#i really feel you cannot exist in this fandom particularly though if you can't make Headcanons

[funishment-time]

last night i saw this complaint on YouTube about how DR is constantly contradicting itself, citing a particular example: Maki pretty much telling you in her FTs she had a bestie she cared about more than anything in the world, then later acting like Kaito is the only person she's ever given a shit about. this was cited as a reason DR is "mid" or whatever snide thing the kids say these days to dismiss being Genuine.

and, okay, DR's far from perfect, i'm not saying it's A Work Of High Genius, but sometimes i feel like the Art of Filling In The Gaps Yourself™ has been lost on people young and old. there's like a thousand reasons you can make up that would slot in fine there and bring the narrative into balance. maybe Kodaka was lazy, i don't know, but maybe it's just more fun and interesting to decide yourself why that contradiction happened, and that doesn't make DR (or any piece of media) bad necessarily

[sunset-telepath]

i powered through unraveled mostly out of a morbid sense of horror and disbelief and i must ask, will we ever be graced with sunset's thoughts on this magnificent and infallible work of literature?

Very bold of you to assume I have opened the cover of this brand new item in Ms. Messenger's oeuvre (or that of Stellarlune, for that matter). As a responsible critic, I cannot give a review of the book itself - but I can give a readout of my immediate emotional response to the plot points I heard from various commentators as they went chapter-by-chapter reacting to the plot of the book.

In summary, my response is also perfectly described as: "a morbid sense of horror and disbelief." Thank you for putting my immediate reaction into words because I hadn't yet. I would compare the feeling of hearing what's going on in the series to seeing a train crash into another - you know it's going to happen and yet you can't help but be shocked as the trains violently crash into each other and become crushed and wrecked.

In the same way, given the foreshadowing planted in Legacy, I had a sneaking suspicion that Shannon was going to do something with her bizarre attempt to make Alvar pitiable and pathetic with the mysterious disease. In this book we got to see the decadently indolent, utterly flagrant, and completely shameless cashing-in on this with Alvar and Keefe being best friends in the Forbidden Cities as Keefe angsts about Sophie. Now note that Alvar was one of the people who kidnapped and tortured her in the first book (if we may harken back to a halcyon (and long-gone) age of good writing) and who betrayed them in Neverseen and committed various other crimes and reprehensible actions.

But to bring this up requires us to acknowledge the swarm of chickens flying home to roost in this whole plot point - that Keefe and Alvar are treated differently by Shannon and she has basically written them a blank moral and narrative check. Characters never acknowledge or denounce them for their immoral actions - just watch how Keefe was completely forgiven after betraying them in Neverseen and after cowardly running away in Unlocked (I mean - come on - at this point, put an ankle monitor on him) and faced no serious repercussions for this. Or how Alvar was given total absolution in Flashback and Fitz was treated as crazy or unreasonable for thinking a terrorist might - gasp - commit future terrorist actions and ought to be punished and/or locked away. And how Fitz is portrayed as particularly violent/dark for not. working overtime to save the life of his terrorist brother after stopping said brother from attacking people while a larger terrorist attack was taking place. Or that Fitz was treated as some psycho in Legacy for wanting to find Alvar and finally bring him to justice - and flipping out when Sophie and Keefe upstaged him, found Alvar, and threw away all of his work to find Alvar by letting Alvar go.

I mean. what do you expect at this point? The prospect that these characters are ever going to face consequences for their actions has been vehemently rejected again and again. At some point, true shock simply isn't possible. Just a morbid sense of disbelief and a feeling of bizarre unreality.

Will I read the rest of KOTLC in the future? Probably not. I have better things to read. I think I have grown beyond it. I do, however, enjoy hearing what has happened to it - in the capacity that I need resolution to this series and I must know how something I spent years of my life obsessing over ended (though with the current pace of this series I'm fearing it may never end). And the fandom is amazing and I am deeply loving the new memes out of these scenes:

*Alvar talking about how great it is that gay people exist and matchmaking doesn't in the forbidden cities*

Keefe: I know what you are

I suppose I didn't cover my reaction to the presence of more gay people. I liked that. It's nice to finally be represented in this series. I don't really talk about it anymore, but if you want a more thorough analysis of Keefe and of the series, I can't recommend @the-way-astray enough. They are very talented and I agree with nearly all of their conclusions.

As a final note, anon, you talk in a way that's really familiar and I can't help but ask - are you a past internet friend/mutual? I have some suspicions lol...

