Please keep in mind that these are just personal headcanons and I would never expect or demand anyone abide by them. The whole point of headcanons is they're personal interpretations. Some fans may have them for personal representation purposes, others might have them because they find them interesting and still more might have them because of the "why not?" factor. (I do all three!)
Freeza is intersex and doctors had no way to determine which set of reproductive organs were going to function or be dominant when he grew up, so he grew up nonbinary until he decided on his own gender at adolescence. He looked like a female throughout his childhood, but the male characteristics showed up at puberty. His gender identity always aligned with maleness, so that's why he's a he and not a she. Btw, neither set of reproductive organs is dominant over the other-- they both work!
[spoiler]I know Freeza’s species is being called the Freeza force, or something like that. I've seen other people call him an Arcosian. I’m more familiar with the fanon term of Icejin, so if you see “Icejin” just know I’m referring to his species.
He’s got both sets of genitals, and the chromosomal equivalents to XX and XY. His blood cells will give you one thing(”XY”) and his tissue cells will give you another (”XX”). I'm using quotes because Freeza's chromosomes proooooobably aren't like a human's at all. Being intersex is not common for Icejins since they have one set of genitals or the other, but it’s not entirely unheard of.
Icejins have something like a cloaca to safely contain their genitals. It’s not a true cloaca because their anuses are separate and in about the same area as humans’ are, but I call it a cloaca because it works almost the same as one. The urethral opening is right in front of the anus regardless of gender. All Icejins sit or squat to pee unless you’re a rude Icejin who lifts your tail and leans forward to squirt backwards.
Sexing a baby Icejin usually involves pushing on their pubic bone to open the cloaca and see what’s inside. Either the vaginal opening will pop open or a penis will pop out. In Freeza’s case both happened!
Both doctors and Freeza’s parents had no idea what Freeza’s actual gender was or which set of reproductive organs would be functional or dominant, so they all decided to let him grow up and decide for himself. His name is gender neutral for Icejins, similar to names like Leslie or Morgan.
The word “nonbinary” was not known to me when I first had this headcanon, but it fits the description for Freeza’s childhood. He was raised nonbinary although he had an instinctual gender identity early on. His parents wanted him to wait until puberty to see if his identity remained the same or changed when all those hormones and physical growth kicked in.
The pronoun used for him during childhood was the Icejin language equivalent to ze/zir/zirs.
Freeza looked like a girl during his infancy and most of his childhood until puberty, where the testosterone equivalent kicked in and he started to look like a boy. Growing up, being called “she” or “her” upset him-- not because girls are weaker, he just didn’t “feel” it. His personal identity aligned with males, so at puberty he decided he’s a he and wanted to be referred to as he/him/his and that’s all there was to it.
Freeza got lucky compared to human intersex babies where the parents decide which genitals the baby will live with and may even go so far as to make the child take hormones to ensure they appear as one gender or the other. This is VERY damaging!
As for which set of Freeza’s genitals work or not-- it turns out they both function fully. He could literally father a child and become a mother to one at the same time.
Since someone will probably ask-- NO he can’t get himself pregnant, his anatomy doesn’t allow it. (He wouldn’t want to anyway!)
The characteristics of Freeza’s other gender are present in his face, most notably in his first form. He’s ridiculously pretty in such a way that he stands out from other Icejins. His secondary sex characteristics were also present in his voice until he finished his physical maturation.
In terms of sexual/gender identity, Freeza identifies as a pansexual intersex male. He’ll try anything sexual at least once. He got King Vegeta blackout drunk and (censored for naughtiness) to see what it’s like with a Saiyajin, and he found it disgustingly unsatisfying. He regrets ever doing it because it was so gross to him. King Vegeta had no recollection of the experience at all.
As for Freeza’s private parts...that's too NSFW for here. I have those details on the Tumblr post I'm x-posting from, but won't directly post the text on the forum because I can't double-spoiler them behind more spoiler tags.
Anyway, Freeza doesn’t care if his opponents find out the truth about his being intersex because he’s not ashamed of it.
So there you have it. Intersex!Freeza, a decade-old headcanon!
P.S. I fucking love Chris Ayres as Freeza’s current voice actor so much better than Linda Chambers and Pauline Newstone. The ladies were good, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like they didn’t quite fit Freeza because of the crappy dub lines he had before DBZKai. BUT the feminine voice played a huge part in my headcanon. I like to swing it that his voice changed because he finally finished puberty and his voice was the last part to change
[/spoiler]Broly was a nonverbal autistic boy who grew into a minimally verbal man. What looked like insanity was actually his brain being its version of normal. Goku's crying hurt his ears, so he associated screaming/crying with pain Goku caused and never realized it wasn't intentional. Fluctuating sensory issues made the world a confusingly scary place. Paragus realized his son's rages and meltdowns were useful, so he abused the hell out of Broly via the mind control crown to keep him obedient. Broly eventually broke free and paid Paragus back by crushing his attack ball. Broly’s story is tragic because his potential to use his power for good got wasted through years of abuse and mistreatment.
[spoiler]Broly was initially nonverbal, needed lots of daily help and couldn’t make his communications understood. Later, he became minimally verbal although he didn’t like to talk and avoided it whenever he could. He was fully competent, but unable to show it in his early years. His thinking patterns were complex and chaotic. To remember something was to experience it again, so the mere thought of pain caused pain, which triggered aggression, meltdowns and rages.
