#zuto

Mark your calendars, because Toko (Toph x Zuko) Week is returning in 2022! It will be held from from February 6 - February 12.

(Rules and prompts to come, but if you want an input on how we'll get our prompts, vote here.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!! my computer absolutely did not want to let me post this for some reason. wtf lol

ANYWAYS, even if Aruka and Zuto live in a desert & likely can’t differentiate winter from summer since it’s hot all the time, I still wanted to draw something with them for Christmas.... just because I thought it was funny lmao! I wanted these images to look like pages of a book, which I think I succeeded at...

The greater than/less than symbols in the text indicate they aren’t actually speaking English & it’s translated, since Hivers especially are described as speaking in grunts, meaning they have their own language. I’m not sure if Desert Runners would be able to speak it, but since Seekers and Hivers learned to communicate with each other despite a language barrier, I think it’s possible for Zuto to do it as well?

Aang and the whole crew run up to them worried. Because if there's two people that shouldn't be left alone together its Toph and Zuko.

Aang: Where have you guys been! We've been worried sick!

Toph sipping her drink: learned how to laval bend

Aang: w-what??

Zuko: Became king and queen for a week-

Katara: Excuse me?

Toph: Yeah they thought we were gods reborn of the elements they worshiped. Had a whole a ceremony, to many people tho

Zuko: I don't think the marriage is vaild in the earth or the fire nation so its not that big of a deal.

Toph: You guys should have been there~

Aang and Katara: WHAT?!

Toph: You're a Father Lord.

Zuko: You mean Fire Lord

Me too, me too :'Dc

I cannot believe I haven’t posted my Man After Man OCs yet! I also cannot believe that’s a sentence I just said! But this image has been on my computer for at least a week, maybe 2, so it’s about time I posted it.

Zuto is a Desert Runner, Aruka is a Hiver (Bearer variant), and Monopoino is a Seeker. 

Aruka’s white spots are a mutation, her skin and fur loses pigment overtime due to stress. If I ever color her in, they’d be a similar color to the Socials’ Queen and Nurse coloration from earlier in the book, whereas the rest of her colors correspond to the appropriate Bearer Hiver coloration depicted in the book. She has finger blades, but they’re more like finger spears because they’re underdeveloped (as the book implies they are in all females iirc? But that’s a bit of a guess because the male Hivers & Socials’ last digits don’t really have joints & are held out straight all the time, whereas the Social Nurses and Queens’ last digits can still bend, and I suspect it’s the same for the Hiver Bearer). Nevertheless, it’s still a weapon, just with different functionality. Aruka is quite dissatisfied with life in the hive, looking to escape. She could probably do it too, since she has Monopoino with her.

Zuto’s whiskers are considerably longer than a standard Desert Runner’s (all the better to keep sand out with..?) and he’s kind of frail. He may have sharp claws and teeth, but he can barely take a hit. He has been to Aruka’s hive before, but the two know each other on a deeper level than that.

My whole story for these 2 is that Aruka flees her hive with Monopoino, and is essentially all alone in the desert until she & Zuto run into each other! So they form a beneficial partnership where Aruka helps Zuto by warding off danger and seeking out food and water with Monopoino, while Zuto helps Aruka become accustomed to life outside the hive. I’m not actually sure if Hivers or Desert Runners can talk (in fact, they probably can’t), but if they could, I’m sure Aruka and Zuto would have very profound conversations about the meaning of life and finding one’s identity...

I think perhaps through Zuto, Aruka learns the skill of deception, something lost to time in her evolutionary history, at least after the days of the Socials...