| abstract
| - At one time, the saga was going to mark the end of The Forgotten. Ledas was going to come to Earth and meet/fight the Z Fighters, particularly Goku and Vegeta. For the longest time, that was going to be how it was, even when I began to write scenes for the first four sagas (as well as the deleted Kyokatshi Saga). Even in the first draft of the Planet Earth Saga (which I did not post on this site), Ledas was very much an antagonist once he got to Earth. As the story evolved and I modified the Planet Earth Saga in the months before joining this site (which occurred in September, 2010), I realized that I didn't want Ledas to be the final villain. I didn't come up with a final villain before joining this site, however, as The Benefactor was created several days after I joined Dragon Ball Fanon Wiki. I knew, though, that I did want Guva to come to Earth, though at the time, I didn't know that it was going to end up how it does now. I was considering him to be the final villain, but the problem is that he's just too weak. There is no logical way for him to gain enough power to challenge Ledas or the Z Fighters (I did not want him to use the Dragon Balls to wish himself to be the strongest guy ever - that would be incredibly lame). So, as a result, this saga was quite nebulous for a while. Not a word of it was written before I joined this site - it is the first saga for that to occur (this is also true for the Fulfillment Saga). Now, after I joined this site in September 2010, I began to work on TF quite extensively, though most of my focus was on the earlier sagas. I never had a very defined ending to TF, so this saga was not defined very well during that time. By late October 2010, I had put up a list of 28 chapters for this saga on TF's page based on what I had already written for the story and some ideas I had for its future. This was long before I cut down every saga to be only 12 chapters. There was a lot going on with the plot at that time. I knew I wanted Guva to come back and fight some Z Fighters, and since The Benefactor had been created by this point, I thought that he could serve as the final villain. I also planned on giving Ledas Super Saiyan 3 at the end of the final battle in this saga, which is lightly indicated in the original chapter list. That list can be seen here. As can be seen, only three chapters of that original draft remain ("Paid In Blood", "Sticky Fingers", "Simply Legendary"), though the general idea of the saga (its pacing as a result of the chapter names) is much the same as it is now. Guva was going to arrive, wreak havoc, then TB would appear, take over, and nearly destroy everyone before Ledas ascends to SS3 and beats him. That idea was modified in the three posted drafts of this saga, but for the most part it remains the same. Ledas beating TB in SS3 in this saga is the biggest overall change, as he doesn't ultimately achieve that transformation in this story and he doesn't beat TB here, as it takes another saga for that to happen. This saga was originally quite tied to the deleted Kyokatshi Saga, with Ishida and Cardinal and whatnot. Once that saga was removed, this saga was streamlined down quite a bit. The Kyokatshi Saga was deleted on January 13, 2011, about a month before I began posting the Planet Earth Saga on this site. By that time, I had only written one line of this saga in my Microsoft Works document - The Benefactor's line that ends chapter 6. Aside from that, no bit of the Reunion Saga was ever written in my Works document. All of it was either written just before posting on this site or in later drafts in Microsoft Word (those drafts were written many years after I stopped using Microsoft Works altogether, though). So once the Kyokatshi Saga was removed, I decided to create the Fulfillment Saga, to stretch the events of this saga's original ideas over two sagas. That would better pace it and allow for every saga to have 12 chapters. As soon as I deleted the Kyokatshi Saga, I reduced this saga down to 12 chapters, which became the 12 chapters of the original draft. That can be seen here. I began posting this saga for the first time on March 15, 2011, and finished the first draft on April 2, 2011. I don't have much to say about the original draft of this saga. It was moderately re-written during the second draft, and I don't have memories of writing it. I later re-wrote aspects of it in 2012 because I wasn't happy with this saga and thought the plot wasn't good. So from January 10, 2012, to January 19, 2012, I re-edited this saga, changing major plot points and several chapter names. This produced a second draft. Again, I won't be commenting on the specifics of the changes here, though I will note them in each chapter's endnotes below. Now, in 2013, I prepared to the final edits for most of the sagas (I believe PVS and perhaps Outbreak had been done earlier). To do this, I created a notepad document and then read through the entire story, noting what changes I wanted to make for each saga as I read. Once I was done, I realized that most of the changes were in the Reunion Saga and the Fulfillment Saga (I remember writing down for FS, at one point, "just delete everything aside from the finale"). At one point, I even considered deleting all of FS and trying to scrunch the plot back into this saga, but that proved to be unfeasible. So anyway, I did the final edits for this saga from October 7, 2013 to October 29, 2013. It was an exhaustive process, much more demanding than the previous sagas' final edits, because I had to change so much. In some cases, entire chapters