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avocadoatlawCharacter Name: Matt Murdock
Journal: avocadoatlaw
Canon: Marvel's Daredevil
Canon Point: End of season 2
Species: Human
Age: 31 (This is a best guess based on actor age and canon indicators)
History: Daredevil Wiki
Personality: Matt is confident, kind and great with words - but despite his easy to know persona, he's actually extremely private and somewhat difficult to know. This is due in part to protecting a secret identity, but also as a guard to his heart. He's probably too emotionally involved in the lives of others, and the problems with his community, for his own good, so that coupled with his obsessive desire to see justice done it's not a surprise that he has some inner struggle when it comes to being a vigilante by night and keeping his loved ones safe from by day.
He's highly intelligent, but reckless when angry. While this comes across as passion in the court room, it gets him into a lot of trouble as a vigilante - often leaving him near dead when he bites off more than he can chew. His stubbornness does nothing to help that issue, but thankfully an ability to take a beating (a gift both from his prize fighter father and, according to him, Catholic guilt) keeps him at least mostly alive when he gets himself into bad situations.
While Matt keeps most people at a distance, he's also a lonely person who craves companionship. He's flirty and charismatic and great at getting people interested in his company, but getting past the surface is always the greater challenge. Many many people believe they know Matt Murdock much better than they do, and in a perfect world he would let them be right. But between his fear of his own violent nature, and his bad history of losing loved ones, that perfect day hasn't come.
In general, he means well, and his moral compass is pointed the right way, but between an almost selfish desire to be altruistic and too much pride to back down from anything, he makes enemies of the worst kind of people, and has trouble keeping meaningful friendships with the best kind. Unfortunately he recognizes this weakness in himself, and tends to punish himself by back away from people who try to care about him, making it even harder to build an honest and meaningful relationship with him.
Due party to his Catholicism, and party to his own moral code, Matt has made a very conscious decision not to kill. It's a very thin line where he refuses to be the judge of life and death, while he is perfectly willing to beat someone within an inch of their life and then deliver them to the police. It speaks to a rage that he very purposely keeps in tight check, as he could easily kill if he let himself. His college relationship with Elektra Natchios demonstrates this control over himself quite clearly as her free and reckless spirit bring out arguably the world in Matt, because it enables him to act upon his own darker urges.
It's only during an instance of breaking and entering, where he's given a choice to take the life of that man that killed his father, that he finally draws what becomes his line, separating himself from Elektra in the process. Yet still, when reintroduced to her years later, he finds himself falling into the same behavior where he chooses to fight alongside her at the expense of his job, his responsibilities and his friends. He tells himself and and his best friend Foggy that it's because he has to, and while he is almost physically incapable of not getting involved in something if he thinks it needs doing, he also enjoys this faster more dangerous lifestyle he experiences when he works with Elektra more than he is willing to admit. As this continues, Matt finally admits to himself that he's not good at being Daredevil without allowing the rest of his life to suffer, and putting the people he cares about in danger. He'd managed it somewhat through the ordeal with crime lord Wilson Fisk, but only because there was enough time in the day for him to assist his own legal goals using his night job. When there's not time for both, Matt has a tendency to lose control of his day life. Nothing illustrates this better than the Frank Castle trial.
When Matt is introduced to Frank Castle later in his life, a vigilante who kills violent criminals, it brings his entire code into question. Matt truly believes that while it's okay as a vigilante to help capture criminals, it's up to the law and to god to decide their death. Yet there's a part of him that's highly defensive about the idea of Frank, and the fact that while the means are different, he ultimately stands for the same things he does. Matt doesn't want to admit this to himself, as it brings all of his own choices into question as taking lives is the only difference between them.
So when he hears that Frank could be facing death, he decides that while he doesn't agree with what Frank is doing, he doesn't want him to be killed for it. Because of this, and an interest by his then girlfriend Karen Page, he gets Nelson and Murdock involved in the trial, despite Foggy's reservations. Then, because of his distraction with Elektra, and his tunnel vision for whatever part of his life he deems most vital, Matt is immediately MIA on the case, leaving everything to Foggy and Karen, despite all his best intentions. The issue is that Matt is terrible about spreading himself too thin, and as previously stated, is basically incapable of not doing something he feels needs doing. But the result is almost always that he does a better job of being Daredevil than Matt Murdock despite how much he'd love to be happy just being Matt Murdock.
Powers & Abilities: While his loss of sight is complete, the chemicals that blinded him as a child also heightened his other senses to a superhuman level, giving him what can be best described as radar senses. Through smell/sound/taste/touch he's able to create a 360 degree mental picture of his environment. This ability along with the combat training he received from his blind mentor make him an almost super-human opponent, as he has near perfect situational awareness and the skill to use it to his advantage. He can hear heartbeats, making him a human lie detector.
