it. It's in the way he keeps his hair pushed back, his clothing always neat and elegant.

It's obviously just a headcanon, but I think that growing up Izzy's family wasn't well-off, at least not most of the time. Perhaps he grew up in a modest upbringing where discipline and modesty were drilled into his head all the time. Perhaps he spent his childhood and adolescence longingly staring at beautiful things in displays of the shops in the town where he grew up, feeling pangs of guilt over wanting things his family would call "frivolous".

Perhaps his family stepped into wealth quite suddenly, and all but Izzy himself became drunk with money. Perhaps their nouveau riche way of being made Izzy despise people who overindulge in the goods around them. Perhaps that was all the more reason for him to become a pirate - he imagined living rough, wearing ragged clothes and eating any scraps he manages to catch.

But then, the most extraordinary thing happened. An Edward Teach appeared on his path, a man who came from a background even more modest than his own, but completely lacking Izzy's guilt over indulging in the finer things in life.

Ed insisted that Izzy wear nice clothes, and Izzy didn't protest when, after looting a ship of vacationing aristocrats, he was handed a mountain of clothes, and tasked with choosing something nice for himself.

The ring on his tie was a personal touch from Ed. Izzy didn't protest.

So that was fine. Edward liked fine things, and Izzy liked Edward, whether he realised it or not.

But then - Stede.

A man so deeply reminding him of his own family as if he did it just to anger Izzy specifically.

He surrounded himself with beauty simply because he could and did things on a whim, and Edward loved that.

And it was Izzy's personal hell.

[atryoshka]

Frenchie and Izzy getting together would be genius and tbh I can't unsee it now

Love that Izzy and Frenchie actually have a lot in common on a deeper level that wasn't really apparent to me until s2 when we see how they deal with trauma in equal but opposite ways. We have Frenchie with his little box that allows him to straight up ignore the dark shit he's been through like it doesn't exist, happily eat some blood cake, and thinking that his death being given a clear deadline is a comfort. Then we have Izzy trying to stone face his way through having his body parts severed, just business as usual bc that's the pirate life and it won't change even though he's visibly holding back tears, and then accusing the crew of being too cowardly to kill him, actively inviting death bc he doesn't get why any of it even matters so keeping him alive is pointless.

What's interesting is that given the right circumstances, they could easily trade places, with Izzy being more lighthearted and Frenchie falling apart at the seams.

We've already seen signs of this with Izzy being much more chilled out after the crew made him the new unicorn, finding something in this terrible life that make him see them, and himself, in a more positive light. Like yeah, life is still filled with unimaginable horror, but now has a custom gold painted unicorn leg to trudge through it with, which is absolutely absurd but now he can't help but smile. So he decided his life is so unserious right now and you know what? A shark took his leg, end of story, here's a little wooden shark I made today just for fun lol. Frenchie on the other hand is still pretty relaxed despite everything that's happened so far, but I have a feeling that he was probably very similar to izzy in the past before he joined the crew of The Revenge. His past is pretty mysterious even with the little tidbits we get like him being in the service for bit. It doesn't sound like he was doing it for too long so the other things in his life that he doesn't talk about remain unknown, probably even to himself. The box exists so he can pretend any trauma he experiences doesn't even exist, unlike a fiction which still somewhat acknowledges that there was something that happened to him in a way he could accept. The truth is, he actually never moved on bc all the parts of his life that he's ignoring are still lurking inside him waiting to break out at anytime. I think when something accidentally triggers a memory he suppressed, we'll see a different side to him. Less chill, more shrewd survivalist, like when he and the others reunited with the revenge crew after being stranded at sea. He bounced back pretty fast after they got past the pinnata and cake standoff but it was interesting to see how ready he was to be violent and how untrusting he was of everyone's intentions in that context. He'd usually be much more chill and willing to fast talk his way out of a situation, even when he knows someone has bad intentions. (There's also probably something with religious trauma he's hiding but that's a whole other can of worms I won't get into. All I'll say is that combined with his very strong beliefs of the supernatural and grudging flippant way he does the cross symbol on himself when others do it, when they boarded the cursed ship, he was that only one to not step in the satanic circle before anyone even questioned what the strange lines even were. Did he immediately recognize it and consciously avoid it or was it gut reaction? Idk, but he sure as hell didn't speak up about it and just wearily watched the other step into it and draw their own conclusions. ) But getting back on track Honestly, their dynamic would be really interesting to explore in the show bc they could understand and care about each other in ways that would probably surprise them if given the opportunity to spend more time together on screen. tl;dr: All this to say that I fell down the rabbit hole after realizing that they are basically this meme, which has a lot of potential for so many hilarious and accidentally heartbreaking moments

