#shintaro karish

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Okay so you have piqued my interest re: Source and Shield although you were not joking about the cover art. I have a question for you: is the series complete or ongoing? also I tried to find an audiobook or ebook version through my library's app (I live in a pretty big city with an extensive library system) but they don't have them at all, so also not joking about it being pretty obscure lol

I forgot to hit send on my last ask which is why these are back to back, but since that message I found a copy of the ebook and have now read the first few chapters. I was like oh okay nice, some interesting world-building, a cute burgeoning love triangle, then I got to the part where all the other Sources/Shields just died and they don't know why?! That escalated SO QUICKLY

It is COMPLETELY finished, there are seven books, there are NO audiobooks that I am aware of because this is the Bad Place, and I am absolutely losing my tiny little mind that I convinced someone else to read them.  You’re currently speaking to something like 30% of the fandom, there are None Of Us.

And YEAH it goes from “okay so some worldbuilding” to “all your coworkers died of Sudden Terribleness and you’re all alone and you have no idea what’s going on okay have fun!!!!”  And like honestly that’s the kind of escalation I desire in my media.  Especially because Lee and Taro are so.  NOT equipped to be the last Pair standing, they’ve been out of school like two months.

I should reread the Triple S, I miss my kids.

#source and shield #source and shield series #triple s #dunleavy mallorough #shintaro karish #i am SURE you are much further through these by now because it takes me forty years to answer asks #I HOPE YOU'RE STILL ENJOYING THEM #anyway that love triangle sure does have a short life expectancy #ahhhhh i love it #i just love a series that gets on its endgame pairing EARLY and then STICKS THE LANDING #seriously there are seven books and things are pretty much Established by book 4 #and then there's like THREE AND A HALF WHOLE BOOKS of them being together #TRULY nothing frustrates me more than a book series spending like half a dozen books on will-they-won't-they #and then getting the romance together in the last ten pages #I WANT TO SEE THOSE FOOLS BE A RELATIONSHIP GODDAMNIT #not targeted at anyone in particular just you know #[frustrated gestures] #love triangles #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #tosailuponthesea #asked and answered

[sapphireswimming]

b l o o m (a Source & Shield fic)

Lee anticipated the need to readjust after their return from the Southern Islands, but hadn’t considered just how deeply Taro had been impacted by their time away

Words: 3k

Genre: Romance, Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort

Rated: K+

Characters: Lee Mallorough/Taro Karish

Timeline: Set after, with spoilers through, Book 3: Heroes Adrift

For @cthulhu-with-a-fez

(( on ffn   /  on ao3  ))

#source and shield #source & sheild #lee mallorough #taro karish #shintaro karish #dunleavy mallorough #cthulhu with a fez #kelly #the hero series #mine #fanfiction #ss #still waiting for ffn to create the new category but for now it's under misc books

[words-writ-in-starlight]

7, 9, 12, and/or 14 for lee/taro?? (you have NO idea how hard i laughed at seeing 10 though. book three, my good friend book three...)

7. What do they get up to on a night out?

Lee talks a big game about hating “nights out” but also sometimes Taro gets them tickets to plays and she likes those very much.  Taro brings Lee to exactly two kinds of play: plays that are outstandingly good, and plays that are outstandingly bad.  Mediocre theater need not apply.  If he’s being totally honest, he prefers the terrible ones--he and Lee sit in the back and she puts on her best emotionless Shield face and pinches him every time he wheezes out a laugh, and she claps with every impression of artistic appreciation, and then they leave and she rips the play apart, with all the precision and detail of someone who took exacting notes through every single second of it.  Taro adores her.

9. What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other?

One time Lee failed to notice that she was actively dating a man who was considering marrying her for literally almost a year.  She doesn’t want to talk about it.

Taro makes a concerted effort not to be embarrassed about things that people consider Source Behavior anymore, but the first time he has a real meltdown in front of Lee, after that dinner with his mother, he feels like he’s swallowed something alive and squirming with how thickly the humiliation settles over him.

12. What first changes when it starts getting serious?

This is a perspective issue.  From Taro’s perspective, the main thing that changes is that he’s allowed to kiss Lee, and hug her, and stroke her hair, and go down on her for an hour, pretty much whenever he feels like doing any of those things.  He also indulges in occasionally declaiming her virtues and his adoration, but that, in total fairness, is not that different from usual.

Lee, of course, totally fails to clock the start of their serious relationship.  So from her perspective, the first thing that changes is Taro’s sudden tendency to make her look at him and pay attention when he tells her he loves her.  

14. When one has a cold, what does the other do?

Taro is actually pretty calm as long as he knows what Lee has--if she’s, say, mysteriously poisoned, he can work up a pretty good panic attack, but if she’s sick with something he knows how to handle, he’s fine.  He’s an expert at handling Sick Dunleavy, which is vital, because Sick Dunleavy will give someone the slip to go back to work at any moment of distraction.  

