English is a more complex and nuanced language than most people realize, a consequence of it being one of the largest and loosest in its rules and permissive in adding new words, and that extends to people who are first-language speakers as well. Many words are nominally synonymous with each other in the thesaurus but in practice aren’t actually used the same way, usually because they convey different sets of emotions or feelings. For example, experience and endure are nominally synonymous, but no competent English speaker would ever actually use one when they really meant the other. To experience something means merely to have been present for something and perceived that it happened. To endure a thing means not only that you were there when it happened, but that the thing took or attempted to take a physical, mental, or emotional toll.

Thus, “I experienced the concert” does not actually convey the same meaning as “I endured the concert”.

Yes, nominally speaking “passive” is correct by a strict dictionary definition of the word. But no English speaker would ever actually use this word, in this way. It wouldn’t even occur to them. The mere fact that there has been argument over it is proof enough of that - if it were clear enough to be acceptable then no one would even think to argue it, let alone would there be as much backlash as there has been.

Or in other words, if you have to resort to grabbing a dictionary to prove yourself right, then you’re only driving home how unnatural the word choice is, since if it were natural, then you wouldn’t need the dictionary.

The only way to make “passive” work in this context would be to reverse the order of panels on the previous change. U18 Bra exclaims “your passive!” and then gives a diatribe as to why. Even then it’s still weird because it’s an unnatural word choice from a 15-year-old non-combatant kid while in the midst of battle with stress and emotions running high.

As it stands, however, the most natural reaction from Majin Bra remains not outrage, but confusion. 2 Replie(s)

You know, I was going to launch into one of my world-famous miles-long tirades, but then it occurred to me that ultimately everything I was going to say about how Salagir messed up can be expressed by a single three-word writing truism.

Show, don’t tell. 1 Replie(s)

...you know what? You're right. This is a brick wall. I'm in the wrong here for even making the attempt. It's been demonstrated that getting anywhere will be like trying to squeeze blood from a stone, but I kept trying anyway. That's my bad. Mea culpa. Lesson learned.

Moving along...



Based on how Salagir has handled SSj3, I wouldn't be surprised if he said that a fusion of the four of them, if it were even possible, would only last like 15 seconds or something.



In fairness, one day after it's over is hardly "not letting it go". It's still very relevant, if for no other reason then it's still the current page.



Funnily enough back during the Bra v. Cold fight someone mentioned that she came across as a reincarnation of Frieza. I think it was intended to be an insult towards her, but I actually liked the idea.

I liked U16 Bra because she fought to win. Like, she may have disparaged XXI beating Vegito with a timeskip/teleportation spell, but she didn't ultimately have any problem using teleportation against Eleim. She agreed to fight Cold even knowing that he had a trick up his sleeve (so to speak), but she made sure to stack the deck in her favor too with senzu beans and hitherto unseen techniques.

One of my favorite lines in DBZ was this exchange between Gohan and Buu:

Buu: "So, you've come to fight me?"
Gohan: "No. I've come to kill you."

Ultimately it amounted to nothing because Gohan dicked around like Saiyans always do, but it's still a great line. And Bra was genuinely striking me as the type who'd actually follow through with a threat like that, and that to me was interesting because we don't get that in Dragon Ball, like, ever.

What I did like in this fight was that Bra largely followed through on that, too. She went for debilitating blows right off the bat, killed immediately when she got the chance, was perfectly willing to use bullshit techniques to speed things along. There's no real point where she can be said to actually start "toying" with her prey.

That all being said, I have no problem with the idea of her losing. For one thing, as I mentioned several pages ago my preferred ending to the Bra v. Cold fight would have been Ginyu switching bodies with her and it sticking. And I don't mind the idea of her losing this big brawl here in theory. Had, say, Gohan's hail mary actually worked then I'd be fine with it, or if there had been an earned Talk no Jutsu, I'd be fine with that too.

Most preferably I would have liked something akin to Goku, Krillin, Gohan, and Yajirobi v. Vegeta, where Bra held the upper hand the entire time but her ability to fight is slowly whittled away, culminating in either a hail mary attack that works, or else an earned Talk no Jutsu. But in either case, it's good that Bra didn't win this fight - and I'm saying that as a "Bra fanboy". Bra shouldn't have won this fight, it wouldn't have been good for the story or her character.

But as it stands, what we got was something that has ruined her character. Go check out some of UMW's posts for a good explanation of why. 2 Replie(s)

But not invulnerable. Pretty sure he still needs to "pull himself together", which might take a while. 1 Replie(s)

No. Talk no Jutsu refers to convincing someone through nothing more than talking that their fundamental worldview and ideology are wrong. What actually happened here on this page was (intended to be) Talk no Jutsu.

What Aladdin did with Jafar and what I was hoping would happen with Bra is not Talk no Jutsu, it's merely convincing/showing the opponent that they have made a tactical blunder. Bra realizing that she's made an error without necessarily changing her outlook on life.

It's the difference between convincing someone not to kill a victim because Killing Is Wrong even though up to this point they have been a remorseless killer, verses convincing someone not to kill a victim because it would actually put them at some sort of disadvantage (the victim would be more useful as a hostage or whatever), without actually making the hitherto remorseless killer realize that killing remorselessly is wrong.

Trying to say "that's splitting hairs", as I anticipate you will try, is like saying the difference between premeditated murder and manslaughter is "splitting hairs". It's not splitting hairs, it (the difference between Talk no Jutsu and mere guile) is an important distinction that a writer should know.



Stop using terms you don't actually understand.

An ad hominem is when you attack the person instead of the argument they are trying to make. Merely insulting someone is not an ad hominem, it's just belligerent. What I did wasn't an ad hominem because merely insinuating that the person I was responding to was only still here due to fanboyism or sunk cost fallacy was not the whole of my argument. It wasn't even the argument I was making, it was a brief aside before my actual argument, which was a paragraph or two breaking down why the comic was not good anymore.

To make things hopefully clearer: if someone said "the sky is green". then...

>"You utter moron, the sky is blue, look outside the window, you can see that it's blue you failed abortion. Here, I'm gonna link your dumbass to the wikipedia page on Rayleigh Scattering, maybe you'll learn something if you can struggle through it."
This is insulting, but it's not an ad hominem because it does directly address the case presented, the fact that the sky is blue. It presents evidence in the form of "look out the window" and a Wiki article.

>"You are a failed abortion and an utter moron. If you were to die even your corpse wouldn't be useful as fertilizer."
This, if it's the totality of the counterargument, is an ad hominem because it at no point actually addresses the argument presented ("the sky is green", as a probably necessary reminder).

What bothers me about the fact that you continue to throw the dictionary at me, Gojita, is not only that it's immensely insulting, but it's that you're so bad at it.

What you are doing right now is an ad hominem because rather than deal with or focus on any of the actual arguments I've made about why this comic has grown terrible, you're attacking me and dragging things into a tangent about dictionary definitions of slang terms and your inability to pick up on sarcasm rather than actually discussing the comic. 1 Replie(s)

That would have been neat. To be honest I was wondering if someone was going to bite the bullet and actually tell Majin Buu to absorb them as a way of powering up Buu to fight Bra. Granted then he might be smart enough to realize that he's been tricked into fighting one of Master Babadi's own minions...but on the other hand, he might also become smart enough to realize that he's got no reason to listen to Babadi.

My vote is a Cell Junior. Or fuck it, Cell himself. Heck, that could have been Gohan's plan. He does hate Cell. Would have been neat if it was done while Cell was injured and he realized there was nothing he could do about it so the last we see of Cell is shooting an amused smirk at the irony of the situation.

"Well played, Son Gohan!"

Another thought: Babadi really wasn't left with enough air, or he was but the schmucks are able to put up enough of a fight against Bra that it's taking more than ten minutes. So Babadi telepathically commands Bra to come and get him to save him, and when she initially scoffs, he threatens to make his last act to break the Majin Seal so she'll lose her power-up and guiltlessness. At which point someone points out how for all her power she's just a slave to Babadi. She lacks what makes real power: freedom of choice.

Which I'd still have gone "A-ra-biiian NIIIGHTS!!!" to, but it would have been a much more organic and better fitting conclusion so I would have been more gently poking then actually criticizing.

I believe you.



Maybe if you're going to conclude the longest arc of your webcomic with an event that turns on this being the case, you do the damn work and establish it beforehand.



Great, but - why? Again, U16 Bra has never been shown to be introspective or curious about other universes before. Nothing she has done has suggested that she's in any way interested in the idea of "the road not traveled". U16 Bra has been hanging out in this arena for two days, Salagir has had ample time to establish this curiosity, during the lunch breaks, just before bedtime, whenever. If U16 Bra isn't the kind to seek out U18 Bra, then U18 Bra could have been the one to initiate it.

But that wasn't shown. The most Salagir can point to is a single page's cover image that doesn't fit the story arc it's part of (and so arguably isn't even canon), is a mere four panels, and concludes with both Bras writing off the other without any apparent interest in learning more about each other, nor needling each other for making "worse" life choices.

What you are doing is explaining reasons why, in the abstract, it could have worked. And I agree, it could have, and it would have been great. But Salagir didn't put in the work needed to convince us that it would work. Rather, every piece of U16 Bra's characterization says that she should have eviscerated U18 Bra, if not immediately, then the moment she started mouthing off to her in earnest. 1 Replie(s)

Let's take everything from the start of Namek through to the end of the Trunks Saga as Frieza's "arc".

In that time, he restored himself...

1) When going from his third to his final form, healing his tail.
2) When rebuilt as Mecha Frieza

Now I don't know how you define "many times over", but personally I don't think two times qualifies. And arguably the first time I mentioned doesn't even count. Frieza was still handily winning in his third form, he'd taken only superficial damage and was dominating everyone with no effort. He chose to go to his final form merely to rub the faces of the Z-fighters and Vegeta into how absolutely fucked they were, not to heal himself or recover. There's no doubt that if he had wanted to, he could have ended the fight in his third form.

Arguably, one could say that he "recovered" after the Spirit Bomb, I suppose, but the thing is that when the spirit bomb hit him we knew that he was only at 50% of his power, possibly less given what he taunted Goku with after going to 50% ("Nevermind 50%, I'm barely pushing a *third!*"). So the idea that the Spirit Bomb didn't kill him hardly counts as "recovery" when he wasn't going all-out anyway.



We knew from the start that Cell had Piccolo's DNA, so him being able to regenerate his tail or other limbs isn't surprising (arguably, this is why Toriyama had Piccolo need to regenerate his arm after his fight with Imperfect Cell, to remind the audience that Piccolo and, thus, Cell, can do it). When 16 tore off Cell's tail, we already knew it wasn't going to mean anything, it was simply something that 16 wouldn't be aware of and so something he'd naturally try. So really, here's where Cell recovered unexpectedly to the audience.

1) After Vegeta's Final Flash. The damage to Cell's arm and torso would probably have been expected by the audience to be lethal to Piccolo, given a Goku-shaped hole in his chest did in King Piccolo.
2) After having his head destroyed by Goku. Destruction of the head certainly would have killed Piccolo.
3) Regenerating from his nucleus. Piccolo 100% couldn't do that, either.

My personal theory is that Frost Demon cells are biologically immortal. They can't regenerate with any kind of speed, but you can't kill a frost demon merely trough massive trauma. This would be backed up by Frieza's ability to stay alive despite being bisected, missing his arm, and having a massive head wound (and, non-canonically, by the fact that Cooler survived being reduced to around half a head). So that biological immortality, mixed with Piccolo's regenerative ability, is what gave Cell his ability to recover from things that would have killed Piccolo himself.



This is true. I actually went back and counted once and found like eight or nine times where Majin Buu should have been defeated in his arc, and yet he isn't due to avoidable failures on the part of the heroes.



Also for the record when this happens, it's the fault of the writer, not the reader. 1 Replie(s)

A better way to convey this would have been showing a panorama shot of the arena, Majin Bra looking tiny next to the sheer carnage and devastation, with the bodies of those she killed or badly hurt very clear, and then close on the panel of Bra saying "shit..oh, shit...!"

At the moment, the clear emphasis is on Bra's anguish coming from the fact that she was...ugh..."passive", not on any concern for those around her or what she's done. 1 Replie(s)

So regardless of the reasoning behind it, having Majin Bra break her Majin seal when Vegeta didn't, is not going to go over well. It just plays into the Bra = Mary Sue stereotype even more.

One final bad decision to cap off an arc full of them. Poetry.



Thanks for this, you gave me the perfect setup.

Because, Person Who Writes Like Frank Miller, it is so poorly executed. Salagir elected to put in neither the time nor the effort that it would take to make this twist work. You are enjoying it right now on a surface level, the basic concept of Talk no Jutsu bringing Majin Bra down. And I agree, had Salagir put in the effort, this would have been great.

But he didn't, for reasons that I've gone over at great length on previous pages. As a result, the concept did not develop into a good execution. When you dig just a little into the actual story being told here, it's full of holes, leaps of logic, bad decisions, and unnatural character choices.

It's a Michael Bay movie. It's using tits, ass, and explosions to cover for its basic structural weaknesses. Even I fell into it for awhile due to the fact that I actually like U16 Bra, but I had a moment of clarity at the start of this chapter (Zenbuu showing up) that served as my own breaking of the spell, my own peering behind the curtain to see the Great and Powerful Oz for who he truly was. I realized that the Emperor has no clothes.

I don't know whether Salagir was a lazy writer or a clumsy writer for this arc. But it doesn't matter, because in either case he was a bad writer who produced a product far inferior to what it could have been had it been handled more competently. This isn't a case of "nothing's perfect". Every story will always have flaws, yes. But this arc has showcased all of Salagir's worst flaws, and worse, showcased an utter unwillingness on his part to correct them.

His lowest moment as a writer will always be when he told us himself that he had a team of people who's job it is to be understood telling him that he fucked up on the dialogue in these last two pages, and he told them "non, I'm not changing anything, and I'm not going to let you change anything". And presented it like it was a good thing. An arrogant writer who won't listen to criticism from his own editors is nobody's friend.



