#Vegeta meta

[dragomer]

Thank you. And if you don't mind, can you roast review this discourse about redemption arcs?

https://www.tumblr.com/dushman-e-jaan/694120765277306880/why-do-you-dislike-zuko-and-kurapika-when-the?source=share

Oh god, if it's anything like the previous one, I don't think I'm mentally prepared for it.

Okay, I skimmed through it and I don't have much more to say than about the previous post, except that in addition to being an immature redditor who can't be concise and is desperately trying to sound smart and grown up, they are also clearly trying way too hard to be edgy.

I've rarely seen someone managed to be that comically stupid while still being beyond uninteresting to the point that just trying to read their post make my eyes roll back so hard, I see my brain. It has a lot of volume but it's so empty and artificially pumped there's nothing to take apart.

The only response to that entire thing is 'Yes, it's a kids show, no, it doesn't become bad just because you grew up and no, acknowledging old stuff is good is not nostalgia, you are not more grown up for deluding yourself like that', there is literally nothing more to say or address.

The fact that they whine about 'not addressing the harsh realities of Imperialism' (yes, it does, you're just mad they do it with nuance instead of indulging your edgy murderboner, they even acknowledge the fact that it would create a 'mixed race' class between the colonized and the 'colonizer' and thus mean you literally can't do anything about it without denying an entire innocent demographic their right to exist, which is infinitely harsher than any surface level edgy nonsense you can fathom) while also whining that every 'revolutionary' (IE terrorists, because the Gaang, Hakoda's crew and the White Lotus are all revolutionaries, just not terrorists) is treated as insane is quite funny, they literally can't handle the harsh truth that slaughtering powerless civilians make you an insane murderer, no matter what 'greater good' you're ranting about.

Just say you simp for Hama and her Jason Voorhees LARP and Jet's delusional plan to drown an innocent town Ozai couldn't give less of a shit about and would have probably burned down anyway and go instead of whining like that.

Also the bit about Vegeta being a 'softy' for his 'waifu' show he clearly has no clue about any of the shows he's talking about. Vegeta had no qualms about killing Bulma or letting her die UNTIL he had his redemption, even in the Buu saga he came close to killing her without giving a shit once he went Majin. Dude unironically did not watch the show.

Gotta love the 'It's the death of creativity!' from someone who's clearly a pretend artist who didn't even have enough balls to try and become a frustrated failed artist. You couldn't make a character anyone give a shit about to save your life, dude, sit down.

Thanks for the ask ^^

[upwards-descent]

Please reblog to enhance sample size!

[himbocorgi]

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[celestial-alignment]

Saw this DBS clip and a lot of the comments were people saying that Piccolo has no right to judge Vegeta, that everyone is forgetting that Piccolo was also a villain once, too. I was going to respond in the comments, but then I realized I don't want to deal with the argumentative dude bro fans of Dragon Ball, so I'm just gonna vent my opinions here... Okay, rant incoming because I'm stuck at home sick and feeling some cabin fever. Honestly, I don't blame Piccolo for having his doubts. He was there almost every time Vegeta did something with possibly world-ending consequences. Vegeta being the one to threaten the planet in the Saiyan Saga. Vegeta letting Cell go to his perfect form. Vegeta going Majin. All for selfish reasons. Yeah, at the end of the Buu Saga he came around, but... it's hard to ignore the years and years of Veggie's A-hole behavior lol. Also, Piccolo DOES have the right to judge. He started off as a villain, but he never really followed through with the evil things he intended to do. He destroyed the island during the 23rd World Tournament AFTER everyone already evacuated. He saved that rando kid and his mom from a falling sign. He caused Goku a lot of damage in the tournament, but not nearly as much damage (physically and psychologically tbh) as Goku caused him, and the way he raised/trained Gohan was to the extent of how he grew up. I would also argue that he was showing signs of being softer long before he ever even fused with Kami or Nail just because he was caring for Gohan (and how could you not, Gohan is the purest cutest thing). Also, Chi-Chi is definitely projecting here, but that's a rant for another day.

[not-souleaterpost]

People on here who think even anime Crona didn't deserve redemption or needed to be severaly punished after watching DBZ:

[unboundpower]

I'm watching "Why It Sucks to Be Born as a SAIYAN" by SUPER RAMY on youtube, and while there's a lot of information that's *imo* inaccurate and headcanons I don't agree with....man. Has it gotten my Gine muse surging. (Not for RP specifically, just in general.)

Because, how the Saiyan character who's the focus in the video is portrayed is basically a summary for most of the headcanons I have for Gine (a lot of them I haven't talked about publicly yet). Namely, how living the life of a low class Saiyan was so fucking miserable and she knew them all being used as tools for Frieza AND (to a lesser degree) the elites wasn't right, but there was nothing that she could do about it. Because 'too weak'.