Misc: Nope!
Sample: There was a part of Matt that didn't believe Elektra was dead.
He'd been there. He'd touched to her grave. He'd felt her heart stop. Yet somehow, the entire thing left him with a pit in his stomach like when you're waiting for a call you don't want, or maybe one you do. He'd paced his apartment for hours, a restlessness he couldn't tame after parting with Stick. After returning to the world from the fight. There was still the Hand - he had no doubts he hasn't heard the last of them despite the loss of Elektra. Of their goal. But the immediacy was gone and it left a buzzing in his mind.
He'd let Frank go. Was that justice? He still wasn't sure. He'd helped him. Saved him, probably. But at the same time, the man was a killer, and Matt couldn't entirely convince himself that not hunting him down to stop him meant that he was making the judgment call that it was okay. That on some level he was an accomplice. The idea of it made his stomach turn in a very different way than thinking about Elektra.
Yet here he was. Hunting no one. Saving no one. Matt Murdock, the out of work lawyer alone in his apartment.
Eventually his thoughts turned to Foggy and to Karen. He wanted to believe that his friendship with Foggy was salvageable while at the same time he knew he was bad for him. Even knowing Matt anymore felt like a mistake. Foggy had probably made the best move in his life separating himself and moving on to greener pastures, and yet Matt missed him all the time. Every day. Foggy knew what Matt was, who he was, and he had made his choice. Karen had never made that choice.
As the buzzing in his head begins to slow, he wondered if it was thoughts of Karen that calmed him. He suspected it probably was. Karen who'd stuck by him despite all of his failings for so long, and without even knowing why. There was an unfairness to it. For both of them. Selfishly he wanted her to know him. To know all of him. He let himself believe that if she knew, she would understand in a way that somehow Foggy didn't. Which he knew was wrong, because Foggy did understand. But as he felt his center returning to him, he decided that it didn't matter. It didn't matter that he wasn't certain telling her could make her forgive him, or if knowing would even change anything at all. He'd spent their entire relationship with her only half knowing him, and if there was even a glimmer of hope for them, she had to know him entirely.
Know him the way Elektra had.
He took a deep, resolved breath and went to find his mask.
Journal: avocadoatlaw
Canon: Marvel's Daredevil
Canon Point: End of season 2
Species: Human
Age: 31 (This is a best guess based on actor age and canon indicators)
History: Daredevil Wiki
Personality: Matt is confident, kind and great with words - but despite his easy to know persona, he's actually extremely private and somewhat difficult to know. This is due in part to protecting a secret identity, but also as a guard to his heart. He's probably too emotionally involved in the lives of others, and the problems with his community, for his own good, so that coupled with his obsessive desire to see justice done it's not a surprise that he has some inner struggle when it comes to being a vigilante by night and keeping his loved ones safe from by day.
He's highly intelligent, but reckless when angry. While this comes across as passion in the court room, it gets him into a lot of trouble as a vigilante - often leaving him near dead when he bites off more than he can chew. His stubbornness does nothing to help that issue, but thankfully an ability to take a beating (a gift both from his prize fighter father and, according to him, Catholic guilt) keeps him at least mostly alive when he gets himself into bad situations.
While Matt keeps most people at a distance, he's also a lonely person who craves companionship. He's flirty and charismatic and great at getting people interested in his company, but getting past the surface is always the greater challenge. Many many people believe they know Matt Murdock much better than they do, and in a perfect world he would let them be right. But between his fear of his own violent nature, and his bad history of losing loved ones, that perfect day hasn't come.
In general, he means well, and his moral compass is pointed the right way, but between an almost selfish desire to be altruistic and too much pride to back down from anything, he makes enemies of the worst kind of people, and has trouble keeping meaningful friendships with the best kind. Unfortunately he recognizes this weakness in himself, and tends to punish himself by back away from people who try to care about him, making it even harder to build an honest and meaningful relationship with him.
Due party to his Catholicism, and party to his own moral code, Matt has made a very conscious decision not to kill. It's a very thin line where he refuses to be the judge of life and death, while he is perfectly willing to beat someone within an inch of their life and then deliver them to the police. It speaks to a rage that he very purposely keeps in tight check, as he could easily kill if he let himself. His college relationship with Elektra Natchios demonstrates this control over himself quite clearly as her free and reckless spirit bring out arguably the world in Matt, because it enables him to act upon his own darker urges.
