#i'm just obsessed with him wanting to remember his victims and be able to relive the things he did to them. idk man. idk.

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dabbling in writing a little bit of slasher iii👀 it's not much, but i've had this idea for months and figured it's about time i did something with it. written while listening to deadrose by unprocessed. not necessary but it's currently topping my slasher iii song list

632 words

Time had muddled in their brain, they had no idea how long it had been since he’d disappeared from their sight, but they knew they were running out of time regardless. The rope binding their limbs had been tied with expert hands. As they struggled against their bonds, the rope’s grip only tightened, the fibers rubbing their wrists and ankles raw until it began to turn pink with their blood. Their eyes frantically searched the room for anything that might help them escape, but they found little that could be of assistance. 

The room he imprisoned them in was almost entirely bare, save for a pile of discarded, bloody clothing heaped into the corner and the black journal the masked man always carried with him. When he left the room, the journal had fallen from his pocket, haphazardly forgotten by the door.

Their curious nature overtook them as they scooted across the grimy floor, nudging the cover open with their toe. Their blood ran ice cold as a pair of vibrant blue eyes stared back at them from the first page. A photograph of a handsome man was paperclipped to the page, partially obscuring what they knew were the events of the final hours of that man’s life. They felt bile creep up their throat as their eyes scanned across the page.

17:43 He believes crying will help him, that his tears will compel me to release him. It’s pathetic, really. I thought he would be stronger. But the tears make his eyes look so pretty, maybe I’ll keep him a little longer.

The horrors of the first page had done nothing to prepare them for the next, as they found those same vibrant blue eyes staring back at them, cold and devoid of life. They tried not to stare too long at dark red blood oozing from the gaping wound in his throat. The pages that followed were all the same format: a photograph of some poor unfortunate soul accompanied by a horrifically detailed account of their final moments, followed by another photo of their corpse. On some pages, he had even smeared blood across the page in vaguely artistic patterns. 

As they flipped the final page, they bit down on their lip to stifle their scream as their own face smiled back from this book of horrors. Despite his poor attempt to crop the image before printing it, they could tell it was a screenshot from their Instagram, a photo they had posted in a moment of self-confidence. A photo that this deranged man would use to remember them by, a juxtaposition for the horrific photo they knew would occupy the next page soon enough.

The door creaked open, and they lifted their gaze from the photo to meet his darkened eyes, crinkled from the grin he hid beneath his mask.

“I see you’ve found my scrapbook,” The smile in his voice told them that he had always intended to drop the journal, that he wanted them to read it, to see what was in store for them. 

He crouched before them, plucking the journal off the floor and thumbing through the pages before returning to the image of the blue-eyed man. He stroked the image tenderly with his index finger before turning it around to once again display the image of his lifeless corpse.

“He’s still my favorite, I think. But you… I believe you’ll be a close second,” His other hand gently traced the contours of their jaw. “You’re going to be my masterpiece, darling.”

He stood then, chuckling to himself as he tucked the book underneath his arm and spun on his heels, striding back out the door as they crumpled to the ground, terrified of what other sick games he might be playing with them.

[septembersghost]

Hi! A few words I wanted to add about Hank and about Jesse as well. There’s a video of some extra moments from Jesse’s confession tape. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but just in case, I’m leaving the link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfvQIx8V14Q&t=205s&ab_channel=MoviesBreaker You know what hit me from the get-go? It’s Jesse, obviously very traumatized and suffering from PTSD, begging ‘No, no, I don’t wanna talk about it. Can we just take a break?’ (because it’s hard for him, he’s actively reliving his trauma and, I think, retraumatizing himself too), and Hank just cuts him off with a dismissive ‘Later.’ and pushes him to continue. Again, I like Hank, but he’s clearly not so kind, especially to Jesse. I’m also thinking about Marie. She must have heard this confession, right? And I wonder if she too didn’t really care, whether too betrayed by Walt and too obsessed with catching him (and she was, judging from her scene with a therapist), or whether she just completely shared Hank’s opinion. Or maybe she did care, maybe she was able to see Jesse as someone more than just ‘a junkie’, someone with a heart and a conscience? Like, did it leave an impression on her? And when months later, when Jimmy tried to play victim and told her ‘Jesse Pinkman and the others, they are out there, and they are to blame, I am not’, did it change anything for her? Did she remember that moment when Jesse was crying in their living room, crumbled with guilt, and maybe that’s why she looked at Jimmy with so much contempt and didn’t believe him even for a second? (pt 1)

