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sukisuna · 3 days ago

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Whatever it takes

Suna Rintarou x Fem!reader

wc :3.2k college!au. party setting, frat boy vibes- asshole!atsumu, loser!suna

this is my first full piece of writing on this blog, so i’m very rusty, i hope it’s enjoyed- i can make a taglist if enough people want to be on it but comments and suggestions are welcomed!

part 1 - part 2 (coming soon)

“God, why the fuck is she here?” He groans, lazily draped on the crowded couch. You know the sound of that whiney voice anywhere, if not too well.

“Who cares, she’s fucking hot.” Comes as the reply, you don’t know who said it but your eye twitches.

Miya Atsumu, you already knew who had said it. You’re currently standing near the kitchen island, you’ve got Kuroo on your left and to your right is Bokuto. You’ve been here a little over an hour, you’re laughing with them as they talk to Hinata. The music is blaring and there’s unattended drinks and bottles scattered everywhere.

You’re far enough away from the group of friends sitting around the couches near the living room, but not too far to where you can’t hear their conversation as you inconspicuously slightly tune out the group you came with to the party.

“ I mean, come on dude-“ Astumu whines to nobody in particular. “She comes to every single party, hottest chick on campus, and not a single person has gotten in her pants- what a waste.”

You can feel your eyebrow raise, it pisses you off but it’s true. You’re popular, very much more than to your liking. People gravitate towards you and can’t seem to understand why yourself, but you’re sweet to everyone and never hesitate to help someone to study or grab them a coffee when they look too worn out. You’re a music major for crying out loud, nothing grand about it. You make silly sounds by pulling your fingers against strings attached to some carved wood.

It’s not that impressive, at least that’s what you think. You’re not sure why you’re always around people, having conversations that you never start but always indulge yourself in, but that’s how it’s been the whole time you’ve been studying here.

You met Bokuto and Kuroo in the first semester, somehow managing to get lost yet again on your way to the music rooms, you had peeked your head through some double doors when you found a volleyball being hurled through the air towards your face. But it never reached, a massive hand sprawled out in front of your face shields the impact. silver and grey hair inches from your eyes frantically making sure you weren’t hurt and tall black-raven hair sprinting towards you to apologize profusely. That’s how you had met your current 2 best friends, the gist of it anyway. And they had dragged you off to every party that their college volleyball team held since.

You continue to listen as the conversation draws out. “I know what I’m doing tonight boys, I’m hitting that- whatever it takes.” A few amused laughs echo.

You don’t even need to be looking in their direction but the proclamation makes your blood boil. Whatever it takes? You could definitely be throwing your head back and laughing at that one later over tomorrow morning's debriefing with your 2 best friends, while you’re all sprawled over your apartment floor with greasy breakfast sandwiches between you 3.

You finally turn your head to look over at the group all gathered around the couches, you see some familiar faces. Most of them from the volleyball team, laughing and joking amongst each other.

One face sticks out in particular, sitting opposite from the couch where you had heard that familiar irritating voice of Astumu earlier.

Longer swooping tufts of hair that dangle around his face, narrowing eyes and expression of absolute disinterest.

His eyes slowly trace around the large open space, until they finally and slightly surprisingly meet yours. To anyone who’s not paying close attention, there’s no shift in his expression as his eyes bore towards yours across the room. His golden eyes slowly shift downward to back up to yours, eyebrows raising just the tiniest bit. His red solo cup perched against the corner of his mouth from where he holds it, the tiniest smirk shifts his lips upward for a split second before he finally takes a sip from his drink.

Ah, Suna Rintarou.

Yeah, you think you do know what you’re doing tonight. Whatever it takes, right Miya?

It’s been a while since you've made a move on anyone, not bothering since mostly focusing on your studies and not letting anyone distract you from your music mostly. There've been a few people that have caught your eye but none who have tried to really get to know you, so you have cut your losses and moved on. Bokuto and Kuroo have also kept you very busy and it's been a godsend, never letting you spend more than a day to yourself before you find yourself out at volleyball practices or all crowded around the local coffee shop’s tiny tables to study together.

A large heavy arm swings around your shoulder, heavy thick muscle pressing into your side. The motion pulls your attention from staring into your empty cup. “So, (Y/N)” it draws out, “Can i get ya a refill?” It’s Astumu, you already know that, not even bothering to turn your head to meet his eyes focused on yours. Audibly sighing, you pass your empty cup towards his opposite hand that rests on the edge of the counter. “I suppose you could” you answer, he chuckles in response. “Now I wouldn't be much of a good host if I didn't make sure every cup is full now would i?” You can just imagine the playful smirk that's cast upon his features as he squeezes you quickly with the arm that's draped over your shoulder.

The heat disappears from your side as he drags himself to the opposite side of the kitchen to skim the bottles laid along the counter, raising your head to look around the kitchen. Bokuto is standing next to Hinata while leaning against the large fridge, while the two of them are already making conversation with Astumu. Kuroo stands over near the hallway talking to a girl you don’t quite recognize, but she's cute you think. His face turns to yours meeting your eye, he raises an eyebrow as his face shifts slightly. You know it's his way of saying “everything good or you need a save?”

You've seen that expression almost a million times at one of these parties. Your eyes shift back to the girl thats standing beside him, you're not sure what they're talking about but there's a slight blush on her cheeks as he looks back down to her for a second, her head lowers for a minute as her hand tucks some of her hair behind her ear. Kuroo looks back at you quickly, you raise an eyebrow at him and give him a subtle thumbs up. It's your response as a “i'm good here, do your thing.”

