| abstract
| - Sleep was the hardest of the seven Black and White Collection stories for me to come up with. After I wrote Brave, I decided to lump all of my recent one-shots into a collection (the Black and White Collection mentioned above). This meant that the three villain stories needed hero stories to pair with. I knew that one of the two remaining hero stories would be Tarble, so that left me with what to make this story about. I made a huge list of every hero character in Dragon Ball, no matter how obscure. They just had to be good guys. It took me two days to narrow it down to Toolo. If I remember correctly, members of Bardock's team and Yamcha were the other finalists. I eliminated most people I had already written about before, otherwise I might've done Master Roshi or Krillin. I did this because I wanted Sleep to be something new, like Brave and Yellow had been. A big part of why I ended up picking Toolo was because I don't think many (perhaps any) people have written about him. It was a unique idea that I was excited to explore. After creating so many stories, finding a new fresh idea is extremely exciting. Another reason I picked Toolo was because his name started with a "T", like the two other hero protagonists (Tapion and Tarble). Once I chose Toolo, the plot was pretty much mapped out at once. Toolo is only tied to the Dragon Ball universe in one way, so I was going to talk about that. I did decide to present a dark take on the events leading up to his species' massacre by Bardock's team's hands, though. Something I really enjoyed about writing this piece was how it indirectly presented Bardock in a very negative light. He and his team force Toolo to do everything he does, so all the blood that is spilled is on their hands. This story was written during the week of July 20, 2014. I consider that week to be my most productive ever on the wiki. I wrote 13 chapters for various stories as well as Yellow and Sleep during that seven day span. Sleep itself was written a mere four days after Yellow. This is because, by the time I wrote Yellow, I had decided upon what my final two hero one-shots for Black and White Collection would be about. I made the page for the Black and White Collection after finishing Brave, and it had pictures of both Tarble and Toolo on it. It was just a matter of sitting down and writing the story once Yellow was completed. I was highly motivated that week, so it happened after only four days. Another thing is that I wrote this one-shot a few hours after completing the first chapter of Prideful Demons Black, so I was in a rare writing mood that extended past that me completing the chapter of Prideful Demons Black. I started writing this story at 3:12 a.m. my time on July 20, 2014. I finished it at 5:14 a.m. the same night and published it five minutes later at 5:19 a.m. I remember writing this story pretty quickly (at least compared to Yellow), and I don't have many memories of the actual process. I just sat down, wrote, and published two hours later. It's about as straightforward a one-shot as I've ever written. I do remember when I was done that I was exhausted and went to bed almost at once. This story took an emotional toll on me. Writing the last scene between Toolo and his son was very hard. All the stuff with Toolo's inner thoughts were also difficult, emotionally, for me to write. In a way, it felt like a burden was off my shoulders when I completed this story. This story was paired with Bluestreaker because Bluestreaker was the only villain story without a pair by this point. That said, I specifically paired Yellow with a different story because I think Sleep and Bluestreaker deal with the same theme of "family vs duty". Both stories end with Pyrrhic victories. Both stories end not long before the protagonists die. So they have thematic parallels that made this pairing important.
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