Even still, Gine knew that the propaganda low class warriors were brainwashed by was total bullshit. Her people could've been so much more than what they were: divided by the caste system and overall made to suffer because of the Cold family's racism. Her psychology regarding her own life and Raditz's birth is especially juicy (and deserves its own post; otherwise this will be 20x longer).

As much as I appreciate the general things she brought to the table as being Goku's mother, Gine SUCKS in canon. She's Nothingburger The Character™ there, but the version of her in my head?? Peak, if I do say so myself.

(I do legit think that, if Planet Vegeta never got destroyed and she got the Right Kick, MY Gine would've eventually become a full on rebel going against the status quo & advocating for change - even if she was killed for it. Basically what Bardock tried to do, difference being his intentions were born more from revenge & desperation than an active desire for change.)

[treepan0]

Sol lore drop

a bit of stuff for my random for funsies heroes word mission inspired character Sol, because I'm bored so why not? warning light world mission spoilers, mainly on Beat. additionally she has to versions her original word mission for fun version, and a fanfic exclusive version because I kind of low key like her for being a for fun character.

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so Sol isn't fully limited to heros, but that is where she started out. It mainly started with Beat and some details about him, mainly the fact he's actually a distant descendant of Goku. With the assumption of this meaning the series is like a very distant future to the GT timeline, we can now begin on who Sol is as a character and other stuff.

So beginning with her name Sol is actually coming from insolation, which should tell you that she uses the Frieza clan avatar option. this is inspired by the fact that some girls who play games with custom characters often choose masculine options, as many don't want any guys knowing for a number of reasons.

moving on to that GT timeline theory and inspired by beat's whole related to Goku thing, I added some of my love for giant monster movies so she's not a direct copy. So here's what happened pretty much: someone farther back wasn't fully cured at the end of the Baby saga, but he was already taken out by then and they were to weak so the dna just remained dormant in the bloodline.

coming around back to word mission Sol begins to register for the card game and start competing for the first time, Cooler is already her favorite character so she chooses the Frieza clan berserker avatar. as it's an easy option that easily hide's her feminine nature while playing, and Sol would rather not have people be rude or creepy about her being a girl. though her avatar has decorations on his horns, almost resembling earrings. (refrencing a type of jewelry a lot of people design for non human characters, in her case it's horn jewelry since her avatar doesn't have ears)

her avatar leans into Cooler further and resembles the level 3rd upgrade, additionally fully embracing the butterfly like shapes because that's what they remind me of, his back spikes are 4 instead of the 6 on the design furthering the accidental butterfly look. (the 3rd frieza clan berserker already looks a lot like Cooler's fourth form, it's just a little more with her because Froze leans into Frieza a bit more)

similar to Beat and everyone else she opens the first packet everyone gets, though in her case she obtains a Baby card that makes her feel really strange. Then when she's rounded up as an ally, her genetics don't reignite until she's pitted against Baby. From then on depending on how the player treats her, her role would change.

If the player is kind to her, she'll be a great ally that also gives boosts to her own team when used. Sol would also adopt other behaviors such as trading cards with beat and froze, mainly consisting of trading Frieza and Goku for cards related to Baby, Cooler, any card related to truffles or any card related to Cooler. (so that would mean Baby, Cooler, Dr. Lychee, Hatchiyack, the twins, any machine mutant or any of the armored squadron)

in game based thinking I imagine the player could trade a variety of cards for different ones, especially trading weaker ones or duplicate points to obtain a stronger card. Mainly I see her trade menu being a way to get some characters stronger, rather than just locking them away in the box.

in the event that the player is mean to her, Sol becomes a great enemy to the player. she starts becoming a time traveling nuisance, with no real care for the problems she causes. on the highest level of dislike, she ends up teaming up with certain canon characters. in other words she's someone you want to be nice to, because I imagine her having a really difficult boss battle if she was an actual game character.

both instances her tuffle and machine mutant genetics start affecting her avatar with time, making her resemble the frieza clan elite higher level designs more and more with time in the sense of robotic parts. slowly her design adopts more robotic parts, until eventually her design resembles an in between of an icejin and a machine mutant tuffle. her avatar keeps his black bodysuit, as it still fits in. (think kind of like Baby's roboform, with a bit of meta cooler influence)

her heroes team is: Her avatar, Super Baby 2, Cooler, Hatchiyack, Baby Vegeta, Salza and Baby (as in his adult form when he flees Vegeta's body)

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moving on to her non heroes version I made for fics, because she does exist. note this version mainly happened because I wanted to write for her more often, but it's a bit more difficult if I keep her a heroes only character. this version also uses slight au context as well, mainly adding to prevent confusion.

this version technically isn't related to Baby, just like her heroes version isn't exactly either. it was just a mutation result from someone not being fully cured from his possession, and the egg just remaining dormant until the genetic remains awoke.