were completely or mostly re-written. That did not occur in previous sagas so much. Yeah, I added in some chapters for Lauto Saga and Stomping Grounds Saga, but there was less deletion (aside from the natives plot) and more addition going on there. Here, I was greatly changing the plot as I went. Some of this is due to the butterfly effect - changes in earlier sagas forced me to make massive changes here to keep the plot and characters consistent. That became even more true in the Fulfillment Saga, where almost all of it had to be re-written for the final edits because of how massive the changes in the previous sagas and this saga affected the Fulfillment Saga. So as a result of the butterfly effect, the Reunion Saga was changed extensively during the final edits, though I believe most of the changes occurred in the latter half of the saga, after the chapter "Snow Day". I will get into specific detail on that in the below endnotes. So now onto my vision for this saga. I have above commented on how I planned this saga - it was always a vague reunion between Ledas and Vegeta and Goku and the others until I got to writing it, really. Even when I came up with chapter names, I didn't have much planned out. I just knew a bunch of fights would happen. I didn't know who would win (other than, by the end, the main villain had to lose for this to be canon-following). My ideas for this saga slowly developed over the months after I first created TF, though it was always in the back of my mind as I did most of the edits. I had this image in my head of Ledas meeting Vegeta and the other Z Fighters in a grassy, bright area away from any cities, sort of like the place that Raditz fought Piccolo and Goku. That setting idea still exists in the final version of this saga today. Once I came up with The Benefactor, this entire saga took more shape, for at first, Ledas was going to get SS3 during his fight against Goku and Vegeta. Now he was going to get it against a bad guy (thus making him a good guy). That plot was of course further modified by the final version. I don't have many nostalgic memories of this saga, whereas I do for most of the other sagas (for SGS, though, that is only for its last three chapters), since I never worked on this saga before I joined this site. In 2010, before I joined this site, it was a golden age of freedom and creative expression for me as I crafted the first draft of TF and had lots of fun doing so. Because I didn't craft any of this saga during that time, some things were missed. I mean, I knew I wanted Ledas to come to Earth and (at the time) fight the Z Fighters, but I didn't write any of that down at the time. So this saga is tied to my memories of this wiki, since I wrote it on this wiki, more so than any saga preceding it. Another thing I want to mention about this saga is that it is unlike the previous sagas in that it is paced like an actual DBZ saga. The saga is mostly a series of fights with the Z Fighters, with the progression being the progression of fighters who participate. In the original draft at least, there wasn't much of a plot aside from "stop The Benefactor", which is how many DBZ sagas play out. The plot was complicated in later drafts, particularly with Ryori's plot and with the flashbacks and the complex characterization of several characters - those things differentiate my saga from a typical DBZ saga - but there is still this idea that Guva and TB are going through the Z Fighters one by one, eliminating them so that they can get their prize. It's a simple idea (much simpler than even the plot of the Stomping Grounds Saga), but I like it because it reminds me of the Saiyan Saga, where Nappa surgically eliminated all those Z Fighters one episode after the other. I don't know why I like it (maybe it's because of my OCD personality), but cleanliness of it, the definitiveness of him just systematically eliminating everyone until it's just Vegeta, Goku, Krillin, and Gohan, is really cool, and I tried to capture the essence of that plot tonally and spiritually in this saga. As I mentioned near the end of my anthology of the last saga, there was a reset of themes (for the most part) in the Planet Earth Saga. Some themes carry over from the earlier PTO arc, but not all do. There are two very important themes I want to mention here. The first is the idea of human futility, seen with Ryori and the New Red Ribbon Army mostly. But this idea that the humans are powerless to protect themselves as aliens wage battle on their planet is a notable theme even in DBZ. I expand on it a lot in this saga. A second theme that is important is the idea of nostalgia being an unattainable goal, that the past can never be returned to. This idea, that the future looked so bright for Ledas and Vegeta, yet has not turned out to be quite what they imagined, is quite powerful. It resonates with me the most in the final scene of this saga, which is a flashback to the PVS-era. That scene is my favorite moment in this saga, and one of my favorite overall moments in TF. Ledas' lines, "Do you really think we’ll be great warriors one day, Vegeta? The kind people tell stories about?" are crucial to understanding the thematic, tonal, and symbolic content of this saga in addition to how I've characterized both Ledas and Vegeta. This idea of stories being the only preservation of legend is a sub-theme of that above-mentioned theme, which is mostly based on what I consider to be the greatest sonnet ever written, Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Keep that in mind as well, for this idea that one must have