#matt murdock meta

[lawstudentmattmurdock]

music + matt murdock

funniest thing to me is matt pretty much being 24/7 tuned in to the radio. people around him ALWAYS have it on. he can’t avoid it.

as a result his knowledge of pop music from the last twenty years is unmatched. he’s so good at karaoke. he knows the lyrics to every top 40 you can throw at him. whenever he’s cooking or unoccupied he just tunes in and starts humming or singing along.

foggy just thinks his private music taste is insane, because matt just does not seem like a top 40 kinda guy, and he never puts them on when he gets to pick the music, but every time he catches matt singing it’s always like. ariana grande.

(i just so fervently believe foggy is a grunge/punk/indie/musicals fan and a bit snobby about it so he’s like. MATT. why are you bringing maroon 5 into our sacred space of shitty apartment 2. do we need to have a good music intervention)

[kenobihater]

i legit don't get the appeal of viewing a character you like as a "100% unproblematic fave". y'all realize that a character can both be staunchly good with many positive traits AND have some flaws as well, right? to me, viewing a moral yet multifaceted character as faultless is like baking a cake with no salt. yeah, it's sweet, but it's too sweet because there's no salt to elevate the flavor! where's the depth in a character that is entirely perfect? where's the compelling motivations and character work? where's the humanity in that?

thankfully, i don't see much of this complete denial of flaws in the popular fanon of characters i enjoy, but what i DO see frequently is a shift in focus from characters' overall negative behaviors - behaviors directed both at themself and towards others - to depicting their self-destructive behaviors as their sole flaws. self-destruction is viewed as an "acceptable" flaw, unlike causing harm to others, and is often exaggerated if not invented out of whole cloth!

for an example of this distortion: there's a heroic yet flawed character i like with a high stress position that he wholly dedicates himself to, who probably loses a bit of sleep and is seen asking for and drinking tea ONCE to buy some time. what's the fanon version of him seen in many fics? well, his missteps and occasional emotional insensitivity have gone entirely out the window, and he's been transformed into a workaholic, sleep-deprived, caffeine addict who is incapable of caring for himself. he WILL collapse at some point in order to justify his love interest swooping in and insisting that this character, a fully grown adult man in charge of 1/10th of the entire army, learns ✨the importance of self care✨

i'm not arguing for every character to be deeply flawed - i love a good hero - but by making a canonically flawed character either 1) entirely beyond reproach or 2) a self-neglectful and/or self-flagellating martyr who has never hurt anyone but themself, you're sucking the life RIGHT out of them, and boring me to tears in the process.

[usaigi]

How @yellowocaballero and I Fixed Daredevil by Headcannoning Him as Mexican

When Daredevil first appeared in 1964, he was a second-generation Irish-American from Hell’s Kitchen, a working-class Irish-immigrant neighborhood. In a time where Irish people weren’t viewed as “white” or “real Americas.” They were a part of the oppressed working class, the bottom of the food chain, who had nothing but their religion, the vehicle of their culture from the old world, to keep them together.

Note: Today, the argument that “Irish people aren’t really white” has been co-opted by white supremacists and has often been used in bad faith against POC. I want it to be clear that what is considered “white” is and has always been a political term with no backing in science. Discrimination against the Irish back in the day was tied to anti-Catholic sentiment in predominately Protestant states, such as England, Scotland, and the United States. Naturally, Anti-Catholic discrimination overlaps with nativist, xenophobic, ethnocentric and/or racist sentiments (ie Anti-Italian, Anti-Polish, Hispanicphonia).

Jack Murdock was a poor boxer with no education or prospects who had to exploit his body to provide for Matt. And recognized that not a way to live and thrive, so he pushed Matt into academics for social mobility. Sound familiar?

At its core, the story of Matt Murdock is an immigrant story. Matt has the immigrant mentality;  immigrants-get-the-job-done type of thing. Gotta hustle and became a lawyer because that’s how he moves up the social and class ladder. And when he does “make it” he chooses to stay and help his neighborhood because he has a cultural connection to it. 

This worked in 1964, I don’t know how much it works now.  