this version is a bit different the idea is that a surviving tuffle scientist out there, got a hold of an icejin child and just kind of experimented with her out of curiosity. it's less of a tuffle and android twins situation, and more of a Kiryu from godzilla against mechagodzilla situation. rebuilt rather than replaced pretty much, kind of saving her life in all honesty

she bares a resemblance to other characters as a result, a bit more masc presenting but still a girl. I chose her avatar over her more human design (which does exist), as I felt that her avatar design was a bit more interesting with the changes.

like her world mission counterpart the machinery is slowly taking over her body, but with her energetic personality she refuses to let it stop her. the moment Baby takes her in he can not get her off, this small child is surprisingly clingy and is glad to finally have a parental figure in her life. (Or two in some rare cases, no she is not locked behind Coolbabe specifically because she's adopted lol)

Constantly trying to train with the twins and Baby, if she's in a coolbabe fic she will do it with Cooler as well. It's sort of like present Trunks, only it's an absurdly hyper icejin kid that will hang on her parent(s) like a sloth. if you offer her a piggyback ride she'll be really happy, and you won't be able to get her off for the next few hours so be careful with that offer.

she sleeps in the weirdest positions like a cat, she can and will sleep in a tiny box do not challenge her on that. I am not joking when I say this child will sleep through anything, an earthquake could tear through and she will be snoozing the entire way through.

she runs circles around Frieza with her energetic nature, she can't do that with Hatchiyack because he'll just pick her up in a casual manner if she's being to hyper.

all in all Sol's au counterpart is a puppy natured goof that likes having affection and people who care for her for once, and wants nothing more than to enjoy that fact every single day.

[evilkitten3]

@blueper-saiyan

#Not sure if I’m allowed to pull out these tags as a separate reblog#but that is an interesting and fucked up theory I like it#and absolutely want to hear the long version#vegeta

you absolutely are as far as i'm concerned but since op's post was getting a bit long i'll respond here

dbz always reblog i have a theory that there's actually a reason for this it stems from my theory that vegeta's mom doesn't exist bc he's a clone of his dad basically it eventually become obvious that frieza was going to take whichever kid was heir to the throne so king vegeta (kv i guess) went ''aight we need a Super Baby (no tuffles allowed) and i'm the coolest guy on the planet. need a baby me'' so he gets a bunch of the buffest nerds imaginable (be real saiyan scientists like the job bc they get to fight physics) and start working kv: i need this kid to last as long as possible we're gonna need to buy some time scientists: got it boss *proceed to make the universe's most ridiculously hard to kill infant* how's this kv: excellent. frieza catch! frieza: oh this is adorable! i'm going to traumatize it =) <-an extremely brief summary of my hc

(^the tags in question)

ok so first there are a couple of things i need to get out of the way ahead of time– namely, i'm not the first person to come up with the vegeta-is-a-clone idea; the first person i saw with that idea was someone who wrote a fic i read a while back that i'm blanking on the name of at the moment, and while their version is massively different from mine, the core concept of clone!veggie is more or less the same

the second thing is that i get way too into world building sometimes and so a lot of pieces of my hcs get mixed up with one another and often don't fit in with established canon (which isn't like abnormal or anything but i want to clarify that i already know some of this doesn't perfectly slot up. in my defense the db timeline doesn't even match up with itself half the time)

the final thing is that while i've seen bits of the anime and the first handful of super episodes, i'm mostly a manga fan, so i view any non-manga parts of dragon ball as free real estate

buckle up, i was not kidding about the length (*immature snickering*)

SO.

first and foremost the relationship between the tuffles and the saiyans: the tuffles are described as being a peaceful yet technologically advanced race, but in my hc, they're a bit more complicated than that. for starters, i don't see how a supposedly peaceful race is going to have high-tech blasters, and while it's possible that they're for defensive purposes, it... really doesn't give off that vibe. also they were super into some fairly questionable science, some of which objectively involved human experimentation (or... humanoid experimentation, i guess)

jumping back to the future for a sec: gohan. gohan is a half-human, half-saiyan male hybrid, and while two separate species somehow producing a hybrid child isn't unheard of, male hybrids are almost always completely infertile. and yet, gohan grows up and has a kid (another explanation is gohan and videl are t4t, which i also love, but it doesn't really fit into this). so how are saiyans and humans not only capable of reproducing together, but capable of having children that can also reproduce? my theory here is that saiyans are genetically modified (early) humans– tuffles arrived on earth sometime prior to homo erectus finishing the jump to homo sapiens, grabbed a handful of various lab rats, and got to work.

