My Lion King Forum

Also thinking about including Sarabi's sister Naanda (pretty sure that's the spelling, on my phone and can't check). Other characters we could include: Binti, Zazu's storyboard mate. Malka, Tama, and I want to say his name was Tojo - he had the birds and lamed leg. These are all cubs in Simba's generation. Simba also supposedly had a sister in the storyboard and her name was reused in SP storyboards before also being scrapped according to Rinjapine before she deleted her archives (Shani/Shanni).

I can get into the idea of those other cubs--one of my favorite fics, 'The Pridelanders' explores a lot of those relationships. Don't know much about Naanda, but I'm fine with including her, and I like Zazu having a mate too!

Do you have a link to this fanfic? I admittedly haven't read a whole lot of LK fanfiction aside from when I was last active on here, and I don't think I'd seen that one. (Oh, and Simba also has a cousin according to the comics. We could bring that into the second leg of the plot, if Nala is on her way to recruit said cousin - the next legitimate heir to this throne - and runs into Simba along the way.)

The Pridelanders, by Aquaman52. It's my favorite TLK fic, and despite the length is only part one (although part two will likely never be written WAAAH). It was written when the author was quite young (15 years old per his bio), and isn't technically perfect, but the characterization, dialogue, plot design, etc all show that frankly, some people were just born to write. It's just a great story.

I can see that cousin making sense--presumably he would've been sent abroad as a male cub?

I'll be sure to check it out! Thanks for the link, Az.

As for the cousin, that'd depend on if they were related through Sarabi or Mufasa - if Naanda, possibly in Sarabi's birth pride if she was sent as a betrothal. If related on Mufasa's side, I have no doubt that Scar would have chased him out upon adolescence. If he was sent abroad as a cub, I'm sure we can think up a reason.

Mmm. So where does this RP begin?

I would prefer before the titular cub opening of the movie, since that gives us more wiggle room with the timeline. We could always start in an adult POV with their parents while the cubs are young. (And if we use Shanni, probably wouldn't hurt to decide if the second-born lion guard lore will be put into use with she and her uncle. Haven't seen much of TLG yet, but questioning if Scar should be allowed around his youngest family is very reasonable given the implications of what happened to Scar's guard.)

I have zero TLG knowledge, so you'd have to fill me in on that. I'm open to using Shanni, but we might have to do some planning gymnastics to build her into the story--and with including Malka, Tama, Tojo, etc. I wonder about getting a little cub-crowded.

TLG, I've only seen one episode of so far (the rest are on my to-do), most of my knowledge on it comes from wiki-walking. As for the cub crowding ... Malka is already established as from another pride, an ally, so that takes him out of the picture except for visits. Tojo we might also be able to regulate in the same way, if (given his similar design) we make him Simba's cousin from the other pride. Perhaps not the Crown Prince, though, given he's stated to have a twisted leg.

Gotcha. Then yeah, I'm open to Shanni playing into the story.