#idek if u meant to send me this but it was fun t b h

[ssaalexblake]

What's your opinion on Karen Page? AJAKSKKSKS

I have some random half formed opinions on Karen, and the Daredevil narrative for her in general. And maybe how the defenders writing didn’t really mesh with how she’d been portrayed before, and if it did, then it showed her in a vaguely hypocritical light. 

Also, she’s a legit straight up murderer and it’s kind of vaguely hilarious in an ironic way that she now works for a living digging up other peoples dirt, because she honestly wants to see justice done. She’s not somebody who wakes up in the morning thinking something malevolent, she’s by all accounts, somebody who has aspirations of goodness. Her moral grayness her so much more interesting in that light, tbh. 

(but, like, honestly, I neither like nor dislike Karen, she doesn’t particularly grab me but i don’t you know, hate her or anything, i’m just personally not captivated). 

Anyway, I’ve been listening to a podcast lately hosted by 2 bona fide behavioural analysts (jim clemente and Laura Richards) and honestly, hearing them talk about it, while simultaneously watching S2 of Daredevil, was thought provoking. 

We know that Karen murdered a man, afterwards she was traumatized by his actions (the kidnapping and threats against her) and that she was even more traumatized by her own actions, she just gunned him down, The End. The show could have painted this in a number of ways, but imo it clearly painted this as a murder, to be honest. I mean, he was victimising her at the time, but this shock killing was not narratively described as a valiant bid for freedom where a woman shoots herself out of a hostage situation. It’s painted as Karen shooting him, and her being left alone in a room with a gun and a blood soaked body. 

She’s terrified she’d get found out. I haven’t seen that season for a long time now, but also, i think it’s relevant that a chunk of her fear after this was fear about what Fisk would do if he found out she did it, and for her own safety thereafter, rather than the action of killing a man.

In that light, fashforward to season 2 and the intro of Frank Castle. Karen is the character in the entire show who is the most okay with Frank. She sees Frank’s honour code and understands it, she isn’t afraid of him harming her despite him being genuinely terrifying. She also isn’t nearly as bothered by his methodology as the others. Frank believes killing the wrongdoers is the apt solution to Hell’s Kitchen’s problems (and anywhere, really). 

It’s interesting, because, throughout the whole time Nelson and murdock are defending Castle, she is trying to convince Matt and Foggy of the merits to his actions. She’s trying to justify it. This is why I mentioned the podcast, because in it, they explain that people who have thoughts and feelings that are generally considered by society to be abhorrent or wrong (and i mean, actual fucked up things, not shitty bigotry) they will attempt to find the same behaviour in others they trust and respect, to prove to themselves that they’re not Bad™. 

Karen, with both Foggy and Matt, the two she is closest to in Hell’s Kitchen (in the world really), BOTH get this line of questioning from her, where she tries to get them to admit that hey! maybe killing bad people is okay and fine. This, to me, seems that Karen is looking for some kind of absolution. Not the kind where she denounces what she did, or what Frank did, but the kind where others prove her ‘correct’ and absolve her of her sins by justifying them. The kind where she doesn’t have to feel bad or be in trouble for her actions. 

In the end, Matt and Foggy, having no clue all the while that this is personal to her, brush off every justification she gives, both of them basically going ‘what the hell! no! bad!’. Because while matt is a vigilante, he’s also one who does not approve of being judge jury and executioner. Foggy was even less likely than Matt to play part to that line of thinking, because he thinks Matt goes too far, let alone Castle. Them doing this, rejecting her without even knowing it, leads Karen smack into the figurative arms of Frank Castli, who is obviously intimidating to her, and goes too far in her eyes, and freaks her out, but he’s the  one she’s most in tune with. Her philosophy is far closer to his than it is to Matt and Foggy. Frank even says it himself, he knows she’d have taken the shot, she means business, even if it’s lethal. 

I have no idea what to say about Karen and Matt. Narratively it’s never made sense to me, and i honestly thought that her reaction in the defenders to him needed a hell of a lot of background filling out between daredevil s2 & this show to make sense. It needed background we weren’t given, but Karen’s /always/ been pro daredevil, we needed a filler to tell us what happened in that gap of time to cause her to treat matt’s vigilantism as an addiction. Foggy, Foggy it made perfect sense because there was background, with Karen who had always been pro devil, it needed explaining. As it is, it kind of came across as Karen being pro vigilante as long as it’s not her friend, which is kind of harsh? It can ruin somebody else’s life but not somebody who i like? Which they could have done, but i’ve also never really thought of karen as selfish in that type of sense, either. 

But, honestly, i feel like the main facet of Karen’s character, her absolute defining trait, is curiosity. 

Karen’s curiosity knows no bounds, and i mean that. No bounds. Karen got into trouble in the first place in episode one because she saw something and didn’t let it go (she continues to not let it go the whole season, even when she’s warned, even when it’s dangerous, through everything). It’s interesting, because Karen’s curiosity doesn’t appear to have much more ground  than wanting to know things, she’s a Ravenclaw type, you know? Her curiosity isn’t really tied to morality, or special interest, he is just curious. 

Unfortunately, her curiosity isn’t necessarily tempered by a hell of a lot of forethought. She drags Ben to a nursing home because she dug something up, and when i say drag, i mean lies and tricks!!! Ben there with her, being pretty damn underhand tbh, i mean, it was low. And then Ben’s name ends up in the log book and then because of that, Ben is murdered. 

That was an example of Karen being driven by her curiosity, bullheaded, and not thinking it though. In S2, the person she gets in trouble at the end of the season is herself. She does it again. Curiosity with no heed to consequence. She is merely lucky Frank saved her. 

I mean, narratively, Karen ending up a reporter is perfect for her as a person, i’m not surprised we ended up there. She is bullheadedly curious, she is tough as nails (hello that kidnapping by the hand), and will legit do any dangerous thing to get her story. She also is curious for curiosity’s sake, so her boss doesn’t really run the risk of her only researching one thing or causing a moral shitstorm. 

I’ve never really seen the show as portraying Karen as a moral goodness or whatever cliches come with the blonde noncombatant tropes in these types of stories, to me, Karen’s never really been the goodness personified in the show. To me, that is Foggy. I like it, to be honest, because lets be real, the blonde haired blue eyed ~angelic looking woman, not being the epitome of goodness??? 

I wouldn’t call Karen moral, i would call Karen curious, with aspirations of goodness. She wants to be a good person, but she’s thoughtless and chaotic and sometimes just kind of… amoral. No other real way to put it. I’ve also never really seen the  show as portraying her as the goodness centre, i mean, i can see how the other characters would think it about her, but the audience? We know more about her than them. 

Foggy and Matt don’t know she killed somebody. Her boss doesn’t know that. The stuff with Ben? that’s for us to know, too. We’re the keepers of Karen’s secrets, not the other characters. As such, the way they treat her as special and good in the show doesn’t bug me too much, from their pov, it probably looks that way, it’d annoy me if she got a good job and the show tried to tell me it’s because she’s a ~good~ person and deserved it, but imo, the show has not done that. 

Her ~aspirations of goodness are all the more interesting, imo, because she does not appear to have them as some kind of attempt at penance. That would make it redemption, or an attempt at it. She’s not trying to redeem herself. 

tldr, , i think Karen is curious, chaotic, wants so hard to be good, but finds herself coming up short and is scared of it. I also think the only person in the universe who accurately has her number is Frank. And also, that even if Matt’s vigilantism hadn’t destroyed their personal relationship, that in the end, the total polar opposite creeds they both have would have done the same thing in the end.