Daredevil Prompt Post #12

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This post is for prompts involving characters from Netflix's Daredevil.

Now that The Defenders prompt post is live, all crossovers between anyone in the four individual shows should go over there. Prompts only including characters that appear in Daredevil should still go here.



Rules:

• General
  
  1. YKINMKATO. Play nice. Respect others. If you don't like something, scroll on.
  
  
  2. All comments must be anon. If you would like to be politely banned to avoid anon-failing, leave a logged-in comment on the mod post or pm the mod account.
  
  
  3. Subject lines should only be changed if you're posting a prompt or a fill (indicators like OP or Author!Anon should go in the body of the comment).
  
  
  4. RPF is allowed. Crossovers, characters from the extended Marvel Universe and comics canon are allowed, but must relate to the 2015 TV show in some way.
  
  
  5. Prompts focusing on characters from other Netflix Marvel shows or the comics should go on their respective prompt posts, but crossovers with Daredevil can go here.
  
  
  6. Drop a comment on the mod post if you have any questions or problems.


• Prompts
  
  1. All types of prompts are welcome.
  
  
  2. Use the subject line for the main idea of your prompt (pairing or characters, keywords, kink).
  
  
  3. Warnings are nice, but not mandatory. Get DW Blocker if there's anything you really don't want to see.
  
  
  4. Reposted prompts are allowed once one round has passed - e.g. prompts from post #2 cannot be reposted until post #4. Please include a link to where it has been previously posted.


• Fills
  
  1. When posting a fill, either add [FILL] (or something similar) to the subject line, or change the subject line to the title of your fill.
  
  
  2. Announce your fill on either the Completed Fills Post or the WIP Post.
  
  
  3. Long fills can either be posted over multiple comments, or posted on AO3 and linked back here.
  
  
  4. Multiple fills are always okay.
  
  
  5. Fills can be anything! Fic, art and vids are all welcome.

Please post any prompts related to Season 2 of Punisher over on the dedicated Punisher prompt post, and put SPOILERS in the subject line!

Comments

FILL (uniting, edited, the previous fills) PART 1

[(Anonymous)]

Matt is angry. He should maybe feel scared right now, but he's too angry for that. (He doesn’t want to think about how he'll feel later, when the adrenaline goes down.)
He's angry because he shouldn’t be chained to a wall—”Wait here, I'll be back later.” He shouldn’t be wearing a collar. It shouldn’t be legal to make people slaves.
But it is, and that’s been his reality for close to three years now. Being a student-aid for lazy Jason was bad enough, but at least he had been able to keep studying Law. He hadn’t been chained to walls. He hadn’t been touched, be it his owner or anyone else—most people had just ignored him.
But then Jason had decided he wanted to be indipendent—as if he’d last a day without someone to cook and clean after him—and had sold Matt to buy himself a place.
Matt didn’t get a say, of course. He didn’t even know who bought him; Jason didn’t bother tellimg him, nor did the men who came to deliver him to his new place.
And now he was here, being pressed against a wall by an unknown man. And Matt is angry.
He doesn’t think his current assaulter is his owner, but that hardly matters. The most a free person could get for raping a slave—not that the Law would acknowledge it as rape—is a fine for propriety damage. Not that any of it matters right now.
Fighting back could only end badly for Matt, but he considers it anyway. He has very little space to move, though; he needs to hit hard and fast, incapacitating the man quickly, or it’ll be useless.
Something breaches him then, and he can’t hold back a whimper.
It hurts.
He stops thinking and prepares to headbutt the man, consequences be damned— but suddenly, he’s not being pressed anymore.
He’d fall to his knees if the chain didn’t make it impossible. Matt stands up on shaking legs, using his arms to regain some balance.
There’s two people in front of him, now.
A big presence holding his assaulter up with a hand, a foot or so from the ground. His heart barely betrays any effort.
“You don't touch my property,” the new man says.
Matt stills.
“I thought...” the other man blabbers, clearly panicked.
“You should have known better.”
Matt flinches when the big man smashes the assaulter on the wall right next to him. He hears the crunch of bones.
His owner—he must be—lets the man crumple to the ground and turns his focus on Matt. “What's your name, pet?”
He’d normally feel angry at being called that, but Matt’s spiraling now, just a little, and the fear’s finally found its way to his brain.
“Whatever you wish to call me, sir,” he forces out, repeating the sentence he’d learned in training. It’s stupid, but he doesn’t want to reveal his name, so it works for him.
He swears he can feel the man's eyes raking over him. What now? Will he be punished? (For what?)
“Wesley.” It takes Matt a second to realize that wasn’t addressed to him, but to yet another man now on the scene. How had he missed his arrival?
“Sir. Did the new slave cause any trouble?”
“No.” The owner turns. The man on the ground whimpers. “One of the new recruits had to be taught a lesson on propriety, though.”
“I see.”
Matt feels numb. He stops listening to the two men talking about him like he isn’t there.
He barely notices when someone—not his owner—releases his collar and leads him to a little room with a cot.
Matt lays down on it, shaking. He can't stop.
The adrenaline is long gone from his system, but the memory of the man pressing him and entering him isn’t leaving.
Even as a slave with almost no rights, he’d never felt so violated.
So he lies there shaking, and Stick would tell him he's a huge disappointment for not controlling his body, but Matt just can’t.
His body isn’t his to begin with, is it? So what would be the point?
Get up, Matty.
Matt shakes his head. You’re dead, dad.
If his dad hadn’t chosen to die, to leave him, maybe Matt wouldn’t be here now.
The tears start flowing.
Pathetic.
He turns and presses his face onto the pillow. He keeps shaking and crying, but eventually he drifts off to sleep and nightmares.
When he wakes up, the door is being opened—he doesn't feel rested.
Someone sighs. Matt stills. Someone opened the door and is staring at him.
“Was that your first time?” The voice is cold, kind of familiar. Matt tries to focus to place it.
He nods.
“Your papers say you’ve been a slave for close to three years.”
Matt frowns. “My previous owner didn't touch me, sir.” Lying about that would be pretty pointless.
“I see.” A pause. Matt's starting to feel anxious; he could easily incapacitate this man and bolt outside, but then what? Even if he were to make it out of the building, he has no idea where he is and no place to go back to. “You may call me James.”
Matt finally places the man: it's the one who took him inside when they brought him to this house, the one who told him he’d be back—the one who came after the owner had dealt with his assaulter.
It's worrying, that he hasn't recognized him immediately. Snap out of it, Matty.
“James?” He repeats, numbly; he did call Jason by name, if he had to, but he knows that’s not exactly normal.
James’ heart does a weird thing. “You may call me that when we’re alone,” he rectifies. “Otherwise, Mr Wesley will do.”
Matt nods, still a little confused. “Yes, sir.”
“You should know,” James says, “that Mister Fisk, your owner, won't use you like that.”
“Use.” Matt repeats, unable to say anything else. Use, as if he’s an object. Is that what he is?
“That’s what I said.” James doesn't sound angry, and that scares Matt. What game is he playing? “What's your name? Don't tell me that I can call you whatever I want; I know that. It's not what I'm asking.”
Matt doesn't want to tell him. They already took everything from him, does he have to share what little he clung to? His name, his identity, they're his. If he tells the people who own him...
(Jason never bothered calling him anything. If he had to tell him to do something, he just said “you”. His friends didn't ask for his name, either. Matt’s friend, on the other hand… He can’t think about him now.)
“I could easily find out,” James adds. “They don't put it on the official papers, but they do keep it on record. It only takes a call to the right person. But I'm asking.”
Matt feels empty. One thing the system pretty much forces on slaves is anonymity, but he doesn't even get that. He swallows. “Matthew.” He sounds strangled to his own ears.
“Alright, Matthew.” James sounds mildly pleased. “You'll stay here today until I'll come take you later.” Matt hears some rustling, and the clinking of plastic when James puts something on the end of Matt's cot. “Eat your breakfast.”
Before Matt has the time to rationalize what just happened (does he smell... fruit?), the door closes and he hears the lock snap back into place.

