These are a bunch of informationals that have been posted over at Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity. If you have questions that you want immediately answered, I highly recommend that you go to one of those sites because I'm far more active over there and this site is flat out awful when it comes to author-reader interaction.
Ansers to commonly asked questions:
I really need to make an info post about this but I'll give an example to help explain why the SI didn't access ki immediately and why he knows about the kamehameha: Be me. I haven't done any high-level math since I left high school. None. The most I do is percentages for tipping and that's it. Now, while I suck at math, I know what the number Pi is. Its a number that can't be fully divided into and it goes on forever. In this analogy, replace Pi with Ki.
Now, while I know Pi is a thing, if you asked me to use it in an equation, I'd have absolutely no clue where to start. I don't even know what kinds of equations would use Pi, but I do know that some of them exist. I simply have no idea what they are. If you asked me what the equation was that formed Pi, I'd be similarly lost. I know it's possible, I've seen it done, but no one bothered to explain it to me so I don't understand it and can't replicate it.
Then, some months later, I'm falling to my death. I'm facing down a fuck off big dragon about to laser beam me to ashes. My one hope of not dying just left me behind to save his own life. I'm a little stressed. But for months, I've been getting the absolute shit beaten out of me every day. I don't give up, I don't scream or cry. I get up and punch whatever was kicking my ass in the throat. If the only thing that can save me is Pi, then I'm going to use Pi. End of story.
Thus the SI learned how to fly.
As for the Kamehameha, let's continue the analogy. I walk into math class to learn numbers and shit. I'm kinda prepared for it. I learned how to add, subtract, multiply and divide nearly a decade ago. Math class is going to be easy. Except, when I entered the room, I was stuck in a pod for three years while some creepy old man shoved a bunch of other subjects in my head like biology, literature, history and poetry ontop of math. And I sit there. For three years. Alone. With absolute no form of entertainment except for sleeping. Then one day I'm out of the tank, sat in a desk and a test is put in front of me. A math test.
At this point, I am not prepared. What I learned was around thirteen years ago. When I scribble down my answers, I don't know if I'm using what I learned ahead of time or if it was downloaded into my brain. How could I tell? My knowledge isn't neatly cataloged with labels that tell me when and where I learned it. It's all jumbled up into one great big mess that overlaps and contradicts itself. The answers I learned beforehand are still there, they just don't jump to the front of my mind unless I'm actively trying to remember them, and even then, why would I assume that answer was one I learned beforehand? 9/10s of everything I now know comes from what was downloaded into me. It's easier to just assume that it came from there and not think any deeper about it.
The human memories suffered a similar fate. To continue using the math analogy; I don't think I know how to use long division anymore. I remember myself doing it at one point in time, and I kinda remember how it goes, but there are a lot of blanks there now that I really start to think about it. There's that sideways L thing and one number goes underneath it, so I sorta remember how it goes. However, if you asked me how exactly it went, then I would be lost.
The real issue is that I don't often think about doing long division. More often than not, long division has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm doing. I'm throwing hands with an alien and trying not to die most of the time so long division is a distant thing thats kinda there but it's not really important at the moment. Then, one day, long division becomes really important. Long division becomes a very important ethical question about genocide and my role in it.
I would continue this analogy further, but then it starts to delve into spoiler territory. Though I will say that now that I'm thinking about actual long division, I'm realizing just how much I've forgotten about it. I know how it works in theory, but when I try to answer a question, I'm pretty sure I'm doing it wrong.
I hope this clarifies some things for people.
Trade Organization and Galactic Realistate Laws:
This is one of those changes to the lore of including the Frieza-force because, in Canon DC universe, that is absolutely correct. However, the Frieza-force, thus the Trade Organization is a galactic company that specializes in real estate. For it to exist, that would imply that there is a market for buying and selling planets, which means there are legal procedures that must be adhered to. Laws are really no different than ones you would see in modern courts; property rights, mineral rights, permits and so on. Some of these laws deal with sentients - like I said before, the rights to the Sol system was bought a long time ago, back when humans were still throwing poop at each other, so they weren't covered by these rights.
Fast forward a couple of thousand years, and now humans are. They're entitled to an appeal, basically saying 'this is our planet, we lived here our whole lives.' It's just not guaranteed to go in the human's favor because, technically, the Trade Organization owned it first, the humans could be considered tenants, and they would either have to vacate the premises or start paying rent now that they are sentient. In this universe, this whole process is why Frieza kills off the native population.
