#rowlerants

[rowlev]

Forgot to post that I got my print from @blanc-ci like a week ago!!!!!! I was having an awful day at work and this instantly flipped my mood a whole 180 degrees!!!!! SPUCK!!!

So here he is on my wall rn! I loved the doodles on the piece of cardboard it came with so much that I hung that up too <3

[rowlev]

All my aromantic mutuals keep posting about Project Hail Mary do I have to watch this movie

[rowlev]

How did you feel about daredevil: born again??

I’m dying to discuss it with somebodyyy

Ooooh man. Let’s do this! I’ll continue below the cut so I don’t fill up your entire screen lol

I’ll be honest, I prefer to view the show more as fanfiction rather than actual official DD content. The original show is so important to me and with the creative overhauls DDBA went under it just couldn’t hold a candle to the original series.

That said, it’s some pretty fucking good fanfiction. The first two episodes were so breakneck pace I instantly knew this was going to be a very different show. I actually screamed when they killed Foggy and had to pause for a second. I still don’t believe he’s dead no matter how good it is for the plot. He’s in witness protection and they’re going to bring him back at the end of season two in the most emotional reunion known to man.

The bullseye plot had me really suspicious for a long time though. It felt like they just fast forwarded his corruption arc so they could have comics bullseye on screen. But by the end of the season I felt like his motivations were more adequately fleshed out. I’m seriously loving the Vanessa Queenpin era. My own headcanons for a s4 (without knowing the original plans for s4) were to have Vanessa take the mantle of the Kingpin since Fisk would be in prison and she would sort of have immunity as Matt’s leverage on Fisk. I think they still took this route sorta. Fisk is going legit with the mayorship, even if he’s also molding the system to his will. Vanessa is the one who is getting her hands dirty so I think the s3 promise still kind of counts. It’s not perfect but I think it’s still very good.

And the plan for Fisk to basically create a legally sovereign crime state at the port? Hooooooly crap. I nearly pissed myself when I saw where they were going. Really put new stakes out there. Fisk hasn’t ever been this daring.

The way they paralleled Fisk and Matt against each other this whole season as tried so hard to deny their violent natures was amazing too. I’m shocked how well they pulled off that slow creep what with all the overhauls. The increased amount of literal blood on screen also really paralleled this beautifully. I am personally a fan of the obscured gore in the original series since I think it was just more compelling to leave most of it up to the imagination, but I can’t deny its been a great tool to show how raw both Fisk and Matt are.

Matt’s denial arc I think is a beautifully written cover for the overhaul also. They originally had taken out all the supporting cast and Matt literally just says it for what it is in the show: it feels fake. Making that hollow feeling purposeful rather than trying to hide their mistake really compelled me. They even wrote it in as Matt slipping into old habits, isolating himself from all his friends, and going so far this time he doesn’t even allow himself a personal space to unmask, inviting Heather into his private space.

Denials and masks are the core of Matt Murdock they were damn good about writing that into the show. The way his glasses actually shatter in the second episode when he finally slips up and punches those cops had me gasping.

That all said, I think there were also many parts that I was quite disappointed about. Muse for one, was fucking wasted. They gave him the cheapest, most flimsy copy of Dex’s backstory I’ve ever seen and then killed him off. I understand the task force needed some plot motivation and the overhauls made it hard to write him in but I’m a massive Muse fan and how they did him was downright disrespectful. That and how Matt could somehow decipher his art with his fingers???? Absolutely not possible. The POINT of muse is that Matt can’t see shit when it comes to his art. He can only smell the blood and gore he used to create it. They entirely missed the point of Muse both as a villain, and as a daredevil villain specifically.

In addition, they similarly did my boy Cole North absolutely dirty. I’m less mad because he’s just a side character in Zdarsky’s run and not majorly important but THAT IS NOT MY COLE NORTH. Comics Cole North was meant to be a misguided, but ultimately good person. He shot a kid on accident and did his best to pay the consequences, eventually learning that by being a cop he simply never did face the proper consequences for his actions. He wasn’t meant to be an enthusiast for violence and certainly not a Fisk bootlicker.

Regardless, I’m still quite glad they ran that punisher-cop plotline in general. This show really hammered in the idea that the system is broken, in ways that I did not expect Disney to be even capable of putting on screen. Watching the punisher shoot a bunch of copycat cops was cathartic. I’m really wondering what this will mean for Matt’s future legal career and how he will face the law after all he’s learned this season with the trial of Hector Ayala and the little things like his encounter with the sweets thief.

I think a controversial opinion I’m gonna have here is that I really loved that bank robbery episode. It felt like a return to the original show’s pace, where they spend an entire episode just focusing on one scene. It also had incredible tension given how Kamala’s dad was an expendable character, but important enough that we still cared about him. I really loved it as a way to cement Matt’s return to daredeviling without making him say it out loud. Plus the green mask Irishman was acting his damn heart out. that man stole the show lol.

