#and you take issue because a woman had agency but you didnt like her decision

[kargaroc]

going through the jade shadows tag reveals a lot of people that should go and talk to a woman in real life

[fadedtoblue]

Ive seen a lot of meta saying Elektra is toxic for Matt, she brings out the darkness inside him...Like Matt didnt have his fair share of problems before Elektra shows up—the dude runs at night and beats up bad guys. Elektra had nothing to do with that & Matt’s a grown ass white man, he can make his own decisions. What am I gonna ask is whats ur opinion on what Elektra needs? People worry about Matt’s mental health & happiness but nobody takes time to analyse El, so what’s ur hot take on that?

Oh this is a GOOD one. I already see myself spending too much time working out my thoughts on it (I apologize!!!) – this is what you get when you actually ask me for my hot take lol. 

(Edited while writing to add: yeah, this took way too long! I’m so sorry, it was the damn holiday week. Between cooking, shopping, and entertaining guests at my home most of the week, I maybe spent a total of 10 minutes on Tumblr in the last few days! Basically not much time for thoughtful writing, only quick answers and mindless likes!)

As anyone who follows my blog should know, I have a lot of Feelings™ about Elektra Natchios but even so, I probably tend to deconstruct her character and behaviors more often within the context of her relationship with Matt. Which isn’t wrong or unusual b/c she’s a supporting character in his universe, but damn it, I sure love her enough that I really should write more metas focusing on her needs and perspective, so…thanks for giving me an opportunity to do that Anon :). 

Back to El, my darling El. When you hang out around fandom long enough, you’ll inevitably hear the argument pop up that not all bad / villainous characters are meant to be good*. That not every character needs (or deserves) to be redeemed. That some characters are just bad. Are toxic. Are no damn good. And maybe that means I read too much into Elektra’s character and her backstory and how that affects her personality and motivations and relationships. To which I say, nope, I think I read just enough, in fact, maybe even not enough? Maybe it’s because I spent 13 hours last week watching a show about an extremely morally grey anti-hero who racks up a body count that should read as horrifying and see him engage over and over and over again in violence as a way of life but damn it, they make us feel for him. They give us a sense of uneasy hope that he’ll find a way out of it. And even though it’s unlikely he’ll leave the Punisher mantle behind for long, we know that he has people in his circle who will continue to be fiercely loyal to him – Karen, Micro, Curtis, and to a lesser degree, Dinah. I go off on this minor tangent because if someone like that, with such a black and white view of the world can be considered in so many shades of grey but still found to be redeemable in the face of all their sins, why the hell not Elektra Natchios. 

*Sure, some characters. I just don’t think Elektra qualifies as one of those characters, like…at all.

I’ll try to not go into too much extra detail on why Elektra is the way she is (I also wrote about that here if you want more of my thoughts) but let’s talk about what she needs, or what I think she needs. To start, I always go back to the scene where Elektra finds out she’s Black Sky and has that heartbreakingly honest moment with Matt:

When you consider the upbringing she’s had – raised as a child soldier, conditioned for violence, then being embedded into a rich and influential family and experiencing the opposite lifestyle? but knowing that it’s not really her home, not really her family, that it’s just another training ground to build up skills she’ll need to better serve the Chaste – is it any surprise that she views love and affection as something conditional? Not something given without strings attached? Or perhaps, even, something that she doesn’t truly deserve? Stick gave her encouragement and affection whenever she was sufficiently vicious and unyielding in a fight. The Natchios’ probably gave her love and affection when she put on the face of an obedient daughter. I’m sure that in a life of being a diplomat’s daughter and debutante, she roped in many a unsuspecting young man into her orbit – for fun, or whatever else, and I’d guess that “love” was empty too. 

And then Matthew comes along, and I’m willing to bet he was the first person who didn’t pre-judge her based on her background, her looks, etc. They may have appeared to be opposites on the surface, but it was clear that he knew her and she knew him, in a way that was strangely honest and real? And against all expectations, they could stand as equals – I’m sure it was a feeling that was marvelously new for both of them. Yes, Elektra had a mission, but her mission had nothing to do with her love for him, nor his love for her. If the mission had never existed, I think she would have been perfectly content continuing the way they were, and it was clear she’d allowed herself to revel in it…their future together. Of course, it comes crashing down when she gives him Roscoe Sweeney on a platter and he refuses to kill. For Elektra, there is once again a conditional line drawn in the sand. Elektra the killer cannot have real love, doesn’t deserve real love. And I think this is why she runs away from Matthew, because it validates, yet again, this awful view of herself that she has inside – that being the person she is, she doesn’t deserve real love, much less from him. 

So fast forward to closer to present day Elektra. This is a woman who has spent years of her life fighting. Fighting for a mission she thought she believed in. Fighting for respect. For love. For devotion. But the fight has always been in the context of someone else’s war, someone else’s mission. It’s no surprise she always finds herself lacking when the fight is never for her benefit, never on her terms. I imagine she always believed that as long as she did as she was told, she would find what she was looking for…but obviously she learns a hard lesson about this, not just once, but twice. It makes sense that she so violently disavows her connections to both Chaste and Hand – no, it’s not conventional response, but nothing about her life has been conventional. The language she is most familiar with is violence, and therefore it makes sense that her grab at retaking her agency is told through violent action.

