#brbabcs discussion

[thekimspoblog]

I mean I guess I'd have to see the post this is in response to to know what you're talking about, but I dunno man. Yes, it's not entirely rational to complain that Kim is underexplored, when really most of that is just a symptom of her being a supporting character. But I think what people are reacting to is how socially isolated Kim is. Yes, BCS wrote one interesting female character, but it utterly fails the Bechdel test. Kim's only relationships outside of Jimmy are to Howard and Chuck, and while Kim's adversarial feelings towards these two definitely have roots in something beyond Jimmy, that is usually what they're shown arguing about. Skyler at least had Marie to talk to. #KimWexlerHasNoFriends

It's not that Kim was "written by men", but the drum I have no intention to stop banging anytime soon, is that Kim was written backwards from the stance of "Fans sent the actors death threats because Skyler was too combative against Walt. How can we avoid a repeat of that?". This was probably the most interesting they possibly could have taken the idea of a love interest who was more on-board with criminality, but at the end of the day she does just have a bit of a Pick-Me aftertaste. A cool girl. There are limits to how mad she was allowed to get at Jimmy or why, and you can feel that especially in the later seasons.

sometimes critiques of kim wexler as a character are frustrating because they are written by people who loved breaking bad and better call saul but didn’t actually pay that much attention to her arc, her dialogue, her backstory, or her anything, really. kim is a reserved and intense person to a fault; to understand her reactions to the events around her you need to actually pay attention to her as a character (which isn’t actually that hard, it’s television not rocket science) and you need to take notice of what she’s doing even when she’s not saying anything. it’s always very funny to me when people make assertions that there’s something un-feminist (not to say her character IS feminist, because i don’t think most media in general is “feminist” even when the women are well-written) about her arc or her role in bcs that basically amounts to them telling on themselves. they just didn’t pay attention to her and didn’t bother to look at her character or her motivations seriously. and it’s crazy to me that these people will come online and critique kim’s character while not remembering half of the scenes she was in alone or the nuances of her solo sub-plots.

another good example of this type of off-base critique is when people claim she only exists in relation to jimmy, the main character. because when chuck’s arc revolves around jimmy that’s normal, right, since jimmy is the titular character? but when kim’s arc purportedly revolves around jimmy (it really doesn’t, but we’re talking about people who straight up didn’t pay attention to kim’s scenes) it’s suddenly bad writing or not feminist or kim is a shallow character in a show where no main character is shallow.

ultimately kim acts as an unusual litmus test for whether or not people understand what actually makes female characters poorly written and flat, and what actually makes their relationships with men a disservice to their character vs. a component of their own arc. if YOU think kim has nothing going on outside of her relationship w jimmy all that tells me is you didn’t watch the show carefully enough or you simply checked out during most of her scenes. and that is well and truly on you!

[mcwexlie]

stimmy kimmy :)

[slamminslamminmcgill]

⚖️About/Rules⚖️

jay | 23 | he/him | trans male | bi

i write reader insert smut for crazy old men. currently this includes characters from brbabcs, tlou, and house md. also deadpool and wolverine.

MINORS DNI. YOU WILL BE BLOCKED ON SIGHT.

NO AGE IN BIO WILL BE ASSUMED TO BE UNDERAGE AND BLOCKED.

i'm a trans man, i write primarily for trans men. i can make the reader gender neutral upon request, but i will not write fem!reader content for free.

since my content is intended for trans men, i list the anatomical terms used to refer to the reader's genitalia.

i write for fun; i write for free; and i write for me. if i am not able to enjoy something, like for example fem!reader content, don’t expect me to write it for free. if you really want me to write you something for a fem!reader, dm me to discuss commissions.

do not spam my inbox with a request that you actually want me to answer. it will get deleted.

i do not necessarily condone every action i write in fiction. fiction does have an impact on reality, but that doesn't mean i won't write about upsetting topics. depictions of SA in media helped me to recognize that i was assaulted. i'm in therapy and if you're gonna tell me what i can and can't write as a survivor i advise you to touch grass instead.

estoy aprendiendo español y escribiendo es como yo puedo practicar. si yo hago un error, corríjame, por favor.

fuck 12

[we-dont-talk-about-potato-nonono]

hi potato!!! omg im not sure if we're mutual yet but i love your art a whole lot!!!!💗💗💗💗 and you're also in brba/bcs fandom too?? that's awesome!!! hiii!! do you perhaps have a brbabcs oc? I'd love to know!