James comes back.
He leads Matt to the showers and removes his collar so that he can wash himself. He tsks at Matt's irritated neck. Matt is confused.
After he's done washing and drying himself off with a towel, Matt finds new clothes waiting for him—boxers and a jumpsuit. His collar isn't there.
James doesn't ask if he's done before opening the door. “Come here, Matthew.” Matt complies and makes sure to hold still while James wraps something around his neck. “That's better,” he comments after locking it in place.
This collar has a similar weight to the old one, but it feels much softer. Matt raises a hand to touch it. It feels like Jason's silk ties.
He snaps back to attention when James calls him to the door. “You may take my arm.”
Matt does.
They go down three corridors—how big is this place?—and stop in front of a large room. There's one woman there, heart beating steady.
“This is Lillian,” James tells him. “Lillian, this is Matthew. He'll help you for the time being.”
“You're kidding me.” The woman sighs. “Again?”
Matt is confused by the reaction, but James stays perfectly composed. He turns back to him.
“Lillian is the slave in charge for the house slaves. You'll eat and sleep with them, and answer to her.”
Matt wonders why he didn't just say 'You're a domestic slave now'.
“Hi, Matthew. Sorry, I have nothing against you.” Lillian seems to give him a long look. “Do you know how to fold clothes?”
“Yes.”
James leaves with no further words, and Matt is left to follow his new boss inside.
“You can help Mia today, she's in charge of ironing. Here...”



///
On word, this has some words/sentences in italic. I'm too tired to put the codes in now (it'll be visible on the shared document).

Re: FILL PART 1 (SORRY FOR THE WALL OF TEXT)

[(Anonymous)]

...and I realized I should have added the spaces between paragraphs.

I'm sorry for the wall of text!! Feel free to NOT read it, I'll fix it later on.

CHAPTER ONE // PART ONE

[(Anonymous)]

A/N: I figure we need some exposure for the readers on WTF the situation is, so I'm starting with that. Also, past tense comes more naturally to me, but we can change it if you want, it's not that important.

---

---

They didn't tell him who he was being sold to, but he had overheard.

Wilson Fisk. The richest man in New York. Matt wondered what living for him would be like. Not good, probably. If there was one thing that he hated with a passion--- Well, fine, there were many things that he hated with a passion, one of them himself. But another was exploitation. Slavery. And powerful people, who allowed slavery to continue, because exploitation was what made them powerful and rich in the first place.

No hope for mercy in the Fisk household.

Not that he needed any.

His transporters* pulled up at what seemed like a mansion - Matt shuddered; don't panic - and lazily went about their business.

The business of handing him off to his new owner.

A man was waiting for them in the driveway. He was... comfortably still. With all the unfamiliar sensations of a new place, he couldn't tell much more; evening breeze scattered the smells, solid shapes of walls and objects in unknown places distorted the sounds. But he could hear his even, unbothered hearthbeat. His expensive watch.

"Gentelmen."

A few words were exchanged, a single signature on a sheet of paper, and... that was it. He was owned by Fisk now.

---

---

*So I'm not going to include that in the fic because it would just seem made up anyway, but here's a little true fact for you - I work on-and-off in social care of homeless people. Every now and then they need to be brought in from Point A to Point B with a car instead of just walking or taking a buss, for one reason or another. We actually have a system figured out for that - you can just call the city guard and they will drive them, for free. IN A DOG CAGE.

I have seen little old ladies with a walker being helped into one. So. Make of that what you will.

FIGURE-OUT, HELP ME:

There's a few problems I have with the Atemptted SA scene that I wanted to discuss with you. I still WANT that scene, because I like the idea and some of its lines fucking ROCK, but I'm not sure how to include it yet.

