Okay, but imagine that you're Morph and you find out that the guy you sacrificed your life for, the guy who you quite literally risked your life for AGAIN meer minutes ago, the guy who went across the world to save you, who you have been best friends with for years and who you would do anything for... values a girl who doesn't love him back, who never WILL love him back, and who he KNOWS will never love him back, more than you
Their sigh while transforming into Jean was enough to make me wanna cry
Greetings from Brasil! I hope you are doing alright. I absolutely love your Lion King universe, and how much thought and care you put into it. I wanted to ask: about all of Akili's Lion Guard being lions, is it for a particular reason? Like, she only trusts the cubs of her relatives/family friends, due to how many of the Pridelanders hold biases against her and Moyo ?
Ayo neighboor! Salutations from Peru!
It's mostly because Akili is inspired by Vitani's guard but the other animals being distrusted of her and Moyo are also a big factor, indeed!
If there's something I can spoil about the twins is that Moyo is very pro-predator and he is aware of the linging problem that the Pridelands have about too many prey animals. So he wants to make a better network of working with other predators and also tie better with other prides, something Kiara already started by unifying the Outsiders with them. Akili will follow suit about that mindset too! And learning about what other guards did horribly in the past while understanding better how the whole ecosystem work, not only from the mouth of the herbivores, is part of her arc.
Their arcs sounds amazing! I also think something that could ease their efforts of working alongside the predators that suffer prejudices, is that those animals could relate to them (especially Moyo) because of how much they are judged by prey too. I wouldn't be surprised if the only friends Moyo managed to make outside of Pride Rock growing up were members of the species deemed as "bad".
If sixteen-year-old, new-to-her-telepathy Jean knew that Bobby was gay, there’s no way thirty-year-old, used-to-her-telepathy Jean didn’t. Which means that keeping that secret is a deliberate choice she made.
The question of course is why does she make a different choice in the main timeline than she does as a time-displaced teen. The comics themselves gesture towards the world’s perspective on gay people being pretty different in the present/future from what it is in the past/present.
But for me, it’s also a question of her character and circumstances. One of teen!Jean’s first experiences on (re)gaining her telepathy is getting her entire future blasted into her head. Everyone around her knows everything about her, and they’re telling her about it. She also feels wildly out of control and we see her manipulating people’s decisions in order to maintain some control of her life. Teen!Jean has fewer boundaries around use of her power, and it’s partly because she’s been thrust into a chaotic world that’s a lot more complicated than what she was trained for.
Prime!Jean gets her telepathy unlocked when she’s slightly older. She’s canonically at least eighteen and possibly nineteen or twenty. Getting her telepathy is also closely linked with the responsibility Charles has given her of keeping his continued life a secret. So even if she figures out that Bobby’s gay relatively early, she’s already older than teen!Jean, less impulsive, and more experienced in keeping secrets. And, as mentioned above, the circumstances she’s in are not quite as bizarre or out of control.
In Leonardo’s twelfth summer, Splinter finally gave in to his relentless pestering. For the first time, he would get to practice with a real katana rather than his wooden bokken.
Some time ago, Splinter had put Master Yoshi’s katana and wakizashi away in a place of honor—which just-so-happened to be too high up for little turtles to reach. Now that those turtles were the same height as their father, it felt a little silly. It felt even sillier as Leonardo insisted that his father and his still-healing leg did not get up on the stool to fetch them. He did it himself, sure to take the swords one at a time and hold them firmly with both hands until they had been safely passed on to Splinter.
While Leonardo put away the stool, Splinter removed the katana from its sheath and examined the blade. It had not been long since the last time he brought the swords down for cleaning and oiling; he could see his own reflection in the flat of the steel. There were some nicks in the sword’s edge that had not been polished away yet, despite many sessions with the whet stone, but he would not have it any other way. Somehow, it felt like the only proof he had of his late master’s very existence; the katana was said to be the soul of a warrior, after all, and this was no exception. He had fought, and lived, and died, and rather than a headstone or a proper shrine, Splinter tended to these swords in his memory.
