Image of the Day

[Sinom Bre]

Dracos: You drew that yourself, didn't you... ;p

[Dracos]

You can recognize the character, so clearly not.

[Kt3]

http://puu.sh/94J7

Hueg resolushun.

Maybe the wish would be for world peace...?

[Merc]

Also, here's the goddamn cake:

[Dracos]

Aww, back when Chi-chi didn't take SuperBitch levels!

[thepanda]

In all fairness, Goku is an idiot, has died multiple times, is an idiot, had gotten her son kidnapped by a green alien that left said son in the wild (with dinosaurs!), and is an idiot.

I'm not saying she's right, but I understand.

[Merc]

And when she did train one of her sons, he became a super saiyan at an earlier age than any other!

Clearly, she is a master trainer!

[Arakawa]

I suddenly realize that there's this weird Doctor Who parallel/inversion:

Dragonball: the main character is a humanoid alien who is at best naive and at worst a complete idiot. If not prevented, he tends to let dangerous enemies get off without much punishment, allowing them to return and wreak havoc once again. (Note, I may be severely misremembering how often that kind of thing actually happened during the Dragonball franchise. Correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm unlikely to go and re-read/re-watch it to correct myself.) He is of course too naive to understand the irony that this reinforces his 'defender of the world' role because he ends up having to fight off the same enemies again and again.

Contrast Doctor Who: the main character is a humanoid alien who is at best a nerd and at worst a renegade hippie wacko who repeatedly failed his planet's equivalent of a driver's test. He has (in the new series) a nasty habit of getting carried away, occasionally even committing genocide, something his enemies like to point out when they want to get a rise out of him. However, he is in fact a pacifist who never carries a gun and even when he commits genocide, he generally does it with a screwdriver.

(I shudder to think how the Tenth Doctor would deal with Emperor Pilaf, the Red Ribbon Army, and so on.)

Neither would be high on anyone's "who would you select to survive the destruction of {character's home planet}?" list. (Well, maybe Goku might squeak through onto his planet's list, given that he's competing against Sayans, who are mostly militaristic assholes that are no fun at parties, but surely there was at least one Sayan out there who was smart and non-omnicidal??)

Okay, here's an interesting question I've been pondering as a result: would I be more interested to read a fic which reimagines Goku as a cynical chessmaster (sort of the Seventh Doctor mashed together with Ikari Gendo) who hides behind the "naive idiot" image because it suits him, and lets his enemies get off in order to be able to save the day yet again later on, or a fic which reimagines the Doctor as a naive softie whose companions, instead of stopping him from punishing enemies via massive overkill, instead have to keep reminding him that "why can't we all just get along" is not a viable negotiation strategy for dealing with Daleks?

Either sort of fic could be either quite awesome, or absolute rubbish. "Chessmaster Goku" in particular seems liable to suffer the same sorts of dreary problems exhibited by most "Dumbledore is eeeeeeeeevil" type fics.

[thepanda]

Chessmaster Goku would by far be the more difficult of the two for two reasons.

The first, Goku has more than enough opportunities to wish for anything he wants in canon. There isn't any reason for him to continue the idiot mask pretty early in the story. 

The second, there isn't anyone for him to play chess against. Goku moves in straight lines; almost anyone who has ever been his enemy is so because they just happened to get in his way while he was doing something else. Once they're out of the way it's 'out of sight, out of mind' as far as Goku cares, usually.

And Goku has been killing people pretty regularly since he was a kid.

[Sinom Bre]

Back on topic...

A nice fantasy future-scape, although I'm not sure what the point of an in-atmo floating ring habitat is.

Too big for the forum: http://postimage.org/image/npjxefi59/full/

[Merc]

[Sinom Bre]

Merc: That pic reminds of one of the songs from Hallstrom's RA:ALS fic, something about pigs marching to war. ;p

[Merc]

Ewww, songfics =p

[Anastasia]

Chessmaster Goku would by far be the more difficult of the two for two reasons.

The first, Goku has more than enough opportunities to wish for anything he wants in canon. There isn't any reason for him to continue the idiot mask pretty early in the story. 

The second, there isn't anyone for him to play chess against. Goku moves in straight lines; almost anyone who has ever been his enemy is so because they just happened to get in his way while he was doing something else. Once they're out of the way it's 'out of sight, out of mind' as far as Goku cares, usually.

And Goku has been killing people pretty regularly since he was a kid.

Yes, this. The only fic that did smart Goku in a way that was interesting got around that. Turns out going SSJ also expands your mind, afterwards, Goku finds himself mildly above average instead of below average. It wasn't a long fic, but it played with the fact Goku was mostly unhappy with the change.

[Dracos]

Well, it's not like Goku exactly has a fantastic life:

So, let me get this straight: I am one of like 2 people who is capable of and willing to save the world from alien invasion.  When I was a kid I repeatedly saved the world from conquest and defeated the local Satan.   I die countless times doing so, having my friends murdered whenever I am even a moment too slow, I live on a planet where really I have to forgive anyone willing to switch sides (even if they want to kill ME personally) because that might be the only way there's enough firepower around to beat the guys giving them orders.  I live on a planet with a bullseye on it, and not only that, but its best and brightest are literally recording my fights in order to build super robots to drive the planet to extinction.

Seriously, when's my next scheduled lobotomy?  I'm remembering too much.

He does kind of kill quite a count really in both his childhood and adulthood.  He prefers not to, but he does do it.  As I recall, its quite a bit less after Freiza though.  Generally, aside from Vegeta, the way to survive is be weak enough that he considers you no threat.  If he can one shot you, then he really sees nothing wrong with leaving you simply crippled on the ground instead of dead (Even if you could get up and wipe out north america).