[rustyvanburace]

you know I gotta suggest Navarre for the character ask! and asahi if you’re feeling up to it :^D

Thank you so much!

favorite thing about them: I love how much PIZZAZ he adds to the early game! How can I not like a character with such a flamboyant, demanding personality whose very presence is enough to make everyone react with shock, contempt, laughter, and awe? Navarre is an ass, but a necessary ass to carry the early narrative and add so much excitement to it. I cannot help but giggle to myself everytime he appears. AND THEN, all that character growth in IVA towards becoming a better, more self-aware ghostie. Ohhh I love he so muuuch~

least favorite thing about them: Definitely the unnecessary perversion in IVA. Enough said.

favorite line: The "dawdling Casualries" line will always hold a special place in my heart, but I am also really fond of the stuff he says when you speak with him during the training drills in one of the rest spots,

"O-Oh, it's you… I thought you to be a demon. Don't start me so… I've never carried a blade any heavier than a knife before. If Mother were to see me dashing about with such a weapon in hand, I think that she would faint…"

And

"I landed a critical blow when I accidentally tripped… The next quest was much simpler, since as you might expect, money is no object to me. 'Twas actually easier than the first. But the final challenge all depends on one's strength, and that's a field I'm particularly lacking in… S-Someone else may have first place, I care not whom. Merely let this debacle of a training exercise be done with!"

brOTP: Nanashi and Navarre are best BROS!

Bad edit aside, can't forget the actual bros, Navarre and Gaston lmao. I really enjoyed their sibling relationship and it opened up so much insight into their familial life and personal struggles. I'm so so happy they got to rekindle at the enddd, it was so sweet

OTP: Everyone knows that I am the sole resident of the Issachar x Navarre Crack Ship Kingdom!! Idgaf that they've never canonically met nor even know of each other's existence, the POTENTIAL between them is enough to keep me content and well fed! We support random rarepairs in this house!

I also really like Flynn x Navarre too and they're my second fave Navarre ship, for much the same reasons!

nOTP: Needless to say, my NOtps would be pairing Navarre with his brother or any of the IVA kids. Eeeugh. Enough said.

random headcanon: It's something I've been wanting to analyze in more depth, and IDK how much of this is actually canon or headcanon considering, but I very much fancy the idea of Navarre always having close connections with the Samurai seniors and keeping close tabs on the Rite and new inductions. He's very astute with the going-ons in Samurai business and likely has been anxiously watching them for quite some time.

unpopular opinion: I understand that Navarre is a very unlikeable character, and he's supposed to be! But it honestly does get really bothersome seeing how much dismissal, if not outright hate, he gets in the fandom. Navarre IS an important character within the early game! It is his very antics that adds the necessary tension and tone needed to carry the early narrative and worldbuilding. It does admittedly make it hard for me to approach other SMTIV fans because I like this bean so much.

But that is okay. I am perfectly content with those who seek out, stick by, and enjoy my bean musings. :)

song i associate with them: Tbh I'm pretty bad at that sort of question, lol. I don't really have one for him right now, so pass? (Open to suggestions though! I want more tunes to listen to.)

favorite picture of them: SO MANY panels of him from the Prayers manga FOR REAL. He's SO expressive in that and has TONS of good moments!! But I am especially fond of the mini bonus chapter that features Navarre~

Masataka Miura can agree: Navarre can have a little moment in the spotlight as a treat~

Thank you again so much for the ask! I think I've written quite at length here, lmao. I'm a bit tired now and I don't think I can fit Asahi here, but I could post hers later on!

[pikapeppa]

Hi! I absolutely love all your fanfiction that I've read so far. I don't know if this has ever been asked so feel free to ignore or point me toward the answer if it already exists. The thing that I admire the most about your fanfiction is how clearly you capture the character's voices. I can literally hear them in my head whenever I read the dialogue you write. I can't think of a single piece of dialogue that you've written where I've thought "Hmmm no... I'm not sure that character would say that". And though you are writing in third person, your narration is so clearly conveying the thoughts of the character whose perspective you are writing from. I feel like I'm in their heads! I'm wondering HOW you are able to do that so clearly! Do you have some kind of method to observing canon dialogue and then conjuring what the characters would say? How do you match their natural speaking styles, inflections, mannerisms, etc? Or maybe you just have a natural gift for it? I'm in the process of writing a fanfiction and it's so important to me that I capture their voices well, particularly because the two characters are extremely different and I want to capture those differences as I switch perspectives. If you have any insight, tips or suggestions, I'd welcome them!

First of all: THANK YOU SO MUCH OMG 😭❤❤🙏 this is such incredibly high praise!! Trying to make sure the characters sound like themselves (both in speech and thought) is so important to me, so this whole ask is like, the nicest thing you could ever have said HAHA!! Thank you so so much!!!