I'm really excited to see how BB and Daniel face off next season. Daniel has such a punchable face and I love his interactions with Fisk. BB just has insane amounts of plot potential with how involved she is with Daniel and all of her little clips of New Yorkers throughout the show. Daredevil as a show has always loved its side characters and I hope they return to that in season 2 with their creative direction now sorted out.

Overall though I think Karen’s return sealed everything for me. She really made the Foggy shaped hole in the show a clear choice of writing, rather than just a mere convenience for the writers not to have to think about the previous three seasons of the show. And I think it felt like I was releasing tension I didn’t know I had to see Matt finally able to lean on a trusted friend, rather than force himself to keep the mask on at all times. I really hope they don’t push a romantic direction for Karedevil because while I think what they had in s2 was innocent and sweet, it just doesn’t work when they know everything about each other. Plus, their friendship is more important than any romance they could have imo. They should always have a bit of a flirtatious friend vibe to them but I don’t want them to be officially romantic again.

I could be on for some Kastle but I think I also stand by a similar opinion on that. The scene of Frank using Karen as bait in s2 daredevil at that one diner I think is the perfect microcosm of their relationship. He might love her but he’s always going to have a demon to fight and Karen doesn’t want to fight anymore. She understands that killing is often necessary, and is willing to kill in those scenarios, but she doesn’t want to. Her being a part of Nelson and Murdock was a way to heal from all the violence she had to take part in in her life.

ANYWAY. That’s getting more into original show analysis. I think that pretty much recaps all my surface thoughts on DD:BA. Overall I would say I liked it quite a bit but I think it had room for improvement. I hope they don’t try to nostalgia bait too much as their main appeal in the next season, since I felt there was a bit of overcorrection in that direction this season but I’m still very excited for season 2 and looking forward to a cohesive creative direction finally being able to pull out all the stops.

[rowlev]

I wanna ask u about daredevil lol what is it

Oh boy, time to unleash Pandora’s box.

So Daredevil is a fairly long running comics character in the marvel universe, known for his super senses, bright red spandex with devil horns, and general acrobatic prowess, hence his name. In his civilian identity, his name is Matthew (Matt) Murdock, a blind defense lawyer known for his largely pro-bono law practice “Nelson and Murdock” with his best friend, and former college roommate, Foggy Nelson.

He’s a street level superhero typically known for protecting his small neighborhood in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. Historically that region was a pretty poor neighborhood (not so much today, but times change) consisting largely of poor Irish Catholic immigrants, and that’s how he grows up- son of an single, immigrant father who does boxing for a living, known in the ring as “Battlin’” Jack Murdock.

Now Jack Murdock doesn’t want this life for his son- he’s old and losing his strength from years of fights, and forces encourages young Matt to stay in school and study hard so he won’t end up like him. It’s not just the physical degradation that makes him so adamant to ensure Matt doesn’t follow his path though, it’s also the fact that he’s been forced to compromise his morals and start throwing fights for money, under a local crime boss’s command.

Matt is unaware of this at the time, but he’s got plenty of other stuff to worry about, like bullying from other kids his age when he refuses to go outside and play with them (his dad wants him to study), and the fact that he gets blinded at the ripe age of 9 by some radioactive chemicals, after diving to save a man crossing the street, who was about to get hit by the truck containing said chemicals. These chemicals don’t only blind Matt though, but also enhance his other senses to superhuman levels, giving him a massive amount of sensory processing issues on top of the superpowers lol.

His father helps work him through the traumatic event, and beginning of his readjustment to life without sight, gets him reading braille, and starting to study again, hoping maybe his kid can be a lawyer or something when he grows up. However it isn’t long before he ends up getting killed by the crime bosses he was throwing fights for, after finally refusing to throw a fight.

So Matt, now alone in his world, gets sent to a Catholic orphanage, and spends the rest of his childhood there, utterly alone until he meets his mentor - Stick. He’s also a blind man, but he’s different from Matt in that he doesn’t have any special enhanced senses, but he is a master in martial arts, mostly learned from people in various fantasy Asia locations that marvel has created. He trains Matt to hone his senses, block out all the unnecessary noise, and punch really hard.

He’s big on tough love teaching styles, some of which to be honest are straight up abusive, but Matt, as a young impressionable orphan, sees him as a substitute father figure. Stick doesn’t stick around for long though, and the reasons for this vary in different comics and the tv show. Regardless, the impact is that Matt has been abandoned once again, and there’s really no notable people in his life until he gets into law school and meets Foggy Nelson.

Foggy is his college roommate, and while they don’t initially get along (one comic says Matt nicknamed him Foggy because he felt like the snoring he made while asleep sounded like a foghorn), they quickly become inseparable. Various comics disagree on their dynamic but I like how Waid portrays them, with Foggy as the smart one and Matt as the charismatic one, both reliant on each other to prepare the best defense for their clients.