So, here are my questions:

• Where does it happen?
• Who does it? What were they doing there?
• Where is Weasley at the time, why doesn't he notice another person wandering in?
• Where TF did Fisk come from? What is he doing there?
• What happens with the space? When does it re-appear in our story, is it just a one-time writing trick?

My guess is it happens in some slave-space, what with rings and chains on the walls, and Weasley bringing Matt there in the first place. In my imagination that place is somewhere underground, as are slaves' sleeping quarters and their general living pace. I've never seen "Downtown Abbey", but if you have - there are essentially two communites living their stories simultaneusly - the Lords/Ladies in rooms upstairs, and the servants in the downstairs kitchens and quarters. I imagine Fisk Mansion kind of like that.

Another option is Weasley chains him still outside, for Matt to wait while James finishes the formalities with the drivers and whatever errands he wants to do before bringing Matt down.

Both pose the same problem though - who would be there to rape Matt? I doubt anyone frequents underground chain rooms on the slave floor just randomly. And if it's outside, next to the door or the driveway - well, for one, someone wandering about a highly secure mansion with no obvious purpose is kind of suspicious, again, who would that be and what are they doing there? But more importantly - wouldn't Weasley notice? He's like, three feet away talking with a driver and signing recieval documents. Would someone really walk up to Matt and pull out their dick next to three people talking? In what is probably autum weather, outside, in the middle of the street or right under a lit window of a most definitely occupied house?

And second problem for both is - what is Fisk doing there? Next to the door he might have just walked by, though I find it hard to believe (where is going randomly outside in the evening) even before you consider that a mansion would have a side entrance for people like Matt, or a working entrance, if not outright slave-entrance. He's likely somewhere out of the way, is my point. If we take it down to chained in the basement stumbling upon Fisk becomes impossible.

And finally - this is only a chain basement room problem, but - what do we do with this room later in the fic? It seems to disappear. It's not slave quarters, where there are beds and most importantly other people (I imagine a large room, with rows of small, clean beds under the two longer walls, each of which has an iron ring at the front and possibly a chain already attatched to it, but those are rarely used.) in it. It doesn't seem to have any function and in the plan as we have it now, it doesn't seem to appear in the fic ever again.

I imagined that pretty much every room would have one-or-more rings discreetly placed at the wall with a chain nearby, for containing slaves where you need them (both in the mansion and the offices, and the institutional buildings and such. Not in the houses of poor-slash-regular people, who won't have slaves in the first place, but in more official places - it might even be a safety regulation. Since slaves are mostly convicts roaming about, I'd expect some paranoia). So Matt could just be randomly chained in a corridor or an open-space main entry room next to a luxurious stairway. That would probably work best for our purposes but still leaves us with the problems of "who does it", "why are they there" (are there even any non-slave maids and domestic workers in the mansion, if there's too many people for too little work already? would any of them still be present and randomly walking the premises in the evening?) and most importantly - "Weasley and two other people are right there" Not to mention Fisk would make noise when coming, he's not exactly hard to spot. Anyway, you have to be a special kind of stupid to try to rape someone in the middle of the most luxurious, most open and public space in an occupied mansion.

It just doesn't seem to work any way I try to get it to, which is honestly a shame. Thoughts?

VANESSA KNOWS

[(Anonymous)]

Oh! Also - about Vanessa knowing Matt is the Devil. I like it :D

She wouldn't have any immediate ways to expose him, especially when he's an escaped slave and therefore already in hiding. Also I think she's much more into cat-and-mouse games than Fisk was, so.

Anyway, question time:

- what does Vanessa know about the murder of her husband? Who does she blame? Matt is the obvious suspect, maybe Weasley tries to undermine that idea in her?

- how do we go from "killed Fisk" to "dozens/hundreds slaves escaped"? I can see his empire fracturing immediately, especially if Matt and/or Karen were already chipping away at it. But I don't see all the slaves running yet. Masters die all the time, the system lives on and they know it. It wasn't just Fisk existing that kept them in chains. So, what gives? Karen, somehow, I bet. But how?

FIC(S) STRUCTURE

[(Anonymous)]

So, anyway. I think the way this is all going we got ourselves a triptych:

• OUR FIRST FIC, where it's Matt+James and a bunch of subplots, mostly tense personal stuff

• PARALEL FIC that is focussed on Retsuko and Vanessa's luxury spy-slave-prostitutes + life in the Gallery — tense personal stuff for Retsuko but the main plot is a SPY NETWORK INTRIGUE

(And this one would begin about the time Retsuko arrives in the first story, then run with it together with the first, until

• THE FINALE OF FISK DYING they will both have

And finally:

• SEQUEL FIC that is all action (similar to the show) and shitshow and REVOLUTION in which the crews from our two fics go against each other while also living the consequences of their stories...

...and We Finally Get Rid Of Slavery 🎉

Thinking about ciggarettes again // random thoughts and lines

[(Anonymous)]

So, the ciggarettes keep coming back to me.

I think I would trickle them in, show James throwing one out after a clear 'encounter' with Leland, then another one after a more ambigious-looking thing, maybe, then at least twice when he gets out of somewhere, like it's nothing special. Then we have the conversation about 'counting' and they appear at least twice more.

Then something obvious and shocking and almost explicit happens, finally driving the point home for even thickest of readers.

Then, right after that, we have our first flasback to James' lifestory, this one about his dad, and it starts with his dad saying

"Don't smoke like your old man, Jimmy." He puts a ciggarette in his mouth. "These things will kill you."

And after the flashback ends James is throwing away a ciggarette again.

---

---

I was thinking that James will tell Matt about his dad at some point. Not in so many words, but something. Maybe the story of his enslavement, after it's already came out how Matt was enslaved. Maybe Matt will ask about that in one of their quiet moments. I envision a dialogue like this:

"Is he still around?" Matt asks.

