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[pige0ns]

Eighty-Six Years — Chapter Eleven:  Home

The road is dark and in the distance a car rumbles along a driveway, tail lights pulling away and then vanishing. Skyler sighs again. “I said too much last time.”

Kim curls a palm over the back of her neck, shaking her head. “If we could just talk—”

“I’m not going to testify.” The line crackles with surety.

Kim takes another deep breath. “I’m not asking you to testify.”

Chapters: 11/? Wordcount: 71k  Relationships: Jimmy McGill/Kim Wexler

#i've been reading and loving every chapter and they all deserve a long comment but this will have to do! #SO obsessed with the way you haven't defanged skyler white at all in this fic #like hell yeah she *would* be moral in exactly this way #it's so juicy and fun to have it pointed at characters i really love and sympathize with instead of at walt #bc it's like...they're all trying to navigate difficult morality and are all doing their best #but of course land on different sides of that because of the lives they've lived #which is so complex and does justice to everyone and it's so good to read #anyway i can't wait to read the rest

[pige0ns]

Eighty-Six Years — Chapter Four:  Robles and Goto Partners

Viola sits behind her desk now, as if establishing a clear division. There, by the bookshelves, in the soft chairs: Kim’s civil suit, and the approach to take with Cheryl, and how to return Howard Hamlin to the Albuquerque legal community.

Here, with the heavy reclaimed desk between them, it’s—

“Mr. Goodman,” Viola says, tapping the end of her pen on a printout. “Sorry, Mr. McGill. Uh, Jimmy.”

“I call him Jimmy,” Kim says simply.

Chapters: 4/? Wordcount: 23.7k Relationships: Jimmy McGill/Kim Wexler

#that ending???? #op???? #you've made my week i'm so excited #absolutely obsessed with every chapter of this so far #i'm just enjoying myself so much getting to inhabit kim's brain the way you write her

[pige0ns]

I'm rewatching s1 of BCS (as one does) and I keep noticing how big Chuck's house is. Nothing new under the sun, but. I was wondering, do you think Chuck knows that Jimmy is living in his office (and what kind of office)? Do you think that if he knew, he would offer a spare room in his house? (It's really big, even for two people, for sure it's gotta have a guest room).

I'm not saying that Jimmy would have immediately accepted the offer but... Idk, i wanted to know your opinion abt this bc i really love how insightful your metas are and the relationship between the McGill brothers is MESSY.

ah, thank you! that's honestly a really interesting question. i've never thought about it before. my best guess would be that he didn't know because he didn't ask. he didn't seem to know that jimmy was broke in the first episode, which leads me to believe he didn't know much about jimmy's living situation. however, had he known, i don't really think that he would have offered, but that's kind of complicated by the fact that he doesn't leave the house. the way that i see it, a lot of his neurosis regarding the house and electricity seems to be about control and needing to control his environment. considering that, i wouldn't really hold it against him if he didn't want jimmy to live there since his inability to control jimmy seems to be a major source of anxiety for him. especially back in s1 he also seemed to feel that his expression of kindness towards jimmy was in holding back the all resentment and bitterness that had accumulated towards him, basically that his contribution to their continued relationship was in not constantly attacking jimmy (i think this ultimately did way more harm than good, but he had good intentions). that also leads me to believe that jimmy living there would be a major stressor because i don't think he'd be communicating, he'd be repressing more and more, and the tension would start building faster than it already was. it's definitely not impossible for me to imagine alternative scenarios, but that seems the most likely to me, and if on i'm the right track then i think it was probably for the best. i feel like jimmy and chuck as roommates would start as a sitcom and then very quickly turn into a horror movie.

