Blog Changes Coming Soon!

Hello new and loyal readers!  This is Belart and I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on some changes coming to my blog.  The content will stay the same with all sorts of new book, videogame, and movie reviews.  There will still be Dragon Ball related content as well (though admittedly less DBS stuff since I've been watching less of that).  The look of the site will stay the same as well (I think).  The changes will come in the form of new additions, such as section for my PS4Share youtube videos and I'll be taking some stuff down from my crowded page.

Thanks for sticking around, everyone, even when I neglected to provide new content here.  I've been in a cave working on a new book that I hope many of you will soon enjoy.  Stay tuned for more information about that as well.

A Dragon Ball Fanboy vs. Akira Toriyama: Missed Opportunities

Here's just a few:

Losing Buu just for the sake of a lame comedy bit.

By anjoicaros

 

Having Buu in this saga wouldn't done three huge and much needed things for this tournament.  A good writer would easily see the opportunities.

1.) Buu Could Bring Some Comic Relief.
Having Buu do stupid shit in the tournament would have been infinitely better than having him in a one off and highly predictable bit that eliminates his entire presents from the tournament.  The reactions of all the U6 fighters after seeing Buu fight would be priceless.

2.) His Strange Powers Could Liven Up the Tournament.
Candy beams, broken regeneration, angry steam, and the attitude of a child.  Buu would make for a great opponent for many U6 fighters.  Imagine Frost going against him next, instead of Vegeta and discovering that he can't poison him thanks to Buu's gummy body.

3.) His presence could've helped with the power scaling.
Since Buu doesn't train, we more or less know his power level.  He's somewhere between a Buu saga SSJ2 and SSJ3.  Now if you put him against, say Frost, and he wrecks Frost then we know that Frost is weaker than SSJ3 and possibly SSJ2 thanks to Buu being a sort of measuring stick for us.  As it stands, we don't know anything about anyone's power in this tournament.  It's all guess work, but even the smartest, most observant among us can't call anything definitively thanks to the slipshod way this new series is patched together.  Power levels aren't everything, but we should roughly know who measures up to who and in what way.  We don't and that's a problem.

Not using ample chances to explain and show how Piccolo got so much stronger (if he did at all).

Okay, so Piccolo is now powerful enough to dodge Frost's attacks, tank many of his blows with very little damage, block his punches one handed while backstepping and charging an attack, and can bind him with one arm.  Even being able to do this to a weakened opponent of this caliber is significant.

In the manga, it's worse from what I see.  They fight on even ground, with Frost having taken even less damage from his fight with Goku and Piccolo still seemingly having an edge in their fight.  To top it off, Piccolo's beam is strong enough to pierce Vado's godly barrier.  So, if he's made these types of gains again, why not explain it?  Why not have him train with Goku and Vegeta in the RoSaT?  Why not have him train in the afterlife while he was dead?  Why not have him give a random thowaway line, handwaving his boost?  Why couldn't we even get that?  Why is this show so damn badly written and poorly animated?  I digress...dammit.

Anyways, we don't even have enough evidence to definitively know if Frost is stronger than base level Goku.  We don't even know if base level Goku has god powers.  There's evidence that he doesn't since Krillin could sense his and Frost's power.  Then again Golden Frieza had regular ki too and was still stronger than both SSJGs.

Using normal Super Saiyan in the tournament without explaining how strong it is compared to Blue God.

Doesn't this just feel unnecessary and confusing for no reason?  We already have no idea how much more powerful SSJGB makes Goku or Vegeta.  Having them use the golden form to hold back just seems pointless right now, especially from a storytelling perspective.  Toriyama and Toei seem to be keeping power growth vague, so I can't for the life of me figure out why they'd add this complication to the story. We've already established that the god level Saiyan's base powers are unbelievably strong since Goku dominated Final Form Frieza in base.  That same Frieza that tortured a SSJ Gohan in his very first form.  Having Goku and Vegeta use SSJ just muddies up what was already established with the base forms.

