#lol this is mostly for personal recordkeeping purposes

[stoneantler]

2020 reads

A non-exhaustive roundup of the things I read this year

Novels

1.  The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela trans. Sergio Waisman 2. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephan Crane 3. The Centurions by Jean Lartéguy trans. Xan Fielding 4. The Passport by Herta Müller trans. Martin Chalmers 5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 6. Sorrow of War by Bảo Ninh trans. Phan Thanh Hao 7. All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (don’t know which translation) 8. A Day of Pleasure by Isaac Bashevis Singer (multiple translators) 9. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Poetry

1. The Country Without a Post Office by Agha Shahid Ali 2. You Cannot Shoot a Poem by Paula Closson Buck 3. Poems of Paul Celan trans. Micheal Hamburger 4. Book of Light by Lucille Clifton 5. A River Dies of Thirst by Mahmoud Darwish 6. Brutal Imagination by Cornelius Eady  7. Seam by Tarfia Faizullah 8. The Artist’s Daughter by Kimiko Hahn 9. Wintering Out and North by Seamus Heaney 10. Of Gravity and Angels by Jane Hirshfield 11. Dancing in Odessa and Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky 12. Not This Pig by Philip Levine 13. Poet In New York by Federico García Lorca trans. Pablo Medina and Mark Statman 14. Scared Violent Like Horses by John McCarthy 15. Gathering the Bones Together by Gregory Orr 16. The Collected Works of Wilfred Owen ed. C. Day Lewis 17. A Season in Hell and Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud trans. Louise Varèse 18. Mistress by Chet'la Sebree 19.  Crush by Richard Siken 20. Master of Disguises and The Lunatic by Charles Simic 21. Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith 22. Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey

Plays

1. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett 2. Henry IV by Shakespeare

Graphic Novels/Comics

1. Why Art? by Eleanor Davis 2. Stitches by David Small 3. Taproot by Keezy Young

Genre Bending/Cross Genre/Very Old Stuff

1. Song of Roland by Anonymous trans. Glyn Burgess 2. Grief Lessons by Anne Carson 3. The Iliad by Homer trans. Robert Fagles

[send-it-to-the-internet]

@rvspberryjvm @larussosbluebomberjacket - Could there be a chance that once Daniel got onto the committee, he slipped that little addendum into the charter? Looking at the actual scene, I know it starts out by saying "we the committee of 1985..." totally cementing the fact that yes, it was the actual committee of that time, but what if there's more to it?

What if Daniel is re-writing history?

Thoughts and theories...

Time - Almost three decades have passed; who knows how good recordkeeping was and currently is. Nobody even knows who those three are, only Daniel. He's got lack of familiarity on his side. Terry is not Bezo's level of infamy, but probably still a toxic rich bitch

The AVT Committee itself - Most of the current members seem younger than Daniel. I don't recall their occupations, so there's a good chance that Daniel is the most prominent member of the committee. Also... they seem to lack a budget and are more concerned about mat colors LOL

Daniel as leader? - If he is the most prominent member, there is a good chance that he wrote or can modify the charter. Daniel might also be the only one who's a hoe about it (and karate in general), so I'm not holding my breath thinking that these other members would be obsessed enough to care even if Daniel did from year to year...

Daniel's revisionist history - We know that Daniel's not the most honest storyteller, and he's not above being petty when it comes to being in control. Verbal stories are one thing but this is actual paperwork.

Daniel is a good man and honestly, this might be too damn deep. But! I love the idea that Daniel's life is so affected by what happened in 85 that in his mind, he has mostly no qualms about inserting his personal feelings disguised as rules targeting those who hurt him and making it seem that it was the committee who "said" that. And also the idea of him accidentally/unintentionally mimicking Silver's methods of manipulation tickle me.

Even in the scene above, he seems hurried, trying to get the committee to deny Johnny's request as fast as possible so they don't think too deeply about what they're actually doing (since they've probably never had to deal with a banned dojo before...). But then they saw there was actually a breathing human behind the dojo name and Johnny was convincing enough for most of the committee to give him a chance.

Daniel knows that no one else on the committee knows Kreese/Silver/Barnes, and if there was anyone that potentially could know all three... it's Johnny. The least amount of contact Johnny has with the AVTC, the better in his mind probably.

Now the questions that I have...

Who owns the building? Terry bought it, but who exactly did he give it to? Is the AVTC a non-profit and they use the building as a vendor space to raise funds, is Daniel in charge of the building? Let Terry come into s4 and be like, yo I want my building back bitch...

When did Daniel join the AVTC, was it before or after Miyagi's passing?

Do I want a situation where Terry comes back and works his way into the AVTC, slowly sinking his fangs into every single non-Daniel member leaving Daniel for last? I DUNNO MAYBE?

Does Terry come back with his own dojo? The newest, brightest and shiniest Quicksilver Dojo!

Daniel is a good man, but has shown that he can do questionable things. If he can purposely raise rent on a man who has very little, I don't think it'd be a far cry for him to insert a small line of text in a rulebook.