I’m sorry my reply was delayed — I was actually think about how to answer! I don’t think of myself as being a very systematic writer in that I don’t use any formal tools or have any formal training, so what I’ve done here is verbalized my own process in the hopes that it’ll give some insights. You asking this question has helped me think about my own process in a way I never really have before, so thanks for this fun mental exercise lmao!

My usual caveat when answering these wonderful writing-process asks: I have no formal training, as mentioned above, and this is entirely based on my own experience, and thus should be taken with a grain of salt! 😂🙏

I’m not sure what fandom you’re writing for, so I’ll be as general as possible, but if you want to know more about a specific fandom or character(s), let me know! 😂

We’re thinking about two things here: 

How the person says stuff (speech patterns, inflections)

What the person is saying (thoughts/what’s going on in their head)

(see below the cut for the rest!) 

How the person says stuff: capturing the “voice”

The main thing I do when trying to capture someone’s voice is, quite literally, just listen to it a lot LOL. Whenever I get obsessed with interested in writing a new character, I typically save video clips of all of their dialogues so I can pull them up on my computer at will to listen to. When it comes to what exactly I’m listening for, there are several things to consider:

Formality: do they speak casually or formally? Are there contexts when they might speak more or less formally/casually (e.g. with certain people, in certain social settings)? Do they use a lot of contractions when they’re talking (e.g. don’t/can’t vs. do not/cannot)? Do they drop the ‘g’ at the ends of words ending in ‘ing’ e.g. “I’m gettin’ out of here”?

Vocabulary: do they use basic everyday vocabulary, or do they tend to use more rare/unusual words? Do they have training of some kind that would make them more prone to using special words in a specific context (e.g. mages in Dragon Age using magical jargon)? 

Cursing (a special and VERY IMPORTANT case of vocabulary): Do they curse? If they do curse, how often/in what circumstances? What is the “worst” word they use in canon, and that you can imagine them using based on what you know about them? Sometimes you have to use your imagination a little here depending on the rating of the game/show etc., and that’s okay; e.g. they never use the word “fuck” in Horizon Zero Dawn/Horizon Forbidden West but I can’t imagine that world existing without it LOL.

Cadence/lyricality: I don’t even know if these are the right words to explain this. But some characters have a distinctive rhythm or “musicality” to their speech that can make all the difference to whether they sound like themselves or not when you’re writing them. Some good examples of this are Solas from Dragon Age (whenever he’s talking about the ancient past), Nil from Horizon, even Geralt in the Witcher 3 (the game specifically, not the books or the show). Also important, for these characters with a special “rhythm” to their speech, do they always talk like that, or is it only in certain contexts (see re: Solas)? 

Accent: a character’s accent doesn’t “look” any different when written on the page, but it’s a obviously a huge part of whether they sound like themselves when you're reading their words in your head. Different accents use the above features in different ways, too, so the idea of an “accent” ties back to the elements mentioned above. This is especially relevant when writing someone where the “standard language/lingua franca” may not be their first language, so they may have more hesitations in their speech, their sentence structure may be simpler, their curse words may be in their first language, etc. 

This probably all sounds like a lot to juggle. But in practice, basically what I do is just imagine the character’s voice in my head, then just write the dialogue to sound as much like them as possible, while holding the memory of their voice in my mind. If I start to feel like the memory of their voice is getting a little blurred in my mind, I pull up video clips of them talking and listen to them again until their voice is clear in my mind so I can continue writing. If the character is a tricky biscuit, I might listen to clips of them talking before every writing session just to refresh  their voice in my mind. 

You mentioned mannerisms in your ask, and I’ll talk about this separately! Some characters have mannerisms/body language that is very characteristic to them (e.g. Alva and Drakka in Horizon Forbidden West), but for other fandoms, you might not have much in terms of canon body language to go on — for example, the Dragon Age games (everyone does the “Bioware Lean” LOL. You know what I’m talking about. It is not very character-specific). I usually invent little physical quirks/fidgets that seem in keeping with each character, and the context in which they might do those things. E.g. does the character run their hands through their hair when they’re anxious? Do they do a little hop when they’re excited? Do they have their arms folded most of the time?

What the person is saying: getting into their head

This is the topic where I might be less helpful (even less helpful HAHA) because I don’t do anything particularly systematic or formal to keep important information straight about a character. But there are a few important things that have their own sections within my outlines, which I’ll expand on below. 

Stuff I made up

One important thing to keep in mind with fanfic is that no matter how much canon info we know about a character, canon does not give us everything. Canon might not even give you a character’s age! Every version of a character I write is partly headcanon/stuff that I made up, which means it may not match other people’s headcanons. What matters is that you keep it consistent within your own understanding and fleshing-out of the character. For instance, a lot of the time I’m inventing a sexual history for a character since that stuff isn’t explicitly mentioned in most fandoms LOL. The key here is that whenever I’m writing that character moving forward, even if their sexual history is made up by me, I’m sticking to it and staying consistent with what I’ve invented for them. 

