#and then after the forced kiss johnny's like 'I asserted my dominance over her just like you said sensei kreese and it didn't work!

[luci3skydi]

I repurposed the text for this from an a/b/o fic wip that I’ll probably never post, but it really goes to show how much space comics require: all three of these pages were one written paragraph originally. Which is below:

(I changed the text a little.)

Meta rant under the cut (not necessary to understand the comic):

So there’s this quick moment where Daniel offers a handshake to Johnny right after the sucker punch in the beach fight. He says, “Okay, man, now we’re even, huh?” angling for some sort of truce, but he keeps his right hand raised in a fist, protecting his face. It’s quick, but this moment says a lot about how Daniel and Johnny function within and react to the world around them. 

Daniel offers the handshake, but is that only because he’s losing? He knows the fight’s inevitable as much as Johnny: he’s got the fist up. The fist is sincere. But is the handshake? As far as Johnny’s concerned, there’s only one path forward that makes sense: they finish the fight. But Daniel offers nonviolence, equilibrium as an alternative. It’s a baffling move.

Does Daniel actually believe they can end this here? Right after he landed the first real hit? Is he dumb? Or is this just plausible deniability in front of Ali (‘see, I offered him an out! I’m the good guy!’) Is it a taunt, like Johnny probably sees it?

It reads like an ill-fated attempt to save his skin, doomed to fail, but he tries it anyway. He’s got his pride and his world view (“well, it wasn’t his, was it?”) and someone to defend, so he doesn’t back down, but he can also try to turn this around (and maintain the moral high ground) by letting Johnny decide: the hand of friendship, or the way of the fist. If Johnny chooses peace, well hallelujah! But if he chooses violence, hey, Daniel’s still a good guy. The guy who got beat on, yeah, but for standing up for what is right. Daniel has moral clarity in spades and the strength and spunk to defend it. 

Johnny really doesn’t have that same strength in identity and purpose that allows Daniel to adapt and prosper (when he’s not beset on by enemy forces) in life. Johnny’s plans at the beginning of this movie are so heartfelt and good and simple: he’s got one year to make it work, and that’s what he’s going to do, make it work. But the second he’s faced with Ali snubbing him and Daniel standing up to him, he throws all that out thoughtlessly. Because what he does and who he is are not the same in his brain. He molds himself into a Kreese clone to get friends, success, and a girlfriend. And that’s worked until recently. But his life is built on shaky foundations. (Enter Daniel “Bull in a Bonsai Shop” LaRusso.)

I think the difference between Johnny and Daniel is that Johnny only ever sees one path forward, he’s rigid. And Daniel’s flexible, he can see outside of what is supposed to happen, to what he really wants to happen. How he thinks the world could work, if people weren’t so hung up on pride and selfishness and how they’re supposed to be doing things. I think that’s why Johnny and him clash so badly in Karate Kid: Daniel is a disturbance to the natural order. He is a destabilizing element to the balance of Johnny’s universe (he questions Kreese!). He is another way to live and be happy outside of the narrow confines of masculinity and ‘might is right’ that Johnny has built himself up around. He thinks outside the box. And that makes him a freak and a twerp and an enemy. It makes him something dangerous to be crushed. 

This choice between the open hand (‘open hand’ = karate, and in this metaphor; Miyagi’s karate, violence as a last resort) and the fist (‘the way of the fist’ = Kreese’s karate, violence as first response) is really a choice between Johnny’s plans to better himself, and his need to assert his dominance and win. And he chooses violence, (self) destruction, and essentially to lose everything (and for what? Pride? Kreese and the Cobras’ approval? Somehow winning Ali back by doing exactly what she doesn’t want him to do?) 

In Cobra Kai Johnny’s a ‘I’m just giving it to you straight, this is how the real world works’ kind of guy, and one of his big character growth things is realizing that it doesn’t have to be that way, he has the power to make it different. Kreese’s Cobra Kai doesn’t have to be his Cobra Kai. He can let things go. He can fight for Robby (I mean, he doesn’t, but he could.) He can move forward and improve and even lose without it killing him. Karate Kid Johnny doesn’t have that awareness, he only has one view (Kreese’s view) and that is ‘if a man confronts you, you strike first, strike hard, no mercy, sir.” So that’s what he does. And he doesn’t think twice about it. 

So when faced with this choice he chooses poorly, and he doesn't even see it as a choice in the first place. He takes less than a second to consider it. He fails at the first hurdle, and he doesn’t even realize it.