Leonardo returned, eager as ever and doing a poor job of concealing it. Splinter couldn’t help the smile at his son’s expense. He was a gifted student, careful and hard-working, but he was also a child, and there was no getting around it.
“Are you ready, my son?”
He scoffed and smothered it with a cough. He bowed and, perhaps too loudly, said, “Hai, Sensei!”
Splinter sniffed to disguise his instinct to laugh. “You must be very careful, Leonardo. Live steel is not as forgiving as the bokken—a careless stroke of the blade will surely leave destruction in its wake. You must be swift and decisive, you mustn’t hesitate, but you must always make the right decision.”
Leonardo’s eyes gleamed like stars as he nodded along. Splinter knew he didn’t truly hear a word of what he said. Some lessons can be learned only by doing.
He turned the sword so that the blade pointed behind him, offering the hilt to his young son. “Be careful,” he repeated, distilling the wisdom into something easier to absorb. “I do not want you to hurt yourself.”
Leonardo bowed before carefully taking the hilt in his hands. Splinter noticed a slight tremble.
“Widen your grip. Yes, there you go. Practice some kata and get used to the balance. It’s different than your bokken, yes?”
He nodded, already deeply concentrating as he began moving through basic slashing kata. The little furrow in his brow was impossibly cute.
Splinter moved to the wall of the dojo, where he had left the wakizashi. It had only been a few months since his leg was broken at the Battle Nexus. It had taken some explaining to satisfy his sons’ worry and curiosity, and they had been waiting on him hand and foot ever since then. That, and taking advantage of it whenever possible to escort him above ground, or get out of training on days when it hurt too much to stand. The healers at the pavilion assured him that they could heal it to full usability if he just stayed another few days, but he had to return home to his sons. He’d had faith in his body’s ability to heal as it had before for lesser injuries, but had maybe overestimated himself. Or underestimated the scope of the injury. He could still feel the fissure in the bone when he ran his fingers across it, not set quite right, always swollen and warm to the touch.
Splinter leaned his staff against the wall and tested his leg. It was tender, and almost buckled the moment he put his full weight on it.
Leonardo’s movements halted suddenly. “Sensei?”
“Continue your katas,” he said, a little more sharply than he meant to. “You’re doing well.”
He sensed another moment of hesitation from his son, then the movements resumed.
The leg wouldn’t bear his full weight for very long, if at all, but he had proven to himself many times that he could still best a skilled opponent without it. As it was, it would simply serve as a suitable handicap against his pupil.
He traded his walking stick for the wakizashi and unsheathed it, savoring the familiar song of the blade leaving the saya. The short sword did not see as much use as its sibling katana, thus didn’t bear as many scars. Still, he cared for it the same and his reflection, always older than he expected it to be, looked back at him from this blade too.
He turned to Leonardo, careful how he held his weight. “My student, are you ready?”
His eyes grew impossibly wide beneath that blue mask. “We can spar with the real ones?”
He chuckled. “Yes, my son, but we must be very careful not to hurt each other. Do you trust yourself?”
Leonardo looked at the sword in his hand as if it would answer for him. “I…I don’t know, Sensei.”
“It is good of you to be honest. What about this: do you trust me?”
He looked back up with a confident smile. “Hai, Sensei!”
“Very good. Then we will spar—carefully.”
The smile broke into a brilliant grin as he took up his stance. It was too narrow, it would be easy to throw him off his balance. But this wasn’t strictly a lesson—they had already done their training for the day, his brothers were off somewhere else causing their trouble—this was a reward for Leonardo’s patience and devotion to his training. And, perhaps in part…a reward for Splinter too, to see the excitement and joy on his son’s face.
Splinter took his stance—also too narrow, but it was more important that he kept the weight off his leg. He raised a brow in silent question to Leonardo.
His grin fell away into a look of deep-etched concentration, then he nodded.
As usual when sparring with his sons, Splinter waited for Leonardo make the first move. He watched as his son carefully appraised his modified stance and subtly shifted the grip on his sword—he was going to attack at Splinter’s weak side. He couldn’t help being proud of him for so quickly picking up on the advantage. He’d been trained to do it of course, but true cunning in the heat of battle could not be taught.
