rubi app.

[miyagimagic]

PLAYER

Player Name: Jelle
Pronouns: She/her
Are you over 18? Yes.
Contact: queeningsquare
Current Characters: N/A
Triggers: Eye trauma, sexual assault. (Nothing I have to avoid entirely, it's fine as long as I'm just warned in advance!)

STATISTICS

Character Name: Daniel LaRusso
Character Canon: Cobra Kai
Character Age: 53
Canon Point: Season 5, episode 10, after the fight with Terry.
Link to History: Link
Skills: Daniel is skilled in karate, particularly the Miyagi-do style, which is based on the actual real world Gōjū-ryū style of karate. It's a style that emphasizes defense, with lots of moves that block and counter the attacks of others. Daniel has trained in this since he was young, though there was a period where he quit it, but he's been back at it for a few years again now. Despite not being the physically strongest person, his style and technique allow Daniel to even take on entire groups at once in canon, sometimes consisting of men much bigger than him. (An example.) He also has a pressure point technique that allows him to incapacitate others, (temporarily) paralyzing their limbs.

Aside from that, Daniel has a good business sense, canonically running a succesful car dealership with multiple upscale locations. He knows how to be charming and how to win people over, an ability that's very much helped by his natural charm and friendliness.
Abilities: None. Daniel is as normal of a human as they come.
Curse Mark: Wilk, on his chest, over his heart.

CHARACTERIZATION

FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES:

• FIRST EVENT: When Daniel was eight years old, his father died of an illness. It's one of the memories from Daniel's childhood that stuck with him the strongest, being able to clearly recount the memory he had to say goodbye to his father when he later tells mister Miyagi about it. Due to his father's death, his mother had to start working moreto support the family, leading to Daniel becoming somewhat of an independent child - and perhaps forming the basis of his habit of not talking about his problems and instead wanting to solve them by himself without bothering anyone else with them.


• SECOND EVENT: Perhaps the most formative moment in Daniel's life though was him meeting mister Miyagi, the local handyman in the apartment complex Daniel and his mother moved into. The man saved Daniel from getting beaten up badly by a group of bullies from his high school, leading to the man teaching Daniel karate and basically becoming a surrogate father for him, filling the hole left behind by Daniel's father's early death. To this day Daniel looks up to mister Miyagi, and truly struggles with the fact that the man passed on several years ago from Daniel's current canon point, feeling the loss of a father figure for the second time. He has taken on the man's philosophies and tries to live by them, even decades later.


• THIRD EVENT: Though Daniel was a very open and trusting kid, all of that was ruined when he met Terry Silver - a man who, to take revenge for his friend's loss at a karate tournament where Daniel won - manipulated Daniel into trusting him and training with him, only to reveal his true nature later on and shatter that trust completely. Daniel has had trouble trusting people ever since.


• FOURTH EVENT: Decades later Daniel was leading a fairly normal life, having shaken off the wild karate events of his childhood and never talking about them again, until the boy - now man - he beat during his first karate tournament decided to bring back Cobra Kai, the dojo that gave Daniel his trust issues through Terry Silver and that caused the bullies go after him during high school. Daniel is seen spiralling from that moment on, wildly lashing out due to his trauma and trying to do practically anything he can to prevent the return of Cobra Kai, just to make sure no other kids will get hurt by its resurgence the way he got hurt decades ago.


PHILOSOPHY: Daniel's values are basically just mister Miyagi's values, looking up so much to the man who taught him and practically took him in as a surrogate son that Daniel tries so hard to copy his beliefs straight into his own life. The most important of these is balance, leading to Daniel always trying to seek and maintain balance in his life. This is mixed with Daniel's very personal innate set of beliefs about always doing the right thing. The first act of Daniel's we're greeted with in the Karate Kid movies is him giving a dog some water to drink, and we constantly see him being kind to people, reaching out and trying to help them, even if it means risking his own life in the process - like when he runs out into a dangerous storm in order to save a little girl without even having to think about it. He hopes kindness will be met with kindness, though his belief in that has been shaken ever since his encounters with bullies and especially Terry Silver in the past. Daniel's beliefs are extremely important to him, and he will try to stick to them no matter what, even if it's to his own detriment or makes things much harder for him.

