daredevilkink | Discussion/Off-Topic Post #1

I had kind of hoped fandom was past hating on female characters by now, and at first glance it seems like our little fandom is doing pretty good (look at all the love for Claire and Marci and Vanessa), and yeah Karen gets some love too but she's also the target of a lot of some really intense scrutiny. Like, ~everything she does is bad and wrong and she's the literal worst~ type scrutiny. And I just... don't... get it?

you what, I never read any of those hate-comments or posts... but this is the second time I read a post about hate-comments/posts towards Karen... (sorry for the repetitions... :>)

SA
(I forgot a "know" in "you what"... =_=)

They tend to get frozen and screened, so if you weren't around during the discussion you probably won't have seen it. But yes, people have very strong feelings about Karen.

People don't usually come right out and make hate posts about her (though there have been a couple of prompts that have lead to wank). It's usually just snide comments interspersed here and there.

yeah a lot of people have been calling her stupid or talking about how she "walks all over other people's feelings" which is just....no, lol. try harder.

She's small and guarded, but she gets the same time amount as big open personalities like Foggy and they overshadow her. I really connected as it went on, but she took a while and the scene people remember the most isn't her best.
Plus being confirmed as the love interest with less chemistry (I hate writers having to strain for romance)

I thought she was the character meant to represent the audience. She feels unsafe because of people who will never face consequences for hurting her? That hit home
Karen wanted justice and didn't back down and she's nowhere near perfect, but I really felt with her.
Tl;dr: Karen feels very real to me. Her first impression makes me cringe but I like her.
Sorry for anyone who read this whole mess. Hope my feels for Karen come through the language barrier. She has pretty hair. The end.

I think people seem to be very protective of Karen in a way they aren't for the other characters. Maybe it's because she is the only female character who really counts as a 'main' character so far, I don't know. But it seems sometimes like one little comment about her can be seized hold of and picked to bits in a way that draws masses of attention.

I've had this happen to me. I say something perfectly innocent an the crowds sweep in and start causing me of hate and misogyny and whatever else and I'm like "wft is going on?" It's very weird, because you can say what you like about literally any other character, but one even slightly negative thing about Karen and you're in trouble. Double standards don't make for a great atmosphere. It's a shame.

+1

I'm the op, and those aren't the types of comments I was referring to, fyi. :-) Criticism is fine (and needed. This show and these characters aren't perfect, after all). But you can generally tell when someone just hates her as a character and thinks every little thing she does or says is Bad and Wrong.

From what I've gathered from various comments around this meme, Karen is: an idiot, looking to get herself raped/killed, nosey, pushy, insensitive, obnoxious, naive, fetishizes Matt's blindness, is responsible for Ben's actions and his death, is friendzoning Foggy, etc etc etc.

Talk about double standards; I've yet to see so much vitriol aimed at any of the other characters (including the villains).

They forget/ignore the part where she's: kind, compassionate, determined, loyal, has a thirst for knowledge and justice, won't back down from a challenge, is a peacemaker, is a good friend, sticks up for herself, is trying to be brave in the face of some serious trauma, is protective, etc etc etc.

Sure, all that good stuff is true, but so us some if the bad and I don't see anything wrong with pointing that out. For example, if Karen hadn't lied to Ben to get him to the nursing home to talk to Fisk's mother, Fisk might not have killed him. His reason for killing him was that he went after his mother. He didn't. Karen did. That isn't hating on Karen, that's a fact from the show. The other stuff, well, you can take what you want from what you see. Saying Karen wants to be killed is no different from the Wesley suicide by Karen post. Saying she fetishises Matt's blindness? Well there was one prompt where Foggy kinda did the same and wanted to be blind himself. No attack to the OP of that post though...

People are more protective of Karen. I don't know why, but they are. It's a shame, because it prevents the more detailed exploration of her character we get with the others because any interesting posts are stifled.

True, like I don't know if she was fetishizing Matt's blindness, but that face touching scene with Foggy definitely gave me a "this is not cool" vibe and I think in the Foggy prompt you're referring to, the OP posed it as a mental illness which may be why no one commented like they did on the Karen one.

As another anon was saying in this thread, we definitely get more of Karen than we do Claire and Vanessa (and Madame Gao got like 5 scenes or something), so she's like the only main female character on the show, so people treat her like she's precious and must be protected at all costs to the detriment of being able to criticize her actions.

People treat her like she's precious because we're all road weary from all the other main female characters in every other fandom we've been in getting hated on, or pushed aside in favour of the fav slash pairing, lol.

