i think that the major misinterpretation that people have with taco is that she didn't get attached to mic because of her sad face in the end wanted to show regret because "she hurted her friend". like. no, she wasn't sad because she regretted what she did. she was sad because she's alone again, but she knows very well at the end that she had it coming. the reason as to why taco was so desperate of wanting mic to tell her that she did gain something is because. she SAW pickle in mic, but of course their situation is very different. "Oh but Taco couldn't have done what she did to Mic to Pickle, Mic was fully aware" but she did do that. Mic herself says it. That is pretty much what II is telling you. Taco isn't a good friend, and is not exactly a good person either. Mic was aware that Taco was/is a bad person, but Mic's nature makes her believe in whoever acknowledges her. Taco made Mic feel like she needed her, just the way she made Pickle feel back in s1.
she didn't really change thanks to mic. her faces of "regret" aren't her actually lamenting all of the stuff she did to microphone, but rather just her realizing that she proved what everyone said about her as a result. i will give it to that she might've tried to change, but not because of mic. she wanted to win the prize so she could prove others wrong on her being a loser and a coward, by being a loser and a coward. if anything, mic made her realize that she hasn't changed. she pretty much just ruined everything for everyone who saw her as a friend, and for herself.
taco's whole arc is constantly just downgraded to questionable takes and listen. i do agree that she is heavily flawed as a character. she is morally gray, but ii doesn't portray her as a good person with good intentions, nor she should be really be treated as if she was. neither she had those good intentions with mic at all, i mean, their "friendship" pretty much started because of taco wanting the prize money, taking a part of microphone's prize if she made mic won, you know, an offer. she would get the prize and mic would get recognition. but everyone seems to forget that probably, the main reason as to why she's doing all of this, is because she does regret how she acted on s1. she doesn't exactly regret doing all of that to microphone, and even if she does, it's for the wrong reasons. (that's because she did the exact same thing to you know, pickle, her once best friend, the only person she truly ever cared about)
people do tend to forget that taco keeps sending letters to pickle, and that's often just used for pickle angst and making it his only character trait, but. it's not that. it's the fact that taco keeps on writing those letters, despite fully knowing that she did hurt pickle because of her actions. taco's biggest flaw is that she can't accept that she has ruined everything and wants so desperately to be back on pickle's life because she ended up caring about him deeply as a person. as a friend. but she was never there at all, either.
taco can't seem to understand that she has hurted people badly. sure, she seemed like a "friend" to microphone, and you can argue whatever you want but a fact is that taco IS smart, and she knew that the only way to possibly keep mic by her side is pretending to want to be better, you know, the same way she pretended to be just a odd fella so pickle and her could remain together and have an advance at the game. she played with both of them. because both pickle and mic believed in her but were just used by her for the game.
however, taco does seem to regret the way everything went during-post s1. you can see how she yearns for another chance and is saddened about not getting it, but that's not only for comedic purposes, but that's because the writing is telling you that she won't get a second chance. at least not here.
what i want people to understand is that, yes, taco is a complex character, however trying to sugarcoat what she did is pretty much missing the point of her writing as a whole. she isn't a good person neither was she a good friend. she hasn't grown because she was never able to let go of something that she thinks that she can fix with some words and a prize. she thinks that she can still fix her friendship with pickle, she thinks that she can clear her name (even if she was the one who tainted it), but she only ended up proving knife right. she proved everyone right. she hasn't changed. a morally gray character is that. they're not exactly fully bad or fully good, but it's taco's actions that speak a lot. words are cheap, and taco's title is "The Liar", and that says a lot, because she kept on lying to microphone and to pickle on both of their games. she won't heal unless she lets go.
and i want to be clear here: i do think that taco can go through redemption. i do think that taco can become a better person, but not in the way people portray her to do so. because it just pretty much goes against what her arc has settled in for us, and the other arcs that were involved in hers as well.