His first move was projected well ahead of time, and easily deflected. The swords clashed with a rasping sound like thunder that echoed in the small, enclosed concrete room. It made a thrill run up Splinter’s spine, he could only imagine how it made Leonardo feel. He deflected a second blow, and waited until Leonardo had fully recovered before making his own sweeping motion with the sword. Leonardo blocked it, and in the moment their eyes locked, Splinter could tell he was having the time of his life.
They fell into a comfortable rhythm of slashing and blocking, moving around each other lazily. Well, it felt lazy to Splinter, but Leonardo was putting his all into it. He became more excited and daring as time went on, starting to move more and trying harder to make use of Splinter’s weak leg.
It wasn’t intention, but chance that made Splinter fall. As he stepped away from Leonardo’s strike, his foot caught a gather in the rug. He had only his bad leg to fall back on, and he swiftly ended up on the ground. Instead of dodging the swing of the katana like he intended, he fell right into its path. The blade cut decisively through the edge of his ear.
He winced; not from the glancing pain, but from the way Leonardo dropped Master Yoshi’s sword.
“Sensei!” he cried. He fell to his knees beside Splinter and hovered over him uncertainly.
“I’m alright.” Splinter could feel the warmth of blood pooling at the base of his ear and slipping unseen through his fur. It would need attention before he stained the rug and his robe. “My stick, please.”
Leonardo retrieved it and helped his master to his feet while tears poured down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry Master, I didn’t mean to. I was being careful— I didn’t mean to—”
Splinter pressed his paw to Leonardo’s cheek and turned his face up to meet his gaze. “My son, it is not your fault.” He smiled, but Leonardo’s eyes were not on his expression, only the bloodied ear. “Sheath the swords, please.”
Leonardo hurried to do as he was told.
Splinter took up a cloth to press at the wound before it further stained the rug. When he turned around, Leonardo was folded over himself at his feet.
“Master, what is my punishment?”
Oh, punishment. Splinter wanted to scoff; the little boy sought punishment the same way Michelangelo sought out sweets. He always took it as a blessing, too. It made Splinter worry he was too harsh in training them, that he was an unforgiving and cruel master if his pupils relished in his admonishment, but his parenting books suggested it may have more to do with the child than his own skill (or lack thereof) at parenting. Leonardo was, simply put, an anxious child. Anxious to please, anxious to make recompense for imagined slights.
Splinter sighed. His salvaged parenting manuals did not give him the solution, only the shape of the problem.
“Your punishment…” he mused blandly. There was no blood on the rug, and he did not yet trust Leonardo to clean the blades without hurting himself. He did not want to give him a punishment unrelated to the perceived crime, but Leonardo wouldn’t accept dismissal without a punishment. Last time he tried this, Donatello later confided in him that Leonardo thought he’d been sent away in anger, and proceeded to smother his tears in a pillow all afternoon. This, of course, could not have been farther from the truth.
The warmth of blood began to seep through the cloth and make itself known again. The wound was superficial, but bleeding quite profusely. He needed to clean and dress it—
“Leonardo, you will help me clean and dress the wound.”
“Yes, Sensei,” he said in a thick, tearful voice. And then, more timidly, “will you show me how?”
Splinter smiled. “Yes, my son. It is a good thing to learn.”
Splinter sat before the small mirror in their washroom and guided him through the process of cleaning and bandaging the wound. His small fingers, though shaking, were gentle and nimble as he carefully followed instruction. Splinter gazed at him through the mirror, impossibly full of fondness for this gentle creature that the universe saw fit to bestow on him. Not one, but four of these little turtles did he have to call his own; sometimes the warmth in his breast was almost too much to bear, he loved these children so much.
“Leonardo, this was not your fault,” he said once again. “These things happen sometimes, when training with live steel. I am not angry with you, and this is not a punishment, only an extension of your lesson. Does that make sense?”
He thought about it for a long moment, using his thumb to smooth the adhesive bandage over the thin flesh of Splinter’s ear. “Yes.”
“Do you think that’s fair?”
