#i dont remember the last time gohan showed up either

[silyabeeodess]

When you love Dragon Ball Kakumei, but the characters you're interested in are part of the side stories:

[duhragonball]

Chi-Chi

I think I’m gonna wrap these up today so I can get back to work on my fanfic.    For the record, I got Buu, Frieza, Jolyne Kujo, Father Pucci, and Jobin Higashikata left to go, and then I’m done.  

But I hate to call it here, because this has been fun.   Maybe I’ll bring this back some time.  

Give me a character and I will answer:

Why I like them: I started watching DBZ back in the fall of 1998, and I didn’t get very serious about it until 2000.   Chi-Chi didn’t have a very big role in the Saiyans or Frieza arcs, and I wasn’t making a point of watching every episode, so it took a while for her character to be fully revealed.   Starting out, she was basically popping in every so often to remind us that she wanted Gohan to study.   She stood up to Garlic’s henchmen in Movie 1, but didn’t really get a chance to do anything.    In the Garlic Junior Saga, it’s stated that Chi-Chi is the strongest woman in the world, which sounds pretty impressive as long as you don’t think too hard about how many women are on the show.  

I don’t think I really understood Chi-Chi well until I got to the part where Goten spars with Gohan, and he reveals that Chi-Chi had been training him while Gohan was studying.   That was where it became clear to me that she only emphasized book-learnin’ over ass-whoopin’ because she knew Goku had that side of things covered.    With Goten, Chi-Chi had to be both mother and father to him, and she didn’t shirk from that.   

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Chi-Chi’s a great supporting character.   She maintains a presence in the story whether she’s on-screen or not, and you learn about her gradually through these short appearances.    And when she does show up, it’s just a treat to see.   She’s always got something to say, and she’s cute and she can beat your ass.    What’s not to like?  

Why I don’t:  Yeah right.   Look, the biggest gripe people have with Chi-Chi is that she makes her son do homework, which is dumb.    She explains this a number of times: There’s more to life than fighting, and she wants that for her son.   And Gohan’s not exactly worse off for her style of parenting.  

I think the disconnect here is that people watch this show and they want to see Goku and Gohan screw around and go on adventures, and they feel like Chi-Chi is here to kill their buzz.   I guess it’d be like watching a football game, and every so often some guy wanders out onto the field and scolds everyone for playing football.    But that guy would be right, because football is dangerous, yo.   Everybody keeps telling Chi-Chi that the only hope for the world involves her little boy getting his ass kicked by aliens, and she’s like “no, that’s bullshit,” and she’s absolutely right.   She’s a saint for tolerating it as much as she does, but I think a lot of fans refuse to look at it from her point of view.    They just want the fighting.  

I remember Lanipator observing that he used to hate Mr. Satan when he was younger, but the older he got, the more and more he appreciated the character.    I can’t relate to that, because I was old enough to drink when I started watching this show, so for me, there is no “when I was a kid” perspective on Dragon Ball.    I thought Mr. Satan was awesome from the start, and I never had much of a problem with Chi-Chi either.  

They did tend to overexpose both characters in the anime, cutting to them when they needed a filler moment to pad out an episode or five.   So maybe that’s got something to do with it.   But that’s not the fault of the characters.    But yeah, if I was watching the Cell Games at age 10 I’d probably get really sick of them constantly cutting to Mr. Satan or Chi-Chi for analysis.    

Favorite episode (scene if movie):  It’s probably hard to top the one where she fought Goku.   That was one of the last Chi-Chi moments I got to see, because I didn’t get caught up on OG Dragon Ball until 2004.   It’s an excellent use of the character and her lengthy absence from the show.   By the time she reappears, no one recognizes her, and she’s upset about being forgotten.  

Favorite season/movie:  I think I’d have to go with the Buu Saga, on the grounds that she got more time to shine, mainly due to so many other characters being unavailable.    It was a real roller coaster ride for her too.    Her husband’s dead and she’s raising two kids on her own, then he comes back, then he leaves again, and maybe Gohan’s dead too, and now Goten has to fight, and then she’s dead, and then they’re all back together in the end.     Wild.