taco's arc is meant to be somewhat a parallel with nickel's in a way. hell, even with knife's arc if anything. she treats knife as a simple bully, but when she saw that he became smarter and way more emotionally aware than what she had expected, she felt attacked by that, because he was stable. he became a better person and he was rubbing that on her, and it made her feelings of anger way worse regarding him, but it is true. knife is pretty much everything that taco wants to be, but here's the thing that made them so different:
knife stayed. taco didn't stay.
knife is accepted by everyone in the hotel because meanwhile he hasn't explicitly said that he had a change of heart, he has shown it through actions and a big difference too is that he was there for pickle, even if they weren't close in s1, and taco is on the woods because deep down she is aware that she can't go back. not if she doesn't have something to offer as an direct apology, but here's the problem. whether or not she got the prize, she still wouldn't get forgiven by anyone due to what she said that day.
again. her problem is not being able to let go and to accept when she has messed up badly. she has been lying to everyone but she has also been lying to herself as a whole. she can't keep on doing this because it's just hurting everyone and herself. keeping grudges and holding onto past friendships that were doomed to fall is just hurting her. she is not on the state to keep on trying, she wasn't at all ever.
taco's arc most likely will have closure on a way that fits her character, and i feel like that would be with her letting go of inanimate insanity as a whole and of what she can't fix anymore. her trying to find herself after years of lying to everyone and to herself. she's not a good person. but she can become one. only if she knows what she did was wrong and that her second chance isn't there, and never will be, and if she recognizes that meanwhile she did that damage, she can still become a better person. just not there.
pickle and mic don't owe her anything, especially pickle. taco does owe them an apology, but they won't accept that. the least she could do is to accept their wishes, understand that she needs to leave them and grow to be a better person. maybe, if she does that, she would actually heal.
she doesn't need anyone to fix her. she needs to fix herself.
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Tell Your Dad You Love Him
A retelling of "Meat Loves Salt"/"Cap O'Rushes" for the @inklings-challenge Four Loves event
An old king had three daughters. When his health began to fail, he summoned them, and they came.
Gordonia and Rowan were already waiting in the hallway when Coriander arrived. They were leaned up against the wall opposite the king’s office with an air of affected casualness. “I wonder what the old war horse wants today?” Rowan was saying. “More about next year’s political appointments, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“The older he gets, the more he micromanages,” Gordonia groused fondly. “A thousand dollars says this meeting could’ve been an email.”
They filed in single-file like they’d so often done as children: Gordonia first, then Rowan, and Coriander last of all. The king had placed three chairs in front of his desk all in a row. His daughters murmured their greetings, and one by one they sat down.
“I have divided everything I have in three,” the king said. “I am old now, and it’s time. Today, I will pass my kingdom on to you, my daughters.”
A short gasp came from Gordonia. None of them could have imagined that their father would give up running his kingdom while he still lived.
The king went on. “I know you will deal wisely with that which I leave in your care. But before we begin, I have one request.”
“Yes father?” said Rowan.
“Tell me how much you love me.”
An awkward silence fell. Although there was no shortage of love between the king and his daughters, theirs was not a family which spoke of such things. They were rich and blue-blooded: a soldier and the daughters of a soldier, a king and his three court-reared princesses. The royal family had always shown their affection through double meanings and hot cups of coffee.
Gordonia recovered herself first. She leaned forward over the desk and clasped her father’s hands in her own. “Father,” she said, “I love you more than I can say.” A pause. “I don’t think there’s ever been a family so happy in love as we have been. You’re a good dad.”
The old king smiled and patted her hand. “Thank you, Gordonia. We have been very happy, haven’t we? Here is your inheritance. Cherish it, as I cherish you.”
Rowan spoke next; the words came tumbling out. “Father! There’s not a thing in my life which you didn’t give me, and all the joy in the world beside. Come now, Gordonia, there’s no need to understate the matter. I love you more than—why, more than life itself!”
