| abstract
| - The Stomping Grounds Saga was not originally a part of Dragon Ball Z: The Forgotten. It was created during one of the several drafts of TF, a little less than a year after the first version of the story was completed and posted on this site. I made this saga because the Lauto Saga was originally 20 chapters long. That was too long, I felt. To fix that, I split the Lauto Saga into two sagas of ten chapters; this saga is the second half of that split. I was also very unhappy with the PC92 natives' plot in the Lauto Saga (as I detailed on that saga's anthology page), so I removed almost all of the chapters that focused on them. This left me in a bit of a bind - I was left with not very many chapters at all for this saga. That left me needing to come up with a new plot to fill up most of the saga. The above picture was one I found on gelbooru (weird, I know). And it inspired pretty much the entire saga. This is very similar to how a single picture inspired the entirety of Dragon Ball Z: In Requiem (and that picture was also found on gelbooru, funnily enough). That picture where Vegeta attacks Recoome is such a powerful image. It remains my very favorite Dragon Ball picture on the internet. The hopelessness of the situation coupled by Vegeta's courage was something that struck an emotional chord with me. I realized that TF did not have such a scene as that, and that felt like a failing of my story. The Namek arc of DBZ is probably my favorite in that entire series, and it's mainly because of the way Vegeta attacks all of the PTO soldiers, taking them out one by one while also gaining power. He didn't always win, either, such as in his fight against Zarbon or when he went up against Recoome. So, my early concept for this saga, at least the first half of it, was to mimick the Namek Arc with Ledas. I came up with eight PTO soldier names (based on fruit puns) and then assigned them personalities and stations afterwards. I came up with the name of this saga based on a Magic the Gathering card. The name of that card is just so cool, but the meaning of "stomping grounds" worked perfectly with what I wanted Ledas to go through in this saga, so I kept it. It is the first TF saga not named after a person as a result. Now, the early plot for this saga was somewhat different - mainly with how Ledas gets to the Stomping Grounds (he is chased there by Cooler in the first version; in the final version, he is brought there by Banas to stand trial). And of course, this saga was originally two chapters shorter, so the chapters with Ledas fighting Cooler and the stuff with The Benefactor and Lauto were all added in during the final edits. Pretty much everything else is the same as the first version of this saga. There are minor differences, of course - rewordings, dialogue cleanup, etc. - but the majority of this saga is as it was when I first completed it. I wrote the entire story (including doing some minor edits on the last three chapters, which are basically just imported from the Lauto Saga) from November 13, 2011 to December 13, 2011. In the coming months and years, I of course continued to do minor edits until July 25, 2013, when I began the final edits. I finished those final edits on August 9, 2013, and aside from minor grammar, spelling, and style edits, the story has remained the same since then. I have clear memories of writing this saga, perhaps more so than any other saga, as I wrote most chapters in the early morning, before anyone else had gotten up. I remember vividly writing the second chapter out in my house's family room with the fog all around the windows, the television on, with a show about people exploring the polar region in large boats on. I will get more into this in the below chapter endnotes, but the memories I have of writing this saga do make me remember it more fondly than the writing of other sagas. Now, this saga brought a considerable uptick in action and fighting. While I was happy with the previous two sagas' battle scenes, I felt like there wasn't anything close to what happens in the Namek arc in them. Thus, I strove to create tons of legendary battle scenes in this saga. The plot was simplified during the beginning as a result - Ledas is just trying to survive and escape the planet. There are of course other things going on, particularly when Digranite gets involved and after Ledas and Guva return to Planet Cooler 92. But the plot is certainly much more straightforward than it was in previous sagas. Also, I have only mentioned this in passing before, but it is something that is very important to note: I consider TF to be split into two overall arcs - the PTO arc and the Planet Earth arc. Each arc is comprised of three sagas. With this being the third and final saga in the PTO arc, it means that a lot of the plot threads are being closed, and a lot of payoff happens in this saga. There is certainly way more action in this saga than in the previous two. Many more named characters are killed, Ledas has a pretty awesome fight against Cooler, and Ledas achieves his Super Saiyan form. And of course, at the end, he finally earns his freedom and sets off to find Vegeta. So a lot of payoff happens in this saga, built up by the plot and characterization in the previous sagas. While they may seem boring in comparison to this one, such payoffs could not happen without the build up in the first place. There isn't a whole lot more to say for this saga. It should be clear from my above commentary, though, that this is one of my favorite sagas; I expect it to be in the top three at the very least. This is due to all the payoff, Ledas' Super Saiyan transformation (which is built up for thirty-five chapters before being achieved), his legendary fights against all the different characters (and in particular, Digranite, Nepar, Konatsu, and Cooler), and the thematic stuff I get into, especially in the last few chapters. This saga was fun for me to write, more so than the previous two, because it's me doing the Namek arc in fanon form. It's me having fun with varied, complex, unique battles. It's me finally giving my Saiyan his Super Saiyan transformation. So there's a lot going on in this saga that I found personally rewarding, and it is all heavily rewarding to the plot too. I hope the readers have found it to be that, too. So the theme song for this saga was chosen from the start, and I think it's one of the best themes for any saga. It may be my favorite overall song from the saga themes. Final Hour is the only song used in the actual saga it is the theme of. This is because, when I heard the song, I instantly visualized Ledas vs Digranite. The entire first part of the saga was molded around reaching that fight. I think this song is fantastic battle music; it sets the right tone of "overcoming all odds" in a badass way and just sounds like something that you would hear in one of DBZ's best fight scenes. So I'm quite happy that I found "Final Hour" before writing this saga, as its tonal impact cannot be overstated. As I did with the Blue Album for Things Were Better Then, I analyzed "Final Hour" closely. I learned how to play it on piano while writing this saga. I learned all of the little things about the song not easily understood just from listening to it. And all of that helped me with the writing of this saga. The above picture is the tagline for this saga. As I have mentioned before, all of TF's saga and special taglines were created in 2014/2015. This was one of the first taglines I created in 2014, and it's remained the same since then. I think this tagline appropriately conveys Ledas' mood in this saga, his will to survive, his will to fight, to never give up, and to no longer take all the shit that's happened to him. This is a saga about Ledas fighting a bunch of dudes in spectacular fashion, but it's also a saga about Ledas finding his personal agency, his voice, and his individuality. It's about Ledas standing up to those whom he was too weak to stand up to before. It's about Ledas making his foes pay. And he is greatly determined to do so, as seen in the defiant boldness of the above tagline. So that's about all I have to say for this saga in the opening monologue. While this saga did have a lot of rewriting to do for its original draft (I had to basically write nine chapters from scratch), its final edits were minimal in comparison. So I would still place Reunion Saga, Lauto Saga, and Fulfillment Saga over it in terms of the work I had to do to complete it, though I think this one was a little bit harder overall than Prince Vegeta Saga to write. Anyways, onto the endnotes!
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