Post by Sabor on Nov 6, 2021 17:53:25 GMT -5
Who am I? Just a conscience!
Introduce yourself
Hey, howdy, hey! The name's EbonyPatriot, and I wished upon a star from Whatsits Galore many moons ago (possibly linked from the old Disney Ever Notice Site?)?.. My other characters include Ronno, Bolt, Accipiter, Geno & Gurri, Thunderbolt, Beast, and Kion. Sabor and I are so very eager to join the Worlds of Disney circle of life!
Character basics
Age: 28 years old, ancient for a leopard (but see below)
Species: African leopard, Panthera pardus pardus (but see below)
Birthplace: Waziri Mountains, near the shores of the previously uncharted estuary branching from the Albertine Rift, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Kanungu District, Uganda, Africa, 12/10/1880
Movie: Tarzan (1999), with a brief cameo in Tarzan II (2005)
Custom title: No Time to Think
Why'd you pick this character? Ever since the movie came out, Sabor’s been my favorite. I like her design, her name, and her character. (I also love the touch of realism: the leopard, not the lion, is the natural predator of gorillas— lions are creatures of the veldt and rarely encounter gorillas outside of zoos).
I also always liked how they made sure she was a bad guy: one of the problems with writing anthropomorphized critters is the whole “Circle of Life” aspect. Basically, you often get either “predators are meanies” or “prey should just accept their lot in life.” Disney!Sabor neatly sidesteps that: notice that she kills more than she needs (it appears she kills the baby gorilla the same night she kills Tarzan’s parents [of course, in the real world, the predator who doesn’t kill as much as they can when they can, may well become the predator who starves to death during leaner times, but shh 
…]) and especially the smirk she gives Kala when Tarzan falls on the rope— I always thought the intent was that Sabor was not just a predator trying to survive but in fact, a meanie.
(And the leopard ads were cool ‘k? ).
In summary, Sabor (and her movie) rock!
Character appearance (try to get at least 2 or 3 sentences for each section)
Hair description: Save for her nose leather and paw paws, Sabor is covered in soft saffron-colored fur that belies her ferocious nature. Her rosettes are few compared to leopards elsewhere in Africa, but numerous compared to leopards her area: solid spots on her head and limbs, merging around copper patches to appear as solid rings on her dorsal sides. In contrast, her underside is unspotted, a blazing white, the same color as her muzzle, ruff, and toes (including her dewclaws).
Facial description/mood/expressions: Sabor’s muzzle is often either preparing for or relaxing from a snarl. Her wide emerald eyes are focused and intent, her black-and-white ears often back in a bad temper. Only with her mate Nuru and numerous cubs and grand cubs does she give a true smile instead of smirk.
Clothing style: No self-respecting animal wears clothes, thank you very much. And Sabor only likes humans as potential prey, so…
Body build: Like all of the leopards of the Waziri region, Sabor's head is broad and angled. Her neck is crested, her body low-slung, legs bowed and abdomen curved: even at rest she is halfway to a hunting crouch. Her tail is long, lashing as a counter balance. The leopards of the Chui Gorge may not have the sleek, rounded features of an average leopard nor, as a result, the agility, but they’re agile enough— and more powerful.
Any unique traits (optional): Unusual for all leopards, Sabor's tail-tip is neither self-colored (that is, the color of her body) or half-colored, but a solid cloud-white.
Sabor’s long, thin white fangs would be the envy of the long-toothed clouded leopard.
Original character analysis (In your own words and please be thorough)
Personality:
Sabor fancies herself both a lady and a philosopher, although none but her humoring mate would agree.
When she can focus, Sabor is cruel and calculating, a coniseur who enjoys fine dining and perfection in everything. When she gets upset or distracted, Sabor forgets everything, going into a crazed frenzy. Not until she gets her way (or is too badly defeated) does her cooler self prevail.
With her family and, to a lesser degree, her expanded leap, Sabor is a dutiful daughter, a devoted mate, and excellent mother. She has successfully raised eight litters, crooning to and caring for her cubs no matter how old they got, and would have whelped more had Tarzan not interfered…
History:
The leopards of Waziri Mountains would cause a great matter of debate among taxonomists. A “splitter” would point to their angular heads and low-slung bodies; even a “lumper” would admit their long lifespan and slit pupils (members of the Panthera genus usually have pupils that contract to the normal circle) would merit re-classification, perhaps even bringing back the Panthera pardus chui designation.
