"Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue Oct 11, 2022 8:30 pm

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It crashlanded with a mighty explosion in a corn field, the shockwaves causing panic and terror in the small community and nearby city.


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The explosion and dust cloud could be seen for miles, and yet nothing seemed to immediately happen. Had it been a star from heaven? A fallen angel? Was this God's punishment for immorality?

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Men, militia men and farmers, came from all around to see just what had crashed.

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To their shock and horror, it was one of the Other Kinds of People!

A woman had crashed from heaven, emerging from a shiny chrome orb in the burning cornfield. Though she seemed injured and in some need of medical assistance, her very appearance angered the men who watched. She's out without any covering or a veil. What's more, she has these hideous muscles and battle-scars and the hardest looking expression as if she were trying to pass herself off as a stern man. They then take note of her lashing tail, wild hair, deathly pallor, bizarre eyes, and a general aura of utter strangeness around her. It is not another kind of person: it is a demon!

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The morality police and men watching debated on how to proceed. They could not insult their God by letting one of the Other Kinds of People walk around in such unmodest clothing, looking so unfeminine! They approached, desiring to remind this heaven-sent woman of her place. Even if she was an angel from above or a demon from below, she could not show affront to God with her immodesty.

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They spoke of Drugatsko

She was a warrior from the Yaban race (Saiyanthropus ferus), and was an experienced low-level vitakoze (Deathkommando) who had been injured in battle in space, which had pressured her to crash land on the nearest suitable world in order to recover and set off to her home planet of Kollidor.

By chance, Drugatsko landed on Suiza, in a farmer's field in one of the most conservative regions of Zanzhi. And now some humans were crowding around her, telling her to discard her armor, spandex, and musculature, get down on her knees, and repent.

She laughed at the sight and was having none of it. The men aimed their muskets and fired. They unsheathed their swords and threatened to cut her down.

Nothing affected her.

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Instead, Drugatsko let bioelectricity dance around her body, sending the men running in fear as this horrible power and incredible qi began to expand.

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Soon, the power she put out was so intense that she caused a lightning storm that destroyed the very field she landed in, electrocuting many passersby and causing the heavens themselves to tremble.

And yet this was just the warm-up.

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As an orb of qi enveloped Drugastko's body, her qi then erupted in a mighty, fantastic explosion that erased the landscape and destroyed mountains. And yet the fireball continued to grow until soon, nothing was left. The explosion ran through the farmland, the town, then nearby cities.

Men and women, creatures of all kinds, mountains and clouds succumbed to the horrible explosion.

And at the center stood Drugatsko, triumphant and bloodlusted.
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue Oct 11, 2022 8:36 pm

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The destruction was intense, the mushroom cloud rising high, and the sense of despair already growing.

But Drugatsko did not do this as a demonstration to make everyone submit. Rather, she saw Suiza as a planet where she could have fun.


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As the ruins and rubble of society already began to collapse, Drugatsko began her worldwide rampage.

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Her power was so preposterous that nothing the people used could so much as scratch her. She was truly otherworldly. She would walk through gunfire and crush men's skulls with a flex of the fingers, and would leave behind mountains of dead bodies and lakes of blood.

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Old, dormant weapons of war were salvaged and brought out to stop the demonoid's rampage. Bombs, napalm, and more. Heavy machine guns, magickal spells, war dragons, grenades, and early atomic weaponry alike.

Drugatsko shrugged.

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And then she struck back, firing waves of qi from her hands that obliterated whole cities, even countries.

Quickly, the sentiment shifted from shock and awe over the current events to despair and even revelation that this was it.

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This was FInal Judgment.

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And Drugatsko deemed them worthless.
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue Oct 11, 2022 8:42 pm

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Now that Drugatsko was alone with this disarmed race of weak humans, even in her own damaged state, she managed to effortlessly crush those who attempted to impose their religious restrictions on her and get her to submit. So enraged was she by the Suizans' turn towards religious pacifism that she took her sweet time making sure the end of Shaeshen civilization was as slow, drawn out, and painful as she could make it.

How pathetic! To disarm yourself! To give up war! To turn away from combat! These weaklings were so pathetic that finishing them off would be too kind.

She didn't collapse the last standing nation until almost five years after she landed, all because she craved to soak in the raw despair and despondency of the Shaeshens. Oh how lovely it was to see these old grandfathers and their black-clad crones weep in despair over fallen icons and burning churches. How laugh-inducing it was to watch communities tear themselves apart over bread, starved by the collapse of agriculture, only to run in fear and horror at her very visage. Observe as political leaders and high-priests fall unto their knees, begging her for mercy forgiveness. HER. Not their god. Oh their God has forsaken them.

She walks their God like a dog.


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Drugatsko was left horribly disappointed at how easily the Shaeshens capitulated to her might.

Her Yaban blood screamed for combat. She felt an intrinsic desire to put her strength against the mightiest possible Shaeshen just to know the answer that their battle would give, but unfortunately, even the strongest Shaeshen man proved to be little more than helpless meat compared to even the tiniest fraction of her true power.

And so, instead of eradicating the species, she instead pondered.

What if she imposed her will on the planet? What if she transformed this planet of weaklings into one of power?


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Drugatsko, a bolloi, a fellow female in this cosmic sorority, could have been the fem-Messiah for Suizan women and overthrow this wretched patriarchy. How could their star-sister not take pity on them? Could she not see how horribly her kind were suffering under the yoke of male supremacy? The women did nothing wrong except be born without dicks and with human emotions, and for that, they were abused so horribly, treated as defective property and not even allowed to have their own word. They weren't women— they were "the other kinds of people," a deliberately cumbersome moniker.

She, the space warrior, is just a wife and mother to be. She could be a competent warrioress who has laid waste to all planets in any number of galaxies, conquered trillions of civilizations, and defeated any great number of proud warriors, and the only thing they'll care about is her answer to the question, "But can you cook and clean?"

These women, most of whom were brainwashed by a medievalist regime and very poorly educated, were not asking for equality. The term didn't even exist in Shaeshen society anymore, replaced by beliefs of a godly hierarchy that cannot be rebelled against. All they were asking for was to be seen as people. Second-class people even. They didn't mind being subservient to the men, so long as they were not disrespected and doubted to even be humans but rather man-footed things lesser than bovine shit. And Drugatsko seemed to be their only hope, for all hope of society realizing its folly of unpersoning an entire gender was lost for at least a thousand years, and even when society progressed again and learned from its mistakes, the scars of this ultra-misogyny were sure to be inflicted upon every girl for a thousand years more in more indirect ways. Even two thousand years from now, girls will be born with the scars of the horrors inflicted in these dark days. They will be spoken of as sluts and whores who destroy societies and exist only to satisfy men's cocks, where any agency they take will be viciously repressed and any aspirations will be torn down and then blamed upon themselves for dreaming low. And that's in the best case scenario. So much worse could happen.

Please, the Other Kinds of people begged, save them.

And Drugatsko replied, "No."

The women were betrayed.


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Drugatsko didn't sympathize with them at all. In fact, she felt the Suizan leaders were far, far too liberal. The bastards of pacifism restrained women as a means of thwarting war out of a belief that it was the passions invoked by femininity and sensuality that drove war and conflict. But they were traditionalists of the classical sense ultimately and desired to control feminine sexuality. They wanted women to be breeding stock and homemakers only. There was masculinity and there was femininity as ordained by God, and it was up to women to keep holy and pure femininity. These women, the other kinds of people, all had a duty to be pleasant, out-of-sight housewives, cooks, and maids for their husbands. They had to live up to the standards of femininity: sensual, emotional, delicate, gentle, godly, and demure, but also had to admit those elements of poison that needed to be repressed, those temptresses of the Devil. This is why society had to be the way it was.

On the contrary, Drugatsko felt that their feminizing presence was holding back the raw warrior potential of the race. That among humans, men are the aggressors. Men are the warriors. Men are the fighters. Men are the kings of the will. Women have their place in human society as the soft defenders of civilization and the mothers of the future. But for what Drugatsko has planned, women are nothing but trash. And there's only one thing you do with trash.

Thus, Drugatsko had every woman on the planet murdered.

As for the men, there was only thing a Yaban could ever think to do with them:

War.

As Drugatsko recovered from her earlier battle, she realized she had a perfect opportunity to craft a world of ultra-warriors, desperate not for worshipping God but for worshipping death, combat, bloodshed, and battle. Her conqueror tendencies ignited as she sought to destroy who the Shaeshens were and remold them into what she wanted them to be.

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The world that had once been, the world Alan Hesx had dreamed of being an agrarian, masculinist-primitivist utopia, the world that would render unto God all good things, was now destroyed and burned. Only the elders had any memory of a world before, and they experienced now the dawn of a new, even darker world under one whose reign would be so cold, chilling, and deathly that they could only wish their God had not betrayed them and left them in the hands of a Yaban.
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue Oct 11, 2022 8:47 pm

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Drugatsko declared herself the Iron Khan, the new brutalitarian ruler of all Suiza.

