don't touch that dial!

back with more tunes and talk to take you from the night to the light.

[paigeangel]

— don ' t touch that dial !

paigeangel ; an independent roleplay blog for earth-616's karen page, of marvel comics. side blog to @kataireo. mutuals only and selective.

✴ about ✴ prompts (or here) ✴ pinterest ✴

inspirations include ... dr. strangelove (1964); after hours (1985); beyond the valley of the dolls (1970); sex and the city by candace bushnell; party girl (1995); his girl friday (1940)

PORTRAYAL.

my interpretation of karen is generally canon compliant as far as the broad strokes of her comic history go. you can find specific information regarding tweaks and divergences at the about post linked above.

characterization-wise, my most prominent basis is ann nocenti's daredevil comics.

comic muses are still more than welcome to interact with nmcu karen, my main blog! she is my preferred version, i just really like to keep her street level and within the noir / crime moodiness of the show. while 616 karen clearly has a dark streak, too, she still exists in that comic book world of heightened ridiculousness. that's what this blog is here for -- and i feel like they're different characters anyway, honestly.

CONTENT.

age 20+ to follow, mature themes are present.

karen's history involves kidnapping, torture, drug use, addiction, coercion, and prostitution. i won't be writing her actively doing those things in threads, but the topics may come up.

triggering topics will be tagged as #___ cw, though by default i really only tag heavy subject matter. that is to say, i wouldn't tag something like #emetophobia cw unless a mutual had it in their rules.

i might write smut, though it won't be frequent and certainly won't be with strangers. explicit nsfw content will be tagged #nsft cw, and i don't tag text-based content that is just "suggestive".

WRITING.

"mutuals only" means i only write with blogs i am mutuals with (this is a sideblog, so i follow back from kataireo). anyone is welcome to follow this blog and interact with my posts, i just ask that you don't reblog my original posts (headcanons, edits, etc.) or writing that doesn't involve you.

i am more likely to stick with threads if we've plotted at least a little bit. it doesn't have to be extensive, i just struggle with replies when i'm not really sure what my writing partner expects or is interested in.

unless we have a good rapport ooc i will likely get bored of short, banter-y threads pretty quickly. sorry!

i tend to run my mouth and prefer slightly longer threads. not always, though, and you don't have to match my length. as long as there's something of substance i can work with, we're good.

ask memes never expire, mutuals may send them in at any time. feel free to use my ask responses as starters.

SHIPPING.

i'm open to it, but chemistry is king. i am a big fan of the interpersonal and psychological aspects of rp and dynamic-building, so of course i also enjoy shipping. i'm just not interested in thoughtless fluff or porn -- you will have to earn that lol (and by then, it technically won't be thoughtless anymore).

also i'm ngl the first half of karen's comic history is "be in love with every guy she works with" because sexism, so i especially want to be intentional with her romantic connections here. you understand.

as a blanket rule i don't do exclusives. if i happen to ship with multiple interpretations of the same character, i strive to make those dynamics and their thread content unique -- that's very important to me. i am not here to "collect" anybody. i don't foresee this being much of an issue, though, as i imagine this blog will stay pretty lowkey.

[paigeangel]

@spectracle asked; have you guessed why i'm here?

She'd been lounging in a beanbag on her fire escape, fiddling around on her laptop when she spotted Alison below, strolling up to her building. Karen shouted down in greeting straight away ; now, having been met with a cheeky retort, she feigns being aloof by casting a glance up the street. "If you're scouting for your next music video, I don't wanna hear it. You know I'm retired from acting."

She can't keep it up long, though, and her expression breaks into a grin as she snaps the laptop shut. "No, I have no clue! Lemme buzz you in and you can tell me inside." Clambering back through her window, Karen does just that, excitement thrumming beneath her skin. It isn't every day Alison pops by for a surprise visit — to know a world-class pop star is to roll with their schedule. She waits in her open doorway and greets her guest with a hug when she reaches the top of the stairs. "Come in! How's it going?"

[paigeangel]

what kind of herb are you?