You look quickly back to Astumu, he’s completely immersed in his conversation with Hinata and Bokuto. You notice another figure standing with them, Osamu. Astsumu’s twin brother, you had forgotten they are twins, you definitely don't see him around these parties as much. He must be the busier and more tame twin.

You take the opportunity to slip away from the kitchen island, making your way through the heavy crowd of people as the music blares much closer to the living room. You spot Kita, Akaashi and Suna on the couch together, you make your way towards around the back of the couch the 3 of them are perched on. Your hands place on the back of the couch as you lean forward in between Suna and Akaashi, as you shift your weight placing your elbows in between them on the back of the couch instead of your hands.

“Is this the anti-social drinking club?” the two of them flinch before whipping their heads towards you on the back of the couch. “Didn't notice you there” Akaashi mumbles, his voice barely caught over the music. “Room for one more? The kitchen is a bit too crowded for me” you chuckle towards Akaashi, his eyebrows raise in response. “Yeah sure, you can have my spot. I was gonna go find Bokuto anyways.” His arm lands on the side of the couch as he gets up, looking towards Suna and makes eye contact with him before he turns to navigate through the crowd of people.

You take the opportunity to lift your weight and hop over the back of the couch and land beside Suna and settle in beside him, you look around slightly before turning back to him. “Figured you weren’t gonna make a move, so thought i'd come to you.” you say to him and smirk slightly. His eyes widen a bit before he tilts his head to look at you fully, his hand coming up to bring the cup towards his lips before he speaks. “What if I didn't want to make a move?” his voice deep and words drawn out as he says it before taking a swig from his cup. You narrow your eyes at him, holding eye contact with him as you shrug. “Maybe you didn't or maybe you did, but I'm making mine. So, are you gonna let me down tonight?”

He chokes lightly on the sip of his drink, before bringing it away from his mouth and raising his other hand to hit his chest once before he coughs a few times. He takes a few seconds before he responds. “You know, Astumu was making his move on you tonight. So what about him?”

You tilt your head and roll your eyes at Suna, “And, what about him?” you ask before continuing. “What about what I want, What if I don't want him?” He chuckles a bit before turning his body towards you more and draping his free hand over the back of the couch. “He’d be pretty upset at me, he wants to talk you pretty badly”

“Oh please” You sigh in response. “I heard his speech earlier, he's not interested in talking to me”

Suna narrows his golden eyes towards yours again, brows furrowing. “And you think that I do?” his voice lowers as he leans towards you the tiniest bit.

“I think you're more worried about him than whatever it is that you want” You raise a hand to curl your fingers and poke him in the chest once with your pointer finger. Before you raise your hand to take the cup he's been holding, raising it to your lips take a small sip before holding it as you watch his expression- his eyes watching your movements before they flick back up to yours as you push the cup back into the shape his fingers still have of the cup that was previously there.

He doesn't respond for a few moments before he says “Maybe I just don't want to deal with the tantrum he throws at me later for it.” his hand comes off the back of the couch as he brings it to his hair and pushes his fingers back through the dark strands of hair before putting back to its spot over the back of the couch.

You huff a breath for a moment before pushing your lips into a tiny pout for a second, his eyes scanning your face. He sighs, he's known the whole time he’s wanted to talk to you but he's not exactly lying about Astumu throwing a fit about it later, he’d be pissed at him. And he's not exactly giving into himself, trying to push you away lightly with a smug attitude because he’d figure he wouldn't get a chance to talk to you, so he didn't bother to get his hopes up tonight. But, you're here tonight and you sought him out. Pushing Akaashi out of the spot he sat in previously beside him.

His head turns scanning the crowd of people before he spots Akaashi in the kitchen, standing beside Bokuto, the two of them standing across from Astumu, Hinata and Osamu. He makes eye contact with Akaashi and his eyebrows raise back at Suna. Suna’s eyes flicker to Atsumu and back to Akaashi with a nod of his head. He can see the gears turning in his friend's head, before he gets a smirk in return and a head nod from Akaashi. The way of saying ‘I got you man’. He watches Akaashi sling an arm over Atsumu and turn his attention back towards the kitchen counter motioning back to all the bottles. He makes a mental note that he owes his dark haired friend big time later.

Suna turns his attention back to you, you're watching him, waiting.

You huff a breath at him, thinking it's time to cut your losses before you embarrass yourself further, reminding yourself why you don't bother to put yourself out there.

“Well I'll take it that you're not interested so I'll probably head out then, guess I'm getting let down tonight” you chuckle lightly, shrinking into yourself a bit as you move to turn yourself away from him. “I'm sorry i bothered you” you say as you raise an arm to the back of your neck and sigh. You place your hands on the armrest of the couch and begin to slowly push your weight off the couch.

As you turned away, you miss the expression that spreads across Suna’s face. His eyebrows shoot up, gold eyes wide open as he processes your words, he sees the way your face falls as you turn away from him. Shit, he really did push you away too much, all because of worry about Atsumu’s attitude later.

As you finally stand from the couch you don't take another look towards him. In the middle of your first step away from the couch, his body shoots forward. “Fuck” he mutters. His arm stretches out and his fingers dropping the cup he was previously holding falls towards the floor, he's not sure where it lands and he doesn't care. His long fingers snake around your wrist and grips tightly before he even processes the motion.

Your head whips around at the contact on your wrist, startling you. Your expression of shock meets Suna as your eyes trail from your wrist up to the arm that's outstretched.

“Fuck- I, I’m sorry” He pleads. He looks up at you, eyes wide and brows raised. You don’t think you’ve ever seen his face so expressive. You stare at him for a few seconds before you respond, “For what? I got shot down, it's cool” You chuckle lightly and your voice trails off. You give him a half light smile, your tone a little different from what it was before, he's not sure what it is but he doesn't like it.

