#or. it technically is but it's a completely different story

[kk-ckffawards]

Cobra Kai Fanfiction Awards 2025 - Final Voting Master List

Hello to all our badass Miyagi-Dos, Cobras, and Seikai Taikais!

All of final round voting polls are officially up and waiting for you to vote for your favorite fics from 2024 (through to the end of Feb 2025).

You can vote for up to three stories per category, but you don’t have to vote in all of them!  Skip through the different sections of the poll to get to the one(s) you want.  

Please submit only 1 round of votes. We understand if accidents happen (forgetting if you voted, mis-voting) but please note that you should receive an email after you submit your vote that will allow you to make edits. If we receive multiple votes that are clearly not a technical or forgotten mistake we will discard all votes from the person trying to vote multiple times due to the amount of work it takes to decipher and clean up the votes for our team. If you have any questions feel free to reach out. For your convenience all the polls and the categories can be found here.

Voting Final Round Day 1

Hawk/Eli

Seikai Taikai arc character

Self-Insert/Reader

Action

Gen Fic

Best Tugboat (Moon/Piper, Amanda/Anoush, Dutch/Jimmy, Daniel /Chozen, Amanda/Carmen, Jimmy/Jenny, Sam/Demetri, Amanda/Johnny, Robby/Shawn, Daniel/Kreese, Daniel/Dutch, Bobby/Daniel, Tommy/Susan, Aisha/Tory, Daniel/Kumiko, Bobby/Barbara, Johnny/Chozen, Terry Silver/Wolf, Johnny Lawrence/Wolf, Axel/Samantha, Devon/Kenny)

Best Novella (10k+)

Best Reader

Day 2 Final Round of Voting

Best Johnny (The Karate Kid-era)

Best Chozen

Best Demetri

Best Amanda

Best Event/Challenge Fic

Best Romance

Best Frigate (Johnny/Ali, Johnny/Bobby, Daniel/Ali, Miguel/Tory, Kenny/Anthony, Miguel/Hawk, Hawk/Moon, Demetri/Yasmine, Johnny/Dutch, Hawk/Sam, Robby/Hawk)

Best Ficlet (101-999 words)

VOTING FINAL DAY 3

Best Original Character

Best Terry Silver

Best Samantha LaRusso

Best Anthony LaRusso

Best Comedy

Best Lawrusso

Best Completed Longfic (45K+ words)

Best Multichapter

Voting Final Round Day 4

Best Daniel LaRusso (from The Karate Kid era)

Best OG Cobras

Best Tory Nichols

Best Carmen Diaz

Best Holiday-themed fic

Best Fluff

Best Cruiser (30+ fics)

Best Drabble

Final Round of Voting - Day 5

Best Johnny (Cobra Kai)

Best Mr Miyagi

Best Miguel

Best Kenny

Best Returning Writer

Best Character Study

Best Whump

Best Platonic Dynamic

Best Series

Voting Final Round Day 6

Best Daniel (Cobra Kai)

Best John Kreese

Best Robby Keene

Best New Writer

Best AU

Best Smut

Best Polyam

Best Oneshot

Polls will be open until July 20th at 8pm Central Time.

Once we have all the votes, the results will be tallied, and the stories with the top votes will go through to the next and final voting round to decide the winners of the most prestigious (and, so far, the only) fanfiction awards in the Cobra Kai fandom.  The awards ceremony will take place in our Discord Server, on a date that we will announce soon.

Happy voting!

[thewindbornebard1]

I have zero clue on how to reply to this, btw, sorry. I've never actually made a post before because I've been too nervous 💀 I thought it was the chat bubble but it looked like it would reply to my post T_T

I do know about that with Enkanomiya! I think it's very interesting, and I want to know more. I also did look into that book, because I was looking into Istaroth and Venti at the time, and found it.

The thing is, even though its possible Venti has lied about his strength(tho idk, its possible Mondstadt's faith isn't as strong as it could be despite the church, have no idea, tho I think there are some with strong belief), I don't think he lied about his origins as a wisp and not being a god. Just me though! I think we do need more about him, but I don't wanna completely throw out that piece of his story either and say he was lying about all of it.

I still think he and Istaroth are technically 2 different people, but I can see Venti having been a part of her once. Gods seem to have a weird habit of having children in strange and unusual ways which could be the case here? Just taking parts of yourself and letting them split off and become their own thing just doesn't seem all that unusual for gods atp. Which ig could be the 'both her and yet not her' thing, cause he isn't her, but he was once part of her.

