Idea Dump: Futurama/KOTOR mash-up

Well, now that I got all of that other stuff out of the way, onto other things!  (And I might as well post this now before 2014 draws to a close...)

So lately, I've had this one quirky idea in my mind: A humorous mash-up between Futurama and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (a.k.a. "KOTOR")!

I'm certainly not the first person to have ever noticed this, but there is that similarity between Bender and HK-47: Humorous hatred for humans.  Oh, and the occasional tossing-out of the term "Meatbag!"

So now I want to draw little parodies of the Futurama crew as KOTOR characters.  (Such a fun concept is certainly nothing new: Just this past summer with the release and success of Guardians of the Galaxy in theaters, I saw all sorts of parodies, ranging from Charlie Brown and friends from Peanuts and Bob and his family from Bob's Burgers.)

So, I was thinking of making the following images...

Phillip J. Fry as the player's main character from KOTOR (hint, hint!)
Turanga Leela as Bastilla Shan
Bender as HK-47
Nibbler as T3-M4
Amy Wong as Mission Vao
Dr. Zoidberg as Zaalbar
Hermes Conrad as Jolee Bindo
LaBarbara Conrad as Juhani
Cubert Farnsworth as Carth Onasi
Dwight Conrad as Canderous Ordo
Professor Farnsworth as Jedi Master Vandar
(...or should Nibbler be the stand-in for Vandar? Farnsworth has the appropriate relative age, while Nibbler has the similar size.  Heck, maybe just resurrect Fry's old dog Seymour and make him stand in for T3-M4.)

...Hm, maybe Zapp Brannigan should be the evil Admiral Saul Karath?  And as for who gets to be Darth Malak, I'm thinking it should be Mom.

So, file this under "Things Which I Would Love to Draw".  If anyone else wants to draw it first, go right ahead.

Remembering Sandy Hook, 2 years later...

It may be so late in the day as I post this, but better late than never, I suppose...

I didn't say it at the time or between then and now, but my sympathies to the victims and their families of that awful tragedy.

This is NOT a post about what could have been done or what has been done since then, and DEFINITELY NOT a post about which side is correct in the ongoing debate (especially with regards to guns)...

And perhaps the best way of all to honor the victims here is to not mention that at all.

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" - thoughts, feedback, and a fan theory

So, like just about everyone else around, I've seen that teaser trailer for the upcoming movie The Force Awakens.

Cute little trailer, very interesting (although I do wonder about that droid design with the head on top of a ball).  And who wouldn't like the bad guy's new lightsaber with the laser crossguards?

I just have one message for Disney, from a who is obviously very serious about continuing the Star Wars universe: Please don't mess this up.  Thank you.  (Seriously, if they could still handle the Marvel universe very well, when why not that of Star Wars or anything else by LucasFilm?)

However, I also have a fan theory of my own, regarding the very title "The Force Awakens"...

What if the Force "awakens" in countless new people across the galaxy?

Consider; Only very few people who are part of the galaxy's population can use the Force, and I imagine that even fewer still would ever become Jedi (because they could also join other groups like the Sith, or maybe just keep to themselves and never get involved at all).  So very few people can use the Force, let alone feel it.  But what if the Force "awakened" in countless new people, and they discovered whatever wonderful (or terrible) things they could do with it?

That's all I have to say for now...

Idea Dump: All that "Breaking Bad" stuff

Alright, so... I have a lot of Breaking Bad stuff on my mind, and I want to do this all now so I can move onto the other stuff on my mind.

And without further ado, here we go...

First off, while this may be well after the fact, my thanks to the entire cast and crew of the series for making one of the most surprising, captivating and thought-provoking dramas in years.  (But at least we've got Better Call Saul to look forward to seeing!)

I was hoping to make a more professional, Photoshop-made version of my "Breaking Assad" parody by now, but such is life and things happening all the while.  (And speaking of which... unfortunately in this case, it seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same: Assad himself is still in Syria doing his evil things, just like last year when I first came up with this idea.)

Although, hopefully my writing skills will more than make up for my graphic art skills... ladies and gentleman, I give you my song parody, "The Downfall of Walter White Senior"!

"The Downfall of Walter White Senior" (by Seth Shirer)

(Apologies to Gordon Lightfoot, whose song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is the basis for this parody for Breaking Bad.)