(pt 2) Also, as I was rewatching this confession now, I remembered the Waterworks episode, the way Jesse was with Kim right then. And it’s CRAZY how much he’s changed. Crazy and so painful too. Those are two completely different 5-minute long moments of basically Jesse talking and recalling his past experiences, and just in a span of a couple of years, he’s a completely different person. His patterns of speech changed, his behavior, his eyes, his expressions, and it hurts. He was such a cheerful bumbling kid back then, just rambling happily (rather incoherently) about everything in front of him or whatever came to his mind, adding ‘like’ and ‘yo’ and ‘you know’ a lot, smiling almost all the time, doing his little cute gestures with sparkling eyes, and here he’s just… He’s just so in pain. Gone is that silly bubbling boy. His speech here is much more cohesive and coherent, he’s choosing his words, but god it’s so filled with grief and regret. The raw pain in his voice, the way he’s crying, it’s just… He broke my heart in this scene. I just want to hug him so much…

i saw what you wrote on the other ask i got about this and really appreciated it (i'm SO behind on properly keeping up with everything lately that going through asks keeps making me miss replies i want to reblog/respond to!). it's viscerally upsetting how little value is placed on jesse as a human life by people around him. he is constantly exploited and used. hank - who overwhelmingly struggles with ptsd of his own! so you'd think he'd have some empathy for it - only sees jesse as a criminal and a tool. he only sees him, in S5, as a way to get to walt. no real kindness or respite or even safety is offered to him. "kind" is not an adjective i myself would've ever used for hank, and that scene in the interrogation room was meant to represent all of the lives lost, but it was a tad jarring for me. marie's perspective about her late and beloved husband is certainly understandable, but it isn't wholly true, and i'd be fine with that except the scene kind of played it straight? you can misuse a badge like you can misuse a law license.

we only know so much from context, but unfortunately i tend to think marie agrees with her husband's views on criminals deserving less than humane treatment (see the scene after he's assaulted jesse for insight into this - she suggests he lie and say jesse attacked first. "it's some lowlife degenerate versus you doing the job you're supposed to. why should you be the one who pays for doing the right thing?" and to his credit, hank openly says it was not the right thing. yet he still goes on to treat jesse's life as a poker chip.) i don't think marie ever has a sense of sympathy for jesse, i just think she holds jimmy (saul to her) and jesse on similar levels of contempt.

breaking bad and bcs do an interesting thing regarding their views on individual personhood and criminal behavior. i think about wendy - she is treated abominably by basically everyone. kim is an exception. she sees her as a person and offers her assistance, should she need it. (and this could lead into a discussion of whether self-punishing as she did ultimately caused more harm to the world than good, because she removed herself from being able to help anyone or affect any positive change by obliterating her purpose so thoroughly. i'm not blaming her, it's just such a terribly sad path for her.) badger, skinny pete, combo. nacho. mike. jimmy and kim. we spend a lot of time with these people who do illegal and even reprehensible things, and it asks us to attempt to understand where humanity can still lie in that. jesse is maybe the most defined and biggest example of it. he does unquestionably wrong things, but we see the depths of his heart and the horrors of his suffering and suspend moral judgment, because at some point it's just not going to help. jesse was a kid who needed concrete guidance and support, and instead he's mistreated and rejected and looked upon with derisive cruelty and broken again and again. does it matter that he isn't "innocent"? at what point do we decide to prioritize compassion and realize that someone has been punished enough?

these stories asks us to look at how people get lost in life - to mistakes, to trauma, to abuse, to bad choices, to hurts internal and external - and to sort of do a there but for the grace of god go i... examination. we all make choices and slip up and struggle - how far could we fall given difficult enough circumstances? how much sympathy can we extend to those who are so damaged? how much trust can we actually put in the systems around us? i've mentioned this, but it's why boiling a lot of these characters down to just ____, just their worst traits, is incomprehensible and even hurtful to me.

jesse will never be that boisterous young man again, yet it's the echo of him we're left with as our final moment. maybe to remember how much difference it would have made if something could've turned his course around. instead, he is always going to carry that grief, those scars. he is always going to be changed. we have a much fuller picture of him than someone like hank ever could, or gus, or even walt. mike may be the only one who sees his whole a bit more clearly. we don't love him despite his wrongdoings, we love him because we understand who he is at the core. and that, to me, really matters, to understand not only the story, but also as (hopefully) an exercise in empathizing with others.