Her first decree: the technological regression was brutally reversed, utilizing her own space ship and transmitted technological schemas from the Gosamyrs to forcibly re-industrialize the plane. In a single generation, the Shaeshens were able to build breeding chambers and artificial wombs that Drugatsko further pruned to help engineer even more warrior-ready Shaeshens. Before, society was quaint, very much similar to the Amish or Mennonites in a Taliban-like society.

Now it was to be something like a gladiatorial Airstrip One, except headed by a war-sick Yaban. Making things more processed, she had slaves and goblins from other worlds brought in to do the dirty work of running society so that the Shaeshen men would not be distracted from their duties of infinite war.

Meanwhile, she utilized Yabans' human factory farming practices to engineer the Shaeshens into creatures dedicated to combat and destruction: muscular, bellicose, and awful.

And Drugatsko herself rechristened them with the delightfully boyish moniker "Devastators."


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As Drugatsko would say, Suiza is now a planet of war. It is a planet based centrally and completely around the triumph of the will over the forces of weakness, of the celebration of bellicose violence and manly pride. There is no longer any place on this blood-stenched planet for weaklings and the effeminate! The Devastators shall be warriors of power and might!


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Under the psychotic reign of the Iron Khan, all memories of Zanzhi, of Hesx, of the world that once was, was now forever lost into a singularity of brutalitarian madness.

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The age of the Shaeshans had passed. Now was the age of the Devastators.


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(Drawn by Ishida1694)
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue Oct 11, 2022 8:56 pm

Hundreds of years have passed since Drugatsko's arrival.

Drugatsko, being a Yaban, is biologically immortal, cycling through youth and maturity rather than reaching old age. Thus, she maintained herself as the Iron Khan, slowly developing her new playthings into the most extreme human warriors imaginable.

Despite being bit players at most, the Devastators are one of my favorite creations for the Yabanverse.



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Suiza under the Devastators is every hypermasculine impulse of 80s post-apocalyptic B-movies come to life and amplified to absurd levels


It is a Death World, only by the will of the Devastators themselves who eagerly seek to destroy their own world just to make it more inhospitable and, thus, more exciting to live on.

Their particular style of choice is a Gladiatorial Airstrip One, a planet-wide fusion of Greco-Roman gladiator and 80s Road Warrior aesthetics, essentially a never-ending Thunderdome, if also in a state of constant ruin and dilapidation due to the scrunts and helots never truly being able to repair what the Devastators destroy because it is destroyed again.

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They are essentially human orcs, living solely for war and battle, driven to infinite warfare by their war-sick leader, the Iron Khan Drugatsko, a Yaban who took their original Gilead/Taliban-like fundamentalist dystopia, destroyed it, and remade their species according to her own whims. So masculine that they're unisexual, since Drugatsko exterminated all women of their species hundreds of years ago and replaced them with cold re-breeding chambers and conjuration rituals.

During the events of Rage of Angels on Planet Gorta, they're all death-worshipping bloodfreaks who do holy battle against Yulaan, the only female some of them have ever seen besides Drugatsko. It sometimes feels like only Yabans can possibly understand them and their need to fight. But they know better than to believe this, as there are a multitude of races driven to vengeance war 'til death.

Otherwise, the Devastator empire is forever expanding outwards throughout the cosmos in search of more battle, because in battle, there is no law!

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Devastators are a loveletter to that style of glammy, homoerotic 80s ultramasculinity of big men with big muscles, often clad in new wave/glam rock duds, airbrushed chrome silver and leather armor, and face paint with punk or metal hair, road warrior fashion, and military worship, essentially Rambo and Arnie filtered through Bruce Lee, Kenshiro, Max Rockatansky, and every badass 80s arcade character.

Pure Manowar-style male fantasy BS.
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Pictured: Warmaster Kombaticus




And they all live under the brutalitarian rule of the Iron Khan, Drugatsko


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Drugatsko, being a Yaban, is the strongest person on Suiza at any particular time
Being a Yaban also means she's arguably the most brutal person on Suiza at any particular time as well

But not for a lack of trying, as she seeks to cultivate Devastators to become the ultimate warriors of chaos
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue Oct 11, 2022 9:01 pm

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For when the average Devastator isn't devastating enough for you.

Mutoid Man is a misnomer; this is actually one of many Mutoid Men. These are examples of what the Devastators can be when they're genetically engineered beyond normal measures. For a species that's already essentially nothing but Adeptus Astartes/Catachan Jungle Fighters/Warriors of Chaos and demon-men road warriors, the Mutoid Men are possibly even stronger than the average Yaban and this means nothing but ultra-war and devastation. These mutant Sapiens bear little to no resemblance to us wild populations of the species, being ultra-hulking masses of muscle and nexcidious warlust.

There's multiple kinds of Mutoid Men, meant to make Rage of Angels into more of a GameLit story.

At the bottom, you have the Green Mutoid Men, aka pseudo-Hulks. These mutants are probably around 10 times stronger than the average human. I say probably because I haven't thought out the details yet, but that sounds about right, and it'd put them on par with secular Yabans (which is what I set out for them to be). They look like the mutants they are, and their power is extraordinary.



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Then you have Red Mutoid Men, which are a bit stronger and much more aggressive, with thicker skin and hardier organs to protect from damage, making them into true "mini-bosses"



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Then you have Blue Mutoid Men, which are getting close to 25 times stronger than the average human, with vastly enhanced physiology that makes them all but immune to anything humans could throw at them.

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Finally, you have the Onyx Mutoid Men, who are something like 100 times stronger than the average human.
An Onyx Mutoid Man is a mutant Sapiens of atrocious power

These are the rarest kinds of Devastator for a reason. That level of power requires extreme resources and top of the line engineering. But every Onyx Mutoid Man is a walking atom bomb of power, able to fight off even a small army of Blue Mutoid Men singlehandedly. Their power is so absurd, and it's hard to fathom that they're humans just like you or me pushed to their absolute possible limit.

These numbers might disappoint those who wanted them to be planet busters, but again, I've been thinking of nerfing relevant characters so as to make the stories more interesting. But don't feel bad: that's all liable to change.

The Onyx Mutoid Men are outrageously powerful Sapiens, with raw physical strength, psychokinetic abilities, and suffering from naturally-produced cocktails of nexcidium-flavored drugs that keep them perpetually in a psychotic nexcidious berserker rage whenever they're awake.

Like the other Mutoid Men, Onyx Mutoid Men don't "sleep" per se as much as they are forced into stassis and deployed only when necessary. The few Mutoid Men in the wild are usually killed soon because they go around engaging in cannibalism to sustain their absurd energy requirements, and even the Devastators have self-preservation instincts.

Yulaan, Skullcrusher, and Yoshua manage to fight precisely two Onyx Mutoid Men while on Gorta, though at what intervals, I won't say. The first is essentially a practice round that they have to overcome with alternate means, and the second is the real deal.

Onyx Mutoid Men are real horrorshow bastards. A single Onyx Mutoid Man could crush every military on Earth, barring the use of nuclear or biological weaponry. Drugatsko had Mutoid Men created mostly to showcase to the grunts that even the most average of fighters can overcome overwhelming odds, but sometimes those odds are just too overwhelming and too good to not use for better purposes.

The sheer raw power of Onyx Mutoid Men is so great that, like Yabans, they often crackle with bioelectricity and command lightning storms to strike their bodies spontaneously. These mutants push biology to its absolute limit.

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The sheer plus-plus might of an Onyx Mutoid Man excites Yulaan's lust for battle, as well as gives Skullcrusher a thrill to show his own skills off. Yoshua, too, feels nothing but pleasure at the thought of slaying a worthy opponent. And who's more worthy on Gorta than a freakazoid Mutoid Man, an ultra-berserker of frankly dumb power.


One thing that separates Mutoid Men from other ultra-high voltage creatures is their lack of qi cultivation abilities. A single Onyx Mutoid Man could crush every military on Earth, barring deployment of nuclear weaponry, and his raw bioelectric and psychokinetic powers can certainly cause cultivators to turn heads. However, Mutoid Men fatally lack that ability to cultivate qi or mana due to some fluke of their mutation, so their power is purely secular and purely disgustingly stupid.
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue Oct 11, 2022 9:19 pm

Revisiting El Bruja

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El Bruja is a side story to Little Miss Savage: Middle American Mythology
Yes, a side story to a side story. Or perhaps a special episode?


Sol Yulaan wraps herself in a mazoku Nightmare Gown and travels through time to Spain in the late 1950s for occult reasons, and winds up the central obstacle in an honor dispute between three characters: a rugged outlaw/anarcho-syndicalist, an amateur witchfinder and full-time law enforcement officer, and a macho ibérico accusing the syndicalist of cuckolding him, disrespecting El Caudillo, and spreading communism. She gets involved in the matter after the witchfinder cop targets her and assumes she's caused the bloody dispute. The witchfinder, who professes to be a deeply devout Catholic and whom Yulaan believes really believes what he says to boot, doesn't know what to make of this Eastern mystical nonsense that Yulaan uses.

Yulaan, being a Yaban, enjoys the conflict wrought.