Favorite line:  In the Cell Games Saga, there’s a TV show where Mr. Satan drags three buses onto the set, cuts a scathing promo on Cell, and then punches one of the buses to put an exclamation point on the whole thing.   Wait, I take it back, I’m pretty sure 10yo me would have loved Mr. Satan.  

Anyway the live audience is marking the fuck out for Mr. Satan, but at Kame House Yamcha and Krillin are unimpressed, because they punch holes in like fifty buses every morning as a warm-up.   But in the dub of that episode, Roshi remarks that Mr. Satan’s theatrics are “sad”, and Chi-Chi goes “It sure is.   Somebody could have used that bus.” Classic, total classic.

Favorite outfit: It’s hard to pick, honestly.   I like the Buu Saga yellow, but I prefer the way her hair looked in the Saiyans Saga.  And that outfit she wore near the end of DBZ was pretty great too.

OTP:  Goku. come on.

Brotp: I think Bulma sort of stepped into that role after Trunks was born, but Chi-Chi seems like a loner to me.   She basically rolled in, got Goku to marry her, and then retreated deep into the mountains to interact with as few people as possible.   I need me a freak like that.  

Head Canon: I think she’s genuinely proud of Goku and the boys being so great at super-karate-laser wars.   She doesn’t talk about it much, because there’s plenty of other people to congratulate them on that sort of thing, and I think they sort of look to her for as someone who grounds their family.  

To put it another way, I don’t think Goku wants Chi-Chi to talk a lot about the androids or the Saiyans or whatever.   I think he wants someone to bother him with household matters and chores and ordinary stuff.   And Gohan and Goten just want a regular mom to balance out their alien monomyth dad.    And she plays that role well, because that’s who she is.   But she’s still proud of them for saving the world and so forth. 

Unpopular opinion: Chi-Chi was right. 

Look, how was Gohan going to make a life for himself as a fighter, in a world where Goku and Vegeta have that market cornered?   

Where’s he live?  In a big-ass mansion.    Why?  Because he married a rich man’s daughter.   Where’d he meet her?   In the school Chi-Chi made him go to.  How’d he get in to said school?   He aced their entrance exams.    How’d he do that?   Chi-Chi made him study.

What does Goku do all day when he isn’t training?  He drives a tractor?  Why?  Because his wife has a thing for farmer aesthetics.   Why does he just do whatever his wife tells him?   Because he didn’t study.

A wish:  I wish all the Chi-Chi haters would stay out of my soup, because it’s salty enough as it is.   (Heyoooo!)

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: I’ve been seeing Manalorian spoilers lately, and I don’t want to give anything away, but it seems like every time something happens on Mando, all the chuds come out of the woodwork to complain about Episode VIII and/or IX.     They’re like “thank you, Disney, for giving us the [Star Wars thing] that Disney refused to give us.” 

My fear is that Star Wars has become balkanized into this thing where people praise half of it as fixing or undoing the damage caused by the other half.   Used to be, people would either like the Ewoks or hate them, but they couldn’t ignore the fact that they were there.   Now it’s like any movie that doesn’t feature Ewoks is done to cater to the anti-Ewok crowd, and any movie that does is solely for the purpose of keeping the pro-Ewok side engaged.   

My point is that I worry that this will happen to all media franchises, and Dragon Ball Q will feature a Chi-Chi that gets turned into a hateful she-hag to satisfy the haters, and then Ultra Dragon Ball Deluxe will feature a more nuanced version of Chi-Chi as a make-good, thereby pissing off the haters.   And they’ll go back and forth trying to please everyone while the character ends up becoming an incomprehensible mess from it.  

5 words to best describe them: Adorable tiger mom/bus advocate.

My nickname for them: Cheech. 

[trunkzbriefs]

Any Son and/or Briefs family headcanons? Spicy hot takes? Truths Toriyama and Toyotaro themselves can not handle? Straight up lies?