#yeah completely agree #better call saul

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I know I've seen a few people talk about how depressing and sad the BCS finale is, and that's a perfectly fine opinion to have, but to me it feels very hopeful. The open-endedness of it all allows you to imagine whatever may happen next for him and Kim. Their story is up to you now, in a way that never would have happened if Kim and died or if they'd betrayed one another or if she hadn't called to see if he was alive. Sure, they might never see each other again after that visit, and he'll languish away in the prison forever, but perhaps Kim continues visiting him, continues fighting for him, and returns to the law like she'd begun to in the finale. Perhaps things go like he says- "But with good behavior, who knows?" He gets out early and they move in together, maybe to a quiet town by the Rockies and she opens a pro bono legal aid business while he bakes, and while things are different, and there definitely is no time machine that can turn things back, at least they have the possibility of a peaceful ending together. And the potential of that leaves me feeling very satisfied.

#completely agree #i totally get why people might be unhappy and that's their right #but the writers left it open for a reason #they've explicitly said they left it open to be whatever you want it to be! #of all the possibilities to imagine for them....why would folks choose the possibility that makes them unhappy #when it's not even going against the intent of the work to imagine something else #idk i feel very freed and satisfied by the sense of open-endedness #and love how well it fits the show thematically to be open-ended #when otherwise it might seem like a cop-out #better call saul

[pige0ns]

Eighty-Six Years — Chapter One: Miracle City

On the desk, next to the ash-filled saucer, the packet of cigarettes waits. The plastic wrapper is crushed at the bottom end, catching the light, but she doesn’t smoke anymore.

Not unless she’s with him.

Chapters: 1/? Wordcount: 5.8k Relationships: Jimmy McGill/Kim Wexler

#SO obsessed with this already #and can't wait to integrate it into my personal canon #i love reading you write kim in such depth #it's just a very cool and exciting new thing to read in your writing #her character and your characterization of her in this stage of her life is just so compelling and interesting #lost it at 'but...we're at paul's smokehouse?' #jimmy asking her how she is...obsessed w them #so excited to see how this story goes <3 #better call saul

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Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk arrive at the 69th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 17, 2017 in Los Angeles, California

#this is very cute 😔 #she looks so good

[pige0ns]

i find it really interesting how in many ways jimmy is an inversion of the typical conman. we talk about how his cons are a way of taking back power or gaining a sense of control, but i don’t know that i’ve seen anyone point out (though i’m sure someone has) how his tendency to go after powerful people is the exact opposite of what most conmen do. usually a con artist or a scammer will go after whoever they see as most vulnerable, like a wolf picking off the weakest member of the heard. they target the people they think will be most likely to believe them, the more desperate or well-intentioned the better. jimmy’s father is singled out as a mark because he’s so eager to help people. they don’t care that he needs the money and they don’t feel bad about taking advantage of his kindness. jimmy’s marks, in contrast, tend to be that same type of person. he pretends to be the vulnerable one, and rather than taking advantage of their willingness to help, he leads them to believe that they’re taking advantage of him. 

the man that he and marco trick into buying the worthless coin involves himself as soon as he thinks they don’t want him listening. he says “hey, money talks” feeling that he just came out on top of someone else. they never directly sell him on anything. he took it upon himself to buy a coin that was being sold to another person. in the flashback in 1x04 the man yells “later, sucker” as he runs off with the fake rolex (which he thinks they stole off a semi-conscious man passed out in an alley, even if said man was a dick). both plans very clearly hinge on jimmy and marco appearing as the “suckers” and their ‘victim’ taking advantage of that of their own accord. you see it with the stockbroker he and kim scam in the first episode of s2 as well. they lure him in by presenting themselves as people who have lots of money to invest, don’t know what they’re doing, and are very suggestible and desperate for advice. after they leave he goes, “wow. just… wow.” as if he can’t believe his luck in finding two people with so much money that are so easy to manipulate. if you scam someone by pretending to be a mark, it would follow that the people you scam are people looking for marks, or at least are happy to seize the opportunity when it’s presented to them. even in s6, the first guy we see jimmy scamming as “viktor” is constantly trying to trick him into losing bets, unable to believe jimmy keeps falling for it and yet very much enjoying humiliating him and taking his money. jimmy targets walt, who sees himself as superior to those around him and bullies his wife and jesse more than anyone else, exploiting their emotionally entanglement with him. the first person walt singles out to help him in his power trip is a drug addict, someone vulnerable that he feels will be easy to control. he prefers vulnerability to reliability, telling gus that he likes jesse because he can trust him and he does what he tells him to. jimmy never really engages with skyler and jesse in the same way walt does. he actually tries to help skyler deal with the man she cheated on walt with without telling walt, and uses walt’s money to do it. if you wanted to be generous (and i do) you could even read his attitude towards skyler, especially with regards to car wash, as his half-hearted attempt to prevent her from becoming involved. 

