#hahaha funny eli no ones ever made that joke before

[cupids-fiction]

apologies if this is insensitive but can we commission neil gaiman to rewrite the bible because i think his version of hell is much more plausible than the whole fiery demon siphilus-type stuff

[baldwinboy5ive]

My absolute aspirational, dream, reach scenario for Hawk in season 4 is not happening BUT that doesn’t seem to be stopping me from TALKING ABOUT IT A LOT ANYWAY! let’s gooooooooo

Warning: this is going to be a long walk to get to my point, I sure wasn’t kidding when I said “a lot.” SO much rambling about little bird over here. so much.

I would love to see Julie-san back, period, and I started to ramble to anyone who would listen about that, but then after I rewatched the episode where Miyagi-Do got trashed, I actually realized a few concrete reasons why I feel she’d be such a great addition to the show, if only for an episode or two! 

My heart was just so broken for Daniel-san when he saw what happened to the dojo. He doesn’t care about things, he only cared so much about the Medal of Honor and the car being graffitied because those things were from Mr. Miyagi, obviously. And that appeared to totally break him, and it just made me feel so sad because in that moment he seemed so alone. I don’t think anybody had the same kind of relationship with him that Daniel did, besides Julie-san. Of course, he was like a grandfather to Sam, and he knew the whole rest of Daniel’s family, but still that isn’t quite the same. I’m sure that all of Daniel’s family just loved him so much, because how could anyone not, but the father-son relationship Daniel had with him was so special and no one else in his family had that kind of relationship with him. But someone else did. 

I really wanted Julie-san to come and maybe bond with Daniel over how much they both loved Mr. Miyagi so much as a teacher and father figure after they had both lost their fathers - or in Julie’s case, both her parents. 

And then I realized that she would be so amazing as a mentor too. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to think she comes to LA to check out all this karate drama she’s hearing about if it involves a dojo called “Miyagi-Do” - she has a huge connection to Mr. Miyagi, so maybe she wants to see what’s going on with her old mentor’s other student. 

It’d be kind of funny if Julie could share some stories with Daniel from her perspective of when she pissed off Mr. Miyagi so much, haha. In the same episode that Miyagi-Do got vandalized (this one episode seriously inspired so many thoughts in me), Daniel’s patience was wearing thin with Demetri. Daniel wants to emulate Mr. Miyagi so bad but what Daniel might not have realized is that once, even Mr. Miyagi came this close to losing it hahah. I didn’t even know he could get that mad, hahahaha.  When Julie-san was like “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” and Mr. Miyagi was just like... “........” ahahaha oh man. It’s just... it would be so nice for Daniel to hear from her about all this, like reading the letters Mr. Miyagi had once written. 

Now, in addition to ALL of that... because I assume that Daniel would have heard and known of her from Mr. Miyagi, I do feel like it’d be amazing if, after meeting her and seeing how great she turned out, he said to her, “I know that you had to deal with a lot of anger when you were younger, and I was wondering if you might be willing to help me out with something about that. See, there’s this Hawk...” 

“I love hawks.” 

“not like that” and I swear to God this isn’t just that dumb hawk joke that I was dying to make, though, I promise ahahaha. 

I mean there definitely is room there for that joke but Hawk and Julie would fit together so well. Even if the source of their anger was very different, she still could relate to him because she had no way of channeling her anger until Mr. Miyagi came along and guided her, and she just found so much peace after.

And I see such a parallel to when she became more self-assured and had that “If I’m ever going to respect myself, I have to do this” moment - it’s clear that Hawk has VERY little respect for himself. There is a lot of denial and self-loathing going on with this poor guy and he needs to learn how to get past that and learn to love himself. 

I think the movie doesn’t go into it a whole lot but Julie definitely seemed to deal with that self-loathing a bit too with like, the expectation that her grandma would tell her “Oh you messed up, you made another mistake, you screwed up.” 

Hawk still has no one to help him do these things - yeah, he changed sides at the very last minute - dude had us in the 4th quarter with 5 seconds left on the clock and we got ball - but that of course in no way means all of his other anger issues are resolved, right? He needs someone. 