DESIRES: Daniel believes he has just achieved one of his greatest desires, one he's had for a few years now back home - which is wanting to stop Cobra Kai ever since the dojo was brought back after decades. We see Daniel do pretty much anything he can to stop kids from being taught the harsh Cobra Kai ways in canon - even if it means stooping to low acts, like raising the rent on the building the Cobra Kai dojo is housed in to try and get it shut down. Though he really doesn't want to hurt people, there is a point where Daniel can believe so much in a goal that he does believe the goal itself justifies the means. (Especially when said goal involves keeping kids safe - which is what Daniel thought he was doing.) He can get a one track mind when he's focused on a goal, being incredibly stubborn about it.

But since he beat Terry Silver back home, Daniel believes that he did manage to stop Cobra Kai. So with that desire wrapped up, Daniel would really just like to lead a nice and quiet life now, without all the karate trauma coming back to haunt him.

Getting stuck in Rubilykskoye will clearly not be very conductive towards this desire.

FEARS: Though Daniel has many fears - failing to protect the people around him, for one, or the past coming back to haunt him once more, I would like to highlight a very different different fear here, especially since I feel like the game would really bring this one out into the limelight, and it's one I'd like to explore.

And that's the fear that Daniel, to a certain extent, fears himself - or rather, what he could be capable of. As I've mentioned, Daniel strives towards balance. He wants to be someone who does good, who protects others, who strives to do the right thing. But sometimes he can go a little bit too far in doing this, especially when his incredibly short fuse temper comes into play. There are plenty of times in canon where we see Daniel's temper kick in, him doing or saying something impulsive because of it, and him immediately looking like he regrets it two seconds later. We even see this with violence - like in Karate Kid 3, where Daniel breaks a guy's nose (partially thanks to Terry Silver's manipulation) for harassing his friend, and then immediately freaks out over the act and wants to apologize to the guy he did it to. Or in Cobra Kai itself, where Daniel fights John Kreese, one of the owners of Cobra Kai, and nearly kills the man in an attempt to make sure he can't further endanger children. Daniel is terrified of how far he himself could go, if pushed too far.

GAMEPLAY

SUITABILITY: I'm sure the above already makes it very clear why it would be so interesting to play Daniel in this game. Daniel's philosophy is practically the exact opposite of everything going on in Rubilykskoye, which will make it fun to see what happens when the man ends up stuck in a place that goes against everything he believes in - a man who's all for balance and doing the right thing stuck in a place that celebrates violence and other forms of extreme debauchery.

Not to mention that the threat of turning into a literal monster basically already is Daniel's fear, though now brought to a very literal level - and the only way to avoid it is by indulging in all the things he doesn't want to indulge in. I'm really excited to see what will happen to Daniel in the process, and what lengths he might end up being pushed to.

SAMPLE: TDM toplevel (warnings for drinking and manipulative / toxic relationships.)

MONSTER: Daniel's monster form is very much like the classic idea of a chimera, though his form is a lion-like creature in the front - a shisa, the Okinawan variety of the guardian lions often seen in mythology - and a snake - more specifically, a cobra - in the back.

When he is in his monster form, Daniel is basically just completely mindless, mostly incapable of rational thought and instead being driven by his base desires. He won't be capable of speech in this form, since there's not much of a person left in there at that point.

The only exception to this are people Daniel feels particularly close to. Even though everything about his monstrous form is mindless otherwise, Daniel will be capable of recognizing someone even in that form as long as he has very strong feelings for them. So though he won't be capable of recognizing casual acquaintances and will treat them just like any stranger, he can control his actions around those he feels a strong attachment to and might even try to protect them.

The strength his monster form has is determined by both his anger and protectiveness. The more angry and the more protective - though both of those often go together with Daniel, which is why it's both traits fuelling it - he feels at his moment of transformation or for a while before it, the physically stronger his monstrous form will be for that specific transformation.