nobledroar-blog

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Lion-O has moved here

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“Okay, wait, I think I’ve got it...” Lion-O stood, looking half the fool without Lena’s unbreakable confidence, hands splayed by his hips and weight ready to shift from his feet. “So, you just--” He kicked his foot out, balanced for a moment! Then fate it seemed was in a cruel mood; the king wobbled, attempted to right himself, and fell on his back with an almighty CRASH!

“Damnit!” Somewhere, out in the stars and cosmos, the lion can feel Tygra laughing at him.

@gayvalry

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epochic:

              ❝          you   are   quite   .     .     .       the   peculiar   creature  ,         ❞            their   gaze   lingers  ,     studiously  ,     over   the   other’s   furred   complexion .      there’s   a   furrow   to   their   brow   and   curiosity   a   glimmer   behind   irises .      there’s   plenty   the   geneticist   would   give   to   find   out   more .    perhaps    to   uncover   what   lay   behind   the   strands   of   his   family   tree  ,     where   evolutions   took   place   and   where   they   may   have   failed .

                   ❝          are   you   inhuman  ,      or   is   it   a   mutation   of   some   sort  ?         ❞         @nobledroar

“Uh...thanks?”

Bewilderment crossed the young king’s face, confusion’s cool hands crumpling his brow, plucking his mouth. Oft though those questions came on Earth -- First Earth as he had called it first, and had since been educated by Winston -- Lion-O was still no more prepared for their barrage. Thundera, tottering back to its feet like a beleaguered cub though it was, had had its own questions, its own voices: the promises of food, shelter, questions of their new king’s way. Though he had taken them all in stride, lion’s voice answering each question with truth, calming with honesty where the promise of power would have deceived, helping with his own paw where kings past would have delegated, Lion-O knew not which inquisitions were easier: those of a new people, a new planet, attempting to do good, or those of his own, dust-clad and homeless at the hand of the foul Mumm-Ra.

“No mutation here. Thundercats have always looked like this, more or less.” Oh, there were different species -- Cats, Dogs, Lizards, Berbils, Fish -- and different subspecies among them, but ever had the Cats remained such, in terms of physical appearance at least. “Well, the lions anyway.”

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herweloved:

❝   YOU  DON’T  HAVE  TO  DO  THIS.  you  have  a  choice.  if  you  feel  like  this  will  not  work  out  then  i  am  more  than  happy  to  step  aside  for  your  comfort.  ❞

@nobledroar.

Sincerity pinched a concerned furrow between the lion’s brow; his lip flattened with disquieted thought. “And what about your comfort, Marian?” The boy in him spoke out, too little like the man he ought to be -- the man his father, his kingdom, wished for. Would she, that rare lilac beauty among fields of steel, shelve her own happiness to allow Lion-O his own? Though Claudus spoke of the way of things, the natural order, in his heart of hearts did Lion-O rebel against the notion. The length of his mane tickled about his ears as the lion took a step forward, eyes pleading, heart bleeding. “You have just as much a choice as I.”

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Where are you and please come back

this was honestly the sweetest thing to see ping into my inbox? lion-o isn’t going anywhere, anon, i promise -- i’ve just been sucked into the witcher 3 for the past few days and side-eyeing potentially writing geralt and waiting on the one thread i have going. right now i don’t have enough followers for me to post a starter call, which would get more threads going, and have me here to write more, but it’s so touching that someone has missed me so early in this blog’s infancy??

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Thundercats, ho! Reblog if you like big bara lion boys with hearts of gold, who’ve been prophesied to rebuild their fallen kingdom and lead it to new glory, or if you like kings with badass weapons that give them sight beyond sight, power up their people or teleport them wherever they want to go -- in short, if you’d like to interact with a Lion-O, King of Thundera and Lord of the Thundercats from the Thundercats 2011 reboot. 

This is a headcanon and meta-heavy interpretation / certain triggers may be prevalent here, particularly in discussion of Thundera and Thundercats society. Writer is 20+, muse is a sunshine king who keeps being betrayed left, right, and center, please be gentle with him.

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weep, little lion man       you’re not as brave as you were    at the start

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If you were going to be remembered for one thing in this life, what would would you want that one thing to be?

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crohfts:

❝   --------   THAT  WOULD  BE  because  i  haven’t.   ever.   ❞

Whiskers. Had he spoken out of turn? Assumed something erroneous in the other’s bearing to turn her sour as milk? From the look in her eye, she had appeared as bewildered as the Petalars, gasping and clutching each other in fright as they had so long ago in the dense thickets of the briar, yet the words on her tongue carried a sharper blade than half the Thunderian army! Rocked by her seeming venom, Lion-O took a step back, honest expression bereft with shock and seeming sorrow, paws raised that he might plead peace a moment more.