this would also explain why saiyan tails look the way they do. to elaborate, here's a spider monkey skeleton:

notice how the tail is made up of more vertebrae that continue along the same curve as the rest of the spine. meanwhile, goku's tail looks like this:

it juts straight out, almost perpendicular to his spinal cord. to me, that does not look like how tails work– it looks grafted on. in the video game kakarot, bulma even makes goku a fake tail for him to fish with that he can just... stick right on there. i know dragon ball science is already broken af (someone please explain to me how dr briefs isn't basically a deity for inventing capsules), but if the tail is a genetic trait that didn't evolve naturally, it makes some sense (in the way anything in dragon ball makes sense, that is)

so– saiyans are a highly adaptable species that seem to be able to eat basically whatever, can both endure and dish out catastrophic amounts of damage, are biologically driven to fight to the point where it's hard to imagine how a society full of them could function at all, get stronger whenever they recover from being seriously injured, can transform into giant apes, and yet have a glaringly obvious weakness that can pretty much completely incapacitate them if you know about it? they seem designed for war, and not in the natural evolution-is-just-funny-like-that-sometimes way.

what we know about the tuffles sort of differs from source to source, but the most negative opinions come from the saiyans– according to vegeta, the tuffles basically treated them as slaves. which... yeah, that adds up, given everything.

anyway, here's where i divorce from canon entirely bc according to gt, king vegeta iii is the one who led the saiyans in the war against the tuffles, which raises... honestly so many questions. so i'm ignoring that; it was vegeta i and he was never officially king, but more on that later. i also need to note that the whole "saiyans lived on planet sadala, fucked it up, and moved to planet plant which later became planet vegeta" to my knowledge is not manga canon but since i like the general idea, i sorta moved it a bit.

in my version, the saiyans and the tuffles both lived on planet sadala, but the war between the two species got a little out of hand and the planet was kaputski (to be fair, if you suddenly got to turn into a giant ape and wreak havoc on the people who were possibly enslaving you, you might go a bit overboard too), so the saiyans stole all the tuffles' ships and gtfo'd (this is why everyone was so sure the tuffles were gone. bc typically blowing up someone's planet is a good way to get rid of all of them. at least in theory– i'm sure frieza can tell you all about how well it works in practice)

back to vegeta i– he wasn't a king, technically, but he was the saiyan who started, led, and according to all saiyan sources (which are biased but w/e) finished the revolt, and chose to die on the planet in an act of heroic sacrifice and/or symbolism and/or his daughter twisted a fact or two bc propaganda is a game we all can play, and the new planet they landed on was named after him. said daughter took the same name, declared the planet and the king to be one and the same, and set about conquering the shit out of it. so vegeta ii was technically the first king but if you asked her she was the second and also disrespecting her father and probably also about to be killed via spear (oh btw king vegeta ii is famed for her giant war spear which was very cool and intimidating and probably didn't see much use outside of ritual combat bc it's honestly more efficient to just blast people but all the statues and art and whatnot have her with it)

i'm going to take a minute to gloat about vegeta ii bc honestly she's one of my alltime favorite ocs that i've made, despite the fact that i don't intend to ever have her show up in anything (yass gurl haunt that narrative!!!) but basically she's a deeply respected figure in saiyan culture, although she died way before any of the saiyans still alive in dbz were born (except nappa), bc she... basically built saiyan culture from scratch. pretty much all the core beliefs the saiyans as a people had were from her very deliberately and surprisingly sneakily forcing them to be developed bc she was fully aware that the saiyans needed more than a love of battle to actually survive as a society independent of the tuffles. she basically had the whole thing set up and ready to last and become a proper empire but unfortunately the one kid that lived long enough to succeed her (by killing her in combat, obviously, and yes the others all tried and died– she's an important figure, not a nice one) ran face first into frieza and we all know how that went down

anyhow, vegeta ii's reign (which lasted a crazy long time bc she lived way longer than she should've and almost certainly used some kind of not-so-great method of living that long, but in her defense she needed to make sure at least one of her kids was cool enough to be in charge, so what's a few war crimes between monarchs) pretty much cemented all the saiyan pride and identity that vegeta iv is so fond of, and not just bc she was his grandma either.

the reason i have to get through all of that to explain my clone!vegeta theory is bc i need to explain why king vegeta iii became king in the first place– under vegeta ii's system, anyone could challenge for the throne at any time, regardless of who they were. her own children were expected - but not required - to do so, and if she died before an heir could kill her in glorious combat, the princes would become stewards and have the duty of finding the next king (who couldn't be one of them. fight and die for that shit like a real saiyan or no throne for you). however, there was actively incentive not to do that bc A) whoever's in charge has to actually be in charge and therefore gets to fight way less, and B) in order to become king you had to be ritually stripped of your identity as a person with the understanding that if you died during your challenge your name would be stricken from all records, none of your family or friends would ever acknowledge that you had ever existed, and you would simply cease to be (the afterlife doesn't follow these rules but most of the saiyans who are there still do, including the ones who by saiyan law no longer exist. say what you will about saiyans; they're a dedicated lot)

