dmxrated

Chapter 2 of Starbound is now up on Fanfiction.net:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8895129/2/Starbound

Right now, that's probably as far as I'm gonna go with it for a while until I see what Mother: The Original Story is like.

In the meantime, while I'm down here in New Jersey where it's easier for me to focus on stuff, I think I'll use this entry to analyze how everything in Earthbound interweaves to form its plot, rather than each chapter being just stuff that happens. For those of you who've either missed it or would like to revisit it before or after reading the following cut, here is my original summary of just what its plot is.

( Read more... )

With that all said and done, here's hoping Yincira and anyone else interested will be able to help me formulate some kind of plot for Starbound, instead of just me making stuff up to put its main characters through as I go along.

Set long after the events of Earthbound, Mother 3 takes place in the initially rural farming community of Tazmily Village, in a remote place called the Nowhere Islands, the only place left on Earth that is able to sustain life after the rest of the world was ruined by humanity itself. In a lot of ways, it is nothing like either of its prequels.

That point that Zerodius inferred about Earthbound? It would truly apply to this game. It has a lot more melancholy to them, and also shows much more of the bad guys' direct activities. On the flip side, while the first two games could be considered straightforward enough (items, enemies, sideline stuff, and contrived coincidences aside), there are things that play a direct role in the more lighthearted parts of the story that could not possibly be written into anything down-to-earth, such as a coffee table that acts like a horse, a man tall enough to ring a town bell without climbing up, Thomas's comical way of running around frantically, a refrigerator on top of a snowcapped mountain, male mermaids who help you breathe underwater by mouth-to-mouth contact, etc.

Just the other day, I have seen official novel adaptations of Mother 1 and 2, which, while written by someone other than Shigesato Itoi, and also darker and edgier than, do retain the same quirky humor that the games were known for. Unfortunately, I'm not so sure if that's something I'll be able to quite pull off with Starbound. Humor is neither my specialty nor Yincira's. Even though Jake does not like Lucky Star, he has written a comical adaptation of Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal, titled Johto: The Funne Version!!!, and said that he'd try, though even he can't make any promises.

That said, Starbound is most likely going to originate as something mostly straightforward, just like what Earthbound 199X is to Earthbound. If a game adaptation even is feasable enough after I complete the fic, I might consider hiring people to work on humor.

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Last night, I used the word "diversion" in a rather loose sense. Jake pointed out the reasons why the main characters in each game were doing the things I specified during a conversation about the entry in general and what his friend Zerodius had to say about it. I relayed the convo to Yincira after we were done chatting, and managed to speak to her through MSN this morning, but she said she didn't really understand the actual context surrounding each thing. I told her I'd list everything from each game in the Earthbound trilogy, and started listing them this morning, before realizing that I might as well just describe the entire plots to all three games (also so that she would understand what I'm talking about each time I refer to the events of those games, and wouldn't have to watch gameplay videos full of random battles and other meaningless stuff).

Anyway, by "diversion", what I meant was stuff that the main characters do that isn't directly related to finding their respective plot coupons or contending with the enemy armies. Really, though, I suppose that "sidestops" and "sidequests" would have been better terms of choice. In other words, stuff that Yincira could not have taken into account in her proposed outline for Starbound:

( Here it is, btw )

If you read the above cut, notice that everything she's written is about how they grow, whether they win or lose against each mana guardian, and the alien generals' involvement in things. That would seem to suggest that it's all about fighting the enemy armies, like in such other works as Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), Suikoden, Mega Man Zero, The Lord of the Rings, or Ancient Ways, Ancient Evils. It isn't. True, we do see plenty of the Pigmasks' activities in Mother 3, but not nearly so much of those of the aliens' in the first two games.

The first line you read after you defeat Giygas in Earthbound reads, "The war against Giygas is over." In Mother 2, this originated as "Ness's journey has ended." The person who analyzed all the differences between both versions of the game on Earthbound Central even agrees more with M2 than with EB, saying that it felt more like a journey or an adventure, or maybe a mission, than an actual war. However, I do recall Yincira stating that despite what most people think of when they think of a "war", the word technically refers to political violence among nations, and that civilian life does continue normally whenever and wherever possible.

Anyway, here is the lowdown for Earthbound Zero:

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(Well, there you have it. No generals or full-scale battles to speak of, and most of the time, if you're not using the player's guide or a walkthrough, you're just kinda supposed to figure out what to do or where to go on your own or by talking to random people. That's right, you visit random places or try random things as you go along, and they actually work towards your overall goal. Some of the things that go on are pure coincidences, such as you entering a factory to send a rocket off, which just so happens to land right where you want it to to do just what you hope it'll do.)

(Earthbound will have its own entry next, followed by Mother 3.)