Tojo

TOJO

the basics

the appearance

Species • African Lion
Eye Colour • A brilliant shade of Sky blue with large pupils and yellow sclera
Markings & Scars • Nothing major, a few minor scars on his paws as he is very clumsy with a tendency to injure himself, but so far he has avoided any dramatic injury.
Height • Average (3 ft 6 in)
Weight • Average (300 lbs)
Voice Actor • John Mulaney, complete with the incredibly hilarious sense of humor
Basic Appearance • Sometimes considered one of the Pridelands' "golden children", Tojo has a yellow-gold tinted coat, his body being a sort of medium tan/light brown with his markings being lighter, more obviously yellow. His mane is thick but fine, cascading from his head and down his chest like a waterfall, it really hangs between his legs, long and wispy unlike most males, whose manes tend to be a little more contained at the belly region. His mane is brown in color with darker brown areas beneath a wavy fringe that he has on his head, as well as at the very end of the mane on his underbelly and finally extending to some areas around his throat and near his shoulders. His eyes are bright blue with a yellow sclera. He's not a large lion, about the size of a really big female, give or take a few inches at the shoulder, but he's still of comfortable size and weight, not overly fat but also not noticeably muscular, just... average. As of right now, he has no scars but that may change in the future.

the personality

Personality • Maintaining an almost cub-like innocence in his tendency to approach everything with curiosity and enthusiasm, Tojo is a fine young male lion. He does not have the Alpha personality that most males do and in fact he moved out of his homelands not because he felt threatened or unwanted, but rather he simply has now and probably always has had a bit of wander-lust in him. He loves to travel, to see new things, to learn with and engage with others, sharing knowledge and experiences with each other, telling stories and mapping the stars until the sun comes out in the morning.

Tojo is just a sponge for knowledge, his intense curiosity often overshadowing his manners. He has no real filter and is the kind of guy to blurt out what he is thinking without analyzing whether or not that would be a good thing to say, it just falls out of him and he often back pedals and tries to explain himself, desperate to not hurt anyone's feelings. Tojo is a kind and gentle soul, he would rather take a bullet in his own heart than to hurt another lion or any of his friends, good or bad. He's very idealistic and thinks that if more lions like himself stood up and took charge of things in say the Pridelands, ruling with love and compassion and not for the purpose of gaining or abusing power, that this world would just be an infinitely better place. Unfortunately, his ideals tend to be too lofty and are sometimes irrationally impossible, which ends with him being disappointed not in himself, but in everyone else who did not follow his lead. He is not commanding enough to be an actual leader, but he certainly tries to be a mentor and a partner in the role of keeping track of the information, the laws, the stories and the traditions of every pride of lions on this side of Africa. So he does sometimes step into a leading position, but so introspective, it often takes a mind reader to figure out what exactly he is trying to do sometimes.

But despite his flaws, Tojo is known for his bright smile, his handsome eyes and his expressions, but also his simply all around good nature. He definitely cares about how animals are treated in their role in the Circle of Life, and is always looking out for the underdog of any given situation, siding with victims and often lifting them up with his cheerful attitude, his blind optimism, and his great sense of humor. He will stop at nothing to help everyone that he can, and that includes many animals that are not lions or hyenas. In fact, he has a small flock of bluebirds that hang around him constantly. His best friend in a jackal that he rescued from a snare trap, he can sometimes be seen in a den full of snakes and never gets bitten. He is just the sweetest young man to everyone and everything that he meets, and, though he is clumsy and fumbles a lot, injuring himself often in his enthusiasm to do things, he still always seems to have high spirits.


Likes • Exploring, Traveling, Spelunking | Swimming, Fishing, Water stuff | Cubs and Children | Lazy Afternoons as he cannot sleep well at night | Bones, Horns, Sticks, anything that he can chew on
Dislikes • Pessimism (especially if they call it "being realistic") | Being judged/thought of as an idiot | Huge Confrontations, Unnecessary Fights | Drama of really any kind | Being Trapped or Confined