It is a burden on Taro, keeping his idiot Shield in bed, and honestly no one cares that Lee being sick is as much of a struggle for him as it is for her.  She is upsettingly crafty when feverish, people, please understand his pain.  (Lee doesn’t hate it when she’s sick and Taro forces her into staying in bed with her head in his lap--he reads to her, mostly, and he can’t carry a tune to save his life but he has a beautiful reading voice.  She just needs to check on one thing and then she’ll be right back, she swears.)

Lee, on the other hand, reacts to Taro being sick like...well, like a young twenty-something who, until very recently, always had an adult around to rely on, when someone was sick.  She doesn’t get panicky because it’s a point of pride that she never gets panicky, but she does tend to handle any illness with exactly the same degree of intense caution as if Taro was actively vomiting up blood.  

Taro will sometimes play up a minor illness to get her to dote on him--he’s very transparent and, if pressed, will instantly and smugly admit it--but he tends to be a very quiet sick person.  Honestly the thing that bothers Lee more than any other aspect of Taro being sick is when it stops being a game for attention--as long as he’s draping himself artistically across their sofa and languishing in her direction and teasing her for treating a head cold like death by consumption, she feels on secure footing.  The first time he’s sick enough to curl up quietly in bed and tell her not to worry, that he’ll just sleep it off, she can go back to work, she legitimately believes he might be dying.  She hates it when he’s quiet.  It’s un-Shield-like and probably unseemly generally to fantasize about murdering dead people while petting your Source’s hair, but Lee indulges in it like clockwork every time Taro is sick enough to be quiet.

#source and shield #triple s #dunleavy mallorough #shintaro karish #starlight writes stuff #ask meme #headcanon meme #lee does an amazing impression of an emotionally controlled shield when it's called for #but also she is a chronic worrier about taro's health and wellbeing #he's happy to take shameless advantage when he has a minor cold but he gets self-conscious almost instantly when he actually Needs Taken Ca #lee on the other hand is an 'I'm Fine' sick person #taro has physically laid down on top of her to keep her from going back to work when she's feverish #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #cthulhu-with-a-fez #asked and answered #*Needs Taken Care Of

[words-writ-in-starlight]

☾ / ✿ (LITERAL OR FIGURATIVE SLEEPING TOGETHER, YOUR CHOICE) for lee and/or taro~?

HELL YEAH

Sleeping (Literal)

Shintaro “Abandonment Issues” Karish does NOT sleep well alone.  There was an adjustment period when he was younger, where having other people around made him restless and nervy and kept him up for days--the first time he shared a room, in an inn, Taro didn’t sleep for more than twenty minutes at a stretch the entire time.  But as he picked up a shiny new set of coping methods, that changed, and it changed fast.  Taro likes sharing a bed, he likes being in contact with someone while he’s asleep, he likes being able to feel someone’s heartbeat and know they can’t leave without him noticing.  Short of that, he prefers sharing a room, because he and silence don’t get along.  It’s not, contrary to what literally everyone assumes, about sex.  Taro just hates being alone.

Lee doesn’t figure out the whole picture of this until well after she and Taro are together, when she finally realizes that Taro isn’t, actually, just waiting up for her because he’s being nice.  She’s noticed that he likes having her around, obviously, especially since he basically shouted it at her while she was being, she’ll admit, a bit of an idiot.  But if she’s out late running errands or getting drinks with Risa or practicing magic with the Flown Raven circle, she always comes back to a sleepy-eyed Source doing idle work or reading or something, no matter how late.  Finally she asks, after they’ve been in Flown Raven over a year, why he doesn’t just go to bed without her--she’s trying to be better about this whole “communicating” deal.

Taro smiles at her, of course, and says something charming and lighthearted about missing her when she’s not in his arms, and Lee scoffs and shoves him off the bed as he laughs.  She also starts trying with far more intent to arrange her schedule so that she’s home before Taro starts getting circles under his eyes.

Sleeping (Figurative)

Taro’s reputation isn’t completely manufactured.  He’s tried almost everything once, and he has a pretty good understanding of what he prefers, but--

He’s not great at setting boundaries, is the thing?  Not so much a problem when he mostly had a string of one-night stands or casual acquaintances-with-benefits relationships, if he didn’t enjoy himself he just doesn’t go back.  But Lee is--permanent.

And also, Lee is a pragmatist to the core.

She asks him offhand what he likes in bed, once they’re more comfortable with each other (read: after their fight in Book 4), and Taro smiles up at her from where his head rests on her leg while she plays with his hair, and says, “Whatever you want.”

Lee frowns at him, which is not the intended outcome, and says, “Well, but what do you want?”

Taro blinks at her for a moment, and says, “You,” and Lee nods like he’s given a whole speech, and says, “Okay.”

Two days later, Lee shows up in their room with her most stoic face on and three sheets of paper covered in her most meticulous handwriting, which she shoves into his hands before he can ask any questions.

Taro glances down at the list and feels his eyebrows shoot upward.  There’s some things on here that even he’s declined in the past, marked out with a polite set of Yes, Maybe, No options in two columns, one labeled with his name and one labeled with hers.  There’s also a few things he knows with absolute certainty that Lee hasn’t done and would never do, but her column is completely blank.  