Oregano

You are home to so many people and yet you're not at home with yourself. Everyone needs something from you and you desperately try to prove that you're enough but you're never enough, never good enough, never even you despite all of that. Your hands shake but only when you're never looking at them and your smile is so ever-present you can't help but wonder if its fake, wonder how much of you is real. You're a caretaker, but are you even good at that, or are you faking yourself out into believing you're something that you wish you could, someone that someone else needed you to be when you were small and so full of need and hope and fragility? Who are you underneath the need to be someone's home? Who are you when you come home to yourself?

tagged by: @heartinhands <3

tagging: @helraising, @ocularcatastrophe, @legacywebs, @h4wkeyed, and you!

[altarbov]

"Well, you could also stay away from it. I'd actually say that's better," He suggested. He knows he can't keep her away from anything if she puts her mind to it. And unfortunately for him, she sets her mind to it a lot. He's half sure he'll go gray before he's forty if she keeps this up, or die of a heart attack due to high blood pressure. And yet, he wouldn't have it any other way. "Okay, tell you what, what about I teach you how to fight? At least then you'll know how to defend yourself from the aforementioned danger. 'Cause I know you won't listen to me and run into it anyway, so you might as well be safe."

[paigeangel]

Air jets out of her nose in a soundless laugh, eyebrows wagging in an expression that says yeah, right ; like that'll ever happen. She has gone away before, and it never sticks — they find their way back to each other, in some capacity. For all her complaints over the years, she's lived in these circles of danger and excitement too long to want something else.

"Do you mean it?" The offer makes her perk up, fork abandoned with the lukewarm remnants of her dinner. Face lit up with a smile, she reaches across the table in her excitement to swat playfully at his arm.

"Matt Murdock, you better not be messing with me -- no take-backsies!" The interjection comes out so seriously she makes herself laugh. "I've taken self defense classes before, even tried a little kickboxing. It was just so hard to fit it into a schedule... but having my teacher in-house? Very handy. I'd like that a lot."

[whoknowswherethetimegoes]

Sharon Tate at Heathrow Airport, London, July 1966.

[alphabright]

✶ ⁺ ☽ ₊ ◑ ‎ ·‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ @paigeangel ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ .✦ ݁˖‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ / &. /‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ memory is not always reliable

this is the first thing they teach you, whether you are training to be an effective investigator — or adjusting and shifting awkwardly in the patient’s seat, steel black with unfeeling railings and uncomfortable cushioning, a seat little too small for you to sit in, the room a little too small for you to breathe in, the world a little too small for you to live in, your life a little too small for you to exist in ———

——— memory is unreliable, of course; but how is reality any better, when it is often times stranger than fiction? when your telltale heart and your inflamed nerves don’t know how to tell the difference, when they can recognise the danger long before your mind and your eyes can catch up?

“i know what i saw,” she replies, blankly at first, before blinking a couple of times and finding herself back in reality, finding herself able to meet the other woman’s eyes again, aurora’s composure a fragile thing at the moment. “the state of my mind does not negate my competency, nor does it take away from my credibility. i’m not dishonest, madame page,” the steaming fury fails to truly rise beyond the surface, for it softens into something more worn out instead. “i also do not want to be a liability because of my mercurial hold on reality. but you must believe me, karen, i know what i felt.”

[paigeangel]

"I believe you," she asserts with some solemnity. "Memory might not always be reliable, but... I think the body has a way of keeping score." There are gaps in her own memory of getting back to New York from Tijuana a few years back, but she knows she still has a hard time falling asleep in a car's passenger seat — even if the driver is a friend, sometimes she wakes up in a sweat like her body thinks she's back in unsafe company.

Karen hears the phrase mercurial hold on reality, and thinks she knows a bit about that too.

"I can't tell you how many times I could swear I was being followed, or watched," she offers in a bid to connect. "I have a lot of... unpopular friends, we've pissed off some powerful people before. But I'm just me, y'know? So I have to stay on my toes. I think I'm usually pretty smart about it all, but every now and then I'll have a phase where it feels like something's lurking in every corner... and a lot of the time, I'm right." Her smile is a little sad, but mostly matter-of-fact, and punctuated with a shrug as if to say that's life.