Hell Kitchen isn’t a rough neighborhood primarily occupied by working-class immigrants, it’s another gentrified hipster hellhole. Irish people and people of Irish ancestry in the United States no long face systemic discrimination. 

Therefore, modern-day recontextualizing is to make Matt Mexican. 

Technically, Matt can also be from any other Latin American country or Filipino but I lean towards Mexican since a) this is my post go make your own and b) we get the most discrimination from the mainstream media. Yes, a lot of it is because racists use “Mexican” as a catch-all term for anyone from Latin America but still. Trump made his presidential platform by calling Mexicans illegal rapists and druggies. 

If Matt was actually the son of Jack Murdock*, an undocumented brown immigrant living in a working-class immigrant/POC neighborhood, it gives him the underdog immigrant arc the character is missing in modern-day adaptations. Matt's core is still the same Matt we know and love, he’s still the son of a boxer, whose dad’s pushed him into succeeding academically, who lost his dad to gang violence, and who is extremely Catholic. Someone who wants to fit into middle-class educated (white) society and feels like he has to suppress the "devil" inside until one day he can’t. He's seeing discrimination and poverty and crime and gentrification tear his neighborhood apart and the police turn their back on it since it's predominantly POC. The law has failed them, he's not going to fail them too. 

Meg made the fantastic point that Matt should still be white-passing (and ginger) so he could exist somewhere in between worlds.  And Matt takes advantage of that, as well as his Columbia Law degree to help his community. Matt not using his conditional whiteness and the fancy degree to “escape” his community and instead help it.

[logicheartsoul]

MattJen & Sambucky Parallels (Finale Edition)

[ceterisparibus116]

Hey. Why do you think Karen Page is a character people seem to hate so much? I’m fairly new to the fandom and I’ve seen people even badmouthing the actress as well, which is awful. I am curious to know what you think about it.

Welcome to the fandom! 💖 I'm so excited for you and I'm super happy that, despite being newish, you're interacting like this. (It took me an embarrassing amount of time to be brave enough to send asks to people lol.)

Also, this is such an interesting question.

I want to address the attacks against Deborah Ann Woll first. No matter how anyone feels about a character, it's absolutely despicable to attack the actor over it. Most of the attacks I've seen have been about her looks, or about her acting abilities. It's fine to critique acting abilities, but looks should be off the table. But even the critiques of her acting abilities aren't actually critiques - they're just, like you said, badmouthing, with little to no analysis. To me, that indicates that they're hating on the actress just because they're emotional (angry or annoyed) over the character.

So why do people get so emotional over Karen?

I think the easiest explanation is: ship wars. Some people struggle to enjoy their favorite ship without tearing down competitor ships. And since Karedevil is one of the few ships that was actually canon (albeit temporarily, but S3 ended with them being pretty flirty again), Karen becomes a huge target.

Another explanation is that Karen appears to be written inconsistently. Personally, I don't think she actually is (except perhaps in The Punisher; I'm not sure because I've only seen S1 of The Punisher). The argument goes: "She loves Daredevil until she finds out Daredevil is Matt, and then she treats it like an addiction, despite being supportive of Frank."

The counter-argument, to me, is clear: she still loves Daredevil, but she hates being lied to and put on a pedestal. Matt did both of those things. Frank (for the most part) did neither of those things. Her issue is with Matt, not Daredevil (which she makes explicitly clear in S3E1, but people still apparently confused on this point). With that in mind, I think she's written consistently in an incredibly nuanced way.

Another explanation is that Karen is a character who doesn't learn from her mistakes. She's rash and reckless and she lies just as much as Matt, and more often than not, people end up dead because of it. Ben is the most obvious and chilling example. Yet even after her actions get Ben killed, and she expresses serious guilt and remorse, she continues to do the same thing. That makes people wonder: is she stupid? Or, worse: was her guilt and remorse only an expression of her personal grief, and not actually the result of evaluating her actions affected Ben?

