#i realize ego is also less sympathetic than revenge or guilt but i also...think it's more believable as a driving force for wickedness

[izzythehutt]

Walt is the least sympathetic of all the BrBa criminals/anti-heroes/rogues gallery because he's the one (major) character who doesn't have a clear and unambiguous "reason" for being the way he is. There is an unflinching refusal to give this character a "Freudian excuse" for his behavior and I just...love that.

It is not only an extremely brave choice from a writing perspective for your protagonist (and really only works because Bryan Cranston can somehow wring sympathy out of this dry husk amoral sponge of a person), but also makes him the most realistic portrayal of what evil really is. Walt feels the least like a television version of how a person becomes bad because there's not one reason it happens, and there's an aspect to his moral descent that's both mundane and mysterious—his motives unfold gradually, they change, and the show never really seeks to outright explain why it happened beyond the obvious inciting event—his cancer diagnosis. Was there something in him always not quite "right" or was there just a unique confluence of circumstances that caused Walt's complete moral transformation? In his own words—he liked it, he was good at it, and it made him feel alive. Maybe it is just as simple as that. Evil is actually a lot less interesting than people give it credit for.

There are so many things about his personality that are just never explained but must have some explanation, surely. For example: Walt's hang-ups about money—his obsession with being the one who provides it for his family and his reactive disdain for charity (even Saul points out there's clearly deep-seated issues there lol.) You could very easily see a different writer backstory dumping a lot of explicit childhood trauma with Walt and his single mother being poor and him getting bullied and this being where his weird inferiority complex about hand-outs come from. Instead this is just a huge part of his personality that has no obvious singular explanation. Why is he like this? Who the hell knows!

Which I personally really like, because regardless of whether that happened to him as a kid (I have to assume something like that was going on with child Walt because he has really specific neurosis) it has no ultimate bearing on the morality of his actions. There is no excuse for what he does, ultimately, and I just love that the show gives you very few reasons to feel sorry for him, at least as far as his backstory goes. Even the merits of his Gretchen and Elliot resentment is called into question (though left vague.)

In a weird, counter-intuitive way this lack of explanation for his behavior makes me feel more sympathy for him (again, Cranston acting magic pulling its weight.) But it's such a subjective thing with him. How you feel about Walt hinges on the performance, the character's actions in the story itself and what the viewer chooses to extrapolate from both. I can't blame people for thinking he's just kind of a low-empathy asshole, though I personally find that explanation reductive and less interesting, I cannot argue with it as a valid read. He is very, very hate-able for so many reasons. There's something refreshing about how unapologetic the writing for him is in that way.

[felikatze]

Hello I will once again, mf rambling since I have lob brainrot

Ooo I would like to say that Carmen's goal is more or less the same and even after hundred and thousands of years she has never once grow to hate humanity seen from her answer toward Angela's question of "are you not going to stop what you are doing?" by saying "not until everyone learns to love themself for who they are". Her dialogues during Keter realization are still consistent with what we already learned from her previous goal being "I want to whisper into people ear and let them know their deepest desire so it could be manifested to the surface" with what her goal in lob about wanting people to be free (mentally speaking in a way of not being constrainted by social standard or themself) and be able to obtain the power to reach their end meet themself without the need to depend on the Wing (lead to the creation creation EGO and so on and in lor Distortion). I would say that Carmen's decision of whispering Angela to follow her desire is less in the sense of "my ideal was wrong all along" but plainly what it is being that she motivate Angela to just, be free and be herself, after all it is her ideology that people should be free and be achieve anything with their own hand. I think the only that actually changed about Carmen is her own realization that she is also a human therefore can be selfish and have desire of her own (I.e her bloodbath quote of "I want to live, when the thought run through me my body shudder with regret" or Angela comment in the true ending about how Carmen is human after all so she must have her own desire and she wanted to live till the end to watch her dream success as well) which is like, good for you girl, go wild <3

I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO SAY THAT, I FIND IT very interesting that despite being a person with weak heart Carmen is not naive till the point where she thought her dream could be achieve without sacrifice. Her decision to sacrifice Enoch is explicitly because she found herself in a corner and thought that a result is necessary no matter what cost, the way she handed thing down to A because she is aware that in the future she must make sacrifice, she must hurt other. And like it not like she entirely dumping everything on A since she also tried hard to reach till a certain point and like, she is like those feeling of like "when you tried to be mentally prepare for something for a long time and thought you could handle it but then when that thing actually happened it hit different". Where she is aware of the inevitable sacrifice but upon facing the decision where she has to made it and realized the gravity of it she doesnt dare to look forward to the future or moving forward. She was also under the pressure of being this "perfect leader" that she put on for other people to put all the expectations on her too so when the first crack appears everything just slowly going down which is super oof tbh 😔.

Also on topic of Carmen I'm obsessed with the fact that day 48 where Abram showing flashback where he compared Carmen to be on the cliff of expectation and one crack and she will go down and never be able to lift her head again (which has happened), him despairing about how you will fall to the ground no matter how many expectations you have and then Angela in the true ending of lob going "the taller you stand the harder you fall" to mock A like the poetic analogy

quite acute of you, i'd say, dear anon!

I'd agree with how you said, Carmen's goal remains the same: freeing the people of the City to pursue their own happiness.

Now that I think abt the dialogue more, I think you're probably right about her not hating humanity. Even so, her saying that "people can only love themselves" is still much more cynical than what we've previously seen of her. A stance like that pretty much rejects the existence of compassion, even though her wish for people to express themselves is, itself, compassionate.

In the end she was just human indeed. Everyone in the lab put her on a pedestal as the figurehead, and she simply could not handle it. Nice use of that day 48 quote, god knows I don't remember dialogue well enough to quote it directly.

Carmen is in the end also a very complicated character. On one hand, it's a very "Well, what did she expect?" sort of reaction, on the other, as you said, the pressure got to her. It all just snowballed~

Though her goal is the same, I'd still say her method is different in the end, otherwise she wouldn't have tried to stop Angela, even if she respects Angela's decision. I wonder a bit about the pre-bloodbath keter realization scene, with the lob angela confronting lor angela. All later scenes deal with Carmen, so is that also Carmen, or nah? If it is, that Angela has a very "I know what's best for you and you don't" attitude.

It ultimately depends on the angle her goal led to. For the Seed of Light, as intended by Ayin and later Angela, is for people to "face their true feelings and express them." (pulling from the beginning of Keter realization)

Carmen's "exposing the true self" seems the same, yeah, but the way she goes about it, the Distortions themselves are happy, but there's too many bodies in their wake. It's why Angela makes the choice to spread the Light instead of hoarding it, too. If she selfishly pursued only her own revenge, it would ring hollow with guilt.

Also sometimes what people think makes them happy in one moment ends up not being true at all.. e.g. again Philip where U'm not sure deciding to never feel feelings again is like, a good choice. Generally. If you refuse to acknowledge your feelings, even the negative ones, and just run away from them in pursuit of your grand goal, it WILL bite you. Like, perhaps, Carmen, trying to shoulder too much responsibility by herself, crumbling under it.

I do love your interpretation of Carmen as a more sympathetic character! It's similar to a lot of my feelings abt trash man Ayin tbh,, God these two.

Also what you said abt Carmen being supportive of Angela,,, I do love that a lot! I feel like Angela got a lot of closure from her "parents."