Idk if anyone has really talked about the second tournament like this but I can’t get it out of my mind how Terry Silver was probably responsible for EVERYTHING that happened.

First, we know that he purchased the arena for the All Valley. He used his money and power as the purchaser of the stadium to announce this at the start of the tournament, ostensibly so that the All Valley will always have a spot for the competition. But Silver did this intentionally to show how involved he is in the tournament. I think this also underscores the implication in my second point.

Because, logically speaking, he also probably was responsible for the change of the All Valley rules in terms of the previous winner only having to fight in the final match to entice Daniel to compete. Why else would the rules change so drastically from one year to the next? And why else would these rules have changed to the current iteration within CK? (We can’t blame it all on retconning when we’ve seen them retcon in CK, too, to explain the canon in the TKK movies - see Ali and the yellow Ford car mishap.)

Third, isn’t it within reason, too, to assume that the lack of safety in the second tournament was orchestrated by Silver? That the hits and moves that would have disqualified someone in the previous year are flying in this one, that the interaction between non-fighters with the fighters on the opposite team (Silver, Kreese, or Snake v. Daniel on the sidelines) are okay? I’d have to find the time stamp but I���m pretty sure one of them even shoved Daniel while he’s knocked out of bounds and like, how would that even fly? Dutch and Bobby both get disqualified for shit that would probably have been fine at the second tournament. Maybe there wasn’t a council/panel/committee like in CK (where they stated that Cobra Kai had the lifetime ban) but some people have to come together and determine the rules for a tournament, and the rules from the last tournament are being explicitly ignored. Why else is that referee not throwing Barnes out for what he’s doing and just gives him warning after warning? Are we not supposed to assume that Silver had his hand in this, too?

Like, okay, you can claim that they retconned it all — and I would shrug and say sure, okay, maybe. But meta is about reading into shit and analyzing what we do have to go off of until we’re given more information hopefully in season 4.

And honestly it makes SENSE to make these assumptions, considering that Silver bought the building and got to speak??? At the opening ceremony, where he passed out Cobra Kai shirts??? Like, who else would do that besides an announcer like in the first film if Silver doesn’t have more power over the direction of the tournament?

I argue that all of what I’m assuming he did is exactly what Silver meant when he said he was going to build Daniel up to think he was invincible and then “in front of a thousand people” realize he’s not in the most humiliating way possible. It wasn’t just about surprising Daniel with Barnes, or with Kreese being alive, but the whole entire affair of the tournament. Silver doesn’t tell Daniel his level of involvement, how he bought the stadium, and we aren’t told but I really do think it’s implied and given a lot of context that Silver also manipulated the rules and the referees. Daniel is justifiably ranting and raving during Silver’s speech, because even he sees the layers of manipulation Silver has gone through to fuck Daniel over. It’s not just “I can’t believe this guy” has the audacity to pretend to be a good sport, but also “I can’t believe this guy” bought the building, and is making announcements before the tournament when his dojo is representing a fighter in the competition, and that Silver went through all of this just to hurt Daniel.

And it really is all to hurt Daniel, and through Daniel, hurt Mr. Miyagi. Like, Daniel’s downfall is Silver’s goal. He wants to break Daniel for good and he almost does until Miyagi tells Daniel he can’t lose to fear. Daniel is on the mat, almost unable to continue because of the pain and the relentlessness and just… all of it is too much for him to handle until Miyagi supports him. It’s a surprise to me that Silver drops everything after the tournament and doesn’t continue to harass Daniel, but that’s movie ending for you.

Sometimes the easiest explanation is the one we’re given up front. Silver tells us his plan through his conversations with Kreese which are probably the only times we actually get a sense of Silver’s true motivations and his true self. Even when he’s around his staff, Silver has a front up, but it all comes down for Kreese. Like, does Daniel ever find out that Silver broke into Miyagi’s house and was stalking around outside while he got changed?

If you buy the queercoded reading of the movie and the implied sexual relationship between Daniel and Silver, the layers of manipulation are even crazier. It’s a lot. Why else is Daniel so hell bent on keeping Cobra Kai out of the Tournament? It’s not just about Kreese, nor about Johnny. Kreese being dead and Johnny not knowing Silver are enough to placate the committee and, until Daniel finds out that Kreese is alive, he has a tentative positive relationship with Johnny. Silver poured thousands (probably tens of thousands if not more; I’m not good with guesstimating costs in the ‘80s) and spent about three months of his life solely devoted to manipulating an eighteen year old boy whose only offense was winning a tournament and Mr. Miyagi humiliating Silver’s BFF when the guy couldn’t land a punch anywhere but to car windows. They went big on purpose with Silver and made him a supervillain in a sports movie to make him larger-than-life levels of scary. And so it doesn’t really surprise me nor bother me when people focus on Daniel’s trauma at Silver’s hands because no one else in Daniel’s life has fucked him over to that extent.

Anyway I don’t really see people talk about ALL that Silver has done or what it’s implied that he’s done around the Tournament in the 3rd movie so I had to write out my thoughts.