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Dragon Ball: After the End

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Personally, I'd have rather had a Bad End than this weird 'you lose, but not really, cause reasons'.

So I'm guessing this still isn't enough for the mc to IT behind Dandeer, grab her tail, then splatter her head like an overripe tomato?
 
I just feel sick and helpless. I felt it on the Vegeta vote when the last call was made for people to vote for it and no one did and I just couldn't think of any more arguments that had not already been said. Now it is worse because all the things I feared have now happened.
odin lowe said:
Personally, I'd have rather had a Bad End than this weird 'you lose, but not really, cause reasons'.

So I'm guessing this still isn't enough for the mc to IT behind Dandeer, grab her tail, then splatter her head like an overripe tomato?
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I feel like the quest has already bad endded. I mean if we run and play as some ghost it is not really the same quest. It is some other quest that this was the prolog to.
 
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I probably shouldn't be commenting further, but I'd like to explain why I was so harsh earlier.

It's the statement that Dandeer is an idiot, when her actions are in fact, the actions of a genius who leaves nothing to chance.

This had the potential to actually be a solid, scripted loss. "You never had a chance, because the cards you needed to win were aggressively denied to you. She didn't act against you not out of lack of awareness, but because the only people who could teach you the necessary skills had been subverted before you were born. You never had a chance to beat her. And that's what gives you a chance to win now, because she's no longer watching you, content in her crushing victory."

Instead, it was "Your mistake was being a good person, who didn't just crush her skull unceremoniously, because she's an idiot, and you can't outwit an idiot."

Thematically, it's basically flaying the skin off the original work and draping it over a grim and gritty teenage fanfic. (The original themes being "The only thing that gives the heroes a chance is their friendship, courage, and ability to cover each other's backs when they're down. Where your mentors don't solve your problems, but give you the skills needed to win.")

Because as you've portrayed it, the fatal flaw of the character was to trust their mentors. And that's why I call this game trash.
 
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Alectai said:
I probably shouldn't be commenting further, but I'd like to explain why I was so harsh earlier.

It's the statement that Dandeer is an idiot, when her actions are in fact, the actions of a genius who leaves nothing to chance.

This had the potential to actually be a solid, scripted loss. "You never had a chance, because the cards you needed to win were aggressively denied to you. She didn't act against you not out of lack of awareness, but because the only people who could teach you the necessary skills had been subverted before you were born. You never had a chance to beat her. And that's what gives you a chance to win now, because she's no longer watching you, content in her crushing victory."

Instead, it was "Your mistake was being a good person, who didn't just crush her skull unceremoniously, because she's an idiot, and you can't outwit an idiot."

Thematically, it's basically flaying the skin off the original work and draping it over a grim and gritty teenage fanfic. (The original themes being "The only thing that gives the heroes a chance is their friendship, courage, and ability to cover each other's backs when they're down. Where your mentors don't solve your problems, but give you the skills needed to win.")

Because as you've portrayed it, the fatal flaw of the character was to trust their mentors. And that's why I call this game trash.
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I don't see how it would have required going to that extreme? As I mentioned earlier, hitting her hard, fast, and without warning would seem to have worked fine based on the information we have now.
 
Yeah I'm out.

Hated the Sorceror-God Dandeer from the beginning and was only sticking around because I thought it was finally going to be over.

Instead we have a contrived loss based entirely on everyone being idiots whose first action wasn't to perform the only action that makes sense and take down the critical threat as a first move before any dramatic confrontation. QM has been disingenuous and shat all over the idea of player agency.

Unless the very next action is a hail Mary that fucking ENDS THIS bullshit then we have the rapey adventures of mass rapist on mind rape world, and funnily enough I have literally no interest in reading that.
 
On second thought I am going to stick around.

Now is the time for one last try at winning. Either it will work or this quest will be over either way we don't have to deal with Dandeer anymore.
 
Agreed. Sorry @PoptartProdigy, but you went too far this time. We fight, we try to get the Senzus and Maya out if people somehow still care, we try to get to Super Saiyan 2, and then I'm done until fucking Dandeer is gone.
 
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PoptartProdigy said:
This one's not over by a long shot.
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HAHAHAHA no. Sorry, but it is. You just had the future self of the protagonist tell her the goal we have spent this entire quest fighting for was worthless, that there was no point to all of our effort, and that we should just run away with our tail between our legs and let the person Kakara hates so much she physically is incapable of hating her more than she already does win. You do not get to pull that, and then claim that it's not over. Because it is.
 