I actually got kind of infuriated at Amanda saying that if Robby doesn't want to come back, "You're going to have to let him go," like it's one of those "If you love something let it go" type of situations, and thank GOD Daniel pushed back on it! Thank God he did, and said "I can't just let him go," and then he said, "He has no one." Man, that part was gut-wrenching. I absolutely love Robby, I really do, but I'm actually less worried for him now. He does have someone now - I think Johnny really is going to try for Robby, and even if he does massively fuck up - which he might, or he might not - I think Daniel will still be there for Robby because he cares about him so much. Robby will, hopefully, be all right. But Hawk I truly do worry about, and Hawk I really do think actually does have no one right now. Except for Demetri, who I still hope after all this will be willing to throw down for him, but he’s his best friend, not a sensei or mentor. 

I hate so much how Johnny treats Hawk and hate how he's failed him, like in multiple ways, and legitimately get mad about it sometimes, hahaha - I will NEVER get over how harshly he treated Hawk and Miguel and made them clean mats, and then ONLY MIGUEL got that honest heart-to-heart after. And this was in response to the both of them calmly asking Johnny about something instead of being accusatory, angry, or anything really, they were simply trying to have a talk with him, and then he just told them to GTFO. (Man, my HEART hurts at the way Hawk still bows to his sensei even then, before he GTFOs.) But anyway - what I'm getting at here is, it really does seem to me that Johnny just does not like even interacting with Hawk. Every single time he interacts with him, save for the one time that he gave him his new name, it's always just so hostile. It's probably at least partially due to Hawk reminding him so much of his younger self, and Johnny likely does not want to deal with or face that self-reflection at all. So to me it feels like a really tall order to ask Johnny to have any sort of real talk with this one particular student who needs him so much. And if he were to even try - would it even be productive, or would it just be more yelling? 

It makes me think of how, in the beginning of The Next Karate Kid, when Mr. Miyagi sends Julie's grandma off to take a break, it's really to give Julie and her grandma some forced time apart. Everyone knew it was needed, it just couldn't happen until Mr. Miyagi could take care of Julie. Julie and her grandma were both dealing with too much - Julie lost her parents, Julie's grandma lost her child - and all they could ever do is get angry with each other. "Talking doesn't seem to help. It just makes things worse," Julie's grandma said.

And right before they part ways, Julie tearfully says to her grandma, "I've tried sometimes to just talk to you, and not get angry, but everything gets messed up and I don't know why." God, that just got to me so much. She's just a kid, and she had this moment of actually trying, and it's not her fault that she doesn't know how to fix things, and it’s okay that she doesn’t know why! Then her grandma admitted her own shortcoming by saying "Things get messed up for me, too." It was a good moment between them.

Hawk is still a good kid, I'm never going to not believe that, probably, hahaha. He was going to step up and confess to vandalizing the Miyagi-Do dojo until Kreese stopped him. (Speaking of that, Johnny had basically given all these students permission to view Kreese as a sensei just as much as they do him - and Kreese hadn't given any of them any reason yet to think he was actually Bad News. Maybe Hawk even thought that Kreese would talk to Johnny first and soften the blow, when he said he would "handle it." But, well - we saw how he handled it!!!)  So, I do not put it past him to be able to admit at least a little bit of fault, or admit to feeling lost, or reaching out for some kind of help. I don't see him doing it in any dramatic fashion or anything like that, or being sorrowfully apologetic and the like, but just... you know, the way Julie said it, I could see him doing something like that. But unfortunately for him, I don't know who is there to hear that from him and then give him that help.

I really don't see Johnny ever owning up to how his negligence and hostility and favoritism contributed to how violent Hawk became... which is sad, cause even just that one small admission of "Things get messed up for me, too" was probably the first step in repairing the damage between Julie and her grandma (even if we don't get to see them afterwards). And they likely would not have been able to get there, or they would have had a lot more trouble getting there, if not for Mr. Miyagi intervening. Julie needed to hear that.

Maybe Hawk just needs someone external to come and shake things up a little bit and be a mentor, someone who isn't so tied up in this karate soap opera already. I think Daniel genuinely does want to help these kids, but I don't know if I really see him having that much sympathy for Hawk, either, and I don't know if he would understand the depths of his anger. Sure, Daniel was absolutely bullied back when he was younger, and I'm not downplaying that at all, but it wasn't to the degree that Eli went through, which resulted in a shit ton more anger than it ever did in Daniel. And then, of course, Daniel had Mr. Miyagi step in early enough to make sure Daniel's anger and need for revenge never got so out of hand. Johnny's simply not going to be able to be that person for Hawk, at least not now. But maybe, maybe one day he could get there if someone came along to jump-start it, the way Ali had to come in and knock his head loose a little about his rivalry with Daniel, and I'd really love for that to be Julie-san. 

there’s definitely also room for several hawk jokes in there somewhere too