(no subject)
Name: Kristen
LJ: mouthofbrass
E-Mail: kristen[at]spectrumvoid.net
IM: MadMadPhineas
Character Name: Littlefoot
Series: The Land Before Time
Timeline: Just as he reaches the Great Valley
Canon Resource Link: Wiki article
Character Background:
During the age of the dinosaurs, a young longneck (apatosaurus) named Littlefoot was born to a small herd (made up of just his mother, grandmother and grandfather). Because the land was changing and the leaves were dying, they were traveling toward a place called the Great Valley, where they would have plenty of fresh green food to eat and clean water to drink. Littlefoot was very close to his mother, who taught him about the Great Valley and how to get there, as well as about faith, interspecies segregation ("three-horns never play with longnecks B|"), and most importantly, tree stars (rare, special five-pointed leaves).
One night as they’re traveling, Littlefoot wanders away from his family and plays with Cera, a stubborn and headstrong three-horn (triceratops). Despite Cera’s insistence that she is superior as a three-horn, Littlefoot is not deterred and plays with her good-naturedly.
As they’re playing, they come across a sharptooth (tyrannosaurus), which chases them. Ultimately, the two are saved by Littlefoot’s mother, who takes on the sharptooth in order to protect them, but sustains mortal wounds. The sharptooth then begins to chase the babies again, just as a powerful earthquake begins. Littlefoot’s mother manages to save the two and knock the sharptooth into a deep chasm. However, the earthquake also separates Littlefoot from his grandparents (and Cera from her herd).
Afterward, Littlefoot finds his mother, who urges him to continue to follow his heart and continue traveling to the Great Valley. Then she dies.
It is pretty much the saddest thing ever.
Confused and heartbroken, Littlefoot eventually comes to terms with the fact that he’s alone and does as she instructed. He begins to travel along according to the directions his mother had given him to reach the Great Valley. He tries to convince Cera to travel with him, but she refuses ("a three-horn doesn’t need help from a longneck B|"), convinced that she knows a better way.
Along the way, he meets several strangers: a precocious big-mouth (parasaurolophus) named Ducky, a cowardly flier (pteranodon) named Petrie, and a voracious, orphaned spiketail (stegosaurus) named Spike. Despite earlier warnings from his mother and others that the different dinosaur species always stick to their own kind and never do anything together, Littlefoot is accepting of the differences among himself and his new acquaintances and quickly makes friends with them.
While he is busy meeting Ducky and Petrie, and trying to find food, Cera finds the sharptooth, who turns out to be quite alive despite the fall it sustained. She runs away from it and finds Littlefoot’s trio. Though she tries to convince them that the sharptooth is alive (regaling them with a tale in which she is apparently unafraid of the monster), Littlefoot doesn’t believe her, insisting that sharptooth is dead, possibly due to the fact that he can’t stand the thought that his mother might have died for nothing. It’s around this time that the group finds Spike, and the five of them decide to travel together in an inexplicable herd.
The next morning, the sharptooth attacks them, proving Cera right and Littlefoot wrong. As a result, however, the group finds the first of the landmarks that indicate the way to the Great Valley. Since only Littlefoot knows the way, the group continues to follow him even though the route leads over high, treacherous mountains. Littlefoot tries to encourage everyone to keep moving, optimistically saying that the Great Valley is probably just ahead, until Cera, tired and convinced that Littlefoot has no idea what he’s doing, decides to take an easier route. Aware that she is going to get lost on her own and wanting to keep the group together, Littlefoot tries to convince her to stay, but when Cera insults his mother, the two end up fighting.
In the end, the group splits up, and Littlefoot continues alone, while the others take a different route through lava flows and tar pits. Under Cera’s leadership, however, one by one, they all end up separated and in danger.
Fortunately for everyone, Littlefoot hadn’t gone far before realizing that he couldn’t abandon his friends to Cera’s horrible leadership and runs after them in time to save Ducky and Spike from a lava flow, Petrie from a tar pit, and Cera from a group of predators. Humiliated, Cera goes off on her own, but the other three remain with Littlefoot, aware that his sense of loyalty and his kindness make even a hard journey with him worth it.
Following this, Littlefoot concocts a plan to kill the sharptooth once and for all by using Ducky as bait to lure him out into the deep end of a pond, where they can push a boulder onto his head from above. The plan goes well at first, but Spike and Littlefoot aren’t strong enough to push the boulder off the cliff by themselves. Luckily, Cera returns at the last moment to help them, and they manage to defeat the sharptooth (this movie is full of last minute saves).
Despite a close call with Petrie, everyone makes it out of the encounter safely. Even so, Littlefoot is disheartened: the journey is so hard for a group as young as they are, and they’ve had a lot of close calls. He wanders off from the group, where he sees a cloud that looks like his mother, and hears his mother’s voice calling him.
He follows the sound through a tunnel in the mountain, but instead of the Great Valley he finds Wonderland.
Abilities/Special Powers: BEING A DINOSAUR. None.
Third-Person Sample:
Littlefoot had been sure that his mother’s voice would lead him to the Great Valley, but as he left the tunnel through the mountain, he felt a shock of cold air like he’s never experienced and he couldn’t see anything but white. He blinked his eyes, then shook his head hard. When he looked again, the landscape hadn’t changed.
Uncertain, he back-stepped, then turned to retreat back the way he had come. But the tunnel wasn’t there anymore. Instead, there were just bare trees. He couldn’t hear his mother’s voice anymore, either.
“…Cera?” he called. His voice sounded small in the cold air. “Ducky? Petrie! Spike!”
No one answered.
He turned around again, but paused, lowering his head to sniff at the white ground. It crunched under his feet and it was cold to the touch. He nuzzled at it, then jumped back when a small black thing landed just in front of his face. It looked like a rock, but it was smooth in an oddly artificial way. He eyed in curiously, but decided to disregard it. Finding the others was more important than some weird rock.
Craning his neck around, he spotted a strange mountain with surprisingly flat sides and top. It wasn’t very big-more of a hill than a mountain-but there were a lot of small figures moving around near it. They weren’t any creature Littlefoot recognized though: they walked on two legs like a big-mouth or-and the thought made his eyes widen in pre-emptive fear-a sharptooth, but their seemed to have strange pelts.
He took a few steps in their direction, awkward on this strange, white ground. Maybe they could explain how he’d gotten here and help him find the others.
First-Person Sample:
[The device falls to the ground, and the landing turns on the video. For a moment, there’s nothing, but then a big, gray nose snuffles at the device, nuzzling it across the ground.]
A rock...? Where’d it come from?
[The nose pulls away and the image is of a purple-gray blue for a moment before the camera auto-focuses, revealing a long-necked dinosaur. And it talks.]
But the only rocks from the sky are from burning mountains... [The small dinosaur sounds worried, and looks around, craning its neck to look over its shoulder.] I don’t see any but...but that doesn’t mean it’s safe.... I have to find the others and get out of here.
Cera? Petrie?! Ducky, Spike! Where are you?! Come out, you guys, we have to keep going! I know we’re close this time, so don’t go off alone again, please!