On second thought, @Simon_Jester (and anyone else ill-effected by it) I do want to apologize for the last lines of that post, at least. The tone there was out of line, and symptom of vestigial and renewed frustration. None of you deserved to be subject to that. (I have deleted/modified those lines, for anyone looking.)

There are absolutely things I would rather have been done differently regarding player agency, and I find your post to be well-constructed criticism, even if I disagree with it on several points.

On another note, I really don't think that PoptartProdigy deserves all the vitriol they're getting from this. I don't really think anyone does.
 
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I mostly have been interested in this quest for the political aspects. Guiding Saiyan society. Many of our actions have been preparing for that. Dandeer was a sort of side quest. Honestly I got tired of the sealing arc a long long time ago, but it gave a good reason for why Kakara might take over from her father earlier than might have been the case.

Then we found out that Dandeer is super evil and the Gene shifted. Didn't really like that, but she was going to be gone in a month anyway so does not really change anything.

Then we found out that Dandeer had 3 of the super saiyans subverted meaning that she could have taken over years ago. Hell she could have done it before Kakara even because a FPSS. The numbers were on her side.

Then we find out that she had the seers subverted as well because why not? Might as well if mind control is so easy and undetectable.

I don't see why Dandeer held back at all when she clearly hated us. She had the fire power to take over years ago. Especially if she acted on her own time table.

I felt mad at first. Now I just feel empty.
 
chryssalideater said:
From what I recall, opinion there was "trust the adults."

Well, that's not happening again. we persona 5 now bois
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:D Yeah this is basically what's going through my head right now. I feel we lost the moment we trusted anyone with anything important. I can honestly say I've taken something valuable away from this update. Yammar was right. We didn't rely on ourselves for this and it went up in flames. A plan carried out by other people, a team of other people, a confrontation (don't get me started on this) made to be effective because of the presence of others,etc. We could've done most of this ourselves (barring unsealing Jaffur) and the very act of including anyone else damned us. A quick unsealing, IT, sneak up, neck snap(or head knock I GUESS), and an apology (that thing we're spec'd at doing) and we'd be peachy. My main hope is that we learn from this. That if all else fails you learn to rely on yourself and to always expect to fail.

Liked the update though, read REALLY nicely (no this isn't sarcasm)! :D
 
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Maybe I don't have a proper right to comment because I haven't been as active and invested in this Quest as everyone else, but I feel like weighing in on these recent developments.

Checking back through the threadmarks, this recent incident properly started once we had Jaron and were started on unsealing him. That update was on July 10th. It is now September 2nd. Adjust dates for timezones as needed.

Since then, we've been trying to beat Dandeer. That's a long time. Maybe the pacing works better if you go through it all at once, some Quests end up like that, heck I'm told the big event in one of mine works better like that. The issue, though, is that I can barely remember what Dandeer was doing through any of that.

Oh, as an obstacle, she's been there. But as a character? As a personality?

*Shrugs*

She's irrelevant.

I think that's the main issue I'm having, personally. It was less of one earlier when it was about the intrigue, but even then, I had more investment in Kakara and her dad and their potential conflict. A potential conflict which is gone the moment Dandeer mindwhammies him.

Yammar's basically the closest we've had to the main personality of our opponents, and honestly? I don't care about him as much. He's mindwhammied. He didn't intentionally fight us or let himself be mindwhammied for some reason. We're not fighting Yammar, we're fighting Dandeer's Yammar-themed puppet.

So as far as it goes, I'm just... Bored, of Dandeer. She's not a villain, she's an obstacle attached to a name. So when Dandeer's winning, I just kinda... Don't care. Because it's not a villain beating Kakara, it's Kakara failing to overcome the obstacle attached to her name.

The idea of having to deal with Dandeer more isn't one that makes me want to keep reading. Especially since the majority of her supporters are unwilling puppets, which means it's hard to get invested in conflict with them when any conflict to come of that is just "Dandeer wants them to fight so their personality is superseded with that."

And honestly, it wasn't the conflict that hooked me to this Quest in the first place. I looked in because it was Dragon Ball, but it was when I saw you'd picked the pacifist character origin.

So honestly, at this point, the most satisfying narrative that I could see following up from here is just Kakara going for the kill and then dealing with the fallout of that. Kakara dealing with the guilt of that and the character interactions that come from people she knows knowing she was pushed that far sound far more interesting to me than Dandeer surviving the next update.

And... Yeah, that's about it.