When Broly and Kakarot (Goku) were babies, Kakarot’s constant crying was sensory hell. Broly had a lot of trouble getting his eyes and ears to process information simultaneously. He either had to look or listen, but struggled with doing both. His attempts to do both turned everything into unintelligible sensory input that eventually translated into pain. Broly developed a maddening hatred of his almost constant pain and mentally associated Kakarot with those feelings. So, for most of his life, he experienced an irrational anger towards all screaming noises and blamed every scream he ever heard on Kakarot.
People who didn’t know Broly claimed he went insane. He didn’t. His young, newborn autistic brain made a sensory association that persisted throughout his life.
Broly’s power was immense at birth, and grew due to the internal energy of being constantly overstimulated and stressed out. His body treated it like getting injured, and when Saiyajins are injured they get stronger when they heal. This, coupled with an attempt on his life while he was still a tiny baby, caused his power to grow way out of control.
King Vegeta’s excuse was he didn’t like Broly’s immense power level. He was actually unable to presume Broly’s competence and deemed him unfit to wield that much ki. Hence, the attempted murder that didn’t work.
For Broly, his sensory issues swung between hyposensitive and hypersensitive. The frequent de-syncing between his eyes and ears frustrated him. Being nonverbal at the time meant he had no understandable way to express his incessant discomfort except through violent meltdowns.
Paragus, Broly’s father, could not control his son’s power. Broly stimmed by blowing things up because explosions made sense to him, but this made him destructive to any environment he came in contact with.
Thus, the mind control device was brought into the picture. Paragus was nasty about using the device. First, it was merely to control Broly’s destructive tendencies, but he didn’t stop there. He used it to prevent Broly from stimming or displaying any of his autistic behaviors because he saw how intense Broly’s power was when his ki surged out during rages and meltdowns. He wanted to use his son’s power for nefarious purposes, so he kept him under control like a fizzy soda bottle being constantly shaken to raise the pressure until it exploded.
Broly had almost zero free will, agency or autonomy for the rest of his childhood. Paragus forced Broly to learn things like eye contact and quiet hands. The device caused Broly pain if he didn’t comply. The real nasty catch? The mind control crown caused him to constantly forget that Paragus was zapping him if he misbehaved. In his mind, the pain came from ‘nowhere’ and furthered the rage and helplessness he felt inside.
For Broly, breaking the mind-control crown was liberation. All the memories it repressed flooded into his mind and he realized Paragus was his abuser all along. The years of wearing the device caused him to forget how to stim or self-regulate. He had zero coping mechanisms outside of his rages and meltdowns. Violence was the only way he knew how to communicate besides words.
Naturally, he went for the source of the zaps and torture. Paragus did not survive. Then Broly went off in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Kakarot.
The saddest thing is if Broly hadn’t been abused, if he was allowed to grow up with healthy autistic coping mechanisms and been introduced to AAC, he might have been a gentle giant who learned to control his ki and use it to help people instead of hurt them. He might have been open to the idea that Kakarot wasn’t trying to cause him pain with his constant crying the way Paragus hurt him with the mind control crown. Maybe Broly and Kakarot could’ve become friends.
But Paragus ruined it all. And he ended up dead for it, too, since Broly crushed his space pod to pay him back for years of abuse.[/spoiler]
Raditz is bisexual with an exhibitionist streak. He's the guy who trolls people by sending dick pics via scouter and he loves to walk around naked until enough people yell at him to put some clothes on. His hair clogs more drains than Zarbon's ever will. He also has a severe case of epilepsy that doesn't respond to medication. It's kind of a miracle that he lived past his second birthday, because kids with EEG's as abnormal as his usually died by the time they turned two.
[spoiler]Raditz is shamelessly bisexual with an equal preference for men and women. One of his “guilty” aspirations is having kids because he doesn’t want to see the Saiyajin race die out. In his mind, having half-Saiyajins around is better than no Saiyajins.
Raditz loves to pick up sex workers (men and women) for a threesome on the planets he gets assigned to destroy. He actually regards them with a lot of respect even though he’s going to blow their planet up the next day. In his mind, treating his chosen partners to a nice dinner, slow sex and a brief cuddle is taking them for one last hurrah before they die.
He refers to himself as a slut a lot because he’s promiscuous, but he doesn’t like it if somebody else calls him a slut.
He takes safe sex precautions and has a perfect track record of zero sexually transmitted diseases.
A funny aside-- Raditz helped a young, sexuality-confused Vegeta figure out he was straight by having an intense makeout session with him. Vegeta didn’t feel the least bit turned on, but Raditz sure was. So Vegeta’s first kiss was actually from a man! (’Geets was 13 and Raditz was 17.)
Raditz literally taught Vegeta how to kiss and told the young prince to think of him if he ever kissed or had sex with a woman. Years later, Vegeta spared Raditz a thought after hooking up with Bulma.
He respects Vegeta a lot more than he lets on. He also kinda-sorta had feelings for him when they were both younger, but grew out of them once he reached full adulthood.
He’s not somebody who whines about unrequited love. He makes himself get over it and move on because he doesn’t like moping about people he can’t have.