“Where did you even hear about--”

“Just because I’m not you doesn’t mean I’m twelve, Karish, I’ve had lovers before,” Lee says, absolutely failing to keep her blotchy red flush from spreading up her throat and onto her face.  Then she pauses for a moment and says, “Also, I went to a professional and she gave me a list.  I figure if you fill it out first, then you won’t just give the answers you think match mine.”

Taro looks back down at the list and then back up at her and tries to sort out the competing impulses tangled up between his ribs.  He’s--pretty sure he’s not in trouble.  He’s also pretty sure that Lee might say something else if he keeps his mouth shut for another couple of moments, so he bites back the impulse to ask are you angry with me, or possibly to kiss her and thank her for something he can’t really articulate, and waits.

Lee doesn’t really fidget, but she has a few nervous tics that she allows in private and that Taro has become exhaustively well-versed in, so he watches her Not Fidget and then thump a closed fist against the bony rise of her hip twice and square her shoulders.

And then she says, of all things, “I’m going to keep liking you even if you aren’t interested in something I like, Taro.  And I would be--” it’s fascinating to actually watch someone discard ‘inappropriate’ words like she’s flipping methodically through a book, some part of Taro thinks while the rest of him vibrates with the need to hear the rest of that sentence “--distressed,” Lee finally decides, “if I found out that you were doing something you didn’t care for because you thought it would make me happy.”  She takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, and then says, stiff and rushed, “You make me happy, Taro.  No qualifiers attached.”

It takes Taro a long moment to assemble some words to answer, and finally all he can come up with is, “You make me happy too.”

Lee flashes him a smile and kisses him on the corner of the mouth, standing on her toes to navigate around the papers, and walks away with purpose like she has something to do, when Taro knows perfectly well that there’s nothing on her schedule this afternoon.  He knows he’s smiling after her like an idiot, but, well.

He’s a Source.  He’s allowed to do things like that.

#source and shield #shintaro karish #dunleavy mallorough #starlight writes stuff #ask meme #headcanon meme #me looking at shintaro 'loud pretty weirdo with adhd and abandonment issues' karish: it's free projection #except i actually do fine sleeping alone as long as i have a white noise machine of some kind #Silence is my Enemy #ANYWAY anyway anyway #taro is an interesting combination of very forward and aware of his options with regard to sex and intimacy #and also EXTREMELY nervous about setting boundaries with anyone he wants to keep liking him #catch me talking for a year about how he's so cagy with lee because he's afraid she'll leave him #he has 'i've agreed to some stuff i shouldn't have because i thought that was how you get people to like you' all over him #his past partners have had no malice they've just assumed he was like...capable of telling people no #taro doesn't tell people no he just gets aristocratic and condescending when he wants to make someone back off #which conveniently guarantees that they'll get angry and he won't HAVE to say no to them #i have FEELINGS about it #*pokes the corpse of the dowager bitch with a stick* hey bitch come back to life so i can stab you more #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #cthulhu-with-a-fez #asked and answered

[words-writ-in-starlight]

how about any combo of "feverish delirium and mumbling", "easy, easy," "brushing hair from brow," and/or "waking up not knowing where they are" for s&s? like yes i know ms moore already blessed us with this content in canon but what about SECOND content??

I DON’T THINK THEY KNOW ABOUT SECOND CONTENT or even first content, actually, Please Read The Source & Shield Books.  For this ask meme!  Also, I have been watching AtLA again, which is my explanation for this.

Shintaro comes around slowly, to the sound of hissing voices.  It’s his first sign that all is not well--servants don’t talk around sleeping nobility, and his mother and brother never bother to be quiet.  No one whispers near him, except occasionally Bailey.

“--can’t believe you brought him here,” one voice is continuing in a sharp murmur, and Shintaro--Shintaro should know that voice.  It’s a boy, maybe his own age, with a broad and inspecific traveler’s accent.  Shintaro tries to force his eyes open to get a look and fails--his head aches, sharp and brutal, a throbbing in the right side of his face and a dry rasp to his breathing, and he can’t quite get his eyelids to obey him.

“I know,” another voice says, flat--no, not flat, purely neutral, a kind of schooled non-response that Shintaro should probably admire, really.  It makes his lungs try to curl up in his chest.  It’s a girl, and this one, this one he really should know, it pricks nervous energy up in his veins.  He knows her.  “But look at him.”

“We’re looking,” says a much closer voice, another boy, and something blessedly cool settles over Shintaro’s throbbing cheek.  It leeches the pain from his skin, leaving a tightness behind, and Shintaro can’t help a ragged noise of relief.  There’s a beat of silence, and then:

“Can’t you keep him out?”

“Well, I could drown him,” says the nearest voice, dry.

“Don’t drown him,” the girl snaps.  “I’m trying to do my job here--”

“I can’t believe you got chewed out by your own past life--”

“Guys,” the nearest voice interrupts, “he’s waking up.”

Shintaro fights his eyes open--one eye, the other is badly swollen and obscured by something that ripples for a moment before being whisked away from his skin.  The dimly lit room reels around him for an awful moment, and a hand appears on his shoulder from over his head, holding him down when he automatically tries to sit up.