He shyly met Splinter’s gaze through the mirror, tears bubbling up in his eyes again. “I really didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Splinter drew the boy into his arms, tucked his head beneath his chin. “I know, Leonardo.”
“When are you going to teach me something I don’t already know!”
As if the boy aged before his very eyes, Splinter found himself looking up at the shuttered, cold face of Leonardo the man instead of his beloved child. Battle-worn, exhausted, and lost, this man was still his boy...just far from home.
His other sons rushed to his aid and brought him up to his feet. They held him up by the elbows, and he held the wound on his head. The blow wasn’t what stunned him—it was the one who delivered it.
Leonardo pushed his brothers aside roughly, trying to reach Splinter. “Master! Master, I’m so sorry. I-I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just… I just lost control.”
Splinter reached out to put his other hand on Leonardo’s cheek, still round with the vestiges of baby fat. Yes, right in front of him, real and solid, but at the same time so very far away.
Leonardo flinched away from the touch. Raphael stood at the ready between himself and Leonardo as if he might have to protect him from his own son. Perhaps it was the blow to the head speaking, but he felt as though he was in a bad dream.
Like one might in a dream, he spoke without thought. “Leonardo. Come, help me dress the wound.”
“Sensei, are you sure?” Donatello said immediately.
Splinter removed his paw from the wound and allowed his son to inspect it. “The cut is shallow, see? It will need nothing more than cleaning and bandaging.”
Donatello’s eyes flicked from the wound to his sensei’s face, hesitant. “Alright. If you’re sure.”
Splinter offered him a thin smile and patted his hand, then touched Michelangelo and Raphael also in passing. The latter offered him his stick, which he took gratefully. Without another word, Leonardo led him to the washroom.
Splinter felt rather like crying as he sat on the stool. Leonardo’s face was so solemn, brow drawn tight while he worried at his lip with his teeth.
Leonardo worked through the process of cleaning the wound in silence. Splinter did not flinch away from the alcohol swabs, nor did he let fall any of the tears that kept rising in his eyes. He ached for his son and this darkness in him that he could not seem to shake, no matter how hard Splinter tried to help him.
Leonardo returned to the first aid kit for bandages and paused, hands resting in the kit and eyes staring at nothing. Splinter gave him a moment to compose himself, then placed a paw on his arm. He flinched away from the touch again, putting a distance between himself and his sensei.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry. I lost control—I—“
“You did not mean to hurt me.”
“But I did.” He turned his face away, white-knuckle grip on the edge of the first aid kit. “It’s unacceptable—unforgivable.”
Splinter hesitated. When he said he did— did he mean that he did hurt him, or that he did mean to…? He was too afraid to ask. “Finish wrapping the wound, please,” he said quietly.
Leonardo shook himself and took up the roll of bandages. Splinter watched him from beneath his brow as he performed the task robotically, winding the bandage around his head to hold the gauze in place. It flattened his fur uncomfortably in some places and ruffled it in others. Leonardo’s eyes were steel-cold.
With the task finished, Leonardo left the gauze roll fall to his lap and his eyes with it. Splinter again reached out to hold his cheek in his palm. This time, instead of flinching, Leonardo took his hand by the wrist and pulled it away.
His sons did not rebuke affection. For him to pull away now, when he appeared to need the comfort most…
“Sensei. What will my punishment be?”
“I think you are punishing yourself enough, my son.”
He looked up, surprised, then sobered again. He looked somewhere just beyond Splinter’s face—it puzzled him for a moment, and then Leonardo reached up to touch the notch in his ear. The one left by Master Yoshi’s blade, nearly five years ago. It was nothing compared to the scar in Leonardo’s shell. The burdens that his poor son had to bear…
“I’m sorry,” Leonardo whispered.
Slowly, for fear he would pull away again, Splinter clasped his hand and tried to convey his sincerity through the grip. “My son, you are forgiven.”
A disturbed look passed over Leonardo’s face in an instant, then a sob burst out of him like it was beyond his control. He dropped his forehead to rest on his father’s knuckles, still over his own hand, and sobs continued to pour out of him.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I’m so—so scared, Sensei, I’m out of control, full of anger, I feel like more and more of a—a failure every day,” he gasped in a sharp breath and his shoulders shuddered. “I can’t stop my family from getting hurt, now I’m the one hurting you!”
