The KidVegeta Anthology/Dragon Ball Z: The Forgotten/Lauto Saga

The Lauto Saga was conceived of almost as soon as I created this story in April 2010. In the early draft of TF, Ledas was going to be in Cooler's region, training on an outpost on a moon orbiting a planet known as Planet Cooler 92. He was going to have 10 Appule soldiers and 10 Cui soldiers. He was going to stay there from shortly after the time of Planet Vegeta's destruction until he reached Super Saiyan 4, then he would set off to Earth. Obviously, I didn't use pretty much any of that terrible early plot. But it can be seen how that evolved into Lauto Saga today.

This saga is quite ambitious for several reasons. For one, Ledas and The Benefactor, in a few short scenes, are the only two characters from the previous saga in this one. Cooler is the only canon character in this saga, and he's only seen in one scene in the second chapter. This saga, almost as much as the Prince Vegeta Saga, is the start of a new story. There is a new setting, new characters, new villains, and a vastly different plot than what was seen before.

So you may be asking why I did this. The answer is basically that I wanted Ledas to survive the Genocide of the Saiyans (a necessity for his character to mean anything; and his escape was detailed in the last chapter of the previous saga), and I wanted him to still be involved with the PTO. The Planet Trade Organization has always been one of my favorite parts of Dragon Ball Z (it is a big reason why the Saiyan Saga, Namek Saga, and Frieza Saga are my favorite parts of DBZ). This meant either using Cooler's region or creating another brother of Frieza. I felt more inclined to use Cooler, since I rather like Cooler (he's slightly better than Frieza as a character, in my opinion). This was at first very exciting, because I realized the possibilities - I was basically creating a new story. The Prince Vegeta Saga could serve as an extended backstory (most writers would treat PVS as little more than a footnote - perhaps a chapter or two or maybe even less than that, but I didn't because I thought the characterization and physical development presented in that saga was crucial for Ledas' development as a character (plus, his interactions with kid Vegeta were what drove me to make TF in the first place, so I couldn't skip having those)) for what I wanted to do.

The way I came up with most of the fanon aliens in this saga can be seen in the ninth fun fact here. Lauto was a pun on a Japanese or Chinese word for old man, though I've forgotten the word I punned his name on and can't seem to find it anymore. Lenomi was added in very late to this story (in the final edits), and her name is a pun on the fruit "lemon", which is a fruit closely associated to the lime. I did this because Lenomi is of the same race as Lieme.

So I had about half of the original draft of this story done by the time I joined this wiki in September 2010. I had written extensive scenes in my word document about this saga in the months leading up to my joining of the wiki, and most of them were pasted on this wiki without any editing. I created the page for this saga on November 5, 2010 about 35 minutes after I completed the first draft of the Prince Vegeta Saga. Then I went to work. I posted the first draft of the first chapter on November 8th and continued posting chapters nearly every day until November 21st, when I completed the first draft.

This saga is unlike the others in that its first draft was 20 chapters (it had 18 chapters when I first created the page but gained two more during the writing process). I was planning on having all of the other sagas be 12 chapters (and for the most part, even in the first draft, I did this). I remember even after I completed it, I had some thoughts about perhaps splitting this saga into two sagas, but at first I resisted such a temptation.

I began editing this saga on January 15, 2011. I'm not sure if these edits were spurred by reviews of the saga by other users, but they were mostly cleanup edits. I wasn't doing final edits yet. Over the coming months in 2011, I did mostly minor edits, usually with grammar, spelling, fixing dialogue, or more technical stuff (such as adding in s ). On November 12, 2011, I finally decided to split this saga into two sagas. At the time, it was going to be split into a saga of 12 and a saga of 10 (though later, both would become 12 chapters). I decided then that this saga should end after Ledas' meeting with Lauto, not when he becomes a Super Saiyan and goes off to Earth. The Super Saiyan thing was cool, of course, but it worked better as the ending to saga 3. This also meant that Ledas didn't become a Super Saiyan until chapter 35, which is something I am very proud about to this day. I built up his power, his character, for 35 chapters before giving him Super Saiyan. It wasn't random or forced. Most authors don't do that. In fact, I'll say more than 95% of authors don't do that. But more on that in my anthology of the Stomping Grounds Saga. Anyway, I changed this saga on November 12, 2011. Most of the chapter names of the final 12 were finalized during this period as well. I did some additional edits to many of the chapters in the coming days to pace them better for the 10 chapter saga, too. This saga was originally the 10 chapter saga compared to the Stomping Grounds Saga being the 12 chapter saga out of the split of the originally 20 chapter Lauto Saga (which also somehow gained an additional 2 chapters in that split).

After that, for the remainder of 2011, all of 2012, and much of 2013, I didn't edit this saga much. I did some spelling/grammar fixes, and some minor changes, but nothing major during that time. I was putting off doing final edits for this saga because I knew they would be much more time-consuming than the final edits for the Prince Vegeta Saga had been. I eventually started on them for this saga on June 29, 2013. The editing process was indeed quite long and hard for this saga. I had to write two new chapters - "Dread Lord" and "The Day I Had 60 Pokémon" - and several other chapters had to have major portions re-written or expanded. I completed the final edits for this saga on July 14, 2013. In the coming days and months, I did some minor edits, but the major edits were done on that day.