"You saw what you saw, and you felt what you felt. I believe you. I think the question you have to ask yourself is what are you going to do about it? Whether you can do something about it or not, what's next?"

[ocularcatastrophe]

[ ADJUST ]: the sender moves closer to adjust some items of clothing on the receiver (i.e. the straps of their dress, the hem of their pants, the buttons of a shirt). — from @paigeangel

Matt has been in this Godforsaken apartment for a month. Karen has been here for a week. It's not really his—Fisk had made sure of that. No, his apartment had been blown up sometime between his bankruptcy and his disbarment.

He's not entirely sure why he let Karen come back.

That's a lie.

He let Karen come back because Matt Murdock is a man who forgives, for better or worse.

So, here they are. In a shitty, half-furnished apartment in a name that isn't his in a neighborhood that's been his since he was born, and the woman he shouldn't love but still does quietly dressing behind him at ten o'clock in the morning, because she had insisted on coming with him to talk to the cop who'd lied about him under oath, and he is the type of man who says yes when a woman makes those eyes.

And then he feels the air shift.

The first tell—and Matt hates himself for reading her tells—is the heartrate. Elevated. Her breath is careful as she approaches. Like she's testing something. In a courtroom, he'd call it premeditated.

The second tell is the warmth. Air displacing, cooling his face, and then body heat, and the scent of her, which is disarming enough to throw him off, because every person in the world has a sensory thumbprint to him; heat and scent, and hers is one he knows better than anyone's.

Her hands arrive on the placket of his shirt, gentle, and for some reason he can't immediately articulate, gentle feels cruel right now. Her nails catch against skin under the fabric, so slight she wouldn't even feel it herself.

She doesn't say a word, but he can feel her eyes on him, and for a moment, Matt's guard is just gone. It's warm and familiar and in his mind, he feels his hands searching for the prosecution he'd been aiming at her all week and he simply can't find it. He leans into the touch like he's coming up for air, because the five seconds of contact push the loneliness away and, Christ, the wanting feels better than anything he'd felt in the last year.

And then his fingers find purchase and it crashes back into him. These are the hands that gave his name to Fisk.

She tugs the placket straight. His jaw clicks as he fights the roiling combination of feelings that threaten the delicate equilibrium they'd maintained this week.

These are the hands that gave him everything. That made him lose everything.

"Karen," he says, his voice coming out quieter than he means, and the sound is like gravel in his throat. "We should move. Manolis expects us at eleven."

It's a deflection and he knows it. Granting the touch without granting the absolution. Again, that roiling collision; he hates himself for it and feels the tug of vindication behind his sternum anyway.

[paigeangel]

It isn't an easy thing, to remain hopeful. Karen remembers seeing a quote somewhere once about how it takes smarts to be a pessimist, but will to be an optimist. She's been called willful plenty ; in fact the most recent time was just a couple of weeks ago, when one of those guys Fisk sent after her tried to snatch her up. He'd laughed at her squirming, remarked to his buddy that she was a willful little bitch, then she sunk her teeth into his hand and hit the ground running. Even half-out of her mind she had the drive to fight, to live, to get ... home.

God knows, though, sometimes the will just evaporates right out of her. It threatens to when she crosses the room, adjusts Matt's shirt, and is addressed by him in a way she can only describe as fair.

What the hell am I doing here? Living in this shoebox apartment, insisting upon her company, waltzing into his personal space — her head drops, but the flaxen curtain that falls on either side can't hide her from him. Lithe hands retract, hesitating for a moment as she nearly gives his chest an encouraging pat but thinks better of it. She shouldn't be here. Her gaze shifts across the room, and landing on their meager cupboards she recalls that with two of them, they'd gotten twice as much at the food pantry. She'd also made a good first impression on a chance run-in with the landlord, and that got their leaky faucet fixed the next day.