This, to me, is the most fair critique of Karen, and I sympathize with people who dislike her because of it. I will point out, however, that Matt and Foggy also repeat the same mistakes. It's obvious with Matt; it's talked about less often with Foggy, but I roll my eyes every time he acts like Matt and Karen are being reckless for wanting to operate outside the law - despite the fact that every time they limit their plans to operating inside the law, people end up dead. This makes me wonder: is Foggy stupid? Or does he simply care more about keeping Matt and Karen alive (and out of jail) than he cares about other people dying?

The actual explanation, I think, is that Daredevil is a show about very flawed and surprisingly realistic characters. People rarely shake off old habits and bad ways of thinking quickly. No matter how many times you tell a person that their friends are there for them, they (like Matt) may continue to push people away if that's their coping mechanism. No matter how many times you tell a person to ask for help before doing something alone, they (like Karen) may continue to go rogue if that gives them some feeling of control over their lives. No matter how many times you tell a person that the systems they want to trust are broken, they (like Foggy) may continue insisting that everyone should trust the system if they continue seeing the world through a lens of privilege.

Can it be frustrating to watch? Absolutely. Is it a good reason to hate a character? I'd say no, but I guess that's more subjective. Is it a reminder to all of us to be gentle and patient both with ourselves and with other people when we find ourselves making the same mistakes over and over? I hope so!

I've said before that I sometimes feel self-conscious over the fact that, in my longer stories, a character's growth is rarely linear. It's usually what I think of as a spiral. They make a mistake, they learn from it...and then the stakes rise, and so they fall back on that old mistake again, since it's comfortable and familiar, rather than trying a new approach. Or the character tries to blend the old mistake with the new approach, to varying degrees of success. Sometimes I worry that this feels repetitive, or like the character isn't learning.

But from the comments I've received, people seem to appreciate it more often than not. They resonate with it and relate to it.

So now that I think of it...maybe the root problem is simply that Daredevil doesn't have author's notes telling us why Karen (and Foggy and Matt) are making the same mistake again. 😅

Or maybe people are more compassionate towards characters in fanfiction than on TV? Or maybe people are more compassionate towards the main character than the side character? Or maybe it's misogyny? Or maybe people are just less compassionate towards Karen in particular because she threatens their favorite ship.

Aaaaand this post has come full circle.

[shiorimakibawrites]

I was reading a fic yesterday where the following happened:

"I'm fine." *snort* "The word or the acronym?"

Freaked Out, Insecure, Neurotic, Emotional

I immediately thought of Matt. He is usually at least a couple of those things when he says he is fine. Especially if one substitutes Injured for the I.

[murdockmeta]

A Human Fly: The Importance of Daredevils Before Daredevil

I've recently watched a video on "human flies", a social phenomenon that peaked in the 1920s-30s, where people would go out and do death-defying tricks literally just because they wanted to. (At first. Money became involved later, of course.) They were called human flies (sometimes human spiders, human lizards, etc.) for their ability to climb up the walls of buildings so easily. They weren't just called human flies, though. They were also called daredevils.

The video I watched talked about how this phenomenon was so popular because of the role it played in displaying masculinity. Most of these daredevils were men, and at the time being seen doing these death-defying stunts was the height of manliness. And suddenly, while learning all this new information, all I could wonder is if that at all was related to Stan Lee's motivation behind the creation of Matt Murdock. Anyway, here we go.

Okay, so, gender roles and how they functioned in society around the first half of the 20th century are similar but also different from what they are now. There were stiffly set rules to what it meant to be a man that was entirely unrelated to genitals. These same standards are echoed in the modern day. I don't think it's a coincidence that Matt falls outside of those rules.

Obviously, Matt's blind. Disabled. And, as a fictional character, that had really heavy (negative) implications before the disability rights movement became more popular. You even see that reflected in the comics themselves. There's the implication that Matt is expected to live out his life unhappy, unmarried (which extends to not having children), and is helpless to such a fate. That is the complete opposite of what being a man in US American culture was in the 1950s and 60s. Matt exemplified what it was to not be a man.

Stan Lee, when co-creating this character, takes these concepts that absolutely oppose one another and he smashes them together. It feels like spitting in the face of standards and expectations. He says, "Oh, look, a blind man. A man that can't be a man. I'm going to take him and I'm going to turn him into something that is undeniably manly." Lee does this through this phenomenon that links back to human flies.