so anyway vegeta iii (before becoming vegeta iii – he had a different name bc names are super important in my version of saiyan culture but if i get into that here we will literally be here for the rest of the week - but i'll call him that for the sake of my sanity) is somewhat reluctant to challenge for the throne bc none of his siblings have managed it (not that they exist anymore whoops), but one of his colleagues/presumed ruling partner (not gonna get into saiyan relationships here either sorry) has been pushing him to do so for a while now

i think i've gone through a few names for vegeta's not-mom, but the most recent one is touga (from tougarashi, or capsicum annuum, and yes i was thinking of neon orange glimmer song by the mountain goats when i named her), so i'll call her that. touga is a pretty saiyan-y saiyan– she's violent, temperamental, proud, strong, and so forth, but another thing she is is deeply, deeply loyal to her people. she's also very aware of vegeta iii's weaknesses (such as "will probably care a little too much about kids if he has any" and "may make decisions based off of feelings instead of cold hard practical logic" and "seems likely to develop emotional attachments to family members"; you know, normal kingly failings) and has the lady macbeth-esque stainless steel go-fuck-yourself coldness to make up for her future husband's pathetic little morals or whatever

anyway, touga pushes vegeta iii to go for the throne bc holy shit his mom has been alive for way too long but also she has faith in hi or something and duty and whatever and dude do it if you ever want this saiyan tail, and eventually he caves and goes for it. he fights his mom, wins, gets a shiny new king name and is all set to run his kingdom. and then king cold shows up.

now in between killing his mom and our favorite chilly boys coming to town, vegeta iii and touga have had a kid, prince escallion (who is a girl ftr but i can't get into saiyan thoughts on sex/gender or the language or even escallion herself in this post bc we will never ever leave). escallion is pretty neat, just the strongest baby in history or whatever, but then post-cold arriving and politely yoinking the saiyans into his empire, rumors start spreading that frieza miiiiight be wanting a saiyan under his personal command. no prizes for guessing whose palace he's looking at for pickings. obviously the only prince they've got is not someone they can afford to lose, but they need a sure bet on super-infants and can't afford hoping for a genetic bingo, so vegeta iii assembles the universe's swole-est scientists and has them get started on making the Coolest Baby Ever (by cloning him, the king, bc he's the strongest but also bc frieza is an asshole and likes playing mind games with people so let's be real he's taking one of the king's kids no matter how tough they are)

so vegeta iv gets made (and named inappropriately but that's frieza's fault and a story for another time so ignore it for now) and eventually tarble is born and almost immediately sent off just in case frieza decides to be a bigger dick than usual (spoilers: frieza is going to decide to be an even bigger dick than that), and vegeta gets to spend the first few years of his life with his dad, big sis, and not-mom until he gets shipped off to go be a child soldier/slave/distraction, at which point frieza goes ahead and blows up the planet. there's more to it than just that, but i may actually want to write it out some day, so i'll keep the rest to myself for now.

[hiero-green]

Mhgnnhh smth smth about vegeta struggling with being a father for years bc saiyans aren't naturally nurturing as a species and don't really Parent™️ their kids all that much but he knows that parental relationships are important to humans and also his son is half human and maybe he doesn't want to completely fuck up by not living up to the care that his human half needs but he just doesn't Get It sometimes and he sees how naturally parenting comes to Bulma while it can feel so alien to him and he feels useless sometimes and the only thing he feels like he can do to bond with Trunks is to train with him but that’s clearly not enough and

[mechaking789]

Goku Kills Meta-Cooler ( I found this on YouTube)

[solid-bambino]

Daily Drawing 288 - misc late night doodles

[cupcraft]

I love the scene in super where vegeta teaches cabba about saiyan pride and like culture and like the super saiyan stuff.

Like it's a big move for vegeta from moving from being forced to be in frieza's force and living every day as survival planning for any out he could no matter who or what he hurt in the process. And then we have him learning growing healing and changing (esp bc of his friendship to goku, and his relationship to bulma, and his kids, and etc) sort of processing that he and goku are really all that's left. And then he meets another and instead of anger at the fact their history is different (the planet still being there) he decides to teach. He decides to tell cabbo to "aim higher". He decides that he won't be alone and suffer alone. He decides to teach him about pride because it's all vegeta has left for his universe's people that are gone. It's such a beautiful scene and mementorship.

[vegetanalysis]

This is the single best character analysis of Vegeta I have ever read. I'm so happy someone out there has articulated--far better than I could--all the reasons why I love Vegeta so much. I've been a part of many fandoms over the years and no character has managed to take Vegeta's spot yet. He will forever be my favorite character in Dragon Ball Z, and my favorite character of any fictional world ever.

if you have the time, I wanna know what makes vegeta so compelling to you, whole ass character arc stuff and what not. I wanna hear you go off on your short king.