Raditz loves being naked. He’s a practically nudist and a bit of an exhibitionist. He would be naked all the friggin’ time if people didn’t gripe at him about it. He only wears clothes when walking around Freeza’s bases and on missions because clothes/armor protect his dangly bits. He jokes that his private parts are an awfully big target. Even when he wears clothes, he tries to wear as little as possible.
Raditz sends people dick pics via scouter. He sent one anonymously to Freeza during a debriefing and caused him to choke on his wine. Another time, he got a dick pic into the holographic display people refer to during debriefings. Everybody in Freeza’s army has seen Raditz’s dick and Raditz thinks that’s hilarious.
He tried having his tongue pierced once, but circumstances made maintaining it impossible and he had to let the hole close up.
Raditz’s hair is a quarter of his full body weight. He was born looking like a pile of hair with arms, legs and a face because it wrapped around him in the womb.
He’s extremely proud of his mane(yes, he calls it his mane), even though it takes a long time to wash and can take days to dry in humid conditions. It smooths down when it’s wet and spikes up as it dries. It’s surprisingly resistant to tangling, though he’ll brush it out if something like grass or twigs get stuck in it.
He needs heavy duty hair bands if he wants to wear a ponytail, because his super thick hair destroys flimsy ones in .0001 seconds. And trying to braid Raditz’s hair into a perfect, neat plait is an exercise in futility. There’s always going to be spiky strands sticking out everywhere.
Those bands around his left arm and leg? Not a meaningless decoration. The leg band represents his dad (Bardock) and his armband, which he got later on, represents his brother (Kakarot, aka Goku). They’re not exactly fashionable; he gets mocked for wearing them. They’re made from bits of leather from Vegeta-sei and they’re the only personal possessions he’ll fight to keep.
His idea of a good time is picking on people for their looks, for their fashion choices, their behavior and for having a power level weaker than his. He loves to make fun of Nappa’s squeamishness towards fecal matter. Hell, he likes to make fun of Nappa any chance he gets because he thinks Nappa’s bald head is hilarious. (Nappa is kinda sensitive about his baldness...)
Something few know is Raditz is a surprisingly good artist, but he has little time to utilize his talent. He gets the most use out of this talent when he draws vulgar things on Nappa’s bald head while he’s asleep.
Raditz was very close to his father, Bardock, so the loss of Vegeta-sei was devastating to him. He happened to be on a long distance scouter-to-scouter connection with a friend on the planet when everything blew. He is the only Saiyajin who heard his planet die, and he never told a soul. The trauma of that moment still gives him nightmares.
Surprisingly, blowing up other planets doesn’t trigger him. Hearing large groups of people scream in audio recordings, on the other hand, is upsetting. He can listen to people screaming if he’s present or if there’s video footage-- even if the video is just static-- but audio only without any visual signal makes makes him feel sick to his stomach.
He is someone who would take offense at fake seizure prank videos or people faking seizures to get out of legal trouble. Because Raditz’s biggest struggle is his refractory epilepsy. He has it because of his genetic makeup. All Saiyajin brains are wired for epilepsy, but they’re also born with four genes that “tell” their neurons to behave themselves. Any Saiyajin missing one or more of these genes will be born with epilepsy. The cause of this gene deletion is an extra inhibitory gene mutation stemming from one or both parents. One Saiyajin with the inhibitor has a 50/50 chance of parenting a child with epilepsy. If both parents have the mutation, all of their kids will have epilepsy.
Bardock had the inhibitor mutation, but Gine didn’t. Raditz is missing two suppressor genes. Medical experts are stymied because most Saiyajins with epilepsy as intense as Raditz’s don’t live past their second birthday.
No medication has ever successfully controlled Raditz’s seizures. Either the meds did nothing, they gave him all the side effects and none of the benefits or they increased the frequency of his seizures (paradoxical effect). Surgery is not an option because Saiyajin brains swell up when punctured or exposed to the air. Even laser surgery could kill him.
A small part of his brain buzzes with seizure activity every few seconds. This is constant whether he’s awake or asleep. The pulses originate in a tiny cluster of neurons in his parietal lobe that can’t turn off their excitatory neurotransmitters. These pulses are like the sparks you get from striking a match. Inhibitory neurons kick on to stop the spread, as if someone is blowing out the match as soon as it sparks so it won’t catch flame. Eventually, though, the person gets too tired to keep blowing on the match, so it lights and that’s a seizure.
Sometimes his brain can do the equivalent of grabbing a fire extinguisher before the flame gets big (simple partial seizures, also known as focal seizures).
Sometimes the whole house burns down anyway (generalized tonic-clonic seizures, also known as grand mal seizures).
Sometimes it explodes before the fire extinguisher gets grabbed (drop seizures, also known as atonic seizures).
Sometimes somebody throws gasoline on the match as it lights (tonic-clonic seizures triggered by flashing lights).
Sometimes a gas oven gets left open when the match strikes and boom (nocturnal/sleep tonic-clonic seizures).
Raditz’s EEG is always abnormal, yet having no visible symptoms outside of his seizures means people don’t see the severity of what he deals with.