The king laughed, and rose to embrace his second daughter. “How you delight me, Rowan. All of this will be yours.”
Only Coriander remained. As her sisters had spoken, she’d wrung her hands in her lap, unsure of what to say. Did her father really mean for flattery to be the price of her inheritance? That just wasn’t like him. For all that he was a politician, he’d been a soldier first. He liked it when people told the truth.
When the king’s eyes came to rest on her, Coriander raised her own to meet them. “Do you really want to hear what you already know?”
“I do.”
She searched for a metaphor that could carry the weight of her love without unnecessary adornment. At last she found one, and nodded, satisfied. “Dad, you’re like—like salt in my food.”
“Like salt?”
“Well—yes.”
The king’s broad shoulders seemed to droop. For a moment, Coriander almost took back her words. Her father was the strongest man in the world, even now, at eighty. She’d watched him argue with foreign rulers and wage wars all her life. Nothing could hurt him. Could he really be upset?
But no. Coriander held her father’s gaze. She had spoken true. What harm could be in that?
“I don’t know why you’re even here, Cor,” her father said.
Now, Coriander shifted slightly in her seat, unnerved. “What? Father—”
“It would be best if—you should go,” said the old king.
“Father, you can’t really mean–”
“Leave us, Coriander.”
So she left the king’s court that very hour.
.
It had been a long time since she’d gone anywhere without a chauffeur to drive her, but Coriander’s thoughts were flying apart too fast for her to be afraid. She didn’t know where she would go, but she would make do, and maybe someday her father would puzzle out her metaphor and call her home to him. Coriander had to hope for that, at least. The loss of her inheritance didn’t feel real yet, but her father—how could he not know that she loved him? She’d said it every day.
She’d played in the hall outside that same office as a child. She’d told him her secrets and her fears and sent him pictures on random Tuesdays when they were in different cities just because. She had watched him triumph in conference rooms and on the battlefield and she’d wanted so badly to be like him.
If her father doubted her love, then maybe he’d never noticed any of it. Maybe the love had been an unnoticed phantasm, a shadow, a song sung to a deaf man. Maybe all that love had been nothing at all.
A storm was on the horizon, and it reached her just as she made it onto the highway. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Rain poured down and flooded the road. Before long, Coriander was hydroplaning. Frantically, she tried to remember what you were supposed to do when that happened. Pump the brakes? She tried. No use. Wasn’t there something different you did if the car had antilock brakes? Or was that for snow? What else, what else–
With a sickening crunch, her car hit the guardrail. No matter. Coriander’s thoughts were all frenzied and distant. She climbed out of the car and just started walking.
Coriander wandered beneath an angry sky on the great white plains of her father’s kingdom. The rain beat down hard, and within seconds she was soaked to the skin. The storm buffeted her long hair around her head. It tangled together into long, matted cords that hung limp down her back. Mud soiled her fine dress and splattered onto her face and hands. There was water in her lungs and it hurt to breathe. Oh, let me die here, Coriander thought. There’s nothing left for me, nothing at all. She kept walking.
.
When she opened her eyes, Coriander found herself in a dank gray loft. She was lying on a strange feather mattress.
She remained there a while, looking up at the rafters and wondering where she could be. She thought and felt, as it seemed, through a heavy and impenetrable mist; she was aware only of hunger and weakness and a dreadful chill (though she was all wrapped in blankets). She knew that a long time must have passed since she was fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering beside the highway in a thunderstorm, slowly going mad because—because— oh, there’d been something terrible in her dreams. Her father, shoulders drooping at his desk, and her sisters happily come into their inheritance, and she cast into exile—
She shuddered and sat up dizzily. “Oh, mercy,” she murmured. She hadn’t been dreaming.
She stumbled out of the loft down a narrow flight of stairs and came into a strange little room with a single window and a few shabby chairs. Still clinging to the rail, she heard a ruckus from nearby and then footsteps. A plump woman came running to her from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and softly clucking at the state of her guest’s matted, tangled hair.