Core motivations, core conflicts, and formative relationships

This gets at the big, underlying foundations of the character — what made them who they are, and why they react to the world in the way they do. Who do they love, and why? Who hurt them badly? What personal traits do they have (e.g. are they a “lawful good” sort of person) that play a big role in how they see the world? For instance, in the Horizon games, Aloy’s relationship with Rost and her sense of connection with Elisabet Sobeck are huge influences on everything she does. In the Witcher (games and books), Geralt has a core conflict between “witchers don’t get involved in politics/world affairs” and his own sense of morality, which combines in fascinating ways with his overriding need to make sure the people he loves are safe. Knowing these very broad, core traits/relationships will be central for helping you decide how your character reacts to various events and people in your story. You might have some canon information about these important core traits/relationships, but you also might be making a lot of this stuff up, and that's okay; as mentioned above, it's just important to keep consistent with what you came up with for that person. 

For romances: why them? 

Since I’m always writing a romantic and/or sexual relationship, I always have a section about why those characters are together. Why them? Why those people specifically? What’s so compelling about the two (or more!) of them together that makes them worth writing about? What is it about those people that makes them good for each other or bad for each other, and that makes us want to follow their relationship? For me, this can be a pretty meaty part of the outline, since it’s so central to what I love to write. Having a clear picture of why you are writing these people together, and why they’re interesting together, will help you shape their interactions and how they react to each other as your fic goes on, and how they react together to external events. 

Knowing the information outlined above then forms a foundation for everything you write about that character moving forward. If you know those things about the character, then getting into their headspace is just a matter of using those foundations to predict how they would react whenever new situations arise.

I hope this is helpful!! I'll also pop in a link here to my other tutorial posts I've written, in case any of them are helpful. And if you want more examples tailored to a specific fandom, feel free to ask or send me a DM! 🥰

-- love from your friendly neighbourhood Pika! xoxo

[cwarscars]

🔥

Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.

i'ma shape this one around the final fantasy vii fandom and go off on my usual spiel ( or, old spiel? cause i haven't chatted it in a while lol ).

i honestly despise the lack of love that the side-characters get as a whole from the fandom. i really don't like what the remake did for the franchise ( i do love the remake, don't get me wrong, but i think it bought about some of the fandoms worst traits ), and i cannot stand the 'one rule for thee, another for me' mindset that fans have regarding characters.

let's start with numero uno - so, obviously i write heid. lol. he's not particularly liked & that's totally fine...but man. finding content for him is horrible. there's nothing. like, barely anything. the few fics that exist are either rape fics or are ( and i hate saying this ), sorely out of character. the art is few and far between and usually more bara-anime-oriented. overall, i feel like i'm drinking from a dried up well. actually, nah. there was no well in the first place.

i always understood that heid isn't exactly the character who would get much fanfare but it's so disheartening to shift through five million pics of 'x' character and find two of heid. i can't even draw ( or at least, im not at all confident in my art ) and yet i took to drawing heidegger all of the time because i had to start making content for him. and in doing so - my art gets no regonition and is totally ignored anywhere but here. i think if i drew a popular character, i'd maybe get more attention but...i can't bring myself to do so.

in general though; heid isn't the only one. even reeve is quite underrated and ignored by the fandom as a whole (or implied to be an owo cat boy which makes me cringe). even, dare i say, barret is often shoved aside in favour of the more 'popular' characters ( the whole tifa/cloud are now marlene's parents suggestion by some people enrages me, like, wtf? )

secondly, i don't like what the remake did for the fandom because i think it bought the worst out in the fans. it appealed to cloud/sephiroth shippers despite that ship making no sense. you could argue the sephiroth cloud sees is just an extension of himself. they're both essentially jenova. but the remake makes it overtly sexual / suggestive. even as i played, all i could think was 'yeah, this was done for fan service'. i don't even think sephiroth should have been seen in remake part 1. ( obviously that'd never happen ).

but whereas there are things i adore about the remake. i think that they dumbed down the story and by extension, made the worse aspects of fandom writers become apparent. like, by making AVALANCHE basically entirely innocent ( despite being literal terrorists ) - they make shinra ENTIRELY evil. in the og, shinra were weirdly nuanced. they were 'evil' sure, but then they were also genuinly trying to save the planet from sephiroth. as for AVALANCHE; yes, they were fighting on behalf of good. but they did murder people in their quest to shut down reactors. in the og, reeve even calls barret out on this. but...now we probably wont get that? like, way to go rid your main heroes of any nuance. god forbid a hero does something bad.

