Cera

Cera (also known as Sweet but Strong-willed Cera) or simply strong-willed Cera), is the deuteragonist and primary female character in The Land Before Time franchise. She is also the secondary antagonist of The Land Before Time.

She is a Triceratops, which is known as a "Threehorn" to the characters in the franchise. Cera's most recognizable trait is her bossy, skeptical and proud demeanor, which covers up her caring and sensitive side. As seen in The Wisdom of Friends and the television series, Cera can also have a fun-loving side if given proper stimulus first, the yellow bellies admiring her horn in the case of The Wisdom of Friends and Tria's secret mud pools in the case of the television series.

She has a father named Daddy Topps, whose personality is quite similar to hers, but much more severe. In fact, it is very likely that she learned her gruff, stubborn, bossy, and sometimes just plain mean side from her father. Her biological mother has not been seen since the original movie, but as of the eleventh installment, Invasion of the Tinysauruses, she has a stepmother named Tria. She also has numerous siblings, but the only prominent one is her half-sister, Tricia, the daughter of Tria and Daddy Topps. Cera is friends with the other six main characters of the franchise: Littlefoot, Ducky, Petrie, Spike, Chomper, and Ruby (that are Cera's friends), although her strongest friendships appear to be with Littlefoot and Ducky. In most instances in which the main characters are listed in order, she is placed second, after Littlefoot.

The character has come under a comfortable public reception, and has spawned plenty of merchandise, along with being mentioned in many other media. Similarly to the character Ducky, there has been confusion over Cera's species, although it has not been labelled incorrectly as often as Ducky's. The spelling of her name, however, has suffered from much more dispute. She is most commonly mistaken to be a Monoclonius, while her name is frequently mistaken to be spelled as "Sarah".

## Personality

### Pleasantries

Cera is often portrayed to be sweet and caring, but this side of her personality is masked most of the time by her more gruff exterior. A major example of her softer side is shown in 6, when she is watching over her niece and nephew. Although very stern, and at times cold towards them, especially when they start to play mischievous games, she still tries to be nurturing towards them. When they are too tired to walk home after Grandpa Longneck's storytelling, she agrees to carry them home, and endures having the horns in her frill playfully tugged at. Later, when returning them home after their venture to Saurus Rock, she gently lifts them out of the trunk they had hidden in from the pursuing *Allosaurus*, and smiles as she places them down again so they may cross it like a bridge, over the canyon. She also comforts them when they are upset about the tooth which fell off of the neck of the rock formation, although she returns to her no-nonsense authority when they say she told them to get lost the day before, after she blames Littlefoot for the events that day.

Another instance of her caring demeanor is in *The Land Before Time XI: Invasion of the Tinysauruses*, when she softly tells Tria that she believes the reason Daddy Topps was so mean to the Tinysauruses was because he felt that they had effectively hurt Tria when they ate the tree sweets off of the tree, as she could no longer have the first one of the year.

Cera is also shown to be very polite and ladylike when relaxed, in "The Mysterious Tooth Crisis". When Littlefoot and Ducky run to Tria's secret mud pool in search of Ruby, they meet up with Cera while she is mudbathing. They at first mistake her for somebody else, until she lifts up a lily pad she was wearing as a hat, and are surprised to see that she is in a calm, gentle state.

Another example of Cera's ever developing character is in *The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends*, during the "Yellow Belly Bounce" scene. At first, she claims the Yellow Bellies "look so silly" singing and dancing, but after one of them complements her horn, Cera is later seen singing and dancing with other yellow bellies. This shows that despite her sharing her father's views in the first movie and later sequels, Cera has become open to all species, even ones such as the Yellow Bellies who have a different way of doing things than most dinosaurs do.

### Bigotry and Dominance

In the original *The Land Before Time*, Cera had an antagonistic side because she is very bitter, arrogant, obnoxious, argumentative, and (like her father) bigoted towards other species (an allegory for racism). This is first shown when she tells Littlefoot that "threehorns never play with longnecks" and that "they only talk to other threehorns and they only travel with other threehorns", and was made explicit when she told Littlefoot that "My father told me that flatheads (a racial slur directed at longnecks) have very small brains." As they were searching for the Great Valley, she takes control of the group from Littlefoot after his search for the Great Valley yields no results. She begins to reform only after a rather severe humiliation when she begs for Littlefoot or any of the others to save her from a tar monster - not knowing that the tar monster is in fact Littlefoot and the others. She angrily leaves. Then, she turned sad and cries because, as the narrator says, "*Cera was still too proud to admit that she'd gone the wrong way*."

