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So we come to it at last. The final saga of ''Dragon Ball Z: The Forgotten''. I have many a strange memory about this saga, for writing it was the best of times and the worst of times for me. It was great fun to wrap up the story, to reunite Vegeta and Ledas, to finish off The Benefactor, to bring a satisfying conclusion to all of the other plot points... and yet, this saga, in its original form was also the worst saga of TF, no question. The 2011 version of this story, in my opinion, is amongst the worst things I ever put on this wiki. This led me to re-write the story in 2012 in a significant way. Everything up to Verlate in that version was modified heavily, and in some cases, plots were scrapped and redone entirely. And then, when the final edits came around in late 2013, I was once again faced with re-writing this saga. In fact, I re-wrote this saga almost entirely for the final edits (I would say that 70-80% of the below story is new material that I wrote for the final edits).
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It was a grueling process, one I had not properly prepared myself for when I began it in mid-December 2013. At that time, I thought that the final edits process for this saga would be much as it had been with the other sagas, but alas that was quite unwarranted optimism on my part, and not something that should have come unexpected. As a result, the final edits for this saga took me roughly three months, with me setting deadlines for the completion of this saga for January 2013, then February 2013, then mid-March 2013 (and I didn't even make this final deadline, for the last two chapters of the ''Fulfillment Saga'' were finalized on March 19, 2013 and March 23, 2013 respectively).
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So as can be seen, unlike the final edits for the other sagas, the final edits for this saga were exhaustive, complicated, and time-consuming. This is primarily because of the butterfly effect of final edits I did for the previous sagas. Before I did any final edits, I created a notepad document, read through the entirety of TF (this was in early 2013, I think) and mapped out, saga by saga (and I also did this for the two specials) what I wanted to change. Most of the things I wanted to change were in the last two sagas. But to make many of the changes to those sagas' plots, I had to make smaller changes in earlier sagas. An example would be The Benefactor's personality. One of the things I most wanted to change from the 2012 version of TF to the final version was TB's personality (it was horrible in both the 2012 and 2011 versions). To change that, I had to change almost every line of dialogue he had. This is a subtle, gradual change that eventually results in a satisfying conclusion to his character in this saga, in my opinion.
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Another example would be the plotline with Colonel Silver, known as Airgead in the 2011 draft of this saga. In the 2012 draft, he was still a Red Ribbon Army dude. However, I didn't like how that plot went, even though I could see good things in it (the Airgead plot in 2011 was well-intentioned but it just didn't work for this story at all). So I moved the Red Ribbon Army stuff to the previous two sagas for the most part. At one time, Colonel Silver was introduced in this saga, and now, he's dead before this saga even begins.
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I moved quite a bit of the plot around during the final edits as well. It wasn't just me re-writing things. The opening four chapters of this saga are a mixture of new scenes and good scenes from old versions of this saga compacted down. The stuff with Yajirobe and Krillin and Verlate's mind prison began much later in previous versions than they do now, and this is all because I changed up the pacing of this saga significantly. The majority of the battle between Ledas and The Benefactor now takes place in Verlate's mind prison, whereas in previous versions, Verlate was only in one or two chapters of this story.
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The butterfly effect has another effect on this saga that it does not have on previous sagas. Since this is the last saga, it means I can't put off resolution of plot anymore - everything has to be brought up and resolved here and now. And that was a tremendous task to accomplish, and one of the main reasons the final edits for this saga took so long.
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Ultimately, I am happy with how this saga turned out. It was lambasted in many a review in 2011 and 2012 (I'm not sure any review of the final version is on this wiki), and those reviews were a big reason why I did radically change this saga from how it once was. Both Destructivedisk and Hyper Zergling matter to me a lot, and their words therefore hold great sway over me. That's not to say others don't have valid opinions either, but it was primarily the thoughts of DD and HZ, as well as my own disgust of this saga after reading it over again to prepare for the final edits (I distinctly remember writing "delete everything except the finale and move Velate's stuff into the ''Reunion Saga''" in my notepad document when I was writing down the things to change in this saga) that caused me to re-write so much of it. As a result, I think this saga is one of the best, though I'm not sure where it ranks quite yet. The Verlate arc as it is now is perhaps the most striking arc out of the entire TF series, too, so I will be supremely happy when I get to commentating on that. It is only rivaled by the middle Stomping Grounds arc in terms of quality, I think (chapters 29-33).
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So now let me talk a little bit about why the plot for this saga is how it is. I have previously mentioned the two other versions of this saga, which were quite different from the version presented below. I won't be talking about those versions much anymore since they aren't canon and not very good.
