daredevilkink | Discussion/Off-Topic Post #1

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Discussion/Off-Topic Post #1

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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."

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Discussion/Off-Topic Post #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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