however, i think that the most glaring and clearly intentional contradiction in his conman role is his involvement with elder law, elderly people being the quintessential stereotype of a scam victim. despite the fact that “old people love him” and he’s clearly very good at charming them, his elder law practice is genuine. when marco asks if he’s “ripping off old people” he seems somewhat incredulous at the suggestion. far from exploiting them, he actually uncovers and exposes sandpiper crossing for defrauding their residents (a plot which repeatably brings up how vulnerable old people are to abuse and manipulation by citing various legal sanctions). the one time that he does manipulate his former clients as part of a ploy to close the sandpiper suit, his plan would actually result in them getting money, not losing it. when he realizes that his exploitation of their trust had real negative repercussions he calls it off and mitigates the damages by creating a situation that would cause them to see him as the bad guy, the kind of person who actually would happily manipulate and exploit old people without scruples, despite the fact that his elderly clients were some of the only people to genuinely like him. it doesn’t benefit him in any way and he actually says that he really doesn’t want to do it, but he makes the sacrifice anyway because he feels guilty that he exploited their trust in him. 

chuck could be taken as another prime example of someone that the typical conman would see as a perfect mark: mentally ill, often desperate, vulnerable, and dependent on him. instead we’re immediately shown how upset jimmy is at the idea that howard is taking advantage of chuck (“wave bye-bye to your cash cow, ‘cause it’s leaving the pasture”). he switches the numbers only after he feels like chuck exploited kim’s hard work just because she had less power than him and he felt entitled to it. he only retaliates against chuck after he feels chuck knowingly and callously twisted his trust and concern against him. at the same time, they make absolutely clear that jimmy holds total legal power over chuck’s autonomy at multiple points and yet he only ever does what he thinks chuck would want him to, no matter how mad he is at him or how badly chuck’s hurt him. he’s uncomfortable with even having the power in the first place, the thought of abusing it would never even cross his mind (not necessarily applauding him for this, but it’s still worth pointing out how it subverts the expectations associated with the archetype). 

the only thing to snap him out of his dark, pain-fueled scam spiral at the end of the series is marion telling him, “i trusted you.” that phrase triggers something and all the fight appears to go out of him. he was relatively unfazed by the man with cancer, and to be honest, his argument wasn’t totally invalid. while having cancer certainly makes you vulnerable in many ways, it doesn’t really have anything to do with how trusting you are or if you’re easily manipulated or if you manipulate other people. the walt example wasn’t inappropriate. maybe jimmy wouldn’t have been as willing as “saul” or “viktor,” maybe he would, but if you’re looking at the criteria he uses to determine his marks, having cancer really isn’t relevant. this is different though. he’s manipulated plenty of people that may have been more vulnerable, but it’s always in service of a bigger plan and in a way that he thinks won’t hurt them (i.e. manipulating the sandpiper residents but only when he believes they would also benefit and willingly taking a hit to reverse the damage he caused after seeing his mistake). at first the nippy lie did seem to fall into those parameters. he wasn’t trying to hurt her in any way, he just wanted to get to jeff. the bleaker his mental state became, the less consideration he seemed to put into who he was hurting and why, but the second that he became cognizant of the fact that he’d manipulated a vulnerable person into trusting him, then exploited that trust, and was now about to see them suffer for it, he stopped cold. even at his darkest and cruelest, that was a horrifying realization. 