“I did though” he pauses for a second before continuing on, trying to find the words. “I wanted to talk to you so bad, i have for so long but i didn’t want to get shot down by you, because you never seem interested in anyone so i didn’t want to waste your time because i’m really fucking boring and don’t know how to talk to people” he rambles on, he looks down slightly, he’s not sure what came over him but he feels like he just completely ruined any chance to talk to you further and you’ll probably completely avoid him after tonight.

His grip loosens off your wrist and he lets his arm fall down, he looks back up to you. You're staring back at him, still in shock. You smile at him, “well, what if i like boring?” his eyes widened again. He grabs your wrist again, and pulls you back towards him. You stand in between his legs as he relaxes back into his seat on the couch, he places his hands around the back of your thighs. “So, you're not gonna let me down again this time right?” you laugh while looking down at him. “That would be an astronomical fumble for me, I'd have to be an idiot to let that happen again.”

A hand grasps your shoulder, “well, what do we have here?” Astumu’s voice is cold behind you, you tense at the presence behind you. Your neck cranes to the side to peer up at him. His brown eyes narrowed and staring into yours. His jaw twitches with the strain of him clenching it together tight. You've never seen Atsumu this angry, you've seen his fits on the court but at this tension, you feel like prey under his piercing gaze directed into your widened eyes. Suna could feel the moment your body tensed together, his hands around the back of your thighs. He lightly rubs both of his thumbs along the fabric of the leggings you wore, in a small soothing motion. It's a reminder, he's here, he knows and can feel how nervous you feel.

“I got your drink for you princess, but you ran away from me”

Atsumu brings his other hand around and holds a cup in front of you, it's slightly indented with the force he holds it with. “That wasn’t very nice of you, when the host offers you a drink” you feel frozen with the way his words feel so heavy, like they slice through your skin, he holds an overwhelming intimidating presence standing over you.

Suna doesn’t even know what to say, if he even should. He's never seen his friend like this, so much anger locked in his jaw. He definitely doesn't want to provoke him, but he can feel your trembling under his hands, he hasn't moved an inch either.

Your fingers twitch slightly as you raise a hand to reach the cup, Atsumu moves it slightly when you reach for it. Your eyes dart down from his to the movement of his hand, you can feel the eyes on you as your eyes dart around the room, a few people close to you are staring at the tension they most likely could almost feel over them as well.

Your eyes flick around the faces closest to you, desperately searching for Bokuto or Kuroo or anyone close enough, you can't see them anywhere close to you. It makes you even more nervous, you don't know what to do.

Suna’s voice finally cuts the silence, “Atsumu man, we were just talking. S’nothin man”

Atsumu’s gaze turns to him, voice taunting him “Just talking to the chick i just happened to be talking about earlier?” his head tilts and his grip on your shoulder gets slightly tighter, forcing you to wince, Suna’s eyes drift towards the grip Atsumu has on your shoulder then back to your eyes. “C’mon man, you're hurting her. Just let go of her.”

“What, so you can swoop in and be the nice guy? Payback for all the times I've bagged chicks you wanted to talk to and slept with them huh?”

Suna’s head retracts for a second in shock before his eyes narrow and his brow pinches together tightly. What the hell? He doesn't think that would have taken him by shock as much as it did, he gets undertones that isn’t just about you but about him too, and he's not sure why.

“Atsumu man, if you have a problem with me man we can talk about it. You don't have to drag her into it, S’nothin to do with her.”

Suna tries hard to lightly defuse his best friend, he doesn't want to be too forward for how it might drag you farther into it, especially with how hard Atsumu is grasping your shoulder. But he doesn't understand why Atsumu is so angry about him talking to you. If he all wanted to just sleep with you then toss you aside like every other girl?

Right?

thank you for reading! i hope you enjoyed:”)

#hq sfw #suna rintarou x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu #cee writes!#suna x reader #suna rintarou

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numberonetacostan · 2 days ago

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TACO'S TIRADE ANALYSIS

OKAY! It is time for the requested analysis of Taco’s Tirade. This is my first time doing a big analysis of like, anything, so I’m very sorry if this is the worst take on the song of all time or if everything I’m saying is obvious!! Can anyone tell i'm nervous about posting this lol. I have a lot of thoughts about Taco and her Tirade. I love it so much. Feel free to imagine me gesturing wildly with tears in my eyes as you read this. We’ll go in sections based on the lyrics and visuals :) Lyrics will be inside brackets, then commentary will be below! Please enjoy!! <3

Tw: slight discussion of suicidal ideation

[Any moment now...

Are you sure this is what you want?

(Scoff) Oh spare me your spin, you tablet tabloid. If you want to psychoanalyze someone, don't look at me.]

Alright, so we immediately see Taco still in a very emotional state. Mepad asking if she’s sure she wants to interfere with the challenge immediately provokes her, and starts her off on her entire tirade. Because he asked if she was sure. She immediately insults him and moves to change the subject and get his attention off of herself and her own mental well-being. She’s very in-denial of her own emotions and emotional pain in this song, as we’ll see going forward, and remains quite defensive for a lot of the song.

[Look at them! It's so pathetic,

How they run to fetch their sticks.

Sure, call me polemic, unsympathetic,

At least I know other tricks!]