He would not be able to safely drive a car or pilot an aircraft unless an automated system can take over. His worst seizures are photosensitive. If he used tumblr, he would one of the people who needs a ‘seizure warning’ tag for his blacklist. Flickering ki, lightning storms, rock concerts, nightclubs and any other place with fast strobe lights are dangerous for him unless he takes precautions beforehand.
He almost always has sores on the sides of his tongue from biting there during violent seizures.
There are rare occasions where he loses all memory of the last sixty seconds before a seizure. Sometimes his seizures cause him to soil himself, puke or fall over.
Raditz’s epilepsy doesn’t go away with a full moon-- he still has seizures as an Oozaru. He transformed in the middle of a tonic-clonic seizure a few times and it ain’t fun.
A lack of sleep, getting drunk or spiking a fever lowers his seizure threshold. “Coming down” after an Oozaru transformation also lowers his seizure threshold.
Simple partials are Raditz’s most common seizure. He has up to 300 SP’s in a 24 hour period. That’s about 27 seizures per hour. They last around fifteen to thirty seconds.
His SP’s are like a roller coaster ride. They start out with a vague feeling that the floor is slowly tilting sideways underneath him, that’s the ride clicking slowly up the hill. This lasts all of three seconds until the tip of his thumb starts to tingle like somebody’s foot “waking up” from being numb. That’s the roller coaster clearing the hill. Next comes the rush of zooming downhill and through a loop-- he feels like the floor lurches violently sideways as the pins and needles sensation spreads to the base of his thumb. The vertigo spins and slows into nothing, which is the roller coaster slowing to return to its starting point, and the tingle going away as soon as his equilibrium is back to normal is the lap bar flipping up to let the riders off.
Nobody knows Raditz is having an SP unless he mentions it. He thinks they’re trippy, and they don’t disrupt his day to day life or his ability to fight because he learned to compensate for his altered sense of balance.
His SP’s are so normal to him that that he forgets other people don’t get tingly and dizzy several times an hour. They’re more bothersome to him when he’s tired or trying to concentrate on a delicate task like fixing his scouter. He often jokes that he doesn’t need drugs to get high, his SP’s do that for him.
Sometimes his SP’s generalize into a tonic-clonic seizure. He knows an SP is an aura foretelling a TC when the vertigo goes away and the tingle continues up his arm until it reaches his neck. This takes about twenty minutes. He’ll alert whoever he’s with that he’s going to “go” so that anyone who doesn’t know what to do clears away while anybody who does know what to do (and who is strong enough to not get splattered by flailing limbs!) can spot him to make sure he doesn’t choke on his spit or puke.
What a tonic-clonic seizure looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nds2U4CzvC4
(* * *WARNING: Loud, and may be disturbing to some viewers. The screaming is not pain or fear, it’s the larynx tensing up as air is forced out of the lungs.)
The chances of his SP’s generalizing increases whenever his seizure threshold gets lower.
Being powered up when a seizure generalizes is a nightmare scenario: his ki goes into convulsions when his body does, and he’ll release huge shock waves until he expends whatever energy he gathered during a power up. Ironically, these shock waves are stronger than any ki blast he can shoot voluntarily. Sometimes he powers up when he knows a seizure is generalizing since the shock waves kill or scare opponents away. The downside is he uses up a ton of energy and he will be so exhausted that all he wants to do is sleep.
Drop seizures annoy him the most, and they give zero warning. They happen less often than SP’s, but they’re embarrassing. Sometimes he loses consciousness for a split second, just long enough to not remember hitting the ground. That little blip in consciousness can wipe out the last sixty seconds preceding the seizure, so his scouter is always recording and a quick playback lets him account for the brief memory gap.
What a drop seizure looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4G1BlyRbDM
Raditz has a lot of nocturnal/sleep TC’s. They usually hit right as he enters delta wave sleep. Sometimes they wake him up, but sometimes he’s so exhausted that he sleeps through the whole thing and awakens later feeling like he got beat up.
Flashing or flickering light trigger his worst TC’s and put him into life-threatening status epilepticus. These primary TC’s have no aura; five seconds of even a tiny LED light flickering will throw him right into it. These seizures are extremely violent and painful, and the post-ictal paralysis can last for up to an hour afterward.
His scouter has polarized glass with sensors that will detect external flickering and “counter-flicker” so he sees a more or less steady glow in his left eye, and the blink rate of the scouter’s power level readouts is slowed down by milliseconds-- and yes those milliseconds really do matter that much. He carries an eye patch to cover his left eye if something happens to his scouter. Covering one eye lessens the impact of flickering lights on his brain, but it messes with his depth perception.
His TC’s are complicated by the constant seizure activity “sparks” zapping in his brain. It takes a long time for his body to stop convulsing, and after the convulsions pass he will twitch in perfect time to the “sparks” in his brain until his neurons calm down. Sometimes he goes into another TC or has clusters of SP’s if his seizure threshold is low.
Raditz’s scouter logs his seizures by what time they happened(universal time), the type of seizure, the duration and a still snapshot of his environment at the time. If a flashing light was present, an arrow will highlight the light source. This helps him stay on top of his external seizure triggers.