none of this is exactly news, but plenty of people exploit and bully those they see as weaker or more vulnerable than them as a way to feel more powerful (walter white is a prime example of that. his entire arc is basically a how-to guide on it.), so i find it interesting that jimmy inverts the conman figure, which does represent that personality type in a lot of ways. his conning is still very much associated with power, as much as he hates feeling small or weak or vulnerable or exploited or without control, he never turns around and takes it out on someone less powerful. it’s a weak person that claims victory by picking a fight with someone they know can’t hit back. that’s not to say he doesn’t do damage or he never hurts people who don’t deserve to be hurt (whatever that means), but in juxtaposition with walt it works perfectly. both stories follow men who make bad choices in an attempt to stop feeling powerless, but if there’s one thing jimmy’s never been, it’s a bully. to use the archetype of the con artist is genius because once you actually put jimmy in that mold it’s immediately obvious how badly he fits. he’s not shameless. his entire character arc is about shame and desperation for approval from others. he’s not ruthless. he’s overwhelmed by guilt over his own collateral damage. walt is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, using his harmless appearance to trick attack those more vulnerable than himself. jimmy is a sheep in wolf’s camouflage, trying to cloak his own vulnerability by playing dress up with someone else’s clothes, clothes that never fit quite right. 

#oh this is SO good #i'd had similar thoughts running around in my head but couldn't put them into words #and this is exactly it #it's another one of those things that explains how even though jimmy does hurt people #and even though he does care about power and control #how he could ultimately escape that paradigm #i feel like there's something also interesting with the way that him escaping the toxic element of this stuff #involves him making himself vulnerable by admitting the ways he wasn't vulnerable #he opens himself up to losing power by admitting the ways he wasn't a victim #the exit for him is always the reminder of his aversion to abuse of power #which is--like you say--in contradiction to the conman archetype he seemingly cloaks himself in

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AND HIS NAME IS ____ _______!

#man.

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sorry I broke you

#obsessed with all your art op #but also. jesus....

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I’m glad you’re alive.

Better Call Saul 6.12 “Waterworks”

#just gorgeous #better call saul

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4x09 / 6x12

#her not being able to dishonor their love even now like jesus christ

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I’d be a… a ghost. Less than a ghost. I’d be a shadow. I’d just be… nothing.

#can't believe i didn't reblog this 😭 #i think i was literally too sad and liked it and was like #i'll uh...think about this later #but yeah. #sigh.

[pige0ns]

not to be overly on-brand here, but i do think there’s something to be said for the idea of the sunk cost fallacy as a framework for the show, this idea that you’re so focused on making up for past failures that you sink further and further into debt instead of doing anything productive in present or future. i don’t think that’s ever been more descriptive of jimmy and kim’s situation than it is right now. neither of them ever actually moved past what happened that night with howard. kim’s entire life has become a model for self flagellation. i think that in a more complicated sense jimmy has done the same thing. the problem with what they’re doing, and i think, in a similar vein, the problem with the focus people have on what consequences they do or don’t deserve, is the fact that what happened to howard can never, ever be undone. neither can anything that’s happened since then. nothing either of them do, nothing that is done to them, will ever fix what happened and there will be no point at which their suffering levels the theoretical cosmic scale. i think the entire issue is that they are stuck in this vortex of consequences and they can’t get out. 

kim is trying desperately to hollow herself out and jimmy is trying desperately to fill the hole inside of him, but it’s not making anything better, for them or anyone else (and obviously kim isn’t actively hurting anyone the way jimmy is, but her situation is still a net loss. she was doing good in the world, she was doing something meaningful, and now she’s not. it’s only ever been partly about her accepting accountability. more than anything it’s her trying desperately to cope.). it’s just a cascading avalanche of repercussions where one choice leads to a worse choice leads to a worse choice. the more that they suffer, the further they get from any sort of place where they can make healthier decisions. my main issue with any desire to heap more consequences or punishment on top of them is less about whether they deserve it or not, and more that it doesn’t accomplish anything. if they can start to heal, if they can try to move forward, that’s the only way i see any of this stopping. that’s the only way things are getting any better, for anyone. so the question isn’t really about what anyone deserves. it’s about whether it’s more important to try to compensate for past losses no matter how futile, or to do better in the future, to focus on what you still have control over. 