Bull. I am calling bull. I am calling bull because even if this were the case you've got a team of English-language translators who I'm sure suggested different dialogue, assuming that you don't want to pick out any of the corrections that were presented by the readers here.

This is not a time consuming task, this is the work of five minutes. It probably took you longer to type up this response.

And given that a quick perusal of the French language version of the page reveals people have the same problem...if you're absolutely married to the word "passive" for God knows what reason, go with Tigamar's suggestion: "T'es juste passive, ma grande!", and then let the English-language team do their job and translate it however they feel best gets the concept you're going for across. 1 Replie(s)

No, of course not. It would be nice, though, and some things need to be said even if nothing will actually come of it. Dum spiro spero and all that.

>Puty your energy in something constructive.

I'm gonna go and try and beat City of Brass.

Let me step in to do my best at clarifying.

Goku is the main character of Dragon Ball, no question there. He is also the main character of Dragon Ball Z. That's why even though Goku is dead during much of the Saiyan saga we still follow what he's up to in the afterlife, and once he stops being dead he's back front-and-center as the main focus.

Gohan is the deuteragonist, the character of secondary importance to the protagonist. The deuteragonist is distinct from just having two protagonists in that the deuteragonist is still decidedly of secondary importance to the overall story. While Gohan may get more screen-time than Goku during the Saiyan arc, he doesn't really do anything, he just reacts to stuff around him. You could replace or remove Gohan easily without significantly changing the story.

While Gohan gets a "limelight" during the Namek Saga while Gohan is off-camera, that doesn't change that Goku is still the protagonist since he's still very much connected to everything that's going on even before he arrives on Namek. Gohan is his son, Krillin his best friend, Bulma one of the first people he ever met, Vegeta a new rival, and the whole arc is building up Frieza, the biggest antagonist Goku is ever going to have to fight.

It's very consistent and clear. Namek was a chance for secondary characters to shine, but it was only ever a momentary diversion. As a point of comparison, there's significant chapters in The Lord of the Rings where Frodo (one of two protagonists, alongside Aragorn) is missing and presumed dead and so the focus switches over to Samwise, but that doesn't mean that Frodo stops being the protagonist.

This extends into the other Sagas of Dragon Ball as well. Goku is still the main focus of the Androids saga even though he's unconscious during it. He begins it front-and-center. He is forced out due to his heart condition but when 16, 17, and 18 are activated Goku still manages to drive the plot by being the character that the Androids are after. When Goku regains consciousness he again becomes the main focus character, the one who the story is about. The story, specifically, at this point being about Goku training Gohan to replace him. Goku might not be the one to beat Cell but it's still his actions, decisions, and choices that brought the deuteragonist, Gohan, to the point where he could do so.

It's only after here that things get a bit muddled. Toriyama had set up Gohan to be the successor to Goku and the initial Great Saiyaman and Tournament arcs of DBZ seem to have been written with that in mind, that Gohan is now the protagonist and Goku the deuteragonist - but then he got cold feet and shifted the focus back to the more popular Goku during the Majin Buu arc.

The Majin Buu arc isn't very good. Toriyama misstepped here an the focus should have remained on Gohan. But Goku was the face of Dragon Ball, so, Goku steals the series back. What can I tell you, the Majin Buu arc isn't very good, you know this.



The thing is, though, that nothing turns around U18.

The major story beats of this comic have been:

1) Broly's rampage
2) "Who's Ginyu?"
3) The Majin Rebellion

Broly's rampage was between Broly and Vegito, then later Vegito and Bra fighting Zenbuu for Broly. U18 was completely absent apart from observing the fight.

The "who's Ginyu?" mystery was focused mostly on U8 and came to a head with Bra verses Cold/Ginyu. And once agian, the U18 crew are merely passive observers rather than in any way getting involved in what happened.

Finally, the Majin Rebellion. While the characters of U18 actually finally are doing something, as I pointed out upthread, they don't really matter. Any of Gohan's or Piccolo's actions could have been replaced by anyone else, and Salagir blundered the setup of U18 Bra chewing out U16 Bra so badly that U18 Bra could likewise be replaced by literally anyone and all you'd need to do is make minor dialogue tweaks.

Now here's the thing. If Salagir wants us all to read his super cool fanfic where his Original Character Donut Steels get into exciting adventures featuring Goku from the Dragon Ball Z series, that's cool. But

1) He should be honest and admit that.
2) He loses the right to ever insinuate that DBM is better than DBGT as a continuation of DBZ.

Dragon Ball GT might be broadly bad (though I like Baby, and I like the idea of the shadow dragons even if not the execution), but it at least still tries to continue the story of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. It might fail, but it fails in the attempt. If Salagir's intent is to be telling the story of Vegito and Bra and U16, however, then DBM isn't failing in the attempt. It's not making the attempt at all.

It's like entering a sandwich-making contest. DBGT would be the contestant making a bitch-ass basic peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and not even with Skippy peanut butter, just some generic store brand. But Salagir has made a soup. Maybe it's a good soup. Maybe it's a great soup. Maybe it's a terrible soup. But soup is not a sandwich, and so DBGT wins by default. 1 Replie(s)

Iie, Kami-sama, yamatte...

It’s the larger context. Salagir dislikes GT strongly enough that he started writing an entire fan comic that disregarded GT while also never sparing an opportunity to diss GT, almost to the point of compulsion, while explaining why his fan comic did things differently from GT. You cannot, with a straight face, do that and then claim that DBM is not intended to be a “better” follow up to DBZ than GT was. The intent is clear. And that being the case, it means that DBM naturally invites comparison to GT.

And at the moment, if forced I’d actually say that GT is the superior follow-on to DBZ, and DBM isn’t. Because DBM is no longer a follow-on to DBZ, it’s morphed into the Bra and Vegito comic with special guest stars Goku & Vegeta & Knuckles, featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series. No, it’s not the Goku time show...it’s Salagir’s Original Characters Donut Steel show. GT gets to win the contest by default.



It really did, actually...Goku was intensely involved with all of the arcs in DBS. He’s usually the one moving the plot forward or at least is taking a direct hand in whatever is moving it forward.
1 Replie(s)

Well, let's hear Salagir come out and say it, then: "the main characters of this webcomic are Bra and Vegito, and the main characters of DBZ are side-characters here. This is the story of my original characters, and the canon characters are only here to further their story."

Which opens up a can of worms all of its own vis-a-vis the original definition of a Mary Sue and still, I think, the most useful: a fanfiction character who sidelines the main characters of the original work.



That's not what I've read over on the TVTropes, and it's certainly not a notion that Salagir has done much to dispel, if I'm reading Salagir over on the French version of the webcomic right. Admittedly my French isn't great, but Google Translate does a decent enough job covering the gaps, and I'm certainly good enough to notice that back in 2008 when this comic started Salagir basically couldn't mention GT without insulting it in the same breath. When a writer goes to the trouble of writing a fanfiction that replaces GT and can't mention GT without insulting it, one starts to draw reasonable conclusions about what the author is writing.



It's not just the weird wording, it's the confluence of every bad choice that led up to this and then on top of that the unnatural wording. 1 Replie(s)

Right, played a bit of City of Brass, and now I'm back with the full response.



The thing is...no, it's not subjective. Storytelling has rules just like anything else. A storyteller can decide to break those rules, but they should be broken because doing so benefits the story - like, say, how Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan movies often have scenes out of order, as a deliberate storytelling choice. Here, they appear to have been broken simply out of missteps and ignorance.

Here's the thing. Two things, actually, in the form of two true statements:

1) U16 and U18 Bra were given no meaningful prior interactions, meaning that there is no connection between the two for U18 Bra to be exploting to get through to U16 Bra.
2) U16 Bra has never been shown to be introspetive or curious about the nature of other universes or te possibilities of "the road not traveled", which means that the fact that U18 Bra superficially resembles her is not a factor in this scene.

By showing both of these facts, you have - intentionally or otherwise - established something about this sequence here.

Anyone could get through to U16 Bra right now, it did not have to be U18 Bra

Since there is no connection and no innate curiosity towards each other, that can only mean that U18 Bra's words are the thing that's working, but that invariably also means that this same speech would have worked just as well had it been said by...really anyone, with only minor tweaking for who's saying it. Jeice, Cell Jr., Videl, I'K'L's mother, a random spectator in the crowd, take your pick of anyone who was sufficiently weak enough that they couldn't pose a threat to U16 Bra and so she decided to indulge them.

Now the reason why this matters is that I have to assume that you're trying to go for the Deep Meaningful Scene here, wherein U16 Bra is looking into a mirror image of herself. But you didn't do the work to establish that by making U18 Bra in any way, shape, or form special to U16 Bra. This means that the Deep, Meaningful Scene falls flat because the thing that's supposed to make it Deep and Meaningful, the fact that it's U16 Bra's counterpart, is neither Deep (because U16 Bra is not introspective enough for it to be) nor Meaningful (because U18 Bra is a Literally Who to U16 Bra) to U16 Bra.

And the reason why this is particularly sour is because this lack of proper work to make the Deep, Meaningful Scene actually deep and actually meaningful is coming at the end of DBM's longest single arc. Eight chapters have led the Majin Rebellion to end with a scene between two characters where one of the characters doesn't actually matter to the scene.

Moving on.



No, you have the inverse problem: you have so many characters that 90% of them get more screen time than they deserve.

As I observed a few weeks ago, if you put a gun to my head I would not be able to tell you who the main characters of this story are. I would default to U18 since this is ostensibly a spinoff of DBZ, but in practice not only do the U16 characters have around as much screen time, they've actually been far more important to the plot. Every major story beat you've written has the U16 crew front and center while the U18 crew are usually out of focus. At most they put in little comments, but they're for the most part passive observers of the plot rather than active movers of it.

Which means that it's really difficult for me to say whether this webcomic or Dragon Ball GT is the better DBZ continuation at this point, because while GT was broadly not very good, it at least both managed to keep the focus on just a few primary characters and have those primary characters be the primary movers and shakers of the plot or at least be integral to things going on in that plot.

As I understand it, the entire raison d'être for this webcomic is as a rejection of GT and an attempt to make something "better". But in real terms, what would actually change about the way this comic has progressed if U18 was eliminated entirely? As it stands their biggest contribution to the plot has been both Gohans and Piccolos being able to work together well during the Majin Rebellion and U18 Bra talking down U16 Bra, but as established above your own work that you did has shown that it didn't have to be U18 Bra, and likewise only superficial changes to scenes would occur if U18 Gohan and U18 Piccolo were removed. They do not actually matter, all their roles could be filled in by others with no actual changes to the story.

Perhaps this will change in coming arcs, but I can't imagine there's too many of those left.

Now one other thing with regards to the wording up above.



I want you to stop and consider something for a moment: the entire purpose of a translator is to take a concept and make it clear in another language. Their main goal is to be understood and clear.

If you have a team of people who's job is to be understood telling you "this does not make sense and needs to be reworded", and especially if you're telling us outright that what Bra's saying sounds just as unnatural in your native language, do you think that maybe, you're the one that's in error?

I know the intent of what you want U18 Bra to say. But you've worded it so clumsily that the natural reaction of U16 Bra should be confusion rather than revelation. Generously she might be motivated to start arguing with U18 Bra over the semantics of what she's saying, but is that where you want to conclude your eight-chapter, one-quarter-of-the-webcomic's-total-runt­ime arc? With two teens bitching at each other over word choice?

It's something that just plain does not work in English, and you've even admitted that it doesn't work in French. I can only assume that this sounded good in your head...but it doesn't sound good out loud, it sounds muddled and confusing. You have made a mistake. 1 Replie(s)

Yes. I’ll have more to say on this later, but for right now I’ll just say that the most natural response from Majin Bra would be confusion followed by pointing out all the times she’s been active and aggressive just within this webcomic, nevermind her life as a whole.



My point was that U10’s initial presence in this tournament makes it pretty clear that the power level standards are low, so that in and of itself wouldn’t bar Garlick Jr. from entry. As well, It wouldn’t be Garlick Jr. as we saw him in the movie or the anime filler, but rather, Garlick Jr. as we saw him in the movie plus thirty years or so. Plenty of time for him to get stronger.

Not that he actually needs to, because Garlick Jr.’s main draw was never his strength. He comes at problems sideways. He’s literally immortal, so you can’t kill him or even cause him much physical damage (he could have used the dragon balls multiple times to give himself invulnerability alongside immortality). His dead zone doesn’t care about power levels; when you’re sucked in, you’re in there. And if you bring in his, what was it, black water mist mind control shtick, you again get something that just doesn’t care about power level. All he needs is a way to avoid getting sucked into the Dead Zone himself.

You know come to think on it this is sounding a lot like XXI. Especially in the “bad guy has had easy access to dragon balls and has used them for years” part.

So it could have been made interesting, again. It also would have given us more variety to fighters rather than various flavors of big muscles and laser blasts, which is also why I wish Janemba had been here.



To say “xfold” in English is just a poetic/fancy way of stating something as opposed to “x times”. The curse that God laid upon Cain, for example, is known as the “sevenfold curse” because God swore that any man who striketh Cain shalt by God be struck seven times in return. Likewise if you say “tenfold” then you just mean “ten times”.

So, yeah. In plain Japanese and plain English (and frankly plain French), the Oozaru form is meant to be a ten-times multiplier, give or take. Certainly Vegeta is intelligent enough that if he meant “twice” or “five times” then he would have said that, and as was said, he has no reason to lie or exaggerate here.

Which, again, to be clear, isn’t one of my problems with this webcomic, that Salagir is ignoring that in favor of his own personal rewrite of canon. I’m just saying that having done that, here and multiple other times, he’s lost the ability to justify choices based on what is or isn’t canon.

Hey, I didn’t say it, my version had fat Jenemba kept docile through some means. In any event like I said, it’s not a complaint, just an observation of the road not traveled and a way to make it work.

Speaking of...