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El Bruja | Sol Yulaan, the witch haunting Tabernas

Yulaan is a classic and traditional Yaban (Saiyanthropus ferus), a kung fu space monkey living a life of war and battle, now exiled to Earth as a result of her childhood ultraviolence. She makes the most of this exile, harassing humans in various places and, eventually, various time periods.

Donned as "El Bruja" by Chale Xaxalpa Sr. many years prior (referencing her masculine behavior and femalehood), Yulaan goes to Spain in the past nominally to find an old occult treasure, but actually seeks to indulge herself in the viciously patriarchal and masculine culture in order to incite conflict against herself— conflict and war being the only thing Yabans truly care about.


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The Syndicalist | The wandering Dutchman who sleeps with the Macho Ibérico's wife, and wants Yulaan as his riding partner.

The Syndicalist has seen conflict in the Algerian War and wanders about seeking more to involve himself in. Despite his warlust, he describes himself as a pacifist ultimately, and he might not be wrong: he's a disgruntled ex-collegian who flunked out and had no other options but a freewheeling life. This life led to him having a go at a man's wife, and he has no regrets.

He sees in Yulaan a youthful young woman excited too much by danger and masculine thrills and wants to settle down with her, utterly ignorant to the existence of Yabans or their nature, which Yulaan exploits to further drive the conflict.


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The Witchfinder | The Francoist Civil Guardian that relentlessly hunts Yulaan as a Satanic witch.

The Witchfinder is a devout Catholic and equally devout Falangist Civil Guardian suffering from Protagonist Syndrome as a result of a lifetime of consuming cheap media, fanatical religious scripture and interpretations, and conspiracy theories. He fashions himself as a modern day Witchfinder General, hunting wicked females in league with Satan, seeing them as the portal to modern degeneracy. His fascist masculinity is so intense and gynophobic, he's essentially cucked himself, refusing to bear children with his wife out of a mortal fear he might father a daughter.

It's for this reason he's obsessive about Yulaan, an androgynous-looking witch who's appeared in his jurisdiction. That she is not human but rather a Yaban is of no concern to him. If anything, her inhumanity is but further reason to war against her, unwittingly giving her exactly what she wants.

Though socially and politically aligned with the Macho Ibérico, the two actually despise each other. However, both agree that the Syndicalist is a bigger threat and that El Bruja is something wicked.

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The Macho Ibérico | The rancidly misogynistic man cucked by the Syndicalist, who desperately wants to bed Yulaan.

The Macho Iberico is a violent and virulently rightist man who believes himself to be a modern Casanova and beds many women, exploiting his stout, muscular, and hairy body to come off as a virile, manly man— he contrasts strongly with the thin, ropy Witchfinder. Essentially a mixture between Glenn Quagmire, Archie Bunker, and a wannabe Charles Bronson, he believes that might makes right, anger is as far as he'll go with being "emotional," and women are made for lovin' all night. And as a manly man of honor, he's going to draw and quarter the Syndicalist for sleeping with his wife (of course long after he's given his woman what for). This man is a humble carpenter otherwise, working with his hands and earning an honest living.

His extremely conservative ideas on gender roles are what drives him to action against Yulaan, as he just wants to fuck her. He has no clue what a bolloi is or why they don't swing and bounce— Yaban aromanticism simply doesn't register to he who only understands femalehood through the lens of romance and sexual thrills.


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The Macho Ibérico and friends | More from Francoist Spain, just a fun extra image

A group of men who know better than to congregate together when the Witchfinder's driving through, but otherwise are old buddies who answer up to what society demands of them. The Macho Iberico himself loves American boxing, and he also gets involved in some good bloody pitfights with the boys. These little dens are men's places, no se permiten damas! Just good evenings where a bunch of big, hairy men can get together, punch each other, get drunk, talk shit about their wives and mistresses, and have a good time as men should.


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El Bruja in Tabernas | A shadowy Sol Yulaan in Francoist Spain, 1950s

Yulaan is a fish out of water, a xuanhuan warrioress who through circumstance bumbled into a pseudo-Spaghetti Western dispute. Yulaan being a Yaban, a Vroda, and a vitakoze ("Deathkommando") by trade, she is well versed and immersed in the art of war, and her lust for conflict leads her to exploit her feminine appearance as a means of riling the macho and virulently misogynistic world of the mid-20th century to fight her, an easy thing to do. She isn't asking for respect or to be taken seriously— just the opposite. The less respect and more overt hostility she receives, the greater that itch of war is scratched, and what better place to visit to tear this itch bloody than the early/mid 20th century?

This is not a fight that any human could physically win— Yabans, like Saiyans, are godlike in strength— but materialistically and psychologically, the possibility of one of these three men overcoming Yulaan and denying her what she wants was always in the cards.

The funniest part about this whole plotline is that the Syndicalist, the Witchfinder, and the Macho Ibérico could thwart Yulaan if they could only understand that she wants violent delights not unlike them, but they're caught in a matrix. They're stuck looking at her feminine face and body and thus stuck trying to figuring her out through the lens of womanhood in the already extremely patriarchal society of Francoist Spain, utterly failing to realize she isn't a woman but rather a bolloi. The Syndicalist sees her as a spunky potential girlfriend of the road; the Macho Ibérico sees her as an easy jailbait lay; the Witchfinder sees her as a Satanic seductress. Women are not so simple, but the funny thing is that bollois are. "Female demon monkey that makes war, not love" is going to describe any random bolloi. But because these three can't possibly imagine a female like a bolloi, they can't understand Yulaan and are constantly flummoxed by her. El Bruja, indeed.
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue Oct 11, 2022 9:30 pm

Nagois, aka Male Yabans (Saiyanthropus ferus)


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Simian bastards!
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Sat Oct 15, 2022 7:14 pm

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Onyx Mutoid Man: a disgusting display of raw power

If he looks like Toguro, that's no mistake.
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Mon Oct 17, 2022 5:18 pm

And now you can chat with them yourself:
https://beta.character.ai/post?post=d-T ... ulHDr4Kh84
Warning: still rudimentary! Lots of lore inaccuracies if you press them too hard about things.
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Sat Oct 22, 2022 8:09 pm

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Yenois

Two yenois, the third-sex of Yabanity. I suppose you could consider them true hermaphrodites, but that is still inaccurate. Because of our binary, Earthlings have a bad time comprehending a fully actualized third sex. Yenois can be masc-presenting or fem-presenting, but generally we aren't well-equipped to discuss a "regular" third sex in our binary-focused society.

Yenois are fun to play with, but they got the short end of the stick with Yabans since most stories are action stories. There are a few action yenois, but they're rarer


To recap, Yabans officially have three sexes:
Nagois (male)
Bollois (female)
Yenois (gamale)

"Gamale" referring to a third sex expression that is deeply uncommon among humans, and as such it's deeply difficult for our Western minds to accurately grasp them.

Yenois are the predominant breeding sex in Yabans and largely reproduce quasi-asexually, freeing nagois and bollois from what Getavara calls "the curse of romance," hence why so many Yabans like Yulaan default to being aro-ace.



Yenois were actually inspired by a phenomenon I noticed during times of total war, such as what's currently going on in Russia: when all the men are off fighting, women typically have to step up to run society. But women are simultaneously told and raised to be the domestic sex, serving only the space of the home and nothing else. It's always in these more traditionalist societies that you see this social schism occur, so I ran with that with Yabans, envisioning that Getavara designed Yabans to have three sexes to get around this from the start. Of course, if you're strong enough to work in a factory, you're strong enough to fight, so bollois are also commonly warriors. Yenois get the short end of the stick, but they can be warriors too; they're just deeply disadvantaged for it.


Yaban gender politics are complicated, and I might go more in depth with them some other time. But the gist is that nagois are basically "the Marines if they were a sex", bollois are "men, but female", and yenois are the Yaban equivalent to a feminine sex. Hence why all the bolloi characters are so overtly macho and it's considered noteworthy that Kevelnege is "slightly feminine." Normally describing a female character as feminine seems like a tautology, but it genuinely is very different for Yabans.
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Mon Oct 24, 2022 7:40 pm

Been reformating some stories lately, starting with Strongest Under Heaven.

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Original photograph: Sunset at Yellow Mountains (Huangshan), China by /u/Vidyutrautela

Obviously I won't use this in any official capacity; I just love the photo. Really captures that "wuxia/xuanhuan" sensibility.



Starring Ral Enekai
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A Yaban among Hóuxiān monkeys
Art by MKUchiha

As well as Temujin
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Art by Jinrijin

Current running backstory idea:

Many decades before the present, Earth-23 suffered a catastrophic war that ruined civilization and shattered the world. The kids that have come of age since are basically a giant Lost Generation. A lot of social trends were reversed— society is very raw, and very few live well, which makes a lot of people hard in heart and mind, so chauvinistic and infected with machismo

Magic and mystery thrive across this world, and warlords of all sorts vie for power. With society's threads shattered, there's been a hard return to more traditional ways of life in smaller villages and towns, with only a few big cities and city-states.

Xiguo is less a country and more a loose confederation of municipalities.

Make no mistake, this is a world in decline, and there's a fatalistic sense that all is lost.