(or, if you dont have, maybe you want to make it..? 👀 abby can them can be friends...)

hey there! yeah im a huge fan of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, but not really active in this fandom… i typically just lurk around, reblog and enjoy the silly memes on YouTube. if i feel inspired, i’ll just draw the characters (mostly jimmy & kim cuz im so normal about them ) and then bail. my squishy brain can't stay in one fandom for too long, it's always jumping around to another new interest. im glad you like my art ❤️ you got a beautiful drawings too!

oo your ask inspired me to create an OC for BCS/BRBA! here she is! her name is Joy

she doesn't have much details and backstory yet, but im planning to flesh her out more if im not busy with other things.

with how messed up the brbabcs world can be, figured that putting my OC as a Los Pollos Hermanos employee would fit right in. she’s also Lyle’s close friend! let’s just hope she doesn't face as much tragedy as the other characters lmao

gonna put on read more for the question about being mutuals because this post is already long ⬇️

[shaking and crying rn i hope i don’t upset anyone..]

so.. uhm im very picky about who i actually follow & follow back because i need to limit it for the sake for my dashboard. preferably id have to REALLY like and rather follow blogs that i vibe & familiar with the contents that i want to see than something… i dont really want to look at 🙏 this is just how i curate my experience

in general, i also dont feel comfortable with others dming me personal things and it feels anxiety-inducing. unless it’s a specific topic like art discussion about drawing tips, ocs design, request, art trades, collab and maybe commission

im SO SORRY 🙏 🙏 it’s nothing personal i swear, really! and im letting yall know that i will always recognize and remember all the people who consistently ✨ like and reblog ✨my stuff and you're all honorary mutuals to me even if i don't follow you back and i appreciate you all sm!!! <3 i go bounce bounce seeing everyone being super sweet in my notif

if yall interact often and you’re super nice in the notific you’re already a mutual for me! 🩷 sending me question and art suggestion never bothers me! i love to talk, get to know and interact more with people in this lovely app! :)

thanks for the question!

[thekimspoblog]

Saul definitely got a major ret-con, where they added the tragic backstory of a dead brother and a missing love of his life.

BRBABCS tries to be politically neutral, but as a show that's set in the real world, with real concepts like cops and money, what the audience takes away from it is always going to come down to your political alignment and the assumptions you entered the story with. I don't have a ton of experience, but from my 1 year in law school, I can report that the LAW is a deeply broken institution, which mostly serves just to protect the interests of the elite and powerful. To say that Chuck was right and "the law is sacred" is a valid reading... but I think Chuck's wrong. Jimmy treats these institutions with flippancy because flippancy is what these institutions deserve.

Jumping off from that, I subscribe to the philosophy that crime is not an aberration of society, but just another part of it. The only way to refine the social and moral codes is to be willing to cross the lines you perceive as arbitrary. Wexler-McGill serve the necessary, almost spiritual purpose of calling out hypocrisy and humbling the arrogant. Sure, they are also hypocrites, but that's between them and God. If BCS didn't want us to sympathize with Jimmy's cynical worldview, it probably shouldn't have validated that worldview at every turn: Chuck putting Kim in Doc Review was extortionate; Sandpiper and Mesa Verde were acquired through legal but unethical trade practices; the courts were happy to throw Mr. Acker out onto the street; Howard and Cliff were acting against the interests of their client by dragging out the settlement; businessmen shrug and say "There's a special place in hell for Wall-Street Executives" then go home to their big empty McMansions while most of us are living in a shoebox.

There are plenty of extremely intelligent lawyers right now speaking out about the corruption in the legal system, and most of those lawyers are women of color. Despite being a (flamboyant👀) white man, a lot of Jimmy's rhetoric feels like a conduit for that frustration and contempt with the system. All art is a product of the era it was made in, so I think no analysis of this show is complete without addressing the elephant in the room: that despite being set in the early 2000's, this show was made at a time when a brazen con-man was able to occupy the highest office in the land despite losing the popular vote, and we were watching some of the most important legal precedent of the Warren Court be overturned. BCS sets out to tackle the mindset of "History is written by the winners", but it fails to ever present an alternative to this idea and ends up endorsing it by default. Maybe because there is no alternative and "might makes right" is something the good-guys are going to just have to wrap their heads around. Not only do I think lawyers who are willing to "cut corners" are necessary for systemic reform and actual justice/equity, but the way fans discuss Jimmy going to prison, as if the state is owed the authority to punish/reform him honestly unnerves me. It shows that the Copaganda of Season 6 worked, despite the previous 5 seasons being rather decidedly ACAB. If anything, McWexler's failure was that they weren't ambitious enough. I mean I haven't completely disappeared up my own ass here; I know Jimmy isn't MLK writing from Birmingham Jail; he was for the most part a petulant man-child only concerned about personal slights. But my point is that you can have good effects even if your motives were impure; there was something rotten about how normalized the behavior of firms like HHM had become, and it was a service bringing them low. The problem was that in the grand scheme of things, McWexler had way bigger fish to fry than the likes of Howard Hamlin. I mean do you know how many white nationalists the Bar Association has let through? There's your chimps with machine-guns, Chuck! Wexler-McGill (at least their memeified versions) have such cachet as a modern Bonnie&Clyde, as naughty little anarchists, and in my opinion, their greatest sin was myopia and failing to live up to that potential. They didn't choose their targets thoughtfully; they'd plan ahead, but not make any contingencies for the hundreds of ways this Rube-Goldberg could fail.