@Salagir

So I’ve got to go to work in about 30 minutes and so don’t have the time to unpack all of this until about 10 hours from now, so I’ll just touch on one point RE: canon. It’s fine that you didn’t want to bring in Janemba; I’m not saying he should have been here, just that it would have been neat. Rather, I’m just pointing out that you’ve broken with canon a large number of times in the past, and no doubt will break with it in the future. That’s cool and fine, it’s not like Toriyama is much better with his own stuff (remember when Cell couldn’t be destroyed because of the nucleus specifically in his head despite his head having been blown apart just a few chapters earlier and the regeneration having nothing to do with his head? Not saying that Goku should have won so much that if Cell’s nucleus was in his head he should have regenerated from that nucleus, not from his body. Later non-canon stuff said that Cell can move his nucleus, but it’s just that: non-canon).

Rather, I’m just saying that “X wasn’t like this in canon” or “Y was like this in canon” has by thine own hand ceased to be a useful justification to do or not to do a thing in this webcomic. There’s too much precedent of breaks or twisted reinterpretations. At this point the best that can be managed with a straight face is “we’d prefer to keep close to canon but will violate it if we want”.



Yeah, God Forbid we have a fighter with a visually distinct design (it’s all about the silhouette) and very distinct fighting style and power set and instead have an adaptation of a blunt instrument...and not even his most interesting version of that blunt instrument. Broly was better when he could talk.



A common complaint about the novel Twilight and the series as a whole is that it depicts the relationship between Bella and Edward as extremely unhealthy by most relationship standards, particularly the parts where Bella deliberately puts herself in danger and her life at risk just to get attention from Edward. If you were to make this complaint, and then Stephanie Meyer tried to explain to you why (despite what every relationship counselor on Earth would tell you) it’s not unhealthy, it’s romantic, would you listen?

Likewise, Jared Leto’s take on the Joker was widely panned by audiences and critics alike For being just awful, especially when compared to his predecessor, the late Heath Ledger. If Jared Leto showed up to explain why he acted the way he did and portrayed Joker the way he did, would that change the fact that his portrayal was just awful?

The film Gods of Egypt is the most accurate portrayal of Egyptian mythology that Hollywood has ever produced. Certainly it’s better than any Mummy movie, and yes, that includes the original 1932 one with Boris Karloff. In spite of that and in spite of being a guilty pleasure of mine, it’s a stupid, stupid, stupid movie, and Alex Proyas (the director) explaining your someone all the reasons why he made his bad directing choices doesn’t change that he made bad choices.

The Room. End of line.

The author of a creative work can offer special insight into the reasoning behind certain decisions or events, but that by no means exempts them from criticism and only rarely changes the quality of it. 3 Replie(s)

So do you just like communicate primarily in image macros or something? Fine, let me speak your language.



Man The Killing Joke is a good comic.



Oh, I'm sorry, this may be my bad. See, when you started this kerfluffle you had quoted my post where I broke down in four reasons why this plot point is a failure, and specifically I had brought up a new point, the fact that U18 Bra is being a self-centered unempathetic bitch by invalidating Majin Bra's trauma simply because someone Barbie Bra knows went through a different trauma, completely brushing aside the fact that there is no "right" way to be hurt. That is the issue.

Since you had quoted that post I was under the assumption that we were talking about, well, that post and that point. Y'know. Because you went to the trouble of quoting it and everything. 1 Replie(s)

Yeah, no. Jokes are supposed to be funny to other people. You spent a few hundred words dodging my argument, pretending you have the skills needed to get inside my head, and then trying to reduce me to a video game character for your own personal amusement.

Jokes are intended to make other people laugh. You just wanted to get a chuckle in for yourself. That's not joking, that's trolling.

And you're still dodging the issue I raised rather than confronting it. If you don't want to have the discussion/argument/whatever, fine. But don't piss on my leg and then try and convince me it's raining.

So I think I've mentioned like four or five times that U16 Bra was my favorite character original to this webcomic. Salagir doing something to make me hate her is significant, especially considering the broad dislike for the character that already exists for good reasons. If one of her few genuine fans who liked her, warts and all, can be turned against her in the space of just a few shitty pages, ya done goofed.

Also gotta love how you've spent all this time talking about me rather than the point I raised. That's called an ad hominem. That's a fallacy. At least when I went off on you two pages ago in a since-deleted post it wasn't to dodge an argument, it was to get you to realize how frankly insulting you were being by throwing dictionaries at me.

To reiterate something I said there, by the way, when doing that you literally could not be more insulting if every third word you typed was a racial slur, so I'll thank you - as will anyone else you talk to - if you avoid doing it in the future. 1 Replie(s)

Counterpoint: Doctor Raichi doesn't really strongly resemble his movie counterpart, Frieza is portrayed as much less polite and genteel than he was in canon, Ginyu didn't care about his teammate's lives in canon while DBM's took the blame for their failure onto himself, Fat Buu had moments of utter sadism in the manga that he's yet to display here, Babadi is being portrayed as vastly more competent than he ever was in canon, Saiyans supposedly lack empathy even though Nappa wanted to wish Raditz back and was shocked when Vegeta killed a Saibaman, Super Saiyan 3 draining power even though that's not mentioned or alluded to anywhere in the manga, the Oozaru merely doubling strength even though in the manga Vegeta outright states it's tenfold (and no, Salagir, "conversation isn't maths" doesn't excuse the change, if someone says tenfold then they mean ten times, or at least something close to it, and they certainly don't merely mean "double")...

I could go on. The point is that for all that Salagir has said that he wants to stick to canon, he's been perfectly willing to break with it. If Janemba was in his first form, he could have been lured in and kept placated in some way. Slightly rework Fat Janemba to be more docile. It could have worked, if he'd wanted to make it work. 2 Replie(s)

I was about to comment that he might not have been powerful enough to qualify, but then I remembered that Universe 10 was a thing. Although it can probably be reasonably guessed that most of the fighters for U10 were still at least as strong as Raditz, and therefore probably around twice as strong as Garlick Jr.

We'll add that to "missed opportunities" nevertheless. Not in a bad way, this isn't a complaint, more just wishful thinking.

Personally were I doing U9 I would basically make it the "Only the movies and not the show" happened universe. So by turns the humans have had to deal with Gurumes, Lucifer, Taopaipai, Garlick Jr., Doctor Wheelo, Turles, Lord Slug, Cooler, Super Android 13, Broly (three times), Bojack, and Janemba.

Heck, could have been an opportunity to bring in Janemba if they hadn't beaten him yet. In terms of personality he might be a lot like Buu, but his actual power set is really neat and distinct and his second form design is kickass.



No. They. Are. Not.

Who you are as a person is a product of your life experiences, and the two Bras have had completely different life experiences. They superficially, physically resemble each other, but they are not remotely the same and trying to claim otherwise shows a juvenile understanding of what makes a person a person. It's more than just who your mommy and daddy were (and even that isn't the same...). 1 Replie(s)

That's not true. Last page I didn't complain about the comic, I just engaged in otherwise normal conversation about Vegito being a shitty dad.

As it stands, though, my current plan is to see this arc through to its unearned end. I'll bow out for the mini-comics.



Cute, but no, although congrats on remembering something I brought up vis-a-vis another user several pages ago. But no, my plan has always been to see this particular chapter through to its end so that I can render proper judgment on it, for whatever it's worth. At this point it's less "sunk cost" and more "everyone wants to see a train wreck."



For my part, it's a confluence of events.

1) This whole situation is out of character for U16 Bra, Majin'd or otherwise but especially Majin'd. Barbie Bra should have been eviscerated the moment she started talking back to Actual Character Bra. Someone who slices and dices her own brother, her brother's mentor figure, and God, isn't going to be held back by a teenage girl's whining.

2) U18 Bra is a Literally Who. A non-character. She not only doesn't have any prior interaction with U16 Bra wort noting, she barely has any interaction with any character. She is a nobody, a nothing, to the story, until this moment. But now suddenly she's the Most Important Person in the Universe, able to get through to Majin Bra where no one else could despite having no connection or similarity beyond superficial appearance.

Roughly, this would be the equivalent of Mecha Frieza being talked from blowing up the Earth by Yajirobi. Except at least he has prior development and importance.

3) Talk no Justsu can be great when used well, but it needs proper setup. Naruto Talk no Jutsu'd Pain, but it actually worked there because Naruto and Pain were both very well established characters with an immense amount of buildup, and spent several entire chapters of the manga not just fighting, but talking to each other. This? This had nothing other than blatant author fiat and a desire to seem deep and meaningful without putting in the work necessary to actually make it deep and meaningful.

4) And in keeping with what I said a few pages back, where I will always be able to bring up something new wrong each time I complain: "everyone has trauma, get over it" is a recent trend that I absolutely despise because it's just so selfish and self-centered on the part of the person claiming it nine times in ten. Yes, everyone has trauma. Everyone has trauma. Maybe the trauma of one person doesn't stack up against the trauma of another, but that's not what matters, what matters it the emotional scars that the trauma leaves. Calling someone weak and pathetic for having the audacity to be hurt and feel pain is heartless.

Things that don't bother one person can devastate another. Do you (that's a subjective "you", whoever is reading this) want a good example?

Your mother is going to die, if she hasn't already. That's not a threat. I'm not trying to make you feel bad. It's just a statement of fact. Your mother is going to die, probably long before you do. And when that happens, most people will be sad and depressed for awhile, but they'll move on. They'll recover. They won't forget their mother but they'll be capable of happiness again at some point after she's gone.

But Robert E. Howard, the original writer of Conan the Barbarian and Kull the Conqueror and Bran Mac Morn and Solomon Kane and all sorts of other MANLY stories? His mother died in 1936. And so Howard went out of the hospital to his car, opened the glovebox, pulled out a pistol, and blew his brains out. He had made it clear to friends and family in the days leading up to his mother's demise that he couldn't take the thought of living in a world without his mother, and so he killed himself less than an hour after she passed away.

Everyone's mother dies. But not all of us can take it. And it's the same for any kind of traumatic event. We all experience and process traumatic events, even the same traumatic event, in different ways. That's why one soldier can go to war and get into battle and come back just fine, and another one who signed up at the same time and served in the same unit and lived through the same battle can become a PTSD-ridden wreck who lashes out at everyone around him. That's why one kid who lived through an abusive relationship with his dad can come out fine but his brother might come out of it a sociopath.

Okay, so Majin Bra hasn't ever had to deal with Cell or Frieza. But that doesn't make the emotional scars and turmoil that she experienced from what she DID go through in her life growing up any less real.

That's why I hate U18 Bra now (whereas before I only felt mild annoyance at a non-character getting to close out the longest arc in DBM). She's denying the validity of U16 Bra's emotions and she's continuing the "boo hoo you suck because you couldn't cope" meme. 3 Replie(s)

Wow this...this is just awful. Also no one on Earth will be able to convince me that Salagir isn’t cribbing TFS here. If it was scripted out years ago, then he changed it on seeing Episode 60. With no understanding of WHY it worked there.

Congratulations, after all this time, I am finally starting to hate U16 Bra. And I now despise U18 Bra. 3 Replie(s)

All I can think of in response to that is the Shazam! movie and how the wizard Shazam spent five thousand years trying to find someone who was "pure of heart" and yet kept failing over and over and over again until he was forced to settle on Billy Batson when he had no other choice. Only the thing is...no one is pure of heart. The wizard Shazam fucked up for five thousand years trying to find someone who is perfect, but no one is perfect.

Same thing here. Yeah, totally, you have people who are more or less evil, but you'll never find someone who doesn't have evil in their heart. Everyone has evil in their heart. Bra might have had more to work with than some, but the Majin spell still stripped away swaths of her personality and emotions. Majin Bra isn't Bra, it's Bra with huge portions of herself - her mercy, her shame, her compassion - missing.

>imagine being an artist and they see some of the feed back they get like "this art sucks!" and so on.

I choose to remember instead of imagine 'cause I've gone through exactly that. Writing is a form of art and I've been writing for 20+ years; mostly fanfiction, some original work. Plenty of the feedback I've gotten is negative. And...I've kept on writing.

Mind, I do wish I could draw worth a damn. Sadly I have what art teachers refer to as "stupid fingers". 1 Replie(s)

I think the pass for her evil behavior is in the fact that she was frickin' mind controlled at the time. It might not be the direct "puppeteer" form of mind control, but Majin Bra is definitely not the real Bra. 2 Replie(s)

So there's two ways this could be taken. Either Vegito is being legitimate here, in which case he's an awful father because, well, filicide...

...or this was meant as a form of motivation for Bra. Which somehow I feel like its even worse.

Which is lame, by the way. That's lame. Although perusing TVTropes it says that Saiyans "lack empathy" by nature according to the novel, which isn't quite the same thing and...somewhat better? A little? But then I haven't read the novel and so can't be sure.



With that many false starts with basically equal progress each time you have to wonder if the issue is the story rather than the artists. 2 Replie(s)

I've been putting some thought into this. So basically, here's every special.



Looking this over, there's broadly speaking three kinds of specials.

A. Specials that basically just retell a story from the anime/manga itself with only minor changes and the same end result.
B. Specials that basically just retell a story from the anime/manga, but with a different ending
C. Specials that tell a new story that never happened in the anime/manga.

Using the numbering above, these are:

A. Retold Stories
1, 3, 22

B. Divergent Endings
5, 6, 15, 20

C. New Stories
2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36

So let's leave aside my opinions on the Group C specials. Some are genuinely pretty good (all the U8 ones), some are terrible (The Future Majin Attack), but they are at least distinct stories in their own right.

But what about the Group A ones? We really don't need to know or gain anything by seeing the insignificant differences between the canon Cooler movie and what happened in this webcomic. Similarly, every one of Group B specials could have been eliminated. Nominally they contain new information, but ultimately they don't really tell distinct stories in and of themselves, just the same story but with a different ending, albeit sometimes drawing out the ending.