Anon do you understand what you’ve unleashed? I don’t think you understand what you’ve unleashed. Or if you do understand, I can almost guarantee you aren’t prepared. This is almost 3000 words of me frothing at the mouth. I hope you know you asked for this. Like the reason I was so late answering was because I wanted to do it justice and could not figure out what I wanted to yell about first.

I guess to understand why Vegeta’s development is so fucking staggering to me, you have to understand who he starts as when you meet him.

Vegeta is around 4 or 5 when Freeza destroys Vegetasei. He’s roughly 30 when he comes to Earth for immortality. In between are two and a half decades of being taken from, which he suffers only because he believes wholeheartedly that he will grow strong enough to kill Freeza and take it all back from him. He lands on Earth with little to his name beyond his pride in who and what he is, and power that, while paltry compared to Freeza and the people in his inner circle, surpassed and still surpasses every member of his race.

Right?

One of the biggest things about Vegeta in Z is that there is A Way Things Are Supposed To Go and when they go any other way, he cannot let it go. Losing to anybody other than the people he has known for years can kill him is unacceptable. Even more so if it’s to another Saiyan. Even more so when this Saiyan is such a disgrace to the blood in his veins. The loss is an impossibility and has to be rectified. Vegeta limps off of Earth with two big driving forces now: kill Freeza for vengeance, kill Kakarot to mend his pride (or at least beat him so far into the ground that his superiority is unquestionable).

Namek is where Vegeta gets really interesting. He’s fresh off a stinging defeat that put a couple cracks into his sense of certainty and self. He knows a way to get what he wants (the Dragon Balls on Namek). He’s in a race against the powers that be for it. He has something of an ace in the hole in that he worked out how to sense ki while he was flying half dead through space, so he’s no longer forced to rely on a scouter—on Freeza’s technology. He intends to make a clean break, and for a while it goes according to plan. Zarbon’s a stumbling block, but he makes it work in his favor, takes all the Dragon Balls Freeza collected and escapes with his life to boot.

And then another repeating theme surrounding Vegeta in Z comes into play. He’ll be a hairsbreadth from getting everything he wants before it all comes crashing down around him, largely due to things entirely outside his control. He couldn’t have used the Dragon Balls even if he had decided to press Gohan on what he was doing in the middle of nowhere with a ‘watch’, because he doesn’t have a password. The Ginyu Force thrashes him, Goku shows up stronger than ever. It’s fine though, because now he knows how to get the Dragon Balls to work, so he’ll never suffer defeat again—it’s a moot point.

…Right?

I think that the point in the story where Vegeta well and truly starts to come unraveled as a person is pretty immediately after Porunga dies and Freeza starts cycling through his transformations. Because like, rudimentary or no, Vegeta’s ki-sensing ability still works. He’s suddenly faced with irrefutable proof, that he can feel in the entire essence of his being, that his power is nothing to Freeza. And he lies to himself, because he can’t accept that he’s outclassed by the magnitude he is. Because this isn’t The Way Things Are Supposed To Go. He’s supposed to avenge his people and embody the legend. He refuses to bend, and so, he breaks.

And it’s sad, y’know? The way he just… stops fighting. For his whole life, he sweats and bleeds and swallows his bruised pride for the sake of survival and hope and what does it get him? I think all the goddamn time about the anime’s interpretation of this, where Vegeta being broken for Piccolo/Gohan/Krillin to witness up close is a deliberate choice on Freeza’s part*. In fact, I may never stop thinking about it. It’s not enough that Vegeta loses his will to fight, he has to know that others know that he gave up, that he can’t do anything against this monster even if he hadn’t. It’s a stunningly cruel blow precisely because he’s so proud and strong.

The man who dies on Namek crying at the feet of both of his bitterest enemies, begging one of them to kill the other for the sake of their race—who in that final moment lets his helpless frustration, his grief, his pride in his people supersede his own personal pride as warrior and prince—is not the same man who fought Goku on Earth. That man is in pieces, and Vegeta will spend every moment for years afterward trying to put him back together with saltwater and desperation. We meme on how death means basically nothing in Dragon Ball, but I go nuts thinking about how, intentionally or not, Toriyama managed to twist that to work with Vegeta’s development.

Because now Vegeta has to reckon with his many abject failures for longer than the few minutes before sweet oblivion, you see. Now it all matters again. As long as he’s alive, he’s still being taken from.

(Bulma’s one of the few—if not the only—person to simply give him something without coercion, or prompting, or obligation. Certainly the first we see. She had every reason to tell him to fuck off, really. She didn’t have to offer him a place to stay.)

Vegeta has a transitive hierarchical logic on strength, which comes up again towards the end of Cell that I’ll touch on when we get there, but for now it will suffice to say that in order to keep moving forward, he has to readjust his purpose in life to focus solely on beating Goku. If he beats Goku, then he beats Freeza, since Goku beat Freeza. Step one, obviously, is attaining Super Saiyan. And he’s so fucking committed to that that he unwittingly locks himself out of it, up until he leaves partway through the three year gap before the androids.