This was definitely interesting to read, I am a huge Venti fan and I adore him so Venti and Istaroth lore I already expect to go hand in hand but I also want Venti to be his own person at the same time so I like to believe he isn't Istaroth :')

(Also I hope you can tell me if I replied correctly or if I needed to do something else, it was super confusing.)

Loving the new lore drop with the recent interlude teaser, but now I'm especially curious about Istaroth.

I don't personally think Venti is Istaroth. They share VAs but I feel like that's more of a sign of their connection more than anything else. None of their lore even hints at it, and Venti himself has stated he never had a human form and wasn't a god of anything, just a single thread of the Thousand Winds. But it's undeniable that Istaroth and Venti have a connection, we already knew this, which is what their lore actually says - I just wish we knew what precisely it was.

I get the impression it's quite a loose parent and child relationship. But I could be wrong. Whatever their connection, I do believe they are two separate beings. Them being the same person just feels like a huge plot hole to me personally from what we already know.

[veritablenonsense]

sctir is such a good story if you're obsessed with worldbuilding Implications because yoojin is also Constantly thinking about that stuff. He's just a (previously) regular guy who has to live in this weird urban portal fantasy world so he cares about stuff like tax brackets and zoning laws and fair contract-writing and alternative uses of everyone's crazy supernatural powers. I can't count the number of times I started thinking "wait, couldn't you-" only to have it answered the next sentence. When his internal monologue mentioned dungeon resets being used for public waste disposal i practically cheered

[zipmode]

New guysss ill try and write more abt them at some point

[papermonkeyism]

Oh, shoot, bedtime somehow sneaked upon me so this is all I had time to do, but I had to try and doodle Xaranthras next to his boss.

Still figuring out clothing, but specially how much of it Xaranthras should be wearing, considering his size (better at retaining heat), fur (same) and definetely not hominid anatomical features like proportions and the hump. Not gonna fit human collars on that neck.

Gotta continue this later, but I just had to doodle this out of my head.

[heyclickadee]

Okay, but what about Crosshair’s sacrifice? Because he makes one, and it’s a doozy.

He’s being tortured. He takes advantage of the one lull in the pain and attention from the guards to break out. He could try to escape, whatever Emerie says, but he doesn’t. He knows he’s being held by a monster who sees him as property. He knows he’s a non-person in the empire’s eyes. He knows that they’re just going to keep hurting him until he talks, and still. He throws his one chance at getting away from all of that—maybe even his one chance at ever seeing his family again and making things right, as far as he knows at the time—to send a message and warn the batch about what’s coming.

And then, far from talking once he’s recaptured, he determines that he’s going to keep silent and protect his family, believing at the time that Hemlock is going to torture him to death if he does.

It’s a sacrifice every bit as heroic and selfless as what Tech does in Plan 99. What’s more, Crosshair maybe has an actual choice where Tech doesn’t. Tech is going to fall one way or another, his real choice is just making sure the others don’t take that risk with him; Crosshair is told the suffering will stop if he just tells Hemlock how to find Omega. And he still chooses to stay quiet because he wants to keep the people he loves safe.

But it doesn’t work.

Now, I’d argue that Tech’s sacrifice doesn’t work either, or that it’s at least not exactly an unambiguous success. He gets the others to safety, but it’s barely, and things immediately go wrong. Everyone’s badly hurt, Omega almost dies, they lose any chance they had at finding and saving Crosshair, the whole mission was pointless, Omega gets taken, and then they spend months floundering around because the guy who knew how to do the things they need to do got thrown off a train. In fact…contrary to almost every other entry in wars, none of the self sacrifices in TBB are total successes, and many make things worse—though more on that in another post.

But Crosshair’s sacrifice? Crosshair’s sacrifice is a disaster. The message he sends with the intent to warn his family only low is exactly what brings them out of their sanctuary to find him. It’s why Tech was on Eriadu to make his sacrifice in the first place. It gets a kid Crosshair loved so much even at that point that he was willing to, again, be tortured to death if it would keep her safe captured by the exact person he was trying to save her from.

He makes a choice at the end of season one that breaks his family apart a little more than it already was; he makes a choice here to protect them with the best of intentions, and no hope of escape or reward, and it just makes everything worse. It’s like he can’t outrun that first terrible mistake of choosing to stay with the empire. No wonder he hits a point where he wants to die.

And then we leave him there. Thinking that the bravest thing he ever did just compounded his first terrible mistake of choosing to stay with the empire, and broke his family forever, saying that it’s his fault and he needs to die for it—without actually unpacking that or allowing the trajectory of his arc to bring him to a point where he’s at peace with himself.