"Nah. Died in prison a few years later."

Silence fell. What do you say to that?

"My dad is the most important person in my life," Matt offered. "He died when I was ten."

James let out a heavy breath. "I'm sorry," he said.

---

---

I was thinking that maybe the crime boss James and Fisk turned on and murdered to take over was Fisk's father.

What do you say? It would keep the story relatively simple, which I do want in flashbacks. Subplots are great, complicated subplots in ancient memories, not neccessarily. And it would be a neat explanation how it was that they were able to take over after the murder in the first place.

Would them having done that be a secret?

I think it might be public, actually, or not exactly public, more like - done in front of Old Boss' closest lieutants, and then Wilson says something like, "I am your Boss now." Proceedes to give orders as if nothing happened.

If we go with semi-public takeover, we can easily do this without the "son of the crimeboss" trick, depending on what we want. I kind of like the semi-thug Fisk who gets into crime from street-level up. He does seem like the type.

And, well, for the Old Boss, "Rigoletto" is right there.

Fisk doesn't seem like someone raised in luxury and such to me, actually. Not polished enough.

But maybe that's just it - he was a failed son. More akin to a street thug than an heir. Too clunky for the life he was supposed to live.

So maybe... Fisk is the disappointing son of a close next-to of Rigoletto?

Eh. Decisions, decisions... xd

Either way, I envision Will and James to find a connection still in their teens, on the basis of not belonging, each being "in the wrong life" for them.

Maybe they're both 15? Or 15 and 17? Or Fisk is significantly older, but he's less capable and a bit childlish in nature. And James is old beyond his years, since he has to be. So they connect.

And then, years later, they take over.

---

---

If we go with "son of the crimeboss" we can end that conversation with Matt with Weasley saying something like

"We're all just products of our fathers, aren't we"

and then start a flashback about Fisk's father and how that created the Fisk today and also the James today. I like that, actually. Let's do that?

TITLES

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, what do you think should be the titles for our fics? We don't need them yet and we'll probably change them at least twice before we're done planning, but I'm curious if you have any ideas.

(I don't yet xd. I'll think of some if you want to play here, though)

QUOTES, maybe? Please agree.

[(Anonymous)]

So, I was thinking about those titles, and I thought maybe we can use quotes. And we can still do that.

But I kind of want to actually show our audience quotes now, with annotations of who said it and when (Name, possible comment on who that is, country and year) at the beginning of each chapter. What do you say?

Quotes from history (US and otherwise, but I'll be lying if there isn't a lot of US there, this story takes place in USA, motherfuckers are the main culprit in modern times and they were more brutal about it than normal), civil rights activists (also largely from USA, even that Lincoln champ, hurray for balance), modern UN officials talking about the present, Thurgood Marshall (of course), my favorite quote from thr US constitution and also some writers, poets and "great men" (and women! Why is it always men that get to be called 'great'?) as a treat. Even religious leaders, if we want. Is that okay?

Also, in Retsuko's story + Gallery story, I was thinking much less known here Asian philosophers, writers etc, plus feminist quotes and quotes about prostitution. Did you know that the oldest novel in the world was written in ancient times, by a woman? Not Japanese, unfortunatelly - Chinese. But still. I BET YOU we can fit that it somehow. Maybe in a chapter about Gao.

I can show you some quotes I think we could use, if you'd like.

With how big this project became, I really want it to be about more than just Daredevil. I want to connect it to real life, I think a story this large deserves that.

It would probably be a little sanctimounus and ham-fisted, so I'll understand if you veto the idea. But think about it first? It's a small thing that adds a whole new dimention to everything. Please?

We forgot BLACK CHARACTERS in a SLAVERY FIC

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, looking through all the quotes made me realise - we kind of... forgot to have Black people around?

I envisioned mostly Hispanic women as domestic slaves, and mostly Asian women as Vanessa's sexual slaves. I still think it fits - Asian women are heavily sexualised in modern Western culture, and most hired-for-pennies domestic labour in USA is done by Hispanic women. But not mentioning Black Americans in now-pretty-serious, otherwise sweeping portrayal of possible modern slavery in USA that is full of OCs anyway seems like a serious oversight.

Sooo, I was thinking - maybe it's mostly men, mostly doing hard labor of some sort (possibly on actual plantation-like fields that Fisk owns, but those would be far away from NYC) and also children. Like seriously young children, 10-12 years old, maybe some even younger. It's not technically legal to have child slaves, but there's an unspoken exception for the Black kids. Fisk, like many, signed an agreement with the city to "foster" unaccompanied children that the city would otherwise "have to provide for" after taking them away from parents on mostly made-up charges specifically designed for it (like that prison sentencing thing). Also, I was thinking that maybe the dormitories on Matt's floor are racially divided (he hasn't realised it yet) but there isn't a white one, so Matt ended up with the Hispanics.

(I think I'd like to drive the racial point pretty heavy-handed, yeah. Hard to do it differently when literally every even semi-main character in canon is white.)

So, one racial dormitory is the almost-exclusively Black "nursery" for working children. Who should probably get some spotlight, but I'm not sure how yet. (I think I'd like one of them to be 12 and named Tamir, maybe).

(There's a child labour problem at the moment in USA, but I don't know much about it. I think that's mostly Hispanic children, not Black.)

What do you think?

Karen investigates James // 3rd fic

[(Anonymous)]

So Matt keeps James' secrets firmly behind his teeth. But with how the confrontation in Fisk's office went down, Karen knows there's something going on between them. Between that, the fact that he witnessed her killing Fisk, and the fact that he's now the mayor of New York - the city that is in de facto open war against all the people she helped escape now - between all that, she decides to investigate him. Which would be a pretty neat opportunity to tell audience more of his backstory or what he's doing or something, but mostly I just want her to find out he's a slave. It might not actually be hard to dig up, if all the slave records have been dropped like we talked about earlier. It's just so outrageous that nobody had ever thought to check. (Our decision if Karen did or just stumbled on it expecting something else - I vote latter, but we'll see.)

