yknow something i find funny?
nothing.
xx
“I’m bored!!! But Yamcha fell asleep!!! Will YOU Play with me?”
*Reblog to play with Puar
So I got into Dragonball because I grudgingly watched Kai on Nicktoons with my brother. My complaints became faker as the Frieza saga thickened and before I knew it, I fell in love with the series. Sometime later, I discovered Dragonball and watched that series as well. I think I watched GT after DB.
Since I watched DBZ first, I cared little for the human characters. I liked Piccolo because of his relationship with Gohan. And I enjoyed Krillin in the Namek/Frieza saga and I felt sad when he died. But I didn't really CARE. Tien and Yamcha were afterthoughts. I thought Chiaotzu was lame and a waste of space. All I cared about were the Saiyans.
But then I watched Dragonball and I fell in love with the human characters. So much magic and wonder. I like DBZ but Dragonball hits differently.
Anyway, I liked Yamcha. Was never a huge fan but I have really begun to feel sorry for the guy especially since my love for Vegebul has kind of faded a bit. I admit that even in the height of my Vegebul fanfic days as a teenage girl, I felt super uncomfortable or annoyed reading fics where Yamcha was painted as a loser, abuser or cheater. I hated how fanfic writers treated Yamcha like trash to make Vegeta look better. People out here trying to make Yamcha into a monster to make Vegeta, the guy who beat on Gohan in the previous two sagas and killed a village of Namekians with sadistic glee, look good :(. Now that I look back on it, I was reading trash!
Intro aside, I wanted to reflect on some ways that Yamcha could have been treated better in the series (DB and DBZ). I think Yamcha is a great character already and he does not need to be a bloodthirsty Saiyan to be amazing...but just some small things that could give him some more wins.
Dragonball: Yamcha vs Tien as the semi-finals fight
Yamcha's fight showcased Tien's cruelty. Roshi's fight symbolized the older generation being surpassed by the younger. But would the story change all that much if the fights were switched? Give Yamcha a chance to make it to the semis and use it as a storytelling device to show that Yamcha is catching up to Roshi as well. I think the story could have been even stronger if Tien was shown to surpass the older generation but then showed his cruelty.
DBZ: Bulma & Yamcha's breakup ending more amicably
I HATE how many Vegebul fans treat Yamcha. Yamcha is a good man and Bulma was always the abusive and unfaithful one in the relationship. I was not a huge Bulma fan in DB. Honestly, I don't think I truly liked Bulma until she got with Vegeta and became a mom. Anyway, why is it necessary to paint Yamcha as a cheater to pave the way for Vegebul? There are many ways for people to break up! The breakup could be a mutual thing where they decide they are better as friends (just look at their sibling vibe in the Buu saga). Maybe Future Trunks' arrival causes Yamcha to be more insistent on marriage and family and Bulma does not feel ready for the commitment. Maybe Yamcha walks away because he can't stand Bulma being friendly with the guy responsible for his murder. So many ways to paint Yamcha, and even Bulma, in a better light so that Yamcha does not look like the loser beta male who lost in the love triangle.
Renaissance Nardwuar: prithee, thou art an admirer of holy chants of the 11th century, art thou not?
Renaissance indie musician: troth, I often favorably partake in those warbling notes.
Renaissance Nardwuar: behold! I have on my person a small portion of the parchment on which such a composition was writ!
Renaissance indie musician: God’s wounds!
"he's so babygirl coded" (he has killed so many people. and he will kill more)
answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:
tl;dr:
israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.
with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.
the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.
as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.
the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.
ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.
and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.
all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!
long answers under the cut!
if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks
not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices
i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.
unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.
this was posted on abc a few days ago
it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.
even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.
with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.