#makes as much sense as how taylor Had to have A Moment with wendy abt how helpful she's always been (WHAT lmfao)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

was already thinking that if sacker was in on it, which she was, it would've made sense if she'd met up with winston before the scene we got, and the meeting with also spyros for some reason was more for show....why not give us a reprise of a one-on-one meeting between winston & taylor like in 3x09, the first episode with winston proper; he doesn't want them in his house again after [7x03 wags subplot no reason] but can call/text to name a time & place....think taylor would've also had a more believably doable time editing his coding if he'd set them up for that b/c they'd given Any info about what they needed to do with it here, but surely we're not sparing such nerd stuff another thought. invoke the drama like that ostensibly winston couldn't uno reverse any "haha. this extortion" like if you're gonna threaten that then You do it, right here, right now, maybe more difficult thusly one-on-one without being tasked as accessories to someone else's power trip, and after definitely having decided on "forget the personal consequences in the face of my ethical quest," though still hardly makes sense why they were all like that in all of 7x03. let winston do the employee breakup like yeah i'll do it and in return lea me alone, which, foreshadowing perhaps their already thinking of doing Other Things like ttmf now in the ease of being like yeah okay despite the value....but even if implicitly winston's given up on taylor (and presumably rian) he should get to express as much more outright after all that and more

[wendytestabrat]

that's pretty much my theory except I feel like tolkien broke up with her because he realized how crazy and needy she is and how she was still obsessed with stan and was just using him to make stan jealous LOL. i'm sure wendy prob manipulated things and lied to make it seem like she was the one to break up with him not the other way around bc that's the kind of fucked up thing wendy would do since she likes having the upper hand and to seem like the superior one in relationships. just like how in "the list" she deadass made all of her friends believe that stan was gonna beg her to come back to him yet wendy was the one who asked to get back together sooo LMAO. i still can't get over stan roasting wendy for that shit in "follow that egg" when he's like "like i give a crap what you think wendy". i mean yeah stan obviously still had feelings for wendy but i think he prob did a better job moving on from it by that point in the show, while you could tell wendy was starting to regret breaking up with him and still wanted to talk to stan and get in his pants, but I digress. but yeah a subtle moment no one talks abt that makes me believe tolkien broke up with her was in "breast cancer show ever" (and this may just be me looking too much into this LOL) when the boys were in the cafeteria talking about how cartman and wendy are gonna fight, tolkien goes "she is PISSED off" which tells me that tolkien knew wendy well enough when he dated her to know how pissed off and crazy she can get, which might have been too much for someone more sane and stable for tolkien to handle LOL. i mean we see how easily annoyed he gets with cartman too bc of that (WHERE HE GENUINELY DISLIKES CARMAN AND AVOIDS HIM NOT THAT FAKE SHIT KYLE DOES WHERE KYLE BITCHES ABT CARTMAN BUT THEN WANTS CARTMAN'S ATTENTION 24/7), but yeah stan def doesn't seem to mind wendy's outbursts and crazy jealous obsessive behavior bc he already surrounds himself with toxic people anyways bc he's friends with cartman & kyle for crying out loud lol. tolkien on the other hand has his head on straight and he prefers to surround himself with more mature people like craig, tweek, and jimmy, so yeah it would make sense why wendy's temperament would've been too overwhelming for him. i'm sure he did rlly like her at first and they initially did bond bc they do have a lot in common and when wendy isn't acting crazy she's all chill and smart like tolkien, but yeah he couldn't handle her toxic side. and another reason why they broke up was bc tolkien was just a getaway car for wendy and i'm sure he realized that LOL. that's what that song 'getaway car' by taylor swift is about when a girl dates basically the first guy she can find as an escape from the previous relationship. so tolkien was just a rebound for her bc she was unhappy with stan so instead of working shit out with him she just decided to jump in the pants of the first guy who was nice to her LOL. i also feel like wendy is very easily seduced and flattered by guys (prob bc she's insecure abt herself or some shit, don't get me wrong tho wendy is rlly good at acting more confident and tough than she is tho) i mean when cartman was being just a little nice and flirty with her she fucking fell for him and kissed him like that while she was with stan. so i'm sure her striking up somewhat of a bond and connection with tolkien was enough to convince her to dump stan and get in tolkien's pants LOL (considering tolkien is way more sane than cartman and more smart & mature like stan and more of wendy's type). I can also imagine it was overwhelming for tolkien how fast wendy fell for him and tried to rush into a relationship and shit when he prob just saw her as a friend and they prob just initially bonded by talking about something simple like homework or some shit.