And so in the misty crags of Devil Fruit Mountain in Naga Kedua lives a mysterious monkey-tailed girl, who comes across a young monk boy...
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Sat Nov 19, 2022 12:27 pm

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Batzor the Starbreaker
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Batzor, the ancient Yaban warrior of legend

Unrelentingly savage, he is the high-water mark for all nagois

He's even the origin of the term "Batzorian Birth," where a Yaban gestates too long and beats their way out of their mother's womb, killing her in the process and immediately lethal afterwards
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Mon Nov 21, 2022 4:04 am

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Don Sebastian Carmona Reyes

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Sebastián Carmona Reyes, repurposed. A good friend of Sol Yulaan and Ura Kevelnege.

Reyes is quite the masculine man, fashioning himself as a sort of caballero and outlaw. Remains to be seen if he'll be in modern times, Middle American Mythology, or even older.

Regardless, Reyes is exactly the kind of man Yulaan and Kevelnege prefer to know— highly masculine fighter, with strong chivalry and warrior's honor. Always gentle to the ladies, but at the same time aware of the differences of bollois enough to set his human chivalry aside to fight one. Always the risk taker and danger-seeker, self-denier, admirer of art and creation, and quite prideful. Essentially an old-school Übermensch.

Reyes, in turn, is left bemused by the bollois more than not, especially their ideology of Titanism. He finds a greater fraternity with Gungarus and Zedakor, but a greater friendship with Yulaan and Kevelnege. For him, having females of any sort of masculine honor is a deeply unsettling and unusual aberration— and as with so many men before and after him, it fascinates him to his core. He must know more about bollois and why they seem so unlike women.


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A younger render of Don Sebastián Carmona Reyes, better showing off his brawler personality.

Don Sebastian is not a martial artist in the Eastern sense, at least not when he first meets the Yabans. However, he is an experienced fighter, as any proper man must be.

Sebastian is a man who lives by 7 virtues: Manliness, Courage, Industry, Resolution, Self-Reliance, Discipline, and Honor. After he encounters the bollois, he eagerly adopts Titanist values as his own:

The life of every bolloi, despite what she may pretend, is nothing but a continuous desire to destroy herself and rebuild herself to overcome herself. To triumph over the gods and over death itself, to master her own nature, and to actualize into a being who possesses the will to power. So says the Ido Yarboggesh and Amota Kundorog. That which applies to her, also applies to him

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Magomed Selimov
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Magomed is a Dagestani MMA brawler, and that's all I have for now.

However, much like Don Sebastian Carmona Reyes, he's got a fascination with bollois.

Dagestani boys and men grow up in a violent society where getting into fistfights is almost a requirement for manhood. Westerners find this barbaric and toxic, the result of uncontrolled machismo and toxic masculinity.
Yabans, on the other hand, celebrate such bellicosity, even finding it adorable in comparison to their own ultraviolent culture.

Sol Yuta and Ura Kevelnege will have something to do with Magomed, undoubtedly some good brawls. With Yuta, it will be challenging the young nagoi to see if he's got what it takes to be a warrior. For Kevelnege, it's more bile fascination of engaging a female in a bare-knuckle brawl. He'd never get that opportunity with a woman, nor does he want to, but bollois allow him to bend the rules.


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Generated with Midjourney


George Kirby, nicknamed Elf because of his love of fantasy and Lord of the Rings, is a biker and Vietnam veteran. Circa 1976, he's out on the open roads with his bird Janet Ellis, both members of an outlaw biker group known as the Devil Monkeys.

Elf and Janet came across Yulaan in California, and the two were astounded by the spandex-clad dark-looking girl, but it took little time for them to learn that Yulaan isn't their brand of normal.

Janet didn't approve of Yulaan’s machismo, finding it all so unbecoming of a girl. Janet herself was a tomboy, to be sure, but she wasn't at all like Yulaan.

When they learn Yulaan has a tail and superhuman strength, that's when they realize they're dealing with something inexplicable.

To Yulaan’s surprise, Elf namedropped a man she already knew— Buck Roosevelt. Apparently, Elf served in a platoon with Buck's son, Jocko, who is currently in New York City.

Eventually, Elf decided to ditch Janet and stick with Yulaan, and the two rode off towards New York. Along the way, they'd listen to rock music— names such as Montrose, Allman Brothers, Sir Lord Baltimore, and Hawkwind come up— and Yulaan would listen with glee as Elf described his brutal experiences in Vietnam as well as his camaraderie with Jocko.

In turn, Yulaan describes life in the 23rd Universe and on Kollidor specifically.

As it's 1976/1977, Elf has never heard of anything like a Saiyan and, by extension, a Yaban. For him, the closest thing would be Sun Wukong who was a fairly popular figure back in the Far East. So for him, a warlike kung fu space monkey is a novel experience.

Elf himself is a violent loner who prefers to get lost in fantasy comics and pulps. He's an archetypal Boomer outlaw biker, the kind that most stoner metal bands worship.

Elf has no issue with Yulaan personally. But he does find bollois as a whole to be off-putting.


_____________________________


It's characters like this that explain why I decided to make the Yabanverse its own thing instead of a bizarro DBZ fanfiction. I certainly could have made Enekai and Yulaan Saiyans and have them appear in real life Earth, because it's not going to matter in the end anyway since artificial intelligence will eviscerate copyright laws and grant me the power to synthesize whatever media I want, but realizing that I'd have some fun playing with certain themes with characters that aren't quite Saiyans but similar enough that people (in the correct eras at least) would know what they're supposed to be gave me some fun storytelling possibilities. Plus I could alter and play with Yaban psychology and physiology in ways I really can't with Saiyans.

Yes, Yabans are heavily based on Saiyans to the point of being ripoffs (I'll never claim otherwise because that was always the point), but creative freedom means I can run with them in any direction I want and create my own lore. Whereas if I stuck with Saiyans, I'd also be stuck with Dragon Ball's notoriously loose and sloppy lore and worldbuilding, a lore that's subject to radically change based on whatever current interview Toriyama's answering.

Like the Saiyan-Tsufruian War. Wouldn't that be so much more satisfying if that took place generations in the past? Wouldn't it be interesting to imagine how Saiyans got on with things for decades or centuries after exterminating their main rivals before the Freeza Force found them? Instead, it's such a compressed time frame that basically Saiyans went from the Ancient Saiyans we see in Kaio's flashback straight to the 80s space punk pirates we know them to be almost overnight. And that's perfectly fine because Dragon Ball's not a very lore-centric story, nor should it be.

Yabanverse is, though. At least at this moment in time (November 2022) it's literally nothing but lore (though that'll change in short time).

There's also the, blarg, gender politics aspect. At risk of coming across as a blue-haired alumnus of Berkeley, that the ultra-macho Yabanverse frequently features bollois as lead characters is no mistake. Jerking about gender norms and expectations can be fun, especially when you're using creatures like Yabans. Saiyan women are still very clearly intended to be women, if more strong-willed and physically aggressive. And sometimes, as seen with Gine and Kale, not even that. And again, that's fine. I've nothing against women and femininity at all. It's just that I've had so much fun crafting bollois as "negative-girls" that I just can't help but prefer them over Saiyan women. That was always the intent: taking the Strong Female Character™ archetype as far as it can go and deconstructing it.
People have a problem with Strong Female Characters™ because they're women written as though none of the biological, psychological, and cultural realities of womanhood don't exist and men and women were perfectly equal, if not unbalanced so that woman are better. Basically, female characters reduced down to the archetype of simply being "strong like men and acting like men" with none of the nuances male and female characters alike bring to the table. Typically all the benefits of having masculine strength and aggression with none of the drawbacks.

"Hey, so what if you had female characters who actually were strong like men and acted like men despite not having all the physical traits of men (e.g. masculine faces, broad shoulders)? Realistically, what would that entail? How would that really work out" Filtering that over the course of five years gave me bollois as they currently are: monkey-tailed muscle girls from a brutal, sexless culture of machismo and masculine-style sorority. Not quite Japanese in nature— I all but stripped hypersexualization from them, so it wouldn't be fitting for them to be all cutesy. But not quite Western there either— they certainly aren't nonbinary, androgynous, half-shaved head types who defeat the male gaze.

Don't feel I could have done that with Saiyans. I mean I could, but I'd have changed them so much that I might as well have made them Yabans anyway.


Lastly, I feel the universe was telling me something with Yabans. I originally intended for "Yaban" to stem from the Japanese word for "savage/barbarian" but decided to not be such a weeaboo and went with another language, deciding upon Turkish.

And lo and behold, when I looked up the Turkish word for "wild"
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If the universe is telling you something, you listen.
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Mon Nov 21, 2022 5:06 am

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Sol Yulaan and Ura Kevelnege
Generated with NovelAI

Two Yaban girls, bloody from a brutal fistfight

Two best friends forever, bonded in blood and steel

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Titanist Bollois
Generated with NovelAI, and lightly edited

Sol Yulaan and Ura Kevelnege in their Titanist cloaks, complete with Titanist pins, after formally graduating from the Jenerkos tarus and going to Atomsk


The notoriously übermensch-like Yulaan is a devout Titanist, and eagerly takes up influence from bollois like Amota Kundorog, the Ido Yarboggesh, Pellagesh, and nagois like Batzor, Shuggoth, and Mazakaizen

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The Titanist symbol

The flash and circle of Titanism, representing the movement's obsession with force, speed, and violence.


