I whole heartedly believe that Matt is a very tactile guy as in he loves cuddles and hugs and holding hands or leaning his head on Foggy's shoulder when they are watching movies but the thing is he rarely let's himself be tactile. It's like one of does mantras Stick taught him, that he is too soft and allowing himself the comfort of his tactile behaviour is gonna be the death of him which it isn't but it's been so drilled into his head that he just can't imagine actually allowing himself to ask for hugs or cuddles for that matter.
He is only acts tactile like that around the people he absolutely trust which is a very sad list of one Foggy Nelson. It's mostly because Foggy has been around since basically forever and Foggy, on his own, is very stubborn, so slowly over the years he broke down the walls that Matt had carefully constructed.
I imagine after the whole daredevil reveal and they are good buddies again that Matt opens up more about what training with Stick was like and admits to denying himself comfort.
There is a lot more cuddles from then on and murder plans to kill Stick but that's mostly Foggy.
29 notes
·
View notes
rude fuckin reminder that foggy and karen both love the fact that Matt is daredevil. they don't think he's a bad person for being daredevil. they don't think he's addicted to it. they don't think he needs to stop.
foggy especially has always been very encouraging of Matt's vigilante activities. he knows how important daredevil is to Matt and how much he enjoys being daredevil. yes he wants Matt to be careful but he also trusts his friend. he never saw Matt being daredevil as some betrayal.
he actively tells Matt to go out and be daredevil. he wants Matt to be a hero.
karen sees matt as a hero and loves that he is daredevil. shes doesnt want him to stop being daredevil. that's it. that's fuckin it.
Matt's not an addict that needs to be rehabilitated. his friends don't treat him like a scolded puppy or a saint for being daredevil. they treat him like he's their friend cause that's what he is.
40 notes
·
View notes
hey lovely hi! I wanted to ask you something about writing. First of all i love love love the way you write matt and Frank! So on point and detailed and so well observed. I wanted to know how do you understand them i mean what are your ways to study a character?
I hope I'm making sense and im sorry for being a bother 😭 love you.
hi first of all i love you sm for this oh my god?? you're not a bother at all, i could talk about matt forever. writing him true to character is the highest compliment i could ask for 🥹
several thoughts come to mind — first i think of the characters as they are individually, then as they are tied to one another; once tied together through the threads of the story, there is no separating them. just as there is no separating the choices they make now from all the choices in the past that led up to this moment. where do the boundaries of the character as laid out in the source material brush up against the boundaries of the character as i understand them & what archetypal role are they fulfilling (if relevant).
also the mutability of the boundary between archetypes: i.e. matt descends into 'hell' to bring frank out, orpheus role; matt hears & carries everything, god-like role; matt accepts this as a call to action, hero; matt takes it upon himself to punish these 'evildoers', devil; matt takes these sins upon himself, christ figure; matt is wounded in his noble pursuit, martyr figure. & how do his roles change in relation to the characters he shares a scene with — fisk (god-like in seemingly limitless influence) / matt (hero/martyr).
what life is there for a hero outside of their duty in a story like this? what room is there for him to be human? that's what i want to know. so i take what we know from what we've been given:
matt is the son of a boxer -> he grows up with the inherent understanding that two things can be true at once: hands capable of love can also be capable of violence
matt, as a child, saves an old man and loses his sight -> he accepts at a very young age the concept of heroic acts & their consequences (inevitability)
matt’s father chooses to die a 'hero' rather than live as a flawed but present father -> better to be a hero, to live and die by those familiar consequences than to be a flawed but present person (2nd ex. of heroes and their consequences, inevitability)
matt’s next father figure is violent but it is through that violence he learns to navigate an overwhelming world -> violence = love
stick leaves, like his father left, like his mother left -> to love is to lose (inevitability)
matt is only human, after all, it's what's most compelling about him as a character. and the show really did let us sit in those long moments of quiet witness to matt's undeniable humanity. he is flawed, he stumbles in fights, he can’t catch his breath, his faith buckles under the weight of his grief; he doesn't understand how to be human, how to maintain relationships, how to reconcile the darkest parts of the world and of himself with his faith in humanity and belief in redemption. the world is overwhelming to him on every sensory level. every touch is a modified blow? he lives that. he looks outside of himself for light (foggy, faith). when he reaches his breaking point, he breaks rather than turn to the people he loves because of the lessons he internalized as a child. stick left because matt loved, despite everything. despite everything, his love > his rage (bc his rage is his grief & his grief is another face of his love).