Basically what I'm asking is...why did Salagir even want the Group A and Group B specials to be told? There's at least some modicum of sense in seeing the ones in Group B, I guess, since tehy are are different, but why did Salagir retell Cooler and Broly instead of devoting time to other universes? 3 Replie(s)

Yeah, and why should there be, it’s only been twelve years since this comic began...

No but seriously, with several universes as basically write-offs to start with due to either fundamentally uninteresting or easily predicted changes or else just plain not being important (U1, U2, U10, U11, arguably U12, U14, U17, U18 (by virtue of being a known quantity), U20), the. When you get right down to it there’s really only like four or five universes we really should have ever had any amount of focus on, and U9 seems like an inherently important one unless the only reason for it existing at all was to get Old Kai and subsequently Mystic Raditz. 1 Replie(s)

I really don't think Frieza can be said to lack in willpower, or Ginyu for that matter, and frankly I find it hard to believe that, in canon, Dabura would lack it. I don't think you get to be king of Hell by being a pushover in any sense of the term.

The fact is that we have only one known instance in canon of someone breaking it, Vegeta. He said it was because of his "pride"...but to be blunt I think it's a little more likely that it's that Toriyama wanted Vegeta and Goku to fight. There is no in-universe justification, it's pure Doylist reasoning, and any attempt to justify it in-universe is going to result in Voodoo sharks (an explanation for a plot hole that doesn't really explain anything and actually just raises further questions) 2 Replie(s)

I mean if you want to get technical, the legal age of consent in Japan is 13 as long as the parents also consent, and the same may be true in DBZ-world.

And yeah, like it was pointed out above, the age of consent in France is 15. Which...might explain a bit about this comic.



God in Heaven, you agreed with me twice in that post.

2 Replie(s)

Are those frickin' tears? Like twenty seconds of conversation is enough to get Majin Bra to go from kill crazy to a broken wreck when nothing dented her ego before this? But a few mean words from a Literally Who are enough to open the floodgates?

We've grasped that if this was shown in real time it would be about half a minute of screentime, right? Bra goes from "I'm the strongest in the universe!" while standing over the broken corpse of the next best thing to God that she herself killed, to "waaaah, a complete stranger was mean to me!", in thirty-ish seconds.

I watch My Little Pony and this villainous breakdown is coming across as forced and weak and unearned.



Majin Bra on the the grounds that personality is a heavy factor in what I find attractive, and while Majin Bra's isn't great, at least she has one.



Well...it's her, but it's not all of her. I remain of the opinion that the Majin spell works by removing your ability to access the good parts of yourself. Mercy, compassion, shame, love, empathy, etc., are all repressed. So she can still feel and experience and express self-interest and a degree of independent thought, but the Majin no longer has anything holding them back.

So this was all Bra's real feelings...but not all her feelings. It was the stuff she genuinely wanted to do except that she had mercy and responsibility and so on stopping her.

No. She experienced them, but nothing in the art or the dialogue suggests that it made any kind of chink in her ego. Even this page right now doesn't suggest that any of this got through to her at the time, instead it's suggesting that U18 Bra right now was - for no adequate reason because U18 Bra is a Literally Who with less development in this comic and less interaction with Majin Bra then Zangya - somehow able to actually put a chink in her ego (and you can repeat the "but she's another path!" thing as much as you like, it's still something that also doesn't pan out because Majin Bra has never been shown to be introspective enough for that to matter to her) and now what she's gone through is getting to her after the fact.

We do not see a single thing to suggest that there was any kind fo weight building up for that straw to break. Momentary confusion at someone new showing up isn't buildup. "I could have sworn I hit a lung" isn't buildup. She just plunges headlong into mockery and slasher smiles each time, with no cracks in her Majinized personality. Buildup would be visible signs of Majin Bra needing to rally herself from an attempt for her human side to break through. A moment of clenching a fist before launching into that slasher smile, for example.

It occurs to me as I type this that maybe the failure is more on Asura's part, I don't know how much Salagir tells him to put on each page. But I'm assuming that the setup is basically like in comic books, where the writer usually describes in detail what is in each panel and across each page. That would make it Salagir's fault, as Asura can only draw what Salagir tells him to draw.

"The straw that broke the camel's back" is a metaphor meant to refer to the idea of a camel that is carrying its absolute maximum capacity already and is clearly doing so. A single straw is added and the tiny weight is what finally snaps the camel's back, but the fact that the camel couldn't take anymore was clear before - in real terms, you had every warning showing you that you shouldn't'a did that, but you did anyway, thinking that it wouldn't matter.

But that's not what we're seeing here. What we're seeing here is an unladen camel having a single straw added and, for no reason that the story or events have seen fit to justify, the camel is tipping over. 1 Replie(s)

Engaging you on this would involve us going wildly off topic. Sufficed to say that this is the sort of attitude that has lead the term "Mary Sue" to devolve from something with actual meaning and shape into now essentially meaning "strong female character I don't like". 1 Replie(s)

Jim, you already have enough information to find the majority of stories I've written since 2012. If you insist on spoonfeeding, here, have a D&D story for that yuan-ti character I mentioned I'll be playing tomorrow.

https://d...dit?usp=sharing

Comments are enabled, so, have at it.

>No, you just want Chekhov's gun to be so blatant that one can predict things a mile away. Life isn't that easy.

...

...Chekhov's gun refers to the idea that nothing should be in a story unless it is essential to that story. Extraneous details should be cut if they serve no purpose to the story itself. Chekov's gun is not a synonym for "foreshadowing". They are tangentially related, but only because, since nothing is in the story that isn't essential, it necessarily means that everything will come back sooner or later in some way. That doesn't mean it's possible to understand the significance of the Chekov's gun before it becomes significant.

No one who actually understands what Chekov's gun is would confuse it with foreshadowing. 2 Replie(s)

No it doesn't. I have editors to whom I've never paid a dime. They're also called "friends". Over on FiMFiction.net I have four or five people that I share and hash out story ideas with, in fact that's a pretty common practice among fanfiction writers generally - at least the good ones. Salagir doesn't need a professional editor, he just needs someone who'll read the story he has written with a critical eye - looking for problems, not merely reading it as a DBZ fan. I'm assuming that Salagir has friends who could do this.



If the author has to tell the reader "you're reading it wrong", then the author has written it wrong. Especially when the "reading it wrong" is by noticing something that would have been trivial to fix. I get that Dragon Ball doesn't usually go in for "deep", but Salagir has chosen to do so here - but then not put the effort into actually making it work.

It's not about how much or how little U18 Bra resembles Majin Bra. It's about the fact that as far as Majin Bra is concerned with her interactions, U18 Bra is just another spectator. Majin Bra has never suggested that she'd spent any time dwelling on the idea of U18 Bra being her "road not traveled", but she hasn't. Majin Bra is not introspective under the best of circumstances, and there is no reason for her to suddenly become so now.

Everything you're trying to explain to me about why in a vacuum the thing makes sense is stuff I already know, and have known the entire time, but I'm still saying: it doesn't pan out. There are plenty of reasons for why it could work, but the effort required to make it believable has not been put in. It's jut author fiat.



But that's the thing. There has been nothing to suggest that there was anything weighing down Majin Bra to begin with. This isn't a straw being the thing that overloads a camel that's already carrying tons of bricks; this is an unladen camel suddenly collapsing after a single straw has been lain on her.

If Salagir wanted it to be a "straw that broke the camels back" moment, then he should have shown Bra actually being affected by what the others said, instead of blithely powering on through everything as meaningless insults.




I can't tell if you're serious or not with this...

The point is that ultimately it doesn't matter whether or not this works because either result is bad for the story. If it works, then it's blatant author fiat, a transparently bad conclusion to the fight because it only happened because the author needed it to happen rather than as the result of natural character progression. if it doesn't work then it's just another instance of setup leading to subversion rather than payoff, no different from any of the other things I mentioned upthread.

It's bad either way. It doesn't matter what Salagir does. Maybe after this point he can then rescue himself, once he's out of this corner...but right now, in this moment, he's written himself into a corner and there is no good way to get out of it, only a less bad way. 1 Replie(s)

But again, Bra both began the fight saying that she isn't weighed down by things like morality or shame anymore, and has spent the entire fight demonstrating that this wasn't just bluster on her part.

Your justification is the best one...but it's still weak, because everything about how Bra has acted up until this point tells the reader that this should not be working. U18 Bra is a nobody and the second she spoke up, Majin Bra should have smacked her down.



That's the other problem. Either this will work or it won't. If it works...well, the story at least moves forward, but that's all that can be said about it. It's blatant author fiat rather than the natural course of the character of Bra at this point in time.

Or it doesn't work and U18 Bra is killed or otherwise ignored by Majin Bra...in which case this gets to go on top of my pile of subversions that I laid out above, and the audience gets even more pissed off.

Kobayashi Maru. Salagir's written himself into a corner where there is no good way to go forward.

Which is why I asked when the last time Salagir showed his full story to a pre-reader and editor, someone who would look the thing over with a critical eye and with the intent of looking for no-win scenarios like this. 1 Replie(s)

Okay, can someone explain to me what actually constitutes flooding on this site? Because I first tried to post the below eight hours and like a dozen posts after my last comment and yet got the “you’ve posted too often, please avoid flooding” message and have continued to get it throughout the day until now. I had to save this to a google doc and post it from my iPhone at work.

The rules say “no flooding” but apparently me and this site have wildly different understandings of what “flooding” actually is, if eight hours and a dozen posts later can still trigger the system for me.

@Invader_Jim

I...wow, I have no words for your attempt to rebuke the idea of story editors.

> that generally say the same thing.

The same thing keeps being wrong but, that being said, I’ve actually managed to add in new details and problems with each post, on the pages I posted on.

>her alter ego

But why would she view U18 Bra as this? You can’t even say that they’d sound alike. You ever record yourself and listened to your own voice? You sound different to yourself than you do to other people because when you hear yourself you’re hearing the sound through your body vibrating, not just the air. Most people don’t recognize the sound of their own voice when they hear it. U18 Bra doesn’t look all that much like her, doesn’t act like her, doesn’t even sound like Majin Bra to her own ears, and the two have had only a single page of interaction where they exchanged like a dozen words, and that was something like two days ago in universe, which, oh yeah, was also the first time they had ever met. Bra has had more meaningful dialogue and interaction with the Heliots than with U18 Bra. I think her and Zangya spoke more to each other.

This is like babby’s first existential crisis scene. Again, I fully understand what Salagir is going for, I’m not stupid and described it myself several pages ago...and also described why it won’t work except on the most shallow level to people who don’t actually think about the situation, because it hasn’t been set up properly. U18 Bra with what we’ve been given should be a Literally Who to Majin Bra, and trying to claim that just because the two superficially resemble each other than this will get through to her is asinine. If this works at all then it would have worked just as well with a random spectator with the evidence we’ve been given. This is not a deep and meaningful scene it wants to be because Salagir hasn’t put in the work needed to make it so.

You can list out all the reasons why in a vacuum it should work, cliche though it is - but those reasons don’t stack up against all the reasons why it doesn’t, reasons based on the story as it has been written, the context we’ve been given. Mystic Raditz appearing and bisecting her would have had more setup. Beerus stepping in and using Hakai would have been about as set up, and just as much of an asspull.

This is an improvement over what we were getting, but only because the plot is finally actually moving forward - but it’s doing so through blatant author fiat, not good writing. 3 Replie(s)

No, but see, it's like, how she could have been, or something, so that makes it the symbolism and thus good or whatever.

...yeah, if you can't tell, I actually agree with you. As I said upthread: the mark of truly bad writing is when you can blatantly see the author's hand. The worst part is if U18 Bra were simply switched out for U16 Pan I could actually buy it more since there would at least be a genuine connection to reach through. This? This is juvenile in its conception and just plain bad in its execution when given any amount of serious analysis and comparison to how it COULD have been handled. 2 Replie(s)

I decided to be a little less mean.



Sure it is, if a way to fix it is suggested alongside of it. I have in the past month suggested two:

1) Restructuring the story to be more like the webcomic it is rather than the manga it never will be.
2) Not doing main chapter updates until the chapters can be released in whole, and using the minicomics to tide things over in the meantime.

Constructive criticism doesn't stop being constructive just because it's ignored.



I'm thinking of a certain Samuel L. Jackson quote from the the first Avengers movie, said towards the climax. You probably know the one.



Heck yeah. Since 2000 and 3rd Edition seriously, though I did play a single AD&D 2nd Edition adventure in 1999, and I consider myself to have started with the original Baldur's Gate in 1998. I'm lucky enough to have been playing with the same group of people every Sunday since 2006. Not just D&D, either, we've played Star Wars, Vampire: the Masquerade, SpyCraft, this really weird Kingdom Hearts homebrew...but for the most part over the past five years we've been playing 5e D&D, with myself and another player taking turns DMing.

We actually just finished Storm King's Thunder this past Sunday, which I was DMing - but, pertinent to this webcomic, I made substantial changes to SKT to make it flow better and appeal to what I knew my players liked more. Had them visit all five of the lesser giant lords, replaced the final boss with an Empyrean instead of a blue dragon and tied her closer itno giantish lore; and ran the giants as basically Big People who could be interacted with, talked to, and reasoned with, and for whom fighting wasn't always the preferred option.

The biggest change was Duke Zalto, who I basically ran as a guy going through a midlife crisis. He has a nagging wife, a daughter who doesn't respect him, a son who doesn't listen to him, and all he wants to do is rebuild the Vonindod (a mecha for giants) in the same way a guy might be trying to put together an old Harley and recapture the feel of youth. When the players showed up to Ironslag asking about it I had him gleefully showing it off. 1 Replie(s)

Well, first, you'll have to demonstrate that it's an obsession. Given that I only started seriously commenting in the past month, have had several comics where I didn't comment at all in that time, and have been perfectly capable of engaging in other projects elsewhere -

— I think you'll have a heck of a time proving it. 2 Replie(s)

Goku was about 11 at the start of Dragon Ball, and around 15-16 by the time he beats King Piccolo. He's about 23 at the start of Dragon Ball Z, which would make him about 24 during his fight with Vegeta and about that old when fighting Frieza, 25-26 when he met Trunks, and 28-29 when the Android and Cell Sagas happened. Ignoring the question of aging when dead, this would make him around 35-36 during the entire final sagas of Z, from the Great Saiyaman Saga thru to the end of the Buu Saga.