History • As all males must do at some point in their lives, Tojo ended his time in the Pridelands at the tender age of 2 years old. Generally, males stay with their home pride until they are 3 years old and done growing, but Tojo needed to wander, needed to explore. Though he grew up with a ton of cubs his age, including Simba, he always felt like the odd lion out. Everyone he met seemed to think he was an idiot, he was often the butt of the joke among his friends, not maliciously mind you but just cubs being cubs, telling jokes and having a good time. Tojo was always struggling to keep up with his friends, his clumsiness leading to a ton of accidents that made it hard for him to follow in his friends footsteps, he was often left behind because of an injury or whatever. His friends did not usually come to visit him when he was on cave rest for an injury of some kind, they did not inquire how he was doing, nor did they really put in the time to make him feel loved and wanted. Instead, he felt like he was a burden to the others and that everyone else had more fun when he wasn't there. And so he kind of settled into this idea that he was better off alone.

That is until they were teenagers. Simba disappeared, Scar took the throne and as a teenage male, Tojo immediately felt threatened by the dark king and his cohorts. The minute that he was old enough to do so, Tojo took off, initially running for his life, but he quickly found life outside of the Pridelands was fascinating. He wandered through jungles and trees, forests and snow, he visited the Tree of Life, he crossed the expansive desert, he travelled far and wide. Originally, he and the other cubs stuck together and they wandered as a group. But everyone was pulled in different directions as time went by and it wasn't long before Tojo found himself alone again, lost and confused about where he fit in with the Circle of Life and the Great Spirit. He did not know where to turn or really what to do, so he did wander a lot, wandered far too, just absorbing the natural beauty in the world and mapping out where everything was, what the fastest routes from one territory to another were, places to stop for water and or food, places to avoid because of human activity, and so on. He met and befriended many lions in his travels, having a particularly soft spot when it came to creatures that were misunderstood or treated poorly, as though their existence was a mistake. He was particularly attracted to hyenas, and while most of the time, clans just immediately chased him out of their territory, his peaceful nature did warm up several clans and a few rogue hyenas. He also has a soft spot for birds. As a cub, he and Simba raised a small flock of blue birds. Now adults, the birds are nowhere near as constant a presence as they once were. But it is still not at all uncommon to see Tojo with birds and rodents and odd creatures shadowing him for protection.

He continued to wander for a following year or so, quickly learning that he loved to travel. He went back and visited the Pridelands shortly after Simba returned, just to see his old friend and being sure that he was alright and that the pride was alright. Though some of the other lions begged him to stay, Tojo was just too deep in his wander-lust to do so, learning very quickly that staying in the same place for long periods of time was stifling. So again, he ventured on, though he made a point to say bye to everyone and promising to return every once in a while to just keep in touch. His friend Tama got a particularly long goodbye, she was Tojo's best friend when they were cubs. Though she loved to play and rough house and what not, she was always really gentle with Tojo, bringing him food and toys and things when he was too injured to go out and get them himself, and they often hung out for hours, until long after the sunlight faded away. He was a little sad to leave her not once but twice, but he just... had to. Or rather felt like he had to.

This is about when he met the lioness Jua. She was a gorgeous young lioness with a brilliant golden coat, immediately Tojo was smitten. She had such stories to tell of her own time wandering, and they fell easily into a relationship, comparing notes about locations, trying to find places to travel to that neither of them had been to yet, and simply loving to explore the natural world together. Tojo found it easier to sleep with Jua around, and he was able to confide in her when he found out that both his mother and baby sister were killed during Scar's reign (his mother was an older lioness and died of disease and complications caused by starvation, while Mzuzi was taken by Scar to bear his children, but when she refused, he brutally murdered her for her insolence.). He feels guilty about leaving them there, to imagine their suffering, their longing, their love for him, and yet he was not there to support them, to carry them to safety. He feels so awful about this and was constantly whining and feeling sorry for himself, leaving Jua to do basically all of the work herself. He didn't wander as much, he wasn't anywhere near as active and he just kind of curled into himself and shut out the outside world. This caused some rifts and resentment to form between him and his lioness, eventually ending with Jua having had enough and promptly leaving Tojo altogether.

Alone with nowhere to go and nothing to live for, Tojo looked for a place to die, to just lie down and starve as his mother did. But he was found by Tama, who was out looking for prey. Though still heavily downtrodden, it was so nice to see a familiar face, to smell a familiar scent, and she managed to talk him down from the ledge and they did not separate again until a few months later, again with Tojo feeling intimidated by Scar and feeling unsafe in his territory. So, even though he and Tama did a lot to rekindle their relationship, at the end of the day, Tojo had to go.

