daredevilkink | Discussion/Off-Topic Post #1

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?

Amen! <3

I don't get the Vladimir and Wesly love either and I think everyone agrees that Fisk isn't good. I like Karen and I want to be able to have a critical discussion about her actions without it turning into wank. She's a very nuanced character and we don't know much about her.

But what does calling out Wesley or Fisk or Vladimir have to do with excusing anything Karen did? If I remember the line correctly, other people's evil does not make her good. The problem *I* have with Karen is, like Fisk (and Matt!), she was given so many chances to make better choices all the way down the line. Everybody kept telling her to be careful, to think, to take precautions, and did she listen to anybody? No, she didn't. Do you understand WHY she lied and manipulated Ben to go meet Wilson's mother? It didn't have anything to do with her being naive or innocently thinking he'd be ecstatic and forgive her. No, she NEEDED him to be the one to meet the woman because Karen needed BEN to be the one to print the story. She wasn't going to do it, she didn't want her past exposed, and she knew exactly what she was doing when she pushed Ben into doing what he did.

Would he have done it on his own, given the chance? At that point, no, because he had already decided his WIFE was more important than anything else in his life at that point, more important than the city, than Fisk, than any story. What kills me is Karen already knew this because he told her this straight up, and what *she* wanted was more important than what Ben needed, which is a running theme for Karen. TBH, it's her leitmotif, a selfishness that parodies selflessness. She's not a martyr like Matt, she's willing to put the pain and responsibility on others instead of accepting it herself. From a writing standpoint, she's brilliant and this show is full of unreliable narrators (Fisk thinks he's a great guy, Matt thinks he's the worst, and their truths juxtapose through the series), and she blends right in. As soon as Ben started backing out of covering the story, Karen panicked and needed him to do what SHE wanted, and got Ben to do it. Not only that, but the next day when he was still so pissed off at her (not thanking his lucky stars that she showed him The Way, you'll note), he's still trying to back out, and she STILL pushes and pushes him to stay with the story. Even after knowing how much danger she's exposed him to, she still wants what she wants.

Now, I take umbrage with Matt in several places of the series, too, as I was meant to, but earlier in the series Matt was making worse decision and he starts to get smarter as the series wears on. Karen doesn't improve as a character. If she's killed before, she's stagnated and now she's actively hiding it (maybe she's hidden the other kills, too). So weigh Karen's actions of pushing Ben (even after she absolutely knew Wesley knew about Ben and killed Wesley, but doesn't tell Ben to save his life, no) against the closely timed scene where Matt goes to Ben for intel and what does Matt/DD tell Ben? To keep his head down and watch his back, to not expose himself because he doesn't want Ben to get caught, and he reminds him they've backed Fisk into a corner and he's going to lash out. There's a difference here between the actions of the protagonists, do you see what I mean? Karen hasn't gotten to the place where Matt is, where he's thinking smarter and not making foolish decisions, but Matt is also given the chance to wreck himself by killing Fisk and he can't, he doesn't. He almost dies instead. When Karen is given the chance to kill Wesley, she does, no hesitation, and then she hides it. There's another thread here that has to do with faith, where Matt and Karen have had this discussion about which one is religious and which one isn't, and as the series goes on Matt comes closer and closer to his moral north and finally establishes it before ep13, but Karen? No, nobody neeeeeds faith to do the right thing, but at the end of the show any character needs to be responsible for their actions no matter WHY they came to them. As an audience member, I either have to blame the writers for all the bad (and good) Karen does, or I have to lay everything on Karen the character, and let her be responsible for everything. You don't get to break the fourth wall like a buffet table and only credit the writers for the bad shit Karen does when she's obvs capable of doing really good things, too. So I choose to credit/blame Karen for everything, because I love all these characters, even when they screw up.

I love Karen as a character and I feel like the show set her up to be something of a subconscious viper in the pit of Nelson & Murdock on purpose (she's a written character, and they put care into her creation like they did all the characters), but I also don't like a lot of the things Karen has done. Foggy *facepalming* unintentionally called her inhuman for killing people in the same way he called Matt a terrorist. The difference? Matt was framed, but Karen really is a killer. It's painful, yes, but it's a nice touch. See what I mean? She has a lot of great traits to her, and a lot of great *bad* traits to her, and I don't think she's a relatively innocent character. She's likely a victim, yes, but being a victim doesn't mean your bad choices are continually excused. At some point she, like Matt, will have to accept responsibility and make better choices. We just haven't seen it yet, and some people really wanted to get closure on her character before the series ended. But there's always S2. :) Maybe Karen's knee-jerk detractors will come to love her next year.

I guess I'm a little confused. (I don't get "master manipulator" Karen, honestly, so the problem may just be that our baseline interpretations of the characters differ pretty widely?)

No, she NEEDED him to be the one to meet the woman because Karen needed BEN to be the one to print the story. She wasn't going to do it, she didn't want her past exposed, and she knew exactly what she was doing when she pushed Ben into doing what he did.

I could be remembering things wrong, but I believe that Ben Urich is the character who tells Karen that she's an incredibly unreliable witness/source because of her Mysterious Past, and there's no way that anyone will believe a story published by someone like her. (Help, kinkmeme! Did I make that scene up entirely? :P )

Matt is also given the chance to wreck himself by killing Fisk and he can't, he doesn't. He almost dies instead. When Karen is given the chance to kill Wesley, she does, no hesitation, and then she hides it.