TL;DR: Dandeer just kinda lacks enough personality that she's not entertaining as a villain, and dealing with more of this doesn't sound like my definition of a good time. I've been having fun lurking in this Quest so far, and I probably will keep reading after this, but hopefully we get back to stuff that isn't Dandeer sooner rather than later.
 
I mean, I personally don't feel particularly railroaded (though that was because I expected this update to end with Yammar knocking us out

It seems like we lost the fight due to a combination of bad luck (Berra one-shotting Jaffur and Vegeta one-shotting us) and bad decisions (not knocking out Vegeta as soon as possible), as well as the fact that Dandeer had as much prep as we did. I mean, from the start of the fight, she had three skilled Super Saiyans (Vegeta, Berra and Yammar) and a the best sorcerer in the world, while we had one relatively unskilled Super Saiyan (Kakara), one Super Saiyan that was likely still a bit rusty (Apra), one very skilled Super Saiyan (Jaffur) as well as the second best sorcerer in the world. It's really not that surprising we lost, though it wouldn't be that surprising if we won either.

Strategically, I also remember a suggestion (from somebody, don't remember why) to ask Dandelor about if Dandeer could have messed with other people's memoeries that never really got anywhere (which could have discovered Yammar being compromised) , and we could also have gotten Spirit Saiyan beforehand. I personally trusted the Seers too much even after we figured out that Dandeer's sorcery could mess with the sight (memories of the Sealing).

Now, you could say we got railroaded into a fight with Dandeer instead of being given an option to vote after we had convinced Berra, but I really doubt that would have mattered. Because, well, I doubt we'd have voted for either Spirit Saiyan or ordering Yammar not to grab her at that time or done anything other than immediately heading for her. I personally was afraid that Berra was subverted, but I thought that if he was, that'd be Dandeer messing with him so he'd be unable to aknowledge any evidence of the Sealing being wrong (thus playing on his psychological weakness, because he doesn't want to to be wrong either) rather than a direct mind-control spell.

Now, as for whether us ending up in a fight with Yammar rather than getting a vote after grabbing Dandeer is railroading or not, I really don't know yet, because it was Yammar that started that fight, not us (personally I'd have tried to grab Jaffur as well, then escape to the other side of the planet, give him a bean and charge up Spirit Saiyan). I'd also say that I think large updates like just read better than short updates.

I also very much don't think PoptartProdigy was planning for us to lose all along, given the existence of Tamar as well as the Krillin Style kick we had a vision of earlier, though I do think they were planning for a possible loss.

And, well, if we're forced to mind project ourselves into space, that's an excellent opportunity to try and contact 17 and 18, who according to Meerak were ones who made Tamar head to Garenhuld in the first place.
 
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I- why the fuck did we not stop for a vote when we grabbed Dandeer? What part of the vote gave any indication that we wanted to fight?

We literally just had a long plan retconned into nonexistence so we can't make long plans, and now if we make short plans the PC goes and starts suicidally fighting? What the fuck?

This was a scripted loss, and it feels incredibly shitty.
 
PoptartProdigy said:
She sighs. "Do you honestly think she had anything to do with that? Yammar basically handed himself to her on a silver platter. He came after her the night after the Sealing, and even she could see that coming. She had a spell set up to trap him. Not enough that he'd suddenly love her or anything, but enough that he'd be passive and ineffective about taking her down, and that if she needed to, she could turn him with a touch."
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This doesn't make sense to me. If prepared ground was enough to beat a raging full powered super Saiyan why would Dandeer need Bara's help to restrain Jaffur a sleeping not full powered super Saiyan in her own house?
 
fictionfan said:
I mostly have been interested in this quest for the political aspects. Guiding Saiyan society. Many of our actions have been preparing for that. Dandeer was a sort of side quest. Honestly I got tired of the sealing arc a long long time ago, but it gave a good reason for why Kakara might take over from her father earlier than might have been the case.

Then we found out that Dandeer is super evil and the Gene shifted. Didn't really like that, but she was going to be gone in a month anyway so does not really change anything.

Then we found out that Dandeer had 3 of the super saiyans subverted meaning that she could have taken over years ago. Hell she could have done it before Kakara even because a FPSS. The numbers were on her side.

Then we find out that she had the seers subverted as well because why not? Might as well if mind control is so easy and undetectable.

I don't see why Dandeer held back at all when she clearly hated us. She had the fire power to take over years ago. Especially if she acted on her own time table.