We start here with her, as I stated, changing the subject and shifting the view onto the contestants figuratively and somewhat literally, as they’re all seen picking up the sticks for the challenge, although she still remains the main focus of the shot. We move to her dancing around Mepad, who takes up the center of the shot, but Taco is still the focus here!! She’s moved from deflecting conversation to the contestants to, in a way, defending herself, despite Mepad not having insinuated anything yet. Taco is calling herself polemic and unsympathetic here, not only because she thinks that of herself, what with her abysmal self-esteem that we see more of later in the song, but because she thinks that’s what Mepad thinks of her. Not only do her only other two friends ever hate her (I wouldn’t go that far for Mic, but that’s definitely what Taco thinks), but the rest of the season 1 cast don’t seem to think too highly of her either, yeah? Mephone certainly isn’t happy to see her soon after the song ends, and season 2 contestants like Mic and Suitcase have been shown to be wary of her before they’ve even met her. (She doesn’t know about the season 3 cast so they don’t really matter here.) The point being, Mepad is Mephone’s right hand (leg?) man, and Taco doesn’t know about their argument, so she’s pretty reasonably assuming that Mepad dislikes her just as much as everyone else does. So, she’s saying what she thinks he’s thinking about her before he can!! Forgive me for not knowing the technical name for it, but this is an actual way of deflecting criticism!! I’ll use an example. Say you made a drawing of a person, a little stick guy, but the proportions are off. One of their legs are way bigger than another, but you still want to post it anyway. To keep people from telling you that one leg is bigger than another, you might say “here’s my stick dude!! One leg is bigger than another but I’m too lazy to fix it.” By stating the potential criticism before anyone else can, it makes others MUCH less likely to comment on it themselves!! And that’s what I believe Taco is doing here!!! I hope I explained that well enough. She then goes on defending herself, self-justifying by saying she at least “knows other tricks.” I read this as her doing things outside the game, and it’s limits. That could be her acknowledging how she doesn’t play by the rules of the competition like they do, but I see it as a note of the hypocrisy/lying to herself we see from Taco in the song. And!! In the transition to the next verse, she has her eyes closed!! Which happens everytime we travel in and out of that purple-y space! We are seeing Taco’s inner image here people!!!!!

[Look at me and all you'll see is the debris of some defective outcast,

A frenetic, antithetic (if poetic) little iconoclast,]

Here we have Taco insulting herself more! Yay! She’s getting more emotional as we get into the song, and she becomes less and less able to keep her usually sturdy walls up. She’s just lost Mic, and as I’ll go over later in the analysis, is expecting she will be permanently dead relatively soon. Of course she’s having a lot of trouble keeping it together! You know how sometimes, if you’re trying not to cry and someone asks if you’re okay, it makes you burst into tears? It’s like that! Mepad asked if she was sure, and the dam began to break. So, the descriptors she uses tell us a lot about her view of herself!!! Debris. Broken remains of what was. That’s pretty accurate to how Taco is feeling right now. She’s drowning in debris, really! The debris of her old, broken friendships, the debris of her master plan to win season 1, and it’s to the point where she sees herself as broken and incomplete as well. She believes she’s broken!!! And that leads us right into her calling herself defective. Imperfect or faulty. She’s very separated from everyone else, yeah? Everyone else (to her knowledge) lives in the hotel. Everyone else is part of the group. Everyone else has people who care about them. Everyone else happily plays by the rules of the game. After everything, compared to everyone else? No wonder she sees herself as incapable of changing, she believes there’s something just, deeply wrong with her as a being. If everyone else can do this and have this, she has to be the problem. And almost right after she started putting forth that effort to get Mic to trust her, focusing on someone other than herself, Mic left her. Rightfully so, but please it is so important to think of it from Taco’s perspective rather than Mic’s in this analysis. Taco was trying to give Mic what she thought she wanted (recognition), trying to be a good friend, and it immediately lost her the most important person in her life. She’s been watching for years, she sees everyone else making strong connections, but she can’t do it when she tries. And before that, it’s her plan failing. Like Brian said in a stream, it was inconceivable to her that her plan would fail. Yet it did. And after a long enough time alone out in the woods, there isn’t anyone left to blame for that but herself. She was the reason her plan had failed, and she’d lost everything. Of course she’d see herself as defective. Outcast is pretty obvious, because she checks all of those boxes. Lives hidden, alone, and very much away from everyone else. She is very very much not part of the group anymore.

Frenetic!! Fast, wild, and uncontrolled. Frankly, something you’d be more likely to describe Taco’s season 1 persona with, yeah? It’s quite different from how Taco usually tries to present herself, being cunning and calculating around others. But of course, the further we get into the song, the more honest Taco unintentionally can get about how she sees herself. She had her whole plan for season 1 down, but it was in the end where she lost control over the situation in which she lost control of herself in which she lost everything. It was in the ship, where something she didn’t and realistically couldn’t have planned for happens that she once again lost control of the situation and thus control of herself, and used violence despite Mic’s plea not to, in which she lost everything again. Of course she’d see herself as wild and uncontrollable, because moments in which she was are standout moments of her life! Not to mention again, how she’s the contestant who tried to steal the prize and cheated in season 2. For better or for worse, she’s much less controlled by the rules of the game than the other contestants. Just another thing that separates her from the group, yeah? Antithetic!!!! In direct opposition to something. And the following word as well, iconoclast, an attacker of a beloved institution or beliefs. She’s against the game that everyone else plays again and again, something that really matters a lot to them, but we see in the show and especially in the finale that the game isn’t good for them. As much as it’s not always for quite the right reason and exactly how she ends up going about it, she has a strong point about the game itself and what it can do to all of them. But she still sees herself as the villain. Despite her genuine, and correct, belief that ending the game will make things better for everyone, she still sees herself as the villain!! And it’s an image of herself that she’s had for a long time, and that she can’t shake after everything, because she doesn’t believe she can be anything else. And I did not forget how she mentions herself as being “poetic!” Whether that’s her believing in “karmic justice” or whatever and that she got what was coming with her, or believing her role as a season 1 finalist who’s come back out of the shadows to try and end season 2, it is one of the few neutral adjectives she uses for herself in the song. It might even be her previous popularity and persona she’s referencing here, that antitheticism and iconoclasm being how she went from a silly, well-loved character to a serious, well. She’s still loved out of canon but none of the people she knows like her at all. She’s the antithesis of what she used to be, and her coming out of the act destroyed the beloved image of who she had pretended to be.