“Dear, dear,” said the woman. “Here’s my hand, if you’re still unsteady. That’s good, good. Don’t be afraid, child. I’m Katherine, and my husband is Folke. He found you collapsed by the goose-pond night before last. I’m she who dressed you—your fine gown was ruined, I’m afraid. Would you like some breakfast? There’s coffee on the counter, and we’ll have porridge in a minute if you’re patient.”
“Thank you,” Coriander rasped.
“Will you tell me your name, my dear?”
“I have no name. There’s nothing to tell.”
Katherine clicked her tongue. “That’s alright, no need to worry. Folke and I’ve been calling you Rush on account of your poor hair. I don’t know if you’ve seen yourself, but it looks a lot like river rushes. No, don’t get up. Here’s your breakfast, dear.”
There was indeed porridge, as Katherine had promised, served with cream and berries from the garden. Coriander ate hungrily and tasted very little. Then, when she was finished, the goodwife ushered her over to a sofa by the window and put a pillow beneath her head. Coriander thanked her, and promptly fell asleep.
.
She woke again around noon, with the pounding in her head much subsided. She woke feeling herself again, to visions of her father inches away and the sound of his voice cracking across her name.
Katherine was outside in the garden; Coriander could see her through the clouded window above her. She rose and, upon finding herself still in a borrowed nightgown, wrapped herself in a blanket to venture outside.
“Feeling better?” Katherine was kneeling in a patch of lavender, but she half rose when she heard the cottage door open.
“Much. Thank you, ma’am.
“No thanks necessary. Folke and I are ministers, of a kind. We keep this cottage for lost and wandering souls. You’re free to remain here with us for as long as you need.”
“Oh,” was all Coriander could think to say.
“You’ve been through a tempest, haven’t you? Are you well enough to tell me where you came from?”
Coriander shifted uncomfortably. “I’m from nowhere,” she said. “I have nothing.”
“You don’t owe me your story, child. I should like to hear it, but it will keep till you’re ready. Now, why don’t you put on some proper clothes and come help me with this weeding.”
.
Coriander remained at the cottage with Katherine and her husband Folke for a week, then a fortnight. She slept in the loft and rose with the sun to help Folke herd the geese to the pond. After, Coriander would return and see what needed doing around the cottage. She liked helping Katherine in the garden.
The grass turned gold and the geese’s thick winter down began to come in. Coriander’s river-rush hair proved itself unsalvageable. She spent hours trying to untangle it, first with a hairbrush, then with a fine-tooth comb and a bottle of conditioner, and eventually even with honey and olive oil (a home remedy that Folke said his mother used to use). So, at last, Coriander surrendered to the inevitable and gave Katherine permission to cut it off. One night, by the yellow light of the bare bulb that hung over the kitchen table, Katherine draped a towel over Coriander’s shoulders and tufts of gold went falling to the floor all round her.
“I’m here because I failed at love,” she managed to tell the couple at last, when her sorrows began to feel more distant. “I loved my father, and he knew it not.”
Folke and Katherine still called her Rush. She didn’t correct them. Coriander was the name her parents gave her. It was the name her father had called her when she was six and racing down the stairs to meet him when he came home from Europe, and at ten when she showed him the new song she’d learned to play on the harp. She’d been Cor when she brought her first boyfriend home and Cori the first time she shadowed him at court. Coriander, Coriander, when she came home from college the first time and he’d hugged her with bruising strength. Her strong, powerful father.
As she seasoned a pot of soup for supper, she wondered if he understood yet what she’d meant when she called him salt in her food.
.
Coriander had been living with Katherine and Folke for two years, and it was a morning just like any other. She was in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee when Folke tossed the newspaper on the table and started rummaging in the fridge for his orange juice. “Looks like the old king’s sick again,” he commented casually. Coriander froze.