None of this is "middle aged" or anything like it, which is generally pegged at the 40s.

Obviously Goku would be considerably older during this webcomic, but the point is that, well, your point about "teenagers" verses "middle aged" is kinda' dumb.

More to the point, you're constructing a false dichotomy. This webcomic could have good fight scenes and a good story, the two are not mutually exclusive. And whether you admit it or not, a story is what you want too, otherwise you wouldn't be reading a webcomic, you'd just be looking at the results of a Google image search for "DBZ fights" and the still images that resulted.



In fairness to DBZ Raditz, he's only weak because Earth is unusually underpowered on average when compared to the rest of the Galaxy. But remember that when he arrived on Earth, he was more than twice as strong as Piccolo and Goku together, each of whom were stronger than King Piccolo had ever been.

Speaking as a writer, the thing I fear more than anything else in the world is an echo chamber. If I write something and don't have someone telling me what I did wrong at great length, then I know that I've fucked up badly somewhere.

Also, au contraire, it's quite healthy. No psychologist in the world will tell you to bottle up your true feelings. 1 Replie(s)

I think it'd be hard to not come up with something more interesting than how Salagir handled it. 3 Replie(s)

Very true. But it also took a lot more to get through to him. As well, Vegeta was supposed to be unique for being able to overcome the Majin spell. He'd already demonstrated resistance to it by simply being able to act of his own accord - that by itself is a setup for a turn-around. Conversely, Bra has been nothing but loyal to Babadi thus far, and we haven't been given a reason to think that it's merely because he's a sort of battery for her power boost.

Also at the time wasn't Babadi kind of cut in half by Piccolo, or was that later? Can't remember. If he was, though, then there's a good reason to think that might have played a part.

Side note, I'm annoyed by how easily Cell brushed it off.



Not bad, but my own thoughts veer towards going back and fixing the Ginyu thing at the same time by having Ginyu do the body swap BUT then return to U8, and since it's a victory there's nothing U16 can do to get Bra's body back without a Dragon Ball wish. So Ginyu is in Bra's body. First thing s/he does? Get his PTO guy to start making him some bitchin' PTO armor. Also a full dance. Also a reunion with the Ginyu Force and posing and dancing, to Frieza's fury. Look, I like U8 and I want fanservice here, I'll admit it, BUT it serves a larger point of Ginyu basically rubbing what he did in Bra's face. Bra is in her room and sulking and recovering and so isn't caught in the mass teleport. Bra is also missed by the Majin spell.

The rest of U16 also basically tells Bra that this whole thing is her dumbass fault - but she interprets it as "you weren't strong enough" rather than "you shouldn't have done this dumbass thing, you should have just won outright at the start".

Bra's principal concern during the Majin Rebellion is trying to get her body back, both to recover her wounded pride and because she thins that'll prove that she's not weak. The focus for her is on her battle with Ginyu, who can't access her full power but nor is Bra able to access the full breadth of Cold's body's power, so the two basically are evenly matched in their rematch. Eventually she manages to get her body back.

BUT the Majin Rebllion also switches between, say, two or three other major battles against Babadi's heavy-hitters, like Cell and Majin Buu. In the process of seeking out Ginyu to fight, Bra actually skips over and doesn't help out in the other fights.

In the end Bra is able to get her body back (maybe with help from U16 Pan in the form of distraction at a critical moment), you know, a character with actual development and attachment as opposed to U18 Bra, who is basically a Literally Who) from Ginyu...buuuut by the time she does the body is beat to Hell and Cell and Majin Buu have won their fights, killed their opponents and are closing in on her as the last standing fighter that matters. It is pointe dout to her that if she hadn't been so selfish and instead actually helped Gohan against Cell, or Other Gohan against Majin Buu, or whatever, then they'd still be alive.

Add in the idea that we don't learn what happened to the actual tournament fighters so there's real stakes: we don't know if Bra will survive.

There. Ginyu actually gets to do something interesting and meaningful in the story, and the body swap wasn't instantly undone. Bra gets the same basic character development that she's probably going to get out of this but without it being in a pointless slog. Instead of devoting eight chapters to a bunch of chuffa and then a long slog of a battle, we devote those same eight chapters to three or four battles spread out across all of them (with brief montages of other battles) that get to serve as the desired fanservice without turning into a slog.

Mind, I'm not saying this is the One True Way. Just that it would be better than the way that we did get.



Scathing.



Maybe not, but I'm personally of the opinion that if J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, Agatha Christie, Eiichiro Oda, Akira Toriyama, and so on have pre-readers and editors, then there must be something to the idea of getting a second opinion before going to print.



So...are you just blind to everyone else who's been complaining, or do you just have something against me in specific? Because it's definitely not just a me thing. 2 Replie(s)

The thing I was criticizing has nothing to do with pacing or release scheduling, so, why would I include it? Believe it or not there are issues with this story as it's being told beyond the pacing and release schedule.



Yes, that part, because it's not set up or suggested at all - quite the contrary, Bra's every action in this arc has been to demonstrate a total lack of morality, shame, or care. She also began the fight by pointing out that she had completely ditched these things.

Point being that prior to U18 Bra stepping up to bat, we were both told by the story, and shown in the story, that this tactic should not be effecting Majin Bra. She shouldn't care. If she's supposed to care, then there should have been prior glimpses and hints of Bra herself still feeling doubt, shame, regret, or morality. The absolute closest we get is after she killed U16 Gohan, but it was 1) immediately brushed aside, and 2) given all the surrounding context and her actions and words, just as likely an expression of "it's funny that he's still talking, I could have sworn death was instant when you sever that particular vertebrate."

Something as basic as her not intentionally killing anyone, perhaps, except perhaps Cell.

...idle question, I keep hearing that this whole story has been written years ago. Has it been, like, given to an outside editor at any point? 3 Replie(s)

And like I said a couple pages ago...

A-ra-bian NIIIIIIIIGHTS...

Still don't buy it.



The truest sign of a bad story, more than anything else, is when you can see the author's hand without even trying.



By Genesis, covered by Disturbed. But the Genesis version is better. 1 Replie(s)

The spare Kamehameha thing...I'll spare you the math and just say that you stand a better chance of winning the lottery twice in one week and then getting struck by lightning than those beams have of hitting something, and an even smaller chance of hitting anything that matters as opposed to, I dunno, a random rock or unremarkable brown dwarf. And that's assuming that the energy is constant rather than something that fades out over time when there's nothing to sustain it.

As for Whis bringing back the Earth, that's not something we knew he'd do; heck, I can't even remember if we knew he had the ability to turn back time yet before he revealed it.

As for the whole "End of Z" thing...again, at any time Toriyama could just plain forget about it, or decide to decanonize it, or decide that it just belongs in a separate continuity, or whatever. Happens all the time in media - Western, Japanese, children's, adult, modern, classic, you name it. Toriyama isn't gonna let something he wrote thirty years ago prevent him from telling a story that he wants to tell today if he thinks that the story today will be better for it.

I'm not saying that it's definitely going to happen and I'm not saying that I want it to happen. I'm just saying that nothing from the last episode of Dragonball Z robs the events of Super of stakes because there's every chance that Toriyama might decide that Z is holding him back.



See, that's the thing though, I'm capable of reading and have read the same chapters you are, and...yeah, no, it honestly drags, in particular with Majin Bra.

In storytelling there's something called the rule of three. Basically it's that you only want to repeat a given action or story beat three times because by the fourth time, the audience starts to get bored.

Good example might be, say, the fight with Goku verses Vegeta. Goku does his x4 Kamehameha and blast Vegeta away! ...but it doesn't work. So he charges up the spirit bomb! ...and it doesn't work. But then Gohan goes Oozaru! ...and it works, that's the thing that defeats Vegeta. Now there are a number of smaller moments in there as well (Krillin fires the spirit bomb, but it misses, but Gohan bounces it back!), but all were building towards the same three basic beats.

You can see a similar thing with Goku's fight with Frieza. He tries normal fighting and the Kaio-ken, but it doesn't work. So then he tries the Spirit Bomb, but it doesn't work. Then events conspire to make him go Super Saiyan, and from that point forward he's winning the fight (the anime lets Frieza get in some good hits and fight nearly equally, but in the manga, it was never close). Again, there are smaller moments in there but they all are structured around these three beats.

Now, compare the fight with Majin Bra. Of the things that were setups for tactics that might work to even meaningfully affect her...

— The two Gohans can act in perfect sync! ...and instantly job
— Bra's arm has been severed! ...grows it back (For the record, I don't mind the idea that the senzus can regrow limbs. They can close massive holes from an android sticking its arm through your chest, after all)
— Gohan goes to kill Babadi! ...Bra saves him (and doesn't even take meaningful damage)
— Gohan and Cell Junior try again! ...and misaim and hit Bra instead (and still fail to do meaningful damage)
— The Heliots attack Babadi! ...and miss.
— Bra is being overwhelmed by opponents weaker than her that nevertheless are just strong enough that combined they are a threat! ...and nothing comes of it
— Bra gets hit by a massive kamehameha! ...but gets a senzu and, in any event, didn't even seem that badly hurt.
— The heroes have one more senzu to get Cell back in the fight! ...nope.
— Teeglo carbonite! ...nothing.
— Majin Buu goes to absorb her but as an unwitting feint for Gohan to stab her! ...nope, she stops that too.
— And now we have Bra! And maybe it will work and maybe it won't, but...who cares at this point? (And this quite aside from the fact that, as I've said, I see no reason why U16 Bra as she's both described her current state of mind and as she's acted throughout this fight - what we've been shown AND told - isn't just slicing U18 Bra's head off)

Now some people like a slog for one reason or another, tastes are different. But it doesn't change that it is a slog. We have had so much setup leading to no payoff, so much sUBveRsIOn of what we were expecting to happen, that there is no possible way that the payoff at the end of this chapter will have been worth it when read as a whole. It's not like this is a back-and-forth fight like Goku verses Vegeta, it's just a beatdown of a strong character defeating weaker characters that we know she can beat.

If the point of this fight was to lead to this existential moment between the two Bras, then you could cut any, probably, five of the moments I listed out above and still have the same basic emotional core and sense of desperation without also making the whole fight feel like a never-ending slog of SubVErSIoN of expectations. And ideally, you'd instead structure it around just three major beats, say, trying to target Babadi, then the group attack not working, then leading to U18 Bra here.



The thing is that during most of the tense moments in Dragonball, the Dragon Balls were made unavailable to fix the problem at hand, or whether or not the heroes would even last long enough to use them was left in question. The Namek Saga of course requires no explanation, but, for example...

— Goku goes Oozaru after Pilaf has already used the Dragon Balls (and Oolong stole his wish). If the Great Ape kills Bulma, Yamcha, Oolong and Puar, Goku won't know how ow why when he comes down, plus he'll have to go on a whole new quest to revive them.
— King Piccolo got the Dragon Balls first, then wished for his youth back - and then killed Shenron so as to make sure that no one else could use the Dragon Balls against him.
— Piccolo fusing with Kami means the Dragon Balls are unavaialble for much of the Cell Saga, and if Cell wins and blows up the Earth then the Dragon Balls ain't gonna mean shit.
— Likewise for Buu, the Dragon Balls may be around, but they're not going to be any help if Buu kills everyone.

And in the movies where they feature you get the same basic thing as during the Cell or Buu arcs: if the bad guys win, then the wishes from the Dragon Balls aren't going to be able to help, because either no good guys will be around to make wishes, or else the planet will be destroyed and so there will be no Dragon Balls to grant wishes.

No. I ironically echoed his gross oversimplification of SuperKamiGuru08mn's stance by using the same gross oversimplification that he was using as a means of demonstrating the shallowness of his argument. Even then, i did not call him a fanboy, I posited that fanboyism might be behind his issues, or sunk cost fallacy, or something else. Later I suggested that yeah, maybe he just has the patience of a saint.

But ultimately that's neither here nor there because you're still using the word "impatience" wrong in any event, and no matter how many webpages you copy/paste at me, that will remain true.



It isn't. Also your Internet Psychoanalysis is getting a bit old. At least when I posited the "fanboy" thing I only dwelled on it for a single line of text before focusing on the actual matter at hand, the story that's (trying to be) told. You're devoing paragraph after paragraph on me; rather than taking a stance on and debating the comic itself. Back in high school debate we called that an ad hominem; that is, attacking the person rather than the position.

Now mind an ad hominem isn't automatically fallacious (despite what the Internet tends to otherwise pretend) since there are plenty of circumstances where the character of the person could be quite relevant to the matter at hand; a gubanatorial election, for example ("My opponent has a fairly sound economic policy, but he's a registered member of the Ku Klux Klan - do you really want him to be mayor?"). However, the subject of the problems facing this webcomic is not one of them. I feel there are actual, fundamental structural problems with it and its execution. You feel differently. Perhaps we should focus on that.



Well for one thing I hate Facebook so screw that; I've never had a Facebook, MySpace, or anything similar and never want one. For another I like to keep things to the smallest number of moving parts and prefer to operate in straight lines. Why create a facebook page when there's a perfectly functional comments section that already exists for the express purpose of discussing the comic and which expressly allows negative opinions and criticisms that otherwise follow the rules? 1 Replie(s)

I'm really feeling like the Val Kilmer to your Robert Downey Jr. right now. I am getting severe Kiss Kiss Bang Bang flashbacks. Who taught you English? Also, what website did you just plagiarize?

>Then dbs would be non canon

Or just exist in a separate continuity, or decanonize the end of Z. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you're not much of a Star Trek fan.

>You're irritated not just with the schedule but the rest of us for being patient.

