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Dragon Ball: After the End

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NavySeel said:
Yeah because Goku did so well against Vegeta right?
It's not like Krillin, Gohan and a fat man with a sword played vital roles or anything.
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Vegeta attacking is a great story to tell the powerful arrogant. It is not a story to tell to speak of how getting stronger is important, the weak can matter, and so on.

Indeed, it is almost a story of the fruitlessness of training, as our heroes marathon train in preparation for Vegeta and Nappa arriving and are still so very, very weak.

It has messages poisonous to the pep talk we just delivered in character. It is about the powerlessness of the weak and the futility of training and more, unless we distort it in very specific directions.

Raditz is a story that fits what we literally just said in character. The good guys grew complacent, not training hard because they knew of no foe. Then the much stronger enemy comes along, and they prove a fight is more than just power, and yet the grave injuries/death of Not!Goku needn't have happened, had they simply kept training.

Vegeta is a story of being anti complacent and getting wrecked for not having natural advantages. This is not the message we want to send.
 
If you want a story about how their is always someone stronger then Beerus. Unfortunately we don't want to talk about super Saiyan God or most of the story.
 
fictionfan said:
If you want a story about how their is always someone stronger then Beerus. Unfortunately we don't want to talk about super Saiyan God or most of the story.
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I still stand by Raditz, for one because, if we mention it, there's the detail that Raditz was considered weak, which means, unlike Beerus, surpassing him isn't inherently noteworthy.

Raditz was stronger, but there was also those far stronger than him, and our heroes learned that pretty quick.
 
spiritualatheist said:
We should tell the story of the strongest man on Earth. I refer, of course to Mr. Satan.
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The Fourth Monado said:
pls no

pls never

that joke needs to die in a fire
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I mean, there's probably something to be said for how a cunning enough wit can ascend to greatness despite being totally outclassed by all his contemporaries, but that's not what we're really going for here.

I'm also glad the joke refuses to die, if only in the hope that someone will write/find elsewhere something that does the possibilities of Hercule's character's justice, though I suspect I'll be hoping for a while yet.

Lailoken said:
"Let me tell you about the time my granddaddy put a rabbit on the moon because he turned grandma into a carrot."
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We can't talk about the first appearance of The Enemy, that's too infohazard-y to be whitewashed.
 
What about the story about how Goku lost against Jackie Chun? The whole point of that story was to teach him that there is always someone stronger out there.
 
I am hereby volunteering to write an infohazard-sanitized version of the Raditz story for Karen to tell her friends, though it may take me, oh... 1-3 days to finish. A few sentences of the draft are written, no more than that tonight.

NavySeel said:
Yeah because Goku did so well against Vegeta right?
It's not like Krillin, Gohan and a fat man with a sword played vital roles or anything.
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Hard to explain Gohan's contribution without the part where he turns into a giant ragemonkey.

I mean, more generally we could pick the Vegeta story, but I'm with the others, I think the story of Raditz is a better fit than just about anything else in Dragonball Z.

If the message was "no matter how strong you are, overconfidence can lead you to expose a weakness and fall to a less powerful opponent," then that'd be great- that would be a good story to tell to, say, Jaron.

But we're trying to tell Sophie, Gemmy, and Jenna the lesson "less powerful opponents can take down a stronger one with teamwork and bravery, although PLEASE don't do anything stupid like getting yourselves killed trying to take down an alien soldier that someone else could handle instead." That narrative fits Raditz better, because of Gohan's contribution (screaming toddler headbutt attack!) and because nobody actually powered up to Raditz' level.

fictionfan said:
We call Goku Marsden and mention that our family is named after him.
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You know I was just thinking that.
 
Terrabrand said:
We either leave out the detail that it was faked, in which case I don't see how it's better than Raditz even there, or we include it and undermine the message flat out.
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We don't have to leave nearly as much out. Radiz had aliens and other planet he came from the fact that Goku was sent to kill all humans. How do we explain how Radiz was in the Genocide business when we are limiting the scope to one planet.

Also it wasn't fake. Master Roshi did win.
 
fictionfan said:
We don't have to leave nearly as much out. Radiz had aliens and other planet he came from the fact that Goku was sent to kill all humans. How do we explain how Radiz was in the Genocide business when we are limiting the scope to one planet.
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We don't. We just claim he was a conquering warrior and ordinary non-ki people can't take him on. Or that it was an ethnic cleansing type thing. Earth has had plenty of attempted genocides.

Meanwhile, it's a weaker narrative for our purposes because the only stake is pride, it's actually master Roshi tricking them for their own good, and they don't overcome through clever tactics.

It also has 'and Goku goes giant ape' as a pivotal moment, and features multiple inhuman or might as well be opponents if we go into the whole tourney.
 
We could also mention the approximate power levels they were at at the time, to give them a sense of scale?
 
Snippet- the prologue part of the storytelling!

"Now, Marsden was found as a baby in a shipwreck on the realm's shore, by his foster father-" you smile to yourself- "Jii. It was Jii who saw Marsden's potential and trained him in the ways of ki. Though this was ages ago, in the time before the immortals saw fit to teach the secrets of the greater powers to mortals. Even heroes were weaker then."

"Marsden had many adventures, beginning with his quest for the mystical Orbs of the Serpent, and ending when he saved the kingdom from Ma the Elder, a terrible demon from the blackest depths of the Unknown Realms, then defeated the Younger Ma, the demon's vengeful son, in a tournament of skill and prowess. He went on to marry his beloved, the Ox Princess, and have a healthy young son, whom he named Jii, after the kindly old man who raised him..."

[EDIT: Poptart has my formal permission to use any part or the entirety of anything I write pursuant to this 'storytime' exercise, at will, editing or not editing as they see fit. I say so now because I remember what happened with the first training omake. :p ]
 
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So I am guessing that we don't mention that Marsden was sent to kill them all? Honestly sending a baby to do that and the baby happening to hit it's head in just the right way seems unbelievable.
 
Would Marsden be the right name? Like, how long as the Goku clan used it?

Might be better use a different name, connected to Karen, as Kakara is a feminine form of Kakarot.
 
Well, @PoptartProdigy may know how long the Gokun royals have been using 'Marsden' as their Masqued name. I don't. I'll keep using 'Marsden' in my draft, in any case, unless someone comes up with something I feel I should switch to.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Gotcha!

Another question: is it generally believed by Garenhulders (or at least the Aramaians living in the general vicinity of Karen's hometown, such as the Misfits) that there's no such thing as magic? I ask because it slightly alters the tenor of the storytelling.
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That's actually a very disputed question. There are, of course, legends of mighty sorcerers (some in fact with a traceable heritage in early Masquerade slips, amusingly enough). Then there are people who say that magic couldn't possibly be real. And then there's Sophie's paternal grandfather, who won his property by successfully accusing somebody of witchcraft when he was a young man, and thus has damn good reason to never, ever back down on the subject.

It's been a turbulent few decades, and the population is firmly split between, "come on, grow up," and, "at this point, what isn't possible?"
 
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