#dd meta

alright mike-enjoyers, this can't be an accident, right? like. this has gotta be on purpose, right?

after mike murdock becomes a real person, the first place we see him is 'the bar with no name.' in ish 7 of vol 8, matt encounters wolverine possessed by the demon lust in 'the bar with no name.'

after having a rather transformative fight where lust is exorcised from wolverine and matt's white suit is stained red, we are given the above line from logan about matt 'denying' who he is.

so far, each demon has represented a sin that matt has committed by continuing to deny who he really is (daredevil). mike murdock's character was invented by matt to express parts of himself that he denies. mike murdock was also originally daredevil (according to the lies that matt told).

with this particular demon, lust, it is referencing not only matt's lust for a fight, but his lust for life and how he defines it. that includes taking risks, doing morally gray things, living on the edge etc. matt expressing those parts of himself was the original intent of mike's character/persona.

But then you got the Heir , and you can characterize the Heir however you want , but at the end of the day they do hire people on to just throw at the Estate . You can play the game as kindly as possible , no one dies ( somehow ) , you don’ t attempt any of the achievements ( ie , sending four resolve zero characters into the darkest dungeon ) you flee at any possible sign of danger and you keep stress levels low as possible . You’ re still engaging in the beginnings of the spiral . And let’ s be real , no one can actually play the game like that . Even if you try !

And . Yeah . People come seeking farm or fortune , so sayeth the voice of the Ancestor . But you can’ t take away from the fact that the Heir is okay with hiring these people and then tossing them into the meat grinder . And it’ s also just . I mean the Brigands are just people . Sure we can argue the cultist won’ t back down from their Position of Killing you . But the Brigands attack because they never got Shit from the Ancestor . And you can argue that they attack the Hamlet but if the Heir refuses to converse with them and goes straight to Kill the All . Yeah . I also wouldn’ t see the Heir as any better than the Ancestor .

You’re very welcome!

This is one of the more interesting aspects, these days, of a longish career – especially one that stretches back into the Ancient Day when dinosaurs walked the earth and there was as yet no Internet or social media. You’ll hear a lot of advice these days intended for the new or up-and-coming author about how, in order to be successful in this noisy overcrowded field, an author ought to be ruthlessly and systematically (and uniformly) Branding Oneself… but in my position I can only look at it and laugh quietly.

Because (assuming I was willing to take any of this advice)… brand myself how? As a Star Trek writer? As a science fiction writer? As an adult fantasist? As a writer of LGBTQ fiction? As a YA writer (or an ur-YA writer, from the days when YA meant any fiction intended for an audience between nine and sixteen-ish)? As a cartoon writer? As a writer of screen SF? Or screen fantasy? Or, or, or…

This is one of the reasons why DianeDuane.com looks more like an an encyclopedia than anything else, as there aren’t a lot of WordPress themes designed for People Who Like Writing All Kinds Of Things. And it disturbs me, on and off, that there are probably writers out there capable of doing a number of things well, who’re consciously limiting themselves and discouraging themselves from striking out into new unexplored terrain because they’re afraid they’ll damage their Branding. (And that said… this is what pseudonyms are for. I’ve got some, and they’re surprisingly freeing.)

So hang onto that older-audience material and allow it to grow. There’s no telling where it’ll take you. There’s also always the possibility that some day you may simply get bored with writing material for younger readers and want to move in a different direction for a while. My advice would be to Fear Nothing And Just Do It. The great enemy of a career writer is going stale, getting bored, losing that sizzle along the nerves that comes with grabbing a new idea by the tail. The energy that comes from attempting the new things inevitably helps feed the old ones.

How frank is literally strapped in place behind it. How matt toes it, but doesnt cross it. And in the begining karen is second closest to it after matt and how foggy is the one who is the furthest away from it. And how ultimately its karen the one who walks straight through it, emotional and with a purpose, and gets right in frank's face.

what did they talk about? did they talk? how did frank go from knowing that he left that Karen - probably the only person during the whole duration of his trial that wanted to help him just to get to the truth of things (tho I think he did sense that there was something in it for her personally, aside from her pitbull-like-personality when it comes to injustice and truth)  - to fend for herself during a cold night, when she had her arm hurt and she'd hit her head and had no car cause he'd totaled it--- how did he go from that to thinking 'I can go to he rand ask for help'. was that homeless man thing more than just a way not to scare her? was it to see if she really was all heart, still? did he have a bet with himself that if she didn't give him the money maybe he wouldn't ask for help? or is that too casual for Frank? I don't think he makes those kinds of decisions, tbh. that's a way of removing responsibility for his choices and I don't think he does that - leaving important things to chance like that just cause facing consequences of shitty choices he made is too hard. (when Karen says 'youre such an asshole' he says 'yeah u got that right'. he doesn't hide, there's no point).  but I do think her stopping for him and handing him that change proved a point. that's why he was smiling.  

did he apologize for that up there ^ ? did he feel like he had to? how did they go from their last conversation to that conversation in her house? there is a bit o a jump, from 'you're dead to me' / 'im already dead' - to them talking about calmly about him having unfinished business that he had to finish - not so much from her side, but from his.

