Next thing: people complaining that Dandeer is a boring villain- of course she's a boring villain, you engage with Yammar more than you do with her!
Every time you've been around Dandeer since the Sealing, you have consistently voted to antagonize or evade her. You do not interact with her; you do not investigate her; you do not ask about her. She's been staying in Clan Vegeta, well away from you, as much as she can, and you've been content to leave her well enough alone. I have a lot of work put into this character. What you've seen from her is a very singular side of her. But you have never given me real opportunity to show anything else about her. It hasn't happened. I can't work with that, because -- contrary to opinion -- this is not a fanfic! If I want to show off a character, I need there to be a situation where the player base goes and interacts with them. Dandeer isn't going to willingly interact with you; it's clear you hate her. And you all have never voted to investigate her Clan, and learn about her. So of course she seems flat. That frustrates me too; I've put a lot of work into her that I'm sure is never going to come to light. I feel like I've wasted my time; and worse, that I will never be able to convince people that the waste was not my doing.
The thing is, Dandeer
used to be interesting. Back when she was a broken woman who had snapped and decided to try and save the idealized family that she never really had. When she was a flawed mother, who none the less was willing to use every measure of her power to save her family, even if it was destroying them and her people. That was
fascinating. It was something so unlike Dragon Ball, but fit so well despite that.
And then you dropped the Sorcerer Massacre bomb, and it turned out she was just evil. That pretty much killed all of my interest in the character right there. She's
boring. I understand that you might have pages of notes on how fascinating she is, but
we don't have that. To us, she is a millstone around the neck of an excellent story. A boring obstacle we can't surpass because she's the world's most competent idiot, apparently. It is the duty of the writer to figure out a way to make characters interesting, and it is the duty of the GM to work with the players and their choices to make a compelling story.
The conspiracy was entirely a waste of time. We spent all our effort in preparing it, because it was the path we had chosen to beat her, using our social ability, and it was pointless. Because she had already beaten us the moment we chose that path, by subverting everyone. We should have given up two years ago and decided to do something else instead, because we didn't have a chance.
And frankly, this entire situation was handled wrong. This should never have been a combat situation. We, the players, have spent the last two years preparing for a political and social confrontation. We have trained for that situation because, fool us, we expected to need to be good at politics and social in a quest that seems itself as being political and societal.
Suddenly throwing us into a combat situation may have been good writing, but it was not good GMing. A GM needs to base their actions around the players, so as not to give them no win scenarios. And for all of the protestations that we might have still been able to win, it never felt like that.
From the moment we leapt headfirst into combat without a choice, it's felt like we've been desperately diving to avoid a hail of bullet. This update was simply the inevitable moment when we got hit.
Don't we all, thankfully we're leaving this shit hole so hopefully it can actually get fun.
This Shit Hole
was the fun. Interacting with our friends and family, helping move along Saiyan society, dealing with our burgeoning political power. There were several very interesting plots just waiting in the wings for this one dragging arc to be over.
We needed to prepare for the alien invasion. We needed to help integrate with human society. We needed to continue training up our friends. We needed to deal with the fallout from Dandeer. We needed to start interacting more with Saiyan society.
All of that is gone now. Many interesting plots thrown out the window. It won't be here when we eventually get back in a few RL years.
The most interesting part of this quest was never the combat, it was playing a Pacifist Saiyan in her quest to make her people better. And we've just lost that. Now it's time for a new quest, one in which Kakara travels the galaxy to become better at punching people.
And frankly? That sounds way less interesting than what we were going to be doing before.