She raced to the table and seized hold of the paper. There, above the fold, big black letters said, KING ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT. There was a picture of her father, looking older than she’d ever seen him. Her knees went wobbly and then suddenly the room was sideways.
Strong arms caught her and hauled her upright. “What’s wrong, Rush?”
“What if he dies,” she choked out. “What if he dies and I never got to tell him?”
She looked up into Folke’s puzzled face, and then the whole sorry story came tumbling out.
When she was through, Katherine (who had come downstairs sometime between salt and the storm) took hold of her hand and kissed it. “Bless you, dear,” she said. “I never would have guessed. Maybe it’s best that you’ve both had some time to think things over.”
Katherine shook her head. “But don’t you think…?”
“Yes?”
“Well, don’t you think he should have known that I loved him? I shouldn’t have needed to say it. He’s my father. He’s the king.”
Katherine replied briskly, as though the answer should have been obvious. “He’s only human, child, for all that he might wear a crown; he’s not omniscient. Why didn’t you tell your father what he wanted to hear?”
“I didn’t want to flatter him,” said Coriander. “That was all. I wanted to be right in what I said.”
The goodwife clucked softly. “Oh dear. Don’t you know that sometimes, it’s more important to be kind than to be right?”
.
In her leave-taking, Coriander tried to tell Katherine and Folke how grateful she was to them, but they wouldn’t let her. They bought her a bus ticket and sent her on her way towards King’s City with plenty of provisions. Two days later, Coriander stood on the back steps of one of the palace outbuildings with her little carpetbag clutched in her hands.
Stuffing down the fear of being recognized, Coriander squared her shoulders and hoped they looked as strong as her father’s. She rapped on the door, and presently a maid came and opened it. The maid glanced Coriander up and down, but after a moment it was clear that her disguise held. With all her long hair shorn off, she must have looked like any other girl come in off the street.
“I’m here about a job,” said Coriander. “My name’s Rush.”
.
The king's chambers were half-lit when Coriander brought him his supper, dressed in her servants’ apparel. He grunted when she knocked and gestured with a cane towards his bedside table. His hair was snow-white and he was sitting in bed with his work spread across a lap-desk. His motions were very slow.
Coriander wanted to cry, seeing her father like that. Yet somehow, she managed to school her face. Like he would, she kept telling herself. Stoically, she put down the supper tray, then stepped back out into the hallway.
It was several minutes more before the king was ready to eat. Coriander heard papers being shuffled, probably filed in those same manilla folders her father had always used. In the hall, Coriander felt the seconds lengthen. She steeled herself for the moment she knew was coming, when the king would call out in irritation, “Girl! What's the matter with my food? Why hasn’t it got any taste?”
When that moment came, all would be made right. Coriander would go into the room and taste his food. “Why,” she would say, with a look of complete innocence, “It seems the kitchen forgot to salt it!” She imagined how her father’s face would change when he finally understood. My daughter always loved me, he would say.
Soon, soon. It would happen soon. Any second now.
The moment never came. Instead, the floor creaked, followed by the rough sound of a cane striking the floor. The door opened, and then the king was there, his mighty shoulders shaking. “Coriander,” he whispered.
“Dad. You know me?”
“Of course.”
“Then you understand now?”
The king’s wrinkled brow knit. “Understand about the salt? Of course, I do. It wasn't such a clever riddle. There was surely no need to ruin my supper with a demonstration.”
Coriander gaped at him. She'd expected questions, explanations, maybe apologies for sending her away. She'd never imagined this.
She wanted very badly to seize her father and demand answers, but then she looked, really looked, at the way he was leaning on his cane. The king was barely upright; his white head was bent low. Her questions would hold until she'd helped her father back into his room.
“If you knew what I meant–by saying you were like salt in my food– then why did you tell me to go?” she asked once they were situated back in the royal quarters.