Karen's side is a bit clearer to me. when she asks 'did you finish it', it implies an acceptance of what he had to do, how he had to do it. something she probably reached in the end of dd season 2, and that she mulled over all those months between this moment and when she last saw frank.

what, I think, requires unpacking (what I wanted to unpack, anyway) - is her point of view on herself, following what happened. on what she wanted to gain, prove to herself - to him - by getting him not to shoot Sconover. how she internalized that, what it meant to her that he didn't chose her way. that he chose vengeance over truth (I think that meant quite a bit to her actually). how she stopped superimposing herself to him, defining the value of her choices by using frank as some kind of standard. or rather, how that refusal in the end was the breaking point because it made her separate the two of them, stop conflagrating them. how he's not that essential to her self perception now.

all that process already happened and seems to lend itself to that calm that Karen seems to have when she's around frank in TP. she's more planted on her feet, she knows herself, her place, her way of thinking. she has made peace with whatever it was that in season 2 threw her for a loop - all that dialectic inside her sparked by frank, by the fact that she didn't feel she could stand up for herself and her own choices out loud, that they weren't defendable, not really. But she fueled that part of her that thought they WERE into her defense of frank.  that when she stood up for him she was also standing up for herself (in a way)

(I find it very very interesting that she was very hesitant not to advocate for him too hard in front of others, that throughout the season she is relentless when searching out facts, but less so when it comes to justifying his actions. that she's a bit halting when she does that, as if not to give too much of herself away. and only reached the point of really 'putting her foot down' for what she believed in at the end of the second season - when she raises her voice in Eliot's office. 'HE IS NOT A PSYCHO MURDERER'. its an important journey of self acceptance, but also of self-definition - away from frank's person - that brings her to that point.) -

anyway, all that dialectic inside her has resolved itself. she's at peace now with what she is. and she also seems more confident, less fidgety.

what does this mean though? what did she think of Matt’s moral compass, of his rules? did she respect it? she was acting on orders - perhaps she even agreed with those orders, but - how did she feel?

Elektra loved Matt in the flashbacks, but i don’t know how. In the sense that I’m not sure how she felt about his need to be morally grounded. Whether or not she respected it. Aka respected him, his need to hold on to that code. Whether or not she loved him for ALL of him; whether or not she thought of his goodness as something he kept holding on to out of fear, and that he had to let it go to be ‘glorious’. (i think she might have been on to something there though. beyond his faith, his need for a moral grounding is also based on a fear of what would happen to him, what he’d be capable of, if he really let go of that. i think he’s very aware of the ‘devil inside him’ so to speak in the sense that he perceives a line while being fully aware that he is able to cross it. And Elektra is like, the unleashing factor into the equation that is Matt’s .. well, everything. He tries so hard to balance shit out but Elektra’s height of fun is to unbalance them. That’s why she unbalances him. Because he does have fun like that too - he just feels guilty about it afterwards.) 

Anyway - my point. She says his darkness is glorious, she was trying to make him kill someone. she left when he didn’t. 

which, intuitively speaking makes me think, ‘okay so she rejected his goodness a little bit, maybe. maybe she despised it.’

but ten years later, she still loves him. so it wasn’t shallow. i think she didn’t always respect the way he held on to his rules like they were a safety net - she probably sees them as a cage, and saw herself as someone who was trying to break him free. as free as she is. but on the other hand, i don’t think Elektra is the kind of person to love by halves - i don’t think she thought matt was just pretending to be good. that was part of him, and she just wanted to show him he had different choices. alternatives.

i think this, because elektra is all about choices. she is about freedom. about independence. fact of the matter is, the second he refused her and she understood that killing would never be a choice he would make out of his own free will, she left. 

if she had not respected Matt for all that he was, she would not have kept loving him. she would not have stayed gone. (i mean, sure maybe her ego smarted at what she probably perceived as rejection, not just of a choice, but of her as well. but it wasn’t only ego - that is not what brings back her memories in Defenders. its not what leads her to die protecting him in DD.)  Out of her own mouth, she stayed gone because she thought he deserved better. Aka, she respected his choice. 