Both the lumpers and splitters would be surprised to learn it is these leopards’ epigenetics, not true genetics, that so alters their behavior.
The rich fountain that grants the Waziri such long lives (albeit not to extent the Porter hoped) contaminates the groundwater throughout the region. All of the animals that drink the water in this region display increased longevity, and the leopards are no exception. Instead of the 15 years a captive leopard could dream of, most of the Waziri leopards live well into their forties, with the record currently held at 65.
The ability to bear cubs was also extended: even though the leopardesses breed later in life and lets her cubs stay longer (furthering the delay between each litter), the “get” of a breeding pair far exceeds that of the normal leopard pair. It is the normal behavior of a leopardess to “donate” some of her territory to each of her daughters; with so many cubs and each dame living so long, there is little land for the Waziri leopards.
The second factor was Pellucidar, that primeval world home to dinosaurs. The quick-witted dromeosaurs often escape; breaches of the larger theropods are also not unheard of. With these rivals to fight off, both male and female leopards found it worthwhile to band together.
Between the longer lifespan, increased number of cubs, and unusual competition, the leopards have found it worthwhile to tolerate each other, forming huge leaps of dozens of leopards, all centered around Chui Gorge. Like lions, the leopards further break down into independent but subordinate cliques, with the females tolerating each other and even sharing some of the cub duties. Like lions and cheetahs, the males are more social, teaming up in coalitions to defend their mates and territory.
Into this world the dominant pair, Zanzi and Kambo, whelped their eighth litter. Kambo was proud of her litter, naming the male after the Mangani term for leopard, Sheeta, and the female after the Mangani term for those legendary, distant lions, Sabor.
Long before Sabor and Sheeta gained independence, Sabor developed a taste for all primates. From potto to bonobo, Sabor had sampled each of the primates in her territory…all except man.
Oh many of the jungle feared man; furthermore, many of the animal felt man was the Chosen Creature of Usen. Like all sinners, Sabor chased away her guilt, almost convincing herself that Usen would not keep such a tasty treat from a good leopard like herself.
But the only men in Sabor’s territory were the Waziri tribe, who had ruled the forest since time immemorial. It had been many centuries since of their members fell to a leopard’s jaws; and they were determined to keep it that way. Sabor learned quickly it was safer to stalk the giant velociraptors of Pellucidar than to hunt the Waziri.
While Sabor was recovering from her last ill-advised attempt on a Waziri dinner, Sheeta grew tired of his sister’s unreliability (it was not the first nor the last time Sabor’s recklessness left her too injured to hunt) and allied himself with a new hunting partner: Nuru, son of Ungo and his mate Tongani. Sabor rather approved of this partnership, to put it mildly: much to Sheeta’s chagrin, Sabor and Nuru became mates.
Little over a year after Sabor whelped her first litter, she found an unexpected surprise: lucky for her, unlucky for the survivors from a British shipwreck two months prior.
Sabor did not know that the pair was the 7th Earl of Greystoke and his wife. Nor did she know that, familiar as they were with bush survival in South Africa, they were unprepared for the deep jungle. However, she did know that their luck ran out when they chose Sabor’s favorite lair for their treehouse.
Even with the barrier of painful glass window and the barrage of frightful bullets, the pair was no match for Sabor’s attack that fateful night. Sabor was a relatively merciful killer, if only because wounded prey was dangerous prey, but she did like her dinner spiked with fear in its final minutes.
Sabor had been so thrilled, had waited so long to taste humans… only to find they tasted worse than the oily carcasses of waterbucks. So terrible was the taste that a frenzied Sabor resumed hunting, catching and devouring a 2-month-old gorilla while the moon still gleamed high in the sky.
Not ready to return to her yearling cubs Jabo and Arad, Sabor returned to her lair, sprawling in the rafters of the treehouse the Greystokes had so rudely stuck in her tree. As she tended to her lacerated paws and forequarters, her crazed frenzy passed and, with it, her glib confidence. Had this been Usen’s punishment? Was Mangani, the Silver Ape, right when he said to kill a human was a terrible sin for any animal?