And then she has to do something about that information.

---

---

How about we have Karen know about Matt as the Man In The Mask? In addition to James, of course, but unlike Foggy and Marci.

We can have them conspire together. Even Canon Karen would be much less "stop being a criminal, Matt!" than Canon Foggy, and Our Karen would definitely just go, "so what are we planning?" and I'm here for it :D

---

---

Does Karen think James is abusing (or manipulating) Matt and/or they're sleeping together? It definitely looks like it in that office scene, with the long hugging.

---

Does Karen suspect Matt might not be on her side after all?

How to START a fic // Matt's assault scene // College backstory

[(Anonymous)]

I started thinking of maybe moving the assault scene later in the fic. What do you think?

There's a few reasons for it:

- there just isn't much opportunity to assault Matt in the original context, I tried to write it and even after all the changes it still seems kind of forced into place by the narrator

- those first scenes will set tone and ideas for the whole fic in our readers, and I'm not sure we're planning to deliver on the tone suggested by that scene

- we meet Fisk and then he disappears for what seems like ever, I think maybe this would be better used when Fisk is becoming a recurring character...?

- I feel if we place it well the scene - and the later Fisk scene - could carry much more meaning.

I don't know, I'm thinking out loud. What do you think of this as a possibility?

***

This would of course mean that we need something else to start the fic with. I don't know what yet, I'd like it to be punchy and intriguing but still within the tone and pace of the fic, which is pretty low-key and slow, with a gradual build-up.

We could jump straight to Lillian - her "you're kidding me" should be punchy and intriguing enough - but I'd like to think of some alternatives first, even if we scrap them.

***

Also, feel free to veto all this and go back to opening with the assault scene. It's definitely an option, I'd just like to see if we can come up with alternatives.

I'm thinking the scene where he gets brought into the mantion could be a prologue - "He was owned by Fisk now" setting the scene, and then we start the fic in earnest?

***
***

Oh! Also - are we sure we want to keep "nobody ever touched me" as Matt's characterisation? It's just that everything in our fic seems to suggest that Matt is an outlier - assault isn't on the same scale as in most fics, but harrassement seems really prevalent.

I was wondering how that would work and came to the idea that maybe for Jason and the college kids lines are blurry, Jason would often take Matt to parties with him where he would be chatted up by tipsy college girls, but they don't really see him as any different than all the other candidates for an exciting one night stand (possibly _because_ they're a little drunk) and generally back off when he smiles and politely extracitates himself.

(Which I think he would do, not because he sees what they're doing as assault or harrassement - it's seriously the same way they talk with any interest, and Matt is pretty new to this being-a-slave thing so he hasn't internalised the _sex is different now_ yet - but after Elektra, he's not ready for any girlfriend or sex-adventure-partner, ever, let alone one he met at a party.)

And I think James is a freshman, so he doesn't quite realise the gravity of owning _Matt,_ specifically - the top-of-the-class student who was suddenly and mysteriously enslaved in the middle of his second (or third? I think I prefer third, not sure why) year. What Matt actually did may be classified, but there's no way that him becoming criminally enslaved wasn't a college-wide scandal. So that affects his social life there, too, and probably makes him more withdrawn than he would otherwise be - which means less opportunity for someone to get funny ideas about sex and consent around him.

All in all, Jason is a decent guy, kind of normal.

But I also think there was this one time. Just one time. Jason treats Matt as something like a beer buddy that you can order around. But he's also rich, and he wants to join a fraternity.

Which you probably don't know if you're not from USA - that's, um... bad. It's like a clique of sexist, racist, extremely priviledged, alcohol-ridden male students, whose main pasttime is being superior and main enetrteinment drinking and expressing being superior through being abusive with impunity. It's a really weird thing, I think it might be a thing in UK as well but I'm not sure. It's a function of university being like 20% an aristocratic club in those two countries.

So, anyway. Fraternity members are aristocrats. And they see Matt VERY differently on their parties. I imagine he only had been to one, right after or right before Jason is finally allowed to join in (there's a whole process of abusive "tests" first, it's so weird), when the senior members tell him "bring your slave" and consider Matt enterteinment. Maybe Matt fought his way out, got punished but in the end nothing came out of it other than Jason got kicked out of the fraternity? I don't know, I'm thinking out-loud again. This might be too elaborate for mostly-inconsequential (to the plot) backstory. But I kept thinking "but the fraternities" when you mentioned that Jason was rich yet no one ever touched Matt under his ownership. So, here it is.

Anyway, that's just one possibility. We can think of a dozen others, might find something interesting and/or plot-useful among them.

So, again - are we absolutely adamant that he never experienced anything before? We can be, but don't have to.

***
***

RANDOM: I think I want Leland to grab Matt's chin, look in his face and go "Pretty." at some point. Possibly with James cutting it down with "I'm sure you'll have someone else to entertain you tonight" or something like that.

Dunno, it just came to me when I was trying to think of an assaulter for that opening scene.

What are the MOST FUNDAMENTAL things we want to establish about Matt?

[(Anonymous)]

What it says on the tin. I also asked in the Doc, but I'm thinking maybe we habe more space to talk about it here...?

So, there's the basics:

• He is a slave
• He is owned by Fisk
• He is being "managed" by James

We also pretty much already established that he's been to Columbia, which I think works well. We'll probably want to mention that he was a study-aid there.

I'm not sure that we want Jason among our fundamentals though. I think I'd leave him out for now. I'd also leave out his backstory with Foggy and/or Elektra - I propose to bring it up only after Foggy ambushes Matt in Legal Departement, what do you say?

But if we keep Matt's college stories away from view, we're left with a lot of space I'd like to fill. What do we put in view instead?