“Whoa, uh...I’m sorry?” Very kingly, Lion-O. The Thunderian could almost hear Tygra laughing at him, mocking smirk unhidden behind a snickering paw. Then she spoke, and realisation came like a thunderbolt upon him. If she did not know of them, then how better to forge a new alliance than by the king’s own paw? Lion-O adopted what he hoped to be a winning smile, canines glinting in the light, and held out a paw. “Then I guess there’s no better introduction! I’m Lion-O, Lord of the Thundercats -- and you are?”

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my hair is VERY soft and could EASILY be played with and you know how many people are playing with my hair??? zero

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“You’re acting like you’ve never seen a Thundercat before.”

@crohfts

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“We attack only to survive...you control the best land and resources, leaving the rest of the animals to fight over scraps. If we steal your crops, it is to feed our children.” “You’re not taking this criminal seriously, are you?” “Criminal? The Lizards’ only crime is being weaker than the Cats...it’s the same for all animals.”

When Lion-O rebuilds Thundera, he builds it for equality. He opens trading routes with all species that they might share Thundera’s resources and receive others in return, opens the city to all species, not just Cats, and ensures all homes are built with a standard of comfort and decency, not just homes of the upper classes. He abolishes the unspoken decree that Cats are superior, despite the unpopularity of the motion among his older, more accustomed to Old Thundera’s ways, subjects and disallows any racial discrimination or speciesism within his territories. There are no dedicated ‘sectors’ of Thundera for each species, no segregation of Cats from Dogs from Lizards; they are all mingled as one, for they are all one, living on the same world beneath the same sky. 

The high walls of Thundera are not rebuilt, but taken down, their stone repurposed into more homes for those who need them. To those who cried defence, Lion-O chose instead to rebuild the fallen watch towers, with low walls connecting them and open arches as gates into the city. He understands the need for protection, especially with his concern Mumm-Ra may one day rise again, but did not wish to promote the old ideal of Thundera; the closed off, segregated city state that did not share resources and left other species to starve. 

The Lizards are permitted into Thundera, but those who previously served under Mumm-Ra must renounce their ties to him, lest they be turned away. Those who do so are accepted, with the condition they are watched over by the Clerics for a probation period, that they might see an unfiltered view of the truth of that individual. For that task, the fastest Clerics are selected, those that may blur out of sight and remain undetected so as not to report only the individual as they perform to the expectations of Thundera rather than the true individual as they are in private. Those who pass this probation period are welcomed into Thundera proper; those who do not, or who are found to still be loyal to Mumm-Ra in secret are imprisoned as punishment. If imprisoned individuals have families, they too are put on probation following the arrest, to investigate if their family was only a front to gain access to Thundera, but are allowed to remain in Thundera during the course of the action. 

After his official coronation, Lion-O names Cheetara leader of the Clerics, allowing her to choose and train her own elite team as she sees fit. Tygra was named hand to the king and still retained his title as Prince of Thundera, permitting him to act as King in Lion-O’s absence. Panthro was named General of the armies, with both he and Pumyra tasked with training the recruits. WilyKit and WilyKat were reunited with their family and the family moved to live in the palace with the rest of the Thundercats. Lion-O personally saw to it that the twins’ mother needed for nothing, having heard the twins talk of her hardships on their journey. Advised to assemble a council, Lion-O chose an elective from every species, wishing to promote unity even in his court. Panthro was selected for the Cats, Anet for the Elephants, Shen-Ru, a descendant of Shen, for the Dogs, Belvere, the Lizard whom Lion-O freed prior to the fall of Thundera, for the Lizards, Arowana, the previous first mate of Captain Tunar, for the Fish. For those species who are not explicitly represented on the Inner Council, Lion-O offered a system of ambassadors -- they would send an individual -- or, in the case of the Petalars, three families -- to speak for their species and work alongside the Inner Council.

The coronation itself was not as grand as the feasts of Old Thundera, but was also not as segregated. Every denizen of Thundera was invited to the feast, the tables extending from the courtyard steps of the palace to almost the gates themselves, and all were given equal opportunity for food and wine. Even those imprisoned were given the chance to attend the feast, albeit in chains and carefully separated from each other, lest they had been forming plans to rebel together in the cells, and under the careful watch of the Clerics. Lion-O does not throw regular feasts exclusively for the rich and noble houses as his father once did, but throws two bi-annual feasts: one for the Winter Solstice, to honour Bast, and the other for the first day of the summer months.