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This saga is split into three arcs: the first being the resolution of the Z Fighters vs. TB from the previous saga; the second being the stuff in Verlate's mind prison; and the third being the wrap up of the story after The Benefactor's defeat. This saga is split into arcs more definitively than most other sagas (though the ''Stomping Grounds Saga'' is also split into three distinctive arcs), and I will be talking about each one individually:
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The first arc is the first four chapters of this saga, and it serves to bring full resolution to the ''Reunion Saga'' stuff. There are several reasons why that stuff wasn't actually put in the ''Reunion Saga''. For one, there wasn't any room. As a consequence of having two flashback chapters, some stuff had to carry over to this saga. Had I not had those two flashback chapters, I'm not sure I wouldn't have ended the ''Reunion Saga'' at the same place. The way the ''Reunion Saga'' ends highlights its role as the transitory saga in the Earth arc (just as the ''Lauto Saga'' served that role in the Planet Trade Organization arc that comprised the first three sagas). I like how the ''Reunion Saga'' ends. The last chapter is one of my favorite chapters in TF. I think the mingling of dramatic moments with blatantly nihilistic themes is a really cool move, and one that I am supremely proud of. Had I continued Vegeta vs. TB (and later, Krillin, Yajirobe, and Ledas vs. TB) in RS, it wouldn't have been so dramatic.
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Now, had I ended the ''Reunion Saga'' with The Benefactor and Ledas getting sucked into the mind prison, that might've worked, but there are two problems with that - it means that I would have had to delete several chapters worth of content to fit 4 chapters into the ''Reunion Saga'', and I think every word of TF is important - any word I don't think it crucially important is simply not in the story. The second problem is that doing so would have left me with 4 more chapters for the ''Fulfillment Saga'' to fill, and I didn't want the Verlate stuff to go for 9 chapters. That seems like too long for me.
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These four chapters contain several scenes from the old 2012 and 2011 drafts of this saga - basically, I kept the best of the best (which wasn't much) and re-wrote the rest. What I kept includes the Yajirobe and Krillin stuff and them helping Ledas, and Ledas taking out TB's eyes before they get sucked into the mind prison. Pretty much everything else was written from scratch, and as anyone who has read the saga as it is now knows, that stuff written from scratch is a significant portion of this opening arc.
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The second arc was the stuff with Verlate. After getting over my depression over how much I hated the 2012 draft of this saga when I was making my list of things I wanted to change for FS, I wrote down that Verlate's stuff should be expanded. As I read through the 2012 draft, I realized that her stuff was really good and gave me a point I could go with the story in this saga. So much of the plot of this saga in the 2012 version had to be taken out because it was crap, but the Verlate stuff was cool and interesting and unique and therefore, I felt like the best option to make this saga better would be to give Verlate a more prominent role. This also diminishes the faint ideas that her mind prison is deus ex machina (which I've dispelled in numerous TF anthologies before this one).
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At first, the arc was only three chapters, whereas the final arc was 5 chapters. That left a 4/3/5 split. I realized this as I was preparing to edit this saga (after I had completed edits for everything through ''Forever Alone''). That is no good. Why should there be 5 chapters after TB is defeated? That seemed like too much. It was a pacing problem, and I'm glad I saw this before I began to write this arc. As a result, two of the third arc's chapters were moved to this arc, expanding the Verlate arc into what it is now. I specifically wanted to use this arc to show how I had grown as a writer since writing the TF prologue, and the use of thematic, symbolic, and philosophical ideas is rich here. In fact, I would say that kind of stuff exists to a capacity otherwise unseen in any TF arc.
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I have quite an aesthetic inclination, and this arc also developed because of that. I wanted cool demons, I wanted Ledas wandering through a wasteland. I wanted him and TB to fight monsters and not each other until the end. I wanted there to be a sense of unease, of them not being in control. And all of that comes out in this saga. Developing Verlate's minimalistic character from previous versions was also a goal of mine here, and she monologues like a proper Shakespearean character because I was taking a Shakespeare class when I wrote the final edits for this saga. So there was a lot of unique stuff going on in this arc that did not happen in any other part of TF, and I will get to that more in the below endnotes.
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Finally, the third arc of this saga is the wrap-up stuff for not only this saga, but TF as a whole. As I said above, it was originally a five chapter arc, but I reduced that after realizing how ridiculous that was. There's no reason to have five chapters for the stuff after The Benefactor is defeated. Now, the two chapters that were removed were named (one can look in the ''Fulfillment Saga''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s history to see what those names were) and were going to deal with Ledas and Ryori and some school stuff, but I got rid of them as that plotline was irrelevant.
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A case could be made that five chapters could still work for this arc, if the final 6000+ word chapter was split three ways. And I most certainly considered doing that. But I eventually decided not to, as the other eleven chapters all were things I still wanted to make. It would mean not having those two extra Verlate arc chapters, and not having those chapters just to split up the finale is not worth it. Another problem is that the finale is deliberately-paced, meaning that splitting it up three ways makes it lose that overall pacing (and also means that the first third, which is mostly setup and build up, would not make for a good chapter on its own). The finale is an amalgamation of literary ingredients that form a cohesive chapter - think of it like food ingredients. Together, things can make a type of food, but individually, those ingredients might not taste good, and that is the case with the finale and why it was not split up into three (or even two) chapters. This left me with three chapters, and I am happy with that.