Nnnno, that's not what bothers me, though thanks for demonstrating that you only skim my posts at best. 1 Replie(s)

I feel a need to ask how it is you managed to reach the conclusion that I am "quickly" irritated by the Majin Rebellion arc when I've only started complaining about it in the last month despite the fact that it's been going on for three years. Or more specifically, counting Chapter 59 as the beginning of the arc and so Page 1347 as its start, 34 months. I have been complaining for only the most recent 2.9% of its runtime.

Please, elucidate how waiting most of three years before finally speaking up qualifies as "quickly".

>fnf had no stakes because we know everyone turns out fine. We see them in end of z.

This is Akira "wait, who's Launch?" Toriyama we're talking about here. This means nothing. 1 Replie(s)

People in glass houses shouldn't be charging a special beam cannon, Mister "this one storyline has been going on for three years and the only possible reason I can think of why other people who wouldn't like it is impatience rather than any legitimate complaint with the story as it is being told."

Besides, I didn't say fanboyism, I said I don't know what, and then suggested fanboyism as one possibility, then suggested sunk cost fallacy as another. A third might just be that is genuinely doesn't bother you, but that doesn't mean that someone who it does bother is merely "impatient".



Lies.

1) If Goku died during the Androids Saga from his heart condition then no one could Instant Transmission to New Namek to pass on information that people needed resurrections. From that point if the Androids killed Piccolo - which they did in the original timeline - then there's no more dragonballs. Or if, as you pointed out, Piccolo absorbed Kami and then there's no dragonballs.
2) If Cell blew up the Earth then there would be no one to resurrect anyone.
3) If Buu blew up Earth then there would be no one to resurrect anyone.
4) We had no certainty that the Super Spirit Bomb would kill Kid Buu, and the two wishes already used by Porunga (to restore the Earth and then restore Goku's strength) were pretty much the epitome of what could be wished for; if the Super Spirit Bomb didn't work then there wasn't really anything that could be wished for with the final wish that would have.

And if we want to keep going into Super...

5) If Beerus destroyed Earth, and then it was recreated with the Namekian dragonballs, he'd most likely destroy it again and then destroy New Namek out of spite.
6) If Frieza had succeeded in destroying the Earth, there would have been pleanty of time for him to find New Namek and destroy it, no one around to tell the Namekians to wish back Earth and its people, and no reason why Frieza couldn't have gone back and destroyed Earth a second time anyway.
7) If Goku and his team had failed in the two-universe tournament, then Beerus would have destroyed the Earth, and see (5).
8) Zamasu was capable of destroying entire universes. The only hope was an almost literal Deus ex Machina.
9) Grand Zeno trumps wishing people back with the Dragon Balls if Goku and the gang had failed to win the Multiversal Tournament.

As for the character development stuff, see my response to Asharnak. 2 Replie(s)

Yeah, actually. I actually didn’t even know about the ability to look at previous posts until you showed it off.

@jaimehlers

Like I said to Ash, I do get that basic idea. But at the same time, it's something that could have been accomplished much more cleanly and efficiently, without as much gratuitous filler. Did the fight with Majin Bra actually need to be three (possibly four, we'll see, ugh) chapters? Could this not have been compressed down to, say, two? Reveal her at the end of the broad Majin Rebellion, one chapter of her fighting and slaughtering people, second chapter of her mopping up the remainder leading to this moment with U18 Bra and then however this plays out?

In sum, I get what Salagir is trying to do - but the actual execution of doing it has not been very good.

There's been adult women who've gotten into serious combat in this webcomic who also haven't actually been exposed in any kind of X-rated way, so I'm guessing it's more that this just Isn't That Kind of Comic.



Huh. I completely forgot about those. Best guess is that the intervening minicomic that really didn't add anything to the overall story or tell us something we didn't already basically know drove home just how terrible the release schedule has been, plus once this chapter started up I started really looking at the Majin Rebellion arc as a whole rather than individual pages and realized just how little had actually happened and just how pointless the whole thing -

— oh, right, I remember now! Zenbuu. It was Zenbuu showing up at the beginning of this chapter and reminding me about the lack of stakes in this fight and how utterly pointless it is.

I also appear to have had some other posts relating to the new posting format in order to clarify what "don't quote the same post multiple times" meant. Oh, and something about power levels apparently.

I guess I popped in more often than I thought. Still, my basic point stands: I've only been actually complaining about this webcomic for a month and a day, not "months", and even then I've been intermittent over that month and day, it hasn't been constant. 1 Replie(s)

Yeah, that one, sure, that was an accidental double-post, but I had another one several posts above that one, the one that Void Slayer quoted. Like I said, whatever, it ultimately doesn't matter.



Sure, but those events still had some inherent stakes or narrative purpose. Could Tien hold back Cell? Vegeta couldn't beat Frieza but after getting an immense zenkai it helped to establish the power that Goku would ultimately be facing. "Tales of Ba Sing Se" is indeed a great episode of Avatar, so great that in my own writing elsewhere I wrote a story that served the exact same purpose as "Tales", as merely a character piece.

But "Tales of Ba Sing Se" was a single episode, not an entire season. And the fight with Frieza isn't exactly praised for its pacing. In fact, it's mocked for how drawn-out it was.

I can buy the idea of developing character, but if the point of the Majin Rebellion was to develop Bra's character, then there's no reason why we should have taken five chapters for Bra to even make her appearance, and the entire fight with Bra could easily have been compressed so that it was not, as was outlined by Grash, a series of failed plans by the protagonists that don't tell us anything new about them, anemically reveal that Bra was serious about her "I don't have a conscience anymore" speech that she both delivered and demonstrated from the start, and frankly just aren't interesting to watch.

We could have, we should have, been where we are a chapter ago in relation to the fight with Majin Bra, and two or three chapters ago when you consider how much chuffa could be cut from the Majin Rebellion as a whole.



Again, while this is something I can broadly appreciate, we are in essence listening to a joke that is taking too long to get to its punchline, and so the audience has grown bored. Worse, the audience has almost certainly guessed the punchline already. We have spent too much time on setup, and by this point - in particular with the release schedule being so slow to the point where the three years of the Majin Rebellion comprises a full quarter of the webcomic's total life to this point - there's little hope that the payoff will be worth it.

Eh, I get what you're going for by saying this, but comparing DBM to other stories with better-paced fights isn't inherently flawed. The thing is that I don't usually compare it on a chapter-by-chapter basis myself, I'm more concerned with the stakes and purpose of the fight taking place from a narrative standpoint.

I.e., when I compare the fight with Majin Bra to the fight with Vegeta, I'm not saying that the fight with Vegeta took X many chapters while the fight with Bra is taking Y and therefore the Vegeta fight is better, I'm doing...well, basically, what you brought up with Namek. The fights had better stakes and clearer focus. Especially the fight with Goku, Krillin, Gohan, and Yajirobi against Vegeta, that fight was friggin' awesome, extremely well written.

Oh, one more thing, I really don't view the fight with Majin Bra as being distinct from the general Majin Rebellion, it's just a different stage of it but it's still the same basic battle. So it hasn't been three chapters, it's been eight, i.e., four times longer than what is typical for DBM.

Wait, why the Hell was my original post deleted? Whatever, it's in Void Slayer's reply above me.



No.



...and? She's a different person. She doesn't even have the same father. She's had an entirely different upbringing. She's a complete stranger who just happens to physically resemble her, nothing more.



Which Majin Bra has given no indication as something that would bother her. In point of fact Vegeta is unique among all of Babadi's slaves for being someone who was bothered by that thought, and only because of his boneheaded nature and warped morality that says that it's okay to accept outside help to gain power if it means that you get to slaughter hundreds of people and fight your husbando.




And I'm saying: I Don't Buy It. Nothing about how U16 Bra has acted since becoming a Majin makes me believe for a second that this would affect her, and she began the fight pontificating about the reason why it wouldn't. Bra has never minded being a hypocrite before: she called what XXI did to win his fight with Vegito cowardly but had no problem beating Eleim in the exact same way, for example; she's chided others for being unable to put up a decent fight but has no issue using senzu beans rather than accepting a loss. Which, to be clear, is one of the things I like about the character. Bra fights to win, not for honor or pride.

But by that token, U18 Bra chewing her out should mean nothing to her at the moment. If she still had a conscience, if she still cared about what others thought about her, maybe. But she expressly doesn't, and has shown as much through her actions.

I know what the sentiment is supposed to be, but Salagir has failed to establish any reason to think that it would work, and instead has established reasons why it shouldn't.



No.



Doing this again I see...

My first post in literally years was on Page 1728, which was on May 9th. I have, in fact, only been posting here for a month and a day. Also for further details because I am by nature a pedant, that first comment was a single sentence post and nothing more. I didn't comment at all on Page 1729. On page 1730 my comment was more involved but it wasn't on the subject of the Majin Uprising, it was debunking the idea that King Piccolo never tried to commit genocide.

It wasn't until Page 1731 on May 15th that I really started getting into details, but the posts weren't merely "snarky", they were a detailed analysis of the problems. I didn't comment on Page 1732 or Page 1733. Page 1734 is when I got back into things in a detailed analysis while still bringing up new problems. I didn't comment on page 1735. On Page 1736 I had one short comment about the comic and one comment referencing Buffy.

My comments from and including Page 1737 through Page 1739 were the actual short and snarky ones more concerned with sass than analysis, but that's only since June 4th - last week. Today is my first in-depth analysis response since page 1734, on May 29th, a mere two weeks ago.

My point being...it has not been months, it's been barely one month and one day, and only intermittently. Really, by trying to claim that it's been months you're really only underscoring my point about this comic's pacing and release scheduling. It feels like it's been forever because this has been so drawn out. 2 Replie(s)

It is. You opinion is clouded by...I don't know what, but it's clouded. Fanboyism, maybe. Sunk cost fallacy, I suppose, coupled with an unwillingness to admit it.

We've devoted three chapters to fighting Bra and eight chapters overall to the Majin Uprising, but it has been to a fight with no inherent stakes to it because we knew from the start that the Majin Uprising is doomed to failure. And it's not doomed in the general narrative sense, i.e., "of course Goku won't lose to Vegeta because if he does then the Earth is destroyed and the manga ends", but rather, because it was from the start made clear that Zenbuu is keeping the major players out of it for his own personal amusement, but has no intention of allowing Babadi to succeed.

Since this fight inherently has no stakes, this is in essence a fight that's most like Goku verses Jeice and Burter, but with the roles reversed. Vegeta verses Recoome, perhaps. And that's the entire uprising, not Majin Bra.

A-ra-bian NIIIIIIIIGHTS...

Calling it now. 3 Replie(s)

Essentially,

Snake Jafar: "Mwahahahahaha! You little fool. You thought you could defeat the most powerful being on Earth. Without the genie, boy, you're nothing!"
Aladdin: "The genie...the genie! The genie has more power than you'll ever have!"
Snake Jafar: "WHAT."
Aladdin: "He gave you your power. He can take it away!"

In essence, what I'm fearing is U18 Bra is going to basically play the part of Aladdin to U16 Bra's Jafar. It's not inherently bad in and of itself since there is definitely the room for parallels...it's just that I don't see a reason for it to get through to U16 Bra or bother her. And also would completely miss the point of what U16 Bra was saying.

U18 Bra: "You don't control your power! You're a slave to Babadi!"
U16 Bra: "Okay, first, idiot, I don't care about that fact as long as I'm the strongest, because second, I didn't say I had control of MYSELF, just my POWER. I can think and act clearly while in Super Saiyan 2 form, which was basically my life goal."
U18 Bra: "But you cheated! You can only do it because of Babadi's magic!"
U16 Bra: "...so?"
U18 Bra: "Don't you have any pride? It's without any kind of honor!"
U16 Bra: "Honor? Honor's killed millions of people and hasn't saved a single one of them. I'll tell you what I like: a killer. A dyed-in-the-wool killer. Cold blooded, clean, methodical, methorical. And a real killer doesn't let pride get in the way of becoming a better killer."

I may have drifted into the Fifth Element there.

If this entire arc has just been leading up to U18 Bra going Super Saiyan, I'm out. Because at that point Salagir will have done something that Dragonball GT was smart enough to not do, and since this comic started off with the intent of being a better alternative to GT, if it gets wrong something that GT got right, then Salagir will have fundamentally failed at the goal he set for himself.

On that note, swear to God if we're about to get an Aladdin ripoff moment...

I'm sorry, I know that this is supposed to be a moment packed with gravitas, but it's taken us so God-damned long to get here and we lurched so much on the way that I just don't care. 2 Replie(s)

Theoretically, it's all been planned out years ago. Realistically, I have my doubts.



God, I dunno. There's frankly even odds of us getting at least one more chapter of this AND THEN Zenbuu brings everyone back and we'll get another chapter of Majin Bra fighting then.

And we're waiting...

Salagir, thank you for reminding me on the importance of keeping a cast small.

Clearly you haven’t seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Specifically I’m thinking the movie here.

I have been burned too much to expect something to actually happen now.

What I want to happen is for Majin Bra to see Bra and have an existential crisis of some variety. More than likely she's going to spit out some blood and then charge in to kill Bra just to prove how evil she is, only for SSj Goku and the rest of the actual fighters to finally arrive and maybe finish this damn arc already. 2 Replie(s)

God dammit I accidentally deleted my post. Ugh. Okay, from the top...



No, it isn't. I am not so shallow as you would like to believe me to be.



Maybe in the future we remember the classes we took back in middle school about reading comprehension before responding to posts. I never said that this fight should be the same as the fight we Nappa in detail. What I did was outline all the reasons why the fight with Nappa works and used it to compare to why this fight doesn't. Reducing it to "a bunch of weak guys against one strong guy" is reductive to the point of uselessness.

I was pointing out why the fight with Nappa still had focus, tension, and stakes while this fight does not, which actually has very little to do with the fight itself so much as the setting around it.

