#musing more like shmusing

[archivedjuice]

quite genuinely i think zdarsky making mike matt's foil was probably the best post-soule mike murdock decision ever because not only does it enhance matt's already existing story and makes you question how mike would fit into everything that you read pre-real boy mike, it also gives mike his own rich inner life just by making matt his foil. it gives you an already incredibly fleshed out basis for how his inner world works with that one narrative decision. it seems so simple but really and truly it adds so much with so little 'effort'. like my favourite thing to do ever is reread the man without fear and think about where and how mike would fit in kind of in a similar way to how mike nicely slots into the born again detail of matt's story when maggie visits matt at the hospital after he's blinded.

the very fact and nature of exactly how he has to slot into every crevice of matt's story (metaphorical of the fact that mike never enters matt's hospital room, he sleeps and remains outside and at the door, even when he witnesses maggie's presence) is kind of it's own homage to the 'purpose' of mike murdock in the first place. he's an alternative to the lifestyle that is either matt murdock or daredevil. he was privy to matt's struggle‚ being quite literally matt himself‚ and subverted matt's identity into compartmentalised divisions. he does something similar with his sheer Real Boy existence by simply existing within the narrative but his inclusion is also his exclusion! he is unable to fundamentally alter aspects of matt's life that need to happen despite the purpose of his initial existence being that of alleviating the pressure that comes with matt and daredevil's existence, and that crevice of matt's story is exactly where the crux of his character as a foil of matt lies! he lives with every inherent nuance of matt's world that matt had to live to explore, that exists beneath a layer of dissolution; case in point: maggie as their mother and mike's different view of their father

[archivedjuice]

some of you just don't get mattelektra. she does not want to make him worse, she doesn't want to make him anything. she doesn't even see him for who he is. every time she falls in love with 'him' again it isn't actually him, it's an idea of him that she's made up of him in her head based on all the times she genuinely did enjoy being with him. it's the same for matt, he's in love with an idea of her, the only difference is that HE is the one that wants to change her. elektra does not change unless she wants to be changed, unless she wants to change herself and the same goes for matt. that's the tragedy of them!!! they'll never change for one another so they're forever cursed to love ideas of each other that don't exist and therefore it can never work!!!

[archivedjuice]

matt-as-mike is a very specific exploration of matt's character and of how restricted he feels as 'matt murdock' because of his use of 'daredevil' as a 'release' comma initially to inact parts of the law he didn't have access to as a lawyer while he was 'matt murdock' but it eventually lead him to pick and choose who he wanted 'matt murdock' to be and who he wanted 'daredevil' to be in terms of the things each persona could do. this only divided these parts of himself more and more and with more restriction comma each part of himself became something akin to personas and soon there were parts of himself that didn't fit into either persona. he didn't create 'mike murdock' intentionally to deal with this issue but it's what the creation of 'mike murdock' ended up finding a solution for.

now what i need you to understand is that Real Boy mike murdock having the same personality as matt-as-mike does not mean that the purpose of this personality is the same for him. if you think this, it means that you have not begun considering Real Boy mike as his own person and beyond that, you, realistically, should be considering two realities in relation to matt-as-mike: one in which it is matt acting as mike and one in which mike has always been a real person but, the latter is a consideration that can only begin once you've understood the purpose of Real Boy mike murdock's use of his matt-as-mike personality. it is a front; in a way entirely different from 'mike' being a portion of matt's true self, Real Boy mike has found a purpose for this caricature personality and it is to keep himself safe. by putting up this front, he achieves the ability to be carefree, strong and a pillar for others (this is very important as it is inherent to mike to care for others, just as it is for matt. this part does inherently belong to the matt-as-mike personality but as zdarsky would have it, and as soule established, that same neverending care for other people does exist within mike) while protecting his real, inner personality. it is imperatively important, when reading canon, to recognise when this front personality is present

[archivedjuice]

i think my favourite part about matt's character is that he's inherently an oxymoron and his inherent nature juxtaposes itself. being a lawyer and vigilante can't work (well enough, anyway) yet he needs both. he can't function without one or the other yet if he only takes one of the two, he loses himself in its entirety.