“Easy,” the nearest voice says, and Shintaro looks, and--

Shintaro freezes for a long moment, and wrenches himself away.  He pays immediately for it, his head screaming and the burn on his face flaring back into the blinding pain that knocked him out in the first place, and he’s barely on his feet before he lurches forward and almost collapses back onto the floor.

“Catch him!” Dias yelps behind him, and a short figure grabs him in strong arms and bears him to the ground in a graceful slide rather than a painful collapse.

“Careful, Your Highness,” his savior says, a little bitterness lacing that perfect calm as Shintaro gasps and presses a shaking hand to his face.  It feels--not as terrible as he’d expected.  “You’ve had a pretty bad day.”

“Clearly,” Shintaro manages, biting his tongue on the rush of pain and forcing his throat to speak.  “Am I being kidnapped?”

“You’re welcome,” his savior says.  She has a riot of long hair in a rare and startling red, and her clothes are deep green and dusty brown, and she looks as professionally expressionless as she always does, but there’s an edge in her eyes that looks a little like disgust.  

Shintaro has had the dubious privilege of meeting Dunleavy, no last name given, several times.  All have involved a very credible attempt on his life.  He’s not entirely sure he’s grateful for this.

It must show on his face.  The other boy, the non-bender--Mika, Shintaro recalls after a moment, with a short Water Tribe spear strapped to his back and a lethally clever twist to his lips--makes an amused sound.  “Never thought I’d feel this bad for a firebender.  Here, let’s get you back on the bed.  If you’re good, Dias won’t even drown you.  And Lee can explain.”

“I’m fine,” Shintaro says automatically, and Dunleavy--Lee, he’s heard them call her that before--snorts.  She’s strong for her size, earthbenders tend to be, and she hauls him to his feet like he doesn’t weigh anything, shoves him onto the bed.

“Look,” Dunleavy snaps.  “Your mother burned half your face off.”

“Yeah,” Shintaro mumbles.  “Thanks.  I remember.”  He doesn’t, actually, but he remembers Bailey’s voice as he was pulled off the Agni Kai grounds, and the banishment pronouncement filtering through the smoky smell of his own skin burning.  “Any other information I might have missed?”

“You were banished.  Rumor is, it’ll be lifted if you can capture the Avatar.  Alone.”  

“I’m aware.  I was called to stand for my failure at the North Pole, and I knew the terms when I agreed to a trial by combat.  So, to clarify,” Shintaro says, leaning away from Dias as a flick of his wrist calls silvery water out of a canteen, “you decided to capture me first.  Don’t touch me,” he adds to Dias, and the waterbender holds up both hands, holding the water back, like Shintaro is a child in need of reassurance.

Dunleavy, for the first time since he met her at the South Pole, shows some emotion besides exasperation, and scrubs both her hands over her face, tangles them in her hair.  “I’m doing this all wrong,” she mutters.  “Your mother is awful, and your brother is worse--why are you even helping them, anyway?  You hate them!”

“Where else am I going to go?” Shintaro says.  It’s not bitter.  It’s not despairing.  He tries to mimic Dunleavy’s neutrality, and doesn’t let himself think about the pain in his face, or the fact that Dunleavy would probably have done better as his mother’s child than he has.  “The Air Nomads?  The North Pole?  Oh, I know,” he says, and snaps his fingers.  His voice is getting vicious, he can hear it, he can hear his mother in it, but he keeps talking.  “I could go to your old home, right?  Ba Sing Se would welcome me with open arms, I’m sure."

That stings her.  He sees it hit home.  Ba Sing Se is still standing strong, but he knows for a fact that they weren’t welcoming to their long-lost daughter and the war on her heels.  Dunleavy looks away from him.

“I’m sorry,” Shintaro says, and lowers his head.  His hair hurts when it falls, loose, against his burn.  “I just--I couldn’t go anywhere else.  And now...”  He gestures broadly.  “How long do you think I’ll survive, roughly?  I’m offering very good odds on the two-month mark.  I would recommend taking the under.”

“That’s my point,” Dunleavy says, and sighs, and looks back to him.  She holds out her hand and Shintaro stares at it for a long few minutes.  “You hate what the Fire Nation is doing almost as much as we do,” she says, and it sounds--careful.  Like she’s picking her words with precision.  “And you can’t go home.  So why don’t you help us?”

Shintaro’s gaze snaps up to her face, and she meets his eye without blinking.  “You would--trust me like that?”

“Like you said,” Dunleavy says, and she smiles a little, a faint trace of a thing.  “I don’t see you getting any better offers, Your Highness.  And,” she admits, “I need a firebending teacher.  You had the best in the world, I assume.”

The Avatar is beautiful when she smiles, Shintaro thinks, head spinning in shock.  He’s surprised to find that his decision is already made.

“Okay,” he says faintly, and shakes her hand.