Titanism: Yeren sociopolitical movement centered around the city of Atomsk, and something of a spinoff of the vroda kagora, it is very similar to Italian Futurism in that it exalts dynamism, industry, machinery, war, violence, masculinity, speed, intellect, and a certain kind of warrior fellowship. Titanists exalt the needs of the warrior, as exemplified by their common slogan, "Kevel vox Yatas" or, in English, "Chaos and Honor." Almost all Titanists are Docile Yabans, living otherwise spartan lives of constant athleticism, training, and war. The overwhelming majority of Yaban Titanists are bollois.

A central tenet of Titanism is the Self-King ideology presented by the Ido Yarboggesh

The credo of the Self-Kings:

Life is struggle.

Through struggle, there is growth.

Through growth, there is strength.

Through strength, there is will.

Through will, there is enlightenment.

Through enlightenment, I break my chains.

I am my own king.

The Ido Yarboggesh spoke that there are three traits of Yabanity: Perfection, the Overjin, and the Yielding
(Jin = Yeren word for "person", similar to our generic usage of "man")


According to Titanist values, nagois are already "Perfection," whereas bollois are "the Overjin" (i.e. the Übermensch or, as Yarboggesh described them, Self-Kings). It's yenois who occupy the "Yielding" part of the triple-taijitu.
Perfection doesn't mean absolution. You can always keep growing; you are just the most primed for it. Comparatively, the Overjin is the one who isn't perfect but can rise above their imperfection to achieve that sort of will to power that rivals Perfection. Which one is more celebrated in Yaban society? It depends, because you can make solid arguments defending each. But yenois do get the short end of the stick, as femininity often does in such masculine societies.

Roman-style masculinity is a major aspect of Titanism, with its love of bellicosity and competition. It is notoriously anti-Jinkai nymph, as Titanists tend to hold femininity in disdain (though not outright disrespect)

Titanism is not inherently fascistic as it lacks palingenetic ultranationalism as a core ideal, hence why I consider it far closer to Italian Futurism philosophically. But considering Yabans are supposed to be the Bad Guys (in a verse where everyone is the Bad Guy), that's not that important of a distinction.

Chaos and Honor

Kevel vox Yatas

The red and white flash and circle designating bolloi shows us what Chaos and Honor means.

Red is nexcidium. It’s Chaos. It’s war. It’s destruction, ruination, evil. Every base Yaban impulse, every need for bloodlust.

White is Honor. It’s the Warrior’s way, the virility of masculinity, and the ideology of struggle. It’s that power, that force, that might.

Chaos and Honor is a warrior’s dao, a belief born of Yarboggesh’s Self King and nurtured in the hands of death worship.

The Titanists are believers of dynamism, force, and struggle. They are warriors and laborers.

In Yeren culture, red represents nexcidium while white represents masculine force. Bollois may be female, but they aren't women; their expectations are to be both laborers and vicious warriors (though second to nagois) keeping Yaban society forever soaked in blood. In their masculinity, they also have the freedom to choose— as they are female, they still can opt for motherhood, despite it being the yenois' realm on Kollidor, and they are far more respected than yenoi-mothers as a result. Basically the best of both worlds. Despite this, they are still considered "less" than nagois who represent Perfection in Yaban society. This is what enables Titanist philosophies, as they are thus considered capable of becoming the "Overjin" (direct symbolic cognate to the Overman of Nietzschean philosophy), a capacity not afforded to yenois.


Chaos and Honor refers to the Needs of the Warrior, which Liquid Snake and Big Boss went on about

Vroda kvltvr helped give rise to the Titanists, who adopt Kevel vox Yatas as the common slogan.

Titanism is like Italian Futurism in many ways, with its focus on dynamism, physicality, strength, vigor, war, courage, instinct, sport, and fierceness.

Above all, war is exalted:

War is something sublime because it forces every jinoi to face the dilemma of choosing between heroism and cowardice, between the ideal and the stomach, between the spiritual instinct to project life beyond the material, and the pure and simple instinct of animal conservation. It is the brutal discriminator that distinguishes jin from jin, nagoi from nagoi, bolloi from bolloi, character from character, constitution from constitution: on the one side the cowardly, the soft, the hysterical, the effeminate, the cry-babies, the passive; on the other the strong, the aware, the idealists, the mystics of danger, those who triumph over fear and those who are courageous by nature, the hot-blooded heroes and the heroes of the will.

Yabans are jinoi of war. Bollois recognize they are strange and rare, being warrior females, and this does not change the fundamental truths of war and Titanist ideals. The truths do not magically change to be more tolerant of their femalehood; they simply have to live up to those truths. War is Hell, and they are Demons.

To be a Titanist Vroda is to be brutal, barbarous, and to abandon romanticism. She must be in love with virility, violence, and war; particularly endowed with “creative genius, elasticity in improvisation, strength, ability and physical resistance, impetus, violence, fury in the fight".

Male and female younglings rarely play, instead preferring to fight and spar. But in their play, there are clearly masculine forces driving their impulses —that is without affective morbidity, womanish sensibility—but lively, bellicose, muscular and violently dynamic. Yenois lack these forces.


In short, Titanism is a scuddy hodgepodge of Italian Futurism, Sparto-Roman style masculinism, Mussolini-influenced masculinism, and Nietzschean/Yarboggeshian philosophy with a good dose of Sith philosophy for good measure and the warrior values of Big Boss and Liquid Snake as the cherry on top. Basically whatever Jack Donovan is on about, minus the gay sex.

It has spread beyond Planet Kollidor to infect other warlike races, but it is a distinctly Yabanic philosophy.
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue Nov 22, 2022 11:04 pm

Probably the most suspect thing I'll post on these forums
Jinkai nymph
Drawn by Odmir Fortes
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Jinkai nymphs are the last remnant of the Jinkai race that was exterminated long ago, though they were always separate from the race itself. Jinkais are magical, all-female, extremely feminine, and mysteriously fleeting. Because of their femininity and humanoid appearance, they're often misidentified as female Yabans by some races. One interstellar guidebook from long ago ran with this misinformation while another extremely misogynistic-traditionalist race adopts this viewpoint as the truth, that only male Yabans have tails and fight while female Yabans are tailless and extremely submissive nymphs. Most Jinkais are adept at healing/alteration magicke and have limited abilities at qi control.


Yarboggeshian and Titanist philosophy about Nymphs

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The Ido Yarboggesh
Drawn by Ishida1694

Whenever Jinkai nymphs try involving themselves in vroda kvltvr, they have a tendency to go too far, confusing blank violent aggression with the ways of the kagora. This inspires some misogynistic statements by bollois, including the Ido Yarboggesh, who claimed that nymphs are fundamentally incapable of understanding kagora culture and warrior chivalry.

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Amota Kundorog

Amota Kundorog, the Titanist thinker of Atomsk, went even further, going so far as to blame the nymphs' femininity for why they seem to fail to understand the warrior mindset.

In words that veer dangerously close to MRA types, Kundorog hypothesized that nymphic women are too beholden to their passive feminine essence to truly understand the ways of the warrior, that the hands of a nymphs are much too weak to bear a sword, that the motherly nurturing instinct extinguishes in nymphs any drive for war and industry. She says, "A nymph is by nature a domestic and delicate creature, irrevocably tied to the fertile spirit of the soil. No matter what she pretends, she seeks to succumb. There is in her no compass directing her towards the martial path."

And another:

"A Jinkai nymph's mind cares only for the allure of romance. The call of war speaks in an alien language to her ears."

Kundorog's Titanist philosophy directly calls out Jinkai nymphs as lacking "vital dynamism." Titanism requires virility and brutality– traits "impossible to comprehend to a nymphic mind and unfeasible to cultivate among nymphic hands. "

The Blut-und-Boden sensibilities peak with: "The nymph lives purest in submission to nature and to the feral fertility of the soil. She seeks not to tame it but to adopt harmonious coexistence with her wild world. We Titanists could not be more different. Our goal is nothing less than absolute hegemony over life and death and good and evil."

And so on:

"The Kollidorian nymph is a creature beholden to the simple instinct of the stomach… She is a servant of the heart and tender maternity. She breathes life, but only the masculine spirit, as personified and perfected by nagois, can project life beyond the material."

"I see in femalehood two expressions. One is the triumph over herself, expressed by bollois. She is a proud mystic of danger, one whose will rises victorious over the meaningless forces of death to achieve heroism. The other is an expression of domestic maternalism, pregnant with the future and incapable of becoming. She can rest satisfied in her natural allure and the materialism of her existence."

And Kundorog summed up her thoughts with; "Nymphs are. Bollois must become."

That is, nymphs are beautiful and merely exist as they are. A nymph that sits in the forest, picking flowers and communing with nature through her feminine spiritual essence, is as much as she ever needs to be. Indeed, she can't be more than this without struggling against her nature. But because nymphs dislike struggle and lack the constitution for it, Kundorog says it's best for them to be passive and receptive. While Yabans do not care for beauty, they are still mesmerized by nymphs, and other races marvel at them as welll. Kundorog claims they possess intrinsic worth. Their physical beauty and fertility is what gives them worth.

