Isabella + abuse

the-gotham-pain:

millicentcordelia:

rose-for-dead-alice:

millicentcordelia:

sunlitroom:

littlehollyleaf:

was having a great discussion last night with @flux–and–flow about Isabella’s abusive behaviour towards Ed with her forcing fake!Kristen and strangulation on/from him without his consent (albeit done out of ‘love’ and with intent to help, paralleling how Eddie’s abuse of Kristen had the same intent, making it arguably a different flavour of abuse to, say, Tom’s of Kristen, who just flat out wanted to control/own – which is the bottom line of what I was getting confused about I think flux, not trying to justify either one, just getting lost in the specific motivations! based on my feeling that the show may have been trying to imply that Izzy’s abuse was somehow ‘good’ because of her intent, and the lack of immediately fatal and obviously psychologically damaging results!)

anyway, I thought of an additional question to ponder –

do you think Eddie himself (or Ozzie!) would have recognised/felt her behaviour as abuse/bad??

because I feel like Eddie, while scared AT THE TIME (though I still struggle to see him as scared OF her at any point) may well have come away from the experience with the opinion that her behaviour had been good/loving?

like, clearly he recognises (unwanted) physical harm like Tom forced on Kristen as abuse (we assume because of personal childhood experience of the same?), but… considering he himself got rough with Kristen and believed it loving (and I don’t think we’ve seen anything to suggest he’s ever questioned his behaviour with her?), and is chill with psychologically manipulating others for their own benefit without their consent (eg. Oswald and the trick with the little girl and arranging a clean election), I feel like he may well have not at any point actually seen or felt anything ‘wrong’ with Izzy’s behaviour? 

(and presumably Ozzie ‘she fought for him’ and ‘I won’t let you leave!’ Cobblepot would have just seen it as fair tactics?? :p)

@littlehollyleaf  To be honest, although I can see it was hamfisted to an extent, and could prompt a reading of abuse – I don’t think they intended it that way.

I think they meant to show “Isabella understands Ed, can meet him ‘on his level’, is willing to endanger herself for him, and helped him to confront his demons and find peace” – which then gave his subsequent loss pathos.

Gotham can sometimes be a little tone-deaf (i.e utterly lazy and thoughtless) with how it does things. Off the top of my head, Alfred slapping Selina, Lee slapping an unconscious Babs, Jim saying he only stopped Ogre to save Lee.

In each respective instance, I think they wanted to show ‘Alfred is furious and grieving and doesn’t take prisoners’, ‘Lee is a bad ass who fights for her man’, and ‘Jim really loves Lee’ – but the unfortunate way they went about each just said ‘this character is a complete jerk’.

@littlehollyleaf  and @sunlitroom  I got a different take on that scene when I first viewed it. After re-watching, I can certainly see the point about how it was abusive. I don’t think Ed saw it that way-because he was happy afterwards and thought things were back on track with Isabella. I think Oswald would have seen it as Isabella pulling out the stops to get what she wanted.

However, I saw something a bit different. When Oswald visited her, she answered the door with a sweet, surprised expression. But behind Oswald’s back, she rolled her eyes and looked disgusted and put out. She didn’t yet know the purpose of Oswald’s visit. What made me look twice, was that she dropped the “sweet librarian” act and looked like a different person for a moment.

Moving on to the evening with Ed, let’s look at what happened when Ed tried to leave.

She grabbed him and pushed him all the way across the room. If we accept that Ed really was trying to leave-how was she strong enough to drag a man all the way across a room against his will? And when she placed his hands on her throat, why wasn’t she at all afraid? Unless she knew that if he did try to choke her, she’d be strong enough to fight him off, unlike Kristen. Let’s remember-Ed choked Kristen to death and she wasn’t strong enough to fight him off. Let’s also think about Fake Bruce’s unusual strength.

One more detail-I’ve looked carefully at all the scenes which feature Isabella’s apartment. There’s lots of clutter: collectables, dried flowers, framed artwork, lots of “stuff”. So, where are the personal photographs? Family photos? Photos of friends? They’re conspicuously missing from the clutter (unlike the clutter at Gertrude’s apartment, or the study at Wayne Manor.)

Yes, I know-Gotham probably won’t do anything else with Isabella But until the season’s over, I’ll still be sitting here with my conspiracy theories.

Trust me from experience she was being abusive and Ed comes from a home of being treated the way Isabella treated him. The show meant for that to be dark, not cathartic

@rose-for-dead-alice  Even if Ed’s backstory (which they’ve given us none of) is different from the abusive childhood he had in the comics, what happened in real time between him and Isabella is creepy, regardless.

Let’s imagine this: suppose the gender roles were reversed. Suppose a man grabbed a woman who was trying to leave, dragged her back into a room, and slapped her across the face. Then proceeded to convince her to have sex with him. That puts things in a different light. I think there’s a double standard, that when men are treated in an abusive manner, we often don’t call it out in the same way we would if the character was female.

I don’t think Ed saw it as abuse, but yes; her behavior was abusive. What the writers intended, I don’t know.

#everytime I see someone referring to her as an *innocent woman* I died a bit inside #I’m against villainizing characters in a general way but if you didn’t get she was a villain idk what to say to you