been thinking a lot about our occasional bcs exchanges and wanted to ask you: what do you personally think about "gene" in 611 and 612? because, at least to me, they really tried their best to make jimmy even worse than he was in brba – and saul was veeery bad already. it's probably just my pov, but it felt like they were trying to convince us that he deserved thoss 86 years in jail and i can't wrap my head around it, because this kind of "morality" was never the point of this narrative universe. it's totally a me thing, but i look at jimmy going crazy after the phonecall (and i am not talking about the anger outburst which is very jimmyTM, i am referring to everything he does after that) or thinking about killing marion, and it rubs me the wrong way, i can't help it. he was always flawed and became an asshole and did awful things, but like that? never. and i just... i don't get it. not saying i am right, because i am emotional and have a hard time being rational, so i am 99% wrong tbh, but is it really agency if everything a character does seems like a excuse for the plot to go in a certain predetermined direction?

i know we've talked/lamented about kim and the erasure of her agency and how crushing the treatment of her as a means to an end felt (and i could rant/cry about the mishandling of her and why it feels particularly terrible forever), and in a couple of replies you've mentioned jimmy too, and i'm sorry for being so awful at responding to things lately, because i swear i read everything you say like this:

i don't think you're wrong, but if you are, we're wrong together, because i completely agree.

my problem with everything that happened after point and shoot was that, not only was it rushed, it suddenly *felt* like writing. what i mean by that is, so much of the strength of the show was in how organic each development felt for the characters, how real it was as part of their journey. even when something was devastating or violent (chuck's death, mike and werner, nacho's fate, etc), it felt utterly honest for the story. of course that had to happen. fun and games is where this breaks for me. kim fidgeting in court only to announce she's quit the law feels written. the breakup scene...i desperately tried to understand that at the time, but it feels this way too, manipulative towards us as the audience in a way the show simply wasn't at other times. and then we get plunged into the gene storyline and very little of it makes sense (the stealing from the mall mishegoss remains incomprehensible and inconsequential lmao), but perhaps the more grievous aspect is that it doesn't matter. you could skip from the saul jump at the end of fun and games to him being caught at the beginning of saul gone and very little fundamentally changes because none of the wheel spinning in those episodes served any purpose to me, *except* to vilify jimmy. this then becomes a failure of plot - why does he need to be taken to this extreme? we know saul did despicable things, but also that certain lines weren't crossed, why go so far here? and the only answer is: to try to justify sentencing him to 86 years in federal prison, with no hope of parole (sorry to peter, who somehow doesn't seem to get that this is the reality of such a sentence). it's maneuvering pieces for a determined outcome, rather than fulfilling characters' arcs more naturally. "gene" ends up feeling more like a split personality than another mask over jimmy (you could easily argue he has a complete psychotic break in waterworks). kim is silenced.

a further problem then becomes, okay, if they needed to prove to us that jimmy could sink that far, they needed to do that in abq, before the full saul descent, show some worse nadir in jimmy himself, but they didn't because we, and they, loved him too much to go there. jimmy does many bad things, but keeps coming back from the brink. then we have an episode where he does the most unselfish thing he could do in being willing to die if it means kim escapes safely, and no time to process or recover from that, or see the two of them attempt to do so, before breaking them up. i know they described this as continually breaking him and stripping things away from him and kim leaving being the final catalyst, but it doesn't sit well with me because there's no room for it to develop, it's just a swerve. he goes from the most empathetic moment to utterly devoid? and then unfortunately they're boxed in by breaking bad and they couldn't concoct a more unexpected way to approach those parameters.

"is it really agency if everything a character does seems like a excuse for the plot to go in a certain predetermined direction?" exactly. and, sure, everything is written to take the plot to a certain place in a story, but we shouldn't be able to feel the seams of it and question its integrity.

what's unsettling to me is they spent six seasons humanizing jimmy and showing his vulnerability and exposing the heart underneath the colorful suits and the mask, only to then take us to a place where i have legitimately seen people interpreting him as worse than walt. which is insane and the wrong conclusion, but that shouldn't have been open for debate (much like i hate how certain audience members can now so easily blame kim for everything and claim she betrayed him - it's wrong, but can i see how they arrive there? yeah, and that's troubling). you can't undo character development like that in three episodes and have it feel right. those last few episodes undo them. we only have the shared smoke scene to reconcile it.