As for the visuals here, how the scene fades back into her and Mepad is so important! She falls off of a cliff into darkness!! A very clear visual representation of how she sees things having gone. After her fight over the suitcase with OJ in the s1 finale, she kept falling and falling and falling, deeper down into the dark hole she’s dug herself, until she’s landed right where she is as she’s singing. Not only that, but this visual is another excellent representation of how she sees things as over for her. How she sees herself as incapable of changing, starting over, or getting better at all. Think about the cliff we know of on the island. Now think about who actually fell off that cliff at the end of season 1. Think about what happened to them. They all DIED!!! And she is picturing herself falling off this cliff!! I doubt this was intended to be a sign of suicidal ideation for her, since ii does have a younger target demographic (ex. Justy said in a stream that OJ and Paper sleeping in the same bed would be a bit too mature), but it can definitely be read that way. Seeing herself as “dead” in a way revolves around that disbelief in self-improvement she has, she thinks it’s too late for her in the same way it’s too late to save someone who’s died!!! And if anyone is questioning whether the scene is just a visual effect or if it’s definitely Taco’s inner picture-y thing, please note her closed eyes during the transition from her falling from the cliff to standing with Mepad!! She is picturing these visuals as she sings!!

[But I won't live in the past.

(Spoken) I almost won this game once, you know. But!]

So we all agree that Taco is totally living in the past, right? She’s saying she’s moved on, she’s telling Mepad and herself that the past doesn’t matter and that she doesn’t care about it, and then immediately she mentions how she almost won before. She has not healed at all, and is not over a single thing that happened!!! She is doing so awful I love her <3. She longs for everything she’s lost constantly, because she’s lost everything!!!!!

[History is rearranged just to credit those who win the glory,

So reality is changed in the edit when they spin the story,]

So!!! Interestingly enough, I think that these lines are quite a bit about the disparities between OJ and Taco!! So, Taco had a whole strategy going into season 1 that got her into the finals, and had it not been for Bow, she would have won! She’d planned meticulously, and in the s1 finale is shown to have great physical capabilities, at least to the point to which she was able to get way ahead of OJ. And, while this may be by great bias towards Taco speaking at least in part, OJ… did not go to such lengths. Don’t get me wrong though, this is definitely a thing. It’s brought up in the show that he wasn’t a huge player in the game! Multiple times!!! S1E15 “The Tile Divide,” after OJ wins immunity with help from Paper Mephone4 says “OJ wins! Wow, that hasn’t happened for a while.” And in S1EP16 “The Penultimate Poll,” Pickle says “-even though [OJ] barely actually won any challenges.” Yet after all is said and done, Taco is outcasted, has nothing, and is disliked by pretty much everyone, and OJ is hailed as the “King of Inanimate Insanity”, is rich, and becomes the de facto group leader with his hotel. The way the narrative has been spun does certainly glorify OJ beyond his actual performance in the competition. And with OJ having his massive ego problems, I don’t doubt that he definitely let that get to his head and contributed to that narrative himself.

And in this shot we have Taco looking down at the hotel from the forest, the same way she’s looking down on everyone participating in the game and how she’s been watching Mic (and presumably Pickle) from the outside. Only now, she’s even further away from them.

[And we choose, to feel this pain,]

Taco denying her emotions again!!!! She likes to be in control, and she can not control her feelings nor keep pushing them down as she has been, so she’s onto deny deny deny!! She is in a lot of pain, and she knows it, so she deflects by saying she’s choosing to feel the pain of her losses. She’s keeping up her act, her defense, by desperately holding on and pretending she has control over these feelings!! I’m certain she’s tried to control them!! To justify herself, replace loneliness with anger, but it hasn’t worked!!! And her defensiveness is reflected in the visuals as well, her putting her hand up to keep a distance between her and Mepad, her still stubbornly keeping up those walls and forcing him away as he looks concerned for her.

[And we lose, more than we gain…]

OH BOY TIME TO LOSE MORE THAN WE GAIN. I use this phrase daily. I'm serious. A pretty obvious reference to Mic having said she gained nothing, and also an acknowledgement that their partnership truly meant something to Taco and is still greatly affecting her. Which is obvious to the audience, but not only is Mepad learning things about Taco and her issues through the song, but we really see Taco starting to fall apart, accidentally implying the feelings that she’s so desperate to keep down!! She’s like a trauma volcano <3. Anyways, Taco had gained a lot when she’d met Mic, even if it took her quite some time to realise, and by the time she did she’d lost it all, again. AS FOR THE VISUALS we once again move into Taco’s head!! The transitions here for the beginning and end of this short sequence have her with her eyes closed!! She’s walking, and hard stops when she sees Pickle and the time travel portal. You see her little feet slide to a stop on her heels! She leans away from him, leans towards him just a tad, and immediately turns and walks away, only to see Mic. She hard stops when she sees Mic too, though it’s less extreme than it was for Pickle. And when she does this, she reaches a hand out towards Mic. It’s for a few reasons I think. Holding it out to try and keep that hurt away, protect her from her thoughts of missing Mic and how much she must hate her, fully reaching out because she misses Mic dearly and that pain is so fresh, reaching out to the person she’s been so close to, closer than anyone before. Another part of it, I think, is how her conflicts with both Pickle and Mic went. With Pickle, Taco was the one who insulted him, claimed they were never friends, and cut things off. Thus, she hard stops when she sees him, only leans a bit closer to him, before turning around and walking away. With Mic, Taco was the one who was left this time. Mic cut things off with her. So she’s left reaching out to Mic, as Mic’s image leaves the screen, and Taco collapses onto her knees where she is. Taco’s left on the ground, squeezing her eyes closed and clutching her head as the darkness in the background, the darkness in Taco’s head closes in on her, until she closes her eyes and jumps straight back into her villain act, the song speeding up with her as she keeps trying to get away from all of her feelings!!! My queen with awful coping skills <3.

