This weekend, my husband and I caught up with the world/my tumblr and twitter friends by binge-watching Daredevil on Netflix. We enjoyed the hell out of it (haaa). There’s some unnecessary leaning on tropes, especially where some of the women are concerned (Preeti Chhibber has a great post on this), and the world doesn’t always feel fully realized in weird ways. But there’s also much to love: the Matt/Foggy friendship, the well-timed and engaging flashbacks, the gruesome and kind of beautiful fight sequences, CLAIRE. It was, as one of my friends had said, very reminiscent of Angel the Series, which we love–dark and grim without being “grimdark,” fun group dynamic, lots of delicious moral struggling.
In fact, one of the elements of the show I felt most drawn to was the way Matt Murdock deals with his moral struggles. I’m such a sucker for a superhero who’s trying to do their best with a murky sense of that means, and I’ve rarely met a hero–or any character ever–in that position and not immediately welcomed them into my poor wasted heart. But Matt is different from many of those characters in what is, to me, a really significant way: Matt is worried about what God thinks of his ethical dilemmas. Matt sorts through his morality in a confession booth, over coffee with a priest, in the shadow of a cross. Matt’s world is on fire, and he feels compelled to act and react accordingly, and he wonders what his actions and desires mean in light of his belief in a God who has a plan for him and for the world. Continue reading
YA Lit & Lipstick 