GODDAMN SORRY this took a while cause i suck at putting thoughts together. i apologize for my obvious briefs bias i have more hcs for them than the son family despite loving them both :pensive: anyway heres some random stuff

briefs hcs:

all of the briefs are pros at non-verbal communication. i hc that saiyans have their own language (and also in my own Mind Canon they still have their fuckin tails) and a lot of it is done through tail movement/body posture/grunts/etc. etc so theyve all sort of picked that up. even bulma, who doesnt have a tail, is pretty good at getting across what she means without actually speaking. they still do speak normally but it comes in handy sometimes considering that both trunks and vegeta are prone to running out of speaking energy or getting very frustrated with words, so having another way to communicate works very well for them

vegeta is fffffffffffffffffffurry. without getting too deep into my own General Saiyan hcs (thats why i made a whole ass four subspecies!!) i think that the entirety of planet vegeta tended to be very hot aside from the part where the castle was, where the temperature would drop. meaning that saiyans working in the palace would grow thicker fur around certain parts of their body, and in the royal saiyans theyd be Especially fluffy. he kept it down on earth, but he has thick patches of fur around the bottom parts of his arms and legs. kind of like snowy boots and gloves! he also has fur that grows in on his neck like a lions mane.

future trunks is an actions sponge, vegeta is a words sponge. vegeta will pick up words VERY quickly regardless if he fully understands the meaning of it or not (completely inspired by 'THATS RIGHT BOYS... MONDO COOL' in z) and future trunks will unintentionally mimic the actions of people - around people he looks up to he might take a few small mannerisms from but this extends to copying the disposition of anyone; he's just very adaptive. this is the most obvious (and funniest) when he's around vegeta bc it really shows like. yeah damn that sure is vegeta's son

vegeta & bulla have an intimidating bastard smirk naturally. their natural smiles are pretty frightening and they have to put effort into a 'normal' one. this also extends to current trunks, his default smile is the Vegeta Bastard Smirk but he learned to have a normal smile quicker than his father and sister. future trunks has a slightly unnerving natural smile (the fact that his pupils are always drawn so fucking small makes me hc that he just has a very intimidating look of 'cat thats about to pounce on an unfortunate trapped mouse' whenever he smiles) but he learned to look normal even quicker than current trunks since he's around humans a Lot and is sort of their uh, Hope. don't want to look scary to the people who depend on you!

bulma has some fighting knowledge and mildly good ki control. vegeta taught her it as a just in case so that she'd be able to defend herself against Bigger threats if he wasn't there and also so she could raise her own ki to alert someone to her if she had to.

vegeta is extremely clean and can not stand to have things disorganized for more than like... an hour before he has to tidy everything up. every time he goes down to the lab and bulma is passed out in a pile of bolts and circuit boards it kills him inside just a little bit

future trunks has little concept of power control. since his timeline was always in danger it wasn't really an important thing for him to learn. the amount of mugs he's accidentally crushed is impressive

vegeta tends to not sound like he's asking questions when he is. he doesn't add the proper infliction to the end of his questions and just sounds flat most of the time. it's confusing to people who dont know him well.

im not even gonna lie, im a BIG fan of the chill demon panchy headcanon so i love the idea that the briefs have a Lil bit of demon in them but just dont know it ghjnkm

[banging my fists on the 'hcs that not even got could take away from me' table] future trunks has OCD

vegeta doesn't really get labels but he's bisexual & "debatably a man", bulma is bisexal & bigender transfem (sometimes shes Wamen and other times its like "gender? no"), bulla is a nonbinary lesbian, current trunks is a bisexual trans man & future bulma forgot to explain the concept of gender and sexuality to future trunks so he's a little confused on that front and his gender & sexuality are "i have literally never thought abt these concepts in my life but i think men are nice. i refuse to think about gender though" (i actually have two main hcs for future trunks which are either gay trans man or more-feminine-presenting nonbinary bisexual)

son hcs:

goku is Not as fluffy as vegeta at all, but he does have fur on certain parts of his body. namely on the back of his elbows + ankles, down his back connecting to his tail, and on his shoulders. its inherented from gine!

gohan is learning saiyan language from vegeta! vegeta acts grumpy about it but he's glad to have someone to teach. when gohan learned that most of the history had been lost he basically wished shenron for a big ol book on saiyan culture and gave it to vegeta just as an act of kindness and vegeta was like [in an angry voice but very touched] "Ok. Sit down. You're learning." by extension gohan is also teaching the rest of his family!

i will take ox king being actually non-human to my grave so like, chichi has horns and a very short ox tail! gohan and goten both have horns, but they're hidden by hair. goten's horns are bigger than gohans.