ya'll what are ur theories on why token and wendy broke up sound off below

[nothingunrealistic]

another sorta jumping off prompt abt Billions In Full: thinking abt any & all instances of taylor's arcs having kinda Becoming Adrift or Struggling w A Quandary points that resolve into Turning Points & any such moments you might have especially had Thoughts Or Feelings abt in full context & knowledge of the series? a la navigating axe cap & axe's guidance vs their qualms in s2, the fancy watch saga, everything re douglas, anything re wendy, having plans to leave across s3, that kind of concept

hmm okay what Moral Quandary arcs do they have. let’s consider it

1. the sandicot fiasco (2x04-2x07): if you don’t count playing in the alpha cup / breaking krakow as a moral quandary (which taylor might, tbh) this is the first time they have to grapple with their principles. taylor is in on this from the beginning, researching the likelihood of sandicot getting a gambling license at axe’s request and telling axe there’s no reason to invest if they don’t get the license. when the license falls through, taylor is brought into the war room figuring out how to recover axe cap’s investment, and spells out both the repercussions of austerity and the reasons they think it’s the right choice. (people living in poverty? offensive. cities overreaching their budgets? MORE offensive, apparently.) mostly i find this arc boring & embarrassing to watch (libertarianism? in taylor? cringe), rather than compelling, but i’m still distraught over taylor telling axe “i find myself thinking in your words sometimes” in 2x05. (the words in question are “shit hole,” re: sandicot, which doesn’t help.)

2. the klaxon short (2x09-2x11): this actually starts out totally unrelated to taylor — dollar bill tells axe about klaxon, a company he is Not Uncertain will crash; axe hesitates to make this trade on inside information but decides to go for it. ben kim and mafee both fail to produce analysis that supports the short; taylor manages it because they analyze the situation from a different angle, and because they suspect axe has inside information supporting a short and just needs it to seem legitimate. coming up with this analysis, and signing off on it, gets taylor a promotion, a spontaneous bonus ($500k!) from axe, and thank-you money ($250k!) from dollar bill, but they’re conflicted enough about it to stop by the SDNY and find out what connerty knows first; seeing their signature on the report puts them under even more suspicion from connerty. this is the first arc that really Feels like a moral compromise for taylor, because they’re more obviously conflicted about it and get more material rewards for it.

3. their stance on fossil fuels (2x09-present): less a character arc than a character sinusoid. taylor’s reluctant to take a private jet given the carbon footprint, but axe insisting it’s fine if they buy some carbon offsets is enough to change their mind. they pitch ESG to grigor, an oil oligarch, as an act of sabotage because they don’t want axe cap to take his money, but they’re willing to take his money for mase cap, and to win over a sovereign wealth fund that gets its money from oil. they still somehow have an environmentalist reputation to preserve after all this, so they short fracking publicly and bait axe into legalizing fracking so they’ll profit privately. then from 5x03 onward, they’ve committed firmly to the Earth-Positive Approach, which somehow encompasses both convincing colleges to divest from fossil fuels and investing in fossil fuels themself while vowing to clean up the companies responsible. i don’t think this is taylor’s principles shifting so much as their commitment to those principles weakening when they’re in new and dire straits — torn between their personal and professional lives, desperate to break away from axe cap and make it on their own, or reeling from a rift in their family. in contrast, season 5 is about taylor (and everyone else) trying to get back on track & clean up the wreckage of their past choices — makes sense that it would include recommitting to the environmentalist approach. so i also have to wonder where it’ll go in the rest of season 5 — will mase carbon and its mission survive that long, or will some unforeseen crisis derail it?

