At long last I begin my quest to redesign as many ThunderCats characters as my hands allow! I'm a big fan of making Thunderians look more cat-like than their original counterparts. I am also a massive fan of having anthropomorphic characters be inspired by the cultures which hold the animal significant and coexist in that region.
ThunderCats, Thunderians and Thundera already have a lot of implied cultural influence from Egypt, Cats Lairs looking like sphinxes, the book of omens using hieroglyphics etc, plus there are multiple important lion deities in Egyptian theology. I wanted to keep the OG color pallet because it RULES, but I also wanted to nod to The White Pyramid (and the Ancient Spirits of Good) and the seven moons of Thundera in the design too.
Behold! Lion-O's Reborn AU Backstory!
Lion-O had the good fortune of being born in a time after Thundera had largely healed from the worst damage of nearly 50 years of violent Mutant Occupation had done to his world. Ever since he was a boy he wanted to be a great hero like Jaga and his late mother Lady Seka and father Lord Claudus. Snarf was his caregiver, and in the absence of other children for his earliest memories, his best friend. Who remembered his mother fondly as the heroine who had given her life to protect the Valley of Snarfs from the last remnants of Grune the Destroyer’s men called the Fanged Cabal. He loved his father dearly, as was true of the reverse. However, Lion-O seldom saw him, perhaps a few times a year at most. For the demands upon him as the leader of the restoration of their planet were great, and fatherhood was one of many urgent callings.
Jaga, after all, was a tough but fair substitute, though he often bickered with Snarf. Snarf wishing for the boy to be safe and happy, and above those things, kind. While Jaga was more concerned with ensuring the boy understood his responsibilities as future leader of the Lion Clan if not, moons forbid, Lord of ThunderCats. Though Jaga had never told him of the likes of ThunderCats by title, or the sleeping Sword that empowered them. It was Jaga’s hope that peace would remain and no evil would come to give cause for the Sword to reawaken. His own way of sheltering the boy despite his grumpy exterior.
Though Lion-O was not want for adults who cared about him, Snarf, his father, Jaga, Lynx-O, Pumyra, and even the smith Bengali when he would sneak away from the Cat’s Lair grounds to watch the royal armorers at their craft. All of this and loyal saber-tooth tiger called Kano, still, he was an only child, and he was lonely. Until Lion-O’s sixth birthday, the Caracal Clan sent to him their twin heirs Wilykit & Wilykat, as was their tradition to send their progeny out into other Clans, to return upon adulthood with all the had been taught. Thus Lion-O acquired a pair of siblings and all the joy, horror and chaos of a pair kittens two years his junior would inevitably bring. Six short years, Lion-O was twelve years old, the age that many a young Thunderian who possessed the old powers, and Jaga had his suspicions that the boy possessed Spirit Sight, the ability to see ghosts, for his own mystic powers of Astral Projection was cousins with such a gift (and burden). Yet Lion-O knew little of grief save for what he’d learned from adults around him, until he would endure more than any one person could comprehend, let alone a child.
The destruction of Thundera would come swiftly, the mysterious and powerful adults who delivered this baleful news, Tygra, Cheetara & Panthro, were awe-inspiring and frightening, only known to him in passing, by sight and name only. Saying goodbye to his planet would be hard enough, but thanks to the Mutant ambush, he would be torn from many adults as well. He would be torn from his father’s arms to save his life, unable to retrieve Kano, and witness what was believed to be the deaths of Lynx-O, Pumyra & Bengali. It would only be a matter of days before, in a desperate (and successful) attempt to save his and Snarf’s lives would he learn of his great destiny. Anointing the, albeit honorable, strangers (at least to Lion-O) clinging to the life raft that was the Thunderian flagship not as a matter of choice, but as a desperate ploy to ensure their survival.
In the final blow of his fiery emergence as Lord of The ThunderCats would be losing Jaga, his suspension capsule damaged, aged half the rate for the time they traveled, having entered as a child, and emerged, physically an eighteen year old boy, sturdy and strong to be certain thanks to the advanced nature of the capsules, but an overwhelming change, especially for one who had already endured so much, inexperienced in battle or mystic arts, forced to grow up swiftly in more ways than what the capsule had failed to prevent.
If you've got any questions about my ThunderCats AU please feel free to ask!
WIP for this piece under the cut!