#source and shield #shintaro karish #dunleavy mallorough #avatar au #ask meme #starlight writes stuff #OHOHOHOHOHOHO I THINK I AM ONTO SOMETHING WITH THIS!!!! #anyway taro does not become fire lord because i'm not...THAT cruel #they find fiona and make HER fire lord #lee's animal companion is aryne by which i mean it's a little asshole and she loves it very much #lee would make the Worst airbender but she makes a pretty legit earthbender so! there you go #earthbender lee and fire prince taro and water tribe dias and mika who Found Someone In An Iceberg #this is basically...in which taro WAS hunting the avatar pre-banishment (to get him out of his mother's sight) #(and transparently so that she could use the spies posted on his ship to send his elder brother in at the last moment to steal the glory) #but his failure to capture the avatar in the assault on the north pole resulted in his mother denouncing him as a traitor #('you had her in your hands and you let her go' the dowager fire lady says viciously. taro kneels and says nothing and does not fight back. #and so now he's banished and fully expecting to be murdered in cold blood within the month #ALSO in this au taro has never had...friends...so he doesn't have his nickname yet! dias gives it to him #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #cthulhu-with-a-fez #asked and answered

[words-writ-in-starlight]

head&etc-canon meme for leverage, source & shield, and/or x men?

Let’s not PLAY, okay, we’re doing S&S, I love my most obscure children.  Someone else PLEASE read these books, they are so good.

Headcanon

Lee’s relationship with her mother remains…somewhat contentious.  Any progress that might have been made after Teshia’s visit to High Scape suffers serious consequences after the whole Marcus debacle.  Also, Lee holds somewhat of a grudge over her mother chastising Taro, during that dinner with his mother all those years ago.

Mika and Dias, on the other hand, have recently discovered that their sister is actually Fucking Radical, and go out of their way to stay in touch.  Mika tries to come visit whenever he can, and quietly configures the Mallorough trading empire to have a reason to send Dias into Lee’s general vicinity.  Also, while he was drunk that one time, Taro let slip to Dias that he spent eleven years essentially locked in a single room, and Mika and Dias have decided that they will brutally murder anyone who crosses their new brother.  

Heartcanon

Taro goes to his mother’s funeral.  He goes to the Dowager Bitch’s funeral, and we all know that Lee goes with him, and it’s miserable and awful and nightmarish for both of them.  Fiona appreciates them being there–it’s good for the Flown Raven residents to see the last surviving Karish there, their never-lord Source with his Shield–and quietly arranges for a bottle of very fine brandy to be sent up to their rooms after.  Lee cajoles Taro into drinking a few fingers worth and then lying down with his head in her lap, and she strokes his hair while he stares at nothing in particular.

“You know,” Taro says, hours and several more glasses of brandy between them later, which isn’t smart but, gods and spirits and forces and anyone else listening, he needs the world to be a little blunted and Lee will take responsibility, if anything happens, “she came to my room sometimes, when I was a child.”

Lee closes her eyes where he can’t see and thinks I don’t want to hear this and says, “Hm.”

“Not often,” he says, in that neutral aristocrat’s voice that she hates.  “Maybe four or five times.  She would ask if I could control myself yet, make sure I knew my etiquette and my table manners.”  He pauses, and she goes on stroking his hair.  “And then she would leave, when I said something strange, without even saying a word.”

“That bitch didn’t deserve you,” Lee says, fiercer than she might be if it wasn’t past midnight and she wasn’t edging toward drunk.  She forces her hand steady in Taro’s hair, every black strand thick and water-smooth in her fingers.

“I missed her so much when she left,” Taro says, blank, confused, like he’s that child all over again, locked up alone.  “I hated her, but I missed her so much.”  Another long silence.  “Why do I still miss her?”

Lee doesn’t have an answer for that, but Taro doesn’t seem to need one.  There’s a damp spot on Lee’s thigh where his temple rests against her leg.  By morning, he’s all out of tears, and the bottle is empty, and he’s…better, Lee thinks tentatively.  Like maybe he needed a night to grieve everything he never had, in order to bury it all with his mother and move on.

Gutcanon

Three weeks into Aryne’s reign, someone tries to cozy up to Lee, hoping to go through her to Taro and thereby Flown Raven, and also to the Empress herself.  Taro rolls up immediately and announces that he’s been sent by the Empress to find his wife, oh, of course, sorry, his Shield, he forgets sometimes that it’s not common knowledge.  Lee slowly cocks an eyebrow at him as he chases off the would-be social climber (you could even call them an erstwhile social climber), and he says, “Listen, I know we sort of pretended it wasn’t an issue in Flown Raven, but things here are different, people will try to use you–”

Lee lets him ramble for a while before she says, “We could do it again.”

“–and I know you can take care of yourself–excuse me?”

“We could get married again.”

“That’s–you know that’s not how marriage works, right?”

Lee gives him her most Shield-like look of patience, the one that made him so angry at her in the early days.  “One of those rededication things, then.  You know what I mean.  Since you’ve already told the entire grapevine.”

“You would–do that?”

“Sure,” Lee says.  “We’ve already broken that rule to bits, might as well do it again in the public eye.  And,” she allows, because she prides herself on being honest, even when that means being nice, “I like being married to you.”

It’s not often that Lee can induce Shintaro Karish, Stallion of the Triple S, to blush, but it sure is a rush when she can.