In later films, Cera is not as bigoted as she had been in the first film. In fact, by the events of 5, Cera is so used to living in a diverse-species community that when the [reat Valley herd is forced to leave the Valley and perhaps break up and join other herds, Cera says "I don't wanna live with a bunch of threehorns, they're too bossy!" In other films, she is shown to be aggravated when her father, who is still somewhat of a segregationist, warns her against interaction with other species, as in 3, when Daddy Topps tells her not to play with Littlefoot after he mistakenly believes the latter deliberately wasted water. She then says that he just doesn't want her to have fun, and hides away in the tall grass.

However, she still has maintained her dominant and egotistical behavior, as seen on multiple occasions, such as in the beginning of *The Mysterious Island*, when she says that the remaining treestar on one of the trees should go to her, professing that she is the oldest of the group (despite the fact that Ducky was shown to be born before Cera). Later in the film, when the herd of the Great Valley is migrating in search of a place with food, and Daddy Topps and Littlefoot's grandfather begin arguing over which direction to walk in, she gets angry and attacks Littlefoot when he says that her father was being impolite to his grandfather. More noticeably, in *Journey through the Mists*, she is upstanding to Ali after she shows fear towards Cera and the rest of Littlefoot's friends, believing her to be cowardly. She also grows jealous and offended after Littlefoot thanks Ali for getting help from the others when he had been trapped in the cave after the earthquake, but does not thank Cera for knocking down enough of the rocks blocking the entrance to one of the chambers, that he could get out. Also, in 9, she is jealous of Mo for the attention and popularity he quickly receives from her friends, and deliberately insults him. Her dominance and impatience often times quarrel with Littlefoot; this is usually towards Littlefoot's actions and persistance which at most times is pointless, and mundane in her opinion; implicating that she stays to code with Threehorn's beliefs that everybody should survive on their own. This high strung ignorance is what normally causes conflicts with Littlefoot amongst their group, concerning on their own well-being and their worrying parents and who is in charge in the realms of their situations, and in some cases it has escalated to where both characters have gotten into physical confrontations this being seen in the first, second and fifth films. When confront with Littlefoot, Cera is often seen by the others as the word of reason and listen more to her when their adventures are ongoing and seem to have no end as the press onward; relatively though this is due to her being a Threehorn, being more equipped with a offense/defensive horn and her aggressive behavior.

### Bravery

Cera tries her best to show no fear, and often professes that she can defend the others, as in 5, when the children see the tracks of a predatory creature heading away from their direction, and she states that she'll fight it if it comes back. In the TV episode "The Spooky Nighttime Adventure", she denies being able to have sleep stories (dreams) in order to hide the fact that she has been having nightmares about the "Hidden Runner". She has no problem bragging about her accomplishments in dangerous situations, even going so far as to fabricate entire portions of the story to improve her image. However, in the TV episode "The Amazing Threehorn Girl", she tries at first to be modest and truthful when everyone in the Great Valley believes that she gallantly dealt with the belly draggers who had been pursuing the children, and frightened them away. She only begins to act more like her normal self after the citizens pressure her to tell them the story of how she did it, many times over. Despite her usual self-proclaims, Cera typically runs away at the first sign of any real danger; an early instance of this being in the first *The Land Before Time*, when she encounters the Sharptooth in the big underground, and out of spite, headbutts him in and around the eye several times, but screams and runs away when this awakens him.

Cera has a fear of heights, as shown in *The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island* when she feels nervous about walking across the log Chomper showed them, and in 6, when she is reluctant to hop on the pillars which originally stood in the canyon. She also has a fear of lightning, shown in the original film, when a thunderstorm breaks out shortly after her hatching, and she hides under her mother for protection; also, in 2}}, she refuses to follow her friends into a cave until lightning flashes in the sky, and she runs screaming into the cave in terror. In *The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island*, she mentions in the song "Always There" that she possesses a fear of storms in general. It is also revealed in this film that she is violently prone to sea-sickness.

### Skepticism

Cera is shown to be very skeptical on many occasions. In 7, she mentions in the song "Beyond the Mysterious Beyond" that she only trusts what she can see with her eyes, and she continually expresses doubt that the "Stone of Cold Fire" really has any magical powers. In 9, she assumes Littlefoot imagined Mo when Mo dives under water before she and the others see him. In the TV episode "The Meadow of Jumping Waters", she expresses disbelief in the existence of "water that jumps" (erupting geysers), until she finally sees the meadow. She also refuses, like the others, to believe that the red tickly treestars Spike ate have brought them bad luck. Also, in the episode "Through the Eyes of a Spiketail", she quickly doubts the existence of the hardwater sweets (frozen grapes), despite Littlefoot's reminders that Mr. Thicknose had said they are difficult to find.

In "[he Bright Circle Celebration", Cera dismisses Petrie's explanation that the Bright Circle Celebration is done because the Bright Circle (sun) likes to be thanked for shining every day. Interestingly, it appears in this episode that Cera and her father believe that the sky is round and the earth is flat, similarly to the accepted theories of the Middle Ages.