It's enough reassurance to steel her resolve for now. The imminent mortal danger part of this season of life might be over, but there is still plenty of struggle and discomfort to go around — that's alright. If Matt's feeling dour today, she can ride that wave. Karen lifts her head, jaw set, and makes herself smile as she nods in the affirmative. "Yeah, let's get out of here."

A cursory pat of the pockets, and then she grabs a purse with hardly anything in it and makes for the door. She slips into a pair of secondhand shoes and tries to get out of her head by wondering what places they've walked before. Then, turning the knob she asks, "You nervous about this?" She's not nervous, but sight unseen, part of her thinks she might hit the guy if Matt doesn't.

[alltoowsll]

SEX AND THE CITY- 5.01

[castlle]

@paigeangel asked: "i crossed a line i can't uncross."

"Nothing can't be undone." Frank looks at Karen Page with curiosity in his eyes. She's always been a fixture at that law office, so he never thought he'd meet her like this. "So, what did you do, Miss Page?"

[paigeangel]

If only that were true. A guy like him can't really believe that, can he? Even if it's just a platitude, she'll take it all the same. "Just Karen is fine," her hand rises in a dismissive wave before she can think better of it. The formality seems ill-suited, but ... it feels kind of nice to be regarded with a modicum of respect.

"I... betrayed somebody. Someone who trusted me." The sleeve of her jacket is pushed up a skinny arm, which she presents simply ; old track marks litter the skin at the crook, fading with time. She lets the sleeve fall back down.

"I was stranded in Mexico once, trying to find a way back to the city. Lucky feels like too nice of a word to describe it -- the only guy I could find was this dealer, kind of in a rush to get back here himself. I had too much going on at the time to pay it any mind, but now that some time has passed... well, if you are who I think you are, I'm pretty sure you're the reason he was in a tizzy to get home and check on things. So I guess I should say thanks." She's never checked if Paulo Scorcese got out of prison or not — easier just to set it all behind her. It's nice to know, though, that if he ever did, vigilante justice had set his soul-sucking livelihood up in flames.

[paigeangel]

first: i updated the about post to add karen's bio. it's long but it'll give you a detailed overview of what her #deal is -- note the blog-wide trigger warnings in my pinned post (under "content") before reading! and seconddd: miss ma'am has her own pinterest board now as well :D

now that that's all settled i feel like i'm allowed to write here finally 👍

[girlintheafternoon]

The biggest physical adjustment was the constraints of the costumes. [Janie Bryant] favored doll-like pastels that spoke to Betty's desire to maintain perfection, and the undergarments and girdles forced a certain posture and even gait that was uncomfortable at first but also lent an amazing detail to the character. It turned how tied-in and implosive Betty was into a literal fact. - January Jones

[helraising]

✞‎ ‎ ·‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ @paigeangel ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ :‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ / &. /‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ❛ what the hell is this town coming to? ❜

“did you move here yesterday or something?” the brunette retorts promptly, not looking up from the newspaper she’s thumbing through, her voice level and calm in contrast to the nature of karen’s question. “no judgement of course, became same. i probably missed you at the LAX.”

“come on, miss page, i was supposed to be the new one to this city; how am i supposed to know what’s wrong with the water in los angeles?” a quiet chuckle. “it’d be rather impudent of me to reveal what i really think about the golden state, you know.”

[paigeangel]

That pulls a laugh out of her. She was wondering how to go about explaining she was new to town but only kind of, because she had lived here years ago — but the nonchalant humor in Helena's words do much to relieve the tension threatening Karen's shoulders. Her situation isn't really so complicated to explain after all ; it's just the looming specter of her personal history in the city. With all these changes, though, it isn't quite the place she remembers.

"You're still the new one, I promise! My 'new girl' status comes with a big asterisk. I'm just saying -- seventy-thousand people under a boil water notice, gas is nearly six dollars a gallon, it seems like there are food recalls all the time... this isn't the LA I lived in eight years ago. And if I mention all that on the broadcast, will callers be happy to vent, or annoyed with my whining? Ugh." She rests her chin in the palm of her hand, and from behind oversized shades she scans the back of the paper in Helena's hands. "If that thing has a forecast with thunderstorms, I'm gonna freak. Actually, don't tell me -- I wanna hear these impudent thoughts of yours."