[archivedjuice]

you see i've had this headcanon for comic!matt since maybe my last reread ended in early september 2022 and i held the same for live action!matt but only around his end of season one to season three period rather than his season one period which you refer to a lot in this post. i wasn't going to talk about it but an anon of mine sent me this post and my mind cannot stop.

something i find interesting about live action!matt's character is that the majority of his character in season one (up until maybe episode seven) seems to have healed some between when stick left, when elektra came into his life and then when we initially meet him in episode one but as the show goes onward, the matt murdock persona he's built around his trauma falls into his daredevil persona and he looses it and therefore losing himself in its entirety blah blah blah overdone plot yet well executed. anyway, my point is that while a lot of this is happening, we see a lot of the symptoms that could be able to be constituted as bpd in his fear of abandonment and the way it plays into his manic-like episodes where he cuts off foggy and karen (to some degree, he never tries to properly speak to her about what's happened between them and gives up on it by the end of the season until he decides he has to tell her he's daredevil, which could be an indication of a mood swing in how quickly his decision was made after almost two canonical years of mulling over it) only for him to begin crashing in the end of season two with elektra's death (which could be seen as kind of a forceful pull from his manic-like episode) through the defenders to a full blown depressive episode in season three which is amplified by his quadrupled grief (the double loss of elektra, the loss of both foggy and karen). i don't agree with your view of his 'abuse of alcohol' because that never happens in the show; he's a regular drinker sure but he's seen to drink both when he's extremely sad (1.11) and when he's at his peak in terms of happiness (2.04) so i'd disagree with that bit.

his practice of daredevil can be seen just as much of some kind of self harm as much as his suicide attempt in 3.01 but that isn't completely indicative of bpd; it could simply just be depression or some side effect of the trauma he's endured paired with the unhealthy mechanism he'd unintentionally learnt from stick who began teaching him how to fight when he was still grieving his father.

matt murdock is not a hollow person nor does he practice daredevil because he 'wants to feel'. in fact, i think a large portion of his character comes from the fact that he feels everything, which just proves our bpd headcanons further. maybe this is his comic characterisation bleeding into him here but i think this is something essential to any iteration of matt murdock and something everyone should understand before they start questioning why he does what he does. it's the most consistent part of his character as well and is probably the only part of it zdarsky hasn't fucked up right now. either way, the same ideas perpetuate for live action matt murdock. he doesn't show it as much as a person, being the one who has the least emotional with mrs. cardenas when both foggy and karen had become pretty close to her already but it's there. it's what pushes him to put on that suit again in the event of her death in 1.09. nobu and fisk both comment on the fact that he seemed to have become more cautious in his nightly affairs earlier that episode only for him to throw caution completely out of the window once she'd died. this goes throughout the season, even when he's unusually focused on his end goal in season three, something he repeatedly considers over his own well being are the lives of those around him.

i've also never seen anything about matt refusing help specifically aimed at any kind of depression considering that he's not canonically diagnosed nor has he been offered help for it or any kind of mental illness and i haven't heard him say that "he's fine, he doesn't need therapy" so i'm a little lost on that your post is such a great analysis of matt in season one up until episode 2.08 or so and ive said this so much more before but i genuinely really wish we could've seen him heal in season four or in a movie or fucking something because he deserved that much.

The way Matt displays some symptoms of Borderline personality disorder makes me wonder if there’s actually some undiagnosed personality disorder hiding in his brain.

Fear of abandonment, unstable relationships (that he’s at fault for because he pushes people away in an attempt to protect them), explosive anger paired with mood swings, struggling with self-image (that man constantly questions who he is), self-destructive behavior and self-harm (it displays in the way he sabotages his relationships and jumps head-first into danger. He’s abusing alcohol regularly because he’s “had a bad day” and the way he’s getting himself beat in S3 just for the thrill of it borders on serious self-harm tendencies), and his constant suspicions keep him detached from reality (I believe his senses make it easier for him to actually SENSE danger, but he also sometimes sees it when there is none just because he’s been taught to always be vigilant and risk his life if need be). I can’t say if he’s feeling empty, I just remember he said he felt hollow when Elektra almost died, but the way he’s living his life on the edge all the fucking time tells me he’s just trying to feel something, and the sadness he displays and how lost he sounded when he told Karen that he can’t do this alone… yeah, that man is broken inside, barely holding on and extremely mentally unstable.