my final point cause goddamn is this getting long is - i despise the way that the fans talk about characters & the whole 'LOL i can ship this but if you ship that then lol stinky gross smelly ewww'.

i've always wanted to explore shinra/heid as a young men. like, really explore their relationship. potentially even one-sided ship them. i love the idea of it, it's interesting and i imagine their dynamic was similar to tseng/rufus. how many jokes have i seen about shipping them? tonnes. but it's not okay to diss any other ship. make a joke about tseng/rufus and ohhh noo, you fucked up, kiddo.

i've seen people imply heidegger is a pervert because he commented on sephiroth being good looking. literally suggesting he 'creeps' on sephiroth and people wholly agreeing like 'omG LoL YEs' - as if calling someone good looking is an alien thing to do or means immediately that you want to bang them (smh).

in general, i constantly see the fandom make jokes about certain characters & imply that if you ship them, like them etc - 'loool something wrong with uuu'. it's dumb as shit. don't be mean about other people's preferences when half of the fandom can't take being told that cloud shouldn't be shipped with whoever.

[z-cerulean]

Sure I'll do a few of these why not

Don't remember exactly I think friends were talking about it and I was bored over the pandemic so I played 1 and 2 then.

DR1

Not really any come to mind they either were annoying and stayed that way or I was initially neutral and then they got worse.

haiji towa is the biggest waste of matt mercer i've ever witnessed

not sure uhh maybe Maki she's cool

no

not really interested in that type of thing

Pretty easily Shuichi

genuinely kinda hard choice tbh i guess maybe Hajime and even then I think he was pretty good

Case 2 I will give credit for managing to achieve that much emotional impact with relatively underdeveloped characters for the point but overall I think case 4 is my favourite from DR1

DR2 Case 5 is probably just actually the peak of the series

V3 pretty easily has the best median case quality overall uhh probably case 5 again

skip

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probably either Akane or Hiyori for reasons I cannot discuss without spoiling stuff

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personally not interested in them all that much

skip

the series can put out some genuinely pretty good mysteries and the characters that aren't just death cannon fodder can be pretty good

Biggest problem especially from 2 onward is how formulaic it can be. case 3 is always 2 victims (and it always sucks idk why they like this one so much), case 4 is always an environment change, etc. it's mostly a problem with case 3, I think the case 4s are pretty good, but still. Also not to beat a dead horse but with some characters like the pink girl in UDG they do not handle their subject matter uhh particularly well

killing game but they're trapped in a supermarket might be funny tbh

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was kinda able to foresee most of them uhh can't think of any and also don't want to spoil people

skip

i could probably make it to case 3 before i'm the unceremonious second victim

nagito sure is something but i don't think anyone does it quite like byakuya

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most them are pretty decent but ig i like maki's overall

uhh skip

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designating x character as uhh celeste according to this random spinner she's alright though the case she's most involved in kinda falls flat for me

V3's ending is a danganronpa ending. I feel like I get what it's going for with it but at the same time it's very busy and cluttered and eh it's probably not that worth dwelling on you don't play these for the overarching narrative

Hiyoko

no but that's why the hunger games application exists for people that do

perhaps the one that kinda spoils the first game for newcomers and then proceeds to overstay their welcome in every subsequent game they're in

he's probably relatively hyped up as is but I don't see people talk about fuyuhiko much he's cool

i do not think about danganronpa enough to have them committed to memory (not for DR but for fire emblem sure)

skip

I do not talk to people much about Danganronpa but i assume it is like most other fandoms

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haven't watched the 1 anime, DR3 the anime is perhaps the single biggest waste of my time i've ever permitted myself to sit through. i'm pretty sure the links I was making up in my head beforehand were better than what the anime showed me. Genuinely the worst thing I watched that year.

The most mediocre shooter I've ever played (play ultrakill instead) and it was absolutely not worth it for what it contributed to the series.

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if we're counting the anime then DR3. at least UDG had parts of it that I thought were ok, DR3 is only good for exactly the length of time Nagito is on screen

V3 is just the best game in the series, pretty good overall case quality (3 is still the worst but it's better than the last two) and I think the important characters in that game are broadly the best collective group in the series.

not much else to say uhh send post

★彡 Danganronpa Asks 彡★

What was your first exposure to Danganronpa?

Which was your first Danganronpa game?

Did you have a character you hated at first, and then fell in love with? Who and why?

Which character can you absolutely not stand?

Which character would you hypothetically die for?

Do you have a fan character? Tell us about them!

You get the chance to reassign five characters new talents. Who do you choose, and which new talents do they get?

Who is your favorite protagonist?

Who is your least favorite protagonist?

Which was your favorite trial from THH?

Which was your favorite trial from SDR2?