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Five chapters meant that this story was going to have the same number of post-last-bad-guy-defeat chapters as DBZ, and that is ridiculous. DBZ has many more episodes, so 5 episodes is not as big a deal for that show as it is for TF. 5 chapters is a much larger percent of the story here. Also, I was always very unhappy with the pacing of DBZ (it is consistently bad throughout all of the sagas), and this is perhaps most apparent at the end of DBZ, after the defeat of Kid Buu. There is no reason there needed to be five chapters following Kid Buu's defeat. Two or three chapters at most could have wrapped up everything, but in classic DBZ fashion they stretched the plot out as much as they could and added in tons of irrelevant stuff that didn't need to be there.
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Another difference between DBZ and TF is that TF has more plot to it, and more needs to be resolved after The Benefactor is defeated (the Ledas/Vegeta reunion, Ryori's plotline, Krillin healing everyone, Cardinal atoning, etc.). DBZ only really needed to show everyone knowing that Kid Buu is defeated and celebrating briefly and then the Uub stuff at the tournament (which could have been done in roughly an episode or two). But even with more plot points, it was important for me to not reach the same number as DBZ's post-last-bad-guy-defeat episodes. I settled on three chapters, and the rest is history.
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The themes of this saga continue the themes of the previous sagas, particularly the last two, and the main theme of "being forgotten" and what that means becomes perhaps more prominent than ever before in this saga. That is seen with both Ledas and Verlate, as well as a myriad of others to lesser degrees. Other major themes include stuff related to courage, to perseverance, to returning to the world after being broken, to getting revenge, and to accepting one's power and powerlessness. These themes and others pop up a lot in this saga and I will try to mention them when I can, but I can't give everything away. Some stuff has to be left for the readers to guess at themselves. All of these themes were specifically put in this saga to have the characters be shown as complex, grey characters - humans and aliens, not archetypes. Real humans aren't good or evil. Real people have attributes, aspects of evilness and goodness (which are in themselves arbitrary distinctions), and my goal with the themes was to try to portray my characters as realistically as possible and to also use the thematic content to build these dudes up and tear them down.
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The theme song for this saga changed several times. At first, it was [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo92iIPOYY4 Creep] by Radiohead. This was at first the tentative theme song. As to why I chose this one, it fit with TB's old personality, and even to this day is thematically tied to this idea of being forgotten in this saga, of not being worthy of attention or recognition. About a week later, I replaced "Creep" with [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5UPWw1QlB8 Paranoid Android] by Radiohead. At the time, that was my favorite Radiohead song, and the chaos, paranoia, insanity, and isolation in its sound and lyics made it feel appropriate for this saga. I even used the third act of that song to open the ''Fulfillment Saga'' at one point, if I remember correctly. Before I started my 2012 edits, I changed the theme song to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3GLYgJQARI How I Made My Millions] by Thom Yorke (the singer of Radiohead). I don't exactly remember why I made this change - it probably had to do with me really liking that song at the time and thinking it tied into the saga better, tonally and lyrically. And for the final edits, I changed the theme song once again to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkE1SH5Llxk Let Down] by Radiohead. "Let Down" remains the theme song to this day. It is such a brilliant song both instrumentally and lyrically, though it was primarily the song's lyrics that made me use it here (the lines, "someday I am going to grow wings/a chemical reaction/hysterical and useless", speak to the themes of this saga with great accuracy, for example). The lyrics tie into the nihilism oft present in the story and the hopelessness that arises from being in a world that is moving on around you without recognizing you, without seeing you as a part of it. Individualism of thought and action is a major theme in TF, and by showing the numbing despair of collectivism and isolationist thoughts, I can bring attention to that. When I was writing the final edits for this saga, "Let Down" was my go-to song. I must've listened to it 100 times during December 2013, and while I'm not listening to it 100 times a month anymore, I still consider it to be one of the best Radiohead songs. It comes off of the same album as "Paranoid Android", so thematically and tonally it has a connection to that song and shows that yes, even though I have re-written much of this saga, there are still ties to the old 2011 version in how it is now.
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[[File:Fstag.png|700px]]
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The above picture is the tagline for this saga. I came up with this tagline pretty early in the tagline creation process. It was one of the earlier ones I came up with, and not one I struggled with for very long to find. There's a lot of despair and melancholy and pessimistic nihilism in this saga, but I wanted to show that the reason much of that is there is like how a blade needs a whetstone. Characters must go through troubling times to grow and to be shown at their best. The last tagline of this series is defiantly optimistic, which is a key personality trait of Ledas himself. But it applies to more people than just Ledas.
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So yeah that's about all I have to say about this saga. It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times, and in the end, I hope that it turns out being one of the better things I've written for all the effort it took for me to complete it. I expect it to be no lower than the second-best saga after I finish this anthology, so we'll see if that holds up when I get to the end. Anyways, onto the endnotes!