A small aside-- Even Raditz’s most mild TC’s are dangerous to weaker beings and property. His body flails and jerks so much that he thrashes against whatever surface he’s on. He can dent a metal floor, splinter wood, break tiles and shatter the bones of somebody standing too close. Even his tail whipping around during convulsions will send a person flying. If he has a TC as an Oozaru, he’ll cause a bit of an earthquake and leave a mark on the ground. Depending on the ground type, it can be anything from a huge crack to a crater.
In Raditz’s mind, puking on himself while seizing is more embarrassing than wet or pooped pants. The terrifying shrieking noise he makes when a TC starts and the moaning/gurgling he does during them are another source of embarrassment. He gets over it quick and puts on an air of fake “I’m fine” confidence once he’s able to move again...and sometimes that scares the crap out of people, which is exactly what he wants.
One of Raditz’s funniest seizure stories is getting flash-bombed soon after landing on some backwater planet. He hadn’t put his scouter on yet, so the flash naturally triggered a massive seizure. The inhabitants capitalized and kept him somewhat immobilized by triggering seizure after seizure.
Then Nappa and Vegeta arrived, and they didn’t collapse into convulsions when the flash bombs went off. They made quick work of the place and spent weeks laughing about having to clean up after Raditz bungled the mission. Raditz got the last laugh because his seizure tricked the inhabitants into lowering their guard.
Sometimes his seizures put chinks in his self-confidence because of their unpredictability. Every SP has the potential to generalize and wreak havoc on his body. He’s not fond of losing control of his body like that in front of people he’s trying to impress. Seizures have ruined some of his “date nights” with sex workers the night before a planet raid. He hates it when that happens; it’s not like he can go in another room to hide because his TC’s aren’t exactly quiet.
Seizures are the main reason Raditz had to take his tongue piercing out. Either he broke teeth on captive bead rings or swallowed barbell beads. The last straw was inhaling an entire small gauge barbell into his lung during a nocturnal TC. He only found that out because he couldn’t find the barbell, thought he swallowed it into his stomach and then coughed it up hours later.
One of Freeza’s ways of punishing Raditz is ordering him to take his scouter off and creating a flickering ki spark above his finger to trigger his seizures. He thinks the shrieking noise Raditz makes when he goes tonic is the height of hilarity.
It’s not uncommon for Raditz to have TC’s in the middle of mission debriefings with Freeza’s men. They ignore him and carry on since they know he’s conscious and will remember what he heard. Unlike humans, Saiyajins don’t pass out when they have TC’s. It’s a blessing and a curse.
Nappa and Vegeta make jokes about Raditz’s seizures, and they’ll make those jokes while watching Raditz have one. He takes it in stride. Hearing their voices nearby is a bit of a comforting thing for him.
He understands that nobody will come to his rescue if he drops in a serious seizure during a battle. He wouldn’t want Vegeta or Nappa risking their necks for his sake anyway because that’s embarrassing.
And finally, he has seen video footage of himself having TC’s and thinks the way he goes from looking like he’s being electrocuted to looking like he’s swimming is hilarious.[/spoiler]
For the most part Saiyajins look like humans on the outside(aside from their tails), but I like to think they have some internal anatomical differences that set them apart from humans. So here's my headcanons about Saiyajin internal anatomy.
[spoiler]Saiyajin bodies are the absolute rulers of compensation. Heart failure? Speed up the resting heart rate and lower blood pressure. Failing kidneys? The liver and lymph nodes take some of the slack. Huge chunks of small intestine missing? Slow down the metabolism. One eye gets weak? The brain learns to ignore it. Their bodies will literally keep compensating until an organ fails completely, and they can live for years with chronic health conditions that kill humans in a month.
They have two spleens-- a big and a little one. They flank the liver. The “big” spleen acts like a giant lymph node and helps the liver process chemicals. The “little” spleen is more of a redundant body part, kind of like the human appendix. If it gets infected or gets ruptured during battle, the chances of a fatal internal bleed are high.
Saiyajin bones and muscle fibers are slightly more dense than a human’s due to Vegeta-sei having a higher gravity than Earth. Trying to “average” them out based on human averages will make them seem too heavy for their heights.
The normal body temperature of a healthy Saiyajin is 100.0F. 105F is a low grade fever to them. Fevers don’t get dangerous until they hit 110F. Brain damage starts occurring at 114F, enzymes and proteins their bodies depend on to function start to come apart at 117F, and no Saiyajin with a fever higher than 120F has ever survived.
Their high body temperature means they’re more comfortable in warmer environments, but will feel cold sooner than humans in cooler temperatures.
It takes a long time for Saiyajins to develop hypothermia in extreme cold because they can power up to get warm. By extreme cold, I mean “surface of Pluto” cold. This is negated if they’re knocked out and can’t power up. Then they’ll freeze to death just like a human...albeit at a slower rate.
It also takes a long time for Saiyajins to develop hyperthermia in extreme heat because they sweat a lot. By extreme heat, I mean “surface of Mercury” hot. This, too, can be negated if they’re dehydrated enough to stop sweating. Then they look just like any typical human experiencing heat exhaustion leading into heat stroke.
Saiyajin immune systems work like killer bees. This is good if they’re sick and it can be bad if there’s an allergy. There’s no sniffly-sneezes or rashes for them, they go right to anaphylaxis. Allergies in Saiyajins are extremely rare.
