even for period typical ableism it still drives me nuts for karen to go oh poor matt how can he deal and get around as if he hasn't been blind most of his life at this point and living on his own by himself as an adult for his entire adult life after college and has also lived in the city his whole life like girl use your damn brain he can get around by himself just fine. good god. like take five seconds to use your brain. literally adult man who lives by himself if nothing else that should tell you he is fine and when he needs assistance has the knowledge and ability to go get it you act as if he can't even walk on the sidewalk by himself. he literally shows up to work by himself. it drives me up the wall sometimes how she sees proof of him functioning fine independently literally witnesses it on the daily and still thinks these things. like again foggy isn't great either bc again the period typical ableism (and just general ableism in the world outside of this period as this is a common attitude of viewing disabled people as helpless and unable to function even if they are people who do live independently (and im not touching on people who do need extra support and caretaking in this context. as this post is about these characters in the context of a story. so im talking about what we see there instead of any truly meaningful nuanced way) but the writing here is like. Particularly this way due to the time) he has a modicum more of understanding that matt is literally a capable grown adult man. literally told karen matt is a big boy who can handle himself and then karen went b-b-but you forget he's blind as if foggy hasn't known him for years of his life and is his best friend like PLEASE SEE HIM AS AN ADULT. I AM GOING TO GO INSANE. PLEASE RESPECT HIM IF YOU LOVE HIM SO DEARLY. AND EVEN IF YOU DIDN'T. JUST RESPECT HIM AS A PERSON!!!!!!

Ive seen a lot of meta saying Elektra is toxic for Matt, she brings out the darkness inside him...Like Matt didnt have his fair share of problems before Elektra shows up—the dude runs at night and beats up bad guys. Elektra had nothing to do with that & Matt’s a grown ass white man, he can make his own decisions. What am I gonna ask is whats ur opinion on what Elektra needs? People worry about Matt’s mental health & happiness but nobody takes time to analyse El, so what’s ur hot take on that?

Oh this is a GOOD one. I already see myself spending too much time working out my thoughts on it (I apologize!!!) – this is what you get when you actually ask me for my hot take lol. 

(Edited while writing to add: yeah, this took way too long! I’m so sorry, it was the damn holiday week. Between cooking, shopping, and entertaining guests at my home most of the week, I maybe spent a total of 10 minutes on Tumblr in the last few days! Basically not much time for thoughtful writing, only quick answers and mindless likes!)

As anyone who follows my blog should know, I have a lot of Feelings™ about Elektra Natchios but even so, I probably tend to deconstruct her character and behaviors more often within the context of her relationship with Matt. Which isn’t wrong or unusual b/c she’s a supporting character in his universe, but damn it, I sure love her enough that I really should write more metas focusing on her needs and perspective, so…thanks for giving me an opportunity to do that Anon :). 

Back to El, my darling El. When you hang out around fandom long enough, you’ll inevitably hear the argument pop up that not all bad / villainous characters are meant to be good*. That not every character needs (or deserves) to be redeemed. That some characters are just bad. Are toxic. Are no damn good. And maybe that means I read too much into Elektra’s character and her backstory and how that affects her personality and motivations and relationships. To which I say, nope, I think I read just enough, in fact, maybe even not enough? Maybe it’s because I spent 13 hours last week watching a show about an extremely morally grey anti-hero who racks up a body count that should read as horrifying and see him engage over and over and over again in violence as a way of life but damn it, they make us feel for him. They give us a sense of uneasy hope that he’ll find a way out of it. And even though it’s unlikely he’ll leave the Punisher mantle behind for long, we know that he has people in his circle who will continue to be fiercely loyal to him – Karen, Micro, Curtis, and to a lesser degree, Dinah. I go off on this minor tangent because if someone like that, with such a black and white view of the world can be considered in so many shades of grey but still found to be redeemable in the face of all their sins, why the hell not Elektra Natchios. 

*Sure, some characters. I just don’t think Elektra qualifies as one of those characters, like…at all.

I’ll try to not go into too much extra detail on why Elektra is the way she is (I also wrote about that here if you want more of my thoughts) but let’s talk about what she needs, or what I think she needs. To start, I always go back to the scene where Elektra finds out she’s Black Sky and has that heartbreakingly honest moment with Matt:

When you consider the upbringing she’s had – raised as a child soldier, conditioned for violence, then being embedded into a rich and influential family and experiencing the opposite lifestyle? but knowing that it’s not really her home, not really her family, that it’s just another training ground to build up skills she’ll need to better serve the Chaste – is it any surprise that she views love and affection as something conditional? Not something given without strings attached? Or perhaps, even, something that she doesn’t truly deserve? Stick gave her encouragement and affection whenever she was sufficiently vicious and unyielding in a fight. The Natchios’ probably gave her love and affection when she put on the face of an obedient daughter. I’m sure that in a life of being a diplomat’s daughter and debutante, she roped in many a unsuspecting young man into her orbit – for fun, or whatever else, and I’d guess that “love” was empty too. 

