Yay For Continuity!

Thinking again about how Aizawa saw the greatest tragedy of his life as a cautionary tale about hero work. Thinking about how losing Shirakumo propelled him to teaching in order to save Shirakumo in ways he hadn’t been able to by teaching his students how to survive. Thinking about how in the end he always believed that death was the ultimate ending for anyone in herowork. Thinking about how this changes when he starts getting too invested in his class and has to believe that there’s a bright future for them that doesn’t end six feet under. Thinking about how he takes up Shinsou and suddenly the greatest tragedy of his life that turned into a cautionary tale has flipped once again and becomes a story about how his friend helped and inspired him to be a hero and how he wants to do the same for Shinsou. Thinking about how when he gets Eri suddenly death as his ultimate ending is no longer an option and now there’s a future he needs to actively stay alive for and maybe love was the ultimate ending. Thinking about how Aizawa’s character arc is going from “passive resignation to cruelties of life” to “desperately clinging onto hope and love despite his better judgements and the pains of his past.”

I’m also trying to draw more dabihawks cause I love them but why is Hawks so hard to draw?!? Meanwhile he’s a sketch of them flirting

surprise

I live

This hc has been gnawing at my mind all night)) in the Fire Nation they propose with knives. we know that the NWT (and maybe SWT) propose w necklaces. I’m imagining Zuko giving Sokka this gorgeous knife but sokka doesn’t know it’s a proposal thing. So he’s like “thanks babe :)” and Zuko is just waiting for a yes or no. But sokka is oblivious. And so Zuko is like “he prolly just has to think abt it and talk to his fam”. Like a month passes and sokka mentions it to iroh and finds out the truth

Yes. Yes. YES!!!!

Okay, so

Zuko has been meticulously hand-carving the handle of this knife or weeks wanting to make sure it is absolutely perfect for when he proposes

and he’s so goddamn nervous and second guessing himself

like they might’ve been dating since the war ended but what if Sokka still thinks he’s moving too fast?

Or what if Sokka never actually intended for this to end in marriage?

(that’s crazy and Zuko knows it’s crazy but anxiety doesn’t have to make sense)

He’s so nervous he doesn’t even tell anyone his plans to propose because he’s so scared of failure and doesn’t want to deal with the ‘how’d it go?’ if the answer is ‘bad’

Zuko just decides it’s better if he kept this decision to himself until after he asks

Because then, if Sokka says ‘no’ well... Zuko won’t have to relive that every five minutes with everyone impatiently asking what happened

So he finally finishes the knife right before joining Sokka on a trip back to the South Pole

That’s where they met, after all (tho their meeting was definitely less than romantic lmao)

But it’s also where Zuko confessed his feelings for Sokka after the war

Where they had their first kiss

And where Sokka first said ‘I love you’ to Zuko

It only seems natural that he propose here, too

And it’s Sokka’s home

Like yeah, he might primarily live in the Fire Nation now but that doesn’t change anything

Their first day there is filled with catching up with Hakoda and Bato and Katara and Aang

So Zuko waits until the next day to give it to Sokka

It’s after dinner when everything calms down and the sun is setting that Zuko pulls Sokka outside over by the pier where he first confessed to him

And Zuko has this little speech that he’s planned out in his head which gets mangled together and bits and pieces thrown out until just the bare bones of it remain in a somewhat coherent form for him to say

Which essentially ends up being him rambling about how happy he’s been with Sokka and how much he loves him and recounting their first kiss that happened nearby several years ago

And he pulls out the knife and carefully presents it to Sokka while saying something hopelessly vague like

‘I wanted to give this to you. Please accept it.’ or ‘I hope you like this’ or even just nothing at all because this is Zuko we’re talking about lmao

And Sokka is like ‘wow - Did you make this?’

Zuko is just kinda like ‘yes?? it’s... tradition. Do you... like it?’

Sokka’s answer to that one is ‘it’s beautiful, Zuko’ and a kiss on the cheek

And Zuko is very confused because Sokka did not react at all like he expected

Like any of the worst or best case scenarios that Zuko’s run through in his mind (and there were a LOT of them) were so completely different

But Sokka didn’t really say ‘yes’ or ‘no’

(It doesn’t cross his mind that maybe Sokka doesn’t know what the knife was for)

But he doesn’t want to pressure Sokka for an answer because he knows that marriage is a big deal and all

He tries not to be hurt by the lack of an immediate answer, though because well maybe Sokka just wanted to talk things over with his family

and that’s fine, Zuko can wait

so he waits

and waits

....and waits

and his hopes are slowly dwindling but Sokka also hasn’t returned the knife or even... said anything about it.

He knows Sokka still has it, he’s seen it with him

Meanwhile, Sokka is trying to plan his own proposal and figuring out if he should make Zuko a betrothal necklace or maybe go with the Fire Nation tradition which...

he realizes he doesn’t actually know what that is

But he wants to find out and weigh his options or maybe he can combine the two traditions together somehow to make it really special

So he goes to talk to Iroh to 1. get his approval since he is essentially Zuko’s dad since Ozai is less than trash and 2. ask what the Fire Nation tradition is as far as marriage proposals go

So he takes a secret trip to Ba Sing Se and drops in just as Iroh’s closing up shop and they sit and drink tea

Iroh is THRILLED when Sokka tells him his plans to propose which takes a big weight off of Sokka’s shoulders already

...and then he asks what the Fire Nation tradition is

Iroh starts talking about it but Sokka doesn’t hear anything past ‘hand carved decorative knife’

bc ohFUCK

and Iroh like stops talking when he notices Sokka’s not listening anymore and is like ‘are you alright?’