Basically, when you get right down to it:

— If Nappa killed everyone, then the Saiyans would destroy the Earth. This was the consequence of everyone failing to buy sufficient time for Goku to arrive, or if Goku had himself failed to defeat Nappa.
— But in this fight, regardless of whether or not Bra wins, the outcome is the same. Either Bra is defeated, Zenbuu returns everyone, Babadi doesn't get his wish, and things progress from there...or Bra wins, Zenbuu returns everyone, Babadi doesn't get his wish, and things progress from there. Ultimately the only change will be who is around and who isn't, but the fight itself is meaningless becasue we know that Zenbuu could end it at any time and will not allow Babadi to actually win.



We already did everything necessary to establish this idea when Bra killed her brother remorselessly. No one is going to particularly be impacted by her killing Cell or that Heliot woman to whom no one had any attachments, and her killing Piccolo is not going to have a bigger impact on her relationships than her killing Gohan. At this point we're just padding things out.



Hooray. That does not change that the end of this fight was predetermined at the start of this fight. What particularly sucks about it is that adding in the tension and stakes would have been easy. You know how you do it?

Don't show us what happened to the fighters who were teleported away

Right now the thing robbing this fight of any tension or stakes is the knowledge that Zenbuu could end the fight at any point of his choosing and that we have no reason to think that he's going to allow Babadi to ultimately win. If we just didn't know what happened to everyone and hadn't seen or heard from them, then there's tension. Then there's stakes, or at least the perception of stakes.



Didn't think this needed to be spelled out, but my point is that when you're doing daily updates you can afford to spend time with zero progress or incremental progress to your story without angering the audience because you only have twenty-four hours between one major occurrence and another (especially if you make sure to include both single-paragraph updates with multi-page ones, as this fanfiction did).

When you're doing only three pages a week, and frequently interrupt the entire story to do entirely different stories? Well, like I said: I might be the most verbose objector to this current state of affairs, but I'm not the only one, and that is the least Salagir should have expected.




Insert DBZA Imperfect Cell quote here. You know the one.



Well then they need to go to the optometrist because their vision is lacking in focus.



And here's where I was when I accidentally deleted my post the first time.

Anyway, as I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, as a point of interest and just to underscore what I'm talking about, I've only been - intermittently - complaining about the pacing and release schedule for this webcomic since page 1728, and that only a single sentence post. I didn't comment at all on comic 1729. On comic 1730 my comment wasn't even about the fight, it was about how Bra and King Piccolo compare to each other. My serious breakdown of my issue with the pacing and the release of this comic has only been going on since comic 1731. Five pages. Five pages, and yet you feel like it's "endless". And for the record I also didn't even comment on comics 1732 or 1733, either, so it's not even actually five pages, it's three.

Before comic 1728 it had been literally years since I commented on this comic, to my recollection, because I actually had taken a years-long break waiting for something to actually happen.

So, yeah, thanks for underlining my point for me.

Anyway, I could continue but I have to go and DM a game of Dungeons & Dragons now. Toodles! 2 Replie(s)

I think she's aware, I just think that a significant portion of her personality has been excised, in this case, her capacity for compassion, self-restraint, and morality.

So when it's removed, ideally, what happens is all of a sudden her capacity to feel guilt, remorse, and pity have returned. And that should floor her.

That is not the only problem. See my previous post about why this fight is nothing like the fight with Nappa for an in-detail breakdown of the other problems with this fight in particular and the webcomic in general.

At the most basic, consider this question: if in the next page Bra killed everyone currently present, would that mean that Babadi wins and the Majin Rebellion is successful? Babadi gets his wishes?



Then he's trying to have his cake and eat it too. There is a reason why manga artists do not release three pages per week, or why fanfiction authors release their stories on chapter-by-chapter basis rather than scene-by-scene. Actually that's not entirely true, I do know of one fanfiction that had a release schedule that occasionally fell into that, but the guy releasing it had daily updates for over four hundred days straight.

Salagir cannot have a webcomic with a webcomic release schedule but expect his audience to widely judge it like a manga with a manga's release schedule. That's, frankly, an unreasonable expectation on the part of his audience.

More to the point - why even try for that? Dragonball Multiverse will never actually be a manga. Salagir is trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole. With enough effort you can do it, but it seems easier to get just a round peg in this case. And the cost of doing that in public with an audience is going to be a substantive part of the audience asking why you don't just get a round peg.



Nnno, he's doing it for the audience, at least in part. If he was doing it solely for himself then he wouldn't be releasing it on the Internet for people to read and wouldn't be permitting comments. It's great if he's getting personal enjoyment out of it, but you don't get to create a website, encourage an active community on that site, and then say "but I don't actually care what you think". The "in it for the art" excuse falls apart the moment you show someone else and invite them to give their opinion.



I say that if this is going to be released with manga-like pacing in its story then we should be getting chapters at a time in a manga-like fashion and I'd frankly rather wait months between story updates so that the chapters could be released all at once, with the minicomics then being a three-per-week update to tide us over between story updates, with more webcomic-like pacing for them. 1 Replie(s)

No, there are substantive differences here beyond that. When the fighters went to engage Nappa we had no idea how massive the gap between him and everyone else was, and the fight was meant to show that Nappa could be a serious threat even to Goku when he arrived. We also knew that Nappa was ultimately on a clock: while the gang didn’t know for sure when Goku would arrive, we knew that he was on his way so there was a great amount of tension built into how long it would take. Further, the fight was never about Nappa himself, but rather it was a way of showing off how powerful Vegeta was - if Nappa could smack around the gang like this, what was his boss capable of? Finally, ultimately the fight was tightly focused around a much smaller cast. Yamcha, Tiemshinhan, Chiaotzu, Piccolo, Krillin, Gohan against Nappa and Vegeta and some faceless Saibamen who die quickly. The Majin Rebellion has easily had, what, three times that many characters? And further we knew that our “focus” was supposed to be on Krillin (deuteragonist from Dragonball) and Gohan (Goku’s kid). Gohan in particular is our perspective character through the whole fight.

Whereas like I said last page, if you put a gun to my head I still could not tell you who the main character or characters of this webcomic are, because it’s so incredibly unfocused. There is no tension in this fight because we know that Zenbuu could end it at any time; powerful though Bra is, we have no reason to think she’s stronger than some of the powerhouses worlds away. There is no stronger foe beyond Bra waiting in the wings, at least not as part of the Majin Rebellion, and we have no reason to think that once Bra is defeated XXI will start fighting. We’re not BUILDING towards anything.

So when you combine a fight without inherent tension that’s part of an arc with no tension (the Majin Rebellion has no chance of actually working: even if Bra kills everyone here, there's still an entire legion of powerful warriors waiting in the wings, whereas the Saiyans could well have destroyed Earth if the heroes failed), that builds towards nothing, featuring an overwhelming amount of characters with no clear protagonist we should be focusing our attention on, and all of it part of an anemic release schedule that is frequently interrupted for occasionally interesting but ultimately pointless side-stories?

No. This fight is nothing like the gang verses Nappa except in the most superficial of ways. 1 Replie(s)

I don’t think moth quite meant “juggernaut” so much as what I described with the Goku verses Vegeta fight from the Saiyan saga, or what he later described of the fight against DIO in Stardust Crusaders. Both fights feature a number of weaker opponents trying to take down a seemingly unstoppable more powerful one, but both fights feature the more powerful foe suffering genuine setbacks and a sense of definite progress on the part of the weaker opponents.

Vegeta isn’t taken out by Goku’s Kaioken x3 kamehameha, but he is injured, pushed high into the sky, flips his shit, and realizes that he needs to break out the Oozaru form, which brings in Gohan and Krillin to try and buy time while Goku finishes his spirit bomb. The Oozaru form is taken out by Yajirobi and Vegeta is notably weakened further, but he can still beat the crap out of Yajirobi, Krillin, and Gohan. The spirit bomb is launched at Vegeta and nearly kills him, but he still manages to get back up and keep fighting, but with notable injuries and weakness, a fraction of his former power. Gohan goes Oozaru himself and Vegeta finally starts definitely losing until he manages to cut off Gohan’s tail, but in the process he’s crushed and finally reduced to barely being able to crawl away - but the effort to bring Vegeta to this state has left everyone else in the same weakened state.

So the fight features a constant back-and-forth, but a definite sense of progress. What the heroes do visibly MATTERS even if it doesn’t succeed.

Here? It’s just failed plan after failed plan. The most significant thing the heroes managed to do was take out Bra’s senzu beans, but those were more of a “win more” MacGuffin than making any real progress, it’s made abundantly clear that she doesn’t NEED them.m to win.

This fight is calling to mind all the worst fights in the Dragonball franchise: the one-sided beatdowns. Those aren’t fun. Maybe visually interesting, but not fun, or narratively interesting. 2 Replie(s)

Constructive criticism came a few pages ago, when I pointed out that this whole Majin Rebellion would have been better if Salagir had chosen just a few characters to focus on, and ones which had better apparent conflict between each other as characters rather than it simply being a generic slugging match. My specific suggestion was Cell and Bra. While obviously it's too late to do that now, it's certainly something that can be done going forward. Likewise as I pointed out, gun to my head I have no idea who the protagonist of this story is or where we're going. DBZ might have had a huge cast but the story at least picked just a few characters to really focus on in each of its arcs, at least until the Buu saga - and guess why that's one of the worst arcs in the series? That's part of it, the lack of focus.

The other constructive criticism is that Salagir should stop writing this like it's a manga because it's not, it's a webcomic with a completely different release schedule and completely different audience exposure, which means that if you pace the story being told the same way you'd pace a manga, you just end up what's happening here. By a wide margin I'm not the only one wishing this was over, I'm just among the more verbose.

The story releases three pages per week, so something meaningful should be happening every three pages, the story should be advancing in some notable way. This is not a manga.

Now to add something new. The fights also need to be paced and plotted better generally, even if the focus were improved. A back-and-forth fight is definitely interesting; one of the reasons I rank the original Vegeta v. Goku, Gohan, Krillin, and Yajirobi so highly is because while Vegeta is definitely the stronger fighter throughout the whole thing, he is visibly hurt and damaged throughout the whole thing, having to resort to a desperate move (Oozaru) that is then meaningfully countered (by Yajirobi) and by the end of the fight everyone involved is visibly at the end of their ropes. We get hope-spots, like when Vegeta was apparently killed by the Spirit Bomb, but even once he came back from that and even though he's still stronger than anyone else present he has been officially fucked up and is clearly no longer fighting at 100%.

Furthermore, the minicomics also slow down things further, frequently with stories that just do not matter, like the retellings of the Cooler or Broly movies. Some of the stories are genuinely interesting, when they show things that are actually meaningfully different, but with the anemic release rate of pages already it's just frustrating beyond belief to put things on hold for months. The minicomics should be a separate project, not interruptions to the main one. 3 Replie(s)

Patience is not an infinite resource and one is not "impatient" for wanting the story to get a move on already after waiting three years for a fight that is maybe ten minutes long in-universe to advance.

It's also not "short-sighted". Quite the opposite, my impatience is born from the fact that I know exactly what we still have to deal with after this fight and a feeling of dread at the thought of the subsequent fights that are still scheduled to occur taking this long. 2 Replie(s)

Someone pick up that phone, etc.

I'm going to take a risk and put down money on the idea that stabbing her was still part of some other distraction that we didn't get to see a hint of being set up. I dunno, Cell's not actually dead and stabs her now or some bullshit like that.

Or whatever.

Anyone else got some Mystery Science Theater 3000 in their head? specifically Wild Wild World of Batwoman?





"But it's free" is the last resort of someone who has no substantive defense.

I worked for a movie theater for three years and had a friend who worked at that same movie theater for ten years before that. For thirteen years straight I did not pay to see movies in theaters. But the fact that I didn't pay money to see Batman v Superman doesn't change that it is one of the worst big-budget movies that I've ever seen in my life, that I regret ever having watched it, that it was just plain awful. Ditto for In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, or Gods of Egypt, or I am Number Four.

Likewise, the fact that Salagir isn't asking for money for this doesn't have anything to do with the skill going into the writing. I write fanfictions for fun, I have an extensive bibliography of fanfictions that I've posted on various sites for people to read, as well as several pieces of original fiction that I again didn't charge money for. But I've never once said "but it's free!" in my defense for objections people have raised, and the day I do resort to that argument is the day I stop writing because I will have lost any shred of artistic integrity. 3 Replie(s)

You know, that's another thing. I swear to God that if you put a gun to my head I still wouldn't be able to tell you who the main character of this webcomic is, or where we're actually going with it, and that despite the fact that I seem to recall Salagir mentioning that we're about 2/3rds done with it. Like, I guess it defaults to canon Goku, but we spend so much time learning the precious little life stories of so many characters that I just have no idea who the protagonist is.

Look I get that Salagir is French and maybe he's a huge fan of the Les Mis novel, wherein we're seriously seventy or so pages in before even meeting our protagonist Jean Valjean, but Les Mis is not exactly lauded for the fact that it's a doorstopper.



Me!



Sure, they'll mention a battle. But I guarantee that battle won't be Goku verses Mahissu, and I'd be immensely surprised if it was even something like Recoome verses Nail. Fights tend to be more interesting when there's a degree of emotional investment in them, a clear conflict between the characters beyond just "lets you and him fight", and a clear direction towards them so that we're actually learning something or experiencing some kind of payoff. When they mean something.

My favorite fight in DBM was Goku verses Frieza. Frieza is my favorite villain from canon: I was invested in him. It was, if I recall correctly, the first fight where we got to see the benefits of Zenbuu's midnight visits to the fighters: we got to learn something that could be applied beyond the fight, the form Zenbuu's aid was going to take. There is a long history of hate between Frieza and Saiyans, while for Goku Frieza represents a major former villain: there was clear conflict between the two. And it gave the Frost Demons an unexpected chance to shine given how badly outclassed they had seemed to become: it meant something.