As you can imagine, minor annoying illnesses to humans feel horrible to Saiyajins. All the symptoms related to illness are the immune system at work, not the bug itself. So a simple cold can knock a Saiyajin down with a high fever, but they kill the cold in about 24 hours, spend 48 hours with coughs, sneezes and sniffles as their body cleans up the aftermath and then they’re better.
Any illness gets this reaction. Colds, flu, strep throat, etc.. Sick Saiyajins prefer to sleep it off.
The only exception to the brief fever rule is illnesses related to the digestive system, which is covered below.
Their metabolism is extremely fast. Saiyajins who take aspirin for a headache will feel the effects within ten minutes, but the medicine will last in their system the same as it will for humans. Medicine gets into their bloodstream faster than it does for humans.
As you can imagine, this means they feel alcohol immediately as well because they start absorbing it as soon as it touches their mouth. Like humans, their tolerance varies. There are Saiyajins who will get drunk just swishing some whiskey around in their mouth and then there’s others who can gulp ten tequila shots and only feel buzzed.
Saiyajin stomachs can expand to fill most of the abdominal cavity. They practically burn through food as they swallow it and that’s why they eat such huge meals when given the chance.
Food rations that are small, but with a high calorie counts and packed full of vitamins can sustain a Saiyajin for a long time. There are “time release” rations that take a long while to digest. Living off rations is not comfortable for Saiyajins.
Their small intestine averages about thirty feet in length while their large intestine is only about three feet long.
A Saiyajin’s colon looks like a human colon without the cecum or ascending colon. As a result, they form a horseshoe shape instead of a rectangle. There are no hepatic or splenic fixtures, the whole thing is tethered to the peritoneum instead.
The reason for such a long small intestine is Saiyajins need a lot of absorption real estate to keep their bodies healthy. Whatever gets past their stomach without getting used up right away passes into their intestines where it gets used up even more. Whatever is left enters the colon. Usually it’s parts of food that aren’t digestible, like old mucus, bits of bone from meat and any pathogens that get cast off the food as it’s absorbed. And for all that you can’t tell their poop from a human’s. XD!!
Saiyajins don’t have an appendix.
Half-Saiyajins have a fifty-fifty chance of being born with Saiyajin digestive anatomy. Those born with human digestive anatomy come out with a little spleen...but it sprouts off where their appendix should be.
Illnesses related to the digestive system, like gastroenteritis or food poisoning, make Saiyajins really sick. Getting the runs is annoying to humans and only dangerous if it goes on and on. Saiyajins can die from it very fast if something isn’t done to slow their intestines down. The biggest risk isn’t dehydration, it’s malabsorption that leads to malnutrition.
Saiyajins can go up to three weeks without water, but they’ll die within a week without any food or nutrition. Their bodies shut right down because, unlike humans, their body eats up excess fat and then it attacks their internal organs.
Dying by complete no-food starvation is a torturous process because hunger becomes painful after 24 hours of zero food.
Saiyajins in a starvation situation will eat their dead comrades to stay alive. If the situation calls for it, they will eat everything, even the bones.
Their tails are densely innervated and have very little blood supply. Squeezing cuts off the blood supply, sends pain radiating through their bodies and their brains think they are being strangled. Saiyajins who overcome this weakness don’t stop feeling the pain, they just learn to control the panic response. It’s kind of like sword swallowers who overcome their gag reflex.
Tails and tail scars are an erogenous zone because their nerves follow the same pathways as the genitals.
Tail scars are extremely sensitive because the roots of the nerves for the tail are right under the skin’s surface.
Pinching the skin around a tail scar is extremely painful. It triggers the same reaction as squeezing an intact tail.
Saiyajin eyes have a blue tapetum-- they don’t get red-eye in photos, it comes up blue instead and only if you take their photo straight on. The tapetum reacts to Blutz waves, which triggers a hormonal response from the tail and transforms a Saiyajin into an Oozaru. The tapetum also reacts to the golden light of a Super Saiyajin transformation and that is why Saiyajin eyes look turquoise/green. Going SSJ Blue, likewise, turns their eyes blue.
Only two things can prevent a Saiyajin from transforming-- cut off their tail or destroy their eyes. A blind Saiyajin with one intact eye can still transform if they have a tail when they turn their face to a full moon.
Tapetum membranes are passed on to half-Saiyajins.
Saiyajins have black eyes. Their irises are literally black, but they mysteriously become translucent if the Saiyajin goes SSJ or SSJ Blue.
It’s easier to look at a Saiyajin’s pupil by shining a light on the side of their eye or shining one directly into their eye at close range to make the tapetum light up.
Saiyajins have better night vision than humans because their pupils can dilate all the way and their tapetum lets their eye bounce more light around inside.
The Saiyajin sense of smell is better than a dog’s or a cat’s because their noses have more olfactory nerves and the area of their brain dedicated to smell is more dense than a human’s.
Their noses are so good that they can tell you who peed on a tree and how long ago. They also know exactly who stunk up a bathroom before them. They can smell blood from literally miles away if a lot has been shed. They can also smell pheremones, so they’ll know you’re attracted to them before you do.
They can smell when somebody is on their period and sometimes they can smell when somebody is pregnant.
The best way to defeat a Saiyajin’s nose is ammonia. It overloads their sense of smell. So leave a dirty cat litterbox anywhere you don’t want a Saiyajin to smell something!