And, shaking, Sokka pulls out the knife and holds it up and is like ‘would - is... does this look like a uh - a proposal knife, maybe?’

and Iroh looks at it and is like ‘Yes! That’s an excellent example. Where did you get that?’

And Sokka goes quiet and sheepishly is like ‘...Zuko gave it to me. Like. Three weeks ago.’

And Iroh’s just like deadpans ‘You are an excellent match for my nephew’

Sokka’s not sure if that’s supposed to be a compliment or not but, hey, the Uncle approves!

Now Sokka has to figure out how to un-fuck this situation, though

He travels back to the Fire Nation as quickly as possible and like sprints through the palace until he finds Zuko and like drops down in front of him, knife in hand and already rambling a million words per minute

About how he didn’t know Zuko was proposing marriage to him when he presented the knife

and essentially his whole journey realizing this including the parts where he was trying to figure out how to propose to Zuko

and ends it with ‘So YES, of course I want to marry you I just... didn’t know you were asking me to marry you when you gave me this bc i’m a dumbass’

Zuko is like shocked and has no idea what to do but also hella relieved bc omg he seriously thought Sokka was just trying to figure out how to turn him down this whole time and ahhh

and then Sokka is just like ‘so... so um... Is that offer still on the table? Are - Does this mean we’re engaged?’

and Zuko realizes he hasn’t said anything and breaks into a grin as he pulls Sokka into his arms to kiss him

only breaks the kiss to say something sappy or - actually, no, he’d be snarky af about it now that he knows it was a misunderstanding

prolly something like ‘No - I really want to see how you were planning on proposing, actually’ 

And like he’s teasing, of course, but Sokka still surprises him a week later with a betrothal necklace right before they make the official announcement of their engagement

(which there’s been a LOT of talk and rumors about with Sokka walking around with that damn knife not knowing what it was for lmao so no one’s really surprised in the slightest) 

Iroh’s speech at their wedding consists of him recounting the moment when Sokka realized that his now-husband had just proposed to him... three weeks later sitting in the Jasmine Dragon lmao

Gay weddings from different cultures

Are you feeling kind of down right now? It’s not your fault that you forgot what baby cheetahs look like. Really. One time I did too.

But now you recall!

Look! Look!

They loves to play!

Rawr!

Their head is just one giant ball of floof!

I can’t even

How do they live? Being so cuTE??

Ugh!!

This has been a PSA. Baby cheetahs are everything good and pure in this world. Please imagine petting the floof head. Please feel better.

self help comic yes i cried when i thought of this and drew it immediately

Watching Code Lyoko is sort of surreal because of how much technology has advanced since this very technology-focused cartoon premiered in 2003.

the virtual world of Lyoko houses two artificial intelligence beings, one with fully human behaviors, and one with the capability to affect things in the real world that aren’t even mildly electronic. (episode 1, a giant teddy bear. why XANA)

Three children regularly fully digitize themselves to enter and exit Lyoko without any negative side effects to their mental or physical well being… aside from that time one of them fell into the “digital sea” and just. ceased to exist. Was there a body? nobody knows

XANA has taken control of trains, a government sattelite with a goddamn laser capable of targeting an individual person and pulverizing everything within a ten-foot radius of its target, (why does that even exist?) clouds of several different kinds of toxic gasses, a swarm of bees, the previously mentioned giant teddy bear, a living replica of one of the main characters, all with decidedly malicious intent. (plus that whole thing with William….)

But, it still seems to obey video game type logic, such as only deploying a limited number of minions, all with a clearly visible weak spot.

The heroes are always alerted of XANA’s activity, (directional vibrations on the ground in Lyoko) and always stop it, (deactivating the tower) in the same ways every time.

literal time travel, via the push of a button, voice command, automatic?? it’s really not consistent

but the gang’s computer whiz kid Jeremie’s personal setup looks like this

look at this dinosaur

and they all use freaking nokias

here we have Ulrich typing in Jeremie’s phone number, from memory, in order to alert him that an evil computer program has taken control of the electrical wiring in the school cafeteria and that they’re all trapped

There’s an episode in which nanobots cause an amnesia epidemic, (I think it’s one of my faves so far) and the next episode begins with Odd talking excitedly about downloading an MP3 file off the web

I haven’t gotten to that episode yet, but I distinctly remember Jeremie exclaiming “I just need a couple more bytes!” and Odd saving the day by closing out a game of Tetris that was running in the background

I remembered it wrong, Yumi was at the computer trying to save Jeremie after he convinced her to try and virtualize him (she messed it up because he didn’t bother to walk her through virtualizing someone step by step) and they needed “a few more bytes” of memory, so Odd plugged Ulrich’s gameboy into the system, which of course fixed the problem somehow. It was definitely Tetris though. He’d been up until 3am playing Tetris the night before. Tetris. Tetris saved Jeremie from deleting himself.

TL;DR: between the conflicting level of often nonsensical technological advancement, (how did a computer program just. make bees) occasionally awkward dubbing, (that was absolutely Ulrich’s voice coming out of Yumi’s mouth. yep. mm-hm. good) rare and often unsettling puns, and Odd’s hair, Code Lyoko is a surreal experience and I recommend it

i only have $4.32 to my name but i would give it all to whoever decided to draw zuko’s contact photo from the latest chapter of unconditionally and irrevocably