[But I will break this cycle,

Of mistakes, unlike all,

Of these snakes whom I call to condemn,]

So! We see Taco hard cutting from her guilt and sadness, straight into her evil plan. Right back into her villain front as she realises she’s begun to open up and get emotional!!! So she’s explaining her plan to Mepad, and projects her own self-hatred and experiences very hard onto the contestants. She’s upset about what happened between her and Mic and sees the game as at fault for what happened as she’s trying to justify things to herself, and push down the guilt she feels about their split. Heck, I’d say she’s probably blaming the game for what happened between her and Pickle right now, even if that one is more on her. And she sees the final four as complacent in what the game does, with them all continuing even though none of them are even enjoying themselves anymore. Most of them haven’t been enjoying themselves for a while now, but they still stay in line and play, as they’re programmed to. This is a bit off track, but it’s important to keep in mind that at this point, Taco has been acting more outside of her programming for longer than any of the other contestants. She was never in whatever sort of waiting-mode they end up in inside the hotel, and she’s cared less and less about the rules of the game as time has gone on. Her plot in the first season was done fully inside the rules of the game, but we see her having broken out of those constraints in season 2, with her encouraging Mic to straight up attack other contestants, which is implied by Taco to be against the rules. And she keeps interfering against those same rules of the competition. Like Marsh breaking the rules by leaving the show’s parameters, Taco explicitly goes against what is meant to happen in the game. And here she is at the peak of that, having gone from breaking the rules of the game to wanting to break the game, the cycle of mistakes, entirely. Her calling the remaining contestants “snakes” of all things specifically is interesting as well, since I’m sure plenty of the season 1 cast would use that to describe Taco. Part of it is her projecting, but another part of it is her actually seeing her own mistakes in the remaining contestants. Keeping secrets from each other (Knife), never properly talking out interpersonal issues (Suitcase & Baseball), and plain loneliness (Lightbulb). And she’s condemning them for their complacency in all of it, for their actions, most certainly in part with her efforts to ignore her own feelings and as well to call out how the game changes people and makes them act.

[If I can't win the prize,

I'll play this last reprisal,

Just to bring their lies all to an end.

-Ack!]

The first line here is more of Taco playing up her villain act. She mentions later on in the episode, while she’s being more honest since it’s surrounding Mic territory, to the final four that she doesn’t care about the money anymore. And I really believe she doesn’t! She’s broken out of that programming after having connected with Mic. She was one of the contestants, if not the contestant, made to be most dedicated to getting that money, so of course she mentions it as she’s still desperately keeping up her front!!! But she says in the very next line that this is her “last reprisal,” she clearly doesn’t intend to interfere or interact with the game again, much less try to swoop in and steal the million. And the last reprisal line is very important!!!! Notice how in the visuals, Taco lets herself fall out of a tree as she says this and upon landing she’s hurt by her injury. There is symbolism here guys!!!!!!! She is letting herself fall here. In her eyes, she doesn’t have anything left to fight for anymore. She’s lost the people important to her, she’s lost any goals she’d had driving her forward, and she hates herself!! She knows she’s injured, and that her injury could very well be lethal, as we see later in the episode, but she’s doing nothing to minimize the risk to herself. She’s not going to sit away and let herself feel and process, she’s going to burn the game down and die with it!!!! This, my friends, is called passive suicidal ideation and self-destructive behavior!!!!! And her facade starts to falter again and she mentions bringing their lies to an end!! Because she is lying to herself, and she herself is not ready to stop holding on to her lies, either to herself or to others in her persona. Bringing the game and all the lies tangled up in it to an end means she would finally have to face everything, and just thinking about that is enough to wipe the villainous grin off her face. But she’s still stubbornly going through with her plot, because she isn’t truly expecting she’ll have to face it, again because she is fully expecting to die permanently in the near future!!!!

[You need regeneration.

Unfortunately, I don't have much faith in that process.

Of course not.

Why "of course not?".

You believe yourself to be incapable of starting over, in more ways than one. I do not know who you lost, but is it not possible to get them back?]

MEPAD TIME!!!! Okay, here we have Mepad (rip king you would have loved the storyboards of your own death) urging Taco to heal!!! He’s looking out for her physical well-being, he can tell that she’s in pain and that her injury is quite dangerous, that being especially obvious the way he emphasises “need” in the line. And he is implying that she needs emotional healing as well!! He starts his Therapad-ing in his next line!! <3 He is very clearly worried about her, a lot of his presence in the first half of the song is just him looking at Taco with big concerned eyes!!!