4. having nice things (2x09-present): pretty much every instance of taylor purchasing some new & pricey thing accompanies another moral quandary, rather than the purchase itself being the only thing taylor’s torn about. for instance: reserving a flight on a private jet, as mentioned, while conflicted about the ethics of doing so and of Living Large more generally; signing the lease on a luxurious penthouse apartment after signing off on the klaxon short; buying the same $164k watch craig heidecker wore to quell their guilt over having profited from his death and wearing it every day, only taking it off when they’ve formally left axe cap and resolved to do business at mase cap The Right Way. similarly, though it’s never addressed in the show, i’m pretty sure taylor’s apartment in season 5 is a different, cheaper apartment than the one they rented in seasons 2-4 — the front door and interior layout we see in 5x02 are totally different from what we’ve seen before — and that this is another manifestation of taylor trying to get back on track / recommit to their principles in season 5. (it might also be that their income was reduced just a bit by mase cap crashing and burning and being forced back to axe cap and they decided to relocate to save on rent. multiple things can be true at once.) the only exception that comes to mind is axe offering to buy taylor a land rover to thank them for running axe cap: taylor turns it down, asks for a billion dollars of their own to manage, then changes their mind and asks for the car too once axe says yes to the billion. they’re not really in a moral quandary in that moment so much as a “wow it sucks that axe is taking the reins of axe cap back from me and undoing all my hard work, i’d like to have some semblance of control and power still, please” quandary, and we never see the land rover again after that, so it’s not exactly memorable. i still want to know what they did with it.

5. selling out oscar’s investment to axe (3x10-5x06): i would not count this as a moral quandary because i firmly believe that Taylor Did Nothing Wrong (in this case), but the 3x10 episode summary describes this incident as “taylor makes a personal compromise for business,” so i guess we have to consider it. taylor asks axe for a favor involving oscar and his business partner, then thanks axe for the favor and mentions the name of said business partner, as one might do when conversing with a trusted colleague / mentor. axe, who is scrounging for cash and should never be trusted, swipes the deal oscar was making; when taylor confronts him about it, he insists that they wanted him to swipe the deal, or else they wouldn’t have namedropped the business partner. it’s unclear whether or not taylor believes this / blames themself for what happened, but oscar certainly blames them — he refuses taylor’s offer of a conciliatory dinner in 3x12 because “after what you did, i could never open myself up to you again,” and tells the marithane ceo in 5x06 that taylor solving his patent issue actually proves just how untrustworthy they are, because “if they’re willing to do that for you today, they’re willing to do it to you later.” yet he was still willing to invest with taylor and have them make money for him, so long as axe’s name wasn’t attached. make it make sense, oscar!

6. selling douglas’s company (4x07-4x08): again, i don’t consider this a moral quandary because taylor was forced into a no-win situation by axe and wendy, and also because douglas just sucks, but again, the writing demands that we consider it. taylor was ready to partner with a VC on funding the development of douglas’s lattice fin design, but axe pulled some strings and got the federal government to demand the technology for national security reasons. with the VC and existing investors abandoning mase cap left and right, there was no way for taylor to keep both douglas’s technology and mase cap, so they chose to sell the tech to the government and keep their company afloat, at the cost of their already-crumbling relationship with douglas finally collapsing. naturally, axe then went on tv and spun this as taylor selling out their own father by flipping his company for their profit. much like what happened with oscar, this is yet another incident that’s more axe’s fault than taylor’s being described as a terrible choice taylor made that proves they can’t be trusted. (this only occasionally happens with actual questionable choices taylor made more freely — connerty prodding them about their new apartment in 2x11, danzig pointing out that taylor “led the charge in wringing cash from sandicot” in 4x01, axe also bringing up taylor taking grigor’s money in his tv appearance in 4x08.)