But where does this leave her now? I think that for all of shit she’s gone through between DDS2 and Defenders, all of which have undoubtedly left her changed, at her very core she is still looking for the same things. Love. Acceptance. Understanding. It’s not entirely clear where her head is going to be at in a post-Defenders world. She’s spent so much of her life being told what to do and given no choices so I imagine there’s an urge to explore what life looks like on her own terms. Sure, it’s possible she might choose bad over good or whatever, but Elektra has never been a character beyond redemption. Canonically, she isn’t. And so I think she’s still going to be looking for someone who is willing to believe in her her, willing to love her despite all of her flaws, her mistakes, her sins. And I honestly think that even with all the drama and angst they’ve put each other through, the person who can give her that is still Matthew. Matt has his own issues to deal with, yes, but I think in the context of his relationship to Elektra, they’ve consistently proven that even when they are at odds, there is still a bond of love and understanding that can’t be broken and ignored, and given the work he put in to better understand and accept her for who she is by the end of S2 (and still, by the end of Defenders), I think there is a lot of possibility for their future that may not have been there before. 

And this is why I always have and always will believe that Matt and Elektra work uniquely well for one another. In their dark, unhealthy moments, it’s a mutually destructive force in both of their lives, but if that same force were channeled into good, into accepting the things about the other that can’t be changed but helping each other be better in the ways that can be fixed, it could be quite freeing for them both. The Defenders proved that they still love each other fiercely and at this point Matt is probably her only tie left to any kind of family, not to mention the only person she knows who would encourage a positive view of life and humanity. And this may be wishful thinking on my part, but I hope he can play a part in supporting her through this new stage of her life because I think what she really needs is not to go through it alone. She deserves to have loyalty and friendship and support, even if it’s just one person to start. 

So…yeah. That’s what I think she needs :).

[huntzbergered]

ok so I loved Godless (which seems to lack popularity around here-- where is the fandom...), and I didn’t have as many issues with it as much as other people did. I thoroughly enjoyed the plot, the characters, the pacing, the everything. I definitely fucking hate what happened to Blackdom in that finale, that was egregious. AND I HATE HOW THEY ENDED ROY/ALICE. I am assuming [bc nothing has proven to the contrary] that they didnt want things to be too saccharine so they had to tug at our heartstrings somehow and this was it???? BUT NO THANKS? pick SOMETHING ELSE. something that made more sense than what we got. 

Alice, who was one of my favorites (alongside Roy, Whitey...i mean lbr i loved them all lol), was completely deprived of agency in that final episode wtf??? Roy was handing her over to Bill as if this was some bridal exchange between patriarchs. What does Alice want? WHO does Alice want to be with???? Why was Roy like, ‘she isn’t mine to have’?? when did we ever get that indication from a show that spent 7 episodes making magic between the two of them lmao. like aLL we saw was Alice subtly, but pretty clearly, making the moves on Roy (ok it was one episode but that tension was building up from the damn pilot peeps!). 

For them to just throw that away with some sort of implication that Alice was always Bill’s “to have”??????? what, when, where, why? Did ALICE ever say that??????? bc i don’t think so. Why is there some passing off between the two of them when Roy’s like ‘take good care of them’; like bro, why don’t YOU take care of them?? why does some man who has had no bearing on their lives for the past decade get to be the one who steps in last minute and usurps what has been developed for 7 hours of telly. not to mention, we saw the cutest, sweetest relationship develop between Roy (as a great father-figure) and Truckee, Alice’s son. THAT TO ME SHOWS THAT IT’S MEANT TO BE ROY/ALICE. Bill has never interacted with Truckee, at all. jesuschristimpissed.

Yes, Bill saved Alice’s ass like 10 years ago, that was great. but what indication do we have that ALICE wants to be with Bill and hasn’t fallen for Roy since then? none. (also idc that she kept his suit or whatever, it could be for various reasons , a piece of clothing does not carry more significance than actual exchanges between two parties, which we saw almost none of).

 they developed a relationship, a human connection, genuine feelings between Roy/Alice; we saw alice interact with Bill a total of THREE fucking times, and one of those times, Alice was like awkwardly, cautiously trying to respond to Bill’s proposals. Another time was the damn 10-year old flashback, which admittedly was a good scene, but it was like a second of connection versus like hours of footage we got between Alice/Roy!!! Even when Bill was around, I didn’t see Alice giving two hoots about him. 

Not to mention, Alice has been a widow for years, along with Bill. So if Bill’s been so fucking head over heels for this woman, why did it take Roy coming along and actually establishing a relationship with her, to suddenly draw Bill back into the picture as some sort of obvious, it-was-Bill-all-along connection??

God, im so mad that we don’t know how the fuck Alice felt about things. She was basically just reacting to the decisions these stupid men were making about her, without us getting her choice or her desires. Bc all i ever saw from her was her implicitly choosing Roy by sleeping with him. also, for reals, that ending with the bag like im going to cry; she taught him how to read you guys and the first words he wrote were for her to say thank you like im dyingGGG. never have i had a ship that had proper hope to actually end up together, given the trajectory of the finale. 

THEY HAD SO MUCH POTENTIAL, SO MUCH HOPE! THERE WAS NO REASON FOR THEM NOT TO BE TOGETHER. FUCK. we actually SAW them connect over so many little things. When did we even see Bill!!!!!! do anything!!!!! with her!!

Also, lastly, Alice was trying to leave this town!! multiple times, as Truckee said. maybe she couldn’t because she never had the guts to, or because she secretly wanted to stay idk. but why does Bill coming along suddenly change things so permanently? the man’s been in town all these years, and it’s not like she’s shown signs of wanting to stick around for his ass. she didn’t feel like she belonged, and Bill never helped with that. I feel like Roy’s presence actually HELPED her feel more connected to her place/location in life, but also gave her some courage to move on. and yes, 100% i wanted her to go to california WITH Roy but no that was never gonna happen bc #darkness #gloom #edgy. But she could have just left town, regardless. that would have been a more appropriate, actually personal decision that showed she had some agency in that finale. id still have cried, but at least i know she wasn’t being handed off to BILL like some sort of farm animal with no choice in the matter.