This one of the reasons why I think we’re not quite done with this story or these characters*. You can actually play with historical irony and have a character’s intentions backfire like this, but you do actually have to deal with it after the fact. You need to lean into it. Force the viewer to look how awful it is in the eye. And if you’re doing it with a character like Crosshair, with an arc like Crosshair’s, you do have to do it in a way that allows the character to come to some kind of terms with themselves. Offer self-reconciliation, or, alternatively, go full in on the other direction, and make it explicitly clear that reconciliation is impossible.

But if you are completing the arc—which, given the trajectory and given that this is still a Star Wars show for kids, I have to think they eventually are, even if they haven’t done so yet…at least let us know for sure that he’s not a suicidal, non-functioning alcoholic whose only reason for not walking into the sea is that it would make Omega sad because literally that is the most likely outcome for him given where we left him IF we don’t get more story in the intervening time period and what the hell did we do all this for if Crosshair is just going to keep suffering forever. Finish off his arc and tie up his threads at the very least.

But they don’t. In fact, they sidestep any opportunity to do so, and any closure with Crosshair besides solidifying the fact that Hunter and Omega trust him beyond words, by not giving him any lines after Tantiss, not making him part of the “Whatever we want, kid,” conversation (he and Wrecker walk in after that part—they’re talking with Echo and the other clones in a conversation we don’t get to hear), and never having him say anything about himself after declaring that he deserves to die.

Which is fine as long as there’s more story to tell; leaving certain things off as an unmitigated and unpacked disaster is actually very Empire Strikes Back. I just think that leaving Crosshair (and the audience) thinking that his sacrifice was useless is unlikely.

*Just to clarify, when I say that I think there’s more to this story, and that we hit the end of a chapter and not the final ending, I’m not saying that I think the next show is going to be TBB 2: Too Bad Two Batch or anything like that. I don’t think it will be. I think it’ll be a show following mostly Rex and Echo, maybe with a new POV protagonist as an audience touchstone (young Hera pllllssss though that’s just a wishlist item), in which the bad batch characters appear in and out (some more than others) and in which their unfinished arcs and threads from TBB fold into and serve a larger clone story that actually ties up this era. That’s what I mean when I think there’s more and that TBB was a sort of middle chapter designed to get everyone to where they needed to be for the next one.

[hoaxghost]

Happy to have posted that cause I can go into more depth about certain other demon-lore tidbits and the like! To expand upon the familial aspect:

Split demons often have complex relations when thinking about their Roots, this is strongest in 1st degree Splits while 3rd or 4th have a much more detached point of view. When Splits refer to their counterparts, they'll often use the term brother or sister but it's usually not intended in any gendered aspect.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

wanna ask how you feel about the eridan bpd headcanon/theory(?? not sure what to call it!) you're so good at your character analysis and i'd love to see your outlook on it

Since I don't have a degree or any formal training in psychology, I feel deeply uncomfortable diagnosing characters. I've made an autism joke before but only because I'm on the spectrum. He's definitely traumatized and anxious, but I mean those as descriptors of his behavior rather than capital-D Diagnoses. I try to focus on those when I can - the cause and effect of cognition, self-image, and behavior - and those factors may very well match up with DSM criteria, but I try not to touch an actual diagnosis with a ten foot pole unless the author has explicitly stated that X character has Y condition.

[slasherflicks999]

I am the only one remembers Crosshatch Creepypasta. Look her up, I felt like she is one of most forgotten Creepypasta characters. I do miss some digital and gaming creepypastas. TwT

She is like female Ben Drowned lol.

i swear i feel like i saw her on amino once in middle school or something she looks SO familiar but not enough to confidently say i knew who she was before now

SHE DOES LOOK SO COOL THO i appreciate i appreciate :o any BEN adjacent character honestly gets an automatic nod of appreciation tho LOL

if you have ever played or heard of the game OFF…. her design reminds me a lot of it

so hyped for that game to come to switch btw TOBY FOX IS GONNA BE ON THE SOUNDTRACK IM DEAD /POS

[pacificbirdnerd]

Runaways? Lovers? Two gryphons from a little story in the making hehe.

These two gryphons, just met days prior to this scene…. Now they appear to be to fleeing somewhere, as he is armed with a bow and arrows. He could also likely be escorting her home.

Would anyone be interested in reading a series of chapters if I actually wrote them and shared them here or on my Bluesky?

(Art and characters drawn, and imagined by me. The background is an image of the Bering strait)

I think I oughta just make a blog dedicated to my gryphon art lol, or just art in general…. :)

Also, I’m still figuring out names for these two….