Kundorog would say, if a Jinkai nymph accomplished nothing else in life except bearing a child, she still fulfilled her purpose in life and can die satisfied, having achieved all she can do.

Bollois, she says, are intrinsically worthless. A bolloi may not simply be and possess worth. Idleness, aesthetics, cowardice, vanity, weakness, expressions of passivity— heralded as traits of nymphs— are against the expectations of bollois. But she lacks the perfect masculinity of nagois. Though some may find them beautiful as well, bollois have no intrinsic worth. Not even their wombs, due to the existence of yenois. A bolloi who does nothing but bear children may provide some worth, but she will rot away unfulfilled and unsatisfied. Thus, she must come into herself through her own willpower and ability. The only worthy path she can take is that of overcoming and becoming, of a will to power.

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Hedo Gutzor

A male Titanist philosopher, Hedo Gutzor, also had suspect things to say about nymphs:

"The nymph is a creature bearing resemblance to the bolloi, but lacking her capacity for excellence and bellicosity. No nymph is capable of attaining the will of the Overjin— their disposition is too weak and sensitive to address the cold and ruthless challenges required to achieve a will to power."

As has been discussed by others, this refers to nymphs’ emotional sensitivity and receptivity. Nymphs are deeply emotional, deeply passionate, deeply empathic, and frail in constitution. Gutzor, like Kundorog, believed that nymphs cannot achieve the will to power without going directly against their own nature, but the more she struggles against her own nature, quote “the fiercer her nature wars upon her and demands she set herself back in her place.” Similar to the neo-Confucian ideals of yin and yang, Gutzor and Kundorog believed that nymphs triumphing over their fatal constitutional restrictions would only plunge their spaces into disorder and darkness, conditions she is not equipped to handle and thwarts her. Yabans require nymphs to be gentle and passive, as this is where their nymphic strength derives, so rejecting their inherent designed nature threatens to ruin other spaces. Nymphic femininity being rejected and trying to mimic bolloi and nagoi masculinity only brings ruin.

Gutzor said: “Though they share the same sex, nymphs are the opposite of bollois: subservient, weak, and envious. These traits personify weakness. The virtues for nymphs are vastly different, including chastity and compliance. A bolloi who indulges in these traits does not act as a bolloi should. She must be strong, dynamic, bellicose, and brutal, and she is inflicted with the scars of battle and honor. A nymph, on the other hand, must succumb. Though she may pretend to wear the armor of battle, nymphs live for subservience to the strong.”

Furthermore, "Nymphs lack vital forces. Martial paths are foreign to her, resulting in her scoffing at the self-evident emergence of honor baptized through danger. She is unsuited to the brutal necessities of the battlefield, both of war and in industry. "

And another: “She may stumble upon the martial path, but she cannot comprehend its meaning. The glories, honor, and principles cannot be understood by she who lacks a becoming martial soul.”

And yet another:

“The character of the nymph beholds that of peace and submission. She may hold a sword, but she cannot wield it. She may do battle, but she will never fathom war. She is superior only in her feral domesticity.”

And on:

"There is a fatal lack of constitution in nymphs. Matters of honor escape her understanding. The glories of battle are doubted in her domesticated mind, left instead to cowardly questions of diplomacy."

And on:

“Nymphs are blessed for their weakness. It is their condition and sphere of action, and they are not lesser for this. But the raw challenges presented to achieve a will to power render them unable to match their fellow females, the bollois, nor should they make the attempt. Nymphs are best left seeking to submit to their nature instead of throwing disorder into our realm by fatally attempting to rise above it.”

And on:

"The constitutional weakness of the nymph serves its own purpose. She has her own domestic and fertile spaces in which she may act. But she is incapable of anything more."

And on:

“The nymph is, by definition, incapable of being a warrior. There is a feral rigidity to her spirit, a lack of dynamism and excess of femininity that prevents her from molding her will towards the path to power. She is an entity wound by her nature and set loose by her untamed soul. Matters of principle, honor, duty, courage, willpower, these are not fathomed and thus do not concern her or her spheres. She is best left unconcerned with the matters of warriors, the strong, and the virile so that she may foster her nurturing spirit in the feminine spaces to which she best belongs..”

And on:

"War is a sublime action, separating the cowards and pathetic from the masters of danger and kings of the will. Nymphs may pretend to bear understanding of war to impress us and feign friendship with our blood fraternity, but she is but a child dressing as their father, role-playing and speaking refrains she knows appeals to our ears. But there is no capacity in her to wage offensive war. She is fundamentally incapable of understanding the glories, honor, and thrill of the fight. There is a wall surmountable only to those of iron will and strength. Those tender and delicate nymphs are much too frail to cross the top. Every jin will cross the wall in arms together. Every nymph will attempt it alone, refuting the honor of fellowship, for fellowship is too foreign a concept to she who needs only her own fertility. Eight thousand years of experience has proven their incapacity."

This is a common perception among misogynists, that the feminine do not understand the concept of honorable friendship and fellowship. Yabans have this perception towards yenois and nymphs. This is why the senja kagora and vroda kagora are seen as great institutions of camaraderie and warrior fellowship between battle-brothers and war-sisters, but vova kagora and nymphic friendship is seen as silly, trivial, and fleeting.

We humans have similar perceptions. For men, we have brotherhoods who possess chivalrous male friendship, honor, principles, and an almost knightly fellowship of men. Sisterhoods, on the other hand, are far rarer and seen as lacking the masculine codes of honor and fraternity of brotherhoods, and thus are far frailer and more susceptible to falling apart into in-fighting and betrayal.

Because nymphs are not seen as being capable of forging blood fellowships, their capacity for war is doubted. Vrodas, on the other hand, are seen in much the same way brotherhoods are on Earth. These are bollois who abide by a code of honor and fellowship and will engage in any brutal action for each other or against traitors. As Gutzor said, “Nymphs scoff at such fellowship, viewing it as toxic and unyielding. Of course she would! Matters of honor are not in her space of action.”

Image
Sayenja

Another nagoi, Sayenja, was incredibly sexist to nymphs and yenois. While he heralded bollois as spiritual übermenschen and physically second only to nagois, he lamented nymphs as inferior and disgusting, raging at their lack of capacity for war, passive natures, and physical weakness.

"The very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame"

Another classic Sayenja quote:

"Nagois have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and slightly greater strength than bollois, who have smaller and narrow breasts, and broad hips, yet nagoi and bolloi prove equally voracious and bellicose. In one, perfection and strength; in the other, excellence and violence. Yenois lack the fire of both, possess brought and narrow shoulders per each head, and weak strength. To the end they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children for the betterment of the male and female sees. To nymphs, there is only disgust wrought over their damned pacifism and gentleness."

He despised that nymphs hated war and spoke of peace and cared more for sex than violence and sport.

And so on:

"Kollidor is a space of war. Nymphs have no place on the battlefield."

"Nymphs need only sit still and look pretty. If you need a she-person to fight, always ask for a bolloi. There aren't many females in this cosmos I'd recommend, but they're always reliable. Nymphs are the standard; Bollois, the exception that proves the rule."

"Offworlders love the nymphs for sexual thrills. They’re best served fostering their pretty faces and legs. The Myrs may say otherwise but we all know that's all they're really good for."

"The nymphs' whole reason of being is to make us stop fighting. Their very nature is opposed to everything we're about."
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Fri Nov 25, 2022 9:27 pm

Bolloi Laborers
Generated with Stable Diffusion and NovelAI

Bollois (i.e. female Yabans)

Bolloi stems from the Yeren combinatorial bol which means "industrial laborer" and the suffix -oi, which is an archaic term for "person". Thus, "bolloi" translates into "industrial laborer person" or "worker person." As such, it should come as no surprise that the chief role in Yaban society bollois play is as the laborers, especially the heavy laborers who tend to do extreme, undesirable, and brutal jobs, as well as making and designing weapons of war.

Most Yaban laborers are bollois, as that is their primary expected societal role. These particular ones are grimy and gritty heavy laborers undoubtedly having accomplished a brutal and grueling day's work, and the sounds of industry and repetitive clashes and clangs have undoubtedly ignited their inner nexcidium and fostered an increased desire to head on back to the underground to join in on a fight club

Ghojin is another such heavy laborer dealing with a vicious job, working extensively in a human factory farm that involves quite a bit of brutality and slaughter. Not for the faint of heart or constitution!

There's a reason bollois like Yulaan and Kevelnege relate to men so much, especially men from the past. It's not unknown knowledge that, on Earth, men tend to do the harshest and most dangerous jobs, especially those which involve physical strength. Generally, men and women do much different jobs, and even after decades of general equality and affirmative action, there are some jobs women just don't tend to do. Perhaps more to the point, there are some jobs women aren't quite as fit to do.

Similarly on Kollidor and other Yaban hives, bollois tend to do the more dangerous and physical jobs, while yenois, if they're involved at all in the workplace, tend to do the far less physical and far more social jobs. Nagois, who are primarily soldiers and warriors, can also be workers, and they tend to follow bollois due to their own physical strength, aggression, and ability to handle extreme situations.

