One of my favorite creative choices in Daredevil (one of MANY many favorites) is how they set the scene for any kind of infiltration/enemy encounter involving Matt showing up at a location we the viewer have never seen. Aside from each location being stunningly unique in terms of lighting and layout, they also make this very specific artistic choice right before the kickass flips and punches start: Matt taking in his surroundings.

Every single time we're introduced to these fight locations, there's always an intentional segment in the beginning where Matt is sneaking quietly around, looking for whatever he came for: the person he's rescuing, the informant he's interrogating, et cetera. These shots are extended, usually uncut or with very few cuts. The camera lingers as it pans around a still, undisturbed scene, letting us the viewer take in as much visual information as we can and come to our own conclusions about what Matt might find or expect.

The most interesting aspect, however, is not what we can see: in fact, there's usually nothing at all happening on screen. The meat processing plant is empty, the warehouse hallways are dark, there's no people or immediate threats. These scenes are always punctuated by other details: mostly, sounds. A single Spanish news station trickling into the silence from another room, the eerily quiet rustle of blind heroin dealers at work. We're forced to focus on these sounds and subtle visuals (like the empty gun case on the same counter as processed meats in the plant from S2 E1) to figure out what exactly the threats even are.

The directors put us in Matthew's shoes.

It’s crazy how low self-worth fucks with peoples lives

Dad Jokes with Charlie Cox & Vincent D'Onofrio - Tongue-Twister

(Source)

Oh so you’re going to mirror Foggy’s death shot with Matt? Oh you’re going to have him get shot near the same place Foggy did?

Okay so first of all, fuck you. Second of all, we will meet at dawn and duel.

remember the end of season 2 when Frank's sniping ninjas off that rooftop and Matt's dramatic bitch ass doesn't have his mask/cowl on? yeah

(ok i KNOW Frank clocked that Matt was Daredevil in the courtroom, it's one of my favorite little moments from this entire immaculate series, but i made this to make my dad laugh when he first watched season 2. and it still make me chuckle. so)

That being said (re: my Heather rant) I must say that I'm really appreciating Angela and Kirsten more and more because they do feel grounded in a way Heather doesn't right now.

Like, Kirsten for one, seems like a consistently characterized person even though we don't get much of her. Her criticisms of Matt and his behavior in this episode were expressing an actual point of view that felt like her own instead of mercurially defined in opposition to Matt's. She still clearly cares what she cares about: her life, her work, her duty to her clients, and Matt and Cherry as her partner and friend. And that doesn't suddenly shift because of anything Matt says or does or thinks or what happens off screen. Kirsten is always Kirsten*.

And Kirsten is a very reasonable person as a matter of her characterization (which I enjoy, obviously), but I don't mean to imply that it's even necessary in the traditional sense. Like, Matt and Foggy and Karen often weren't/aren't always perfectly rational actors (obviously lol) and that's part of what made them great and nuanced, and I think here's where Angela*'s characterization works really well too.

Because in her short scenes she's actually very unreasonable--I mean she goes to one (1) defense attorney🧍to get him to stop a slew of corrupt cops who have already successfully killed his client, and then later, a serial killer no one has a single lead on, and then she gets upset with Matt for declining, and, well. That is not a reasonable thing to ask or expect of someone. Daredevil? Sure, but she doesn't know he's Daredevil. She just barged in and asked Steve from accounting to stop Jack the Ripper.

But it works. It works because she's a teenager, with no one else to turn to, who feels incredibly helpless in a time of great injustice, who has been violently confronted with the fact that she can't trust the authorities, and Matt's the one (1) person🧍she has to turn to who's proven a willingness and a (however limited) capacity to Help.

And in this context, in this ✨characterization✨, it doesn't matter that it's unreasonable because it's understandable. There's a consistency of thought and motivation behind her actions that make her feel like an actual person. It makes her interesting, it makes her relationship with Matt interesting, and it gives her weight in the narrative.

(*Give me MOAR. )

No matter how much you dislike your own writing, I promise you it’s better than AI

The bimbo feminism girls who love Legally Blonde really missed like the whole point of the movie. The point is that she's not a brainless bimbo. She saves the day with her knowledge of haircare, sure, but she got in the room by going to law school. You cannot reduce that movie down to "Girl knowledge saves the day!" because the perm wouldn't have mattered if she hadn't spent the entire rest of the movie working her ass off in an unrelated field. The feminist angle is that she can have girly interests and also be smart, not that having girly interests is feminist in itself