Being a human fly was about proving to the people around you that you were a man among men. That you were capable of physical feats that others only could wish to accomplish. And Lee grew up in a time when he was surrounded by these types of people as a child. Most of these people would travel to New York City, where Lee grew up, just to perform these stunts.

How masculinity was defined in that age was rigid. You had to be strong, you had to be capable, you had to have the ability to provide for your family. There were certain elements that also took away from your masculinity. You couldn't be too smart or bookish, you couldn't be too skinny, you couldn't be disabled. And being able to fit into these standards wasn't just about pride, it was about social status.

These human flies were often referred to as daredevils by newspapers. It doesn't seem like much of a reach for me to think that they could've possibly related to Lee's creation of Daredevil.

This strip is from the second issue of volume one.

It was revolutionary* (asterisk), to an extent, what Lee was implying with his creation of Matt's character. That you could be disabled and still be fully capable of accomplishing what society has deemed impossible for you or deemed you unworthy of. That you could represent the peak of masculinity (meaning you could be perceived as an equal to those around you) while having supposed qualities that strike you from it.

I'm not saying that that's a goal that every disabled/blind person has or should have. In fact, under a modern lens, I think it's very counterproductive. But, I think the social and cultural context surrounding the character's creation is important to understand. I think it's important to know why implying those things at the time was important to disabled representation.

Many people don't like or struggle to read older comics due to them aging badly. While I don't blame them, I think there would be less resistance if people stopped trying to interpret those comics through a modern lens.

Context is important. History is important.

(asterisk) *This is in relation to the time-specific era of disabled representation. This is not to ignore the problems with the representation of Matt as a blind man. I'm not saying or implying that there's nothing wrong with the original comics, in fact, they are incredibly ableist. I am simply focusing on the importance of that representation at the time of the issues being published.

Thanks for reading.

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Ranting about the old Netflix Marvel shows:

Looking back at the original NMCU as a whole, while I think the general consensus is that this side of the MCU fell off when “Iron Fist” premiered, I think the real issue is more complicated then that. I think that the Netflix shows started off strong, but couldn’t implement their long-term plans for their side of the universe due to mismanagement/lack of collaboration. Oddly enough, the NMCU sorta reflects the current issues with Phases 4 and 5 of the mainstream MCU.

When you look at the shows overall, it feels like a bunch of creators were given free reign with these characters, and it shows. All of them had their own distinct identity, as well as what audience they were targeting. The problems started occurring when the shows had to start connecting.

I can’t say this for sure, but it really feels like no one was put in a Kevin Feige-like position to direct the overall journey. Instead, it feels like Jeph Loeb and Marvel Television (which was its own thing before being absorbed by Marvel Studios) just sorta mandated that the shows need to have a big crossover event. It made sense, especially since the Arrowverse was pulling this off as an annual thing with their shows. While it sounds good on paper, I feel like none of the teams behind each show were in sync with each other:

1) Daredevil didn’t really find a good way to balance the needs of the show and the needs of the crossover. Rewatch season 2 and you’ll notice that while the Punisher storyline feels more thought-out, the Elektra storyline feels jumbled and incomplete. In fact, the first 4 episodes are focused on Frank, and then all of a sudden, Elektra is pushed into the story. I can’t prove this but it feels like the original idea was to focus on Frank Castle, but then Elektra had to be introduced in order to set up “The Defenders”. Which was premiering the following year.

2) Jessica Jones didn’t even bother building up into “The Defenders”.

3) Neither did “Luke Cage”.

4) Although I have a ton of separate issues with “Iron Fist”, I do feel sorry for the production team. This show had the unfortunate burden of having to introduce its hero while also doing most of the build-up for the crossover. To make matters worse, if you read up on the behind-the-scenes development, you would know that the show was rushed out. Finn Jones was literally learning the fight choreography minutes before filming.

I have this funny feeling that Marvel Television set up the schedule for each show and refused to change it. Given more time, Netflix could’ve made it work. I can easily imagine the Elektra storyline being its own season of “Daredevil”, “Jessica Jones” and “Luke Cage” each having a season focused on the Hand, and “Iron Fist” being given more breathing room to introduce Danny Rand before diving into the crossover.

