something I think about a lot -- especially whenever the bit comes up about Bulma hooking up with Vegeta because he seemed lonely -- is how underrated and under-discussed Bulma's loneliness is too. She's not isolated in the same way Vegeta is, but throughout the series she presents herself as an extrovert, while struggling to make friends, displaying a deep frustration toward her relationship with her parents, and then the late-add lore that her big sister just up and left her whole life behind when Bulma was still a little girl, and kind of left Bulma to deal with their parents and their company and all the hard parts of growing up by herself.
The other thing is that Bulma's intellect is largely unmatched, especially in anyone her age. Even including her sister, she doesn't have anyone she can talk to about the things she's passionate about. She can't communicate all the stuff that goes on in her head, because nobody who cares would get it and nobody who gets it would care. Vegeta, due to being a highborn alien raised in a cutting-edge advanced society, is very likely the first person in her age bracket that knows and is actually interested enough in science to talk about it with her, and can follow probable logic well enough to not have his eyes glaze over when she explains something out of his depth. And, it's implied that it was not common in any of his demographics either -- Vegeta's intelligence was something Frieza had to remind even his highest-ranking men to remain on alert about.
All this to say, I think it gets read a lot that Bulma felt sorry for Vegeta and just wanted to fix him, but I don't think that's giving her enough credit as a person with her own life and experience. Rather, I think it's a really cool and interesting part of their dynamic that loneliness and isolation as a direct consequence of being Born Special(tm) is something Bulma can fully understand and empathize with.
areudirty
tangentwithtanner
turnnoffyourmind
theartofmadeline