Junkcanon

If this was any other book series, I would be sitting here speculating wildly about Taro pining horribly over Lee and That One Time In Book Three With The Sex Magic and his reputation as a player but instead all of those things are hard canon.  God, I love Heroes Adrift, ft The Guiltiest Bitterest Orgasm.  Why isn’t more sex pollen fic based around “A (willfully ignorant) and B (pining horrifically) almost fuck because A is affected and B isn’t aware, B realizes and leaves feeling terrible, A waits out the effects while B shamefully gets off to the memory, and T H E N they fuck.”  Thank you Ms Moore for my life.  Thank you for confirming that Taro, whose entire social reputation is as a charmer and a player, has slept with a total of two people since meeting this snippy cold redhead that he loves.

What was I saying?

Taro goes down on Lee like he’s being graded.  Lee’s had sex before, the Academies are pretty isolated and she’s fooled around with plenty of people, but they were all Shields, which is not to say that they were selfish or reserved or anything, but she’s never been with someone who gets so much open and obvious satisfaction out of making her come.  Taro is a Source to the bone, around Lee, with his heart in her hands and every emotion on his face for her to see, and the way he hums into the crease of her thigh when she’s been reduced to a gasping wreck is highly destructive to her rational thought processes.

For Taro’s part, making Lee relinquish some of her Shieldly control is.  A personal achievement under any circumstances.  And he’s very proud of himself.

Spleencanon

These books are somehow languishing in complete obscurity rather than being hailed as the neurodivergent fantasy soulmates Pride and Prejudice they are.

Anyway, the song Hanahaki by molly ofgeography is really phenomenal for Taro/Lee (you can try, you can try, but the thorns//still cut your careful hands//so you left your love untended//and it grew in reprimand), and therefore I give you: Beauty and the Beast AU.

Lee is not saying that her brother is a lovelorn idiot, but she’s also not not saying that, so it takes a day or two for it to become concerning that Dias is late back from the city market.  Then his horse comes back alone, and Lee glances at Mika, and there’s a beat of silence as they argue mutely over who’s going.  Lee wins, of course, because Mika is their mastermind and he can’t be running off two days before the new shop opens.  Their parents would never forgive them.  Lee is a good tailor but nothing special, and Mika does their books, so.  Lee is going to find their wayward brother.

Lee finds said brother in a castle, prisoner of a beast, and for the first time…ever, maybe, she does something reckless.

Taro, who’s been here ever since his mother arranged for him to be cursed out of the family line, by whatever means a somewhat unethical sorcereress with a sick sense of humor felt appropriate (it’s Green, ft her sidekick Gifford, because we all know that’s the reality of it), is so impressed that he lets her.

Ft: candlestick!Aryne, grandfather clock!Saint-Gerard, duster!Druce (yes, this is for the alliteration), wardrobe!Risa, etc.  There isn’t really a Gaston–Lee is arranged to marry Marcus still, but neither of them are especially into that concept, and Mika and Dias are very intent on storming the castle to get Lee back, but when she stomps out the front door in the nicest gown they’ve ever seen and knocks their heads together, they cease and desist.

No, the real problem is when the noble Karishes get word that someone may, in fact, be close to breaking the curse.

The Dowager Duchess’ tune has changed, somewhat, now that the boy she cursed into a monster is her last living heir, and she wants him back to do his duty to the family–free of any foolish attachments to a merchant’s daughter.

#source and shield #moira j moore #dunleavy mallorough #shintaro karish #taro x lee #starlight writes stuff #ask meme #headcanon meme #THESE BOOKS!!!!!! THEY ARE GOLD!!!!!! #THE FIRST ONE IS LIKE T W O D O L L A R S!!!!!!! #please ignore the covers i swear on my honor that they're not representative of the content #i've slowly been hauling the kencyrath out of the abyss of obscurity and i WILL do my level damndest on these as well #anyway the one (1) time that lee voluntarily sees to it that taro gets drunk is after the duchess' funeral #she tells fiona that this is the plan ahead of time and fiona nods firmly and thus the brandy is present #in the batb au the duchess tries to stage an attack on taro's castle in hopes of making the beast look like he's been holding her son capti #this Does Not Go Well and ends with taro writing a letter to fiona much like his letter in canon #'hey my mother finally slipped up in public forum and i'm holding threat of total social destruction over her head' #'yoooooou wanna be a duchess?' #by the time fiona shows up mika has a file of evidence and dias has led a minor revolt of the peasantry #and lee is sitting calmly on the stairs of the castle with an air of innocence as if she has no idea how this happened #taro (recently transformed back and RADIANTLY smug about everything) is chatting with a nervously tittering shopkeep who's appointed hersel #*herself doorguard #taro: 'I can have FRIENDS now' #the shopkeep: 'ohhhhhhhhhh god the monster in the woods is actually an incredibly hot nobleman with a destructively gorgeous voice' #'this is fine' #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #cthulhu-with-a-fez #asked and answered

[words-writ-in-starlight]

1, 14, and 45 from the newly resurrected askmeme for lee and taro~?

