#and even from a like. marketing standpoint you're not gonna advertise your show as being about a duo and kill off half of the duo in the

[gouinisme]

i don't think our #doomed girl number one is actually gonna die anytime soon* but now my brain is going mag 40 mode like "alice, you didn't die here did you?" anyways if she ends up either already being some sort of undead/construct or turning undead at any point i'm a genius and otherwise i was just kidding teehee

[queencvbra]

okay I'm gonna talk about That Scene (the Tory & Sam fight that ended with her leaving). and I'm gonna be potentially ranty bc I have been thinking about this A Lot over the past few months and idr if I've said anything about it before on the dash. but I have so, so many problems with that scene and the argument the writers are trying to make here.

listen. I love Johnny to death okay? But he was wrong as hell about letting Tory fight, from every angle. I get the writers wanted the approach of "fighting through the pain" but this? This was not that. It was another form of Cobra Kai's whole "channel your anger and make it your power" thing which is just unhealthy. It has a historical basis, too; the whole idea of Cobra Kai since the first Karate Kid movie is that it is a western corruption of the traditional values of karate, and the most direct display of that is the fact that Cobra Kai karate is NOT karate at all, it's Tang Soo Do, and it was just called karate because karate was a marketable term in that time period, no respect given to the actual art other than how it could be turned into profit.

It's all based on an old mindset that largely cropped in the martial arts scene after western militaries (largely the United States) started incorporating various east asian martial arts techniques into their military training. That part of the show where they have Kreese learn Tang Soo Do while stationed in Korea is somewhat accurate (minus the dramatic special ops shit obviously), and my own family has actual experience with this, as this is actually how my uncle's father learned Taekwondo in the first place; he was stationed in Korea during the Vietnam war and taught martial arts. In a lot of cases these "hardass" (sarcastic) military guys would come home and take that "karate" and completely commercialize it, stripping away all of the actual ideology behind it to replace it with western militaristic ideals. Which of course fostered extremely toxic environments when the point of these martial arts was always supposed to be balance and discipline, not just an outlet to beat the shit out of people when you're angry, and that's why that mentality is present and still exists to this day, because it became *that* prevalent. This is literally the basis of Cobra Kai and part of the writers' thesis in this show was supposed to be deconstructing that, yet it seems they keep backpedaling and making it seem "cool" when they need it to be because it appeals to a certain demographic.

And yes, this stuff being in the show and reflected in a positive way DOES affect what people will do in real life, and there is empirical evidence to support that. Seeing martial arts on screen is enough to inspire people. There was a spike in the popularity of martial arts after the original Karate Kid movies. There was a spike in popularity after Bruce Lee became a star in the west. There is currently a spike now because of things like Cobra Kai and the UFC becoming so popular. But not everyone comes in with a healthy, learning mindset, and that happens a lot more when the *unhealthy* mindset is advertised and encouraged on screen instead of challenged. My uncle has kicked students out before because it was easy to tell that all they wanted to do was beat people up and try to mimic their favorite MMA stars. I think Stingray is genuinely the perfect caricature of that phenomenon irl and the writers really cooked when they wrote him, because there really are people who act like that, who want to learn martial arts to feel "cool" and "powerful" for all the wrong reasons.

And I think, from the standpoint of the writing itself, it's a detriment and unfair to Johnny's character that even after all this time, he still hasn't unlearned this mindset and is actively advocating for it when the whole point over the course of this show was supposed to be showing that this is a horrible and unhealthy mindset; it's clear they regressed him to that again just to put him into conflict with Daniel once more and sow more dissent into the group again and give Tory a reason to walk out. In a martial arts setting, you should never take out your anger on another person, and a sensei especially should never allow or advocate for that to happen. I don't care if this is just a show, this is such a stupid argument to make from a writer's perspective and also potentially harmful for any impressionable dumbasses who think they can just go learn martial arts so they can enact their violent fantasies on others as an anger outlet. Mutual trust is such an important thing to have with anyone you spar, and these people join with the intent to purposefully abuse that trust so they can feel like they're a bunch of tough guys. Focus is such an important aspect in martial arts training and discipline, too, and if your head is clouded (especially by that much anger) you are more likely to not only hurt your sparring partner / opponent but also yourself. Allowing that would have been pure negligence and unhealthy for those students in more ways than one.

Because what would have happened if they let Tory fight Sam like that? Nothing good. It wouldn't have helped her. It wouldn't have made her feel better. Her mom fucking died. That much grief and anger and sadness is not something you can just punch away. Sure, if you're angry and you show up to class upset, you can take it to the bag and let out some steam, but that is NOT the same thing as directing that towards another person. She would have hurt Sam. (She was already hurting Sam and they were barely into the match!) Worst case scenario, she could have potentially *killed* Sam. Do you know how easy it is to critically injure or even kill someone by accident? You could put out an eye, break a jaw, give them a concussion, hell you could even get brain damage from something like getting choked out for too long. This is why you train for *safety* first, and everything else is secondary. That's always been my problem with how much shit gets allowed in the show. And I don't mean Johnny's silly OSHA violations. Like, it's goofy, it's funny to see on television, I don't mind *that*, but after so many seasons it's kind of a nuisance to see when it gets taken THIS far, beyond the jokes and funny scenarios and into something serious where the same mindset carries over.

Ultimately, from the standpoint of what actually would have been the right thing to do in that situation, this is not a "different perspectives" thing. There is *no* argument to make here, and the writers trying to pull the same "well they both have a point" bullshit again is wrong, because no they fucking don't, and I'm tired of this being the basis of every single conflict between Johnny and Daniel in the series. Sometimes things ARE just black and white. And also, purely from the perspective of Tory's character development and arc? She doesn't need yet another person telling her to hold on to her anger and center her karate around those emotions. She needs someone to show her that it's okay to let it go.