No, no, she convinced herself that it was just because these strangers had come from feeding on the wrong things. Why, they still had the faint but acrid smell of smoke! If only she could catch a human fed on good jungle food! Perhaps a baby…
Sabor’s luck continued in the morning when Kala, dame of the gorilla the leopard had snatched overnight, uncovered the Greystokes’s last secret: a baby, not more than a few months old. Her thrill at this discovery set the tip of her tail wagging in anticipation, although her happiness (not to mention some slight gratitude to Kala) was quickly overcome with rage when the gorilla just stared at her without moving. How dare Kala steal what was rightfully Sabor’s kill!
When a bluffing lunge failed to persuade Kala to drop the baby, the leopardess fought with the gorilla. Had she kept her cool, Sabor might have fared better against the thieving ape: but her temper was flared into a frenzy, shredding sails and breaking through planks. Nor was her attitude improved when the rope tangled her hindleg and hung her at the top of the pulley, leaving unable to do anything but screech her fury while Kala absconded with the baby.
Not until sun blazed high in the sky was Sabor able to free herself, slicing the rope holding her hind paw and crashing painfully to the ground. (Had she been able to keep calm, she probably could have figured out how to free herself much, much sooner). Too much in pain from her sprained foreleg and splintered back, not to mention her still torn paws and forequarters, Sabor had little choice. She had to get back to her cubs, but she was so weak with hunger that first she had to settle for those disgusting humans.
Sabor seethed with hatred of Kala and her whole tribe. Everyone knew gorillas, unlike their chimpanzee and bonobo cousins, rarely, if ever, ate meat— baring some rogues, most gorillas never ate nothing higher than insects!
Not until she had returned to her cubs did Sabor realize the silver lining. Let that ridiculous Kala raise the baby. Once the baby (whose name she would eventually learn was Tarzan) was larger, fed on proper jungle feed, he would only make a better meal. And in the meantime, Sabor would enjoy every gorilla dinner all the more…
Unfortunately for Sabor, this was easier said than done. Kerchak was a wise leader, and the gorillas of the Waziri Mountains mated for life, allowing for many silverbacks and blackbacks to remain in contact with the tribe. When Kerchak chased off his ally Tublat, when Tarzan ran away from home as a youngster: each time Sabor thought she might have a chance, only to fail again and again. Worse still, Kala and Kerchak did not breed again, producing no offspring to distract Kala from Tarzan.
Sabor, on the other paw, produced multiple litters, successfully rearing the majority her cubs to independence (although many of her sons later disappeared as adults). With her eighth (and though she did not realize it, last) litter, in addition to sons Skree and Zu-Ro, Sabor finally felt she produced a cub good enough to name after herself. Sabor felt confident this cub was destined to be as fierce as those legendary and faraway lions— and the fact that this cub was a daughter did not deter her from naming the cub Numa.
Not until Sabor was 28 years old, after she had reared her eighth litter to adulthood (much to her disgust, Numa had told Sabor neither she or her mate Meeta, nor their future cubs, would ever consider humans prey), did Sabor got her best chance at Kerchak’s tribe.
While Tantor and Terkina squabbled, Sabor lunging, barely missing Tarzan. If Kerchak had not intervened, she might have caught them.
No matter: Kerchak was aging, and he would make a fine meal himself. But even this was denied, and instead she found herself matching wits with Tarzan.
At last she battled Tarzan, determined to finish what had started so long ago. Tarzan, she had to reluctantly confess, was a worthy opponent: his youth matched her experience, his cleverness her cunning.
But Sabor’s teeth and claws could not be broken off, like Tarzan’s spear. Confident, she pounced one last time, crashing through the vines, snapping for his throat as she felt the prick of the spearhead at her chest.
The next thing she knew, she was in the land of Walt Disney World.
Ambitions:
To finally catch and finish off that dinner who got away, that @!#$^&;% Tarzan!
To get to taste every type of primate: at long last, she has access the rumored New World Platyrrhini!
To rescue her disappeared sons (little does she know that when Tarzan someday frees La’s Leopard-Men, he will rescue her sons in the process).
To return to her territory, her leap: and most of all, her mate and cubs.
Strengths & abilities:
Incredibly fast and agile, especially for a Waziri leopard.
Long, saber-like fang and slashing talons.
When she can focus, a cunning mind not easily defeated.
Powerful muscles, able to drag heavy weights into trees.
Flaws:
Whenever she gets excited or especially frustrated, she goes into a blind and crazed frenzy. During this time, all of her cunning goes bye-bye.
