Saw the Shin Yu stuff and at first I thought “not my cup of tea since he killed kids” then started I thinking historically “Wait, Huns typically ‘adopted’ or enslaved the kids with their moms.” So now I’d like to request some fluff of him, basically, adopting a street urchin girl from a village he’s conquered, please.
It’s fine. He mostly gets a pass in my book because at the end of the movie he died pretty horribly and I can only assume the last of his goons were executed. (I’d be really pissed if Mulan and the emperor just let them go/live for some bullshit reason that didn’t even make sense in the context of any other version of the story (you guys know the series I’m talking about).)
I’m actually really into this idea because (1)It’s historically accurate in a sense and (2)it’s something new for me to write about.
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🦅 You will forever remember the day you met him. It was the day you lost everything; your home, your family, your life(metaphorically), and it was all his doing, Shan Yu. He and his army came and burned everything in your village, slew your neighbors indiscriminately, it didn’t matter if they were a man, woman or child, they were dead a moment later. You were the sole survivor.
💀 Since that day he “took you in”, as he describes it, he kept you on a tight leash. In both literal and figurative sense. That wasn’t the end extent of your relationship, he trained you. He trained you as hard as his men, maybe even more so. In the beginning, one time, he tied you to a heavy wooden pole in the snow and expected you to tend to a small fire just out of reach or die in the cold of the night. He called it a “test” but you called it “abuse” or just a shitty murder attempt that was pretty unfitting to literally THE SHAN YU. You passed.
🦅 Since then you lovingly gave him the nickname “Old Bastard” (because you a child who craved death). Shan Yu would then in turn “test” you again. Like, have you carry your weight (and even more later on) during day-long hikes, force you to hunt, skin and cook your own meals, all while on a rope leash and a flimsy bow-and-arrow that was probably made for a toddler half your size and to wrestle* him -before- that for “your right” to eat.
💀 *Mind you, he’s SHAN FUCKING YU is literally wrestling YOU (probably a teenager, if not a child). You stand no chance for months and only managed to “hunt” out of a morbid form of sympathy or something.
🦅 Eventually, just like Mulan in her military training, you start to catch up and prove your worth to an entire army of hardened warriors, even Shan Yu in a sense. You became strong. You learned the ways of the wild and how to provide for yourself, even with monumental handicaps. And, most importantly, you managed to pin (even if it was for a moment) Shan Yu after learning his openings and how to grapple. But by then you weren’t the orphan he would use as a punching bag anymore.
💀 You became exactly what they were.