...mmm. Agree to disagree here, please. Matt hunts Fisk down, still not entirely sure if he's going to kill him or not, and events conspire to take the decision out of his hands, right?

I mean, the timeline (watch me make an embarrassing mistake here) briefly goes A) Matt considers killing Fisk in revenge, B) Matt seeks out Vanessa Marianna, apparently to convince himself of Fisk's humanity, C) Matt gets counsel from his priest, who suggests that murder is not the answer, and Matt leaves that conversation on an ambiguous note, D) Matt attempts to track Fisk down, and we the audience still don't know what his ultimate plans are, E) Nobu ambushes Matt and starts a fight that nearly kills Matt, F) Fisk shows up, continues to beat the holy shit out of Matt, G) Matt flings himself out the window to escape his own certain death.

I don't think we ever get a definitive "Matt decides that murder is wrong" moment, or a "Matt has a realistic opportunity to kill Fisk and chooses not take it," do we?

Karen's timeline, on the other hand, goes: A) framed for murder, B) attacked and nearly killed in jail, C) attacked and nearly killed in her home, D) drugged, kidnapped, and brought to an abandoned warehouse by E) the man who's responsible for the previous attempts on her life and who immediately makes several very credible death threats against everyone she's ever known, F) Karen shoots her kidnapper to death, G) Karen does not report this act of self defense to the authorities, because she is aware that an unknown number of policemen report directly to Fisk.

Um, if I can interject into this really interesting discussion?

Karen does not report this act of self defense to the authorities, because she is aware that an unknown number of policemen report directly to Fisk

Buuuut this doesn't explain why Karen doesn't report the 'act of self defense' in the immediate aftermath when the police force has been cleaned out and Fisk is in jail. And if she doesn't want to report her crime to the police, then it still doesn't explain why she won't tell Matt or Foggy, who are not corrupted by Fisk?

see, that's when it gets interesting - because I think Karen makes good decisions and bad decisions, and I am generally pro-karen but that? like. I can call ~trauma~ and ~people in high stress situations sometimes work against their best interests~ and even sometimes seriously, sometimes semi-seriously, "Karen didn't report the murder because she is a Murder Spy, is why, and this is not the first time she has Murder Spy'd Someone to Death," but.

eh.

she's working with two defense attorneys who handled it the first time she was (wrongly) accused of murder, so you'd think that she'd seek them out for advice/counsel.

maybe she's trying to protect them?

maybe she feels that no judge/jury would believe her (because of that pesky "previously accused of murder, and even if the charges didn't stick, it Looks Fishy") and she's not sure if Foggy or Matt would believe that it was self-defense?

and of course the longer you stay quiet about any Big Fuck Up you've made, the harder it gets to come clean, because now instead of saying "hey, Matt, Foggy, somebody kidnapped me and threatened to kill everyone i loved and he had a gun and I grabbed it and shot him to death and booked it," she's got to say "hey...booked it, AND ALSO lied to you for (x) days"?

i'm sorry, I am just so - I am on Karen's side, which in this case mostly means "i want you to win, karen, i get why you keep making terrible choices but you gotta break the cycle, girl."

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...

Nope, not his fault either. People aren't responsible for the actions of other people.

Didn't say it was his fault, just that we could blame him...
Also, he would totally blame himself too.

Semantics. Just because we can blame him doesn't make it his fault (funny, how no one in fandom has made any posts about how terrible Foggy is for getting Elena killed). The same way that, just because we can blame Karen for Ben's death, doesn't make it her fault (or even that she's the best person to direct that blame at).

Yes, but we could blame Karen for dismissing Urich's concerns and taking him to the nursing home under false pretenses. Even when he calls her on it, she doesn't back down.

(And don't tell me she didn't expect Fisk to be a murderer. She KNOWS he is, which is WHY she's pushing this. But Ben has been trying to mentor her since the beginning of their partnership on the *smart* ways to do this. She doesn't want to listen, because she thinks the info they can find is too important. So she lies to him. Yes, I can definitely blame Karen for endangering Ben, and dismissing his priorities, and LYING.)

And yeah, I get that that's a cornerstone of Karen's character: she *doesn't back down*, even after people think she's no longer a threat. (Just like Murdocks always get back up.) For good and ill.

But she's such a cypher this season that it's frustrating. Personally, I don't think Karen deserves to know everything she demands to know, particularly when she's trying to hide whatever is in her own history, and I would give a lot to have had more actual bonding moments between her and the avocadoes at law, because most of what you get are just really odd, tense dating/not-dating? scenes between her and Foggy, and lusty/flirty ones between her and Matt. (The drinking the eel night is the only exception I can think of, and about the only reason I can stand Karen at all.)

Also, I'm afraid for next season, because I think she'll take what could be a great character growth moment for Matt--him actually choosing to tell someone about the senses, instead of being backed into it by circumstance (as happened with Claire and Foggy)--and steal that from him by pushing, pushing, pushing. Because she's Karen, and her past is allowed to be a mystery, but nobody else's is. Also, because so far, she's a rotten love interest. I would be more comfortable with the character if they didn't go there.

(Incidentally, I love Claire for saying, nope, not happening. THANK YOU, CLAIRE, FOR BEING BOTH ATTRACTIVE AND SMART. THE KISS WAS GOOD, BUT THE WAY YOU DIDN'T ALLOW IT TO TAKE OVER YOUR BRAIN WAS EVEN BETTER. BUT THEN YOU STILL HELPED MATT OUT. YOU'RE AWESOME!)

Discussion/Off-Topic Post #1

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

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