Review: "The Kang and I"
- Gulliver63
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Review: "The Kang and I"
I recently got in a mood to watch our green friends Kang and Kodos, and wondered what would happen if the Planet Express crew had to deal with them. This story of mine isn't based on the regular canon of the show, but on the canon of the Treehouse of Horror episodes. Particular reference is made to the first THOH, and to the episode where Marge has a "Rigellian-Maggie" with tentacles. Be advised that I had to use my own head-canon on the Rigellian homeworld; I have not seen some of the newer episodes, mainly the "Man Who Came to be Dinner" episode. If I get something wrong on their planet, I apologize in advance. That being said, I had a lot of fun writing this, as Kang and Kodos are extremely fun to write for. I would also like to thank Mike Jessen for his great pencil sketch he did for the story; now you'll better understand what the drawing is about.
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"We are today's creatures, locked in tomorrow's double feature..."
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Re: Review: "The Kang and I"
OK, there's some really weird formatting and random letters at the start of this document (at least when I downloaded it). The actual text seems error-free, though. (I assume the story ends with "Perhaps you will at that, my child...perhaps you will at that.")
Typoes: "add" should be "ad" (when it's short for advertisement); "an off day" doesn't need a hyphen; "who's multiple hearts" should be "whose"; "Frys" (in the plural) doesn't need an apostrophe; it would look better if you wrote out numbers with letters (at least low numbers like "three" and "four"); "snake like" needs a hyphen. Not really a typo, but "Kang's eyeball dropped to the floor" sounds like his eye literally fell out.
You call Kodos "he" in some spots, even though you also refer to her as being Kang's sister. I guess it could be intended to show the weirdness of Rigellian gender, but it still seems a bit odd. Still, that sort of thing is for the author to decide.
I've always been a big fan of Kang and Kodos, and combining them with Futurama is a fun idea (especially since we don't know how long Rigellians live). I also thought that the "Starship Poopers" THOH segment had a great concept and started out great, only to be let down when it turned into a Jerry Springer satire. All this made me predisposed to like this story.
And it certainly delivered! The title may be obvious, but it's still great. The writing is pretty good; descriptions are a bit sparse in places, but by and large they shine. Leela's dream after drinking the mushroom juice is cool and shows the alien world influencing her in a rather subtle, symbolic way (I can't help but feel that your "Last Turanga" series could have done with more slow-building influence like that). I like the way you describe Rigel-I-can-never-remember-which-number and some of its culture. Particularly the Oviparium is a cool idea. All the regulars are in character, and I really like what you've done with Kang's character. Of course, he's always been pretty one-note on The Simpsons, but you've fleshed out his character nicely: brutal, but also with a strong honourable streak. is also a very good character, quite probably your best original character to date.
The plot is decent: not bad, but nothing that really wowed me. However, I liked The might be a bit of a common science fiction trope, but it still made for a good action scene. The ending scene is very good, too.
In addition to the emotion, the comedy is another high point of this story. Particularly Bender is hilarious in this, with great jokes almost every time he opens his mouth. (Well, he doesn't really open his mouth, but you know what I mean.) Leela is nicely snarky, and a lot of the other characters get good lines as well. The funniest scene has got to be when they're tricked into going to the Coliseum.
On the downside, and some parts of the plot and writing felt a bit lacklustre. Nothing actually bad, though. Also, a couple of jokes dragged a bit, which diluted the comedy (for example, Kang losing "several of his four hearts" to someone is pretty funny, but then Kodos repeats the same line nearly verbatim).
My score: A-
Heh, was Fry having an elephant trunk in Leela's hallucination a reference to him having the same voice actor as Ellievan in Jungle Junction?
Typoes: "add" should be "ad" (when it's short for advertisement); "an off day" doesn't need a hyphen; "who's multiple hearts" should be "whose"; "Frys" (in the plural) doesn't need an apostrophe; it would look better if you wrote out numbers with letters (at least low numbers like "three" and "four"); "snake like" needs a hyphen. Not really a typo, but "Kang's eyeball dropped to the floor" sounds like his eye literally fell out.
You call Kodos "he" in some spots, even though you also refer to her as being Kang's sister. I guess it could be intended to show the weirdness of Rigellian gender, but it still seems a bit odd. Still, that sort of thing is for the author to decide.
I've always been a big fan of Kang and Kodos, and combining them with Futurama is a fun idea (especially since we don't know how long Rigellians live). I also thought that the "Starship Poopers" THOH segment had a great concept and started out great, only to be let down when it turned into a Jerry Springer satire. All this made me predisposed to like this story.
And it certainly delivered! The title may be obvious, but it's still great. The writing is pretty good; descriptions are a bit sparse in places, but by and large they shine. Leela's dream after drinking the mushroom juice is cool and shows the alien world influencing her in a rather subtle, symbolic way (I can't help but feel that your "Last Turanga" series could have done with more slow-building influence like that). I like the way you describe Rigel-I-can-never-remember-which-number and some of its culture. Particularly the Oviparium is a cool idea. All the regulars are in character, and I really like what you've done with Kang's character. Of course, he's always been pretty one-note on The Simpsons, but you've fleshed out his character nicely: brutal, but also with a strong honourable streak. is also a very good character, quite probably your best original character to date.
The plot is decent: not bad, but nothing that really wowed me. However, I liked The might be a bit of a common science fiction trope, but it still made for a good action scene. The ending scene is very good, too.
In addition to the emotion, the comedy is another high point of this story. Particularly Bender is hilarious in this, with great jokes almost every time he opens his mouth. (Well, he doesn't really open his mouth, but you know what I mean.) Leela is nicely snarky, and a lot of the other characters get good lines as well. The funniest scene has got to be when they're tricked into going to the Coliseum.
On the downside, and some parts of the plot and writing felt a bit lacklustre. Nothing actually bad, though. Also, a couple of jokes dragged a bit, which diluted the comedy (for example, Kang losing "several of his four hearts" to someone is pretty funny, but then Kodos repeats the same line nearly verbatim).
My score: A-
Heh, was Fry having an elephant trunk in Leela's hallucination a reference to him having the same voice actor as Ellievan in Jungle Junction?
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Pretty little monster
Went to the good school
Left with honours
Brand new tycoon
Sitting with a harpoon
-- Mother Mother, "Business Man"
Now offering writing commissions! Fanfiction or original, PM me for more information.
- Gulliver63
- Sub-sector Control Officer's Assistant
- Posts: 1360
- Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 10:21 pm
- Location: Indianapolis
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Re: Review: "The Kang and I"
Thanks for that...this was one of those projects that I whipped together fairly quickly. My choice of Fry's trunk was very random, as I had never heard of Jungle Junction; I'm not really sure if it has even been seen here in the states, as I had to google it up. It was interesting to see that Billy worked on a project as diverse as that. I really hope you guys get to meet him sometime; he's quite a character. The choice of Amy turning into sort of a pseudo-cobra was based on ideas that Kaspired and I worked on several years ago - I figured that whatever this juice was, it would really hammer a human being pretty hard...humans weren't used to drinking the stuff.
Thanks again; without seeing several of their episodes, I felt a little like I was driving blind when it came to their show canon.
Thanks again; without seeing several of their episodes, I felt a little like I was driving blind when it came to their show canon.
"We are today's creatures, locked in tomorrow's double feature..."
David Bowie
David Bowie