I could write another entire essay on how Super Saiyan can be read as a trauma response and how it differs between all the Saiyans in Cell saga (and especially about Goku on Namek), but this is surely already more than you bargained for when you opened this can of worms, so, Vegeta. When I think of Vegeta’s awakening to Super Saiyan, I tend to default to the original dub’s take (ep129), because it has lived in my head rent free since I saw it and it will not give me peace.

Take this part of my rambling with a grain of salt, I know I’m about to get a little ‘it’s not that deep’ about it, but. Here’s my interpretation of this. Vegeta only attains Super Saiyan once he has done away with distractions—not entirely because now he can focus on nothing but his training, but because he’s inadvertently given himself space to even begin to process all the shit from the last 25 years of his life, even if he fights it every step of the way as weakness. All the self-hatred, yes, but also the aforementioned frustration, the grief, the anger. The helplessness. ‘I didn’t care if I lived. I didn’t care about anything.’

Ultimately the trigger to Super Saiyan is a single moment of all-consuming emotion, so whichever thread of canon you personally subscribe to, the facts are that something happened in Vegeta out there in the middle of nowhere space. And he returns to Earth riding high. I’m not gonna lie, he’s rocking some seriously manic energy when he shows up to waste Android 19, and honestly why wouldn’t he be? He’s latched onto this new power and he doesn’t have to feel anything else. Things are finally going right. He’s invincible. He’s the king again. This is The Way Things Are Supposed To Go.

…

…right?

Super Saiyan is supposed to be a solution for Vegeta, and instead it eventually turns itself into a problem during Cell and the androids. To be fair, he can’t misestimate the strength of an opponent he can’t sense in the first place, but even so, he’s so blinded by the euphoria of succeeding for once in his goddamn life that he can’t imagine that anything can be stronger than him. Androids 17 and 18 are a rude fucking awakening. They are the ultimate pulling-the-rug-out-from-under-you vibe check. All those pieces that he struggled so hard to put back together, kicked apart again without thought or effort. He has a bit of a crisis over it, understandably.

In the interest of brevity, I’m glossing over the intermediary parts between Vegeta coming out of the time chamber (wish we had more info on what transpired in there, personally) and the tail end of the Cell saga, because it’s something of a repeat of what he did with Freeza, except he’s using Goku’s ‘let Freeza power up to 100% to hammer home his superiority’ logic. I made a previous post on my main blog about the post-Cell part of Vegeta’s character arc, which I’ll copy down here with some minor revisions:

The hell of Vegeta swearing to never fight again is that he actually follows through, at least in the beginning.

There are seven years between Cell and Buu. In every version of the media I’ve gone through—English manga, uncut dub, uncut JP, Kai dub—Bulma says that Vegeta has trained the last five years before the tournament. Which can only mean that there was a two year gap right after the Cell Games where he didn’t train at all.

And like. Can you really blame him. His purpose in life has been cut out from under him not once but twice, first by Goku attaining Super Saiyan and avenging their people by killing Freeza, and then by Goku’s decision to stay dead and deny him the opportunity to surpass him. His strength has proven insufficient time and again no matter how hard he works, overshadowed by that of a boy half his age, who doesn’t even like to fight. His pride hinges on both of those things and even before that was mercilessly trampled on. He has no people. No planet. No purpose, power, or pride.

I really do think the only things keeping him going by this point are inertia and spite. Almost without doubt, this is the absolute nadir of Vegeta’s existence: at least, the nadir for the man he thinks he has to be, or can’t reconcile not being. If he has nothing, if the last things tethering him to his supposed innate nature (to borrow a line from this fic, shameless plug,) are torn away from him, what is left for him to do but accept defeat and submit to change?

What he doesn’t know yet is that that’s okay. He doesn’t know yet, but the seven years that Goku is no longer a presence in his life is perhaps the best thing Goku could have possibly given him. Without Goku physically there to be actionable on (for lack of a better phrase), new things can grow in the spaces where his animosity and aggression burned holes in him. Even if Vegeta is still nursing the embers of that blaze and ignoring the encroaching growth as hard as he can, he is still beginning to care about things that the old him wouldn’t. (coming back to Vegeta’s logic on strength: to Vegeta, Gohan’s victory over Cell is also Goku’s victory, and Trunks’ loss is his own loss. Bulma mentions to Gohan that he’s dead set on making Trunks stronger than him, and why would Vegeta care about that goal specifically unless Trunks’ victory over Gohan is also Vegeta’s victory over Goku?)

And then.

And then all of a sudden, Goku is back in the picture. And when he comes back, so does the Vegeta from before, like a relapse.