[warmhappycat]

I hope it’s ok that I took this idea and then wrote a bunch about it. Not fic exactly, just thoughts, some of which approach fic.

I both love and hate posts like this. I love them because OP is brilliant, and this idea is good, and it would have been such a small change but such a dramatic improvement. And I hate them because OP is just a random internet person who came up with a great idea that would have been so easy to implement and make the season so much better, and all the paid professionals did… what they did… instead.

There’s something about seeing how easy it would have been to make it great that makes it even more frustrating that it wasn’t.

It doesn’t make any fucking sense that Izzy “I should have let the English kill you, [you] namby-pamby in a silk gown pining for [your] boyfriend” Hands would do drag and sing so that the crew could slack off and Ed could have sex with someone else. I feel very confident that he would rather die than do any of those things, and his “development” in season 2 was too weird and rushed for me to believe that he had become that kind of person.

But,

I found it believable that he had softened his position on “namby-pamby-ness” (hard to put your foot down about it with all those missing toes, huh Izzy?). I found it believable that he wanted Lucius to get better (or at least stop complaining) about his trauma. So if we had a turn of events in which the crew found out that Izzy largely sparked Ed’s whole violent spiral, then we could have had an arc where Lucius is demanding recompense from Izzy the same way he did with Ed, and that could have ended in this.

Maybe Lucius heard Izzy humming or singing in the bath or something. I find it hard to believe that Izzy would initiate himself singing in public, but if Lucius discovers he has a nice voice, and he feels that Izzy owes him something, maybe he would ask. Maybe he would say, “I want you to sing at my wedding. You were horrible to me about being a ‘seductress,’ you treated my intimacy with Pete like it was dirty, you lit the fuse that sent me overboard, and you rowed Pete out to some island to starve to death and rot under the hot sun. Sing at our wedding, bitch.”

And now there’s an actual catalyst for gradual, believable change! Like, it’s not that I think living with and watching Ed during his kraken era wouldn’t also catalyze change, but I find it unlikely that someone who has been shown so far to be emotionally abusive, disdainful of feelings, and just generally to have the emotional depth of a teaspoon would able to intuit all of the correct lessons from that circumstance and very quickly execute them to near-perfection. That’s just a new guy! They just body-swapped Izzy Hands with a different guy!

But in this scenario, he doesn’t have to become enlightened. He just has to decide whether or not he’s going to sing a song - whether or not he’s going to do something nice for someone he’s hurt, because they asked him to. Maybe he’s not ready to make amends and take accountability and become emotionally vulnerable and be honest and totally turn his personality and relationships around, but Lucius is being really annoying about it and the whole crew is on his side and Stede keeps yapping about “poison into positivity” and even Ed says, “at least all he wants you to do is sing; I let him push me off the boat!”, and so he concedes to do it.

But maybe at first he won’t say what song he’s going to sing. Maybe he’s really grouchy about the whole thing, and openly debating whether he should sing some random sea shanty or dumb drinking song or maybe an old religious hymn, just to pour cold water on this gay event. We could have a cute scene of Lucius second guessing his decision to push for this, worried that Izzy will ruin the wedding, and then Pete saying that the wedding will be great no matter what Izzy does, he couldn’t possibly ruin it even if he tried, because they’re getting married(!!!!), and besides, he thinks it’s hot that Lucius bullied Izzy into this and won.