Which was your favorite trial from V3?

What is your OTP?

What is your NOTP?

Which character do you think could benefit from a total rewrite?

Do you have any ideas for a Danganronpa murder? Share!

List five headcanons for your favorite characters!

How do you feel about fangames?

What kind of fantasy creature would you make [X] character?

What is your favorite aspect of Danganronpa?

What do you think could be improved about Danganronpa?

What’s a setting you’d love to see for a Killing Game?

Which are your top three favorite beta designs?

Which character do you most identify with?

Which character surprised you when they were revealed to be the blackened?

Which character did you expect to be the blackened, but wasn’t?

You’re placed in a Killing Game as yourself (who you are now, no perks). How far do you believe you’d get?

Who is your preferred rival?

Talent swap time! Which two characters do you think would benefit best from a talent swap?

Whose design do you enjoy the most? 

Whose design do you dislike the most?

Which two characters from different games do you believe would get along the most?

What is your favorite interaction from the Talent Development Program?

What is your opinion on [X] character?

What is your honest opinion on the end of V3?

Which character do you wish had more screen time? Why?

Have you ever wanted to run a Killing Game yourself? 

Which character do you feel is too popular amongst the fans, in your opinion?

Which character do you feel deserves more love?

Do you celebrate character birthdays?

What is your opinion on Ultimate Talents being similar to low-level super powers?

How do you feel about the Danganronpa fandom as a whole?

Which is the most offensive Danganronpa character, in your opinion?

How do you feel about the anime?

What is your opinion on Ultra Despair Girls?

What are some of your pregame headcanons?

What are some of your Remnant of Despair headcanons?

Do you have any rare pairs?

Which is your least favorite installment?

Which is your favorite installment?

[ultfreakme]

I am highly concerned by the amount of people in the JJK fandom going "hey maybe Geto has a point". He wants to genocide about 99% of the human population. "Maybe it's best to kill every non-sorcerer because that means no curses."

*deep sigh*

Now, I'm no expert in JJK lore, but from what I know, though curse users are able to control their energy far better than non-sorcerers, their resentment still leaves residues. There is no way to fully eliminate it. Sorcerers also have a chance of becoming cursed spirits themselves. Geto's idea is that if you kill all non-sorcerers, the cursed spirits would be gone due to a lack of uncontrolled resentment and whatever spirits do remain would be more easily killed.

But no matter what Geto does, resentment itself cannot be eliminated. Every human, be they sorcerer or non-sorcerer is going to feel things and part of that is resentment. It's just what being human means. If you have resentment it means at some point you had a positive emotion that went sour due to life events. You can't be happy at every single moment of your life. You can be content, you can be satisfied and overall feel good about yourself and your existence but the human existence is defined by ups-and-downs.

It's also practically impossible to eliminate all non-sorcerers without Geto becoming the very thing that led to his spiral. Sorcerers can produce children with zero affinity for curses. What's he going to do? Wait till they're 4-6, then kill them? Won't that make the parents resentful? Would it not be possible for the dead child to come back as a curse? Because Rika happened. Yuuta had a specific able to curse her but Gojo says the greatest curse is 'love'. Feelings play a huge role in curses. It won't matter what Geto does, humans feel, and you don't even have to be that powerful as a curse user to create or become a horrible curse.

Also, the whole thing about "the strong must rule the weak" thing is highly flawed too. Like come on, society's backbone is what people would consider "the weak". Curses themselves have power and exist because of the non-sorcerer people's resentment and negative emotions.

JJK might constantly repeat that the strong rule the weak but you know what else it enforces for every single character? That it's lonely at the top. That power and strength means absolutely nothing if there's no one else around you.

You need "the weak". Be they Sukuna, Gojo, Geto, Itadori, Megumi, Nobara- whomever they are- they need people. It's so clear most of these people don't even really belie the "strong rule the weak" thing because Gojo care a LOT about the kids. Geto protects Mimiko and Nanako though I'm pretty sure they aren't particularly strong curse users. They all have 'weak' people that they keep around and care about because when the powerful people got to the top all they wanted was company.

Thinking that the strong hold all the power is foolish, especially in real life. The 'strong' got to the point they're at on the backs of the 'weak'. The 'weak' can bring them down if they choose not to allow them to stay there. Society isn't about strength or weakness in any field, we're all co-existing, we're all in this shit together and we got to this point as a species because of community, not because of some mad race that allows only the strongest to live.

Geto wouldn't have become the person that he is if the Jujutsu society allowed for people to get help and actually form bonds instead of treating people based on their grade level. Geto's idea was somewhat right in that the only way to fix anything is to have more sorcerers. If the information of curses being real went public, more people who have some kinda connection or ability to be curse users would pop up more frequently to learn and understand themselves. If people became aware that spirits are real and dangerous, they'd have the precaution and knowledge to guard themselves better.