Now people are questioning if the base forms are even strong at all, now comparing them to Frieza arc characters.  I don't fall into that camp but the horrendous power scaling gives them plenty of evidence.  Obviously no one at Toei or even Toriyama himself cares about making this show make sense any more.  Having at least a vague sense of how characters compare to one another would be nice.  Horrid power scaling makes this impossible though.

Other Notable Mentions:
-Not explaining Vegeta's rage boost.
-Not using the red haired God form again
-Not showing Frieza's training (shooting Togoma over and over again doesn't count)
-Not showing more of Piccolo and Gohan's training or showing how strong they got.

Indie Book Corner: Moirae, by Mehreen Ahmed

A Well Written and Thought Provoking Tale With a Unique Writing Style

  

Moirae is a story with many themes running through its narrative.  There's the story of a young woman longing for her beloved, the tale of an imprisoned man longing for a better life, and the story of a woman and her child.  There are also other stories present and they all connect at various points as the characters all have a connection to the village of their childhoods.  Along the way each of the characters is met with the rigorous struggles of their harsh lives.

The story takes place in what I believe is a fictional place, though it at times feels real enough.  The conflicts definitely have real world connotations including the rift between the two fictional religions that drives much of the story's conflict.  What's strange though, is that there is mention of real world places in the story so it does share some geography and events with our world.  Much of Moirae reads like a commentary on real world issues so those without much knowledge in real geography may even mistake the Dravilands as a real place.

The story is written in a unique and strange style called "stream of consciousness."  Britannica.com says of the style "Stream of consciousness, narrative technique in nondramatic fiction intended to render the flow of myriad impressions—visual, auditory, physical, associative, and subliminal—that impinge on the consciousness of an individual and form part of his awareness along with the trend of his rational thoughts"  I am not at all familiar with the style.  Moirae is my first foray into it.  There were two particular chapters near the beginning that featured no punctuation.  What seemed to separate one sentence from the next was capital letters.  It was confusing to say the least, but the brain is adaptable so after a while it did become easier to read.  I did not find much enjoyment from this sort of thing nor did it enhance the story in any way, for me at least.  It is an artistic choice though and so I respect the bold commitment to it.

Much of the content in the story was featured around this large extended family and it was a story that I enjoyed.  There was a lot of food for thought when it came to the topics of poverty, immigration, religious warfare, civil strife, crime, violence against women, and quite a few other topics.  I would say that Moirae is a tragedy.  Throughout there is a big look at the very human condition.  What does it mean to be poor in a place filled with strife and warring ideologies?  What does it mean to be thought of as a second class citizen?  All of this is handled in a fairly natural way and what stands out about many of these stories is the effect of hope.  For even when a situation seems at its most desperate and hopeless, these people persevere to face the next challenge.  There is also a strong tale about tortured motherhood and madness.  It adds an almost supernatural aspect to the story.  I found that to be my favorite POV of them all, though it makes the most use of the stream of consciousness style.

Now I'll express my criticisms for the story.  To me, it didn't feel personal enough.  I was never completely immersed in the story.  The narration style felt very distant and matter of fact.  It had the effect of reading like a much older book.  It didn't manage to reach at anything deep inside of me to truly connect me with characters like MD, Pontu, Tahu, and Nalia.  The characters and even many of the events fell flat to me because of plain narration and dialogue.  I think I could've enjoyed the style more if those aspects were more engaging.  I also found the timeline and POV jumping to be very distracting.  Most likely it's another aspect of the stream of consciousness writing style, but I didn't much care for it.  There was also some confusion on my part regarding the timeline and setting of the story.  I wasn't sure if it were modern day or if it had taken place in the past.  And since it was a fictional setting, I was always taken out of the story whenever a place in the real world was mentioned.  I had to google Dravilands just to make sure it wasn't a real place.

Regardless, once you give the story some time, it does start to make its point and the characters did grow on me, even those introduced later.  So I did have a good reading experience with Moirae.  For fans of the stream of consciousness style and those interested in books about the human condition, I think this one is a good read.  Try it out and let me know what you think of it in the comments below.

Belart Wright

Author of 2 Books, Worker of Minimum Wage, Avid Gamer, Thinker of Things, and Wannabe Warrior

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