And then the wedding scene comes, and Izzy’s just kind of vocalizing while Pete and Lucius enter. It’s more like an instrumental piece than someone singing, but it’s nice. They have the ceremony, and the kiss, and just as they’re breaking apart and the cheering is starting to die down, we hear…

🎵 Hold me close and hold me fast, this magic spell you cast… 🎵

Because he chose nice. He had every opportunity to be that nasty little rat man from season 1, to rain piss and vinegar on this happy, gay, lovely moment, and he chose to be nice instead. Maybe when he gets to “and when we kiss…” he even gestures at them to kiss again, and visibly smiles when everyone starts dancing.

It wouldn’t be a sign that he’s a totally cool guy now, or that the ways he hurt people in the past don’t matter anymore, or even that he can be trusted to never do it again. But it would be real, tangible, believable proof that he is capable of being that, and that he’s trying to change. Con O’Neill once said in a panel that Izzy wants to be better, he just doesn’t know how. I love that thought, but I never saw anything in canon that supported it. I think this would though! Someone gave him a very clear request to do something pretty simple, just because it was the kind of nice thing that other people on the Revenge do for each other. He was given that opportunity, and took it, and exceeded all expectations. That would have made more sense to me, and therefore, would have been more impactful.

if calypso's birthday had been the lupete wedding btw. that means - ok, i talked about how the way izzy's redemption arc works in the second half of the season is by taking every shitty thing he did in s1 and kind of symbolically reversing it to atone for it, right? so he already got "being kind of nice to lucius" as one of the beats last episode but this means the singing would be specifically blessing lucius and pete's union. the first clearly & actively homophobic thing he did in s1 was harass lucius & pete for having sex, and then here he'd be working to make their wedding romantic. nice gesture and honestly helps explain what they were going for with the decision to have izzy sing: it's not just, or even primarily, about ed and stede.

[taketheringtolohac]

I have like. Barely thought about the Guerra sisters but someone said that they should be Filipino and now I’m VERY 👀👀👀 and I am having THOUGHTS about them and growing up like!!!

Ok I have a lot of thoughts and this got long so if you are interested read under the cut (cw for talks about Catholicism, mentions of weight, and not great family dynamics)

Izzie and Atlas cooking with their Lola who immigrated to the states and who just. Throws money at them when their parents aren’t looking but who cares about them deeply and wants them to have a strong sense of family tradition and thinks the best way of doing that is through cooking and baking for them.

Izzie who really loves their Lola and all the recipes that Lola gave her but hates how religious her family is and going to church and how uncomfortable it all is for her but who always gets a card saying Jesus Loves You for Christmas and hates how her Lola talks about Christianity and the Philippines because she can TELL how much of it is from growing up in colonial Philippines. She doesn’t really know how to feel about being her Lola’s perfect granddaughter who cooks and cleans and listens to her. Izzie doesn’t like being the “good” one and she doesn’t like leaving Atlas behind but she doesn’t want to be treated as badly as Atlas is by their family so she stays quiet because she likes doing all of the stuff her family wants her to be, and when she does the things they like it makes it easier for her to do what she wants to do in her spare time– learn to play blaseball.

Meanwhile Atlas is here and as they get older they just hate how restrictive her parents are and get so FRUSTRATED with all the RULES and like gets really embarrassed by her culture and her parents accent and the fact that she has to take leftovers for lunch every day to school and hates how her family treats her because she’s not as perfect as Izzie and she doesn’t love doing all the housewife training stuff that Lola and their mom taught them. She loves playing blaseball and sloftball and getting rough and singing karaoke too loudly at big family parties but her family doesn’t LIKE that because she’s not PERFECT like IZZIE is and it just makes her madder because why does IZZIE get to be interested in blaseball and get praised for it but when SHE does it they tell her to wear dresses and be more like Izzie.