For similar and yet distinct reasons, my second-favorite fight was Bra verses Cold, even though I hate DBM's version of Cold. But that fight managed to turn things around when Ginyu revealed himself and body-swapped with Bra, who I like a lot more. But I was ecstatic! This was a twist that I hadn't seen coming, with a character I like and a character who at least sired a character I like. It provided payoff to the long-running "Who's Ginyu?" plotline. And it was absolutely loaded with possibilities! Heck, just the idea of Ginyu-as-Bra in U8 wearing PTO armor alone, while Bra-as-Cold has to eat crow in Cold's body for her cockiness finally costing her dearly, would have been worth it. Great for both characters.

...aaaaand instead Salagir wasted it by restoring status quo ante. Literally the least interesting thing he could have done.

Pfeh. 5 Replie(s)

Oh God no please no. I would have loved to see the Tournament played out to its conclusion, but now that it's been thoroughly interrupted for this long it's time to just ditch the thing and move the damn plot forward. We do not need to start stepping backwards just so that we can go through all of this again with XXI. 1 Replie(s)

On the one hand, I really want this to work, on the grounds that then there's a small chance of the plot moving forward.

On the other hand, this really shouldn't work, as she knows that the midget Cells can teleport and this plan isn't exactly a work of tactical genius and Bra is supposed to be a canny fighter. And also what Aca said above me, it should have ended a while ago and there's just no more emotional investment.

Also if this is seriously what spawns a Gogeta v. Vegito fight I'll be annoyed as all get-out because among other things I do not fucking care about a Gogeta v. Vegito fight, it will be nothing but filler and delaying actual story progress.

Everyone here has realized that we still have no resolution on I'K'L as a character too, right? Like, every reader has grasped that in addition to still needing to properly introduce and expand upon whatever the fuck is up with XXI, we still have to get some damn payoff for I'K'L, right? And yet there are people who want to waste time on a Gogeta v. Vegito match that will not matter? 2 Replie(s)

You know the mini comics could be a separate update, like what El Goonish Shive does with its main story comics verses the EGS NP comics.

Just sayin'. 1 Replie(s)

I increasingly feel like it isn't, though, for previously outlined reasons.

Well that's too bad. If we're seeing this in mini-comic form then that basically rules out it happening in the main comic, which might have been interesting.

Fine, I'll stop talking about pacing. Something else still needs to be addressed, however.



Go back to the Bra Verses Cold/Ginyu chapters. Do a search for the screen name "RainbowDoubleDash". I switched to Lord Rime around some point during that but I'm also RDD. And I was one of the more vehement defenders of Bra during that arc. And I'd be a defender of Bra during this arc too if not for the fact that the overall story is starting to get to me. I like Bra, I like that she's a powerful and canny fighter who fights to win and fights smart. I want to see her eat some humble pie and grow into a better person and I think this experience will help her with that.

Just a pro tip going forward: don't assume that someone who disagrees with you on one thing disagrees with you on everything. Don't project. 1 Replie(s)

SEE: A free poorly paced comic is still a poorly paced comic. The "free" part just means that I'm not going to get as worked up as I would if I was actually paying money for it, but it doesn't change that there are structural issues with the story that mean that the story isn't as good as it could be and I am rapidly reaching a point where I have to ask myself, "am I only continuing to read this because it's FREE, and not becuase it's actually GOOD?".

Like the old man said, reasons are not the same thing as excuses. 1 Replie(s)

A free poorly paced story that's taking forever to lurch from arc to arc is still a poorly paced story that's taking forever to lurch from arc to arc. The different medium doesn't affect that. But fine. You don't want to compare it to the manga? Cool. We won't. Jury of its peers and all that. So let's compare it to other webcomics.

You know what other webcomic has been going on forever and is often accused of having a mercilessly slow pace? Order of the Stick. In fact Order of the Stick has been going on for longer, since 2003. Yet in that time the comic has managed to have extensive character development, multiple plots that have begun and ended, we've traipsed across multiple continents and been to varied locales...

...and DBM from 2008 to 2020 has had one giant tournament arc. The main story is in one location. The side stories are exclusively flashbacks that don't actually advance the plot or characters. At least in Order of the Stick when we spent a couple years hanging out with Elan's dad in the desert our characters were doing something, growing and changing in notable ways, and while the main plot wasn't advancing the side plots were.

In twelve years DBM has managed to advance its story about as much as Order of the Stick managed to advance single plot arcs. 1 Replie(s)

That would be pretty cool and personally where I'd take the story...but in that case I think these chapters would have been better if they were focused Bra and, say, Cell. The two form natural counterpoints in this arc:

— Cell is a villain who by circumstance is being forced to aid the heroes and act heroically (even if only to further his own self-interest). Despite being a villain he threw off the Majin "push". Cell, who is normally utterly selfish, has to rely on others.
— Bra is a hero who by circumstance is being forced to act like a villain, largely to further her own self-interest. Despite being a hero she embraced the Majin "push". Bra, who normally can keep at least some restraint on her selfishness, finally lets loose and decides it's all about her.
— Both have a wide array of techniques at their disposal, both are canny and intelligent fighters, etc., etc.

So the secondary characters - the Heliots, the Frieza force, etc. - should have been pushed to the side so that we could focus on Bra and Cell, with Cell getting maybe one of the Piccolos and a Gohan (but keep it vague as to which one!) on his side, plus some Cell Juniors.

So now the fight is conceptually ABOUT something rather than what it is right now, which is a mere slugfest (sans Slug, more's the pity) that's basically just Bra proving her Evil credentials but only because she's being "pushed" into it.



So amusingly you don't seem to know how or when "tips fedora" is supposed to be used. You also seem to have missed the "Frieza arc was paced poorly" thing that I outright said in the post. It was paced poorly, but at least its release schedule helped to offset the terrible pacing by at least giving us plenty to read each week.



This too, the constant filler arcs that put me in mind of nothing so much as Bleach are not doing this webcomic any favors, but I stand by my issue with the pacing. Again, this coup attempt has been going on for nine chapters but nothing has actually happened from a narrative perspective, other than Bra being evil now and swaths of secondary characters getting wiped out by each other. 1 Replie(s)

Frieza took forever, but at least we'd get entire chapters at a time. The pacing was still terrible but we were at least getting more than three pages of stuff to look at to drive the story forward per week.

AND on top of that, we were at least consistently focused on the main villain, in fact the most powerful being in the universe as far as we knew at the time. We didn't know of anyone above Frieza or anyone coming after Frieza, so that meant that the fight narratively mattered more.

AND ON TOP OF THAT, the fight at least remains tightly focused with just five characters we're very familiar with (Gohan, Krillin, Vegeta, an eventually by turns Piccolo and Goku) against said villain. Krillin and Gohan had been the main characters of the Namek arc, Vegeta the deuteragonist, Piccolo at least a major character in his own right in previous arcs, and Goku was the main character of the entire series.

AND ON TOP OF THAT, the fight takes place from chapters 292 to 329: thirty-seven chapters. With a weekly release schedule in Weekly Shounen Jump for the chapters, that means the whole thing took less than one year to finish. Frieza, at the time, was basically the end-boss of the series.

Compare to here, where we've spent two years on Babadi's coup attempt and around a year specifically on the fight with Majin Bra, using a wide swath of characters who drifted in and out of focus throughout the previous arcs, and we've spent all this time when we know for a FACT that there's still major enemies to deal with after Majin Bra/Babadi.

Yes. DBM has pacing issues. And focus issues, which I suspect ties into the pacing issues as Salagir wants to spend a lot of time on everyone rather than focusing the story on key players. On the one hand, it's good of him to want to spread the love so everyone can get to see their favorite character Do A Thing. On the other hand, the lack of focus is hurting the story.

Okay, short version because apparently the long version was off topic and thus deleted: I know what pacing means. I know it very well. I don't mind if you disagree with me when I say that this comic is poorly paced, but don't insinuate that I don't know what "pacing" even means to begin with.

To reiterate my point from my original post, this focus on Babadi's plan has been going on for over two years at this point, and the fight with Bra has been going on since around this time last year, and aside from using a swath of secondary characters to kill off a swath of secondary characters (something that could have been achieved in FAR less time), basically nothing important has actually occurred.

The only significant character change has been forcing Bra into evil, which, fine, that's pretty significant if it either a) sticks or b) seriously affects her character once the Majin state is removed, but in either case I don't see how the story benefits from spending an entire year on this point. 1 Replie(s)

Poor pacing is poor pacing, dude. 1 Replie(s)

Oh my what a twist never saw that coming...

/sarcasm

What's bothering me about the length of this fight - apart from it giving me genuine flashbacks to Dragon Ball Z in the pre-Kai era - is that this is such a long fight and it's one that doesn't even matter. This isn't even Bra snapping under her own volition, this was something she was pushed into by magic. At the end of the day, she wouldn't have done this under her own volition, she's doing it because of Babadi. We have wasted like half a year watching a MINION fight.

Okay, yeah, she's not exactly a Stormtrooper or Appul, but Babadi was, like, the third tier of our boss characters that we have to deal with. Even once we wrap up all this nonsense we're still going to have to deal with XXI, definitely, and that's assuming that there isn't a Zenbuu-shaped hurdle to overcome first.

And all I'm thinking to myself is:

Jesus Christ, if this is how long we're spending on Bra, how long is the fight with Zenbuu and XXI going to be?

I mean don't get me wrong the fight with Frieza in the original manga took for-fucking-ever as well but at least we'd get entire chapters at a time rather than three pages.

The pacing needs work, is what I'm saying. 1 Replie(s)

Can't let you claim that, Star Fox.

"Good afternoon, my loyal citizens. I have more news of terror and mayhem. As members of my new order, you should all prepare for destruction. [...] Your planet - heh, MY planet - is divided into forty-three sectors. [...] I'll draw a slip from the box each year. And guess what, folks? There's more. The chosen sector will host that year's celebration, which will culminate in its destruction and I will do the honors."

In short, King Piccolo planned to slowly kill off everyone over the course of 43 years, give or take. He absolutely was planning on wiping out massive swaths of humanity; he said so himself. And it's not like every other day of the year he was going to just be sitting around watching Sailot Moon reruns, either, he'd be killing people en masse as the desire struck him too.

Although I'm being needlessly pedantic, because "genocide" does not require you to actually wipe out an entire race, only to deliberately kill a large group of people, particularly on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Or in this case, power. Or lack thereof. King Piccolo had it, Earthlings didn't.

Additionally, saying "well King Piccolo only planned to kill arbitrarily large swaths of Earthlings at a time" does not exactly make him better. Kill one person, kill a million people, that's not what matters, what matters is your reason for doing it. In King Piccolo's case, it's because he got a sick rush out of seeing people suffer and die. Why oh why does that make him better than Bra? "Well Bra was going to kill seven billion people, King Piccolo ONLY planned on killing a few million". That sounds like some kind of twisted inverse power level argument, except instead of measuring power we're measuring evil. But I really don't think it works that way. I think after a certain point it really doesn't matter how many people you're killing, you're an evil fuck. I don't know where that limit is, but we've certainly gone past it by the time we've started depopulating countries.

You know I'll give DBM one thing, this extremely long, drawn out, largely one-sided fight is exactly like the original Dragon Ball Z experience.

But actually it was Turles pretending to be Kakarot because Vegeta doesn't want to let on how many Saiyans survived.

Or something.

Probably not. Kakarot's immortal, yo.

Huh, honestly didn't expect Bra's blow to actually land.

Personally I like Bra so this has been great for me.

I think the problem with saying "power levels are bullshit" is that the Scouters have to be measuring something, and apparently everywhere in the known universe except on Earth the Scouters provide a good estimate of threat level. Everywhere else if someone with a power level of X fights someone with a power level of X-1, the person with power level X wins.

"Power levels are bullshit" is basically just another way of saying "the character who wins is the character the author wants to win". Or in other words, "there is no consistency, there is just author fiat". Which can get old and unsatisfying to keep watching when it happens again and again. When Piccolo could charge up an attack that vastly outpaced his normal output and so could actually threaten Raditz, that was cool! But when "power levels are bullshit" is used to excuse the insanely powerful Cold jobbing to what should to him be a fat load of nothing? Blegh.

Plus at no point in canon DBZ does someone with a known smaller power level actually beat someone with a known higher power level in a one-on-one fight. The closest you get are singular attacks or techniques that allow a fighter to massively boost their threat level temporarily (Piccolo and Goku v. Raditz; the Kaio Ken in general), and even then those expressly only work because they affect the power level.

Uh...yeah, you did, and I'm glad you did, as apparently I have a completely different conception of what constitutes "double posting". To me that means making two distinct, separate posts in a row, as in, you'd see my avatar twice. Quoting the same post multiple times but within a single post isn't double posting according to most sites I've been on, it's just breaking a quote into smaller chunks in order to respond to individual points in that quote more clearly, and not something that's normally frowned upon on most sites, and so not something I would have anticipated as being frowned upon here.

I'm sure you have your reasons for it and it's certainly a rule I'll follow, but it is damn weird. And again, not something I would have considered "double posting". Does the term mean something different in French or something? Like how the phrase "bum a fag" means two completely different things depending on if you say it in America or Britain? 1 Replie(s)

Honestly I think the question of whether or not the makankōsappō can hurt Cold is a moot point. He can always, y'know, dodge it.

Because if Vegeta blows up the Earth and kills everyone on it, then Cold doesn't get to do it himself. Cold wants them to die on his terms, not their own.

When Frieza entered final form, his tail regenerated. I don't see a reason to think that his tail would be any different from an arm or a leg. Additionally, when transitioning from 1st to 2nd and form 2nd to 3rd the "cosmetic" damage (scuffs, etc.) were retained, but when Frieza turned into his final form all the cosmetic damage was lost and he looked pristine. Finally, while transforming from 1st to 2nd and from 2nd to 3rd was depicted as morphing, with various parts of the body shifting, growing, etc., when transitioning from 3rd to final form, the 3rd form seemed to crack and then shatter, almost like he was shedding it.

So, yeah, I'm inclined to think that going Final Form clears all wounds.