"this kind of "morality" was never the point of this narrative universe. it's totally a me thing, but i look at jimmy going crazy after the phonecall (and i am not talking about the anger outburst which is very jimmyTM, i am referring to everything he does after that) or thinking about killing marion, and it rubs me the wrong way, i can't help it. he was always flawed and became an asshole and did awful things, but like that? never. and i just... i don't get it." say that!!! one of my biggest problems with this is the moralizing aspect of it. brba never fell into that trap, and maybe you could argue it should've been ~morally~ harsher to walt and jesse (although, objectively, it's extremely dark, it's not necessarily about moral judgment so much as it is about consequence, fate, and transformation). walt dies, but he dies on his own terms in a blaze of glory. jesse's imprisoned and tortured, he'll carry those scars, both physical and soul deep, but he escapes. it doesn't hinge on moralizing at us in a literal sense, it's rather what you said before - this universe was never about balancing morality and choices with the justice system. it was about balancing those choices with yourself, those you love, and those you hurt.

the balance doesn't come, because jimmy and kim never even have a conversation. she is powerless and voiceless in the unfolding of these events. he only gets her to show up by making it seem like he might turn on her. and i know they talked about synthesis, i fully understand and appreciate the reclamation of his name, but (at the risk of belaboring this point, because I've mentioned it before), there's no reconciliation or middle ground here. saul lies through the truth by putting the weight of everything on his extreme trauma, jimmy then negates this altogether and give himself more credit than is even due for the heisenberg empire, and the depth of his trauma isn't acknowledged. it's unbalanced. it's seven cushy years at club fed or 86 in supermax, like...this show was so beautifully nuanced only for them to literally and figuratively end in strict black and white? there's a puritanism to it, and the ways in which jimmy and kim are "punished," that's unsettling. it's meant to be tragic irony - the lawyer who mocked the system is the one who will spend the rest of his life in jail - but feels clashing somehow to the more humanistic (and even mythic) elements inherent to both shows. it's not even that it's antithetical, i get what they were aiming for, but the purpose and heart of the story isn't ultimately served for me. and so much of that is due to the lack of space it had to breathe, and the rushed decline and whiplash manipulation of the characters, jimmy particularly.

this is long and i don't even know if i'm answering you properly or running in circles because this is what it's been like in my head for months. it's tormenting. i miss our show so much, it was my favorite and i still consider it a genius piece of television and an artistic triumph from the creative standpoint of the acting, the cinematography, the majority of the writing, but something fractured so badly for me by the end. i miss having more insightful/deeply felt thoughts about it, i miss its magic, and i miss the sense of comfort that it gave me, even in its tragedy. i know you understand that, and i wish i could help us reclaim it. when we'd say bcs is a ghost story...it haunts me, but not in the way they intended.

folks!!! after like ONE MONTH i got un-shadowbanned by tumblr, but!!! at least for now i'll keep using my other blog @boboodenkirk even though i have less followers there. follow it if you're still interested in my awful memes and random meta <3

@boboodenkirk and I are discussing bcs characters as allegories for the seven heavenly virtues (imagining them based on the work of piero del pollaiolo)

nacho as prudence, which is represented with a snake and a mirror to look behind its back

chuck as justice

gus as temperance

kim as fortitude

manuel as faith, his son the christ like figure

jimmy as hope, his brother the god like figure

charity of course, as howard

putting this out there because I'm not confident enough to draw anything yet but I'm obsessed with the idea now (we couldn't fit mike in there sadly)

i am sorry friendship with boboodenkirk nickname has ended, i am primordialscream now

@swordmaid tagged me to post 10 songs and tag 10 people. This one's for you babeee

Baby Queen - Gorillaz

Ghost in the Machine - SZA ft. Phoebe Bridgers

Which Witch - Florence + the Machine

Summertime Wine - Sizzy Rocket

Florida Blues - Cruel Youth

West Coast - Lana del Rey

Skinnydipped - BANKS

Gas Up - TeZATalks

Heaven in Hiding - Halsey

Two Weeks - FKA twigs

I tag:

@villainanders @iris-bllues @prince-luffy @lodessa @boboodenkirk @francy-sketches @weirdwoodeyes @kidenxo @dreadwulf @plavoptice and anyone else who wants to do it!