It's a curious quirk of their trisexual society. Because yenois are the primary breeding sex, bollois have far less inherent biological value than women do in the same context, despite also being capable of breeding. Coupling that with their greater strength and aggression than women would have in similar contexts, and you can see why bollois take on a far more man-like role among Yabans.

It's this reality that drives a lot of Yulaan's motivation to travel throughout Earth's history in Middle American Mythology, as it's with bollois and bollois alone that gender roles and expectations are completely inverted in comparison to their human sex equivalent— women. For Yulaan, it never gets old to see people be flummoxed by her refusal to act feminine followed by the slow fade-in of the light of recognition that she is something separate. Though Yulaan is never deluded by the prospect of equal rights and respect, nor does she care to seek it. Rather, she seeks the conflict itself just to find it and see if it is ever at all possible to fight these old honorable men.
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Sun Jan 29, 2023 11:56 pm

Good news, the two people who might care:

I've decided to give up all pretenses and remarry the Yabanverse back into Dragon Ball.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Yabanverse/com ... _and_have/
I'm completely serious too.

"No more Yabans?"

Actually, "Yaban" would just become an alternative term for "Saiyan." The idea I'm floating now is that Yabans are a separate tribe of Saiyans.

Literally nothing would change, except I'd get rid of yenois since Saiyans have a sexual binary (though, if people are still interested in the concept, I might keep them around).

The Yabanverse as a universe would remain unchanged.

"Why tho?"

I'm just tired of straddling the line between fanfiction and original fiction. I refuse to cross over because I want my kung fu space monkeys. So why not just embrace them being Saiyans once and for all?

Except I can still have them be Yabans. They're Saiyans, no longer "Legally Distinct". Just also Yabans.

Which means Yabans can indeed transform as Saiyans do, but also keep their own transformations and abilities as well. I can have my cake and eat it too.

"All that work for nothing, though...."

Are you kidding? If I didn't make Yabans separate from Saiyans, I never would have come up with a quarter of the stuff I did. And fusing the Yabanverse with the Dragonverse doesn't come at either's expense. I can still put everything I created in the latter.

I was never going to be able to sell this story legally as long as Yabans were what they were, so why cripple myself any longer? Why constantly battle with the repeated issue of "These aren't actually Saiyans but Yabans, aka Legally-Not-Saiyans!"

"But Little Miss Savage???"

Yeah, that one's going to be extremely surreal now with Yulaan actually being a Saiyan....but also watching Dragon Ball Z on Toonami/Japanese bootlegs.

Expect the Yabanverse wiki to be completely rebooted!

"There’s virtually nothing on that wiki anyway!"

Making my job easier.

I also want to credit generative AI. I figured that since media synthesis is finally going places, there's no point trying to make the Yabanverse distinct from DBZ.

The Yabanverse was always unpublishable as long as I used Yabans, and I was completely unwilling to change them because the entire reason for the Yabanverse in the first place was to have fun fleshing out Saiyans. Even something as transformative as Yabans is too close to the original IP and would land my black ass in court if I seriously went commercial with it.
But more than that, even if there's a legal loophole where the Yabanverse IS actually commercially publishable, I don't care. This is pretty much "art for art's sake." It's supposed to be fun and dumb worldbuilding for worldbuilding's sake with some stories on the side.

Completely undermining that sentiment, I also got frustrated at the idea of losing DBZ fans as an audience, as I'd rather not force people to have to constantly go "Oh, so these are like the Namekians, but not the Namekians? And these are basically like Jeice's race but not really." It's too similar but not similar enough, if that makes any sense, hitting that perfect sweet spot where it frustrates people more than entertains them. I love the Namekians and kaioshin too much and wanted my own version, but every time I tried making my own Namekians, I chickened out because I felt it was too on the nose. Yes, I said that unironically.

I was thinking about this with this one group of slug-people who are just blatantly Namekians and I realized "Man, these are just Wish.com Namekians. Why am I doing this? When I could just make this a fanverse IN Dragon Ball and use the original races and lore as well."
It doesn't invalidate or render obsolete anything I've done because I was already keeping the Yabanverse as close to Toriyama's verse in the first place; Yabans were the only true "direct" ripoff and even then, I kept them deliberately as close to Saiyans as I could.

I got worn down by all the creativity and assets available in Dragon Ball, lamenting that I was starting from scratch and basically recreating all the same stuff towards an end that would make no difference. We have the Not!Saiyans, and that was pushing it to the point it was already troubling, but now here's the Not!Namekians and Not!Shenlong and Not!Capsule Corp and Not!Majins (who are still called Majins). And then to spend time fleshing them out only for that fleshing out to amount to "the Not!Namekians are Namekians, but not."

Yeah, it's easy to see why the Yabanverse was unsustainable.

All I'm doing is turning Yabans back into Saiyans. That's literally it. Everything else stays the same. Including Yabans.

Now you could argue "Then why make it DBZ fanfiction if they're still separate and there are original races added?"

The way I could describe it, the Yabanverse is still in that murky gray area between fanfiction and original fiction because I'm not going to use the original Dragon Ball universe directly but rather keep Universe 23 and just run with the idea that it's a parallel and similar universe to Universe 7, like what Universe 6 is. But because I'm stepping back over the line into fanfiction, counterintuitively that just opens up MORE creative possibilities. Plus it's much easier on myself. I can't express how tiring it is to constantly and relentlessly have to repeatedly point out "Actually, this isn't a Saiyan but a suspiciously similar species called Yabans, who are exactly like Saiyans but are called something different." On worldbuilding groups, I had to constantly justify why it was okay and this was an original work... so that people inevitably only referenced Dragon Ball. The loophole that it was technically original fiction wasn't exactly flying all the time and I got some moderators on my ass.
I also realized I locked myself out of sharing the Yabanverse among DBZ fans and groups because it "technically" wasn't a DBZ fanwork, even if heavily inspired by it. Whereas now, those gates are open.

I've no idea if I'm explaining myself well or not, but the gist is:
The Yabanverse was constantly frustrating to work on because it was too similar to DBZ but not original enough to be its own unique IP, causing it to fall into an uncanny valley-like hole where it was frustrating to me trying to create it and loads of assets and lore that amounted to "Do you remember this thing from Dragon Ball? Here it is again, but with a different name" but also frustrating to others because it was so blatantly obviously trying to be Dragon Ball and yet wasn't. It was like a monkey wearing a human skin suit trying to pass itself off as a human.
So I took a step back for a while, looked at what was wrong, and went "What if I made it a fanfic again, but kept it its own original universe?" All of a sudden, all the issues evaporated. It's unpublishable either way, but when it straddled closer to "original fic," it was frustrating because people would just go "Why don't you take out these details so you can actually sell this story?" and I didn't want to do that.



Or to use an analogy, imagine someone obsessed with the Jedi and Sith and they decide to create their own universe of two schools of mystics called the Yedo and Gath who fight with plasma swords and qi-esque powers in a science fantasy setting, complete with most of the flourishes of the Jedi and Sith to boot. Technically it's not fanfiction, but the whole time, you're just going, "Oh, so this is basically that thing from Star Wars." At some point, you're going to go "Why not distance yourself from Star Wars?" but this person says "No!" and you watch them helplessly struggle to recreate the entire universe of Star Wars by themselves, an effort that amounts to them taking things from Star Wars (and maybe a few other series like Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Halo, Mass Effect, etc.) and filing off the serial numbers. It's not an uninteresting universe; you're just concerned for their mental health.

And then they say "Actually you know what? I'm going back to the Jedi and Sith and the comforting embrace of Star Wars, but this is going to be my own timeline with all the stuff I created mixed in."

If I were watching that, I'd go "Dude, it's about time."


And to celebrate: here's Super Saiyan Yulaan
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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by LoganForkHands73 » Tue Jan 31, 2023 5:57 pm

Okay, I still really like this project yet I have to say this, with complete affection: this verse is starting to feel less like a cohesive meta-narrative about a feral female Kakarrot that I thought it would be and more like one of those epic, barely legible 400,000-word paracosmic manuscripts found in some elderly high school janitor's basement, and no one can tell if this magnum opus was written by him, an escaped inmate of the local asylum, or a member of an alien race attempting to make contact. In short, I have absolutely no idea what's going on anymore, but I'm impressed by the scope and just along for the ride at this point :lol:

EDIT: Oh, apologies, I completely skimmed over the latest post that explained your new direction for this universe. I think trying to narrow down your focus is the wisest move you can make. While I was kidding around in the first paragraph, I would have to make some genuine constructive criticism in saying that this whole concept grew very tonally, topically and aesthetically confused over time (e.g. I can't really see clear connective tissue between the original premise and the space Amish stuff from the last couple pages). Making the Dragon Ball parallels more explicit could be a solution, I guess, but what you created here was still imaginative and transformative enough to feasibly be legally sold or franchised if you really wanted it. Again, it just needed some editing and refining somewhere down the line. I don't think the pseudo Dragon Ball references were ever the problem, necessarily, but a stronger focus and goal on what you really want to say with this story would be a great way to refresh it, in my opinion.

