| abstract
| - On March 1, 2014, I added three stories to my "Current Stories" list on my userpage - From Magic to Monsters, Be a Man, and The Perfect Lifeform. I created these stories knowing that they wouldn't be like normal stories. Be a Man would be told in postcard form and From Magic to Monsters would be told in the form of character studies. I originally was going to have The Perfect Lifeform be written in prose, like a normal story, but ultimately abandoned that to make it like the others. These three stories challenge the idea of what makes a story a story, which I found interesting to explore. From Magic to Monsters was originally created with the intent to show how Bibidi created Buu. Considering that throughout Dragon Ball Z, everyone referred to Buu as Bibidi's creation, this seemed like an interesting story idea for me. It would also allow me to delve into Bibidi's failed creations as well. I fully planned on using at least one failed creation in my (as of writing this) upcoming Bulla story. In a way, this story would serve as a character history and background to that Majin so that Majin wouldn't seem like they were randomly introduced in the Bulla tale, but it would also give a more detailed history of Buu's creation as well. Of note is that before I posted the story page, my original name for this story was "From Monsters to Magic". I did change the words around before posting the page, though, so From Magic to Monsters became the final name. I began the story on March 5, 2014, around two days before I began the other two similar stories. Originally, I broke the chapters up in terms of failures and successes. There were going to be 16 failures and 4 successes. At least one of the successes was going to be the Majin featured in my upcoming Bulla story. I completed four chapters of this story before the Toriyama interview was released in June 2014, where he revealed that Bibidi did not in fact create Buu, but merely tamed him. This was a huge deal, not only because it was a retcon of establish Dragon Ball lore, but because it basically ruined this story as it had originally been set up. I had to decide early on if I deemed Toriyama's comments canon, because he was contradicting what was established in Dragon Ball with his comments. He's done this in previous interviews as well (in addition to his awful manga, Dragon Ball Minus, which breaks canon in at least five major ways), and he didn't seem to remember much about the universe he had created (admitting he forgot Super Saiyan 2 even existed). So I was wary to take what he said as canon. That said, I thought long and hard about this and eventually came to the conclusion that what Toriyama said, while re-writing Buu's history, doesn't exactly break canon. It just shows that the Supreme Kais had false information (or perhaps intentionally gave out false information) about Bibidi's relationship with Buu. Basically, Toriyama's overall truth is different than in-universe characters' information, showing that they are unreliable narrators. Unlike Toriyama's other non-canon comments in various interviews, this one is explainable and usable, so I deemed it canon. With that in mind, I had to restructure my story. The first thing I did was change the number of overall Majins: the failures became artificial Majins, and their total number was reduced from 16 to 13 because 13 is seen as an unlucky or evil number; the successes became true Majins, and their total number was reduced from 4 to 3 because I wanted the true Majins to be a triumvirate and a representation of the true Majin stages of life (Sesami being an older Majin, Hocus being a Majin in his prime, and Buu being a child Majin). To do this, I came up with the new plot that Bibidi would try to summon the true Majins by creating an artificial one. This also allowed me tie Amoon into the story, giving it a strong connection to KidVegeta's Theogony: From Silence to the Greater Kais and Hyper Zergling's universe. With an artificial Majin wreaking havoc in the universe, the true Majins would sense it and mistake it for one of their own kind, inducing them to wake up and reveal themselves. It's a bit of a complex plot that ultimately was required because of Toriyama's comments. I think the original plot of failed and successful creations would have been simpler, and perhaps better, but I was tied down by the author himself. If I had learned of Toriyama's comments before making the page for this story, it would have almost certainly turned out differently. I think I would have not had any artificial Majins. But, I made four artificial Majins before learning of those comments, and I definitely wanted to keep them, so the plot had to evolve around them. I am proud of how I was able to streamline the plot with Toriyama's retcon, though. So why did I write this in the form of character studies? I was inspired by A Wiki of Ice and Fire, which has rich, descriptive history sections for their characters, events, and other pages. The fake-historical-lore that I was reading felt like stories in and of themselves, even though they were just summaries on pages. I wanted to try this for myself, and thus From Magic to Monsters was born. I wrote all of the chapters on the wiki. I didn't use Microsoft Word or google docs. I did a lot editing on each page because they were character pages, not just stories. So the categories and other stuff were great for getting achievements. I remember most of the chapters being written relatively quickly. I improvised almost all of the plots. With Majin Buu, I knew I had to tie him with his canon history, and with Majin Presto, I knew she had to be the one to waken the True Majins. I also knew I was going to make Jaduu important before I wrote his chapter, and I knew that Sesami would escape and live while Hocus would be killed. But most of the other things were fully improvised during the editing process. The below story only shows each character's history. I didn't opt to put in each one's fate and pun headers on this anthology page because that would muddy up the page in an unnecessary way. Feel free to check out each character's articles if you've forgotten those things about them. I don't expect these character pages to have as many endnotes as a true story, particularly with the shorter ones, but I should have at least a few things to say about them.
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