And then Matthew comes along, and I’m willing to bet he was the first person who didn’t pre-judge her based on her background, her looks, etc. They may have appeared to be opposites on the surface, but it was clear that he knew her and she knew him, in a way that was strangely honest and real? And against all expectations, they could stand as equals – I’m sure it was a feeling that was marvelously new for both of them. Yes, Elektra had a mission, but her mission had nothing to do with her love for him, nor his love for her. If the mission had never existed, I think she would have been perfectly content continuing the way they were, and it was clear she’d allowed herself to revel in it…their future together. Of course, it comes crashing down when she gives him Roscoe Sweeney on a platter and he refuses to kill. For Elektra, there is once again a conditional line drawn in the sand. Elektra the killer cannot have real love, doesn’t deserve real love. And I think this is why she runs away from Matthew, because it validates, yet again, this awful view of herself that she has inside – that being the person she is, she doesn’t deserve real love, much less from him. 

So fast forward to closer to present day Elektra. This is a woman who has spent years of her life fighting. Fighting for a mission she thought she believed in. Fighting for respect. For love. For devotion. But the fight has always been in the context of someone else’s war, someone else’s mission. It’s no surprise she always finds herself lacking when the fight is never for her benefit, never on her terms. I imagine she always believed that as long as she did as she was told, she would find what she was looking for…but obviously she learns a hard lesson about this, not just once, but twice. It makes sense that she so violently disavows her connections to both Chaste and Hand – no, it’s not conventional response, but nothing about her life has been conventional. The language she is most familiar with is violence, and therefore it makes sense that her grab at retaking her agency is told through violent action.

But where does this leave her now? I think that for all of shit she’s gone through between DDS2 and Defenders, all of which have undoubtedly left her changed, at her very core she is still looking for the same things. Love. Acceptance. Understanding. It’s not entirely clear where her head is going to be at in a post-Defenders world. She’s spent so much of her life being told what to do and given no choices so I imagine there’s an urge to explore what life looks like on her own terms. Sure, it’s possible she might choose bad over good or whatever, but Elektra has never been a character beyond redemption. Canonically, she isn’t. And so I think she’s still going to be looking for someone who is willing to believe in her her, willing to love her despite all of her flaws, her mistakes, her sins. And I honestly think that even with all the drama and angst they’ve put each other through, the person who can give her that is still Matthew. Matt has his own issues to deal with, yes, but I think in the context of his relationship to Elektra, they’ve consistently proven that even when they are at odds, there is still a bond of love and understanding that can’t be broken and ignored, and given the work he put in to better understand and accept her for who she is by the end of S2 (and still, by the end of Defenders), I think there is a lot of possibility for their future that may not have been there before. 

And this is why I always have and always will believe that Matt and Elektra work uniquely well for one another. In their dark, unhealthy moments, it’s a mutually destructive force in both of their lives, but if that same force were channeled into good, into accepting the things about the other that can’t be changed but helping each other be better in the ways that can be fixed, it could be quite freeing for them both. The Defenders proved that they still love each other fiercely and at this point Matt is probably her only tie left to any kind of family, not to mention the only person she knows who would encourage a positive view of life and humanity. And this may be wishful thinking on my part, but I hope he can play a part in supporting her through this new stage of her life because I think what she really needs is not to go through it alone. She deserves to have loyalty and friendship and support, even if it’s just one person to start. 

So…yeah. That’s what I think she needs :).

Dickheads of the Month: October 2019

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of October 2019 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

In a really, really mature move proven liar Boris Johnson sent a letter to the EU to request a Britait extension but didn’t sign it, in a feeble attempt to try and say that an official letter from his office doesn’t count if he didn’t sign it and he absolutely should not have to fulfill his promise of claiming he’d rather be dead in a ditch than request an extension

Of course Priti Patel would try and claim the Tories are the party of law and order during her conference speech in spite the minor issue her speech came a week after the Tories were ruled to have unlawfully suspended parliament, because what else did she have other than a strawman about he “North London Liberal Elite” to say for herself?