“Shh, shh, Leonardo, it’s alright—”
“No!” he wailed. His body practically collapsed, he went from kneeling to sitting so quickly. His head still rested on his father’s shoulder, but his arms and legs drooped listlessly. His breaths were too short, too loud. “It’s not okay, I’m broken, there’s something—something wrong with me. I feel like I’m living in a nightmare! When will it stop?” He broke off with a guttural, anguished wail.
“No, my son, no, you are not broken.”
Splinter slipped from the stool to sit on the floor with his son. He wrapped his arms as far around Leonardo’s shell as they would go and held on as tight as he could. He stroked the back of his head and rocked slightly, trying with all his might to comfort the sobbing turtle.
“You are not broken. You are troubled. You are burdened beyond what your young spirit can handle. I wish I could take these troubles from you.”
Leonardo went limp against him, abject sobs still wracking his body.
“You will come through this stronger for it,” Splinter murmured, a promise to both himself and his son. Splinter kept rocking and holding him, holding back his own tears through sheer force of will.
He would get better, stronger, but not without help. It was time to do something about this brokenness in his son’s spirit. Something dramatic.
-------
Did you like this work? Please leave a comment, reblog, and/or check it out on AO3!
I am at last myself… with no ambition greater than to walk where I please and to breathe the open air. To die unremarked and unnoticed… and be free. You speak as if from a distant dream.
Really though (going off of yesterday), the moment that Rumi shares with Mira and Zoey in What it Sounds Like is SO beautiful. With everything we know about how the honmoon works--it's a tapestry of souls, woven together through the connections souls make with each other. Hunters weave the honmoon by "igniting" the souls of others through inspiring and uplifting them. Once they ignite a person's soul, it can be woven into the honmoon. Like, in that context... first off Rumi inspires and uplifts Zoey and Mira, forging a connection to their souls where the connection had previously been broken.
She ignites their souls.
Sidenote: I find it really beautiful that Zoey's soul is ignited right after Rumi sings "I tried to fix it, I tried to fight it" and Mira's is ignited with the lines "my head was twisted, my heart divided, my lies all collided". The lyrics connect to the girls in question.
Like, Zoey was relentlessly cheerful and fighting to fix what was going on up until the end ("All our songs are in three-part harmonies! How do we--"). She really did try to "fix it and fight it," especially with the context that Rumi is singing in--Rumi is delivering this line about trying to destroy these natural parts of herself because she fully believed that those parts only had the power to destroy and hurt. Zoey, similarly, tries desperately to fix and smooth over all their interpersonal issues because, as a people pleaser, she sees conflict as something that only has the power to destroy and hurt. So Rumi connects to Zoey's personal internal struggles here.
And then, Mira was struggling with intense feelings of paranoia and distrust throughout much of the movie ("I sound nuts...") due to Rumi's lies. Mira's head was twisted and heart was divided, and we saw her clearly grappling and struggling a lot with whether to trust Rumi as a friend or accuse her of something despite their friendship. She pretty clearly went really back-and-forth on it, and wasn't sure what to do--see the confrontation in Rumi's bedroom, where Mira comes in fairly aggressive and point-blank demanding Rumi explain herself, then pretty quickly walks it back and semi-apologizes for being so intense, then leaves clearly dissatisfied and still mistrusting. So Rumi connects to Mira's internal personal struggle here--and then, of course, beyond that, she openly acknowledges that she lied with the line "my lies all collided," validating Mira's paranoia and taking responsibility for it.
That's how Rumi connects to their souls and inspires them. Because she's being vulnerable, not only do they understand her better, they also see themselves in her and feel seen. It's a true and deep connection because through Rumi's vulnerability, the three of them are able to understand each other on a new, deeper level that they hadn't been able to reach previously. Which is why Mira and Zoey join in singing the same song, and it almost feels blended... like, it feels like they could be singing about their own struggles or expanding on Rumi's own. Because they're forging this connection through a deep shared recognition that the three of them have been struggling in such similar ways.