Because as much growing as does, he still has seven years to gnaw on the same question he has been for ages now. Why is Goku so much stronger than he is, being what he is? Why is he so inadequate? There is now a window, fleeting as it may be, for Vegeta to get some answers he had no reason to assume he’d ever get. There is now the terrible possibility that he can make things go The Way They Are Supposed To Go. And Goku’s willing to let him take that shot and get those answers, right up until the whole business surrounding Buu disrupts everything and then he isn’t anymore.

Because the thing is, they were scheduled to fight each other before anybody else. Vegeta was not supposed to see the gap between himself and Goku until he was experiencing it firsthand. Picture for a minute the timeline in which the tournament plays out normally. Goku and Vegeta fight, Goku wins, and then Vegeta’s only recourse is to demand answers from Goku—who would surely give them, to the best of his ability!—or to come to his own conclusions and act from there. Either he makes peace with affairs, uneasy as it may be, or he blows up immediately, and Goku is there to stop him before he gets too out of hand. Instead, what happens is that he’s given the opportunity to realize that he’s still inferior, he still doesn’t understand why, and most importantly, that there’s a third option open to him. At the cost of his will, there is a way.

Submitting to Babidi to force Goku’s hand and close the gap is the act of a man who knows that he is running out of time. Whatever pride Vegeta still has would not possibly have allowed this unless he was so desperate for closure that he couldn’t see another way. For ten years he’s been trying to rebuild a sandcastle below the high tide line, and it’s not that he’s too stupid to move farther up so he isn’t freshly shattered at every pass—it’s just that trying to power through in the face of futility is literally all that he knows to do. He has been coming apart stitch by stitch ever since he met Goku, his worldview and his preconceptions of destiny and self dissolving in slow motion under his feet. Goku will only be here for a day. This is the last chance he has, and he knows it. He knows he’s not going to see Goku in the afterlife, even before he asks Piccolo.

What the fuck else was he supposed to do?

The music in the background of this scene is ‘Trapped Between Past and Present’ and if that doesn’t sum up the backbone of Vegeta’s arc in Z, then there’s nothing that does.

The beauty of his sacrifice is that he still has the mark of evil on his forehead when he dies, even though he’s bucked Babidi’s mind control by that point. He chooses the present. He chooses to symbolically and very literally raze his old self to the ground for the sake of all that his new self cares for. That is why the impermanence of death in Dragon Ball works for him. That’s why I go insane over the Majin arc specifically. New growth roots in ashes, phoenixes and sapling trees both.

Super (and end of Z) is where you get to luxuriate in that growth and watch it pay off, and oh my god does it ever pay off. Without going deep into spoiler territory (formally begging all of you to read the manga here), the later arcs begin to address Vegeta reckoning with his personal sins against the Namekians, and those of his race, who destroyed countless worlds under Freeza. Vegeta and Beerus have a conversation in chapter 69 of Super where things I’ve described in this here essay are worded explicitly into the canon. I think of it to this day. I think of all of the things Vegeta does in Super and I think it’s incredible just how far he’s come.

Before creation comes destruction.

Alright that’s enough pretentious meta. Here’s Vegeta being very happy about a well-earned victory. Isn’t he so fuckin’ cute.

*ep85, or 41 if you prefer Kai

[himbocorgi]

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[celestial-alignment]

I need to sleep but I'm thinking about how in the original Bardock movie, when little Vegeta found out his world was destroyed, they believed he was the only survivor at the time. Who knows how long it was before he was reunited with Nappa and Raditz, but for what probably felt like a lifetime, that little guy believed he was completely alone.

Fast forward to when he meets his son from a future where HE is the only survivor (aside from his mom), because the world was decimated by the androids.

Just wondering if those two dots ever connected for Vegeta or if that was a big part of why he was so god damned mean to Trunks. It's a lot of trauma and toxic indoctrination to work through.

[adjoint-law]

a dozen Queer Studies doctoral theses could be written on this post alone

FEMINISM: sorry, but you can't be a feminist. You cum out of the wrong hole and that makes it toxic masculinity if anything has ever made you angry in your life. We're looking for that "white cis woman blogger on her 3rd box of franzia since 5 pm radiating elephant's foot level toxicity on twitter about her inoffensive cis boyfriend for losing one of her $30 Sockdreams socks in the dryer" type beat. You can go hang out with the queer theory people QUEER THEORY: whoa there buddy. The dick is... sorry, it wouldn't be a dealbreaker if you weren't on estrogen, but as it stands, well. Call us if you die in a way that helps us yell about the Nordic Model. In the meanwhile, go hang out with the trans activists TRANS ACTIVISM: As a poor above 21 you mean nothing to us. We're strictly for closers. Go hang out with the t4t crowd T4T CROWD: Fat and over 30? Gross. Go back to Fetlife, loser FETLIFE: You can't post mpreg vegeta here. Mpreg vegeta is strictly forbidden by the Fetlife terms of service,