The legend lives on in Alberquerque on down
Of the big desert they call To'haijilee.
The desert, it is said, rarely gives up its dead
And its vast burial grounds are quite roomy.

Teaching chemistry to some brats at J.P. Wynne,
Walter White felt his whole life had passed by him.
He made meth for money to take care of his kin
Before that lung cancer could finally kill him.

His meth was the bane on the American side,
His “Blue Sky” attracting global scrutiny.
Working as “Heisenberg,” he was smarter than most,
Purveying record-high levels of drug purity.

Getting really worried, he kept looking all around
The desert for that accursed Jesse Pinkman.
When he got a hint of his money supposedly found
Could this have been the threat he'd been fearin'?

At first he tried to call those neo-Nazis for help,
But then found Jesse with his own brother-in-law.
Realizing he’d been outed by the ungrateful whelp,
He tried to peacefully surrender to the law.

But then the skinhead calvary showed up anyway,
And before too long all the bullets were flyin’.
Within moments, it was all over, just like that,
And it was done with both Hank and Gomie just dyin’.

Lying and crying into the desert sand.
He said, “Sorry Hank, I really did try to save ya.”
And then he held back that tattle-tale rat
And said, “Jesse, you punk, I don’t even know ya.”

His horrified family was no longer believed his lies,
And no longer cared that he still suffered from cancer.
He fled their home after an impromptu knife fight,
Thus came the downfall of Walter White Senior.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When a good man turns himself into a monster?
He cared more about his pride and his ego,
And failed his role as his family's provider.

He could’ve died dignified or found another way
To do his job as his own family's father.
All that remains is the pain and the shame
For his wife and his son and his daughter.

With one enemy poisoned and all the others gunned down,
Walter White had finally finished his mission.
Now young Jesse can finally chase his dreams,
Now that he's got another chance at redemption.

Throughout and beyond the state of New Mexico,
Some people keep on searching for answers.
Hopefully his family can somehow recover
And escape all the unwanted exposure.

Just ask anyone around, and they'll all agree
That what's been done is no mere misdemeanor
Unsympathetically, they'll all remember
The downfall of Walter White Senior.

The legend lives on in Alberquerque on down
Of the big desert they call To'haijilee.
The desert, they said, rarely gives up its dead
And its vast bural grounds are quite roomy.

(I did the best I could here, trying to work in all these details from the series and still make it fit the size and rhythm of the original song.)

I would also like to post something else on my mind...

Obviously, there are many influences for Breaking Bad, most notably a lot of Westerns (and of course, virtually no fiction or story these days can be totally bereft of any influences).  However, I just wonder if the creators of the series had any anime in mind when they came up with Breaking Bad...

...namely Death Note and Cowboy Bebop.

For those of you who are not familiar with these things...
Death Note is a supernatural thriller about a young man named Light Yagami; he is brilliant but bored and disgusted with the world, but when he discovers a supernatural artifact, a notebook which can kill virtually anyone by writing down their names, he takes it upon himself to rid the world of evil as he sees fit by killing all the criminals.  However, he fails to realize that he has technically now become a criminal himself, and now there are detectives hunting him...
(And yes, his personal name is the English word "light" but for good reason: symbolism.)
Cowboy Bebop is an adventurous saga about a bounty hunter named Spike Spiegel and the crew of a spaceship called the Bebop; the year is 2071, and Earth has long since been ruined by a disaster taking place in the 2020s but humanity has colonized the remainder of the solar system.  In this setting, the crew of the Bebop are bounty hunters who are always looking for their next target and the reward which goes with it.

And how does Breaking Bad relate to all this, in my honest opinion?  SPOILER ALERTS, SPOILERS FOR ALL SERIES MENTIONED HERE!

Let's start with Death Note, and I can write an entire essay comparing the two (well, a more proper essay than this), but maybe I'll do that some other time instead.  For now, here are the key points, starting with this: Both protagonists are evil sociopaths who claim to be doing bad things for good causes.