Living in isolation and in secrets, hoarding power to one place, it's never going to work. The giant divide between Jujutsu society and regular society is what causes sorcerers to be disillusioned. If people were allowed to know, sure yeah maybe resentment and negatice emotions would spike but people WILL adapt. It's the best part of being human- we can adapt fast to fucking anything.

In the long-term, sorcerers would increase in number purely because of the accessibility of the information. Heck even those who have no affinity can get on board the way Maki did (maybe not to her level but to some small extent that allows better protection).

Geto's right in that it's best if there are more non-sorcerers but his way of going about it is wrong.

I think the core message of JJK is that companionship and empathy are important. The strongest sorcerer was defeated by love, Sukuna's whole thing started due to loneliness. Yeah, the power of friendship and trusted bonds is the answer, even if it doesn't seem like it.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

(1/3) Now that some of my anger has passed I wonder if I was too harsh on Jensen. But I cannot reconcile myself with him reacting like that to a question- given that this is not the first time this has happened. I know he's a nervous person in general and tends to be very curt, but a little bit of prep can help here. Just some non-committal statement he can use for questions he will not answer. People will keep asking these questions, we can't police them.

(2/3) What hurts is seeing a young fan humiliated like that. If something I had asked got torn apart like that i'd be in tears and I'm nearly 30. And that's not the end of it, all the hate she's probably getting from BOTH sides of the fandom. It's awful. But maybe if he had a neutral sounding answer the backlash might not have been as bad for her. I'm not saying he is responsible for how other people react but.. Just a little bit of effort can undercut it in a major way.

(3/3) And the wildness of his response always makes me feel bad about being not straight, though it shouldn't. I don't really need to get validation from an actor about what I am, but for younger, more vulnerable people- I can see why it hurts. I don't expect Jensen to pander to anyone or anything he doesn't want to, just a little sensitivity is enough. If he's kinder, more accepting of differing views in the fandom, maybe some people will stop claiming he 'approves' of the hatred and divide.

I see your points. Can Jensen do better - yes. But honestly I can’t bring myself to be particularly hard on him. Yes, his reluctancy on talking about queer-related topics has allowed a portion of the fandom to project their homophobia and effemiphobia on him and use him to support their views, but we can’t forget that he does not have good experiences with the fandom on that front. I don’t think you need to be homophobic to feel uncomfortable by the existence of pornographic fanworks about you and your friends and costars, or by vocal tinhatting that reaches you and the people around you; some actors aren’t bothered by the porn written/drawn about their characters or themselves (or maybe all do but hide it), but some are and they have a right to be. I remind you that when Jensen hears about shipping and ships, that’s what comes to his mind. Together with the literal harassment of people close to him because of shipping reasons. He’s wrong in thinking that shipping is limited to that; but I can’t blame him for not being motivated to make research on the topic.

At the end of the day we don’t know Jensen. We only know a very limited part of himself he shows us in public settings and glimpses of his personality beyond that that we can see from his interactions with his friends and family. We see the product of his work, mostly - a work in which he pours a lot of himself, and that gives us little glimpses of his personality too, but all we’ve got is nowhere near a full picture of who Jensen is.

We know he loves his queer aunts. We know he put the rainbow icon on twitter and tweeted his condolences for the Pulse shooting, which doesn’t really mean much because a lot of people have done that because everyone was doing it, but we also know that Jensen never uses his social media accounts to express social or political views (grieving the death of queer people shouldn’t be a socio-political view, but sadly it is in our society). And of course we know he is really close to Misha, who, let’s be real, doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d become such close friends with a bigoted person. Jensen and Misha care about each other deeply, it’s quite obvious even if we don’t know them personally. Honestly I kind of doubt that Misha would be particularly invested in someone radically different from himself when it comes to social views.

I am appalled at the wave of hate towards Jensen that is happening these days - there are even people deploring that Jensen will grow his children to be bigoted and homophobic and whatelse. We have no right to make assumptions of this sort. Maybe it’s true, but we don’t know that and it’s disrespectful to attack him over assumptions that, if they’re not true, are hurtful.

