Talking with Chewy about Pokey the Sociopath and New Jeff
Liar: So chapter three was 15,000 words. What’s that like to slog through?
Chewy: Heh every time I finish a chapter and look back, exhausted, I feel as proud as if I had just translated an entire novel. Then I flip to the next chapter and all relief pretty much drains from me. It’s such a time-consuming project that I’m curious how long it will take people to only read through it.
Liar: Luckily for us, we don’t have to read it in two languages. A lot has started to happen in the novel, now that Ness is moving from city to city and Paula has shown up, and for me, reading your rough drafts, the book is starting to get more exciting as a result. Do you feel the same way?
Chewy: Absolutely. There are scenes in the book where I actually translate faster because it’s so suspenseful that I can’t wait to see what happens. I start plowing through it so I can hurry up and get the English out and see it.
Liar: I joked about Pokey not being a matinee idol in the last excerpt post, but he’s actually kind of creepy in the book—Kumi kind of brings out the sociopath in him, doesn’t she?
Chewy: Yeah, as a child I was always a little disturbed by Pokey’s behavior, but I can see that Kumi went to town with him—it’s almost like the nonexistent narrator hates him personally. To tell the truth though, even though some of the characters seem to depart a little from how they were in the game, I really think Pokey is consistent with what Itoi was aiming for in Earthbound. Now that I think about it, though, it’s interesting that Kumi, who was 35 years old when the game came out, was also affected by his twistedness. I was young and impressionable when I experienced it, so having that insight in retrospect tells me that Itoi did a good job with Pokey.
Liar: Then, of course, there’s Ness and Paula
Chewy: I was always a loyal Ness+Paula shipper.
Liar: Oh, definitely, Ness and Paula forever. After all, I named Ness after myself.
Chewy: But I gotta be honest, I prefer a more passive romance. Like, the Jim+Pam effect—gotta make them work for it! For now I’ll just be relieved that they haven’t acted outside of their age group yet.
Liar: Chapter four focuses on Jeff, and while I don’t want to give the whole thing away, in case you figure out how to distribute this, it’s one of Saori Kumi’s biggest divergences from the source. Talk a little about it.
Chewy: As you’ll read in the afterword, I think Kumi decided to focus on Jeff particularly closely for a few reasons. For one, he was her favorite character, and from what I understand (having not yet read the MOTHER novel) she wrote the heck out of Loid in the MOTHER novel and didn’t want any overlap between the two books.
At first, I was a little put off by Kumi’s decision to add such a wild element to the story—his backstory is enough to actually establish that this book is not “officially canon” with the game—but as I read on, all the pieces began to fall into place in a way that only truly talented writers can pull off. By the end of the chapter, I was thoroughly impressed when such a random addition led to another seemingly random addition, and by the time you get through it, everything between Jeff and his father—something that seems intensely deep in the game in an ineffable way—is finally completely explained. And I personally feel she made some excellent decisions.
Liar: I like EarthBound’s way of suggesting a lot of what it doesn’t want to say, but I agree that Kumi’s way of explaining things was also very interesting. Okay, that seems like enough teasing for tonight. Any last words before you return to your translating chamber?
Chewy: I just wanna thank everyone for the nice comments, and for following the blog. It feels really good to have a group of people with me as I work through the project.
I can’t wait to read the next excerpt. Your conversations tease too much!
It’ll be particulalry interesting to see what Kumi does with Pokey, since he was originally created to serve various “meta” functions within the game’s narrative. Most relevant is how the player’s hatred of him was actually very carefully cultivated, especially after Mani Mani is ruled out as an explanation for his behavior. All building up to Magicant where it’s revealed who was actually being subtly manipulated all along, with Ness and the player’s fostered inability to empathize with Pokey being set up as the only implicit example of the negativity that had been holding back Ness’s overall mental maturation.
But afterwards the player WAS meant to finally be able to relate to Pokey as a ‘videogamer’ during the final battle; and in a twisted way his no-holds-barred sociopathy became understandable given the ‘unreal’ context of the scenario, with his rival being in a completely dehumanized form and their mecha-battle taking place in a time period devoid of any other life. Basically an ideal situation for him to abandon any sense of real-world consequences and just vent his built-up frustrations by making the most of the opportunity and compensate for the inferiority complex he developed by growing up next to someone like Ness. So I wonder if the novel will be gradually exploring any similar ways of challenging the reader’s preconceptions by retaining that sort of subtext.
Whew, glad the translator likes the comments. Awesome work being done here. Can’t wait to hear more about Jeff’s application in the plot…actually, he seems to be a favorite among most female writery types. I personally was fascinated by the part of the game where you played only him– he dropped everything and went running when Paula and Ness called, or so it seemed. And once he got there I was totally won over by his “shy and kinda reckless” line.
I…actually haven’t gotten to Magicant in the game yet, although I’ve been spoilered horribly about the events in EarthBound way before I even started to play. Still, that’s an interesting take that the commenter Giovanni has on Pokey’s character; that’s a character whose characterization so far has been head-scratching for me, since Giygas the universal horror gets people feeling sorry for him and Pokey the next-door neighbor gets…disturbing fanart, and not even until after the next game like a decade later. Technically all characters in a story are meta devices, but I can see how he’d count as one especially.
Anyways, great translation work!!