Cobra Kai | 5.07

Johnny went home both these nights and asked zero questions.

That part of the date where they show you their weeaboo room but before taking you where the anime body pillows are

I should probably do a whole rewatch, and tbh i found the b*by subplot so dreadful (in the gothic sense) i might literally have tuned a lot of Johnny’s screentime out, but s5 seems to me the series of ck where he kinda had the least to do and the least relevance to the plot.

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3.09 | 5.08

god when TIG does those high kicks my soul leaves my fucking body

 🥴🥴🥴

#sidenote: apparently on reddit there are entire threads of straight men just dealing withbthe fact#that he is objectively daddy#ive seen ot#like the opposite of the straight mans aggressive response to ralph macchio  @macchiatosdumptruck

if you ever feel like copypasting any of those reactions….

it’s the “god he must be good in bed” that gets me.

Chozen : I've been a "bachelor" for 30 years

Chozen : but uh yeah I'm straight, of course, I love that girl, been 30 years and never said anything.

Also Chozen : but uh I took the first plane from Okinawa to LA the second the guy I once try to fight to death called me for help.

Still Chozen : I kind of uh turned into that same guys bodyguard yknow? But also I kinda ground him.

Again Chozen : I also fought some evil weirdo who was flashing a katana at me. Just for my guy. Yeah

stupid long post sorry im v tired anyway kyler is fascinating to me in so far as like. what's the game plan there. is there one? is he just this? is he that ultimate bully figure for the show, existing for everyone to hate, to have at least one person for all our (kid) heroes and villains-turned-heroes to point to as the example of what you don't want to be or become? is there a place for that character in a show that is so obsessed w/ redemption, or at the very least contextualising to a degree that begs the audience to at the very least not see them as a 'bad guy'?

in my mind so much of whether they can justify just keeping kyler as he is by the shows end boils down to what they plan to do w/ kreese, silver and kim da-eun going forward; but more specifically kim da-eun, given we've had the Contextualising treatment for silver and kreese (and the irl campaign by the writers (perhaps all in the name of fun, but wild either way) going strong). if we ultimately reach this shows end having not redeemed/contextualised kyler or kim da-eun, what exactly will this show have ended up saying abt bullies/things not always being black and white/no true heroes or villains, that won't be undercut by these two?

to base this show on the premise of taking Thee 80s (white) Bully and giving him his tragic backstory and his current anti-hero arc and say, in the show and about the show, that a one-note villain is tired and it's fun to play around in the grey etc etc no good guys no bad guys etc etc, and then give us a kyler and (potentially) a kim da-eun (who i do genuinely think has a higher probability of getting her Contextualising Treatment, given we've had glimpses) and sort of just let them exist as antagonists we are never asked to feel more for than just baseline derision.......would be wild. for so many reasons, some of which go back to the karate kid, which did, in fact, give depth to johnny lawrence (it's arguably why you can make a case for making cobra kai); it wasn't the point, but the texture was there. an investigation, however light, into where a guy like johnny draws the line, did in fact happen.

and just. this white american ppl doing martial arts show ending w/ the one (or two) unredeemed/un-contextualised characters being asian.....would be something. i hope the writers have a game plan in mind to curb this. (i feel, in my heart, if they don't, they'll always have some smarmy 'well maybe someone should give kyler the cobra kai spinoff treatment' line to fall back on). (heck, the way they keep threatening spinoffs, that might be the game plan)

w/e i can say of this shows knack for half-hearted redemption that often sidesteps really getting into exactly how shitty a characters behaviour was (for instance, if they redeem kyler, i don't see it happening in a way that acknowledges his sexual harassment of sam, and how he punished her rejection by spreading rumours about her - something it feels like the writers have forgotten even happened), i do again wonder @ what it will say for them to have created kyler (and potentially kim da-eun) to be the exceptions to their rule. i do hope they're wiser than that. i do kinda doubt that they're wiser than that. we'll see. would be racist and fly in the face of their mission statement and hilariously better exemplify the antagonist one-notedness they're trying to combat but we'll see! maybe not. maybe they've got this. maybe they won't indulge in hypocrisy and then high five and go 'NAILED IT!'

cobra kai season 5 rewrite

Alright I’m rewriting everything Johnny & Robby for the entire season.

I’m constraining this to the format of TV (no narrative prose, gotta show things on screen, limited time each episode, etc) and fitting it to the structure of the rest of the season (both plot wise, and matching the general tone and rhythm of the show, keeping the same character in the lead and not skewing screen time towards others). Against my better judgment, I will even be following the show’s lead in trying to move towards a reconciliation between Robby and Johnny despite Robby objectively being better off just cutting him out at this point.

I’m also not tackling anything else but these two. This is already enough work.

Basically: this is not just a fix-it fic. I got plenty of other ideas for fic. This is an attempt to actually achieve what the show thought it achieved, under the exact same constraints.

This is very long. You may prefer it on ao3. 10k+ below the cut:

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Cobra Kai | 5.03

I’ve connected the dots

actually genuinely thinking about that bar in Ohio is the most women we've ever seen in one place on this show, and the only time adult women have been allowed to fight

Did Jessica take Amanda to a lesbian bar?