They have a bicuspid aortic valve, which means the valve between their heart and their body has two flaps instead of three. (Humans can be born with bicuspid valves, but it’s rare and usually causes health issues.) The chances of half-Saiyajins having hearts like this are fifty-fifty.
Their blood types are the same as humans, except their most common blood type (AB negative) is the rarest human blood type. Meanwhile, the most common human blood type (O negative) is rare in Saiyajins.
A Saiyajin can take a blood transfusion from a human with no problem unless there’s a blood-borne disease present, but a human can’t receive blood from a Saiyajin because there’s genetic material for the Oozaru transformation and human bodies can’t handle that.
It’s possible for Saiyajins to receive organ transplants from a human, but a human can’t receive organs from a Saiyajin for the same reason humans can’t receive blood from a Saiyajin.
A half-Saiyajin can receive blood or organs from both a Saiyajin or a human. This is because their DNA is “wired” for the Oozaru transformation and won’t reject the foreign material.
Powering up raises a Saiyajin’s blood pressure by making the heart beat harder at whatever speed it’s going.
Their veins and arteries have thicker, stretchier walls that allow them to survive higher blood pressures than humans. They can still develop aneurysms (ballooning of an artery).
Sometimes the ballooning only happens during a power up, but if an aneurysm is already present it’s the most at-risk for bursting when the Saiyajin powers up.
Heart attacks happen the same way-- a very sick heart can’t keep up with the powered up Saiyajin’s needs. Sometimes they just max out and can’t power up past a certain point, but sometimes disaster strikes.
A Saiyajin with heart disease(usually congenital) or a brain aneurysm may literally drop dead while powering up because of a heart attack or hemorrhagic stroke.
Saiyajin lungs have four lobes and twice as many alveoli as a human’s. As a result, they don’t need to inhale as often to get enough oxygen while at rest, and they tolerate thinner atmospheres with fewer ill effects.
During exertion, the blood vessels in the lungs dilate to allow more red blood cells through for faster gas exchange. It’s like a store opening more cash registers on a crowded day.
Their lung capacity gives them better stamina in battle and lets them comfortably hold their breath for up to six minutes.
Saiyajins have little tissue flaps on the opening of each bronchi that are similar to an epiglottis. They can voluntarily shunt all their air to one lung if the other is punctured or damaged, but the lung they use needs to have at least three working lobes.
Sometimes the bronchial flaps get infected. It causes a lot of wheezing if they swell, and sometimes they get surgically removed if they get infected over and over.
Saiyajins don’t have tonsils. Bronchial flap removal is their equivalent to humans having their tonsils taken out.
They shed teeth throughout their lives, not just in childhood. A knocked-out or pulled-out tooth grows back within a month. It’s no big deal to them if a tooth rots, they just pull it out.
Half-Saiyajins regrow teeth too.
Saiyajin saliva has antimicrobial properties to it. A Saiyajin could literally spit into an open surgical wound in a sterile room and the incision would be cleaner afterward. Sometimes they’ll spit on their hands and rub them together like they used hand sanitizing lotion before tending to their own or a friend’s injuries.
Saiyajin spines have redundant nerve roots arranged in a random pattern, so a Saiyajin with a complete spinal cord injury may be able to feel or move parts below the lesion if they have redundant nerve roots above the lesion. This gives the impression that they have an incomplete SCI.
Redundant nerve roots are unique to each person, like DNA, retinal blood vessels or fingerprints. Bodies too damaged for identification can be identified via the arrangement of nerves in their spines.
Saiyajin bodies know when they’re too damaged to survive and self-destruct. This happens the most often with injuries where the spinal cord or brain is exposed to air outside their body. There is an immediate immune response that causes the spinal cord and brain to swell. Death usually occurs because the brain smashes against the skull, or breathing is cut off because the part of the spinal cord responsible for breathing crushes itself. It’s actually a peaceful death because the swelling causes unconsciousness almost right away. It happens fast-- if you watched it take place it’s like watching a balloon inflate.
The immune response makes brain and spinal surgery dangerous for Saiyajins, because the surgery can trigger the swelling.
Puberty is a difficult and annoying time for young Saiyajins. Sometimes their power levels hit a plateau and won’t rise despite vigorous training. Then they hit their growth spurt and their power has a spurt too. The intensity of their power increase depends a lot on their power level at birth. A weak Saiyajin may only get a little increase, but a strong one gets an intense boost.
Some young Saiyajins that weren’t very aggressive as children become extremely aggressive at puberty. In rare instances, the opposite happens-- very aggressive children mellow out.
For a lot of Saiyajins, fighting is a physical need. It’s an instinct, just like it’s instinctive to seek food while hungry or sleep when tired. Smelling smoke from fires or blood being shed triggers this instinct. Sometimes it makes them feel like they can beat literally anyone, which causes them to charge half-cocked into fights they can’t possibly win.
Saiyajins don’t have periods. Their body reabsorbs endometrial tissue if a pregnancy doesn’t happen.
The only way to tell a Saiyajin uterus from a human’s is to look at the Fallopian tubes. They’re shorter on a Saiyajin.
Saiyajin pregnancies last seven months. They don’t start to “show” until they’re six months along. Their labors and deliveries are quick. The longest labor was seven hours from the first contraction to birth. Most labors are shorter and involve a lot of back pain.