Idly, the king picked at his unseasoned food. “I shouldn’t have done that. Forgive me, Coriander. My anger and hurt got the better of me, and it has brought me much grief. I never expected you to stay away for so long.”
Coriander nodded slowly. Her father's words had always carried such fierce authority. She'd never thought to question if he really meant what he’d said to her.
“As for the salt,” continued the king, "Is it so wrong that an old man should want to hear his daughters say ‘I love you' before he dies?”
Coriander rolled the words around in her head, trying to make sense of them. Then, with a sudden mewling sound from her throat, she managed to say, “That's really all you wanted?”
“That's all. I am old, Cor, and we've spoken too little of love in our house.” He took another bite of his unsalted supper. His hand shook. “That was my failing, I suppose. Perhaps if I’d said it, you girls would have thought to say it back.”
“But father!” gasped Coriander, “That’s not right. We've always known we loved one another! We've shown it a thousand ways. Why, I've spent the last year cataloging them in my head, and I've still not even scratched the surface!”
The king sighed. “Perhaps you will understand when your time comes. I knew, and yet I didn't. What can you really call a thing you’ve never named? How do you know it exists? Perhaps all the love I thought I knew was only a figment.”
“But that’s what I’ve been afraid of all this time,” Coriander bit back. “How could you doubt? If it was real at all– how could you doubt?”
The king’s weathered face grew still. His eyes fell shut and he squeezed them. “Death is close to me, child. A small measure of reassurance is not so very much to ask.”
.
Coriander slept in her old rooms that night. None of it had changed. When she woke the next morning, for a moment she remembered nothing of the last two years.
She breakfasted in the garden with her father, who came down the steps in a chair-lift. “Coriander,” he murmured. “I half-thought I dreamed you last night.”
“I’m here, Dad,” she replied. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Slowly, the king reached out with one withered hand and caressed Coriander's cheek. Then, his fingers drifted up to what remained of her hair. He ruffled it, then gently tugged on a tuft the way he'd used to playfully tug her long braid when she was a girl.
“I love you,” he said.
“That was always an I love you, wasn’t it?” replied Coriander. “My hair.”
The king nodded. “Yes, I think it was.”
So Coriander reached out and gently tugged the white hairs of his beard. “You too,” she whispered.
.
“Why salt?” The king was sitting by the fire in his rooms wrapped in two blankets. Coriander was with him, enduring the sweltering heat of the room without complaint.
She frowned. “You like honesty. We have that in common. I was trying to be honest–accurate–to avoid false flattery.”
The king tugged at the outer blanket, saying nothing. His lips thinned and his eyes dropped to his lap. Coriander wished they wouldn’t. She wished they would hold to hers, steely and ready for combat as they always used to be.
“Would it really have been false?” the king said at last. “Was there no other honest way to say it? Only salt?”
Coriander wanted to deny it, to give speech to the depth and breadth of her love, but once again words failed her. “It was my fault,” she said. “I didn’t know how to heave my heart into my throat.” She still didn’t, for all she wanted to.
.
When the doctor left, the king was almost too tired to talk. His words came slowly, slurred at the edges and disconnected, like drops of water from a leaky faucet.
Still, Coriander could tell that he had something to say. She waited patiently as his lips and tongue struggled to form the words. “Love you… so… much… You… and… your sisters… Don’t… worry… if you… can’t…say…how…much. I… know.”
It was all effort. The king sat back when he was finished. Something was still spasming in his throat, and Coriander wanted to cry.
“I’m glad you know,” she said. “I’m glad. But I still want to tell you.”
Love was effort. If her father wanted words, she would give him words. True words. Kind words. She would try…
“I love you like salt in my food. You're desperately important to me, and you've always been there, and I don't know what I'll do without you. I don’t want to lose you. And I love you like the soil in a garden. Like rain in the spring. Like a hero. You have the strongest shoulders of anyone I know, and all I ever wanted was to be like you…”
A warm smile spread across the old king’s face. His eyes drifted shut.
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