...although we can thank Geoffrey Clifton-Brown for completely undermining Patel’s speech by his being arrested at the conference due to getting into a punch-up with event security  an hour before Patel even took to the stage

Hapless businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri would look a lot less like she’d been handed a script if she asked what business of ours is it to ask why a six-figure sum of public money ended up in her bank account courtesy of proven liar Boris Johnson, rather than the narrative she attempted to spin asking who we are to ask whether or not he had an affair...because the actual question is a matter for the courts instead of the court of public opinion, as whoever wrote her script knew all too well

In the latest bout of the Liberal Democrats showing how they’re definitely not Tories in disguise, all nineteen of the MPs abstained on a vote to keep the NHS out of Britait negotiations and, in the process, handed Boris Johnson his first-ever parliamentary win over Jeremy Corbyn - which Jo Swinson attempted to defend by squawking “something something antisemitism” in an attempt to distract people from noting the day before she couldn’t stop talking about the handful of Labour MPs who voted in favour of the proven liar's Britait timetable as she continues to try and delude herself and others into believing she’s a kingmaker and not a Tory enabler

...although she’s not alone in that regard, as Gavin Shuker took to Twitter to say how The Independents would do anything in their power to prevent Jeremy Corbyn getting into Downing Street, which only serves to justify him losing a No Confidence vote from his constituents when standing as a Labour MP 

It says a lot about Blizzard that their response to Hearthstone streamer Blitzchung voicing support for the Hong Kong protestswas to boot him out of an upcoming Hearthstone tournament, suspend him from any further Hearthstone tournaments for a full year, and withhold the earnings he had made - and attempting to hide behind their competition rules does not adequately explain why they also ditched the two commentators who happened to be hosting when Blitzchung made the comments in spite their cutting to commercial as soon as he made them, which definitely does not make it look like Blizzard are shit scared of losing the Chinese esports market or anything considering they didn;t do a damn thing to any American players or commentators who subsequently spoke up on Blitzchung’s behalf...

It didn’t take long for the BBC to start gaslighting the public during the election campaign, with Fiona Bruce telling a Question Time audience member that Vote leave was cleared of breaking electoral law in spite the fact that they were found guilty of breaking electoral law, at which point panellists Paul Scully and gaslighter extraordinaire Isabel Oakeshott piled in to continue the bullying somebody who showed more aptitude for journalism than Bruce, Oakeshott and Scully managed between them

I have no idea how Rudy Giuliani managed to give a journalist on the Orange Overlord’s no-no list reason to further investigate the Trump regime leaning on foreign governments to dig up dirt on their opponents when his right buttcheek somehow dialled their number, but what I do know is that it does not surprise me in the slightest that the stop fell into a journalist’s lap because Giuliani was so careless he managed to butt dial them

I’m sure it’s a coincidence that both James Cleverly and Mark Francois both used their Tory conference speeches to threaten rioting on the streets if Britait isn't done, which definitely isn’t a well-worn trope of the Leave camp by this point and certainly not something the police should look into

Isn’t it interesting how Lib Dem staffer Steve Wilson was quick to accuse Dawn Butler of making up incidents of experiencing racist abuse, which not only undermined the Lib Dems’ attempts to portray themselves as anything other than the Tories under a different coat of paint, especially considering the fact that Wilson just so happens to be husband of recent Lib Dem appointee Angela “funny tinge” Smith?

I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot about how Matt Hancock tried to claim that the 20,000 new police officers the Tories claim will be on the streets by 2025 will replace the 21,000 they have laid off since 2010 in an interview with Good Morning Britain, just as I am sure people will mention he kept repeating his soundbite even when being told that the UK will still be 1000 police officers worse off than they were ten years ago several times until he started to look like a malfunctioning computer

Of course Louise Ellman responded to a vote of no confidence being called against her by her local party by resigning from the Labour party and using the usual “Corbyn is an antisemite” arguments we heard numerous times before from people facing deselection.  It’s passed cliche and is rapidly headed towards high camp at this point

...especially when Karen Pollock of the Holocaust Educational Trust posted a video to her Twitter telling her followers how terrible it is that Labour are looking to have Jo Bird replace Ellman and regurgitated the exact same claims of antisemitism...yet never once deigned to mention that Bird is Jewish, which looks uncannily like the “wrong type of Jews” argument we’ve heard more than once from the Board of Deputies

Of course Anne Sacoolas expressed regret at her reckless driving being responsible for the death of Harry Dunn...after she legged it back across the Atlantic as soon as humanly possible, waiting a few days for the heat to die down, and then issuing a press release saying she regrets her actions but will not actually face consequences for them due to scurrying to hide behind diplomatic immunity in record time

On paper it looked as if WWE had merely given wrestler Jordan Myles a really unimaginative shirt design because the character they gave him is Smiley Guy Who Is Happy To Be Here 708...but the thing is that, on paper, the design didn’t look uncannily like something from a minstrel show, which Myles was particularly vocal about when he saw it - and even more vocal when WWE’s statement in response was the usual ass-covering gaslighting they issue when the company is shown in a bad light 