But let’s say Marvel Television didn’t want to make people wait that long for a crossover. Then they still failed to move the storyline of the shows in a way that could naturally lead into “The Defenders”. You’re telling me Jessica and Luke couldn’t have at least had a 1-2 episode subplot about the Hand? Or that the Daredevil team couldn’t have introduced Frank Castle later on in order to prioritize Elektra, who is arguably the most important character in the crossover? “Iron Fist”, while not a good show, at least tried to lead into the crossover.

(Side note: Just as a reminder, a common problem people had with the NMCU was that each season was too long at 13 episodes and that the shows didn’t have enough story to squeeze in. Jessica and Luke could’ve definitely worked in a 1-2 episode Hand stand-alone subplot to offset these issues)

I don’t mean for this post to take away from any of these shows. I still am fond of the NMCU. But looking back at it, I can’t help but feel that they were mismanaged. Good on their own, but since they had a crossover miniseries set up, there needed to be stronger collaboration between each show. Or, at least move the damn crossover if the shows weren’t ready for one.

[gianteyedcrow]

It’s been years and I’m still intrigued by the way that the writers of Daredevil introduced Frank Castle as a morally grey character.

The first thing you know about him is that he: kills a lot of people and is capable of incredible acts of violence, and only one of those things is ok in our hero Matt’s book. We’re initially supposed to view him as the villain of the story, but that narrative shifts really quickly when he beats the absolute shit out of that freakish pawn shop owner with a baseball bat for trying to sell him CSAM.

It instantly makes it clear to the audience that even if he can’t be classified as a Good Guy, he’s still probably at least a little tiny bit a good guy.

[prettyeyesnof4ce]

PSA for fellow Matt Murdock fanfic writers:

Please do not ignore Matt’s blindness. Regardless of his heightened abilities you cannot forget that he is legitimately blind and cannot see at all. It’s bad enough that DD writers (both in the show and comics occasionally) dismiss his blindness for a plot point or to gloss over the fact that he has a disability. So please, be mindful and make sure you’re writing Matt correctly/realistically within descriptions or scenarios

[racefortheironthrone]

As part of a joke about diversity in the MCU, Someone on Tumblr described Daredevil as blind, Catholic, and mentally ill. I know the comics Daredevil had a multiple-personality arc, but as far as I know that wasn't used in the MCU. Other than that, does the live-action Matt actually have a mental illness?

In the comics, Frank Miller, Brian Michael Bendis, and Mark Waid have established that Matt Murdock suffers from clinical depression, and has periodically sought treatment for his condition. As one might expect from his Catholic upbringing and personal background, Murdock conceptualizes his depression as a "demon" he has to fight to overcome.

The show is less explicit about it than the comics, but the MCU Matt Murdock seems to share the same condition, and we see this particularly in Season 3.

[sun-ni-day]

Still can't get over how INTIMATE final confrontation between Matt and Fisk is. It's bloody and emotional and heart wrenching and it's so so very personal. This is them each coming to face the demons he has lived with most of his life in the form of one another. They are not fighting each other. They are fighting their own trauma.

Season 3 had it's shortcomings, for sure, but boy did they deliver on character development!

[usaigi]

If Danny Rand was biracial (Chinese-White) he'd still be the forever outsider. Not fitting in with the upper-class society in the US and not fitting in with the upper-class society in East Asia. And when he's orphaned and adopted by K'un-Lun, never fitting in because he's half white and American.

Later when he befriends Luke, Luke has to teach him about racism and the discrimination Brown and Black people experience in the US. For a moment Danny is under the impression he's exactly the same. Luke needing to explain that while Danny has adversities as an Asian man, it's not the same as what he experiences as a Black man.

Then, both of them learning about the 'model minority' myth and how that's been weaponized to divide Asians from Black and Brown people. What it means to be 'white-adjacent' and how that's bullshit and super conditional. It changes the dynamic between Luke and Danny from "Luke needing to constantly teach (white)Danny about racism" to "Luke realizing that everyone is a victim of racism/the white patriarchy."