So he did, wandering again, looking for Jua so that he could fix his relationship with her. A part of him wanted to stay with Tama, to be her knight in shining armor, to keep her safe under Scar, especially considering what happened to his mother and sister. However, he definitely loved Jua, so he could not leave the thought of her alone, he was obsessed with finding her and apologizing, because that is just what you do when you mistreat somebody. At some point, he was contacted by a messenger who revealed that the rogue lion was being summoned back to the Pridelands for reasons unknown. So he did so, following his trail backward to return to where it all started. At first, he was completely dumbfounded as to why he had been summoned. But then Tama approached him and between her legs came this bounding bundle of joy. And he immediately understood what was happening.

Overwhelmed and mortified, at first his relationship with Tiifu was kind of rocky, but now three years old, Tojo had grown a lot and, though he was still desperate to find Jua and restore their relationship, he knew that being Tiifu's father was more important. So, for the moment, he resides in the Pridelands to take care of his daughter. He is completely blindsided when Jua shows up to the party.

the FAMILy

Father • Unknown
Mother • Shanney (deceased)
Siblings • Mzuzi (baby sister, deceased)
Mate • Jua (current), Tama (former)
Offspring • Tiifu (daughter)
Others • Simba (childhood friend), Chumvi (childhood friend), Kula (childhood friend), Malka (childhood friend), Nala (childhood friend), Tama (childhood friend)

the role player

Name • Heapass
Nickname • Heapass is fine, can be shortened to Heap, my real name is Joey which some of my friends use sometimes
Age • Thirty
Password • Don't post this until you're COMPLETELY finished with your app.
Other Characters • kishindo and khalfani

roleplay Sample

Missy had always been a finicky horse, which was not saying a lot since she was only a few years old, still a teenager by horse standards. She was still getting used to eating solid food, still getting used to the idea that her mother was now ten stalls down the row from her rather than being within muzzle reach, and the whole concept of life in this big, bad adult world seemed to hit the leggy filly hard. It was not odd for her to reject her feed every few days or so. But she'd pace, get some exercise the next morning and return that night for dinner sporting a healthy appetite again and all would be well. Not eating for three days straight was a bit odd, even for her and her young jaw, her unground teeth.

That was how the oldest De Luca child found the cremello filly that damp evening- pacing restlessly in her stall, a full bag of oats hanging from the sliding wood door to her stall, still heavy and completely untouched. She was starting to wear a track in the bedding on the floor as well, a perfect oval of kicked sawdust marking every step of her shoed hooves for the past 72 hours, where as all of the other horses, her mother included, stood stock still in the slowly darkening evening air. They probably had never worn tracks in their stalls in their lives. Carson's eyebrows dropped toward his brilliant blue eyes in an expression of deep puzzlement. To be fair, Missy was always a fidgety filly- taking after her sire and sporting boundless amounts of energy, she promised to be an excellent racehorse one of these days. But a healthy amount of energy was also usually accompanied by a crazy appetite, and even when at her most finicky, she'd go maybe six to twelve hours maximum without nibbling on something. This three day stint was unheard of.

Unsure of what else to do, the tallest of the De Luca family used his long strides and well built legs to close the small gap between himself and his favorite horse, casually coming to a stop with his chest leaned against the soggy wooden doorframe. Outside of the stables, the sky was cast over with darkened clouds and a lazy rain fell from the heavens in low, gentle rumbles. But the shingled roof was solid and the thoroughbred paused in her stall to eye the soaking wet figure that now peered at her through the bars, swiveling her ears once or twice curiously before silently walking over to where his hand lay outstretched through the door. Without hesitation, she sniffed and then casually nibbled his extended fingers, tugging on the wet sleeve of his jacket, as though to ask why he'd be foolish enough to come out here in the bad weather. But the werewolf only smiled knowingly at the animal and patted her nose gingerly.

"What's the matter with you? Your favorite rolled oats and you've barely touched 'em."

WORDS: 507 (and that's pretty short for me, I can regularly type between 700 and 900 words)