#I will never ask TIG or Ralph any of this... but I will forever wonder...

[variousqueerthings]

look I know we’ve been through this, we’ve been over it, we’ve unpicked it at length, but let me try and take off my queercoding hat for a moment (”try”)

Desire, Devotion, Discipline

Desire and Devotion to what? 

To karate? 

I “Desire” karate, I’m “Devoted” to karate... it’s... an odd concept... Desire in particular isn’t something you’d typically use in this context, desire... to get stronger? a devotion to karate techniques? 

and then that phrasing “the first two I can’t give you, the last one I can, but you have to be willing to receive it”

that’s... I mean, it’s Silver teaching him discipline so he can enact his desire to get stronger, because he’s devoted to karate. I’m guessing this must be the reasoning behind that phrasing? 

Which, if that was the intention, that takes away Silver’s effect on Daniel/makes it entirely about karate as a non-metaphorical concept (as in, karate gives Daniel safety, strength, a home, a sense of self, peace).

It kind of stands in contradiction to the fact that it’s not really about karate as a sport, it’s about how Silver corrupts the thing that makes Daniel feel safe, strong, protected and replaces it with him.

So it doesn’t really make sense, except for as a stretched attempt to try and find a non-sexual context for those words (or, trying to figure out just how heterosexual, cisgender and in no way ever come across kink/bdsm as a concept the people making this movie were/the showrunners have got to be in order to not see a sexual subtext to those words). 

Which leaves... Silver. Obviously.

Silver isn’t really asking Daniel to pour his desire and devotion into karate

He’s telling him to desire and be devoted to him, right? He wants to destroy Daniel and he wants him to thank him for it (textually).

And okay, we’re still without the sexual subtext for the moment, that still makes more sense as a reading, because Silver is trying to make Daniel submit to him/trying to own Daniel (this from the titles from the soundtrack) and to do that Daniel has to give over to him completely. Not to the nebulous concept of karate, which he already practises, but to Silver as his teacher/mentor, which again, explicit in the way Silver bullies/coerces him into dropping Miyagi-do teachings.

which Daniel then at the last moment doesn’t do - he doesn’t give himself over/give his desire and devotion wholly to him, hence Silver’s heel-turn, impulsive beating up of him, when the original plan was to wait for the tournament (I’m giving this movie too much credit, indulge me). We all wonder what would have happened if Daniel had just continued down this path.. a different kind of destruction, for sure

Queercoding hat back on (*phew*):

Once you’ve put “desire” and “devotion” into the context of a person, it’s that much harder to argue that there isn’t at least subtext in that phrasing, regardless of gender. 

And once you’ve agreed that karate is a metaphor for all kinds of things in this verse, then adding that sexual component - specifically as a corruption of everything that draws Daniel to karate in the first place - and the fact that it’s a man enacting this onto a boy riiight on the cusp of manhood...

Terry Silver is grooming Daniel, is what I’m saying here. 

Again, nothing new, but since he’s the dark side to everything that Daniel already feels... reading Daniel as bisexual is just... it’s a very in-your-face read (if you’ve got a swanky queercoding hat on)

And here comes the obligatory “if this were a man and a girl it’d be so much more obvious” disclaimer (Terry Silver tells “Danielle” to desire him... horrifying, very sexual...), but you really do wonder, what possible other read can come out of this just because Daniel’s a boy

Boys can’t be groomed, I...?

I just

I need to know what other alternative reading there can be, what is, say, a heterosexual cisgender audience member who, let’s say, is familiar with tropes, but who’s never heard of queercoding before going to get out of that? 

He’s giving Daniel Discipline (textually), so that Daniel can enact his Desire and Devotion onto him. He is teaching Daniel how to show his desire and devotion to him!

this is

can somebody give me a possible alternate reading of this. I’m thinking there’s got to be something that I’ve missed, because this is barely even a read, this is like.

the shallow end of the pool, this is picking up a glaringly shiny seashell of information right where the tide hits the beach on which it says: An adult man tricks a young boy to meet him after dark without his parental figure knowing and hurts and manipulates him, while convincing him that he has the boy’s best interests at heart.

And the words he uses to convince the boy to trust him are Desire, Devotion, Discipline

it’s not very subtle

anyway, give me alternative reads of this, I want them, silly and serious, I want to know what the cisgender, heterosexual, non-kinky (or ever heard of kink) viewer component might be thinking at that moment