The protagonist of Death Note is a young man named Light Yagami.  Like Walter White, he is extremely smart, but unhappy with life.  However, while Walter is someone now in his fifties and feel that life has passed him by (and being diagnosed with lung cancer only made these feelings worse), Light is still a young man in his final year of high school before college but still feels as though life holds no challenges for him.  However, Walter's gripes are more personal (life not having worked out for him and him missing great opportunities) and Light's are more external ("this world is rotting").

But when both characters discover something which they see as the answer to their problems, they both seize this perceived solution. Walter discovers how much money he can make by manufacturing and selling methamphetamine, which could left behind to his family if and when he dies from the lung cancer, and his plan starts when he encounters his old student, Jesse Pinkman, who has since become a drug dealer.  As for Light, he discovers the Death Note, a notebook used by shinigami which can kill people, and could therefore be used to kill all the evil people.  (Note: Shinigami are gods of death from Japanese lore, but those depicted in Death Note are purely fictitious.)  This particular Death Note was dropped by a shinigami named Ryuk, who is bored with the state affairs in his world, and seems to periodically drop the Death Note in the human world just for fun to see who will find it and what they will do with it.  Ryuk is particularly fascinated and entertained by Light's plans and actions, and as long as Light possesses and uses the Death Note, he will stick around to see what happens.

Then there is also the issue of how quickly both of them sink into their evil ways: While Walter does so at a slow but sure and steady rate which is also believable over the course of a series which is set during a two-year span, Light simply dives right into it.

However, before long, they both attract the attention of the authorities, be it for selling meth or mysterious mass murder.  And this was what really caught the attention of me, yours truly, to make this big comparison: Both characters were bold enough to do their thing even though they have family members who are in law enforcement, and are then assigned to these cases.  Of course, Walter continuously deceived his own brother-in-law Hank Schrader of the DEA, while Light continuously deceived his own father, Soichiro Yagami of Japan's NPA (as well as the internationally-renowned yet mysterious detective known as L.).  Furthermore, the challenge of outwitting their own family members also tests their resolve on the issue of family: Of course Walter absolutely refuses to hurt or kill family members no matter what, that being the one line which he will not cross, while Light realizes that he might need to kill his own father in order to achieve his goals.

This also leads to the fact that both men are sociopaths: They kill and hurt countless people to achieve their goals, dismissing their evil deeds as a necessary evil.  They constantly lie and manipulate people into doing what they want.  And Light is worse about this than Walter; while Walter only killed when he saw no other option, Light killed without any guilt or remorse.  (It should also be noted that the Death Note's insidious ability to manipulate the victim's actions and death made it even easier for Light to make his victims act like pliable puppets.)  They also both suffer delusions of grandeur: While Walter later states that he's "in the empire business," Light boldly proclaims in the beginning that he will be "the god of this new world!"  And they also both take on secret aliases to mask themselves: Walter calls himself "Heisenberg" (after the German scientist Werner Heisenberg, who also suffered from cancer), while Light discovers that the public at large has given him the nickname "Kira" (a Japanese transliteration of the English word "killer") and he simply accepts with it.

Another strong point to make in regards to the sociopathy is their intolerance of criticism.  Early on, L first baits "Kira," and he does this by having a man, "Lind L. Taylor," claim to be working with Interpol give a speech on television, calling Kira "evil."  Naturally, Light gets angry and kills the fake "L" on the spot, on live television; but because Light was so hasty, he fell for L's trap, which helped L narrow down "Kira" as being somewhere in the Kanto region of Japan (the region which includes Tokyo).  As for Walter, his own intolerance of being criticized is shown later on in the series when he confronts Michael Ehrmentraut one last time as the latter is trying to flee the authorities.  Mike blasts Walter for trying to take control and do everything his own way instead of leaving well enough alone and working with others ("you, and your pride and your ego!").  Enraged, Walter retrieves the gun which Mike had hidden in his own bug-out bag and shoots Mike to death with it.

Another considerable point to be made is the justifications which both characters use to carry out their deeds, both professed and actual.  Walter insisted he was doing it for family, while Light claimed he was doing it for the world.  But then there is also that rare occasion when both of them confess to their real motives for doing what they do, and it makes for an interesting contrast: Walter privately admits to his wife Skyler in the very last episode of Breaking Bad that he did it for himself, Light proudly boasts to the shinigami Ryuk in the very first episode of Death Note that he wants to control the world.