Here’s a bunch of songs

rules: make a new post and spell out your url with song titles then tag as many people as there are letters in your url

Tagged by @boboodenkirk

How many fucking E songs… anyway;

Zombie - the Cranberries

I need my girl - the National

Everlasting love - love affair

Even true love - widowspeak

Everybody’s hearts breaking now - lavender diamond

Every feeling - Ezra furman

Everything i love is going to die - the wombats

Good kisser - lake street drive

Lovesick - peace

Everyday people - sly and the family stone

Ruler of my heart - Irma thomas

Crushed it. Tagging people to participate makes me feel guilty about leaving others out so please show me your songs. It’ll pass the time before we all cry/implode/give up entirely.

sending you an embarrassed adorable 90s bill pullman just to publicly say hiiiiiii ily 💕💕💕

ELISA NO LIE, my mom and i watched this movie tonight!!! i'd been seeing so many gifs of it and had it on my mind even more after talking to you, and it felt like a perfect movie for the new year. he is so. cute and bestie. when she says, "i'm in love with your son...not that one. that one," i tear up every time because i am a sap. and she's right, who could blame her?

hiiiii 🥰💞💗

anyway. you rock.

me when i look at anything from you:

thank you for being here and listening and understanding, you're awesome and ilysm 💗

my dearest meli @bcyoureallthatmakessense tagged me! 🌹✨🌷

Go to Pinterest and type " [your name] core aesthetics" and create a moodboard with the first 9 images. You dont have to post your actual name in the post if you dont feel like it 😊

i did these for both jessica and jess, with ever so slightly different results but shared and accurate vibes, so here are both!!! 😘💖 (also i apologize for these being the worst mood boards because i just uploaded the pictures into two posts and screencapped them 😅)

tagging lovelies (no pressure!): @christinedaae, @princessofamber, @headfullofpresley, @boboodenkirk, @deardaaery, @littlelattewanders, @notastainofredwine, @lanne13

Jess, honey, hey! How are you?? I'm so happy you're back!!! ❤️

Your post about Kim popped up and I'm gonna say that... yeah. Actually the longer time passes, the less right the final episodes sit with me. I mean they TRIED to give us the most hopeful possible ending, and the first time I watched it seemed really good, but now I just don't know. It truly seems like Kim became the ghost of her former self, like she is gone and I don't know if she's ever coming back. I'm happy that both her and Jimmy are alive and, who knows, maybe they have a shot at rebuilding their relationship, maybe Kim will become a lawyer once again, maybe she'll find herself and shine in her true light, but we will never know. I just want her to come back. I just want her to become brilliant and dedicated and passionate and larger than life again, she's honestly one of my two MOST beloveds female characters EVER, and thinking about her arc and how she appeared in Waterworks especially makes me sad.

Which also makes me think (I'm sorry for going off-topic here) final seasons and specifically the endings are hard, and the more we love the story, the more we love and connect with the characters, the harder those endings hit and the more difficult it is for them to be truly satisfying. I got into one show a few months back (as in podcast), and I fell in love with it so much and especially fell in love with two main characters who are also in love with each other. They became my number one favorite OTP (kid you not, even more than Kim and Jimmy, which surprised me.) I'm close to the final season and the anxiety levels I have about this and the actual finale are going through the roof. I've never actually talked about this, but I do worry. What if they destroy my boys? What if the whole thing ends up in a big tragedy and that is it? What if it's never gonna be okay? What if the final episodes are just... bad? It's been STELLAR so far but I know how shows in their final seasons can get.

Like, so far I can name only two shows whose finales really, fully satisfied me, and the others were either just plain awful, or sort of okay-ish, but I have my issues with them (BCS is the latter.)

Anyway, sorry for this rant and I would really love to hear your thoughts about Kim (that is, when your wrist is doing okay and fully healed.) Btw, you can call me Ellie!

ELLIE!!! omg it makes me so happy to be able to use your name because i have been too shy ALL these many months to ask what you like to be called?! HI! ILU!!! and i always love your long messages, rants or otherwise! my hand/wrist are healing a bit and not as painful, though i'm still trying to be careful, thank you for asking! <3

i have had many emotionally overwrought private discussions about kim and the way she was ultimately treated, and it's a couple of mutuals who have had me wanting to mull it over and work through it a bit more recently too, because they've expressed some thoughtful criticisms that have hit me hard.

it's curious, because i think we maybe had a bit of an emotionally shell-shocked reaction to the amount of things they threw at us in S6B, and while i did express some feelings of hurt/being disconcerted at the time, it has also gotten worse for me the further we've gotten from the show. they tried, but they also kind of...didn't?...and it leaves us in this odd liminal space where it feels like they 1. were painted into a corner because of brba and could not find a creative way around that; 2. they forgot the key principles that the show was built upon because they, at that last hour, prioritized plot over character; 3. they wanted to have their cake and eat it too by serving us both wrenching tragedy and some sense of hope, so ended up with a lukewarm mix of both while not entirely serving either.