TAMIR - OC

[(Anonymous)]

Hey! So, this is the place to develop Tamir :))

How old is he? What is he like?

• What's his personality?
• Does he have dreams? Is he cynical beyond his years? Is he traumatised?
• Does he have some kind of beliefs/convictions/hell, fears? Inner life in general?

His past

• How long has been in "the system"?
• What landed him in the system?
• Does he remember anything from "Before"?

(I think we might want to look up school-to-prison pipeline, see what kind of thing happens in that trap).

(It's also possible that he just doesn't remember, or doesn't actually know, because he was too young to understand. That would hit pretty hard. I still want other options, though, or if we go with this one - I think I'd like us to know anyway, even if Tamir doesn't). Could you look up school-to-prison pipeline for us?

His present

• What is his life actually like?
• What does Fisk have slave children do, anyway?
• Does he have a family somewhere out there?
• Does he have a social circle of some sort? A "best friend", maybe?
• Maybe we can tie him and other kids to our garderner somehow?

I vote he has a dad that's in prison (and maybe that was enough to put him in the "fostering"?? I still want to know WTF happens in the school-to-prison pipeline, though) and a sibling that is also in Fisk's "care" - younger, maybe? Or older and a fully-fledged slave, but for some reason I'm thinking younger.

And I'm thinking maybe Black slaves created their own inner support system, since they're ostracised and discriminated even from among slaves. They know each other, and the (few) adults try to look out for the children, and that's how we tie it all with our gardener George?

(If we mention that Gardener George is here because of fake bills, then maybe we should change his name to a different one, seeing as with Tamir around him the reference becomes pretty blunt pretty fast...?)

What do Black child slaves do?

[(Anonymous)]

Precisely what it says on the tin - what do they do? What is their "small labour fee"? What does Fisk "use" them for, and what do they do when they don't work? How much non-work time do they have? (I think we said one day a week of education, so there's that). What do their lives look like?

We already have domestic workers (and sex workers, not that that was an option here, uh), so we need something else. Ideas?

RETSUKO'S FIC

[(Anonymous)]

So we get more and more ideas for the first fic (Matt) and the third fic (Revolution), but the second is kinda left behind.

We only have the wide brush strokes - it's about Retsuko, Vanessa, the Gallery and a spy intrigue. I'd like to develop it more.

Ideas?

Retsuko's inner life

[(Anonymous)]

This is a callback to that comment in the doc. I think we need to develop her more:

- her personality
- her past as a geisha
- her past otherwise, like stuff that goes beyond a semi-standard geisha life
- her dreams/nighmares
- possibly her convictions, religion, things like that

Essentially - what is she like, and what are her drewna/nightmares about?

Ideas?

REVOLUTION FIC

[(Anonymous)]

Since we have a Retsuko fic (Fic Two) thread, I figure it'd be good to have a thread specially for plans and ideas about our finale - Fic Three, the Revolution.

We've had some things come up already, like:

• Weasley is the acting mayor of New York
• Most of Fisk's slaves run away with Karen's help after he died and are in hiding
• There are protests/revolution + a crackdown on "crime"
• Marci and Foggy have a legal practice that is also a human rights centre
• Claire and Adria somehow feature in that HRC
• Karen investigates Weasley and tries to use her findings against him (finds out he's a slave, possibly other stuff)
• Matt runs around as Devil of Hells Kitchen, works with both the HRC and James
• Vanessa is the new crimeboss (possibly parades as the grieving widow of charismatic mayor at some point, tries to influence politics)
• Fisks empire fell apart and there are more independent crime entities and agendas now
• The Gallery people are the core of Vanessa's fledging empire
• Retsuko is still in Gallery
• Gallery and Matt clash against each other.

It's a lot, but it's also pretty vague, and it doesn't quite tell us where, for example, Juana is in all this. Or Tamir and other Black children. "In hiding", but where? How?

What happens, blow-by-blow?

What is the Gallery side of the story?

FIRST FIC

[(Anonymous)]

Just to have everything in one place, I figure we want a "First (Matt) Fic" thread too. For comparison and reference if nothing else.

This is more or less what we have in the First Fic

• Matt is sold to Fisk, managed by Weasley, works in Fisk's crime meetings

• Matt slowly discovers Weasley is a slave, this is a Weasley+Matt story

• We get a bunch of backstory on Weasley, also some backstory on Matt

• Much of the fic is dedicated to worldbuilding, explaining the mansion (Black slaves, Hispanic slaves) and introducing OCs

• We introduce canon characters of Marci, Foggy and Karen, which means a legal story (preparing constitutional case against slavery, eventually), broken friendship angst, and Karen's arc

• Karen's arc is assault, clash with manager, not-not-friendship with Matt, joining Marci and Foggy, learning about social justice, becoming a wannabe activist, taking Foggy and Marci for a ride in changing actions/convictions, investigating Fisk, working to free slaves, eventually killing Fisk and helping slaves escape illegally

• Matt possibly becoming Man In The Mask at some point and James looking the other way, Fisk discovering it and that is when Karen kills him, everything goes to hell and Revolution Fic begins.

So, that's more or less what we have that we will be fitting the other two stories together with

Places

[(Anonymous)]

You're right that we need to map out our space. Can we workshop it here?

One idea was to have everything in the mansion, with Fisk's home, Vanessa's Gallery, offices, the Legal Departement, the rooms where Meetings take place and of course slave quarters.

And we can stick to that, but I'd like to explore other ideas as well, is that okay?

---

Having everything in one place would be convenient, but I'm not sure it's really believable. To some extent, yes - but not all, I think.

