My Lion King Forum

Ever since the character Naanda was revealed in the two early TLK scripts and the TLK Blu-Ray, I've noticed something odd regarding the fandom's take on her. It seems like 99.9% of the time, she is described as Sarabi's sister.

The reason I find this strange is because she is just called Sarabi's sister in one of the early scripts (the Jaunary 1990 version, which also seems to be used for the caption of the storyboard art that Naanda appears in). In the May 1990 script, she is only described as Nala's mother, and she is Nala's mother in the January version as well (this makes it especially odd when Naanda and Sarafina are depicted as two separate characters in fan art).

I was just curious as to why nearly everyone tends to call Naanda Sarabi's sister. Is it just a lack of knowledge about the character or some other reason?

Well, truth be told I don't really know what the bulk of the fandom is getting up to nowadays, (I have a really irrational but very deep and profound dislike of Deviant Art and that seems to be where the activity of the fandom's moved to now--they're not going to TLKFAA anymore that's for sure!) but I think....

My gut feeling is that its that Sarabi is just such a question mark that people are desperate for something, anything even quasi-official to fill out her background, because she's a great character but isn't really given any additional information in even the subcanon comics and things.

When those scripts surfaced people were probably just so thrilled to almost, sort-of, kind-of, have *something* from Disney!

^I hear you on deviantart.

For me, the issue is fanfic. The Lion King is so popular that it is like crack to a lot of people! LOL!

[quote="cleargreenwater"]Well, truth be told I don't really know what the bulk of the fandom is getting up to nowadays, (I have a really irrational but very deep and profound dislike of Deviant Art and that seems to be where the activity of the fandom's moved to now--they're not going to TLKFAA anymore that's for sure!) but I think....[/quote]
I hear you. It's a little disheartening how the bulk of TLK art seems to be on DeviantART now, and a good portion of that seems to be recolored clipart or traces of screenshots.

[quote]My gut feeling is that its that Sarabi is just such a question mark that people are desperate for something, anything even quasi-official to fill out her background, because she's a great character but isn't really given any additional information in even the subcanon comics and things.[/quote]
I see what you're saying here, but even if Naanda's "sister status" were moved, Sarabi still has two other sisters in the early drafts (Diku and Dwala). Even without Naanda, she's got more siblings than Mufasa has.