my thesis for enderverse breaking bad (/better call saul)… i think a Lot about the parallels between characters and the roles they play in their respective universes. so. Massive yap below!!! and spoilers for all three series ofc 👆
bean is walter white. this whole thing started because i was watching breaking bad at the same time i started rereading enders shadow and was endeared by how narcissistic they both are. and i had the thought that walter’s cancer functions similarly in the narrative as anton’s key in the sense that it puts a definite cap on both of their lifespans, accelerates the rate at which they get into soo much crazy shit, and also walter trying to afford treatment/bean looking for a cure is a major part of their story that conflicts with the crazy shit they get into. at the very beginning of their stories, walter and bean are both constantly overlooked and underestimated, bean mostly for his size/age and walter for a multitude of reasons, but i think both of them have a struggle with masculinity in this way because they are not as strong and masculine and In Control like the others around them. they both start off in positions where their intellect is extremely underutilized and are frustrated that people who are less intelligent than them have gotten so much further ahead (though obviously bean being homeless and the runt of a street gang who licks food wrappers for survival and walter being a caltech grad who barely scrapes by as an overqualified highschool teacher/car wash employee are very different scenarios). thus when they’re presented with an opportunity to do something where their skills will actually be useful (battle school, cooking meth…this is kind of cracking me up) gaining the power and control they so covet ends up becoming a motivation in addition to the immediate concern for their survival (bean escaping rotterdam, walter paying for his cancer treatment).
like walter, bean automatically assumes he is the smartest person in the room no matter what, and they both make this known (usually in internal monologue for bean because 80% of the book is his thoughts but i like to imagine if you laid out walter’s thoughts in book format they’d look somewhat similar). when it comes to raw intelligence, they’re typically right—they are both arguably the most intelligent characters in their respective universes. and bean and walter also both make a lot of judgements when it comes to the intellect and skills they perceive in other people, looking down on almost everyone and defining others by how valuable they are. even those they don’t look down on (primarily gus/ender) they run into trouble by being too hasty to assert their own value and intellectual superiority. i really enjoy how unreliable of a narrator bean is because he is so quick to assume everyone knows who he is and that he Should be recognized and appreciated for his brilliance a lot more than he is already. AND THEN they both run into a lot of problems when forced to face the reality that intelligence is not the only thing that matters. they both are insanely lacking in experience when it comes to their respective fields (bean as a soldier/prospective commander, walter as a drug dealer/prospective kingpin) and they struggle because a lot of people skills, understanding of others, and making the right decisions in the interest of others is necessary to do those their jobs. they do not necessarily share this in common but i want to acknowledge that bean goes through sooo much character development in ES that starts when he realizes how much being loveable matters to other people, and because he feels like he is fundamentally lacking in what Should make him human (though there’s also an internal battle between this and him believing he’s the normal one and everyone else is WRONG!!). so bean looks for a lot of what he is missing in ender. in a way i think walter also looks for what he is missing in gus, and for a while there i think for both of them it had a lot to do with craving a sense of power and accomplishment that they have been denied their whole lives. they also share a sense of entitlement and grandiosity when it comes to what they think they are actually going to accomplish in that professional relationship. but what separates them is that beans love and admiration for ender and desire to coexist with him prevails, while in walter’s case his pride always ends up winning. bean becomes a more self aware and well rounded person while walter destroys everyone around him and then himself. though i also like to think about how bean might behave if he was in walter’s shoes instead! i want to let bean break bad and see what happens 💭💭💭
they both are also just kind of autistic with it sometimes. like for example thinking about the scene where hank was showing walter his crystals and he just starts yapping about manganese. this is bean coded to me but don’t ask me to explain why.)
