2 years, 8 months ago by Chewy , 3 Comments »
Time for another installment of fanart recruitment!
This next excerpt will be from Chapter Two, and rewind a bit to a previous blog post: Just Two Cops in Love.
Jim and Maggie, welcome to the MOTHER 2 novel illustrations. Let’s make this one count.
Behind the glass partition, a crowd of detectives was spitting while consulting one-another, practicing their quick-draws from the holsters beneath their overcoats, and snacking on cherry pie. Others were handling the zealous citizens who’d come to plea for the expulsion of wild dogs or the eradication of youth delinquency.
A group of policemen scuttled through the hallway and out the other door like a SWAT team, knocking some documents out from the arms of a passing female officer. She looked as though she were about to say something, but relented and threw her arms up in exasperation. Ness and Jim helped her with the fallen papers.
“Oh, thank you so much, Jim.” The woman adjusted her crooked glasses and, batting her eyelashes, gazed at Jim. “My goodness, is everyone on edge. I can’t concentrate on my favorite speed traps like this.”
“You’re so right, Maggie.” Jim, with a captivated expression, took her hand. “It’s terrible not being able to see your chalk lines. After all, they are the very best.”
“Tee hee. Well, the way you tear off tickets is so sexy and charming,” she said, girlishly.
“I hope we can set police traps together again soon.”
“Absolutely, honey <3. Let’s dish out those citations together.”
The next illustration for the novel will be the following:
Behind the glass partition, a crowd of detectives was spitting while consulting one-another, practicing their quick-draws from the holsters beneath their overcoats, and snacking on cherry pie. Others were handling the zealous citizens who’d come to plea for the expulsion of wild dogs or the eradication of youth delinquency.
A group of policemen scuttled through the hallway and out the other door like a SWAT team, knocking some documents out from the arms of a passing female officer.
3 years ago by LiarXAgerate , 4 Comments »
“He does look a little young to be one of the sharks.” Captain Strong crossed his arms, flexing his Super-Ultra-Mambo-Tango-Foxtrot Martial Arts-forged muscles, and glared at Ness. “But criminals are just getting younger and younger these days… hey. Kid. What’s the big idea, trying to force your way out of town? You one of Frank’s cronies?”
“No, that’s not it,” Ness said. “Frank is the leader of the gang members hiding out at the arcade now, right? I’ve never even met him.”
I’m still not quite used to seeing Ness talk—EarthBound has always seemed, to me, like the ultimate silent-protagonist game. But many a personal code of silence has broken down in the face of Super-Ultra-Mambo-Tango-Foxtrot Martial Arts. Chapter One ends with Ness ready to go out on a grand adventure to save the world, and Chapter Two begins… with a roadblock. Some of Kumi’s additions are as esoteric and odd as the game itself, but Chapter Two features one of the more practical Kumi-isms—the police station in Onett is as crowded and frantic as you’d expect a town under surreptitious alien attack to be:
Behind the glass partition, a crowd of detectives was spitting while consulting one-another, practicing their quick-draws from the holsters beneath their overcoats, and snacking on cherry pie. Others were handling the zealous citizens who’d come to plea for the expulsion of wild dogs or the eradication of youth delinquency.
All this commotion is a nuisance for Kumi’s two new characters, Officers Maggie and Jim, who’d really just rather make out with each other.
“You’re so right, Maggie.” Jim, with a captivated expression, took her hand.
“It’s terrible not being able to see your chalk lines. After all, nobody does it better.”
“Tee hee. Well, the way you tear off tickets is so sexy and charming,” she said, girlishly.
“I hope we can set speedtraps together again soon.”
“Absolutely, honey ♥. Let’s dish out those citations together.”
Those crazy kids. After the jump: Government corruption and the Sharks.
(more…)
3 years ago by LiarXAgerate , 4 Comments »
Liar: What do you think about chapter one? I’m sure in the course of attempting to translate it you’ve read it more than any other chapter in the book.
Chewy: Haha, that’s quite true. I actually had mixed feelings even by the time I finished chapter one. She seems to have a really strange writing style. I don’t exactly have a big collection of Japanese novels that I’ve read before, but this is the first time I’ve seen an entire book narrated in “masu” (polite) form.
Liar: What’s that mean for the Japanese-impaired? Or the actual English of the translation, I guess. Is she really apologetic about writing the whole thing, or just for intruding on the narration, or what?
Chewy: Well the norm for writing is what is usually referred to as the “plain form”, which is also the style people use when speaking casually. The fact that she’s using the polite form brings in this weird feeling of a first-person narrator more than just a story written in third person. The “narrator” is never given an identity or anything and doesn’t exist in the story, but there are still times in the book where she breaks that wall and interjects into the narrative itself. It’s kind of colloquially told.
Liar: The big reveal in chapter one—I don’t think this is much of a stretch—is probably that Ness’s dad is the owner-operator of a fast food chain that’s in hock to the Minches, and that his mom is an ex-supermodel (apparently all Western women are models or ex-models?) What did you think about all that?
Chewy: I thought it was pretty funny at first, but I’m around chapter three right now and, well, spoiler alert, all these Western women are apparently model-tier.
Liar: Wow. I’m not sure I’m ready for Hot Paula’s Mom.
Chewy: Well, to balance her out, apparently her dad looks like Abraham Lincoln? But I’m just getting ahead of myself here.
Liar: That makes Paula the Ultimate American Stereotype Chimera. One-half Abraham Lincoln, one-half blonde-haired, blue-eyed supermodel vapidness.
(more…)