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As the sole surviving blood-heir of Claudus and last living descendant of Leo, Lion-O is intensely aware of the expectations forced on him. Even before the fall of Thundera, it was expected that Lion-O would take a suitable wife, exclusively of the lion species, and father children with her to continue the royal bloodline. Though he knew from a young age he did not ‘fit’ with his father’s view of his future, that the thought of marriage sent an unwelcome shudder down his spine far beyond the childish idea of girls and germs, Lion-O still attempted to subscribe to his father’s ideal. His performative heterosexuality, taken mostly from Tygra’s attitudes towards queens and his own father’s example of how a Thunderan king should act, began as he sought to prove to his father he was as good a son as Tygra. It soon began to backfire, however, as Lion-O subscribed too much to it -- he appeared as a womaniser to Claudus, a free-minded skirt chaser who shirked his duties to pursue queens as though the future of the royal house did not depend on him.

“This attack comes not a day after I pardoned two of those filthy beasts. Now do you see the results of leniency?”

“I was only trying to act like a prince...”

“You undermined our power and made the Cats look weak! It’s no wonder everyone thinks your brother should be king....”

Lion-O never told Claudus about his orientation. The hegemonic toxic masculinity and supremacism of Thundera pervaded their every action, even when Claudus was being kind as a father. To be gay would be to be weak, to willingly engage and be dominated by another male undermining the powerful image of the Thunderians and destroying the Cats’ power, and so Lion-O fell into his cycle of performative heterosexuality. It continued even after Claudus’ death and the fall of Thundera, with Lion-O chasing both Cheetara and Pumyra because he had been taught it was the male thing to do. Only years later, when the Soul Stone had been recovered and Mumm-Ra’s power waning, did Lion-O even begin to end his performativity. It was his first decision as king, though neither decreed nor announced, that he would work to build a better Thundera, more equal, where no one would be shamed for their orientation, gender, or species. 

He is aware that many cats, having grown in an environment where absolute masculinity was key and Cats were supreme above all, stand against his ‘soft-hearted’ view, rallying against him with reminders, as they perceived it, it was his actions in freeing the Lizard prisoners that brought about Thundera’s fall, but he does not attempt to crush them beneath an iron fist and assert his view is the only right one. Instead, he attempts to teach Thundera it can co-exist through example, often leaving the palace with only a handful of Clerics to walk amongst the people and help them with his own hand as best he can. After all, they were all poor with nothing but their lives and their clothes on their backs after Thundera’s fall -- they were equal then and they will be equal in Lion-O’s Thundera, even though some will scoff at a lion rescinding his power.

“I understand now…power alone is rigid. But if you can bend with the wind, you’ll never break!” 

Despite his learning to accept himself, the pressing issue still remains of Lion-O’s heir. To Thundera, he remains a bachelor king, passing off his lack of spouse as being focused on rebuilding Thundera and ensuring the stability of his kingdom, and all but those closest to him remain unaware Lion-O is gay. To Lion-O, he sees two choices: either he marries a friend who knows of his orientation, allowing him to sire a cub while still being permitted to act on his own emotions and seek out his desired company in secret, or he continues to play the bachelor, decreeing that, should he die without heir, the throne should pass to Tygra. In an ideal Thundera, he could marry who he likes, and adopt a cub as his parents did Tygra to raise as an heir, but Lion-O is aware Thundera’s reformation has a long way to go before that will be permissible.

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Docking is a common practice among the Thunderian nobles and royal family. While all cats are born with a tail, as their respective Earth species are, it is considered to be a mark of the lower classes; kittens of noble families are therefore taken at a few days of age at their mother’s word and their tails docked before being returned to their mother or nursemaid. It has been a marker of the royal family to have tailless kits since its inception following the triumph of Leo, first king of Thundera -- although Leona died in childbirth, and so could not initiate the ancient rite for Lion-O, Claudus stepped forward as the first royal father in history to begin the proceedings for his child. Clerics and those in direct service to the royal family, such as the war generals and the army, are also docked -- those who were not docked at birth are docked following their assessment and placing in the army, although there have been some unrecorded and secretly hushed instances of hazings, where initiated privates have stolen into the barracks and crudely docked initiates’ tails with blunt blades in their beds. Those who suffer this hazing are told to never speak of it when receiving medical treatment, lest they make Thundera appear weak and feeble through their own ‘weakness’ and inability to deal with a ‘little’ pain.

Unknown to the cats, the process of docking began under Mumm-Ra; not as a marker of class, but a marker of servitude. The Ever-Living docked the tails of those cats he enslaved and butchered the corpses of those he killed, docking them in death as a mockery of their bodies. When Leo formed Thundera, the cats were unused to any method of living, and so docked the tails of all kits born following their escape from Mumm-Ra.