goten also has a more ox-like tail, with a little puff of fur at the end. generally, gohan looks more saiyan-like and goten looks more ox/human-like.

although he keeps up his cheery demeanor very well, goku is still haunted pretty badly by like... everything that’s happened in his life. he still has frequent nightmares about cell & buu specifically.

gohan will freak out at worse, zone out at best, if he's even tapped on the neck. it reminds him of the whole 'getting his neck snapped on namek' so that area is pretty off limits to everyone

goten gets along really well with android 17. they both have a love for nature and 17s kind of like his chill uncle, so whenever he gets too stressed out or just needs a break you can find him face down on the ground outside of 17's place on monster island.

goku is really really good at remembering completely random shit. bulma uses this to her advantage whenever she's working and has him memorize random technology stuff. a week later goku can not remember what he had for breakfast that morning but as soon as bulma asks "hey do you remember what i told you last week" hes like "oh yeah sure i have no idea what it means but [blurts out three hours worth of technical garble]"

oh boy is this a headcanon that has a lot more depth to it than just a bullet on a tumblr post, but gohan has DID!

goku, like vegeta, doesnt get labels either, and does not even Try, ask him about any of it and hes like "i dont get the gender thing but i think lots of people look nice :)" gohan is gay and like vegeta, "debatably a man", goten + chichi are both bi nonbinary, & pan is a lesbian trans woman.

both:

bulla and pan are both into music! i think theyd mess around making their own stuff w/ launchpads

i have a general hc of ki mixing or shielding, essentially, if youre close enough to someone people wont be able to tell apart your ki and you can also 'shield' someone with your ki for a small amount of time. if vegeta has his energy low, his and bulma's energy are the same. same thing with goku and chichi! goten and trunks are near impossible to tell apart, and same thing with gohan and videl.

though goten and trunks are both protective over their younger siblings, gotenks is that protectiveness times a thousand. look at bulla or pan wrong for 2 seconds and you're going to have an angry gotenks in your face asking if you have any last words. i like to think that trunks and goten fused casually a lot, especially around the time where bulla and pan were young, so its basically goten and trunks own attachment to them PLUS gotenks' attachment to them as his own person combined.

i like to pretend end of z did not happen the way it did so uub, using nimbus, travels back and forth a lot. goku isn’t the only one who teaches him how to fight as goten, gohan and trunks all think of him like a little brother and love training with him!

fuck you letters to toriyama/toyotaro hot takes:

cell, as cool of a villian as he is, definitely should have had a creepier final form. or multiple- just something that really drives in the fact that he's made up of other's dna & fuckin ABSORBS people. also his first two forms should have had a different absorbtion method other than the tail thing (not the drinking thing thats fine) it just feels.   Weird. not good

it would have been far more interesting to keep the bitter attitude towards vegeta that future trunks had imo... in super trunks was going through a Lot granted but the fact tht he wasnt more confrontational to vegeta being a dick to him seemed kind of off considering his attitude in z i just.. think it would be interesting and far better if they had more of a back and forth 'family but lowkey hate each other' relationship

i dont want to rant about super so heres some super condensed takes, goku black arc specific because thats 90% of what ive seen of super:

mai is a fucking freak ass weirdo, why did they not just make another character to pair with trunks

trunks not flipping the fuck out at his timeline being erased feels... out of character. also trunks deserved the win against zamasu

future bulma did NOT need to die

trunks should have just stayed in the current timeline

please fucking let trunks and goten grow up. we SAW a version of trunks who looked 14 (history of trunks....) and the versions of goten & trunks we have r/n in super do not look 13/14 respectively what in the goddamn hell is going on in the character design department

super definitely should have taken place later down the line

supers version of bulma and videl look awful. why are they That stick like.

vegeta needs to kill frieza. just once.

fu has enough potential to be a very interesting mainline character and i am so sad he's not

i would actively enjoy a sdbh anime with more  budget that isnt just a promo anime and has a plot that makes sense... i think db should have more wild spinoffs

xenoverse deserved a better story that went FULL in on the 'what if' type of timelines- like they did in raging blast which is a FUCKING GREAT GAME

straight up lies:

dragon ball z is a good series