#also people who like dbz but don't like vegeta don't like camp and don't like fun

[siflshonen]

Am I the only person who gets annoyed when people say bkg getting treated as vegeta and they have never even read dbz or db and treat vegeta as someone we should look down on dragon ball isn’t perfect anyone can see that but vegeta is a great character and his arc is and what he overcame is amazing but I see this all the time

My short answer: No, you are not the only person who finds that annoying.

I find it very annoying when people talk about Vegeta in depth when they don't really know him or the series; I find it very annoying when people think Vegeta's arc is the single worst or most problematic thing about Dragonball. Speaking as someone with Piccolo and Gohan (usually it's one of the two of them, anyway) alternating as my favorite character, I think Vegeta is great, particularly given the nature of the series he is in. He won the hearts of the audience for a reason.

But most of all, I find it very annoying when people say Bakugo is "just" the Vegeta. I think the two characters share notable similarities, which was Horikoshi's intention as I've explained in my Bakugo Presentation 2.0, but I think framing him as "just" the Vegeta completely misses the point of what Horikoshi has done with Bakugo's character as well as the other main characters of the series. He's mixed and matched different standard shonen roles in different characters and Bakugo is a primary example of it.

In particular, Bakugo isn't just the "early shonen antagonist of the week" that became popular enough to stick around in the series for longer than expected before gaining his own redemption. Katsuki was meant to stick around and learn to love and be loved from the start.

Just because Vegeta and Bakugo's growth both happen to involve a "small step" and realization of something fundamental to the human experience doesn't make them copies of one another. It also doesn't automatically make the crux of their arcs any less profound.

#vegeta #dbz #dragonball #bnha #bakugo #also people who like dbz but don't like vegeta don't like camp and don't like fun #ask #thanks for the ask!

[straightfacedstrangeness]

Bulma rambling

Not sure if any of this is coherent cus it's totally stream-of-consciousness, but let's go.

Disclaimer again that it's been a long time since I've watched anything but the earliest DB/DBZ episodes and movies, so my memory of the anime-only "filler" scenes is vague at best, but...

Thinkin' 'bout Bulma's relationships with the other cast members and why things didn't work out with Yamcha, and how their relationship pretty immediately went from hormonal teens obsessed with how cute the other is -> Bulma constantly being cranky and frustrated with Yamcha and accusing him of having a roving eye while he meekly sits there and takes it.

(Sidebar: Again I don't remember "filler" very well but I'm pretty sure the most Yamcha ever actually does before Cell Saga is blush at the sight of a cute girl, while Bulma has a TON of screentime drooling over or openly flirting with cute guys. And then there are scenes where it's clearly wild speculation on Bulma's part, like in Tree of Might she hears Yamcha say he bought a fancy new car and IMMEDIATELY accuses him of doing it to impress other girls, while I think his dialogue with Puar earlier actually indicated that he was trying to impress HER. So while Future Trunks says Yamcha was unfaithful and that's why they stopped dating, he would have heard that from Bulma, so I don't consider that necessarily "the truth." :'D Yamcha seems to be an honorable and honest guy, so I find it just as likely that he was completely faithful but Bulma was obsessively jealous and/or always looking for a fight, or that Yamcha dated other women during periods where he and Bulma were broken up and she considered THAT to be "cheating.")

ANYHOW. Watching Namek Saga has me enjoying her dynamic with Krillin and going "well why didn't THAT ever happen?" (The real answer being, Toriyama or his editor wanted a new Saiyan baby and Bulma/Vegeta was the only possible pairing that involved existing and young/unmarried characters...) And it made me realize that basically every person Bulma spends time with is a complete pushover who lets her do whatever she wants. Yamcha tries to apologize or explain himself, but he generally tends to stay quiet and not fight back. He, Krillin, and Gohan are generally too polite or scared to speak up or push back when she gets bossy or rude, and Goku tends to either obey or outright ignore her rather than get into a fight. Her parents are completely easygoing and let her do whatever she wants. The only one who ever gives her a hard time is Oolong, and even then she can easily bully him into doing whatever she wants, just with a lot more yelling and insults.

On top of that, thinking about how she put up with all the hardship of going on the initial Dragon Ball quest despite her constant griping about how she hates camping and being in danger, and how she's always willing to join in on an adventure and run towards the big battle to try and help. And how she's constantly drooling over or trying to flirt with guys who are trying to kill her XD AND how she cuts school during the Red Ribbon Saga because it's "boring," and how the Jaco manga retconned/clarified that she had already graduated college before that point, so either she was going to grad school or was in high school as a social activity (or to hang out with, or keep an eye on, Yamcha).

...Anyhow, putting all those things together, it feels like what Bulma wanted all along was someone who'd push back, maybe to push her life in different unexpected directions, or some kind of challenge to keep her from getting bored. Someone who wouldn't just roll over if she started bossing him around, even though she also clearly gets frustrated when other people don't do what she wants. (And that's totally realistic! People are made up of contradictions, and what you want doesn't always match how you feel when you actually get it!)

It's been forever since I've seen past Namek but I feel like she really mellowed out after she had Trunks? So maybe raising a child was enough of a challenge for her that she was satisfied focusing on that, instead of obsessively trying to make a relationship work with Vegeta like she obsessively kept trying with Yamcha. So maybe their romance evolved more naturally, as a sidebar to both of them focusing separately on raising their son (Bulma as a caretaker, Vegeta as a combat instructor).

So Vegeta ultimately ended up being kinda perfect for her as someone stubborn and cranky who'd fight back but still be tsundere enough to let her have her way or dom him some of the time, both of them slowly learning to compromise together instead of one person running the show all the time.

Though, I'd always considered Goku/Bulma a NOTP for me, but thinking about it in these terms, that might have wound up working too: Goku obeying her some of the time because his Grandpa taught him to be polite to girls, but also going off and doing his own thing sometimes because he's ultimately as self-centered as she is. I'm feeling like it would have made things VERY weird within their friend group, though :'D Particularly Yamcha feeling he was thrown over for a younger man and that Goku "betrayed" him by "taking his girl." But at least being with Bulma would've forced Goku to spend more time with his friends during the series XD instead of repeatedly abandoning them for years at a time

#dragon ball #rambling #headcanon #bulma #yamcha #vegeta