"What we lost in the fire, we found in the ashes."
(The Magnificent Seven, Directed by Antony Fuqua, 2016)
Hello! West Sayan is the first fanfiction I am trying to translate to English. So, I ask you to be patient, because this isn't my first language and I will probably make some mistakes. Well, constructive criticism will be welcome.
West Sayan is an Old West story, but not an American Old West history. Even full of cowboys, bandits, Indians, and everything standard in any western tale, this will be a Dragon Ball history, and the Geography is more like the series Geography: no Country is precisely like the reality, and the places are more like a strange jigsaw of real sites.
In this fictional Alternative Universe, probably 100 years before the first Dragon Ball series, the Far West is a rough place, and there where a Civil War years before, wich one Bardock took place as a soldier. At the beginning of the story, he and his family are running away from a very well known bad guy.
You will see places with names inspired by the original series and characters very likely the originals, even if I transformed the nature of some of them. Piccolo is a "Foreigner man" (actually, a native disguised), Oolong, Puar and Karin aren't animals, but humans; Tien is also a native from the "Han" tribe, just like Chaozu; Goku, Vegeta, Raditz and, of course, Bardock are classic cowboys. Even Nimbus is a character, but its transformation is my favorite one, so I won't tell you about it, because I want to make a surprise.
I have to tell you when I transformed one of my favorite characters, Tienshinhan, in an Indian, I tried to be sensitive about it, avoiding make him a caricature of a Native American or make any cultural appropriation. The words of his language are mostly from the Dragon Ball series and other books and series, as you will see later.
I had the idea of this history on a Sunday night when I was watching "Westworld." I know it is a sci-fi series, but the West environment suddenly seemed a perfect scenario to make a Dragon Ball AU history. There is also many influence of Stephen King's Dark Tower series (but not that awful movie) and other books like "East of Eden", "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Gone with the wind", also from movies like "Shane", "Blood for a silver dólar", "Magnificent Seven", and, of course, all the Sergio Leone movies I watched along my childhood. Some of them are celebrated in this history with all credits when it appears like a reference.
Finally, Raditz is essentially a bohemian man, so he has a guitar and plays some music out of time the story takes place. Please, see this like a poetic license I made to use songs like Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory," "Ghost Riders in the Sky," and "Long Black Veil," by Johnny Cash.
Finally, each chapter begins with a quote that may be from a book or a movie that helped me form the imagery of this story. The one in this chapter came from the new version of the movie "The Magnificent Seven," 2016.
I hope you enjoy this story just like I enjoyed to write it.