(Izzie got into blaseball so she could feel closer to her sister, Atlas thinks she’s just trying to take something else from her.)

And then they sign onto different teams and just let their hatred and jealously feed into each other. Izzie signed in KC, near their hometown, and Atlas chose to join a team that was as far as her parents would let her. They never talk at Chicago/KC games. They go to family gatherings even after they’ve both signed and everyone talks to them and praises them and gives them money even though they don’t need it because they’re proud and they all bet on blaseball anyways, its easier and more lucrative than the casino now, and still they compliment Izzie on her playing more even though it was Atlas who was on the team in high school and she should be the one who they should be proud of instead of Izzie who only got into it as a HOBBY but now they’re complimenting her on using their Lola’s recipes in her bakery (that she OWNS and PURCHASED using her blaseball money, the family asks Atlas why she hasn’t done anything useful with her money yet and she just says she’s saving it. She doesn’t want to own a business) and she doesn’t have time to be mad at it just be Tired. They ask her why she hasn’t lost any weight yet even if she’s been playing blaseball all this time and she just shrugs it off because it’s nothing she hasn’t heard before

When Atlas gets transferred to KC in Season 3 she doesn’t know how to feel. She’s mostly angry. Izzie on the other hand is just so scared of doing something wrong because she doesn’t know how to make their relationship better and she KNOWS she’s the one who fucked it up and she wants to make it better but Atlas is so resentful and she knows she deserves this but she doesn’t know how to reach out. She tried to reach out to their parents and tell them to be nicer to her because she doesn’t think that they love her but they just insist that they’re only doing what’s best for her so that she could have everything that they didn’t and then they just start talking about Immigrating to the states and American dream stuff and how Atlas should be more like her and she has to take everything she has to not hang up the phone.

Izzie stops going to church after Atlas transfers to KC. It isn’t immediate but it does happen. Atlas had stopped going years ago when she came out to their parents and they didn’t react well (they didn’t react badly either, but the thought of going back to that church with all those people who she knew were judging her and praying for her family made her skin crawl) but they didn’t kick her out. Izzie saw that and kept her sexuality to herself for YEARS because she was so scared that her parents would hate her for not being the perfect child they thought she was 

When Izzie comes out their family reacts way worse, like she expected, and she’s hurt and sad and doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t want to talk to Atlas about it because she doesn’t want to burden her but she so desperately wants to TALK to her and it’s hard. They don’t really get the chance to until they’re shopping for the things they need to send back to the Philippines one year and it’s awkward but they get through it. They get into some petty argument in the car on the way to their parents house and suddenly they’re shouting and somehow Atlas says something about Izzie being their parents favorite and suddenly Izzie is crying and Atlas is SCARED bc Izzie NEVER cries and Izzie has to pull over to just cry and suddenly she’s telling Atlas everything and Atlas is MORTIFIED because she didn’t KNOW that Izzie was also queer and she felt so bad for treating her like the enemy when really they were on the same team here. And Izzie is apologizing for not standing up for her and for just letting their parents say all that stuff to her and it’s not instant forgiveness because you can’t just erase years of trauma and complicated relationships in a few seconds, but there is understanding.

They aren’t ok right away but they do start talking. About their parents, about their culture, about being ex catholic, about blaseball and just. Start healing. Izzie renames the bakery to what it is now, as a threat to any and all Gods because it’s what tore her family apart and made her and her sister hate each other for so long. Colonialism and religion is what ruined her life and she’s gonna take it all back. Atlas is trying to regain the time spent hating her sister and being mad at the world and trying to do some things to heal, like getting back in touch with her culture after she pushed it away for so long and trying to unpack her trauma in a more constructive way. They both try to start repairing their relationship with their parents. It’s not easy, but they’re all trying.

Eventually, Atlas decides to take up a position in Izzie’s bakery. It’s not perfect and they’ll never be fully ok, but they have each other’s backs and that’s enough for them.