One final point: How both characters meet the end, especially after their schemes finally unravel and leave them exposed and powerless.  Walter got outed as Heisenberg and everything fell apart on him, but after hiding in a remote place for several months, he made one last move to make things right as best as he could, by exacting his revenge on those who betrayed him and making one last effort to leave something for his injured family; he miraculously achieves his goals and dies injured, almost happy and accepting his fate.  But as for Light, his own trap to kill off his remaining pursuers during a meeting in an abandoned warehouse backfires, and is exposed as Kira by L's successor, a young genius with the code name "Near."  He tries to talk his way out of it, but fails at that, as well as his attempt to kill Near on the spot with a hidden piece of the Death Note.  How gracefully Light meets his own end differs slightly, depending on the version: In the animated version, Light escapes the warehouse while everyone is distracted by his apprehended accomplice suddenly committing suicide, and manages to get some distance away from them before Ryuk decides to kill him to end it there because Light is finished, and so Light dies somewhat peacefully; however, in the original graphic novel version of the series, Light begs Ryuk to save him by killing everyone else in the room, but Ryuk laughingly refuses to oblige him, defiantly writing Light's name in the Death Note, and so a panicked Light dies on the spot, all the while screaming that he does not want to die.

(Curiously, the issue of their respective legacies is quite different, complete opposites: While everyone discovered and will remember that Walter White was Heisenberg, Light Yagami was never revealed to be Kira, because the task force pursuing Kira, perhaps wisely, never revealed the existence of shinigami or their Death Notes.)

Now, as for Cowboy Bebop...

...well, it's not that big a deal, especially compared to the other aforementioned series, but I did notice something: It's how the respective protagonists go out at the end of their sagas.

Actually, let me note this first: Both series allude to the protagonist having some kind of past which is briefly seen in scattered flashbacks but almost never discussed, which leaves the audiences with incomplete, almost fragmentary narratives of what happened.  It almost feels as if both series are really just epilogues to some other past stories which already happened.  By the end of the Breaking Bad, we eventually learn that Walter helped his old college friends set up a company which took off and made his friends wealthy, but Walter himself left under negative circumstances before that could happen and thus missed that opportunity.  As for Spike Spiegel, we learn from Cowboy Bebop that he was once part of a crime syndicate and fought side-by-side with a man known as Vicious, who now rules that same syndicate himself and fights Spike at every opportunity.

As for those scattered flashbacks to pique the audience's curiosity, they seem mostly concentrated in one episode each: The third episode of Breaking Bad ("...And the Bag's in the River") shows flashbacks of Walter going over mathematical equations with his old flame Gretchen to break down the human body into the basic elements, while the fifth episode of Cowboy Bebop ("Ballad of Fallen Angels") shows flashbacks of Spike fighting alongside Vicious and being in love with Julia on the side.

Also more tellingly, both characters allude to metaphors and allegory of life and awake; they both equate being alive with being awake, and being asleep with being dead.  Walter tells Jesse "I am awake" in the series pilot and then tells Skyler "I was alive" in the series finale, while Spike also makes similar such comments throughout his own saga, saying that he feels like he has finally woken up.

And now, for the big comparison, their fates: Walter and Spike leave their families behind to embark on one final mission which they may very well not survive, and they know it but they still go ahead with it anyway.  This final mission involves killing other criminals as revenge for murdered loved ones.  They both succeed in their goals, wrecking their enemies' lairs and killing their enemies, although they themselves are mortally wounded in the end.  Both Walter and Spike fall to the ground, presumably dead, as reinforcements show up, but with smiles on their faces.  And of course there are special "blue" songs playing during their final moments while the camera pans out from above: Walter goes out to the sound of the modern hit song "Baby Blue" by Badfinger, while Spike goes out to the sound of a song simply called "Blue" by Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts, which is from the series' own original soundtrack.

(And even with both protagonists presumably dead, some rumors and speculation still persist, mostly among fans of the respective series, that they could have survived.  Even Bryan Cranston had some fun with this idea, claiming that no one actually saw anyone "zip up the body bag" for Walter.)

So, there you have it.  I couldn't help but notice these similarities between Breaking Bad and these two other series, and whether or not it was a coincidence is anyone's guess.

Any thoughts?