Saiyajins in labor get a temporary surge in their power level and get absolutely vicious. It’s an evolutionary trait that lets them protect themselves and their baby during the labor process.
There’s no morning sickness with Saiyajins. They get hiccups after they eat. It’s very annoying.
Saiyajins carry their babies more towards their spine than their belly button, so their baby bumps rarely get huge. Their babies are born "sunny side up”, which is the opposite of humans.
There’s no third stage of labor for Saiyajins. Their placentas form a membrane around the entire inside of the uterus. This membrane sits between the amniotic sac and the uterine wall and comes out with the baby.
Newborn Saiyajins release a burst of energy immediately after birth. The damage they do to the environment depends on their power level.
Most Saiyajins can remember their infancy, unlike humans. (Vegeta remembers how he shattered everything glass in the birthing room when he was born because he didn’t like the cold brightness.)
Newborn Saiyajins are born pink and wrinkled like human newborns, but they can hold their heads up without support.
Smell is the first sense newborn Saiyajin babies learn to utilize efficiently, followed by hearing. Adult Saiyajins often find comfort in smells and sounds they remember from when they were babies. The most common “comfort reminders” are the smell of milk and the sound of a heartbeat.
Baby Saiyajins bite. They grow their first teeth when they’re five months old. Their biting goes from kind of cute to breaking skin and drawing blood.
The mother’s ki mostly masks the baby’s until the baby is born. It takes a specialized scouter to distinguish mom’s ki from the baby’s.
Saggy boobs are considered sexy by Saiyajin standards because their brain associates sagging with “those boobs nourished a healthy baby” whether the person had a baby or not.
Most Saiyajins develop dementia (Alzheimer’s, to be specific) in the last years of their natural life. Unlike humans, it happens fast. A Saiyajin in the diamond phase will reach the pearl phase in five years at the most. Sometimes it happens even faster. (Explanation for the gems.)
Saiyajin hair strands are pigmented, yet translucent, which is why their hair turns gold or blue when they go SSJ or SSJ Blue. The effect is like fiber optic cables, albeit ones with cracks and scales that let color show through the whole strand and not just the ends.
For all its spikyness, Saiyajin hair feels like coarse human hair. Saiyajin “hairstyles” are determined by which direction their hair follicles point. Someone with a head full of follicles pointing random directions will have messy wild hair (Goku) while somebody whose strands all point one way will have a more organized ‘do (Vegeta).
The chance of a half-Saiyajin having hair like a human or a Saiyajin is fifty-fifty.
It’s extremely rare to see hairy arms, hairy armpits and hairy legs on a Saiyajin. They have hair on their heads and the hair in their pubic region grows in when they hit puberty. This is because the “hairy” genes only appear when they transform into an Oozaru.
Half-Saiyajins often inherit the sparse body hair genes from their Saiyajin parent.
Saiyajin hair grows very slowly. It takes three days to get the five o’clock shadow humans get overnight. So a Saiyajin who shaves their head and decides to grow their hair back may have to wait up to five years to regain the hair they had at birth. It’ll be ten years if they had very long hair.
They’re born with the “hairstyle” they’ll have for life unless they choose to change it, and it grows to stay in proportion with the size of their head. (Yeah, Raditz was born with that impressive mane!)
All Saiyajins ‘have’ epilepsy-- as in their brains are wired for it, but only Saiyajins who are missing any of the four suppressor genes that prevent excessive brain activity will experience spontaneous seizures and be officially diagnosed with epilepsy.
Epilepsy happens when the parents carry a gene that prevents one or more suppressor genes from forming. If both parents have the gene, all their kids come out with epilepsy. If one parent has it, the chances are fifty-fifty.
For Saiyajins who aren’t diagnosed, certain things can trigger tonic-clonic seizures that are indistinguishable from an epileptic Saiyajin’s EEG. High fevers, extremely high blood pressure, swelling of the brain, having the blood/oxygen flow to their brain cut off and restored are just a few examples. Actually, seizures after oxygen/blood flow deprivation are a good sign that the brain is intact and working.
Some non-epileptic Saiyajins have brief tonic seizures(their body goes rigid) as they’re entering and exiting deep delta-wave sleep. These aren’t dangerous and someone who doesn’t know what they’re seeing will think it’s only a weird stretch.
Saiyajins stay conscious throughout tonic-clonic seizures unless something else knocks them out before or during it.
Some Saiyajins have absence seizures when they get a concussion, which leads to lapses in attention and memory. The seizure activity stops when they recover.
Half-Saiyajins have a fifty-fifty chance of having epilepsy if their Saiyajin parent has the gene that stops suppressors from forming.
Unlike full-blooded Saiyajins, half-Saiyajins have seizures exactly like humans; any seizures that cause unconsciousness in humans will do so for half-Saiyajins.
And finally...Saiyajins itch instead of hurt when they get sunburn. They don’t burn easily, either, and need to be exposed to intense UV rays for many hours before the first signs of sunburn begin to appear.[/spoiler]
Yikes! That got long. Glad I spoiler-tagged everything. I hope I didn't bore anyone. ^_^V
What about everyone else? Do you have headcanons? Feel like sharing?