Additionally, the Trade Organization is fuck off big and powerful. Not just because of King Cold, Frieza and Cooler either - powerful empires, like the Reach, back them because they benefit from their practices. The Reach used it to subvert the treaty in addition to their normal method of brainwashing primitive planets into willingly joining them, which in turn made them significantly more powerful than their canon counterparts. Because they have the backing of a significant portion of the galaxy's more powerful empires, the real estate laws have legitimacy on a galactic scale.
And, in the end, the Green Lanterns are space police. They enforce the laws, they do not dictate them nor can they change them. The Guardians would like to, certainly, but with the Trade Organization almost acting as a glue of sorts for the powerful empires, they know they can't tip their hand. Their position isn't as secure as it was in canon. The Reach is more powerful than it was when they were forced into a draw with the Green Lanterns, them alone would be enough to give the Guardians pause in contradicting the real estate laws of the galaxy.
That isn't to say that they're toothless. Say Tarble was going to go to Earth and kick everyone off it and demanded that Hal Jordan be the one that did the evictions. The conversation would go a lot like this.
Hal: *gasp* is that...Batman?! He is the night, he is vengeance, and he has struck fear deep into my heart! Will...fading...can't...use power ring...! Oh no! Sorry, tried my best. Oh well.
Additionally, there's a few hours delay before the Guardians revoke access to a power ring, so that's plenty of time to kick whoever is trying to conquer the earth butt. However, since ownership of a planet can't really be decided in a fight legally, most of it is settled in a court. The usual solution, for the most part, is either buying the planet back or finding...'ways' to obtain the deed.
Green Lanterns, the Reach and Frieza-force Comparisons:
#501
I can't remember who said it, but the thing with the green lanterns is that whenever they're fighting an enemy, they're never just fighting that enemy. They're fighting the rest of the galaxy at the same time. Worse, they do it with kid gloves on because green lanterns can't kill.
The Reach, when it comes down to it, is similar to America back in WW II. When they go into war economy, the collective galaxy shits itself because of the sheer amount they can produce. 5% of the galaxy might not sound like a lot, but, in comparison, the second-largest empire controls about 2%. They have over a thousand planets, and more than a few of them are solely manufacturing worlds. How much they can produce - weapons, armor, tanks, fleets and so on, is by far their greatest strength when it comes to war.
The scarabs are their greatest weapon that they can mass produce. They're expensive, limited only by exotic resources, but for every green lantern that the Guardians can field, the Reach can field a thousand vanguard scarabs.
So, back when the green lanterns and Reach were butting heads, it was a war of attrition, more or less. The green lanterns just didn't have the numbers to counteract the sheer numbers of scarabs that the Reach could field. You had single green lanterns going up against literal armies - as much damage a green lantern could do, it just wasn't enough to stop the Reach from swarming over planets. Then there's the issue that the green lantern rings run on a battery.
And, it should be noted, that the Reach fought the green lanterns to a standstill. It wasn't a victory - though, it is treated as one because it was the green lanterns that sued for peace. That's why there were pretty big concessions for both sides. The Reach can't outright conquer worlds and the green lanterns can't operate in their territory.
Had the green lanterns withdrew from the rest of the galaxy and focused solely on the Reach, ignored the armies and focused on manufacturing centers, I think it would have been a very different story.
As for why the green lanterns aren't interfering now - for starters, two of their top five biggest enemies are beating the crap out of each other. They're using the treaty that they signed with the Reach as a defense, and leverage on the Reach for some concessions in exchange for help. Stuff like, 'hey, maybe you stop subverting the treaty by exploiting loopholes, stop committing genocide and/or enslaving races, etc.'
For the Frieza-force...I don't want to ruin the surprises, so I can't say exactly why, but I can say that its Frieza's family that they fear.
The average pl for the Frieza-force is 10,000. Compared to the Reach, or the green lanterns, they might as well not be there. Their only saving grace is there is a crap ton of them, some members being much stronger than that, and the saiyans that, on average, are about 20,000 in their oozaru form. In a straight-up fight, the Frieza-force is by far the weakest faction.