Throw in Mexican!Matt, Colleen, and Misty so they have to unpack intersectionality and what it means to be poor, disabled, and a women.

I don't know, I just think you can't end violent street-level crime without addressing racism and inequality.

[hithertoundreamtof23]

I haven't seen anybody point this out, so I guess I will.

(Pardon the rambling, it sounded better in my head)

I think it's amazing how both Matt and Wilson Fisk's mentors gave them advice that not only stuck with them, but formed the basis of their beliefs and moral codes. It's a testament to the amazing writers on this show and the effort Charlie and Vincent put into developing the characters. 

 Wilson's mentor, his father, repetitively told him [in reference to facing his bully] to 'kick him', which Wilson used as a mantra when he beat his bully and later, when he killed his own father. Wilson kept this ideology when he took over Hell's Kitchen; metaphorically (and sometimes literally) kicking anyone that stood in his way. He rose to power by force- obtaining it through trampling on people he saw as lesser than him (Mrs Cardenas, Ben Urich, etc.). 

He tried on multiple occasions to use his brutal tactics on Daredevil, but Matt never let Fisk get away with it. Which leads me to the next point...

Matt's mentality is to keep getting up, no matter how hard he falls down. This is in part due to the advice he got from Stick.  Whenever young Matt would get injured during training, Stick would apathetically tell him to 'get up'. Matt's greatest strength (and sometimes weakness) comes from this perseverance. Through the series, he gets stabbed, shot, heartbroken, and betrayed time and time again. Thanks to Stick's mantra, Matt always gets back up and never gives up on his goal. 

Despite Fisk's tendency to 'keep kicking' his enemies, Matt keeps 'getting up'. In the end, Matt's perseverance outperforms Fisk's brute force, giving everyone the message that staying power can defeat whatever opposition it faces.

[ceterisparibus116]

Frank has lied to Karen and even put her in explicit danger by using her as bait in the diner to lure out the Blacksmith's men and lied to her by omission by not disclosing his plans. That's worse than any other shit Matt did so? Easily disproves one of your talking points about how "fRaNk nEveR LiEd tO hEr" 🤪 goofy

Normally, I don't consider it productive to engage with someone who...talks like this...but I do think it's interesting to compare Frank's lies vs Matt's lies.

[First, pro tip: if you're going to say a person's point is "easily disproven," it helps to articulate that point correctly. I never said Frank "never" lied to her; I said: "Frank (for the most part) did neither of those things [lied to her nor put her on a pedestal]." I'm conceding that Frank did lie to her, but suggesting that his relationship with her was not marked by lies the way Matt's relationship with her was. Misrepresenting someone's point like this is called a "straw man fallacy." I encourage everyone who's unfamiliar with the idea to look it up!]

Let's talk about the lies. Frank totally lied to Karen and used her as bait, which I (as a viewer) find pretty horrific. And is that "worse" than Matt's lies? If the metric we use to determine "worse" is "which endangers Karen more," then I think Frank did directly endanger her more than Matt did.

But we have to look at this from Karen's perspective, and I don't think the metric she's using is "which lies endanger me more." Frankly, Karen doesn't much care about danger. She cares about Capital-T Truth. She cares about trust. She cares about honest relationships. And by that metric, I think yes, she believes that Matt's lies are "worse."

I believe this for the reasons listed below, but also because it strikes me that her reactions to Frank's lies vs Matt's are quiet different. Like, was she mad that Frank lied to her? Absolutely. But when I watch it, I don't get the impression that she was hurt.

Mad is not the same as hurt.

With Frank, she was mad.

With Matt, she was mad and hurt.

Why? For several factors.

Depth/intimacy of the relationship. She'd known Matt for over a year (I think; timelines are weird) by the time she realized he'd been lying to her. Not only that, but she'd been working with him for that whole time period. Not only that, but she'd had a crush on him for probably that whole time period (or close to it) (which I bring up because a crush is one surefire way to make a relationship feel intimate, maybe even more intimate than it really is). Not only that, but their relationship was fairly intimate. From the very beginning, he invited her to ask him some very personal questions about his blindness, and she was depending on him to keep her out of jail. Then we have him literally falling apart and sobbing in her arms. Talk about intimate! And not only that, but they also literally dated and she invited him to her apartment to have sex, let's be real. So when Matt lies to her, it's not the same as a guy she's known for a few weeks whom she wants to rescue the way you want to rescue a lost puppy lying to her. This is her coworker, her best friend, and her would-be partner lying to her.