(sidenote here… i don’t like the way how Matt defines the world, makes her feel like she is missing something. like she is somehow wrong - not good enough. but then i get back to the real world where killing is not okay lmao and i understand why)

she goes from being a girl with a mission - moulded by Sticks ideology that has little to no respect for human life beyond those he thinks worthy - to giving Matt a choice, and respecting it, and loving him for  both his potential and what he choses to act upon. 

she plays by his rules when she comes back. she doesn’t ask him to change. she chooses him, in fact. (i really think she loved him a lot for that. for giving her a choice. for trying to open up her alternatives, the way she tried to with him.) and after choosing to stay with him over going with Stick and slits the kid’s throat - she is not asking matt to change himself. she is asking him to accept her the way she is. the way she accepted him the way he is. (it’s so fucked up that she thinks being a murder is such an integral part of her person, that she cannot be loved in any full way, if that part of her is not accepted as well) 

and he doesn’t. 

And it’s so sad to me that the only moment she considered joining the Hand was because maybe this would be her chance at being loved. (she WANTS to be loved. loved, not feared or adored, or worshiped. or used. LOVED. she wants human connection. acceptance. she doesn’t try to make the world conform to her wishes. she wants to live in the world and be accepted, as she is - if anyone can’t, then fuck them.) 

idk man, she makes me sad. 

but it makes me happy to know that Matt challenges this belief of hers (the centrality, in her person, of killing) over and over. that he loves her, with great intensity and devotion, throughout a lot of shit, and that he doesn’t give up. that his love is a direct challenge of this thought she seems to have that she is unlovable for who she is. because he knows who she is and he loves her. 

i mean… if you could see me as i talk about them to you, it would pretty much look like this

i started dipping slowly into the fanfiction side of daredevil and they are the first couple i chose to read for -  which is a big BIG telltale sigh for how much i enjoy the potential of a relationship  (the only reason they preceded matt x elektra is because i didnt want to be spoiled by the fic since i knew she was coming back in defenders, but ultimately i ended up being spoiled anyway cause i wanted to see the pretty gifsets, whatever) 

this is what i love most about them - the potential of it. in any and every direction. i dont even primarily mean romantic, though of course i wish love (as in, happiness) in their lives, preferably with each other. but i also mean, as friends. like, influences in their lives that are positive. that abate loneliness. something good in their lives (lets be real this is more about frank’s side of things. he is so in need of a friend. of allowing a himself to even have a friend.) 

also, from karen’s side, i like that she has, in Frank, someone who kind of meets her in the middle of it all? (i know im not very coherent - it’s just that this is the very first time i put my feelings about them into words.)  she is not as ‘good/sweet/clean’ as Matt thinks she is. she is not as confined by the law, by the normal side of life - the life normal people live as Foggy is. as in, she’s had to get pretty up close and dirty with some really scary situations (and im not saying they would judge or turn her back on her. no way. this is about how Karen sees herself. not how they see her. where she feels she fits. trauma creates distance - especially as she conceals it. secrets create distance too. and i feel there is a palpable distance, from Karen’s pov, between who her friends think she is, and who she thinks she is, knowing what she knows of herself.) 

so yeah i feel like they have great potential to meet in the middle - both of them. karen is very compassionate. but she’s been so scared a few times that she’s felt like it was kill or be killed, and she killed. she is a survivor. frank can understand that. she can understand his brand of… lets call it problem solving. (because she is so compassionate and - im taking a guess here thinking she probably has a better understanding of murderous rage than we know of - given her mysterious past). he is extreme but he can move towards her - once the ‘war inside him’ quiets a bit. once he gives himself some time to grieve. (god his story is horrible). she feels like she’s a bit afloat rn - he can understand where she’s coming from because he has different moral code from people around her at this time - that is, she knows he won’t judge her. 

OH i wanna change my statement lmao - what i love most about them - it’s the respect. the respect frank shows her, which directly feeds into how much i enjoy their interactions. i just love the way he talks to her, so much. the dignity she treats him with, the empathy, the immediate way she sees him as a person. the way the so palpably treat each other with decency. 

she gives him chances, he gives her chances. they inch toward each other - mentally speaking. i love the idea of what they could be. how they could help each other. make each other better. better themselves, for the sake of themselves, inspired by the other. i love the idea of a partnership between them - because so far it feels equal and based on solid respect. (yup deff my favorite things about them)