Matthew has trauma and I’m pretty sure his need to self-destruct stems from a serious high-functioning depression he refuses to address or get help with because “he’s fine, he doesn’t need therapy”, and that is all caused by the trauma of the accident, his dad dying and then what Stick did with him. He thinks asking for help is weakness and he doesn’t want to hurt the people he cares about, which he does though with the way he treats himself and drives a wedge between them because he’s so scared of losing them that he pushes them away in an attempt to shield himself, and it’s a spiral that just keeps on going down and he can’t get out of it. A mouse on a wheel that can’t escape, almost. He knows he needs help, maybe it’s his father’s voice in his head, but he can’t take it because he feels responsible. He feels responsible for everything bad in the world and wants to change it, but he can’t fix everything so he constantly beats himself up for it (and gets beaten). Like I stated above, his need to self-destruct is greater than self-preservation – he protects his heart by pushing people away, but doesn’t want to lose them either, so he either holds on too tight or not at all. Unstable relationships, as mentioned above.

It all leads back to the trauma Stick inflicted on him. So I’m slightly torn about the BPD suspicions because he’s only started displaying those symptoms after his dad died and Stick started training him. He twisted all of Matt’s views, and even though he’s trying hard to fight what he put in his head, Stick is always whispering in his ear and it makes him sabotage everything around him for what he thinks is right. While he displays personality disorder symptoms, serious ones at that, it might just be a trauma response, or perhaps he inherited something from his mother after all and he’s had the genetic predisposition since he was born. Mental illness is hereditary, after all. Not always, but if your parents are sick, the likelihood that you will get sick too is extremely high because your brain has a serious hormonal imbalance from the beginning.

I understand where Matt comes from, but I just wish my boy would go about this differently. He has friends, he needs to let them be a part of his life. And he realizes that at the end of S3 after Foggy swore to hold on to him, not leave like everyone else did, and that’s twisted on his part because Matt hurt him and he had every right to leave, but he doesn’t and Matt eventually realizes that he’s not alone. But he still needs to work through his issues and all the trauma inflicted on him ever since he could think.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[archivedjuice]

anyone remember when this was my banner?

yeah well it was mostly cause i was insane about these two panels:

in which matt explicitly confronts the fact that pre-nord stone reality him viewed mike as both his own person (which we already know based on his refusal to undo mike with reader's help because he realised & recognised that mike was indeed someone with a consciousness and therefore a life of their own. which kick his second chance ass mind into gear about the whole situation. which is think was ultimately a GREAT jump start for zdarsky's weird background idea of mike's morality and the philosophy of what it is that makes someone truly alive but also how it would affect a person mentally, to be so constantly aware of, not only the tangible realness of their physical worlds but also their mental ones) but also he subconsciously still views mike as the mike he invented to cover up his issues at the time. and what's the MOST interesting part about this is that right after his subconscious (because this is still all just a dream) recognises this, the version of mike that he perceives mike to be goes ahead to clean up his issues once more. it's also unintentional foreshadowing of the reason for which mike would continue to live within daredevil comics (covering up matt's issues IRONICALLY in a very flipped way where mike is acting as matt this time) as well as foreshadowing for the fact that he will die covering up matt's issues.

also im just a really big fan of this panel:

because i loooove the implication that mike is an 'i know a guy who knows a guy' type of guy because of the other implication that mike is the one who carried him to this doctor or whatever. which fuels all of my ideas related

[archivedjuice]

in my head, for Real Boy mike, i like to think that in this separate, new reality, throughout mike's Real childhood (and life), there was still a continuous gnawing feeling that something wasn't quite right and it wasn't up until the point where this made up but still very much real reality kind of converged with the current canon and suddenly mike woke up on the floor of an abandoned apartment crying, that this constant gnawing feeling started to make sense to him: he isn't an entirely Real fucking person

because, also, when you think about it, a mike-less reality only exists to us, the readers of daredevil comics now. like if matt & mike were to ever read daredevil comics it would be their only exposure to a world without them existing as twins but i think about the fact that matt probably has a really weird inherent disconnect when it comes to his relationship with mike but at the same time cannot separate himself from mike in his head. do you understand what i mean? like i bet when matt, throughout this Real Boy mike childhood and even throughout his adult life, probably has trouble knowing when he ends and mike starts but also often neglects to think about mike as his own person. and this is probably so normal to him that he doesn't question it but he just doesn't know this issue exists because once upon a time mike wasn't a real person and he is inherently parts of matt made hyperbolic then stitched together