I felt mad at first. Now I just feel empty.
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This. So much this. Dandeer has been built up as an unstopible incarnation of evil by @PoptartProdigy, and has been given every single advantage since the start, in a way specifically tailored to render the plan people spent years working on a liability. She comes a across less as a character and more of a plot device that mind rapes anything and everything in a way that is somehow completely undetectable and unbreakable by the might of an entire race for five years. She pulls shit out of her ass, and whenever it seems like we might an actual advantage for once, @PoptartProdigy just throws something else in to make it useless because why not. I want my quest back. I want the incredible story that I have followed for years, whose writer I respected enough to ask them personally to let me use their mechanics for my own back. I want to head out and show the aliens that they messed with the wrong Exiles. I want to see
Jaffur get his sanity back, because he has been through too damn much with his brother. I just want Dandeer to not be here anymore.
 
fictionfan said:
This doesn't make sense to me. If prepared ground was enough to beat a raging full powered super Saiyan why would Dandeer need Bara's help to restrain Jaffur a sleeping not full powered super Saiyan in her own house?
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… Because Dandeer was lying? Also, because she might not have had the ability to prepare for Jaffur and Yammar in a close enough timeframe?

Like. We know that some portion of the events of the sealing was 'shit Dandeer engineered to lie to the populace'. So why wouldn't that apply to the idea she needed help?
 
fictionfan said:
This doesn't make sense to me. If prepared ground was enough to beat a raging full powered super Saiyan why would Dandeer need Bara's help to restrain Jaffur a sleeping not full powered super Saiyan in her own house?
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In short, she didn't need Berra's help.

Not for the actual execution anyway. She's entirely capable of subverting anyone at any time, entirely trivially.

What she needed from Berra was political support. If she'd sealed Vegeta and Jaffur without any involvement from Berra the entire Vegeta clan would have torn her to shreds. Especially Raditz.
 
Our control over kakara is on a downward trend, first thread discussion was removed as an influemce to her thoughts then long form voting was removed. Maybe these were done for good reason but they have effectively caused kakara to act in a way that the thread did not predict or agree with in a highly contentious situation.
 
Carrnage said:
Our control over kakara is on a downward trend, first thread discussion was removed as an influemce to her thoughts then long form voting was removed. Maybe these were done for good reason but they have effectively caused kakara to act in a way that the thread did not predict or agree with in a highly contentious situation.
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Yeah, so we don't control her interpretation of the vote. How the fuck do you read the vote to get into a long fight with Yammar?
 
You know with how Masks work why in the world were Jaffur and Vegeta both sleeping at the same time? In fact with how much of a workaholic Jaffur was and is why was he sleeping at all? I didn't question it at the time because I didn't understand how masks work, but now I am feeling cognitive dissonance.
 
I'm electing to believe the vision of 'future us' was a plot from the subverted seers to get us out of Dandeer's hair, mostly just because I refuse to accept this loss, especially if this loss starts us down the path of that version of us. Not saying we didn't earn it, but Dragonball is all about refusing to accept a loss and somehow winning anyway, because reasons.

Admittedly I'm not sure how to turn this into a win and I'll confess I'm a spiteful enough person that I'd vote just about anything to ruin Dandeer's day because I'm sick and tired of her, so me voting is probably a bad idea.

Also, I strongly disagree that this arc is over. When Goku had to train to beat Piccolo, the arc didn't change. When everyone had to get ready for the Cell Games, it was still the Cell Saga. When Tao almost killed Goku, that was still the Red Ribbon arc. If you think this arc is over then one of us is making a serious mistake in our judgement of the players. Personally I won't accept that this is over until it's actually over. If it's been 20 years in real life and a thousand updates and in that time we fight and beat Freiza, Cell, Buu, Broly, Beerus, The Enemy, and The Enemy's Dog, it'll still be the Dandeer arc in my mind until we beat her.
 
redzonejoe said:
Hmm. Excellent! So very rare to have a QM actually allow the players to lose. Well done!

And it's not even a final loss. It's just another chapter in the grand story that is Kakara's life. Sometimes heroes lose, but getting back up to fight the good fight is what makes for the most compelling of hero driven tales. Bravo @PoptartProdigy , I have more faith in you as a writer than ever before.
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Ditto.



Cariyaga said:
Oh, I wasn't talking about any of the votes along the fight; I was talking about before we even arrived at the hall.
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Ooh! Ooh! Add, "Chibifying the remorseless evil lizard instead of properly supervising and exploiting him", to the list!

It is astonishing that anybody is trying to argue that the latest developments are anything other than the predictable and predicted results of awful player decisions.
 
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