[twelvemonkeyswere]

Hey there! You replied to me but I feel like you didn't really address my points and I wanted to be clear. My point was that even though Izzy himself is a well written character that serves a purpose in the narrative--and he fulfills it very well--many fans seem to appropiate the character and ignore his role in the tale and turn him into something else. This is why the POV of view matters. As we all know, changing the POV in a story can in fact change the story, and it especially matters in this case because Izzy represents something so very specific in the show. Looking at things through his lens would obviously change how we perceive the story for him, and so is the same for any other character. I don't think this is the main problem, though. The story itself constantly invites us to see things from Izzy's perspective, it's just also telling us he is in the wrong. Like my friend said in her original essay, fandoms in general choose over and over again to ignore the characterization and themes around violent white men, Izzy included, and much of what they say seems to be motivated by their desire to make this violent white man sympathetic to the point of ignoring their function within the narrative and twisting their characterization into something it isn't, all just to justify either liking them or to justify that their actions are not, in fact, their responsability. Or worse, that they are completely justified in acting the way they do. I believe in transformative writing and engagement, but I think when it's always so clearly the white violent man they try to woobify, I find it suspect. Even if you can argue the white characters in question aren't racist, the fandom is. And this is what needs to be addressed.

You also mentioned the story sides against Izzy's actions and even motives, however you define them, and my point was that there was a reason for that, hence why the audience cannot just ignore it, not if they want to properly engage with the text. People keep defending Izzy and talking about him as if he was a victim or as if the story didn't present his actions as choices. Izzy himself acknowledges some of his actions deserve reprobation, but many fans choose to act like this isn't important in the story and that somehow this means they have a deeper understanding of Izzy. Empathy or sympathy for a character doesn't mean you have to ignore their flaws, not in a well written story. The opposite is true in OFMD, which is brimming with flawed and interesting characters, Izzy included. No one really wonders if the Badmintons have hidden depths because they're obviously villainous. Izzy is a more complex, up-close exploration of those issues represented by the Badmintons, because he is also more rounded. But the story isn't neutral about Izzy. The same way the Badmintons represent those ideals Stede can't live up to, Izzy represents the patriarchal ideals that Ed feels pressured to live up to, ideals which are constantly hurting him and dragging him back. And the truth is those ideals are of white, violent, straight, racist, homophobic, and emotionally-detached men. Izzy is interesting in great part because we can see he himself cannot live up to all those things, yet constantly tries to pretend he does, and constantly forces those around him (particularly Ed, who right off the bat is not white nor straight) to comply to them. Izzy actively attacks, belittles, and insults the men who don't. For Izzy, masculinity can only exist in one way, and he doesn't care what he says or does to enforce everyone to be as close to it as possible, however impossible it is. We all know Izzy would be happier if he just accepted that not everyone has to be that way, including him. He refuses to see that.

The show thus invites the audience to consider what Izzy is doing, the multiple reasons why he is doing it, the consequences of his actions, and whether this seems like a worthwhile pursuit. The story tells us over and over again that what Izzy is doing is wrong. And even though the story tells us over and over again that Izzy's path leads to pain and shame (especially for Ed, who, again, is gay and a man of color), audiences try to excuse him, often with blatant disregard to the text. Like my friend said - This isn't so much about Izzy as it is about fandom at large choosing to turn a character into something he isn't without looking at the implications of their reading. White culture upholds the value of white men. So when the fandom prioritizes Izzy, a white male character, and starts blaming Ed, a man of color, for his decisions and feelings and actions, this proves to me they're choosing a reading that is first of all, not supported by the text, and second of all, revealing either an implicit or explicit bias towards the white male character of turn.

Izzy Hands is Kylo Ren: Or, An Informal Exploration of Fandom's Proclivity Towards Minimizing and Sympathizing with White Male Violence

i brought this undertaking upon myself by putting this thought out there (and getting cursed with the knowledge that this take makes izzy/ed reylo) without my full intent to write the post. my being cursed is my own fault, my own cross to bear, my own self made misery. however, i'm going to make this analysis EVERYONE'S problem now because jokes on all of us, i wrote the post.

notes for readers: this meta is just under 6500 words. i have tried to divide it into thematic sections determined by bolded lines. sometimes i will reiterate previous points with expanded discussion because i always have more to say. big thanks to @dragonzair @plotdesigner and @twelvemonkeyswere

so to get the ground work settled: obviously izzy hands is not identical to kylo ren, given that he is not the fallen son of heroes, nor directly a key figure of a fascist empire. however, in the context of our flag means death and its fandom, particularly the portion that favors izzy and takes him at his word without examining the underlying context of his scenes and dynamics with other characters, there is a LOT of similarity between the ways that the two characters enact violence, and in the way the fandom response is geared towards sympathizing with these two characters for said violence while also and minimizing their responsibility for it.

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. 

izzy hands can find redemption. he can grow and change and become something better. but not if he (and his fanbase) are incapable of acknowledging exactly how deep in the shit he is to begin with. the way for izzy to grow is not for the other characters to change or the other characters to cater to his hurt or make space for him. the way for izzy to change is to recognize that he did this to himself and that his absolution will come from no one else.