However, quantity is a quality of its own. Frieza cares absolutely nothing about causalities. If you go up to him and say 'we got a planet, but it cost us a hundred million billion quintillion soldiers to get it.' What Frieza hears is 'we got a planet for free.' The Frieza-force has the numbers - they outnumber the Reach a hundred to one. And, they have money. A lot of money. So much money Scrooge McDuck is turning green with envy levels of money.
I mean, I think it says a lot about priorities when Frieza's goal is to resell planets during a large scale galactic war.
Power Levels:
Power levels aren't set in stone, and I don't want to risk contradicting myself later down the line. As of right now, the power levels of people like Frieza and Superman are left up in the air until I approach the point in the story where fighting them isn't tantamount to suicide. And things are already escalating in terms of feats because, in this chapter, Tarble proved to be a multi-ton lifter. I don't want to end up in a situation where I've written myself into a corner by having Superman, or someone, struggle with something that Tarble could do when he was way weaker.
And that was also before I completely discarded my previous outline for the story where 100 million was pretty much at the point where your strength was maximumer.
Length of the Story:
I'm going to be really honest with you - I have no clue at this point.
I've come to several decisions about this story recently and I'm not yet sure how they're going to affect the length. One of those decisions is to treat this story more like a si-fi story - so expanding on alien races, looking at how the tech influences the war, and exploring the factions that make up the story. The Frieza-force is a galactic trade empire with countless slave species fighting for it while the Reach is a tech-focused dictatorship. I think taking a step back and taking a look at how they actually function will add a lot of nuance to the story beyond 'they're both bad guys.'
Additionally, I also want to develop side characters because, as Arcanist said, this story is lacking a good cast of supporting characters. Up until this point, the supporting cast has been the team, and how many people actually care about them? I mean, when Leek died, no one even said a word about it. I'm taking steps now to develop the team, which should have been done already, but for those that caught the hint in this chapter, I'm taking further steps to expand the supporting cast beyond morally gray saiyans. So, the next time I kill off a character, someone will at least mention it.
I've also decided that this arc will serve as a turning point in the story. Up until this point, the main antagonist has been Tarble's self-doubt and passiveness. This entire arc is about him becoming an active protagonist, so there won't be that internal conflict driving the story. Which leaves the Reach to serve as the antagonist, and right now they're just the bad guy that Tarble fights because someone tells him to fight them. There's a really great quote that I heard but I can't find about how a literary conflict is made vastly more interesting when it serves to answer a question and the two sides that collide have opposing answers to that question. And this is a long-winded explanation to say that actual antagonists will be appearing - some short term, others long term.
There some other decisions that are a bit too spoilerish for me to give away just yet, but to answer your question...Yeah, I have no clue. The story will be as long as it needs to be to tell the story that I want to tell, and so far I've greatly enjoyed telling it.
Frieza thoughts on the Wrath State and Super Saiyan:
Right now, Frieza is under the assumption that the Wrath State is what the legends of the Super Saiyan are based on, but at the same time, he still has doubts. Since Bardock wasn't blasted back in time, the reason why Frieza knows about the SS is that legends of it spread beyond Sadala. Then there's the fact that Sadala was destroyed by the last SS, so he was powerful enough to enter planet-buster class. There's enough doubt surrounding the legends that Frieza isn't sure how much of it is exaggeration and truth.
As for why legends of the SS and SSG expanded beyond Sadala...well, a SS appears every thousand years or so and a big part of the reason that Saiyans consider them legends is because of their practically non-existant record keeping. That's not true for the rest of the galaxy.
Frieza's end goal:
The easiest way to explain it would be that Frieza wants the status quo to continue but on a grander scale. Right now, the Trade Organization has several checks on its power from various factions, and he wants them removed. I guess his end goal could be best described as an intergalactic trade company, possibly multidimensional, that has no trader laws to follow or obey any kind of restrictions if it doesn't want to. Frieza is a bit like a cat in that regard - lazy, wanting to be pampered, and occasionally torments small critters for his amusement. He never really struck me as the kind of guy to have grand ambitions of supplanting Darkseid as the God of Tyranny or conquer the galaxy for the sake of conquering it.
Frieza is the kind of person that is powerful, enjoys being powerful, and loves the rewards of being powerful.
There are plenty more of these over on Spacebattles, but these were the highlights.