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Re: "Yabanverse" | A worldbuilding project that's like DBZ meets Warhammer 40k

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue Jan 31, 2023 10:09 pm

LoganForkHands73 wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 5:57 pm Okay, I still really like this project yet I have to say this, with complete affection: this verse is starting to feel less like a cohesive meta-narrative about a feral female Kakarrot that I thought it would be and more like one of those epic, barely legible 400,000-word paracosmic manuscripts found in some elderly high school janitor's basement, and no one can tell if this magnum opus was written by him, an escaped inmate of the local asylum, or a member of an alien race attempting to make contact. In short, I have absolutely no idea what's going on anymore, but I'm impressed by the scope and just along for the ride at this point :lol:

EDIT: Oh, apologies, I completely skimmed over the latest post that explained your new direction for this universe. I think trying to narrow down your focus is the wisest move you can make. While I was kidding around in the first paragraph, I would have to make some genuine constructive criticism in saying that this whole concept grew very tonally, topically and aesthetically confused over time (e.g. I can't really see clear connective tissue between the original premise and the space Amish stuff from the last couple pages). Making the Dragon Ball parallels more explicit could be a solution, I guess, but what you created here was still imaginative and transformative enough to feasibly be legally sold or franchised if you really wanted it. Again, it just needed some editing and refining somewhere down the line. I don't think the pseudo Dragon Ball references were ever the problem, necessarily, but a stronger focus and goal on what you really want to say with this story would be a great way to refresh it, in my opinion.
Alright let me be perfectly clear here:
This is absolutely an inmate escaped from the asylum kind of story
I need help

Actually, the Yabanverse was schizophrenic by design. It literally STARTED because I had a slice of life Dragon Ball fanfic idea back in 2016; all the other stuff developed around that. I always needed the slice of life story to have some space, but that always felt awkward when placed next to the more martial arts fantasy stuff, especially since both were treated as equally canon.

There's multiple different stories in the verse, is the thing, so that's why it feels more than a little coherent

• Little Miss Savage
• Middle American Mythology
• Strongest Under Heaven
• General background worldbuilding stories

So that's a big reason why it felt tonally inconsistent.
It was worldbuilding for worldbuilding's sake, so naturally there was going to be a lot of stuff that clashed tonally because some stuff was meant to be taken more seriously than others.

And worldbuilding is worthless if you don't have stories to tell inside that world (indeed, to some extent, I try to do worldbuilding backwards from some of these stories rather than building the world from the top down 100% of the time).

Little Miss Savage was always supposed to be the "What if a Saiyan lived on the real life Earth?" story; this is the concept that literally sprouted the entire Yabanverse from the beginning.

Middle American Mythology was actually a sub-series of Little Miss Savage where Yulaan and some others travel to different eras of Real Earth history, usually just to get into fistfights with sexists but otherwise also indulge in the surreality of things like "Here's a story where a Saiyan is currently in Francoist Spain harassing fascists" or "Here's a story about a Saiyan and a Mazoku in 1850s California" or "What if Yulaan crashed with a stereotypical WASP family in early 1960s America?"

Strongest Under Heaven was always supposed to be "my" take on Dragon Ball as a story rather than as a verse, just because I wanted to do that all over again with my own flourishes.

Stuff like the Planet Suiza saga are more or less the same sort of universal worldbuilding you'd see in Star Wars or Warhammer 40k that has some massive, overwritten backstory about a planet we barely even hear about in the main stories.


Furthermore, I feel there's another aspect that I haven't made clear as to why the Yabanverse is even a thing: synthetic media.

I know AI art is unpopular, but I've been excitedly awaiting its arrival for years.
Literally:
https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/com ... ontent_my/

And notice the date that thread was created. That was the exact same month the Yabanverse got its start. That's not a coincidence: the sudden realization and epiphany I had that AI was going to turbo-democratize media creation led DIRECTLY to me wanting to create "my own Dragon Ball" because I knew that there was zero chance I could sell it or work on it to the point that people would make art and animation for it. I mean, there was a fleeting chance if I started ASAP in 2017-2018 that I'd get enough clout and followers to make that a possibility by 2021-2022, but I absolutely wasn't ready with the verse yet. I knew that if I was going to create my own universe, I was going to need a few years to figure out every detail, and every time I tried making the inaugural story, I found the details lacking and wanted to keep worldbuilding. By 2020 during the lockdown, I fully accepted that there was zero chance for the Yabanverse to ever achieve any level of pop cultural impact as its own entity, let alone anything coming close to rivaling Dragon Ball. There was never going to actually be Yabanverse movies, games, music, etc. At least not made by the hand of humans. But then again, isn't that what I was expecting in the first place? Back in 2017, I started the Yabanverse with the explicit expectation that, within a decade or even sooner, I'd be able to realize whatever I came up with using AI so there was no reason to feel angst about any of this.

The massive strides forward in AI in 2022 reminded me of that original idea.

And I also felt a bit awkward and insecure about some things. Like, "If this actually did blow up somehow, all people would do is compare it to Dragon Ball and find ways that make it come up short for feeling like a less fun discount version."

Basically, by pure chance, the Yabanverse fell into a sort of uncanny valley where it was too fanfictiony to be its own original property (legally, Yabans aren't transformative enough without some intense legal wrangling) and not fanfictiony enough to properly share with Dragon Ball fans without making them confused and frustrated at why I was making "Not!Dragon Ball."
There were always two easy ways to solve the issues of the Yabanverse.

1: Make the Yabans more distinct. More rooted in Sun Wukong, a more fleshed out culture beyond just "murderous battle-crazed space pirates," a bit more different physically, or maybe get rid of their tails and simianhood entirely and go with a more Klingon/Mandalorian/Dothraki style—

Yeah, fuck that.

2: Go full DBZ fanfic, but still stop short of actually making it a "DBZ fanfiction" if that makes any sense. So no following the story of Z or inserting Enekai or Yulaan or Yuta into the main story of Dragon Ball. Feel free to use some of the characters if absolutely necessary, but mostly just crip races, planets, techniques, transformations, and other details. No more creating suspiciously similar substitutes to everything I like. No more making Not!Kaioken, Not!Namekians, Not!Majins, Not!Capsules, Not!Saiyan space pods, Not!Super Saiyan, etc.

And don't get me wrong, making Not! versions of all those things isn't bad by itself.... if the end result wasn't quite literally me going "They're actually totally supposed to be these things." Just... what's even the point of having that unnecessary layer of convolution. Saying "It's all martial arts fantasy" can only get you so far.

There's a lot of stuff I want to build "anew," so it's not like I plan on giving up any more creative worldbuilding entirely, but there's also a lot of stuff that I felt like I'd have had an easier time if I simply built off of pre-existing assets. Like, for example, Saiyan space pods. Those are both too iconic and too perfect to not use for Yabans. Everything I came up with felt "wrong" and "cheap" if that makes any sense, and I ultimately came back upon simply using pods. At which point we run into the same issue of "Why not just use Saiyan space pods?" and then "Why not just set this in the Dragon Ball universe?"


That also comes with at least a couple downsides in that I do have to at least make some token effort to follow Toriyama's word and follow a few of the rules of DB, but the benefits outweighed the cons several times over.



LAST BUT NOT LEAST....

About monetization, or more important, notoriety:

Though there are times when I do dream big and think about the Yabanverse having legions of fans (I can't lie, I absolutely do), I always came at this from the perspective that there was never going to be an opportunity to commercialize this because I was adamant that Yabans HAVE to be as close to Saiyans as possible. That was never negotiable or debatable. If Yabans got too far from Saiyans, the central conceit of the Yabanverse falls apart, even if the universe is still interesting in its own right (and I do think it's interesting, but Yabans/Saiyans are what bring it together for me).

Buuuut, if I was actually that desperate to get rich off the Yabanverse, who's stopping me really? Maybe if this was the 1990s or 2000s, I'd be SOL like Yulaan, but avenues like Patreon and PayPal donations exist. Unless you're actively selling a product, the lawyers can't touch you if you make $100,000 a month off a Legally-Not-This-Thing story unless the original creator is really overzealous about copyright (and Toriyama and Shueisha are definitely not zealous about copyright at least).

"So wait.... if earning potential is basically the same no matter what, what's even the point of this not being a fanfic?"

MAYBE it was feasible to sell it on its own, but I'd have to argue in court that it is transformative enough to be its own story when I've already long been upfront that Yabans = Saiyans. That's all they were ever supposed to be.

And if generative AI is going to blur the lines between professional and amateur products, why even care? I'll be able to create the stuff I want to make in the end anyway. So why create Not!Kaioken and Not!Super Saiyan when I could just straight up use Kaioken and Super Saiyan but further flesh them out in my own adjacent universe instead? Who knows, maybe if I achieve enough notoriety, some things I create will bleed into other fan products, sort of like Super Vegeta Den or Multiverse or Abridged.

A boy has the right to dream. There are endless possibilities stretched out before him.

Hope this answers at least part of your comment.
The Yabanverse
My own take on Saiyajins in a fanverse.

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