Essentially, these are the things we need to place:

• Domestic slaves
• Black foster children
• Gallery slaves

• Other slaves

• Mansion slave quarters

• Mansion work spaces - washrooms, kitchens, things like that

• Mansion offices

• Private living spaces of the Fisks

• Public (?) living spaces of the Fisks

• The Library

• Fisk's businesses

• Where Karen + the manager work
• Where Marci + Foggy work
• Legal departement

• Archive

• Where the Meetings take place

• Where Vanessa's Gallery invites powerful men
• Where the more "art" part of Gallery is
• Where Vanessa's closest, personal slaves live/sleep
• Where Vanessa keeps her most "private-pursuit" part of Gallery

A lot of it will be somewhere in the mansion, but I don't think all...?

Collars // chips // IDs

[(Anonymous)]

So, I genuinely think collars are mostly for show. In their "lock mechanics" they're not unlike dog collars - technically, a slave can take it off easily. (This plays a role in that moment when all Fisk's slaves escape after he dies, they do it then). They all know it's a very bad idea to actually do it though, taking off the collar doesn't make you any less a slave and doesn't really give you a way to escape, it only puts you in several different piles of trouble.

What ACTUALLY makes you a slave in the eyes of the system is your ID. You can't really function without an ID in society - I imagine they double as credit cards, for example, or bus passes, passes for different entries in general - not quite like DfS but close. Right. So you can't function without an ID, and there are two types - Citizen ID and Slave ID.

Slaves that are considered "high flight risk" are also chipped - which includes all foster children, by default. An owner has a lot of discretion here - they can decide to chip any slave they want, just by their own decision. But some types of slaves simply come already chipped, and it's regulated by law which types. A chipping can also be ordained by a judge, which judges pretty much always do when sentencing Black men. An owner can petition to take the chip out of their slave, but it's very rarely done.



...all of that clashes a bit with James' armband, I know. My thinking is - James has a semi-working Citizen ID that Fisk got for him so that he can perform his "powerful man" duties without trouble. And in addition to that, he also has a custom-made armband identifying him as a slave, in which there is a chip-ID - but which is also a brand of Fisk's ownership. Fisk could have chosen a different form of ID. He chose this one. James didn't object; he never does.

SEX WORKER KAREN

[(Anonymous)]

So we talked about Karen getting involved in sex work for her investigations, and this is what came to mind:

---

---

Karen: riffling through some kind of stuff in Gallery building in the middle of the night.

Senior Gallery worker (house misstres?) from behind her back: "What are you doing here?"

Karen jumps. There's a woman standing back-straight and judgemental behind her.

"Sorry, I lost... uh..."

"I haven't seen you before."

"I'm new."

The woman looked her up and down critically. "Are you one of the millers?"

"Millers?"

A sigh. "Do you perform your duties on company grounds more often than here, milling among employees and providing them with service? Have you even been here before?"

Karen blinked. Providing them with service. "Yes. And, uh, no. I was sent in today for the first time." She thinks quickly. "Will I be providing service here, from now on? Nobody told me."

A huff. "Well, some of the time, yes. You shouldn't have come so late. Which way did you come in?"

No need to lie about that, Karen supposed. "The staff corridors, Madam. I didn't want to wake anybody up."

"Next time, do wake the doorgirl up. Or better yet, don't loiter behind until it's middle of the night already. I've had nervous girls do many things for the sake of avoidance, you're far from the first one putting off coming until it's the next day, technically, and only avoiding crossing deadline by my own mercy. Skirting around in the dark like a bulglar, though, that's a new low. You will have to work out that skittishness, it won't do you any favors."

"Sorry, Madam."

"Yes, yes. Come. You'll have to make up your own bed at this hour, I don't have one prepared for you."

Karen's BLACKMAIL MATERIAL

[(Anonymous)]

Copy-pasting from upstream:



Hm, good question, what does she blackmail him with. I kind of assumed she realised that he's a crimeboss, but actually, that doesn't work very well. Far too vague, for one. We need something specific, and Karen also needs proof. You can't threaten a person with vibes.

Plus, maybe even Karen wouldn't be stupid enough to go into a kingpin's office in his own home, threaten them there and assume she'll come out alive...? I don't know, she might. xd

So, here's an idea - Karen collected a huge file of photos, interviews, documents and such documenting how slaves are treated. Not all of it is illegal; most, if not all, is perfectly within the law. And it's not even very extreme or abusive with deliberate cruelty (most of the time, anyway; Karen has a whole list of "incidents"), and not all of the abuses are done on Fisk's order, much is just lower free people taking advantage of inattention over their power. It's all pretty standard stuff for a slave owning household, nothing remarkable in comparison with other rich people. But most people aren't rich. It's standard, but it paints a very ugly picture; a picture that a beloved mayor definitely doesn't want to be public.

What better way to resolve this but collect PR points through mass-emancipation?

Free your slaves and gain from it, or have everyone see how your slaves are really treated. It's a no-brainer, isn't it? One of those two is a clear win-win situation, Mr Fisk, in which you can be a phillantropist and a leader, and the other leaves you with a nation-wide scandal you could avoid. Karen could make it an international scandal, actually, sir. America is the last slaveholding country in the world, had been since before the Civil War after all. The world would watch this with popcorn bags in hand. It's only a question of contacting well-chosen media, and Karen has a list of influential foreign media and their email addresses, right... here, sir.

Thoughts?

MATT IN THE COMPANY // Karen with no boss

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like this will get lost, so I'm copy-pasting. Answer to your "maybe there's only a few slaves on the floor" and "why is Matt still sleeping in the Mansion" comment from "Mansion places" thread:



It... kind of works? I'm not fully convinced yet, but yeah, maybe. It's a bit patchworked. I'll think some more on it, maybe we'll find a way to tighten the seems a little.

Maybe... companies don't have dormitories, but a room or two on each floor? It would be different on ground floor, which is most public, and in high-management floor; those, naturally, have the lion's share of prestige slaves (maybe the highest directors, CEOs and such even have a decent-sized room for their exclusive slave directly office-adjacent) and so there's more rooms/a dorm there, but barely significant floors like Matt's only have an abandoned, dark and small room with four bare beds, only one of which is occupied now, by Matt? It's a miserable existence for sure.