And Taco has zero faith in the recovery process, between her, as Mepad helpfully says, believing herself to be incapable of starting over in more ways than one, her believing no one would want her to be recovered, her having a hunch of Mephone’s reluctance to revive her, or her own inability to see much of a future for herself, she does not believe she can come back!!! Angst!!!!! She is hurting so bad I love her <3

And Mepad is an empathy king!! And is probably the least biased against her out of everyone on the island!! And he can see beneath her crumbling exterior!!!! So her self-loathing and regret and everything she’s trying to push down is obvious to him. Of course she doesn’t believe she can be revived. And we see even Taco is surprised and even a bit miffed by this!!! Aside from Mic to a lesser extent, Mepad is the only person who can really see through her facade. Mic did try, and saw that Taco was hiding things, don’t get me wrong, but Taco was much more stable at that point and shut Mic’s attempts to see underneath her image down much harder than she is able to do during the song.

And Mepad plainly spells out what she’s feeling. This is so important to why she opens up to him more in the next verse. Not only can she not hide her emotions from him, because he already knows, but having it spelled out like that means she can’t keep hiding it from herself either. She can’t ignore her feelings when they’re being clearly stated back to her. So all that she’s been pushing down comes springing right back up in the next verse!!!! She has to physically turn away from him and cross her arms in a final attempt to keep herself closed off, keep anyone from looking in, but after everything she just can’t do it anymore.

["Clear the slate, start again",

Are you hearing how preposterous that sounds?

How do you not comprehend that for someone with my MONSTROUS BACKGROUND,

the whole slate has fallen apart!]

Oh my god guys Taco is being honest about her feelings it’s happening guys it’s happening!!!!! She’s turned away from Mepad for the first two lines, but as she really opens up to him, she turns back around, and gets louder along with the music. And we have Taco be like, the most emotionally open we see her!!! She’s putting Mepad’s rather succinct evaluation of her feelings into her own words. She doesn’t just think she can’t change or have a new start, she finds the notion preposterous!!! Forgiveness is inconceivable to her!!! Inconceivable!!! I can’t emphasize enough that this is the first time Taco has ever emotionally opened up to anyone ever and it is her telling Mepad that she is evil, unable to change, and will never be forgiven. We really get a feel for how everything has been weighing down on her for years, and how everything has built up to a point that she really can’t take it anymore!! But she doesn’t believe there’s any chance of a happy ending for her. Not only the whole slate, but her entire life has fallen apart!! She has lost everything and is fully confident she will never get anything back!!!

[Taco, that is not true.

There are other ways to-

It's too late-

It's not too late,

For me to restart!]

Mepad coming in trying to help <3 Notice how he comes in while she’s still holding the previous note!! He is immediately refuting her idea that she’s irredeemable!! He does the same to refute her when she says it’s too late!!! He is very concerned for her and trying to convince her that it’s not too late for her. He’s trying to tell her there are other options, that she’s not so far gone, but this sort of ends up backfiring, since not only does she not listen to him when he says these things but his interjection ends up snapping her out of the state of emotional vulnerability, and she pulls her facade right back up. Taco saying it’s too late for her kind of breaks my heart honestly, I love it when my blorbo is in pain don’t get me wrong but ow, my taco it’s gonna be okay I love you. She really sees no redemption or even future for herself, and at her lowest she’s finally expressed that to someone!!! Which is a very important step to healing!!!! She accidentally started the healing process by talking about her issues. I mean, she backpedals immediately, but still!!!! Great job Taco <3 And at the end of this line we head into Mepad’s face!! Because there’s a shift from Taco’s feelings to her pushing him away, literally and figuratively, after that moment of vulnerability!! The audience is going with Mepad, at the moment, chasing after Taco!!!

[But it's not I, its they,

Who deign to play this game, so,

Cruel and inhumane, base and uncouth,]

AND HERE COMES TACO WITH THE IMMEDIATE SUBJECT CHANGE!! She just did her first ever emotional vulnerability, and as per her usual strategy with her emotions she’s hard changing the subject!!! In this case, back to the final four and the game!!! She’s deflecting back on to both of them in quick succession trying to get a topic that isn’t her to stick! She is quite literally walking away from the topic in the visuals too!! She’s trying to get away from Mepad, who is trying to keep them on the subject of Taco’s feelings, looks back at him angrily when he keeps talking about it, and then is even more angry when he keeps going, before storming away from him again!!!

[Let us talk about it when your,

head is not so clouded. You're no,

menace, Taco, how did they hurt you?

Please think this through]