Prone to reckless and dangerous behavior even when she’s never frenzied, willing to hurt herself in pursuit of her goal...only to regret it later.
Hot-tempered and selfish with a bit of a cruel streak.
Overblown opinion of her own cleverness and hunting ability.
Likes:
Primates! Oh she’ll eat other animals if she has to, but from pottos and galagos to chimpanzees and bonobos, if a scientist has placed it in the order Primate, she loves them.
Snoozing in her favorite tree, with a fully belly and nice cool mist in the air.
Her cubs and mate: to them alone does she reveal her softer side.
Watching the world go past while she herself sits unobserved, ruminating on What’s Wrong With The World.
Dislikes:
When her prey gets away— sure, like all leopards she only has about a 38% success rate, but it’s still frustrating!
That @!#$^&;% Tarzan and Kala-- all of Kerchak's tribe!
Defiance and challenges.
The taste of any human not raised in the jungle.
Fears:
The Waziri Tribe.
The various dinosaurs of Pelucidar, especially the carnivorous theropods.
Too many baboons! (More than one leopard has lost its tail or worse to a large troop of baboons).
Any loud or sudden noises.
Anything to add?:
Don’t worry, between her disdain of “wrong-fed” (i.e. everyone but Tarzan) humans and ill-advised hunting techniques, Sabor won’t succeed in catching any humans or captive primates here (if the feral populations of rhesus monkeys do makes it Orlando on the other hand, they might not be so lucky…)
Kipling’s kvetching aside, I always thought Burroughs chose wisely, especially when it came to the foster animal for his “raised-by-critters hero." Unlike wolves, which even in captivity are pretty old at 10, wild gorillas/chimps (and so presumably the fictional in-between Mangani species) routinely reach their forties. This allows plenty of time for a human baby (the best for a “learned-animal-talk-and-identified-with-animals” plot to be believable) to grow to adulthood while still having members of the foster family to interact with.
This continued into Disney's adaption. Both elephants and gorillas live for a long time, making it believable that twenty-something-year-old Disney!Tarzan would still have his buddies and mother around.
But leopards are considered ancient at the age of 15, with most wild leopards never making it that far. (Ditto for lions incidentally— wild females tend live longer than wild males, but I think the record still stands at 19).
And Tarzan fighting Unrelated Random Leopard #2.0 isn’t half as satisfying as Tarzan (unwittingly) avenging both his parents and Kala’s baby’s deaths— but Tarzan taking out a, to quote Mr. French, “superannuated” leopard isn’t much better.
So I used the series elements to make Sabor roughly middle-aged (older but still able to put up a good fight) and explain why the leopards congregate in such large numbers (although there is a term for a group of leopards, leap, wild leopards usually only hang out together during the brief time they’re with their mother and/or siblings).
My original thought was that Sabor’s mate and brother would indeed be the Nuru and Sheeta panthers from the show, but keeping with the new rules, I’ll leave it ambiguous if Sabor's Nuru and Sheeta are the same duo from the show or just an unrelated pair that happen to share the same names, with one pair possibly serving as the others' namesakes (you’ll notice I don’t even clarify if Sabor’s mate and/or brother are panthers or normal spotted leopards 
)
According to D23, Disney based Tarzan’s jungle (which, thanks to Kingdom Hearts I think of as “Deep Jungle” XD) on the Impenetrable Forest in Bwindi, Uganada. This would fit with my theory that, between their mountainous homes, larger size, and shaggy coats, Disney!Tarzan’s gorillas are meant to be mountain gorillas, Gorilla beringei beringei.
But Uganda and the mountain gorillas are kind of landlocked. XD There are some lakes near it, and there is the Albertine Rift, but you got a few countries between Bwindi and the ocean! On the west coast of Africa you do get the Western lowland gorillas, Gorilla gorilla gorilla, in some coastal countries, including Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Cameroon (although I don’t know if even there the gorillas can be found *quite* that close to the coast).
Of course we also see ring-tailed lemurs in the first movie, and those guys are strictly endemic to the island of Madagascar, while the series add non-avian dinosaurs, so there you go.
RP SAMPLE:
PAST TENSE ONLY. MUST BE ABOUT THE CHARACTER FOR WHOM YOU ARE APPLYING.
See Ronno.
IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A CHARACTER WITH US, NO SAMPLE IS NEEDED; INSTEAD, PUT "SEE ____"