things start to fall apart however when i try to think about jesse and skyler. petra and nikolai are kind of a toss up them…? maybe..? i considered his jesse being nikolai, because nikolai is his real “in” to the world of battle school by virtue of being beans first real friend there and bc he bridges the gap that takes him out of his isolation. like how jesse brings walter into the meth business. but in the rest of the shadow series petra is more of his partner in crime and i honestly don’t remember what nikolai gets up to but it seems more within beans interests to protect him from achilles and the other crazy shit. i dont know. i can see some parallels between jesse and petra in terms of like. they love kids and strong desire for genuine connection and actively fight very hard to overcome their nature as addicts (jesse to drugs and petra i think to war). maybe i can see some similarities in their personalities too if i look hard enough. but i also don’t like this and it’s pretty uncomfortable because if you look past the very upper most surface layer of the walter jesse relationship they are really nothing like bean and petra or bean and nikolai At All. [i think the most walter jesse dynamic in the enderverse is probably some combination of graff/mazer and ender, because of the emotionally abusive teacher/traumatized student, where ender/jesse go back and forth between hating them and looking for connection in them as the closest thing they have to a paternal figure and friend. ender/jesse are also both constantly under their control, put into situations by graff/walter where their lives are in danger and they are forced to kill someone they don’t think deserves to die (thinking of bonzo/gale specifically but there are more), and both of them have their own lives and sanity sacrificed to fulfill a purpose they end up despising. i definitely can see some similarities between ender and jesse! but that’s just food for thought.]
in the context of bean as walter, though, i think ender would be gus. of course there is a lot that is different about these two characters but gus and ender both sort of occupy a similar role in brba/ES. where they are at the absolute top and but also still under a different organizations control, the IF for ender and the cartel for gus. gus owns the cartels main supply chain for methamphetamine and they need him, but like ender he is also just treated terribly by them and holds so much hatred in his heart for them. especially because of how hector salamanca killed gus’s partner (in both business and in life… they are gay confirmed💗) before committing to working with him, and how the teachers destroy enders closest connections with valentine and alai before deciding he can serve as their chosen commander. both gus and ender are also very polite, professional, and have a lot of people who work for them and are willing to follow them into very dangerous situations. they are also both incredibly intelligent (side note: i see it argued often whether gus or walter is the most intelligent character in the universe and, similarly to ender and bean, i think walter has him beat in raw intellect but gus more than makes up for it in other ways that make him a much better businessman and kingpin. including his willingness to work with the cartel and letting them push him around, which walter really does not do. and i honestly think beans defiance is a non insignificant factor in why he was not given the chance to take enders place as chosen commander). but it’s also very important to both of their characters that they are emotionally distant and very closed off, keeping people at arms distance after gus loses max and ender loses val/alai. this is both because of the fear of getting too attached and losing someone again, but also because it just interferes with the role they have taken on. when faced with the very rare opportunity to be close to someone, ender and gus both run away and return back to the miserable role they must fill as a leader who stands at the top, all alone. when they first meet gus/ender, walter and bean both have delusions of getting closer to gus/ender and are extremely preoccupied with making their importance and value known to them (walter even shows up at his house in the middle of the night and gets a call telling him to leave before getting the chance to get to his door. i dont entirely remember why but this is hilarious and very bean coded to me). gus and ender are both very distant from them though of course and the only time they are able to have productive conversations are when gus/ender initiates it and calls walter/bean to a specific location, in particular i think of ender calling bean to his room and gus bringing walter over to his house for dinner. anyways i also just think ender being the manager of a restaurant is very silly. long live los pollos hermanos
peter is saul goodman/jimmy mcgill. IM REALLY PASSIONATE ABOUT THIS ONE. scumbag politician & scumbag lawyer have very similar energy to me LMAO and i like the idea of peter wearing his obnoxious colorful suits. but!! they actually have a lot of similarities. from an objective outsider perspective both jimmy and peter seem like bad people But we the audience are given a empathetic look into both of their histories and how complex both of them are, making the way they turn out a combination of both nurture and nature. how they both have cruelty or being a criminal in their nature, but are also heavily shaped by family who treats them as irredeemable and incapable of being anything else, and thus it is a self fulfilling prophecy. chuck and jimmy were neglected by their parents like val and peter, but i think the way chuck treats jimmy kind of represents how peter is treated by both val and his mother ("god knows why i love you" type shit). jimmy/peters accomplishments were constantly undermined because