So what encompassed my final edits, and why were they so radical, compared to the previous saga's final edits? The first reason for this is because I split this saga into two. That left it with not as defined an ending point as I had originally conceived. The Lauto Saga at first had its early sagas filled with training and stuff with the natives. All of this then came to a head with Ledas becoming a Super Saiyan. That plot progression and pacing was disrupted when I split the saga. Additionally, in my final edits (and even in edits before the final edits), I began to downplay the role of the natives in the story. While Destructivedisk and others praised my portrayal of the natives and the colonialism themes tied to them, I wasn't personally satisfied with my portrayal of them. This is one of the biggest examples of me trusting in myself, and not others. I could have kept the natives a prominent factor in this story (in the original draft, there were probably 5-8 chapters that heavily involved them). So one of the big things I did for this saga was to downplay their role and to show them more as a parallel to Ledas than people he needed to save. I didn't want him to save them because he's not a hero; he's a Saiyan. He's a complex, grey character. So having that heroic moment where he saves the natives from the PTO just isn't right for his character. Now, he still sees them as pitiable and despises their position, but this is because he sees himself as one of them - just a slave. So the way I portrayed the natives in the final edits is more nuanced, more complex, and I like it much more than how it used to be. Especially in this saga, they are built up as being just like Ledas, so the brutal way in which Payar and the other PTO soldiers treat them has thematic worth on multiple levels. They can be compared to Ledas, and the slavery/colonialism themes are also present (though in subtler and less cliched ways, in my opinion). The themes of agency, slavery, and brutality related to them remain strong in this story, despite the natives' reduced role; to me, this speaks to my ability to use their scenes effectively in the final edits. The original story was bloated, but the final edits focused the story, thus also focusing the themes.

The second reason why final edits were so difficult and long for this saga was because with the splitting of the original version of this saga into two sagas, the pacing of the plot was messed up. As it remained, this saga didn't have much going on (even in the 20 chapter version, a criticism of this saga was that not enough interesting stuff happened). So I wanted to rectify that. I added in the plot of the PTO rebels just for that. I got some specific ideas related to them (the vanadium mine, the Saibamen battle) that I thought would be really cool when I looked over this saga and took some notes down to prepare of the final edits. I thought adding in those things would be good because otherwise, this saga had no battles. It had sparring, yes, but no true battles. And that was fixed with the addition of the PTO rebels. They added in two major, complex battles that I am very proud of. The Saibamen battle in particular remains one of my favorite battle in this entire saga.

Other than that, there isn't much else to say. This saga was very tiring for me to write; it took much more effort than PVS because it wasn't tied to canon events. But at the same time, that is what is so liberating and exciting about this saga. It is me just creating stuff purely from my imagination. There are many little things throughout this saga that have great aesthetic worth to me because of that. The writing process of this story is also something I remember fondly - at least the writing process of the original draft. I remember being on a very old, slow computer writing this story on a works document (back when Microsoft Works was still a thing), the television on to my left, my dad and brother being around at the time, talking to Destructivedisk and others on various chat programs while I wrote. That remains one of my fondest memories of my time on this wiki.

So this saga, much like Prince Vegeta Saga, originally had two theme songs. The first was After the Fall by Two Steps From Hell. This is an amazing song - one of their best. Again, like Dragon Rider, I consider "After the Fall" to be one of the top 5 Two Steps From Hell songs. The second theme was originally The Soul That Must Awaken by Two Steps From Hell. This was supposed to be the saga's theme after Lauto's introduction (hinting at my need to split the saga at that juncture). This song was later re-used in the Stomping Grounds Saga, though not as a theme song, but as the first in-text song (not counting the songs I used in Outbreak: Paved In Blood). These two songs remained as the theme songs for this saga from its creation on November 5, 2010 until February 25, 2011, when I removed "The Soul That Must Awaken" and kept "After the Fall". The theme song was again changed on May 24, 2011 to Sarabande Suite (Aeternae) by Globus. Incidentally, I would later consider that song for the unwritten special about the trials Guva and Banas went through for the choosing of Planet Cooler 92's governor. On October 27, 2011, I changed the theme song again, this time to One Truth by Globus, and that remains the theme song to this day. It was a bit of gamble going with a song with lyrics (as opposed to the rocking instrumentals of Two Steps From Hell that I had been using before), but since Globus is basically just like Two Steps From Hell, except with lyrics, it was the most natural compromise. This song works quite effectively, thematically, with Lauto Saga, and I'm completely happy with it.



The above picture is the tagline of this saga. It hints at the theme of slavery and agency in this saga, which is seen with Ledas and the natives. It is also a reference to the Gears of War 3 tagline "We're All Stranded Now". Ledas being a slave and not having any agency is hugely important in this saga, as it builds up to Ledas' Super Saiyan transformation in the next chapter. I was very careful with Ledas' Super Saiyan transformation. I built up to it as much as possible and made it as realistic as possible, as I've seen too many fanons wrecked by having bad Super Saiyan transformations or levels. This was a major focus on mine in this story, and it will be commented on in more depth in the next saga's anthology.

So that's about it for this saga. I have fond memories about and bad memories too (with how bad some parts of the original draft were). But overall, this is a solid saga. Its page has the most edits of any TF saga page, if my memory is correct, and that again speaks to how much editing overall I had to do on this saga, especially compared to the Prince Vegeta Saga and Planet Earth Saga (the two sagas that originally book-ended this one). It's interesting how drastically different this saga is from the previous one (in many different ways), and that shows how bold I was as a writer when I created this story. I didn't rest on my laurels. I went all-out with this saga, and even if the first draft of it wasn't completely successful, that reckless abandon is one of my best traits as a writer. With a good eye for quality, it allows me to produce truly memorable fiction. Hopefully, that has occurred with the final draft of this story. Anyways, onto the endnotes!