i'm cry laughing some people on twitter are now saying "izzy bashing" needs to be tagged in fics. how did these people ever survive watching this show where izzy is the CANON ANTAGONIST i'll never know
benefit of the doubt but i think most of them have gotten to this point gradually. when they first watched the show they were not attached to izzy the way they are now. i know for a lot of people it was blorbo at first sight with izzy but i've also seen izzy enjoyers say they didn't like him at first, and then fandom made them care about him.
like i'm pretty sure for a lot of ppl it started off with isolating themselves from ppl who made posts that they didnt like, like ppl who criticized ofmd for being based on two real people with direct connections to actual real-world slave trade (which is an incredibly valid thing to criticize abt ofmd).
another one that i think funneled a lot of fans towards being so delusionally attached to izzy was people pointing out or complaining about the disproportionate amount of fan content for izzy compared to prominent characters of color—which is a consistent issue in fandom no matter what the media, and is also a very easy one for people to be uncomfortable with whenever they see it get pointed out. people venting that "fans care too much abt this white man" often make fans who care abt that white man very defensive right off the bat, and then rather than engage with why they feel defensive or question if maybe their enjoyment of this character is fueled by implicit bias (which it might not be, to be clear! im not saying—and i have never said—that everyone who enjoyes izzy likes him for racist reasons), they stop listening to the conversation abt white favoritism and continue blorboposting as much as they want. it's incredibly easy for fans to brush off this convo as "just starting drama" and avoid the topic altogether because "fandom is for fun!" and they dont want to think abt difficult topics like racism and implicit bias, they just want to enjoy their blorbos in peace.
so they kept narrowing the takes they were seeing until they were in an echo chamber that kept moving more and more towards complete woobification of izzy hands. these people are now looking at the show entirely through izzy's pov, making posts abt how sad it is that none of the other characters are ever nice to him, how frustrating the show is from his perspective, how it feels to be deeply in love with someone who doesn't love you back. they've stared at gifs of con's micro-expressions and read angsty fanfiction and looked at endless izzy fanart and their entire ofmd fandom experience revolves around empathizing with this one character even tho the show itself continually makes him the butt of the joke.
at this point, telling these people to rewatch the show doesn't even matter. they've spent so much time over-analyzing every single one of izzy's scenes to the point where the emotional responses they get from these scenes are not the emotional responses anyone would have watching the show for the first time. they've warped the entire first season to fit their version of the show and are forgetting how often the show itself bashes izzy.
and the icing on the cake is the trolling. there's like, one or two people on here who go around sending anon hate and leaving nasty comments on instagram posts and harassing people on twitter for... like, i would say "for liking izzy" or even "for saying positive things about izzy" but like. i've gotten these messages, and the most sympathetic i've ever been to izzy was the post i made like "maybe he's mean bc he has chronic IBS. i'd actually understand him more if that were the case." so when i get these messages it's easier for me to just laugh them off bc it's so obviously just someone trying to make me upset, but people who do care about izzy (a lot of them being the same people who avoided engaging with the "why does fandom care so much abt white characters" convo) get these absolutely horrible messages about how they deserve to get hate crimed and they should kill themselves. and these fans who didn't want to even see vaguely negative posts abt izzy bc they just want to enjoy fandom in peace are now like "im targeted for just liking a character!"
so that's how we get to people saying that "izzy bashing" needs to be tagged. never mind that their definition of "bashing" almost certainly includes things that are not bashing but are just things that contradict the way they headcannnon him.
78 notes
·
View notes
I’m curious (if you’re willing to share) — is your post season 3 fic shippy or platonic? Looking forward to it!
Both of the main ones I'm working on now are platonic! But also you've opened the door for me to talk about it so I'm gonna talk about it!
The post-season 3 fic is platonic and--I cannot overstate this enough--has so much of a plot going on across multiple characters that I finally broke down and made a fucking spreadsheet.
That said a lot of Roy's struggle in this fic centers around his emotional attachments with other people and the roles he plays in their lives (with family, with friends, as a coach). He's stuck in this perfect storm where it seems like all his most important relationships are in flux.