It appears that the BBC are taking the threats against politicians so seriously that they invited Julia Halfwit Hartley-Brewer onto the Question Time panel little more than a week after she shared the home address of Jo Maugham on her Twitter account so her followers could happily dogpile

You would think that Bethesda would have learned that Fallout 76 has been nothing but a humiliation conga line for them by this point, but apparently not, as they had the genius idea of charging $99.99 (or £99.99, because fuck British players amirite?) for a premium subscription for a game that came out to critical derision and commercial stagnation a year before someone hit on this idea, and if that wasn’t humiliating enough it soon transpired that the supposed benefits of paying $13 a month didn’t work to the point where players paying the premium were losing items while those who weren’t had no problems at all  

Once again it seems nobody told Extinction Rebellion that there’s a way to protest that doesn’t mainly involve being a bunch of dickheads and generally pissing people off with dickheaded stunts, with James Brown taking the prize for most dickheaded act after he climbed on top of a plane at Heathrow, although the bloke at Canning Town getting a shoeing after trying to hold up the train runs him a close second

I have no idea how Roland Rudd imagined his boardroom coup to take over the People’s Vote campaign would have gone, but I’m going to guess the mass walkout of staff when his plan to make the campaign a fully-fledged political party who would position as pro-business “liberals” in an obvious bid to try and split the Labour vote may have had something to do with it

The sheer spinelessness of the BBC was exposed for all to see when it emerged that a solitary complaint from a viewer was all it took for the corporation to reprimand Naga Mulchetty for suggesting that Donald Trump saying non-white congresswomen should go back where they came from, yet when Brendan O’Neill saying people should take to the streets and riot if Britait isn’t delivered received over 600 complaints no action was taken.  And as if that didn’t make it any clear, when Priti Patel was called out by Andrew Marr for smirking through an interview when a list of businesses facing bankruptcy due to Britait drew a couple of hundred complaints, the corporation issued a grovelling apology that said they should not make light of Patel’s natural facial expression, even though there’s a wealth of evidence that smirking is not her natural facial expression

Funny how the dogwhistling boneheads have nothing to say about Jess Phillips’ mental flub during an interview when she claimed she'd knocked on the doors of 25,000 doors in the previous two weeks when she meant to say 2500, yet have spent the past two years continuously howling about the one time Diane Abbott flubbed her sums in an interview.  Hmm, I wonder why the white middle-class Phillips gets better treatment than the black working-class Abbott...

Luckily for Rebekah Vardy it isn’t exactly difficult to do a disservice to the image of footballers wives, but her being caught out leaking stories that Coleen Rooney planted on her Instagram to find out who was leaking stories to The Sun wasn’t the logical defence of trying to claim that The Sun hacked Rooney’s phone as they have previous in that regard but to reel off ever-more spurious attempts at a denial and threatening legal action

In a desperate bid for attention Tracy Ann Oberman accused Jeremy Corbyn of stalking her at her place of work by posting a selfie of herself standing near a table where Corbyn, his wife and Shami Chakrabarti were having a cup of tea at a theatre in Corbyn’s constituency, and to prove she’s definitely not unhinged this soon degenerated into her getting into the usual vicious Twitter spats that occur when her behaviour is called out

Pity poor Savid Javid for having to endure the pain and humiliation of Hugh Grant not shaking his hand at a film premiere.  Of course, maybe if Javid didn’t publicly dismiss the concerns of those who have been victims of press intrusion, maybe he wouldn’t be in a situation where a victim of press intrusion such as Hugh Grant would not want to shake his hand at a film premiere...

It was finally revealed how mug salesman Steven Crowder looks borderline informed when in debates with other people.  It’s because his father prevents him from taking part in debates against opponents who will show him up as the ill-informed blowhard that he is.  Yes, really

Sentient testicle Toby Young decided this month’s dogwhistling about Meghan Markle would be how she obviously can’t be depressed as the rich and famous are never depressed, which plumbed new depths of ignorance even for him 

Britain’s most triggered man Piers Moron Morgan thought he was being clever when asking Good Morning Britain viewers to vote in a poll about whether he should be fired or not.  The look on his face when 56% of voters said he should be sacked revealed how clever he actually is... 

And of course, what would a month be without Donald Trump being utterly moronic, on this occasion saying it’s okay for the Kurds to be attacked as they didn’t help the US in World War II in spite the act that a.) They did, and b.) KURDISTAN IS NOT A COUNTRY.  But then again, he does seem to be running out of material as the best he can say about Joe Biden is “But his text messages!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”