[archivedjuice]

imagine being an immigrant, being lied to all your life by various governments, forms of currency and life security. constantly feeling like your existence is being taken for granted because of how easy it is for authorities and powers to lie to you. and someday you get into some shit and someone comes to save you. he tells you your name which let's you know that your existence is not being taken for granted. he knows your name, you must mean something to someone. and he tells you his name and that he is not lying to you. oh my fucking god

[archivedjuice]

op i 100% agree with you but if im being honest i think her dislike (maybe distrust is a better word?) of matt also goes back to the fact that she also sort of admired matt and looked up to him as a voice of reason and of structure and that admiration melded into idolisation, which also melted into her romantic attraction and feelings for him. so when the appearance of matt being a straight forward good person she could look up to was shattered by the fact that he's daredevil i think past the fact that she was lied to, some part of her was also incredibly disappointed that these two people - daredevil and matt - she once found faith in, when put together created a huge lie she had been hiding from about herself: that she can't run from who she is because it'll always be part of her and that no one can be perfect or completely innocent (she once said that matt treated her like she was innocent and that she liked that).

plus her character is built off of the want and general need of the truth so it'd also make sense that logically, she'd hate that he lied, even if he didn't like doing it.

Friendly Reminder

Karen never once had an issue with Matt being Daredevil. Her issue is with Matt himself.

The difference between her treatment of Matt and Frank is that Frank never lies to her, whereas Matt lies to her all the time.

Karen has said this, repeatedly.

[archivedjuice]

see the thing about nitw is that a lot of the game past the middle literally doesn't feel like it makes sense because of how fast it all declines but it's supposed to be metaphorical, representing how life feels for people not taking 'traditional routes' (college, moving out, etc. in this case mae makes a wonderful example because of her circumstance: she moved out and went to college but dropped out and moved back home) in their early 20s. in this case the game is representing mae, her family and her friends so the meaning of the ending largely is: we're stuck in this town due to our own separate circumstances (so like for mae it's her mental illness and for bea it's her father) and the larger circumstance of society and capitalism and it sucks ass but there's nothing we can do about it. then it gets pretty philosophical with all the stuff about god, death and existence. but then since the entire game is set from mae's perspective but is still kind of kept in the third person omniscient the rapid decline of mae's mental health as the game goes on (mirrors the rapid decline in the game's plot into some kind of confusion/madness but also) feels like something we shouldn't be experiencing, like it's wholly mae's but she's also trying to get us to understand what it feels like and what she went through in college, what she's been going through her entire life. and you can never explain the way this game progresses to anyone unless they've played it themselves in the same way you can never get someone to fully understand what it's like to have a mental illness unless they have experienced it or something similar as well. yeah

[archivedjuice]

anyway. father lantom telling kid matt (3.02) that he's angry and if he doesn't find a way to harness it it'll destroy him and matt being such an inherently good person that he went on to observe people in the church and decide that it's his destiny to harness that anger by helping people. helping people by being a lawyer wasn't enough to harness that anger and he decided that he needed to help people more/in another way hence being a vigilante. like imagine housing that much anger inside you and you manage to turn it into something relatively good and when it doesn't work you decide you just need to do more good

[archivedjuice]

[tags by @feenyreadscomics from my ask game]

basically i said that in my head, mike doesnt fit the gender binary in one way or another and can i just say that you get me so bad........ i made a post either earlier this year or late last year where i talked about how mike is literally the most perfect trans allegory from start to finish. when he first existed, matt became most comfortable being 'mike murdock' because mike was everything matt couldn't be while he was matt murdock; he was able to express himself freely and soon matt liked being 'mike' more than he ever liked being matt. it also speaks volumes that the person he was in love with also ended up liking mike more than matt. i like to hc that karen took a liking to mike because he was exactly like matt, just more expressive, emotional and was generally more himself, whether she was aware of it or not. then when he becomes a real boy he craved being seen for what he is, not just a fake Thing inherently related to matt; to him he had always existed but to everyone else he was just beginning to exist and he seeks to make life comfortable for him. it also doesn't help that, like i mentioned, mike is an inherently incredibly expressive person. his fashion is loud yet classy and he makes everything work. he talked a lot and makes a lot of jokes, even using it as a shield from his own emotions. im so abnormal how closely he mirrors the trans experience and if i ever were to write a comic run for him id definitely make the allusions more explicit

