These are things are true.

• I am non-binary.

• I was raised as a man.

• At some point in my life, I held a black belt in a homegrown style called Jung Su before (and I could not make this up if I wanted to) high school musical theater became my one allotted extracurricular activities.

• Before its finale in February 2025, Netflix’s Cobra Kai was probably my favorite television show.

• The existence of medical drama exemplar, The Pitt, and Will Trent, the eponymous show named after the one most likely to give Capt. Olivia Benson a run for her money for the title of “the one good cop in all fiction”, notwithstanding Crave’s Shoresy probably has a strong claim as one of my favorite shows, certainly my favorite sports drama now that Cobra Kai has ended.

• I thought about writing about the conversation that exists between Heated Rivalry and Shoresy, but the last episode of Shoresy season 5 kinda forced a hard pivot.

So. We’re about to get into spoiler territory. If you haven’t finished Cobra Kai or Shoresy season 5, or at the very least started season 5, you may want to turn back. This is mostly a disclaimer for my friend Fleet who reads this newsletter on occasion.

Gonna provide just a bit more buffer. Like a reminder to subscribe if you’re reading this from my bluesky, tumblr, or were somehow forwarded this.

Alright. Enough stalling. Let’s ask the question at the crux of both Cobra Kai and Shoresy, although we will opt for the Shoresy framing of the question.

“Would you rather lose honorably or win dishonorably?”

In fairness, that is actually at the crux of Shoresy season 5 specifically, while it is very much the through line of the entirety of Cobra Kai. Shoresy seasons 1 through 3 were more about the nature of competition, teamwork, and community. How the identity of a sports team is part of the identity of a town. Shoresy season 4 pivoted to asking “what happens when you can no longer do the thing you love the way you used to.”

Season 5’s first episode involves Shoresy giving advice to one of his mentees who is struggling on a new team. Through a couple mid period pep talks, Shoresy (the character) manages to get the kid feeling good about the sport even though the game is marred by a player on the opposing team taking a dive, or exaggerating the brutality of a hit to draw out a penalty. The game of hockey has changed. Violence on the rink is not celebrated/venerated in the same way.

“Diving’s a part of the game now” is a sentiment oft repeated. The “dishonor” here is playing the ref instead of playing the game.

This is different, yet the same, when it comes to Cobra Kai.

In the season 2 opener of Cobra Kai, Johnny Lawrence addresses the biggest disconnect of the Cobra Kai philosophy and real life: “no mercy does not mean no honor.” I was already in love with the show, but that singular line really emphasized that the writers and showrunners understood what they were doing with the sequel series. In a fight, you fight to win. You fight to defend yourself. But in that fight, there are rules. Some explicit, some implicit. But the question you ask at the end of the day is how are you going to live with yourself after the fight is over? Was it a good fight? Was it a worthy fight? Can you live with yourself afterward?

Johnny and Shoresy are two peas of the same pod. Ultra masculine figures whose identity comes from the sport that they love and their chosen community. They are fiercely protective of their kin. They are fighters. They are old fashioned, never quite couth, curse and drink like a sailor type. They are also romantics, chivalrous, singularly focused on their paramour. They are rough around the edges, vulgar, and know that their place is helping the next generation.

I don’t see myself in them per se. Not fully anyways. I think there are parts of me that respect their drive. I think I respect their want to give back. Their honesty in their simplicity. Their want for a fair chance to prove themselves.

I’ve talked about my archetypes before. I think the Archivist and Artificer are exceedingly androgynous. I think the Adversary is the one that is more masculine. I think the Adversary is a partial artifact of how I raised. I think a part of my embracing of my non-binary-ness is in part a rejection of toxic masculinity, of incels, of gender roles. I think more parts can be attributed to finding comfort in having something be undefined. Not quite one thing or another. A blurring. A shift from 0s and 1s to quantum bits. It’s not that I mind being referred to as “he/him”, but that there is something satisfying, something soother about the ambiguity.

And then I see Johnny Lawrence and Shoresy on screen, playing jump role with old stereotypes. And then I see the parts of masculinity that make sense. And then I see the power of simple repetition, of mantras.

I don’t follow most professional sports. The closest I ever did was back in the mid 2010s when a friend of mine and I would watch UFC fights, and we got really invested in a couple fighters. I think the draw of sports media is the narrative, and I think sometimes narrative is easier to digest when you get unfettered access and that’s not something I think real athletes should have to do. But I do get the appeal.

I’m get a bit of it with reading all about Alysa Liu at the Winter Olympics. The thrill of a story. The narrative payoff.

I guess all of this to say is that as February is winding down, I am thinking a lot about of sports and sports media. I’m thinking about what it means to fight. I’m thinking what if I had access to some of these stories earlier.

That said, I still identified more with every single robot than any human character in most media, so I think some things were kinda already in progress.

Anyways, thanks for dropping by. Next month, we’re gonna start by recapping the aznzinefest and then after that I don’t actually know, but that’s kinda the fun part of a newsletter/blog ain’t it?