daredevilkink | Discussion/Off-Topic Post #1

I believe, and anyone feel free to correct me, that he's considered the self-insert character because he is the character we want to be in this universe. We want to bang Matt Murdock. We want Matt Murdock to be secretly in love with us.

I also believe, once again a correction may be needed, that he's also considered the self-insert character because in the show there is a canon romantic relationship of sorts with Matt - it's Claire. And there isn't really a whole lot of Matt/Claire out there. Hell, it could even be Karen but once again, not seeing a whole lot of Matt/Karen. Why, when there are two obvious romantic pairings given to us in the show, do we fall to the unlikely pairing of Matt/Foggy? (Because, let's face it guys, I really doubt Matt/Foggy is going to become canon.)

Now, these are just my observations on the matter from reading a whole shit ton of fic and seeing a whole lot on tumblr. I hope somebody with better insight comments on it.

then -- and i'm not trying to be rude here -- how do you explain mattfoggy shippers that legitimately find foggy attractive?

i mean, okay, we can all agree matt murdock is hot, but like, i would date foggy. he's really cute and he doesn't have the bad habit of going out at night and punching things as a form of stress relief. i guess that's just a small minority of fans who think like me but idk.

AYRT

I'm not discounting those people (I am definitely one of those people) and I don't believe the majority of writers are out there doing self-insert. I believe that Foggy is considered the most blatant self-insert character for the reasons I stated but that doesn't mean every characterization of him is blatant self-insert.

I tend to think to myself that I would fuck Matt but I would rather date/sleep with/love Foggy. Matt's the fantasy, Foggy's the reality.

Matt's the fantasy, Foggy's the reality.

nayrt but that's a really good point, nonny, and I agree. A friend and I were commiserating this weekend that if Matt were ours, we'd eventually strangle him ourselves because he's noble and hot and a hero and all that but him coming close to dying every other day would get so old, so quick. If you're in love with Matt and you're not a superhero like him where you get to go out and protect him or help him, your life is a bundle of nightly fear and anger and tears and blood and worry and stress. That's the reality of Matt Murdock. Beautiful creature, but Foggy would be a million times easier to have an ordinary relationship with.

I do think Foggy's become the self-insert character because his characterisation has become consistently wildly so far away from canon that he's not even recognisable as the guy I adore on the show, and that never speaks well of the canon character. Why such a need to write him so drastically different if you love FOGGY ON THE SHOW, you know? I appreciate an AU as much as the next fan, but how is it most Foggys in fic are AU Foggys? Maybe I'm just a little sad because I love the Matt and Foggy relationship, I even love reading Matt/Foggy, but it seems a lot of time it ends up Matt/X when Foggy is so weirdly different from the show. I don't know, maybe it's just me.

I'm fascinated by how you rate Foggy as attractive but you have to negate Matt as a guy with 'the bad habit of going out at night and punching things as a form of stress relief' in order to qualify it.

Personally I think that has more to do with the fandom' tendency to favour white m/m pairings over all else.

This argument irritates me to no end. I ship Matt/Foggy because I enjoy friends to lovers and I enjoy pairings that have a character or characters that I can interpret as mentally ill and like.......a whole host of other things. There is migratory slash fandom for sure but I don't think you're finding much of it in Daredevil - Matt/Foggy in comparison to juggernaut slash ships is tiny and is more likely to just be people liking gay friends to lovers than it is people seeking out a pairing to read ten thousand gay fics for, doesn't matter for who or what.

yep. all fandoms, really. how many other characters -- not even minor ones, im talking main characters-- do we have in the show to pair matt with, including an actual canon one from the comics (like karen, who's basically his greatest love), or ones he's actually had something with in the show (like claire, with whom the chemistry is unparalleled), and yet somehow it always goes back to the white male friend with the excuse that "oh i just prefer it." it's one thing if a portion of ppl do, but when, for example, a kinkmeme is 99% that white m/m ship then it's not just personal preference anymore, and more a symptom of a bigger problem (that ppl might not even be cognizant of it themselves, but that is still an issue nonetheless).

but like.

We got Matt/Claire. They were canon. If you like Matt/Claire (which I do), you have the privilege of watching the actual show to get your fix. And Matt/Karen - look, very few people are in doubt that they're going to be canon at some point, too, particularly with their comics history and that date-y screenshot from Season 2 filming floating around.

Even if you don't like that particular pairing (which I don't, ykinmk) it's hard to deny that's where TPTB are going. But that's the point. Matt/Karen fans are going to get to see their ship developed on screen. Matt/Foggy fans? Not in a million years.

The m/m ships are never going to happen in canon. They're just not, particularly when one participant is the main male lead. But we can make them happen here. (Over and over and over, yes please.)