[archivedjuice]

im never getting over the way matt treated stick like a halfway point between family and being incredibly emotionally detached; i think it affected him worse than if stick had just treated him explicitly like a soldier. from telling matt he's proud of him to provoking him in a fight in his own home and then accompanying him at elektra's funeral yet still betraying him by 'taking out' the people he was working with in the defenders right before he dies - a death matt cried and momentarily mourned for.

It’s fucking hilarious how Stick when saving Elektra makes Matt make him tea. It’s such a Stick style asshole move but it also makes sense from a crisis management standpoint because Matt is clearly panicking and his worrying and hovering is not conducive to Stick actually helping Elektra. Stick giving Matt something to do with his hands that involves just a little bit of concentration and makes him seem useful is a well known tactic when dealing with a crisis and panicking people that does work. It’s still funny though.

[archivedjuice]

mike murdock becomes grounds for a horror genre type character when you think about his whole being as a performance and wholly as a character rather than a person. the agency involved in rewriting his own reality is his own version of breaking the fourth wall; the horrific realisation that nothing lies outside of the dichotomy that's been created for you as he's written back into the role he's been created for whether that is against his own wishes or not. he's frankenstein-esque, the creation that instead of turning on its creator, has turned on the audience and stolen their agency by simply acting through his. they're written into the reality he's created for himself

[archivedjuice]

ironic that there's a whole few issues long side plot turned main plot in bendis' run where luke cage gets this impression from matt that he's more inclined to fuck with mob bosses and costumed villians than actually help at the street level -- help out the impoverished and stop them from getting involved in petty crimes, drugs etc -- so matt says fuck it and risks his entire life as matt murdock trying to get back on track to helping at the street level almost to a point of unnecessary extreme where even luke goes back on his words (his 'kingpin' arc) and then in zdarsky's run, zdarsky literally ignores all of that and goes back on that entire plot by making matt absolutely obsessed with this whole idea of 'going big' in terms of organised crime and messing with whole neighbourhoods worth of crime. like that isn't what matt is about, why tf is he going to tony stark for help on buying out whole neighbourhoods just to make himself feel better about whether or not he's actually helping? i've never known matt to be that inherently selfish. even in waid's run when he's literally a celebrity, he's still dealing with these small bits of crime and mishap here and there because he's one regular ol' guy!! it's the most he can do!!

[archivedjuice]

okay i might sound a little crazy but ive been thinking about how matt's catholicism correlates with his addiction to daredevil and ive realized something that isnt completely related but begins this in terms of his character development.

so matt believes that he was blinded and 'given' his 'abilities' for a purpose - god's purpose. he believes he was meant to become daredevil and that daredevil is god's soldier. we don't learn that he believes this until s3 but the revealing of this belief is accompanied by a flashback and him actually admitting that it's something he believed since he was a child - that he was given these abilities to help other people (which manifests in him wanting to become a lawyer and him becoming daredevil).

now the actual reason for which he became daredevil is because he could not ignore a child in danger, he couldn't ignore the crime in hell's kitchen anymore - his abilities had become a burden because even though he was (on his way to, really) helping people as a lawyer, it wasn't working. his work as god's soldier didnt extend properly and so he put on a mask.

ive just rewatched 1.12 and the scene where he comes across madame gao's warehouse and learns of all these people who have been blinded for a purpose, imagine how that affected him, like genuinely affected him? not to mention he has a conversation with madame gao shortly after finding these people and he is rightfully upset about what she's done to them only to learn that, "they did it to themselves," and that they did it because, "they have faith in something beyond the distractions of your world." now to me, as someone who knows the context of what she's talking about, i know she's talking about the people having faith in the substance the hand uses to evade death but to matt, his faith in god is being questioned. he's come across people who have blinded themselves for a purpose, something he somewhat relates to and that the purpose relates to something beyond his world - something he would likely relate to god. so, as a result of her words, does matt second guess his purpose, second guess his faith is god because his blindness wasn't a choice?