See below the cut for spoilers:
His Family
This is a big one for him and where a surprising amount of therapy work gets done. When the story kicks off, Phoebe is suddenly Around Much Less and a part of that is his sister tentatively feeling out a reconciliation with their parents. This causes a surprising (to Roy) amount of emotional upheaval in his life. As someone who's always been in his sister's corner, he's always seen (even if he's never fully verbalized it to himself) his keeping contact with their parents as a way of releasing his sister from any responsibility or lingering guilt about cutting them off. But now that she's tentatively in contact with them, and introducing them to Phoebe, Roy is realizing that he has a lot of unresolved issues with his parents. Adding to that stress is the fact that while he's played a huge role in his niece's life, he's never actually had to ask to spend time with her before, and he is awful at admitting he might need something, especially when the people around him keep telling him he can 'have a break.'
Keeley
He and Keeley have decided to remain friends. Keeley wants to be single for a while and work on herself, her company, and all the special projects she has falling out of her sleeves (*cough*womensteam*cough*). However, Keeley is the most serious relationship he's ever had, and they started out on a flirty, romantic footing, so he's never just been friends with her. In fact he's never stayed friends with any of his exes. He's navigating unfamiliar territory and he's not sure what's allowed of him. Even basic shit--is he allowed to tell her she looks nice? invite her for coffee? for dinner?--he ends up second guessing.
The Diamond Dogs / The Workplace
He literally JUST became a Diamond Dog and showed them emotional vulnerability by asking what the secret was to becoming a less shitty person and now he's in charge of them. (And he's in therapy, seeing the staff therapist, so everybody knows about that too.) With Ted gone, the inter-team dynamics between the coaches is a whirlpool of Beard and Nate trying to out-smart each other, and suddenly Roy is the one keeping everybody in line and fielding Higgins' questions about player recruitment. This isn't the big drama but it is mundane and tedious and just another fucking thing to deal with.
The Team (Sam, Isaac, Colin)
The step between captain and assistant coach was a fairly easy one for Roy because he was essentially doing the same thing in both jobs (yell at them about their form, psych them up before a match, etc). He's the gaffer now. Most gaffers don't just casually hang out with their players. If he was another team's gaffer, he wouldn't. But these are people who know him, people he used to play side-by-side with, and god help him but he does care about them. So while he's pretty sure he needs to start drawing a boundary between the professional and personal, how the fuck is he supposed to tell them that when Colin is literally getting chewed up by the media as the only openly gay player in the league and he clearly needs the support? How's he supposed to back away when Sam, who's never angry about anything, is fucking seething over Edwin Akufo and asking Roy for help? Is he supposed to step back and drop it all on Isaac, who's trying his best but also seems to be carrying his own weight about something? They're not not his friends, but also he feels responsible for them. So what kind of coach is he going to be, now that he's the guy in charge?
Jamie (ofc)
Where does any of the above leave Jamie? Truly, if the boundaries between him and the other players are in flux, the ones between him and Jamie are fucking spaghetti. Because all of the same issues still apply, but with additional layers (their rivalry, Keeley, Amsterdam, Wembley, personal coaching, the fact that he's met Jamie's parents and would punch his dad in the face if he ever got a chance, the fact that his niece thinks they're best friends). His partiality is skewed every-which-fucking-way, and frankly he's a little annoyed that no one else holds it against him.
And all of that becomes additionally fucked up because:
Roy going to therapy is intrinsically tied to his behavior towards Jamie (Roy has a lot of guilt to work through on how often he's taken his anger out on Jamie)
Jamie and him have unwisely turned therapy into a goddamn competition (they have a chart), which means that any time he makes progress in therapy, he immediately ends up sharing it with Jamie
They don't even have the coach-player thing to fall back on because Jamie starts off the summer injured
This is also the Jamie Going Through It fic (with Tartt Sr in rehab being a huge part of that), and at this point its a given (to Roy at least) that if Jamie needs help, Roy is going to help him.
Jamie might be his friend. Maybe. Possibly. Roy might even admit that one day
So is this a shippy fic? No! No relationship statuses are added, lost, or changed in the winding plot of this fic (unless I figure out how to break up Beard and Jane). Everything picks up right where the finale left it.
But do relationships--the weight of identifying what you might need from other people, and how to navigate changes, and how to define things that aren't easy that are maybe complicated and messy and necessary for your own personal happiness--appear in this fic?
Absolutely yes.
17 notes
·
View notes