#exactly #you called this shit so hard

[pige0ns]

the series finale of amc’s BETTER CALL SAUL airs monday, august 15!

#insanely gorgeous op #better call saul

[pige0ns]

Can it be talked about how much of a serve it is that Kim is just insanely insecure as Jimmy is? Like she doesn’t show it as much, but on last week’s insider podcast, where they said whenever she thought he might leave she pulled him into bigger scams cos she thought that was the only way to keep him like god woman I hope you have a good therapist in Florida right now

first of all, let us pray our girl is long gone from florida. she's not far from the prison so that it doesn't take her long to visit, and she has a small but cozy home, and she does legal aid and gets the support she needs away from the place where she exiled herself.

it's why they're so beautifully, tragically suited for one another, isn't? they may have a piece missing, but they fit with one another. the insecurities, the imposter syndrome and self-doubt covered by bravado or steeliness, the desire for more, wanting to help or make an impact but initially pursuing that in the wrong ways, craving love but struggling to voice it, feeling a rush from their little plans, they're like one of those friendship/love necklaces that breaks in two but will always match together, even though a crack runs down the middle. and what's really poignant to me is, after everything, the pain, the missteps, the trauma, the separation, their inner struggles, they both reconcile who they are within their own souls in a much more whole and complete way, and when they come together again, that's where there's so much possibility for something good. to hold onto that love in a much truer sense. it's jimmy and kim, for real, no pretense. hands clasped together.

#just obsessed with how much she loves him i really am #the vibe is incredible #better call saul

[pige0ns]

the way that the score track that plays over jimmy and kim’s final scene is called “shared sentence” paralleling “shared smoke,” the shadow of the prison bars on the window cast over both of them, the shot at the end where they look at each other from across the prison yard, each in their own separate cage. the physical prison itself is irrelevant. their shared sentence started the moment kim left, the moment lalo killed howard in their apartment. they’ve both been living in their own private hells ever since. their prison was their guilt and their separation. jimmy going to prison isn’t his penance just like if he got out in 7 years he wouldn’t be free. it was always about this, the release of their shame and the end of their isolation. they’re closer to freedom now than they have been in 6 years.

#totally #and love your tags too about them not technically being free yet #it's more about there being a light #a glimpse of color #something to push you through the work #more than it being over

[pige0ns]

god this show is perfect. he did come out on top. he had them down to seven years, he likely would have served even less, but the victory was meaningless. no victory or money or power ever meant anything real to him. the scams, the manipulation, were his way of taking back power, of coming out on top of the people who made him feel small, but he never really wanted to win. he didn’t want to be better than everyone else, he wanted to be their equal. he wanted their respect, and he was incapable of winning that. the only person to ever respect him, to see him as their equal, was kim, and he lost that, and so the scams got worse and worse, more and more extreme. the further down he sank the more desperate he was to win, but it never fixed anything, because it’s never been what he really wanted. he finally came out on top here, for the first time ever, really, because he stopped comparing himself to everyone else. 

kim didn’t care that he was always down. maybe she cared in the sense that it made her sad, because she wanted better for him, or it frustrated her because she knew he was capable of more, but her faith in him was unwavering. that’s why she cleaned up his messes and picked him up when he fell down and protected him from the consequences of his choices. she never stopped protecting him. i think she wished other people could see him the way she did, but it never actually mattered to her what they thought. she saw him, and that’s what mattered, and in the end jimmy realized that too. he could win a million more times and it would never make up for what he lost when he lost her. he gave up on the whole idea of loss and victory. he admitted he was wrong, because he felt it was wrong. it went against what mattered to him. he won, but he hurt people. he won, but he lost everyone he loved. now he’s lost, but he got what he actually wanted. the only thing that walter really cared about was power, and so he ended up alone. all jimmy really wanted was to not be alone anymore, so he gave the power up.

#exactly exactly exactly #i already put my thoughts in my way too long tags on your other post #but yeah. #the show's language about winning #and it's language about identity and love and consequences #it all tied together so perfectly in the end #and i'm obsessed