In college, he also has a fling with Elektra, who is the start of his endless string of lovers. She is the daughter of some rich millionaire, but what Matt likes about her is the danger she represents. By this point, Matt has been actively masking the fact that his enhanced senses allow him to sense his surroundings much more than an ordinary blind person might be able to for more than half of his life. He never told his father about his enhanced senses, and Elektra is the first to see him for who he truly is, mask off, and accept it. However the problem he runs into is that Elektra’s morality is much more gray than the black and white lines he’s constructed as a Catholic lawyer. She urges him to more and more reckless stunts until an event (differs between different comics/the tv show) where his actions lead to death or near death. They break it off and he doesn’t see her for many years following.

Once he kicks off his career at Nelson and Murdock, he also starts his early vigilante career. I’m not too familiar with the reasons around why it only kicked off then (I haven’t read daredevil: yellow yet or the very early comics) but he quickly racks up small time enemies and a very unbalanced work-vigilantism schedule.

Their first office manager is named Karen Page, and she’s the first and most prominent love interest for Matt. Her story starts out with her and Matt being in a very innocent relationship while both of them mask the darker parts of their personality from each other. The early comics don’t do this very well because well, people were much more misogynistic in the 1960s. However I think the tv show beautifully adapts this storyline and fleshes Karen out a considerable amount. In the comics though, Karen eventually is killed by Bullseye, who you can probably guess the powerset of by his name.

Bullseye also kills Elektra after she and Matt have a reunion, both in comic suits, where she has become an infamous assassin in the time after she left Matt in college. Technically he kills Elektra before he kills Karen but Elektra gets revived later so it’s all good. In any case, bullseye cements himself as a major rogue of daredevil haunting him through his deceased girlfriends. He represents a main antagonist for the martial arts/ninja side of daredevil, along with the Hand, a cult of ninjas that worship a creature called the beast, who can resurrect the dead.

On the law side, with Matt Murdock, the kingpin tends to be his main enemy. If you’ve seen into the spider-verse, you’ll know that Kingpin has beef with Spider-Man too, but with Daredevil, it’s a lot more personal. The Netflix show demonstrates him with perfection but I think the Frank Miller Born Again run demonstrates his ruthlessness best, where he discovers the secret identity of Daredevil and then systematically and slowly dismantles his entire life, getting him disbarred, then manipulating his tax records and utility bills so that he loses his house, leaving him homeless, sleeping on the streets, with only one thought on his mind: revenge against Kingpin.

Those are the basics I guess, but yea the comics are just him on adventures fighting supervillains and (more often) his own personal demons regarding his repeated childhood abandonment and deep-rooted depression. I find him to be a complex and interesting character with a lot of flaws to explore. I would highly recommend the tv show, it’s a genuine masterpiece and an excellent way to get started on the comics too.

[rowlev]

Do you have any Daredevil fic/ reading recs? 👀

I’m gonna be honest I don’t read that much fanfiction. However there is one fic that I swear is what I will imagine mcu canon as post-snap no matter what the new born again series gives us. I spent several hours trying to find it again so you better read it lol.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Premise is post-NWH Spider-Man trying to tough out life and Matt trying to establish a presence in Hell’s Kitchen again after being snapped. Lots of found family tropes, and really hits the spot for my interpretation of Matt ngl. I haven’t checked in on it in a year and now ao3 is requiring an account to read it so idk how it is now, but highly recommend.

As for reading recs on comics, I think my favorite runs are bendis/brubaker, waid, and zdarsky if I had to pick some, but honestly they’re all good. Like objectively speaking daredevil has some of the most consistent quality writing compared to other comics.

Especially in bendis there is some really fantastic art by David Mack and storytelling, best used to describe the origin story of echo, who currently is getting a show produced about her in the mcu. Apparently the trailer just dropped so I’m pretty hype about that. Overall I think bendis is the bread and butter of daredevil. It accumulates the early history of daredevil into what forms his core character.

Zdarsky is really good if you’re a fan of the Netflix show. It leans more heavily into the religious side of daredevil if you’re into that, and honestly the characterizations feel like they could be ripped out of the tv show. I especially enjoy the first half (pre devil’s reign), but the second half is also pretty good.

Waid I think is my all time favorite run, mostly because it builds onto everything else that makes daredevil’s character and creates a sort of meta analysis of it. Plus it feels the most emotional - at this point he’s trying to go public with his secret identity and it’s a genuinely painful process for him to allow himself to be vulnerable. Yet it’s also a time where you get to be happy for him that he’s finally reaching happiness. I genuinely start tearing up whenever I reach the end of this run. I appreciate the soule run very much (blindspot is awesome!) but I can’t ever forgive him for robbing Matt of the ending of waid.

New run of daredevil is also currently in the works with Saladin Ahmed if you want to start out with a totally fresh story for daredevil. There’s only like 2 issues out so I can’t impose any judgment on it yet but it’s certainly an interesting new position they’re putting daredevil in.

Hope this helps!

[rowlev]

I. Forgot I had that cement post queued vhjsksjxn