#i'll be back with more on chewing coffee when i'm averaging more than four hours of sleep per night

[vibesaresimplyatrocious]

At some point in the comics Matt's identity becomes the world's worst kept open secret. I'm pretty sure he sues the press for this.

Would he still be able to get away with this in Jumble Sale Chic's universe considering the territory thing?

Was claiming territories that large ever outlawed or is it just taboo?

So, yes and no.

He would probably be able to get away with it in the sense that he’d probably be able to dodge a legal finding that he’s Daredevil. Like, Matt in the comics and Matt in JSC are both breaking laws as daredevil. If I remember correctly comics Matt sued the press for libel, and they weren’t able to prove he was daredevil, so they had to print a retraction. which means the evidence people had on him had to have been super fucking weak, because he beat them on a preponderance of the evidence standard and a criminal finding would be on the much higher beyond a reasonable doubt standard, so a criminal case would have next to no luck. So everyone knowing he's daredevil isn't the same as having a legal finding that he's daredevil--namely, it lessens the risk of him getting prosecuted or disbarred.

Matt in JSC has an extra hurdle to jump in the sense that he also can be identified by the scent thing, which he’s obscuring using blockers right now, and like. If he gets dragged in, they’re gonna be able to withhold blockers. He’d be clocked as the guy who smells like daredevil. I think he’d probably just rely on his fake twin brother and point the finger at Mike Murdock, identical in everything. So, Matt would probably get away with it like he did in the comics.

The problem is that claiming massive territories like Matt did is incredibly illegal in the JSC universe. So I can see them coming after Matt in JSC even harder than they did in the comics--maybe he doesn't get away with it. Like, comic Matt is committing a lot of violent crimes. But JSC Matt is committing a lot of violent crimes and is a serious threat to public safety.

And it’s basically for like, the exact reasons why hand-spun silk happened. The problem at the start of hand-spun silk isn’t that Matt didn’t have a partner; the problem is that Matt didn’t have a partner and he had a massive fucking territory filled with enemies to be possessive over. Like, the hierarchy of concerns during rut goes: 1) mate 2) territory 3) literally nothing else. If Matt had a partner, that’d be sort of where his entire attention span would stop, the way it happened with Peter. He’d just get really intense and obsessive about one specific person and his territory would only rank as important enough to break through that focus if like, fucking Fisk showed up and started being an active threat to his terf and his partner. But if there isn’t a person, then all of his attention goes to being intense and obsessive about his territory.

And taking care of a partner consists of very different things than taking care of all of Hell’s Kitchen. Like, he just wanted to be schmoopy and clingy with Peter. He will want to brutally murder Fisk and leave his body as a warning to everyone else. Claiming this big of a territory is not just the sort of thing that’s taboo to do—it’s a big ol’ sign saying “i may lose it and kill people one day”

If someone with as big of a territory as Matt doesn’t have a partner occupying their attention, there’s a huge risk of the person in question either killing or raping someone while in rut. There’s like, other considerations involved in the creation of that law—the idea of territory is pretty primitive, people have like, mortgages and leases now, also it sort of invites a turf war that’s extremely frowned upon in civilized society, so there’s a lot of incentives for society to socially and legally confine claiming territory to “property you actually own and nothing else”—but the number one consideration behind it is “hey, what if this fucking asshole loses their partner and goes off their nut and starts killing people once they rut.”

Which Matt was fully aware of at the start of hand-spun silk. He knows that he may go insane and actually kill someone. He knows these laws exist, why they exist, and what they’re trying to stop. He knew that from the start, but was borderline suicidal when he made this particular life decision and wasn’t exactly planning to make it to his next birthday party, so he thought it’d be a non-issue. This was the first time rut actually came around and he didn’t have a partner to keep him calm. So he decided his options were to 1) find someone to help him out as his partner or 2) leave Hell’s Kitchen entirely so he wouldn’t hurt anyone.

If he was just leaving like, his office unguarded, it wouldn’t be such a big deal—that’s a very small space and isn’t under big threat, it’ll be fine for a week. He won’t be super distressed over it. But Hell’s Kitchen is literally always under attack to some degree. There’s always danger going on and Matt’s going to know that in rut. He’s got a very high risk of stroke or heart attack or other stress-related complication. Option 2 is either going to kill him or leave him on his ass for a very long time after.

Comparatively, Option 1 would probably be better in every possible respect. There’s huge health benefits to spending a heat or rut with a member of the opposite sex—which like, the man could use after how many concussions he’s had. Hell’s Kitchen would be fully safe from him, and he wouldn’t have to leave it. He’d also have a negligible recovery period after a rut with a partner, so he could get back to work and Daredevil pretty much immediately after.

Except Option 1 required Matt to effectively ask someone else to have a lot of intimate, unprotected sex with him to bail him out of his own bad decision. He wasn’t willing to do that. People offered to bail him out, but, for a lot of reasons, Peter was probably the only person on the planet he’d actually be okay accepting from.

Effectively, claiming hell's kitchen was a bad enough life decision that the best possible choice matt could make as a result was to just. Take on very serious risk of death and just hope that he beats the odds and doesn't have a stroke. It's such a bad decision that it’s an extremely illegal one and--hey, it may be illegal enough that the law comes down harder on matt than it would in the comics. whether he actually gets in prison for it is gonna come down to how good he is at gaslighting the world into thinking he's not him. he'll probably ask peter for a consult.