even after foggy finds out matt's secret life of physical violence, he still refers to him as "my soft-hearted partner" because it's true, matt cannot help but love & recognize humanity in others. it's because of this that he feels called to balance two unsustainably contradictory lives: using his voice to fight for redemption in court; taking it into his own hands when the law fails. taking their blood onto himself, by himself.
and that is the only touch he allows himself to experience—violence. blood on his knuckles, in his mouth, in his throat. and when his body is torn open and his secrets bared through his wounds, we get another glimpse into the reality of heroes and their consequences. foggy is not treated as an audience stand-in to giddily marvel at matt's abilities and how cool they are, he's heartbroken. he’s fucking devastated. his best friend is bleeding out on his apartment floor. he doesn't want matt to die. he doesn't want matt to be daredevil, he doesn’t want matt to be a hero — because foggy, more than anyone, understands matt's humanity and mortality. and foggy, more than anyone, selfishly wants matt to be his friend first. let hell’s kitchen take care of itself. why should matt die for a community that doesn’t love him like foggy loves him? that doesn’t know him like foggy knows him? he knew matt before he became a story. their time at columbia grounds their friendship & grounds matt to a life that is as close to normal as any comicbook story. they stay up late studying, they drink a little too much, they live together and achieve a kind of domesticity that comes easy to foggy but utterly incomprehensible to everything matt knew before foggy. we see a glimpse at a life with foggy that represents a gentle kind of safety and happiness — everything matt has been denied in his life until then. everything that the momentum of the story demands matt cannot keep (as hero).
and then there's frank. composed of rigid codes and immovable beliefs, just as much as matt, but on the other side of the line matt has drawn in the sand. that line represents matt’s faith in humanity and belief in redemption. despite living the worst of it, despite bearing the brunt of it. matt can't lose frank because matt never had frank; and yet matt and frank hold an inherent understanding of one another that no one else can. two sides of the same coin: unwavering & fatal sense of duty that walks them in a winding but inevitable line toward their respective fates; acceptance of the roles life has given them in what life has taken from them. it's not that they want to die, it's just that they’ve lived so long in the depths of their own private grief that they can’t see living outside of them.
so of course foggy doesn't want to matt to be a hero because there is no story where the hero comes home unscathed, there is no story where the hero is not brought to his knees. to love matt is to accept he could lose matt. either through death or through his inevitable transformation into something foggy may not recognize.
(now matt's unwritten rules by which he lives are bleeding into other characters' lives, consequences spiraling outward & outward)
a perilous thing began with wanting to explore this idea: a story that revolves around the moment when the hero is brought to their knees (figuratively & literally) that marks the separation of who they were before and who they must become after (transformation), if there is to be an after -> internal vs external consequences; forced passivity; how does the hero come back from that & who is he if/when he comes back from that. is he recognizable? i also wanted to look at the hero & the story through someone else's eyes, someone who could be more objective than me, more objective than foggy (whose love for matt clouds his observations, as it did in light perception). and who could objectively understand matt's actions & motivations better than frank? the anti-hero and matt's foil.
so i first look at the character through the lens of the story that’s been told and then the story i want to tell, i look at him through the lens of other characters and i assemble a picture from there. i look at matt through the events of his life, through his relationship with violence & his relationship with his very mortal body. unlike other superheroes he is not invincible, he is not bulletproof, he is not capable of flying, or softening a long fall; he is not capable of throwing his adversaries across a room, he is barely capable of saving himself from his own self-destructive choices. he has a damaged & unbearably human body. everything he can do he has fought tooth and nail for. he doesn't have superpowers like telekinesis or lasers that come out of his eyes; he has loss, he has grief, he has rage. we can all relate to that. he has a voice that is capable of giving a second chance to others (in court) but he lives and dies a thousand deaths inside of the silence at his core he can't find his way out of. his inability to communicate his grief or desires in a bearable way.
perhaps he finds redemption through saving others because he doesn't believe he, himself, is otherwise worthy of redemption. if he did, he would relinquish his duty as hero, he would live a quiet & happy life of domesticity with foggy. perhaps in another world he does. he lays down his mantle, or he lives in a world where he never had to take it up. he's just matt, foggy's soft-hearted partner.
62 notes
·
View notes