It's only during an instance of breaking and entering, where he's given a choice to take the life of that man that killed his father, that he finally draws what becomes his line, separating himself from Elektra in the process. Yet still, when reintroduced to her years later, he finds himself falling into the same behavior where he chooses to fight alongside her at the expense of his job, his responsibilities and his friends. He tells himself and and his best friend Foggy that it's because he has to, and while he is almost physically incapable of not getting involved in something if he thinks it needs doing, he also enjoys this faster more dangerous lifestyle he experiences when he works with Elektra more than he is willing to admit. As this continues, Matt finally admits to himself that he's not good at being Daredevil without allowing the rest of his life to suffer, and putting the people he cares about in danger. He'd managed it somewhat through the ordeal with crime lord Wilson Fisk, but only because there was enough time in the day for him to assist his own legal goals using his night job. When there's not time for both, Matt has a tendency to lose control of his day life. Nothing illustrates this better than the Frank Castle trial.
When Matt is introduced to Frank Castle later in his life, a vigilante who kills violent criminals, it brings his entire code into question. Matt truly believes that while it's okay as a vigilante to help capture criminals, it's up to the law and to god to decide their death. Yet there's a part of him that's highly defensive about the idea of Frank, and the fact that while the means are different, he ultimately stands for the same things he does. Matt doesn't want to admit this to himself, as it brings all of his own choices into question as taking lives is the only difference between them.
So when he hears that Frank could be facing death, he decides that while he doesn't agree with what Frank is doing, he doesn't want him to be killed for it. Because of this, and an interest by his then girlfriend Karen Page, he gets Nelson and Murdock involved in the trial, despite Foggy's reservations. Then, because of his distraction with Elektra, and his tunnel vision for whatever part of his life he deems most vital, Matt is immediately MIA on the case, leaving everything to Foggy and Karen, despite all his best intentions. The issue is that Matt is terrible about spreading himself too thin, and as previously stated, is basically incapable of not doing something he feels needs doing. But the result is almost always that he does a better job of being Daredevil than Matt Murdock despite how much he'd love to be happy just being Matt Murdock.
Powers & Abilities: While his loss of sight is complete, the chemicals that blinded him as a child also heightened his other senses to a superhuman level, giving him what can be best described as radar senses. Through smell/sound/taste/touch he's able to create a 360 degree mental picture of his environment. This ability along with the combat training he received from his blind mentor make him an almost super-human opponent, as he has near perfect situational awareness and the skill to use it to his advantage. He can hear heartbeats, making him a human lie detector.
Misc: Nope!
Sample: There was a part of Matt that didn't believe Elektra was dead.
He'd been there. He'd touched to her grave. He'd felt her heart stop. Yet somehow, the entire thing left him with a pit in his stomach like when you're waiting for a call you don't want, or maybe one you do. He'd paced his apartment for hours, a restlessness he couldn't tame after parting with Stick. After returning to the world from the fight. There was still the Hand - he had no doubts he hasn't heard the last of them despite the loss of Elektra. Of their goal. But the immediacy was gone and it left a buzzing in his mind.
He'd let Frank go. Was that justice? He still wasn't sure. He'd helped him. Saved him, probably. But at the same time, the man was a killer, and Matt couldn't entirely convince himself that not hunting him down to stop him meant that he was making the judgment call that it was okay. That on some level he was an accomplice. The idea of it made his stomach turn in a very different way than thinking about Elektra.
Yet here he was. Hunting no one. Saving no one. Matt Murdock, the out of work lawyer alone in his apartment.
Eventually his thoughts turned to Foggy and to Karen. He wanted to believe that his friendship with Foggy was salvageable while at the same time he knew he was bad for him. Even knowing Matt anymore felt like a mistake. Foggy had probably made the best move in his life separating himself and moving on to greener pastures, and yet Matt missed him all the time. Every day. Foggy knew what Matt was, who he was, and he had made his choice. Karen had never made that choice.
As the buzzing in his head begins to slow, he wondered if it was thoughts of Karen that calmed him. He suspected it probably was. Karen who'd stuck by him despite all of his failings for so long, and without even knowing why. There was an unfairness to it. For both of them. Selfishly he wanted her to know him. To know all of him. He let himself believe that if she knew, she would understand in a way that somehow Foggy didn't. Which he knew was wrong, because Foggy did understand. But as he felt his center returning to him, he decided that it didn't matter. It didn't matter that he wasn't certain telling her could make her forgive him, or if knowing would even change anything at all. He'd spent their entire relationship with her only half knowing him, and if there was even a glimmer of hope for them, she had to know him entirely.
Know him the way Elektra had.
He took a deep, resolved breath and went to find his mask.
