they need "righteous" as a mood icon...

[timepiececlock]

I was looking through the DragonBall Z section off ff.net for nostalgia's sake, not really planning on reading something, and I realized something I'd noticed before. There's a *lot* of romance chapter fics up there that have the basic theme of Bulma and/or ChiChi getting kidnapped and made into slaves on the Saiyan homeworld. Many of these fics are AU, of sorts. Some are lemon, some are very PG. The thought struck me, "That's all rather sexist. How come VEGETA never gets kidnapped and made into Bulma's slave?"

I suppose from a logistics standpoint, it makes more sense that the weak human gets made into the slave, cause admittedly there's not that many people in the universe that actually could enslave a Saiyan like Vegeta, especially if its AU and he's already a SuperSaiyan. But there's ways around that. Like-- what if Bulma worked for, like, Freeza or something, as the top scientist or strategist, or something? And Vegita *was* Freeza's minion in canon after Freeza enslaved or murdered the last of the Saiyans, so it wouldn't be so big a stretch to make him be assigned to serve under Bulma, would it? And if you wanted to get all dominating about the "slave" part, you could always give him a shock-collar to drive it home. I've seen that given to humans in the fics before.

God, part of me now wants to write a story like that just to level the gender portrayals in the fandom.

... the worst part about those fics is that Bulma is a great feminist character on the show in the first place, the smartest character of the entire show and one of the feistiest, and these fics make her weak. Screw that; they should make Vegeta weak. In fact it makes more sense anyway-- all the shitty bad luck always happens to Vegeta on the show. Why should fanfic be different? And hey, it will bring angst. Vegeta's a great character for wallowing in angst and hating the world.


You know, you the whole backstory for the Saiyans as a race freakishly resembles the Peacekeepers on Farscape. Makes you wonder...

Comments

[mildmay.livejournal.com]

You know...I think somewhere there actually is a fic where Vageta is Bulma's slave. It's been awhile, so I'd have to go searching, but I seem to remember seeing one in some Vegeta/Bulma archive somewhere.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

oh, link! ?

[mildmay.livejournal.com]

Yep! I found it: http://www.adimra.100megs6.com/toshiba/chains.html

I haven't read it, so I can't really say how good it is, though. ^^;

[hecatehatesthat.livejournal.com]

::nudges you::

I haven't actually read any DBZ fic, except crossovers with other anime shows, but that idea I would totally read. Especially if you wrote it.

And word on Bulma. She kicks ass with her enormous squishy frontal lobes and her making Vegeta wear a pink shirt *snicker*

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I've written some DBZ one-shots; a couple Vegeta vignettes, a couple V/B romance, a couple FutureTrunks fics. I even did a poem, short though it may have been. ::giggle::

I don't think I'll be writing one any time soon, though. I haven't watched DBZ in a while, and I'm sure the speaking patterns would be all weird... Bulma would start to sound like Luna Lovegood and Vegeta would start to sound like William The Bloody.

[bathsweaver.livejournal.com]

Gah--I know this is completely tangential to your post, but every time I saw "Bulma," I read "Bulimia;" which I know is just wrong, and the product of me having gone to an all-girl's high school, but...

What was my point again? Oh, hell.

::wonders off in search of a soft, dark, quiet corner in which to crash::

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I can seen how that could make you think that. Actually, it's the warped English version of Buruma, or something like that, which is Japanese, and the name of the character is some kind of pun on a food product. I don't remember which.