It’s still NaNo but I took half the GED today during the latest in THAT fucking saga, so time for my most obscure beloved fantasy series ever.  Post-canon fuck yeah.  For this ask meme, which I am now declaring closed on account of how I am doing a different one.

1) How do they fall asleep? Wake up? Any dailyrituals?

The second he realizes that he has clearance to get away with it, Taro starts curling around Lee like a limpet.  It starts on the couch after the second Rush, and then it’s a while before they do it again, but the habit starts well before they’re together--at first just for pragmatic comfort, as far as Lee is concerned.  If she’s not going to take advantage of the fringe benefits of being bonded to the Shintaro Karish, like being able to just turn physical discomfort off with a held hand or something, then honestly what is she even doing.  It’s not for literally years that Taro finally admits to her, in the dark when she rests her cheek on his chest out of pure habit as he closes his arms around her, that he’s never really slept well alone.  Not since he left Flown Raven, that first time.  Lee, who always sleeps just fine pretty much no matter what, links her fingers tightly with his and doesn’t say anything.

Once things are...okay, for more than an hour and a half, Lee stops waking up early except when absolutely mandatory.  Her stance is that she has earned the right to sleep in.  It’s a rare luxury given the givens (Erstwhile isn’t really a hot site, but the Erstwhile Pair isn’t decorative anymore, either; and that doesn’t even touch their Aryne-appointed duties), and Lee will be good goddamned if she’s getting up early on the days she’s able to sleep late, she doesn’t care if Taro gets bored without her.  Sometimes Taro stays in bed with her--he never really breaks the habit of being an early riser--but more often he gets up and wanders off for a while, and then comes back with something to do.  He picks up drawing, during their time in Flown Raven, or rather re-picks-up drawing.  He has a lot of drawings of Lee, asleep.

14) Anything they both dread?

So, to start with the obvious and canon: Lee is terrified of being useless, and Taro is terrified of Lee thinking he’s useless, and they’re mutually terrified that the other will become bored with them.  They both handle this poorly.  There are like seven books about it.

On things that are not the primary topic of like the whole series, I’m really invested in the idea that Taro has always been...pretty claustrophobic.  It’s worse, since Creol, but he’s always been uneasy about enclosed spaces.  Knowing that he’s locked in.  It’s not really dread unless he can’t see daylight or clear air, but it’s a deep, sick fear that he thinks he’ll never truly be free from.

Lee, on the other hand, prided herself for years on being too rational for phobias.  Then she was poisoned and had such a high fever that she had to be restrained so that she didn’t hurt herself.  That feeling--the feeling of being really, truly out of control in a way that not even music has ever driven her to--never quite leaves her.  She doesn’t really know why it felt so different from music, something that has driven her, in the past, to jump her Source or start a bar brawl, but it did.  Every time she gets a fever for years afterward she gets stiff with fear, that she’s about to be plunged back into that delirium.

45) Any special dreams or goals they have as acouple? Any heartbreaks? Regrets?

Taro’s special dream is a fucking vacation.  He understands Lee’s concerns about asking regulars for that, he gets it, but they’ve been everything from prisoners of war to buskers to imperial advisers in the past decade.  Shintaro Karish wants a week where he and Lee are both healthy, well-fed, and housed somewhere free of responsibilities or potentially life-threatening complications.  That is his dearest wish.  All others pale in comparison.

(He would once have said that his dearest wish was to marry Lee, but listen, that’s why he feels comfortable having this kind of wild outlandish desire.  Weirder things have happened.)

Lee would also like a vacation, please and thank you, but she’s less histrionic about it, if you ask her.

Taro has made it his life’s business to always direct his path away from the heartbreaks of his past, and if he’s being perfectly honest, he holds little against Lee.  She’s done things that have hurt him, but she’s also loved him and protected him and been loyal to him like no one else in the world ever has.  That sort of trade earns a lot of forgiveness.

Lee’s greatest regret, even after everything that she’s done, remains the night of their bonding.  She wishes that she could reach back to her younger self, so full of unearned confidence that she knows everything she could ever need to know about the man in front of her, and shake her until some good sense clatters back into place.  She knows that Taro doesn’t hold it against her, but.  Lee is so furious with herself, that they spent that night in stiff, polite silence, with Taro trying to haul the conversation along by sheer force of will without success.  It’s not something she can ever fix, and she can’t forgive herself for it.

#source and shield #dunleavy mallorough #shintaro karish #taro x lee #moira j moore #ask meme #headcanon meme #can i REMIND YOU ALL of this series #it's absolutely amazing #also listen i'm very extremely emotional about lee and her regrets #she works hard not to dwell on regrets--she did what she had to do #but the night of their bonding--she didn't have to do that #she could have talked and laughed and let herself be charmed without hating taro for who everyone said he was #and she could have saved them both so much time and heartache by doing it #she can't really NOT dwell on it a little from time to time #i love them #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #cthulhu-with-a-fez #asked and answered

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Hot take: Zuko could probably have completely flipped Azula's loyalty from Ozai to himself if the first time he met with her after his years of banishment he just walked up, hugged her, and refused to let go for a while despite her flailing and cursing and eventual crying.