And then--
This is literally the girls using the way their connection inspires and uplifts them to magically tie their souls together and create the first knot in a new honmoon. Again: this is literally the girls using the way their connection inspires and uplifts them to magically tie their souls together.
Like, it's really so beautiful? When I talk about Jinu's sacrifice and how that shared moment between them is important to Rumi, I don't mean to discredit or discount this moment at all. I think this is such an intense and profound display of love between the three girls, I really love it so much. (And it's also visually beautiful as well, but we all knew that.)
Wukong is just so hungry for affection and I love that side of him. Really enjoyed making this drawing, I tried putting some details in it; Wukong is leaning towards Sanzang but we know he could never be this tired to be accidentally dropping his head over someone's shoulder. He's just pretending to be tired. Another thing is Sanzang's casaya is under Wukong's clothes which shows that he was sitting here initially and then Wukong came to sit next to him.
Something that the "ugh, why didn't Rumi just tell Mira and Zoey about her patterns?" crowd likes to ignore is that, even setting aside the fact that the girls gleefully slaughter demons and say anything with patterns has to die (especially Mira on the latter), when Rumi does try to express her concerns with Takedown, she's shut down by BOTH of them, aggressively so with Mira. Yes, Rumi is beating around the bush about her true problems with it, but it's not until an ENTIRE TRAINFUL OF PEOPLE DIE PARTIALLY BECAUSE THEY WERE FIGHTING that they actually listen to her, because they weren't even really giving her much of a chance to explain herself beforehand! Why would Rumi risk telling them about her patterns during the movie given they aren't even listening to her about her problems with a song?
And I was watching a YouTube video the other day that said that Mira and Zoey mock Celine, and Rumi should've taken the opportunity to tell Mira and Zoey about her patterns at that moment....completely ignoring the fact that RIGHT AFTER Mira and Zoey mock Celine, they double down and are like, "yeah, but she's right, we have to hide this problem with your voice until we can fix it." You can even see Rumi get a sad, resigned sort of disappointed look in that scene right after they say that.
So yeah, if you can't tell, I really hate it when people bash Rumi for not telling Mira and Zoey her secret, or at least, when people insist that Rumi had ample opportunities to share her secret during the movie and had no reason to believe that Mira and Zoey wouldn't accept and forgive her.
It's bad situation overall. No matter what, if a significant time period passed between Mira and Zoey meeting Rumi and them discovering her patterns, they would be hurt and feel betrayed by her keeping such a massive secret from them regardless of the circumstances they discovered the secret, and Rumi (and Celine) likely think, not wrongly, that them discovering her secret, even if she just tells them, could cause a rift in their relationship and cause the Honmoon to weaken/the girls to be uncoordinated in being a united front against demons, putting Korea at risk.
But on the other hand, I can completely understand if Celine didn't want to start of her and Rumi's new relationship when they first met Mira and Zoey by saying, "Hello, you have been recruited to fight demons. Also, this girl that I've raised who will be part of your team is part demon." Setting aside the fact that teaching Mira and Zoey that there's complexity among demons could easily get them killed if they hesitated for just a moment while killing demon, I feel like telling Mira and Zoey that they've been recruited to kill demons with a half-demon would lead to them starting out their new mentorship under Celine by not trusting her or Rumi.
Either way, it's a shitty situation from all ends no matter how you slice it. But I'll firmly stand by the fact that it's completely understandable why Rumi gravitated towards Jinu, why she didn't tell Mira and Zoey about her patterns, and how their behavior reinforced her idea that they would not be happy and would not accept her if she revealed her secret.
I'm 100% open to the idea that Rumi is selfish in regards to her relationship with Jinu in the sense that she does not keep trying to kill him even though she SEES the staggering amount of people his plan is getting killed, killing him would be a devastating blow to the Saja Boys, and he straight-up tells her he is not a good guy and isn't the dude to help her, insisting that he's not redeemable (when I first watched the movie, I kept thinking, "Is she ever going to bring up the fact that tons of people are dying because of him?") but in regards to her hiding her patterns? I don't see her actions there as stupid and selfish, but rather intense self-preservation.
theartofmadeline