Scope of the lies. The scope of Matt's lies runs deep. A) Him lying (by omission) about his senses clearly hits Karen very hard. It feels like a massive invasion of privacy. Now, I've argued before that it's unfair for characters to punish Matt for something he can't control, and I've also argued that Matt is not required to reveal his senses to anyone. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't still hurt (and shock, and even offend) people to realize that he could smell their breath and hear their heartbeat this entire time. B) He's lying about a huge part of his life and personality. Frank's very up front: he might lie about goals and tactics, but when it comes to who he is as a person, what you see is what you get. Whereas Matt presents himself (as Matt) as a very buttoned-up, reasonable, conscientious, safety-oriented, controlled person...the very opposite, in many ways, of Daredevil. C) Matt's lying about things that could have huge direct consequences for Karen (and Foggy) - namely, their law firm falling apart and Karen and Foggy possibly going to prison. D) Matt lied more to Karen than he did to another person. I don't think Karen's reaction to Elektra was primarily jealousy per se; I think instead she's like: "You won't share this part of my life with me, but you will with Elektra." Not dissimilar to how Foggy was mad about Claire knowing more about Daredevil than he did. It just hurts to find out that your friend has chosen to reveal things to someone else, rather than you.

What the lies say about how the other person views Karen. What does it say about how Frank views Karen that he'd lie to her the way he did? Ehhhh. I guess that he didn't want her getting in the way of his plans? Maybe he thought she couldn't handle something, and that would annoy her? But with Matt, wow, we know exactly how she thought Matt felt about her, based on the lies. She says: "Why didn't you trust me? What, did you think I would judge you?" To her, Matt's secret-keeping was proof that he didn't trust her (ouch) and that he fundamentally misunderstood her by believing she'd judge him when she prides herself on finding the humanity in those others would condemn.

All of these factors show why when Matt lied to Karen, she wasn't just pissed off. She was hurt. Matt's lies struck deep in a way that Frank's didn't.

And listen. I say all this as a giant Karedevil fan. I don't ship Kastle at all. In fact the argument from the first factor (that Karen was so hurt by Matt's lies because of the intimacy of their relationship) is, to me, a pro-Karedevil argument.

But being a fan of a ship doesn't mean we can't evaluate it critically. Evaluating all things critically is one of the aims of my blog.

So, dear Anon, if you're still reading this far (which I kinda doubt lol), I hope this made sense. But if you're just going to send me another ask misstating my positions and calling my position "goofy," then into the trash it shall go!

[shiorimakibawrites]

Saw something earlier that had a couple things in it that burns my butter. Not naming any names because I'm not trying to call someone out. I just need to vent.

One

People need to remember which continuity the fic they are reading is from.

MCU Daredevil, Comics Daredevil, and Daredevil 2003 are entirely separate universes.

It is never wrong for a fic writer to present the events / characters / a characters powers as they are presented in that particular universe.

For example, it is not wrong to describe Matt as having brown hair when it's the MCU just because comics Matt is (usually) a red head.

Two

I have very firm policy about ignoring canon when it is being bloody stupid. To paraphrase Nick Fury: "I realize that canon has made its decision. But since it was a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it."

Yes, I realize 'being bloody stupid' is a subjective opinion and people's thresholds on that are going to vary. But anything that throws me out of the story is going to get tossed out. Period.

For example, I do not care that in the Daredevil comics that Matt has been known to read printed material / computer screens by touch. Or tell what color something is purely by touch. It is not happening in my fics. It's dumb.

And frankly rather ableist.

God forbid Matt cannot read something because it wasn't printed in braille or available in an audio format, etc. Or cannot tell what color these otherwise identical objects are. You might think he was blind or something (obvious sarcasm is obvious).