Unlike Walt, Jimmy does have lines he won't cross. When Jimmy realizes his scam has cost Irene Landry her (honestly pretty shitty) friend group, he chooses to come clean even though it would cost him. He's content to do all the property crime (and light battery of rich adult men) he can, but when his options are between brutalizing Marion and running to hide in a dumpster, Jimmy's the guy who will pick the dignity of the dumpster.

Breaking Bad gave Walter numerous outs, and Walter refused all of them because of pride. Jimmy ends up enlisted into helping Lalo because of a stupid stunt Jimmy pulled 4 seasons prior. He visibly loathes the act of lying for a remorseless killer, but he does so under duress. DA Ericsen tried to toss him a life-preserver, but I can understand why Jimmy trusts Vacuum-Cleaner-Repair-Guy way more than he does the actual Witness Protection Bureau. I haven't watched Breaking Bad recently, but Walt's antics honestly feel pretty small in the grand scheme of things; Jimmy was already embroiled in the criminal world by then: Gus knew about Kim, Mike probably knew where Kim lived in Florida. If Jimmy didn't go along with the racketeering and the money laundering etc. I don't think Gus would be above giving the order to hurt her. The moral thing to do is always to tell the truth. The moral thing to do was not an option until after Mike and Gus dead.

Saul Wrong?

I have many controversial BrBa/BCS opinions, but the one that I always come back to is that Saul Goodman worked way better as a comic relief supporting character than as a protagonist of his own show.

I actually found him more likeable when he was an unapologetic sleazebag, it was when they tried to make me feel sorry for him in his own show that I lost sympathy. His pathological criminality brings out my inner Howard/Chuck, I guess. It's like....dude...why are you like this? And I don't necessarily feel like the show does a very good job of explaining it. At a young age he sees his father getting taken advantage of by conmen, and apparently accepts the (deeply morally cynical) attitude that the world is separated into hustlers (wolves) and marks (sheep.) His parents seem to have been totally normal people for whom he felt affection but no respect, because he can't stand rubes, and that's what they were. His brother Chuck is not a rube and is the family member whose affection and respect Jimmy seems to covet the most, though it's not clear whether he has any awareness that the very quality that makes his brother's esteem worth having (his commitment to an objective standard of morality—the fact that he can see through Jimmy's bullshit) is the one thing that prevents them from understanding one another.

Somehow the fact that Walt lived a (basically) normal life until his cancer diagnosis, and everything he does is predicated on his awareness of his own mortality, makes the character's moral fall from grace...more understandable to me? He obviously has a bunch of bottled up petty resentments and a sense of having wasted his potential, but I find his pathology way more coherent than Jimmy/Saul's. I think this is really because he was always the main character of a show, and Saul got a gigantic retconned deep backstory for the spin-off which, while enjoyable, was very obviously not the point of that character when he was created. BCS had to answer the question, "why would someone become like this?" but I wonder if there really is a particularly satisfying way to explain why a comic relief criminal lawyer would choose to work with a person like Walt.

I think BrBa did a better job of showing how Walt self-justifies his awful behavior (compartmentalization, projection, guilt) but Jimmy/Saul seems to have something missing (a sympathy chip? He's capable of feeling compassion for people he relates to, but no sense of seeing value in any abstract principle.) Why are you so obsessed with breaking the rules, dude? His brother is basically correct in their final conversation when he assesses Jimmy as behaving like a child who refuses to acknowledge the consequences of his actions beyond how they hurt him. Every moral consideration is made in terms of his subjective feelings. Him feeling entitled to a high-profile job at his brother's law firm when his brother had to bail him out of serious legal problems is really kind of insane.

Maybe the real problem for me is that Walt is obsessed with gaining respect and Jimmy is obsessed with being liked, and at the end of the day as a motivation for villainy in a man, I.....kind of find the latter more pathetic than the former.

[exdeputysonso]

✨ Better Call Saul Discord ✨

hey everyone! finally put together that discord i’d been thinking up. a space for speculation, live episode discussion, actor discussion, and anything else relating to the brbabcs universe.

rules: must be 18+!

https://discord.gg/6df2WH3fGw

(reblogs are welcome, but please don’t repost link outside of tumblr)

[mpregeminem]

the mutuals discussing which brbabcs character is most suited to show hole

I love speculating on how gay sex would've altered the course of the entire brbabcs universe <3