Oh…kay.

I’m going to preface this with the fact that I can’t tell if you’re joking.  I’m not always great at parsing humor face to face, let alone over the internet, so if you’re kidding, please feel free to disregard everything below and get on with your life.  Furthermore, please feel free to write, read, or otherwise enjoy any redemption arcs you want–I’m writing a whole novel about one, so don’t let me stop you.

That being said, uh, no.  Bad take, anon.  That’s not how abusive families work, and the reason that Zuko’s arc from villain to hero to redeemer of his whole society is so compelling is because the ruling family of the Fire Nation is a brutally sincere rendering of an abusive family.  Love does not “turn” abusers.  The narrative that you can “fix” someone with determination to love them throughout their toxic behavior is a dangerous one, especially with family.  If they love you, they’ll try to change when they understand the harm they’ve done.  If they don’t put in the work to change, they are not worth your valuable time and care.

Azula is a master manipulator, a deeply damaged child, and a profoundly paranoid politician.  None of those things lend themselves well to changed behavior in and of themselves, and in combination, I firmly believe that, if Azula was going to get a redemption arc, it could only be after her status was broken and her father was off the chessboard in as complete a manner as possible.  She would never have sided with Zuko over Ozai, for the very simple reason that she is a child desperate for the approval of her father.  

Whatever else you want to say about Azula, she craves her father’s good opinion, and her father and grandfather raised her to believe that the best way to get it and keep it was to make sure there was a scapegoat easily to hand–someone she can point to and say “See how much better I am than them?”  From start to finish, that’s Zuko before anyone else, but every move she makes is made with the intent to cut someone down so that she can shine in comparison.  It’s Zuko, it’s Iroh, it’s the Earth King, it’s Mai and Ty Lee, it’s the servants she banishes as she starts to crumble, it’s Katara.  And while I certainly think there’s something to be said for Azula being literally taught to be a sadist, the much simpler explanation is that looking like the best at the cost of someone else was how she stayed in her father’s good graces.  It’s all she knows how to do.  That means that in order to turn on her father, his approval has to be off the fucking table.

And even then, it’s not that easy.

Zuko kept chasing his father’s love through abuse, a murder scheme, a burn, a banishment, a manhunt, a coup, and more.  And he was starting from the objectively more hopeful point of caring enough about the lives of strangers to speak out in a war meeting, which we never see Azula do about anyone.  Azula, although certainly a victim of her family’s megalomania and abuse, has been in the golden seat her entire life.  To have Azula turn her coat so cheaply–for, what, a hug? five minutes of patience while she snarled poison into someone’s ear? being willing to stand there and get hurt just so she could get it out of her system?–would have cheapened everything about the way the Fire Lord’s family was constructed, and everything about the redemption that Zuko fought for.

If you mean that Zuko could have manipulated her into serving his interests, I think we all know that Zuko is not a fast enough talker to do that.

Furthermore, I know I’m in the minority, but I’m A-OK with Azula not getting a redemption arc.  Abusers don’t get a pass just because they suffered.  I’m sure it would have been well-handled, and I might even have enjoyed it, but to be completely honest, the narrative of “you were a victim too, so I’m going to break my back trying to connect with you” is one I’m just sick to death of seeing.  No!!!!  I’m not going to work myself to the bone trying to drag someone through a redemption arc they’re fighting me on every step of the way!!!  Maybe that makes me a bad and selfish person, but I’m not in that market anymore and I’m sick of seeing it presented as the only right thing to do.  Sometimes the heroic answer is to cut your losses, protect the people you can, and walk the fuck away.  Life over limb, baby, every time.  

TL;DR: Nope.  Azula can go get whatever the in-universe equivalent of some intensive fucking therapy is, and we can talk again when she can spit out the words “I shouldn’t have tried to murder you” in any semi-sincere manner.

And also, even if that DID work, it’s not Zuko’s fucking job to put up with that.  Even if an hour long hug would just fix Azula like that, it’s not his job to stand there and be screamed at.  Fuuuuuuuuck that.  

#atla #avatar the last airbender #azula #zuko #ah #this may have gotten a little sharp #but i am #dealing with some family stuff #and had to rewrite this three times to make it this nice #yeah no listen if my cousin who was my constant companion until the age of 10 showed up on my doorstep #she's not getting a hug #she's getting one chance to leave before i call the cops on her for trespassing #so NO i don't think that a hug and some patience would flip azula and i don't think it would be zuko's job to do it even if it would #if you want to write that fic it's your absolute prerogative but don't expect me to read it #i put up with enough of that irl thanks #in this house we respect zuko and shintaro karish and todoroki shouto and other characters who tell their abusers to choke #i'm not saying 'no redemption arc ever' for azula but i am saying that #a #ONLY post-series would that remotely work out #and b #NOT LIKE THIS IT WOULDN'T #all right #i feel somewhat better having got this off my chest #i'm going to go figure out how to pay the student loans my family swore they would cover and then didn't #because my family is ALSO a card castle of manipulative sadists #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #Anonymous #asked and answered