chuck/theresa wished him to be different, but could never really see anything good in him when he tried. however i do think the most similarities are between chuck and val, because they both have very rigid perceptions of good and evil, and in their minds jimmy/peter is ontologically evil no matter what good they do. at the same time, val and chuck read and understand their brothers better than anyone else and are often the only ones who are able to fully see and understand their actual flaws. but the way they perceive and talk to their brothers is also just so wrapped in resentment and anger and spite that from jimmy/peters perspective, they are just unable to see anything beyond the bad in them. jimmy and peter are both perpetually unable to shake their past and become anything more than the way they were as kids. even when they are actively doing things that help people, to val/chuck it means nothing because of how they perceive the intentions and the means behind it. i think if peter were to pursue a career in law instead of becoming president of the world he would end up a lot like jimmy. both of them are brilliant (jimmy is a really fucking good lawyer) but they also are prone to crippling boredom and just have an inherent lack of respect for rules they perceive as arbitrary, and are incapable of cooperating with authority. they cant fit in anywhere. and no one trusts them. even when jimmy gets a good job at davis&main, he clashes with his bosses and ends up purposefully acting out until they fire him because he cannot take their rules seriously and he Needs to not be under anyone else’s control. it makes me think a lot about peter purposefully flunking at his gifted school. both he and jimmy were doing work that was brilliant and produced results (jimmys ads bringing in insane amounts of clients, peter’s writings being praised in online forums) but it angered their bosses and teachers because it broke the rules. they don’t complete the assignment and don’t have any respect for the framework or curriculum they are being expected to follow. i think a lot about this passage in enders stocking every day
it genuinely fucks me up so badly like. oh my god bro. very very strong associations with jimmy mcgill here because this is his entire life when he is trying to be a law abiding lawyer. and there’s just SO many lines from chuck>jimmy that seriously remind me of the way val talks and thinks about peter. but anyways this pushes jimmy to become saul and peter to become locke and they both find their niche!! and in this universe the locke persona is exactly like saul goodman where he is a Criminal criminal laywer who is very involved in the actual scene and is by far the best one out there. YAY! i also somewhat remember locke in soth and saul in brba serving a similar role where they provide support and connections to bean/walter and help clean up all the crazy shit they each get into without actually getting their own hands dirty in the action. i think the relationships are both very entertaining and i quite like thinking about peter being beans lawyer.
achilles would be a stand in for the salamanca family in terms of the conflict that he presents for bean. character wise i actually think he is a lotttt like lalo and this comparison makes me very giddy!! but lalo does not actually appear in breaking bad so the story will have to be twisted to accommodate it. oh achilles…making things so difficult… but it needs to happen. i saw a reddit post about lalo and gus theoretically Could coexist in brba and it inspired me so im needing to think about this more. anyways their similarities. lalo is not like the rest of his family (who operate with occasional cordiality but typically only with brute force)(kind of like the other bullies in rotterdam.wink wink nudge nudge) because he is INCREDIBLY charismatic and lively. it’s just so easy to love this guy he gets along with people so well and is so friendly and smiley you just want him to like you. you can look at him and have a conversation and share a meal with him and enjoy every second of it. but if you know him you know there’s something Off about it all because he is a psychopath and he is out here killing and torturing people, sometimes for completely unnecessary reasons. like achilles, lalo kills a lot of people who really just did not need to die, but they both feel no remorse for murder and will kill as a stepping stone in achieving a larger goal or just to assert their control over a situation. both of them are extremely calculating, perceptive, and intelligent, but there are also times where their own arrogance ends up trumping logical reasoning and their ability to fully read people, which is what ends up getting lalo killed and achilles thrown into prison. lalo and gus’ relationship also itches my achilles and ender pilled brain but this isnt really based on the actual text of enders shadow so i wont go into it here right now.
who else. i guess bonzo and nacho remind me of each other a little bit, not really their roles in the story at all but just personality wise and because they’ve both got a resting angry face and are also very pretty. and have close relationships with their fathers. but when i think of how they interact with other characters it all falls apart. also no matter how hard i try i can’t think of someone who fits the role of mike ehrmantraut which is INFURIATING because i love him so much and he’s so important to the story. Wait. maybe i can make petra be mike. hold up i just thought of this and now im thinking about it… 🤔🤔 this would make her interactions with everyone else so much better i need to come up with how to justify it bc their personalities are pretty different but we’re putting a major pin in this one.
anyways thank you for reading my long delusional post… hopefully this provides some context to anyone who is interested. big love!!!!
