🎭 Taylor

🎭 A headcanon about what they lie about

oh man there are so many good Taylor Liar Moments. my favorite is without doubt when theo is like heeey whatcha got there and she's like [standing next to tarp covering a Fate Worth Than Death Body Horrored guy screaming in eternal agony] "a recording :)." she lies about a lot of shit obviously but i particularly love this nasty habit she has where it's like. she's capable of doing and witnessing terribly violent things for her Greater Good, and she's aware that many other people are not, so she drags them into doing those violent things by lying to or manipulating them. & the thing is that she genuinely views this as a kindness--she decides that the shit needs to get done no matter what, and then takes the stance that (and i'm paraphrasing something she says as weaver here) it's kinder to manipulate people into doing it instead of arguing them into being on-board so they can still have a cleaner conscience after. or she decides that it's kinder + more effective to hide aspects of the violence from them (e.g sundancer not knowing there were ppl still in echidna and never having to find out she committed a few more murders, theo not knowing that a gray boy victim was under the tarp and being spared the demoralizing horror) to reduce some of the trauma of the event & enable them to complete their part of it more competently.

as the book goes on she gains increasing reputation and respect as someone you want to put in charge if you want to get everyone out of a situation alive--not out clean, or out without some incredibly ethically questionable shit happening--but out alive. the undersiders immediately put her in charge during the s9k chase, the wards immediately put her in charge during behemoth, she's requested by the prt for her "administrative abilities" (wildbow is NOT subtle with the QA motifs towards the end it rocks) during khonsu, etc. and it's very textual that the reason she's such a capable leader--often a miserable one to be around, but someone who will drag you all through the muck and blood to crawl home alive--is because she's manipulative as shit! she lies about So Much! she's explicitly acknowledged as being useful in this really fucked up driven way, with this uncanny ability to want something So Bad that she finds a way to drag everyone else into cooperating for it whether they want to or not. forgot the exact context but at one point she's literally compared to having some cult leader ass capabilities for shoving people into doing shit. it rocks. the PRT keeps pointing her at problems and then being utterly unnerved about how she solves them. she's like if cauldron was a weird girl that everyone acknowledges is super fucked up but keeps around anyway because Someone has got to be fucked up enough to do what needs doing.