i'm going to quote @boboodenkirk because she wrote such astute replies that i don't think i can phrase it better, i hope she doesn't mind (bold is mine): "as for me i guess at first i felt such need for comfort from the show, that i just tried so hard to find the good and forget the bad about 6b. i liked the ending at first because from 609 on i'd been feeling like every new ep was…painful for pain's sake. the breakup was so messy and rushed, 611 to me felt like "propaganda" trying to convince you jimmy's a monster, 612 was heartbreaking, so i guess 613 at first felt like breathing again. but then i look back at it from a "safer" distance. and i realized that there were to many things that just seemed rushed, forced and contradictory to me. and as you said, as time passes, the feeling of disappointment just gets more and more intrusive. maybe i'll try and voice them? you've got a break up that somehow doesn't sit well with me, maybe because it was too abrupt, maybe because parts of the script in 609 just seemed a bit… melodramatic. but i could accept it, i guess, if that was kim running away from herself as fast as she could…but the divorce scene? that is angst p*rn ffs. why would she stick around? why would he "become saul" so quickly? i know this is my personal taste, but still…it feels different and worse. which brings me to the characters arcs being suddenly dictated by the plot and not vice versa. after the messy and rushed breakup (followed by a divorce scene that just seemed a bit sadistic), you've got them trying and trying to paint jimmy as THE villain. don't get me wrong, saul is awful and did plenty wrong, but this universe was never about balancing morality and choices with the justice system. it was about balancing those choices with yourself those you love, and those you hurt. in my eyes, they went on a mission to demonize jimmy so you'd feel okay with him being 86 years in prison. but i don't. the rampage he goes into after kim's phonecall makes absolutely no sense to me, because that's not him. they made him worse and worse and i think it was just so that his final good deed would look "cooler". while kim? kim annihilated herself. and 612 is another perfect example of pain for pain's sake. and instead of, dunno, having her trying to figure out how much she's """responsible""" for jimmy's becoming the worst version of himself (which is something i'd have loved to see) and dealing with guilt, vince said hey!!! let's make her bf a misogynistic asshole but somehow funny!!! let's turn doubtful consensual sex into a meme!!! and, eventually, she almost felt like a means to an end. she was there so jimmy could "repent", but where was the depth of her new storyline? you can't show that level of complete and utter self loathing and sabotage and think that "yeah, but see? she's volunteering at a legal aid center now" will somehow be the right answer to all of the deep questions her annihilation raised." <- i legitimately feel like she plucked this from my brain.

one of my biggest problems was, and continues to be, the way they very quickly tore the characters apart and then tore them down, in a way that vilified one and utterly destroyed another, for...misery? to prove a point about morality? part of the strength and even genius of these shows was that they never moralized AT us, they were so brilliant and intelligent and challenged us without talking down to us in regards to the justice system, in regards to human failings, in the deep, murky gray of destructive choices and hurt/harm and the interplay of that with empathetic connection, and how those terrible actions and downfalls happened, and what the legacy left in the wake of that was. where the humanity could possibly remain. how "justice" doesn't necessarily lie in a system, and isn't equated to revenge. how certain amends can never be made, but where the decisions lie within that tragedy, and what one can do (if anything) to change, to look at those shifting sands and make something of them. it's why the end of breaking bad works so well - there is no absolution for anyone, but there is the heavy consequence and the hope of slowly building something else.

they were aiming for that in a way with bcs, but it didn't quite get there. all of us know logically that hope is absent in those 86 years, but we keep trying to convince ourselves it's there and a release is possible. we get hardly anything with kim because she is utterly stripped of her agency and her strength and she barely speaks. (as i've said, it's beyond my understanding why kim doesn't even get a flashback when she is literally the center for jimmy. we get those scenes between all the main men that verge on the cynical and yet...nothing with her to provide some realized meaning? really?) which is what makes her depressingly feel like a means to an end - they built up this incredible, empowering female character only to CRUSH her, force her to annihilate herself and run from everything she was, surrender her agency (which was the key to her character's existence), and never return any of her power to her. she's left to her silence and her paralyzed inability to decide anything and then to jimmy's whims - even though what jimmy conclusively does is for her and a kind of reclamation, she has no say in the matter, no ability to affect it. she's barely recognizable, but in a way that doesn't work for me. it just...it makes me ache a bit that such a brilliant, wonderful, complex female character was diminished in such a staggering way. that she's basically a plot device, when she was NEVER that. her existence boils down to being the catalyst, abandoning jimmy to force him into the final descent of becoming saul, and then having no power or arc of her own to lead to the ending. she deserved to be more than a ghost. she deserved to be an active participant, like she always was. and i can't get over the fact that it feels like a uniquely female punishment, to silence and make her smaller the way that they did.