been successful enough to have stories told about them being the definition of legacy is an important characterization contrast between Ledas and Vegeta. For a while, Guva's special about him becoming the governor of Planet Cooler 92 was tied to this saga. It was eventually deleted outright once I realized I didn't want to write it. I mainly didn't want to write it because I felt like we had already gotten past PC92 and the shenanigans on there. Guva, Banas, and Ledas persisted from that place, but the actual place, and all the PTO stuff related to it was left behind by the survivors. It felt like going backwards, momentum-wise, to write that special, so I didn't do it. Now, this saga had a span of four theme songs, to my knowledge. The theme song was originally Island In The Sun by Weezer. I mainly picked that out because I liked the song, and when I was writing this saga, I had recently become a fan of Weezer through Destructivedisk, so I thought I'd make one of their songs a theme of one of my TF sagas. However, the song doesn't thematically tie to any version of this saga, so there wasn't really a connection there. I changed the theme to The Good Life, also by Weezer, halfway through my posting of the first draft of this saga, to tie the theme to the saga more overtly. I then changed the theme song for a second time to Waiting On You, also by Weezer, once I completed the first draft of this story on May 24, 2011. That song is very fitting for the thematic and plot content of this saga. Indeed, to this day, whenever I heard that song, I think of this saga, of a shot of Ledas flying over grass with a blue sky above him as he flies to confront Guva and the Z Fighters. However, the song is too relationship-oriented, and during the final edits, I changed it again on October 27, 2013 (just before I finished the final edits for this saga) to The Stars Are Projectors by Modest Mouse. Now that song is a lovely song, though perhaps not one of my top 10 (or even top 20 - I'm not sure) Modest Mouse songs. Sound-wise, it is nice. In my opinion, just the way it sounds goes well with this saga, though I thought that was also true with "Waiting On You". The lyrics really distinguish this song from "Waiting On You", though. I think "The Stars Are Projectors" hits several thematic parallels to my story and particularly to Ledas' relationship with Vegeta in its lyrics. The mere idea of stars being projectors is seen in the final scene of this saga as kid Ledas and kid Vegeta stare up at the stars and guess at their future. So I thematically tied the story and the song together, and I did so in many ways, most of which I won't mention because that would be telling. This was one of the hardest saga taglines for me to come up with. As I've mentioned before, all of these were created in 2014/2015. This was one of the ones created in 2015; indeed, it might've been the last overall tagline I came up with. I don't remember with 100% if that is the case though. Even if it's not, this was one of the last taglines I created. Even knowing the themes, the plot, the characterization, the overall progression of this story by that point (in early 2015), I was still stuck over coming up with a clear, short tagline that would express the thoughts of this saga concisely. Now that you can see it, it seems obvious. Yes, that works for Ledas and Guva and The Benefactor and Vegeta and this idea of a personal vendetta does drive the saga. But when I had nothing and had to come up with this from scratch, it took me forever to do so. I must have cycled through a dozen other taglines before this one. Anyways, this tagline is important in showing how no one is playing or taking their time anymore. TB knows where Ledas is now, so he immediately goes after the boy. Ledas can no longer delay his reunion with Vegeta. Everyone has to face the facts of the plot as it progressing. They can no longer sit around and scheme and come up with plans. Now, they must act. And all of those actions are based on personal vendettas. TB is super mad that Ledas stole his energy; Ledas is mad that Vegeta won't recognize that he's still alive. Others have such personal matters too. There is lots of emotion in this saga, and it is not being held back by anyone. This time, in this saga, many people are trying to get revenge for wrongs that happened to them in their pasts. This even applies to Cardinal, Silver, and Ryori. So the phrase is very useful since it has such wide breadth. That is all I have to say about this saga in my opening monologue. I will get into specifics of the differences of the three drafts of it, the consequences of the butterfly effect during the final edits, and how I shaped this saga about my growing realizations about my characters below. That should be fun. I remember as I read back over this saga after completing the final edits that I thought it was severely underrated, as it was never considered to be the best TF saga by anyone I've talked to. I thought it turned out really good and thought it could even be one of the best sagas in the entire story. I'll have to see if I still consider it one of the better sagas now that I've anthologized the four sagas preceding it. I do hope it ends up being at least the second or third best, but I have no idea. I thought the Planet Earth Saga would end up being either the best or second best when I was preparing to anthologize it, and I ultimately ranked it fourth (out of the four anthologized so far), so my old memories are not sure things. Anyways, onto the endnotes!
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)