[fairweathermyth]

PARTY GIRL 1995 dir. Daisy von Scherler Mayer Parker Posey as Mary costume design by Michael Clancy

[paigeangel]

@altarbov asked; i won't let you do anything that will put you in danger.

"Let me?" The arch of her brow is pretty severe, to say the least — luckily the curve of her mouth and her tone of voice give away that she isn't actually that incredulous. "No offense, Matt, but I dunno how much 'let' has to do with it. Trouble's always been our third." The fork in Karen's hand twirls idly, spooling the remains of a pasta dish around its prongs. "I know what I'm signing up for every day I stick around. But if I could help you out more directly sometimes... maybe I'd see that danger coming, y'know? Stay on top of it."

[notmorbid]

the americans, season 4.

dialogue prompts from season four of fx's the americans.

you okay?

it was the only way to protect you.

i'm not gonna be able to come back here.

everybody kind of hates me now.

i do, sometimes, rub people the wrong way.

did you screw something up?

not everyone's as lucky as you.

i wish i could live that way again.

you think everything is all about talking.

is something wrong? is something going on that i need to know about?

how do you feel in your body?

to forgive yourself, you have to create a space for it to exist.

you have a lot weighing you down, don't you?

there's a limit to how much progress you can make without being honest with yourself.

you're not destroyed.

you're safe. we're together.

i keep having these memories from when i was a kid.

everything here is out of the ordinary, isn't it?

can i talk to you alone for a second?

nobody can carry this sort of thing alone.

we could leave. maybe we should leave.

i'm looking for something good in all of this.

my world was too small for you.

were you surprised to hear from me?

i won't let you do anything that will put you in danger.

in a place like this, you have been a surprise.

i'm not who i was.

it's amazing what you get used to.

i'm not so good at approaching people.

there's always a better choice.

people believe what they need to believe.

i don't think it's something most people would understand.

losing a child is like nothing else.

you are living in a burning house.

i told myself i'd be safe if i just did what i was told.

i don't know why i expect anything.

you really know how to kill a party.

it eats you up, what we do.

there are places no one could find us.

it's not safe for us to be here. we need to go.

i'm not checking IDs. don't freak.

i just think it's very american, the whole thing.

you cannot get precious about your feelings.

you don't have to do anything you don't want to do.

come on. i have to always ask before you tell me anything.

free. i don't remember: what's that like?

i don't know a lot of happy couples.

there are a lot of jerks out there, and they all seem to want to date me.

you always undervalue yourself.

was your mom a good cook?

there's a word for what you just did: entrapment.

you can't understand america without trying a twinkie.

have you guessed why i'm here?

you're good at this, aren't you?

we may have to run.

i thought i could live like this.

you've done so much for me.

people disappear for all sorts of reasons.

promise me you won't give up.

'okay' means 'not okay'.

are you hungry? everybody brought food.

it's possible for people like us to forget ourselves.

i don't want your money. i don't want anything from you.

i think i kind of lost my mind.

i haven't felt the same since.

i tend to show up around mealtime.

i feel like i'm out on a limb and i've handed you a saw.

i will do anything to keep this family together.

how did you know how to do that?

i just keep replaying it over and over in my head.

i wish i could show you where i grew up.

think good thoughts.

it's time for you to come home.

i didn't change your mind. i reminded you who you were.

you always say we'll get through it, but you never say how.

maybe i need to learn how to defend myself.

every morning, i wake up with this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

the absence of closeness makes you dry inside.

it's hard to know when it's too late.

this isn't how i wanted to tell you.

sometimes don't you just wish you could go back to being a little kid again?

you want to pack? get the hell out of here?

[duallpa]

NICOLE KIDMAN as ALICE HARFORD Eyes Wide Shut (1999) dir. Stanley Kubrick

[adastrasx]

patreon request from last week 👼