Mepad is trying to get her to go back to that emotional vulnerability!!! He wants to help her, he wants to talk through her issues with her rather than watching her self-destruct!!! I think this is where the idea that running the Truth or Flare challenge will help her comes from, too. He can tell she’s vulnerable, despite how hard she’s trying not to be, and she is talking things out, in a way, during ToF!! In a healthy way, no, but it’s Taco so we need to take what we can get. As he says, he’d rather do it when Taco has calmed down, taken a moment to not bury her feelings and even gets recovered, maybe. And here we get to a very important line!! Mepad asks her how they hurt her!!!! I genuinely don’t think Taco’s been asked this, yeah? Her whole schtick is supposed to be that she is the villain, she hurts people, not how she’s been hurt herself! And dare I say, me, the biggest Taco apologist and forehead kisser you ever did see, they have hurt her. She’s seen every other person who’s hurt the others be let into the hotel and accepted into the group, yeah? Balloon was accepted, after quite a bit of effort on his part. No one really seemed to care that Knife had killed Marsh for fun, Taco mentioning it in episode 13 as they’re arguing. Nickel and Taco are relatively similar in personality, but Nickel seemed to have relatively free reign to asshole all he wanted until Suitcase snapped at him, and even then it was just Suitcase who was angry with him. But not her. She hasn’t apologized to Pickle in person, at this point, but she had sent letters. She’d at least tried to contact him, and while he was well within his rights to ignore her, I can’t really blame her for not wanting to go inside the hotel either. Not to mention, Taco has been watching them all very closely, at least for the duration of the second season and likely after the first as well, for her to have found out about the second season and to have begun scheming so quickly. So every time they’ve spoken about her, every insult and awkward silence after someone mentions her name, she’s heard. That’s got to hurt!! Taco is very much not perfect and I don’t really blame the others for not reaching out to her given she hadn’t decided to make a change yet, but it also can’t be easy to make a change for the better when you are homeless in the woods!! Mic and Mepad’s willingness to help her is what really convinced her change would be good and possible, she hadn’t had anyone else reach out to her before, and to be fair, she folds pretty damn quickly in the grand scheme of things. Mic showed her she was likable as a person, and Mepad showed her she was redeemable, and with that support she is doing her best now!!! Anyways. Uh. There’s still one more line!! Mepad is pleading with Taco not to make things worse for herself, because taking over the challenge and such is only going to make them think she hasn’t changed at all and feed into the persona he knows is a sham in shambles at this point! Talking it out with him would be a much better way to do this!!! But alas, she’s dead set.

[I think they're too afraid to,

Bear the bed they've made,

Can't bring themselves to face the awful truth.]

TACO & THE AWFUL TRUTH that she’s projecting. Yeah Taco is the one who is afraid to actually face her mistakes, the people she’d hurt. Though, she probably sees her isolation as doing so, yeah? She’s hurt people, so she has to be alone as punishment, even though that doesn’t give anyone closure. However! As for the awful truth, yeah, Taco really is one of the only ones who’s looked the competition in the eyes for everything it is and spat on it. She’s motivated by a lot of complicated feelings she tries not to feel, but she sees the game for what it is, and how it hurts the contestants involved!! And the final four are yet to take that look, until she gets everything laid out in front of them!!

[Feeling double-crossed is part of,

Dealing with a loss, yes, but the,

Healing is a process, that's the truth]

FEELING DOUBLE-CROSSED this line is also important because!! Taco does feel betrayed by Mic!! She feels guilty and blames herself for what happened, yes, but she still does feel that sting of betrayal, since Mic left her, yeah? Oh her part, she’d finally accepted Mic as her first true friend, someone who liked her for who she was and she liked being around, and almost immediately Mic left her. A lot of that is on Taco, don’t get me wrong, but from Taco’s end she still doesn’t even fully understand why Mic was mad at her!! She thinks it was all because of her getting violent, not because she didn’t listen to Mic. My low empathy queen is still struggling to fully grasp Mic’s motivations, her first friend that she could act “normal” around, so of course she’d feel betrayed! Taco is dealing with a loss!!!!!!!!! And she is NOT healing!! She is trying to push it down like always, but it’s become too much for her!!! And Mepad is telling her that healing is a process because it’s so much for her at the moment!! He’s trying to communicate that she’s going to feel better eventually, that she needs help and time to do so, instead of rushing into another scheme!!! He’s telling her the truth, that healing is possible!!! But as Taco rejects his pleas for her to reconsider and grabs him, we shift back into reality. Taco is unconvinced, and they’re more or less at square one, with Taco’s mask for the rest of the world securely back in place.

Everyone look at this shot RIGHT NOW I’m going to explode. All these cracks come from the ii logo that Taco stomped on, yeah? And those cracks in the game spread, and create the cracks in her. She has been broken by the game!!! Look at her face! Does she look whole and happy to you? I didn’t think so. And here we have Taco close to the camera, looking out towards the viewer, to illustrate how although she’s separate from the game, more of a spectator than the player anymore, she’s still trapped inside the competition that’s broken her!! And we have Mepad in the background, further away with his position as an assistant!! The cracks are all around him rather than through him, because he’s not being hurt by the game!! He’s not a competitor!! But the game is crumbling everything around him. He’s watched everything, just like Taco has!! Every betrayal, every fight this season, Mepad has been watching. And the more he’s been seeing, the more he’s been feeling, and the more he’s been able to see how the game tears people apart and breaks them, just like it’s broken Taco.

[So I'm turning up the heat to "sauté",

I've a beef to get grilled,

But I fully guarantee that today all the beans that get spilled,

Won't be mine, no I'm fine,

Shhhh...

Now it's time…]

Guys I think Taco might not be fine. She’s shoved her facade right up and has closed herself back off, moving to continue with her plot. She’s going to grill the final four and 100% not get upset or feel any feelings, nope. Of course this is not what happened, and from Taco’s facial expression when she claims to be fine she has a hunch it’s not going to be so easy. She knows and has acknowledged to herself that she is not okay, which is a big step, but she still stuck in her ways in terms of ignoring it in favor of playing the role she’s been designated. Her mask is cracked, her confidence is transparent, but she’s still acting. Mepad is still trying to help her here, but she physically silences him. Not literally, per say, as turning him invisible wouldn’t stop him from talking, but she shushes him and he gets the memo. The window to convince her to stop has closed, and she’s going forth with her plan regardless of how well she is.

THANK YOU FOR READING!!!!!! <3 I HOPE YOU ENJOYED!!! I REALLY HOPE THIS DIDN’T SUCK. IT TOOK A WHILE TO WRITE SO IF IT SUCKS THAT SUCKS FOR ME. HOPEFULLY I DIDN’T MISS TOO MUCH. THROW TOMATOES AT ME IF I DID (i will be sad). GIVE ME COOKIES IF NOT (joy inducers).