It truly seems like Kim became the ghost of her former self, like she is gone and I don't know if she's ever coming back. I'm happy that both her and Jimmy are alive and, who knows, maybe they have a shot at rebuilding their relationship, maybe Kim will become a lawyer once again, maybe she'll find herself and shine in her true light, but we will never know. I just want her to come back. I just want her to become brilliant and dedicated and passionate and larger than life again, she's honestly one of my two MOST beloveds female characters EVER, and thinking about her arc and how she appeared in Waterworks especially makes me sad. <- you also could've taken this directly from my thoughts. :(

endings ARE very hard, no doubt! and i have immense respect and regard for vince and peter and these actors and this creative team, and deep, abiding love for this show, which is another thing that's made it hard to criticize. it's not a violent shock and horrific wound in the way certain other endings have been (you KNOW what i'm referring to). it's difficult to get a story to a right and fulfilling conclusion - i can think of a handful of shows that managed it and all are shining little exceptions to the rule (ironically, i still maintain brba is undoubtedly one). far more often, they're either disappointing, saddening, or utterly ruinous. it's challenging to get them just right, and maybe it's nearly impossible to satisfy everyone when our connections to stories are so subjective. sometimes we're forced to accept sort of okay-ish because at least it's better than irreconcilable pain and destruction, but i feel like we still have the right to criticize things that don't ultimately sit well with us. it's been harder for me to process with bcs because i did trust peter and vince so much and it was hard to realize how let down i felt, and because i just wanted to cling to the comfort i got from the show and the way i loved it, but the more i've stayed quiet, the more discomfited i've been and that hurt has festered a bit.

the more we love and connect with the characters, the harder those endings hit and the more difficult it is for them to be truly satisfying. agreed.

never apologize for your thoughts and rants! tbh i could talk about kim forever, and despite what happened, it doesn't take away how vitally important she is to me. i truly hope your show ends well and is satisfying and doesn't take anything away from the characters you love. let me know!!! *hugs you tight* 💙💙💙

tagged by @watasemasaru + rules: put your favorite playlist on shuffle and list the first ten songs, then tag ten people! no skipping

Printemps éternel - Flo Delavega

Saturne - Bénabar

Si j'étais un homme - Diane Tell

Et même après je t'aimerai - Hoshi

Slow, Slow (Run Run) - Ayo

Mr Blue - Catherine Feeny

Ta marinière - Hoshi

Future Club - Perturbator

Emmène-moi (featured L.E.J) - Boulevard des Airs, L.E.J

Like Sexy Dynamite - The Orion Experience

tagging : @boboodenkirk @lachotakesitall @alltheotherfools @abliafina-18782 @locosalamanca @pt90 @walking-enthusiast43 @scumlow @riotgrrrlhole @oldmanroadhouse if you wish to do so

tagged by @locosalamanca​ to create myself on this picrew (thank youu)

was also tagged to post my lockscreen, the last song I've listened to and the last photo I've saved so here you go (the tony brainrot is real):

tagging @bowersgangvslosersclub @trantors @swesq21 @lachotakesitall @oldmanroadhouse @abliafina-18782 @a-crack-kinda-girl @starbuck @lalocorleone @watasemasaru @gaywexler @pulquedeguayaba @riotgrrrlhole @kimwexlersgf @boboodenkirk and whoever feels comfortable doing it :)

rules: make a new post and spell out your url with song titles then tag as many people as there are letters in your url. 

tagged by: @locosalamanca @boboodenkirk AND @pulquedeguayaba xoxo

A: Angela, Hatik

L: La grenade, Clara Luciani

C: Chemins de traverse, Grand Corps Malade

O: Other Side, Woodkid

M: Mala Vida, Mano Negra

P: Paradis, Orelsan

A: Adult Diversion, Alvvays

S: Slow, Slow (Run, Run), Ayọ

D: Dilemme, Lous and The Yakuza

E: Et même après je t'aimerai, Hoshi

M: Mr Blue, Catherine Feeny

I: Il Mio Rifugio, Richard Cocciante

C: Can't Get You out of My Head, Kylie Minogue

A: Après moi, Regina Spektor

B: Balance ton quoi, Angèle

A: ave cesaria, Stromaé

L: Le temps est bon, Bon Entendeur, Isabelle Pierre

L: Lakes of Canada, The Innocence Mission

O: Our Last Summer, ABBA

tagging: @oldmanroadhouse @swesq21 @abliafina-18782 @a-crack-kinda-girl and the rest of these fools<3