[leftoversludge]

the gradual descent from creating a story that was only supposed to be about maybe 5 chapters and becoming a full fleshed novel concept of about 20 chapters is not gradual at all and, in fact, i think i have whip lash now

[eternalnostos]

.

[sodachalice]

more 2021 drawings of gale and cooper specifically

[asurrogateblog]

I still feel like we aren't paying enough attention to the fact that "in the flesh?" is just evil sgt. peppers

[unproduciblesmackdown]

an/other thing/s, Of Course

rifling through things again going like "oh yeah, That" & "hmm making connections. great work, me" & "huzzah forgot that entirely / what a delight as always to revisit things" & Pointing these couple times

reminded of wondering "wait did another sibling die in infancy or are they always just out of frame, infantly. or is their mom coincidentally babysitting at the moment" and in a real feat was like alright a wiki sure might have these answers, i'll open it & look things up. indeed telling me an infant hannah was a sibling, died. then going "oh right you're telling me What lmfaooo" re: the wiki's timeline asserting that Mordecai's First Murder(tm) was four years before the fleeing on a train incident?? murder of "opportunism and revenge" like What is going on there lmao, a lot at once, apparently. providing more of a quote that i'm just taking for granted Exists rather than perhaps have to wayback cited sources: "He extorted money from someone who had previously worked for and who had, in a way, betrayed him and indirectly cost his already depleted family a great deal. What he managed to get from this individual was a frustrating pittance, though, so believing himself to be smarter and more capable, he murdered him and took his place as a relatively minor player in a larger criminal network. He used the to position to embezzle money from higher-ups, at first to make up for what was lost and later, because he could. Eventually, inevitably, he got caught." that little Mystery Solving thing where you sure just don't have enough info until you do lmao like What! out here going "starts as a bookkeeper. probably does some embezzling wuh oh" like no way am i inferring "yeah but also previously worked for, indirectly kind of betrayed by some bookkeeper, Got His Ass i.e. killed and replaced him like hello yes it's me, That Guy? working remotely? what Comedy played out in replacing him lmfao and Then embezzles and Then gets in trouble for that" like hello!!! amazing. another win for looking things up ever after all.

which does kind of ramp things up, also. figured "i do remember mordecai's dad died at some point in his childhood & the entire poor tenement living conditions issue & combining that & general socioeconomicpolitical factors it's like well yeah sure so he gets into bookkeeping for perhaps less than legitimate(tm) enterprises, does some less than Definitely Not Embezzling" was motivation for things enough, sure, then like oh uh hello murder years before fleeing??? but add in a sibling dying for increased sense of insecurity and some kind of especial acute crisis specifically uponst this family by some specific party Fucking Around like ah right sure. doling the Finding Out and more broadly being in tempestuous situations always from some point onwards, gotcha.

and well the only thing about the little atlas & mordecai photograph is "oh right i forgot there was that photograph of these two" and the other remarkable point being like, can't really think of another time mordecai is ever shown so Wide Eyed in a "neutral" mode of being. rather than elevatedly bothered, whether at the level of "quite unsettled &/or irritated" or the level quite above that of "trying to kill someone before they kill him and it's extra tricky / urgent" which is very neat of him (to shift o_o mode for that, namely. thank you mordecai for the Drama as always. real [!] visuals) and it's like, maybe it's to cue his being younger? sure has real I'm Baby design, even with also "yeowch. sharp" and resting bitch face design, additionally. complimentary. was gonna be like "sure don't know when it was taken or how quickly this particular of the job was further presented to him, but maybe it's about having a few dozen fewer kills under his belt or something. but like damn never mind even getaway train mordecai was like been there, ["you son of a bitch i told you i'd do it. you're next (i'm referring to a specific post edit lmao. but you can imagine)"]'d that....still perhaps several dozen fewer kills and, you know, kind of a wash to consider the specifics beyond that when it's like sure maybe that'd make him look unhappier in pictures or maybe there's reaching the point of having to adjust to that new norm here. rather than that even with motivation, probably baby's first murder is more difficult than the implicit second through fourth required to Not Be Killed himself. or maybe not. much to consider; all speculative. maybe it's another impromptu unexpected snapshot. maybe he's glad to take a pic with just atlas &/or doing so feels more like a Portrait & this is still his Portrait Face. presumably he wouldn't have had many, or any at all, taken in years. and atlas mustering half a half smile like another giddily joyful day with the boys

[wereh0gz]

Not feeling great abt some of my creative endeavors rn