I figure driving Matt back and forth to the office would be too much a hastle, and James moved him there (and specifically to an insignificant floor that might not even exist as far as far as Fisk's empire is concerned) from working in the library, specifically because now that Matt goes to the Meetings, he can't have him just milling with other in communal spaces with no supervision.

So Matt gets moved. He no longer sleeps in Juana's dormitory most of the time. He did for a while, and wiped the floor in-between meetings, but Fisk considered that improper, and after (or shortly before, knowing what is coming? or even before that, recognising the signs of Fisk escalating and losing control of himself) Retsuko, James decided maybe it would be good to get Matt out of Fisk's sight anyway (which is maybe the reason why Fisk orders Retsuko in the first place, he's escalating but he doesn't have anyone to escalate on). And so James moves him, to the building where he himself works - for convenience - only about 15 floors lower. And drives Matt to the Mansion only for Meetings - together with himself, also going to the meetings - then drives him to the office the next morning, when he also goes there himself.

Matt probably doesn't immediately realise that he's essentially being repeatedly taken on "bring your child to work" trips. (God, James is tired. He used to be better at this.)

I think I like "sees Fisk escalating => takes Matt away from him => gets sent for another slave" timeline best.

With that, Matt gets driven in and out at the beginning, but then James suddenly disappears for a few weeks (he's in Japan) and Matt gets much more discretion over when he goes where (maybe he's even given contact to the driver?) and what he does there. This is when he gets close with Foggy and Marci.

Karen, too, gets much more discretion over her actions - her manager quietly disappears shortly before James goes away, he's not about to leave a problem behind - since there's no one over her now. James "fired" her boss, but didn't bother firing her - he has other things on his mind preparing for Japan, it probably didn't even enter his mind but if it had the decisions would be the same - the woman is not the one causing problems, she had been given tasks, James is used to having people doing pointless tasks nothing unusual there, if she posed any danger keeping her employed would keep her controlled (very Canon James style, the hire your problem lawyers on retainer guy) and it's better to keep her contained than out in the open looking for a new path in life. He doesn't really consider all that, though.

Anyway. Karen has a job but doesn't have a boss, or any duties given by said boss beyond something pointless that was given to her by now-absent guy anyway. She only really has Matt, so she pretty naturally follows him to Marci and Foggy. And when James comes back, Matt's life goes back under James' control, but Karen still doesn't have a boss or any tasks beyond what she gives to herself. So when she does her investigations on company time, or becomes a fake-slave prostitute instead of secretary, there's no one to notice and no one to object.

Thoughts?

FRANK

[(Anonymous)]

So I'm copy-pasting my comment about Frank, since we didn't finish that discussion:



I think about Frank periodically, yeah. But he has a whole story that makes him who he is as a character, and that story hasn't happened yet.

In the first fic it definitely hasn't happened yet, since it starts even a little earlier than where canon s. 1 starts. Fic 2 is paralel. In terms of passage of time, Fic 3 is when Franks DD s.2 story would be taking place - that's when his family dies, he goes off the rails, becomes a criminal, gets caught etc - becomes the Punisher. There isn't just a ready-made Punisher out there for Karen to recruit. In order to really involve him, we would have to mirror all that in real time in our fic, and I'm hesitant to do that.

We can fuck around with it all, of course. Adjust timelines, change backstory, whatever we want. I'm hesitant to do that, too, but I can be persuaded :)

RETSUKO'S OCs — Chinese friend // Italian maid — NAMES

[(Anonymous)]

It will probably be so long before we really get to them that we'll need a new thread, but for now - this is where we can discuss Retsuko's two non-Japanese Gallery OCs.

---

---

One thing I think we can maybe decide now are names. I searched through A LOT of Chinese names yesterday (man, do they sound strange to European ears) and finally found one that I do like: Lan Fen. It means "Scent of the Orchid". Orchid is a beautiful but poisonous flower (one that Elektra loved), which... might paire quite ominiously with "Fury", right...?

Anyway. Both Chinese and Japanese names actually begin with the last name, but slaves don't get a last name, so I dropped them for now. "Lee" comes to mind though: "Lee Lan Fen" and "Lan Fen Lee" both sound like music to me.

Here:

• https://www.mandarin-names.com/en/name/Lan%20Fen
• https://www.nippon-names.com/en/name/Lan+Fen

And a few resources:

• https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/guidebook/chinese-names.htm
• https://www.chinafetching.com/chinese-names
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_taboo

I'm thinking maybe Lan Fen could be our OC's real name, but the Gallery either renamed her completely or gave her a "stage name" that is more glamourous and more suited to American ears.

Maybe she would even reveal her name to Retsuko as a secret; with how much weight Chinese people put on people's names, that could be a really significant gesture - not just of trust but of true feeling and deep friendship.

(Wow, that sounds like a romance...) xd

What do you think should be Lan Fen's Gallery name?

---

---

Do you have any names that feel right for our Italian maid? There was one that came to me, but you have actual familiarity with Italian names while I can name maybe three, so I'd like to bow to your expertise here, if that's okay :)

I wouldn't put it past Vanessa to also rename her maid according to her wishes, mind you, so we can try for two names here, too. I was thinking renaming wouldn't be standard practice, though; it's just that 'Lan Fen' was deemed not enciting enough.

---

---

Anyway. There's a phrase that came to me and I don't want to lose it, so I'll just put it here randomly:

"Friendship that runs deeper than scars."

Also, apparently this whole thing is making me melodramatic, because to Retsuko, Lee Lan Fen sounds like "something that's carried by the wind" or even "a secret carried by the wind". Or spring waters, alternatively. We might want to look up the elements in Chinese/Japanese culture in a free moment sometime.