It seems like people hold her to a higher standard than most other characters though. Like, I'm not sure her morals or actions are any worse or better than Matt's, tbh.

(Funny enough, I remember seeing a bit of Claire hate when I first got into fandom. Don't know if it's still going, but people seemed unnecessarily harsh on her for "abandoning" Matt, when all she was doing was looking out for herself).

Somebody on Tumblr tried to insinuate Marci was verbally abusive to Foggy too XD

They're more protective of her because she does get a lot of misogynist hate in this fandom (not so much on meme that I've seen, thankfully). I't not necessarily the right response, but it's a response I can understand.

Karen hate stifles discussion of her a lot more than people getting defensive about her.

Interesting. Can you link me an example of the hate?

For one, there was this post from another thread here:

http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/1097.html?thread=4746057#cmt4746057

There were some threads on the kink meme that got deleted, too.

Though most of what I've seen has been on the tumblr Daredevil tag.

SA, oh and on Reddit. :| Though I haven't save links, I just backbuttoned out of there.

The thing was, the prompt about Foggy wanting to be blind didn't attract any negative comments about Foggy. The one about Karen fetishizing Matt's blindness attracted a few about how Karen is an awful creeper.

Karen just plain gets more hate than Foggy. Almost everyone in the fandom loves Foggy (including me), so I can understand why people are more protective of a controversial character like Karen than they are of Foggy.

For example, if Karen hadn't lied to Ben to get him to the nursing home to talk to Fisk's mother, Fisk might not have killed him. His reason for killing him was that he went after his mother. He didn't. Karen did.

That's not the same as her being responsible for Ben's death, though. Like, did she even have reason to believe that Ben would be killed because of that? She didn't know the depths of Fisk's instability and thirst for vengeance when she decided to trick Ben. It's entirely possible she thought they were going to find the smoking gun, that Fisk wouldn't be able to touch them once they talked to his mom, that Ben would immediately print the story and Fisk would be in too deep shit to do anything about it.

I think Karen was naive, but she never had reason to believe that the corrupt businessman she was going after was actually a supervillain who would murder a man with his bare hands. If she knew how dangerous Fisk was, I would call her partially responsible (because Fisk is ultimately the one responsible for Ben's death), but I really don't think she can be blamed for getting Ben killed when she had no idea that it would happen.

Nope, but she did lie to him to get him to go up there in the first place. That's the bit I take issue with.

ayrt

Yeah, me too. That wasn't the right thing to do, but she was desperate and living in constant fear. It doesn't excuse her, but I can understand why she did it. She thought (naively) that Ben would be so thrilled with the information they got that he would forgive her for lying to him, and they would put Fisk away and everything would be dandy.

it's kind of sad we're even having convos about What Karen Did Wrong, considering this is a kinkmeme that involves characters who AGGRESSIVELY gentrify poor areas by infecting the population with drug addiction and are constantly MAKING PEOPLE DISAPPEAR thru human trafficking? like, people LOVE vladimir bc he Sort Of redeemed himself by working with matt, but he was still fucking selling women and children into slavery? and fisk is an aggressive drug pusher working with gao's resources and his idea of "cleaning up" is by scaring away poor minority people so he can make their tenements only affordable to the rich.....

idk. like, i feel bad about fisk's backstory but i still absolutely despise fisk and i cannot believe we're writing what equates to a CALLOUT POST of some poor, relatively innocent female character. like, really, guys? she's afraid and likely a trauma survivor and we're complaining about her being somewhat insensitive??? really?

Re: What's up with the Karen hate??

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-16 03:46 (UTC) - Expand

Re: What's up with the Karen hate??

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-16 11:03 (UTC) - Expand

Re: What's up with the Karen hate??

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-19 01:13 (UTC) - Expand

Re: What's up with the Karen hate??

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-19 10:09 (UTC) - Expand

Re: What's up with the Karen hate??

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-22 02:31 (UTC) - Expand

Re: What's up with the Karen hate??

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-22 17:35 (UTC) - Expand

The blame for Ben's death still ultimately lies with Fisk (and the woman at the newspaper who tipped him off). In case you've forgotten, Karen was very nearly murdered for her mistake as well.

It's like Claire nearly getting murdered because of her association with Matt. It wouldn't be fair to blame Matt for what happened to Claire, because Matt can't control what other people do. Just like we can't blame Matt for Elena's death, just because Fisk wanted to make a point.

No, but I bet we could blame Foggy...