And that's a part of it, too, I think - fic is about asking, 'but what if...?' and having the freedom to write the story your way, in a direction canon will never go. Matt/Claire, Matt/Karen ... canon either has or will answer those questions for us. There's not as much thrill there.

But hey, ymmv.

but we have fanfic because the show isn't enough. that's why fan fiction exists. lke wtf?

I have never seen the line "well m/m just isn't ever going to happen and so THAT's why there's so much fanfic for it." but I think it's such bullshit and vaguely condescending toward anyone who ships cannon ships regardless of if they are m/f f/f or m/m.

You sound like the people who complain there isn't enough of the ship you prefer.

Its well known that some shows, no matter how good, don't generate fanfic. Because they answer all the questions. There are no 'between the scenes' moments to take advantage of. Ironically, the better the show, the less romance fanfic. Homoerotic subtext that gets turned into slash is rife in shows where there is tease but no payoff.

As for Matt/Foggy, the relationship is closer and longer lasting than any other relationship these two have. I think I'm one of the few people who wrote a sex scene for Matt's wife Milla, and even I ship Matt/Foggy over Matt/female companion of the week.

+1

The kinkmeme didn't start out that way. Which brings me to what a fucking shit hose dream width's API is and how pissed I am that I need to learn web scrapping to get any useful statistics about HOW the kinkmeme has changed over time.

Gripe gripe gripe.

Yeah I agree - but it's definitely fandoms at large that do this, not just this fandom. And I'm saying this as someone who almost always primarily ships white m/m pairings (I wish I didn't, but yeah)

I would tend to think that the "problem" of fandom shipping too many white m/m pairings has less to do with the fans than it does with the writers. With the way that television (and film) is typically done these days, the white characters (especially the white male characters) will tend to be the most interesting/well-written/carefully developed characters in a piece of media. Therefore, it follows that the characters the fandom is most likely to latch onto are going to be the most interesting ones...i.e. the ones the writers took the most care in developing, i.e. the ones that white (males).

So, a lot of people latch onto Matt, because he's attractive, well-written, complicated, attractive, and vulnerable. A lot of people latch onto Foggy because he's relatable, approachable, funny, and at least tolerably well-written (though nowhere near as developed as Matt). And then their relationship is the one relationship in the show (with the possible exception of Fisk/Vanessa) that has gotten the most well-rounded development so far. I think it's only natural that Matt/Foggy would emerge as a favorite pairing, given these facts.

I don't think it's fair to blame the fandom for preferring a white couple when 80% of the characters in the show are white... If 90% of people start shipping a white m/m couple when the Luke Cage fandom starts to get going, then you would have a reason to argue that it's the fandom's fault. Don't blame us for the failings of the system.

THIS

I just feel it's disappointing that fandom is a place where we can bend rules to make stuff like mpreg happen, but suddenly other non cis white m/m ships are just too hard to create for. So the writers give more content to Matt and Foggy (although beyond knowing Punjabi and making butcher jokes, what do we /really/ know about this Foggy? He has not had any more development than Karen, nor Claire for that matter), so instead of using the tools we have to change that and give more space to characters that didn't have that much in the show, we just continue the status quo? It's nagl to brush the responsibility of including intersectionality off your shoulders bc "oh well canon is like this so w/e."

This, exactly. We have all this room to create and fandom (in general, not just this one) tends to stick with the white m/m ships. And there are definitely those who write other ships but it's not as abundant.

My mind boggles because do you know how many Karen/Ben fics are on AO3? One. Next to Matt and Foggy, Ben is the person Karen spends the most time with in that show. And there's one fic. (I'm sure there's more on here, I hope there is, I'm fairly sure there's at least another one I've read.) And people go 'but, Ben's married with a sick wife' and Matt is pretty much straight in the show and into Claire but there are 654 fics of Matt/Foggy so what?

We need to be the change we want to see. And I'm not saying boo on Matt/Foggy because damn I love me some of that but I think fandom as a whole needs to open their eyes a bit more.

+1

explain Clint/Coulson with this theory then.

it follows that the characters the fandom is most likely to latch onto are going to be the most interesting ones

I'm chuckling, not at you but because DARCY. The 'fandom bicycle', because she's bland, cute and adorable and fun and lightness and rainbows made flesh et al, vaguely fleshed out just enough for fans to use her as a self-insert meat suit into any and all fandoms. I'm sorry but your argument doesn't hold water in light of Darcy, the fandom cockroach who will outlast popularity of Marvel itself.

Matt and Claire broke up and Matt and Karen have not had all that much one on one interaction and haven't known each other for very long. Foggy tells Matt that he is really attractive only a few seconds after they meet and they have been close friends for many years and go through a breakup on the show. It's not gonna be canon but it's not like the unlikeliest pairing to exist.

This isn't even counting the comics either - Waid's last run was shippy af.

Discussion/Off-Topic Post #1

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