Straight from the mouth of a bee with big eyebrows comes a tale of courage, friendship, and the kind of silliness that will have you rolling on the floor! Will Giygas prevail or will the world's last hope band together and strike this intergalactic foe down? It all rests...upon the Chosen Four!The Chosen Four is a fancomic based on the Nintendo video game EarthBound. It is posted at Starmen.net by Darrow and is currently over 600 pages. The comic can be found and read here or on Darrow's deviantART page here. Also, the forum thread where the comic is originally posted by the author is quite entertaining in its own right.
Anguished Declaration of Love: Subverted by Ness, who works up the courage after a while, but he then stutters and Paula loudly interrupts him and plays it straight.
Thunder and Storm. They only wanted to make people laugh, a desire that was twisted and warped by Giygas. They're also left alive, albeit heavily injured.
Arc Words: "If a man yells loud enough, he can do anything!"
Parodied later with, "If a man dances hard enough, he can disco anywhere!"
Battle Aura: Ness sometimes gets one of these. At least once, he triggers it just to scare monkeys. No, seriously.
Beware the Nice Ones: Paula. Learned the hard way by Pokey and the Jerkass delivery man in Threed, among others (including, of course, Giygas' minions).
Breaking the Fourth Wall: Heck, there's practically nofourth wall! One of the funniest examples of this is when Paula steals a baby picture of Ness from his second Your Sanctuary.
Ness: With the melody recorded I guess we should move on, then! It's a good thing the inner images only appear to me, though, otherwise... Hey! You're not supposed to see this! How did you even do that??
Paula: Why bother worrying about logic at this point of the story? Help me carry this home so I can hang it in my room!
Brick Joke: During the fight with the Trillionage Sprout, the senile boss calls Ness "Billy". We later find out Trillionage Sprout was actually mistaking Ness for Shroom!, whom he had a close father-son relationship with.
Paula: Those are MY cheeks! Those cheeks belong to ME!
Cool Down Hug: Ness gets lost in Dungeon Man and grows frustrated and angry to the point of he is bursting with psychic energy and he scares minions away with only glaring at them. Then his friends find him, Paula hugs him... and he suddenly feels completely cheered up. He even forgets what he was upset about.
Word Of God confirmed that is a hint of Giygas is trying influence him by fueling his negative emotions, but his friends are keeping him sane.
Crutch Character: Invoked by Paula's father, who claims to be of too high a level to keep things dramatic.
Curb-Stomp Battle: Once the whole team is brought back, the battle with the Plague Rat becomes this.
Cuteness Proximity: Paula in general. However, it still wasn't strong enough to stop her from level grinding on Foppies.
Dungeon Bypass: Jeff and his Bubble Monkey do this in the maze by leaping over the rock barriers.
Everything Trying to Kill You: A non-video game (sorta) example, but several enemies and bosses are harmless at first, with the Happy-Happy cult members helping Ness up after he lands in the village from a Territorial Oak explosion, or the Trillonage Sprout mistaking Ness for Billy. Unfortunately, as soon as Ness tells them who he is, they immediately turn hostile.
Expy: The comic justifies the similarities between EarthBound's Ness, Paula, and Jeff and MOTHER's Ninten, Ana, and Loid by having Giygas' mind so twisted and distorted, he mistakes the former three for the latter and takes his hatred of Ninten out on Ness.
Faux Horrific: The ghosts in the tunnel scare our heroes and the Runaway Five with ADVANCED CALCULUS and a COPY OFSUPERMAN 64! AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
Felony Misdemeanor: A mini-UFO in #72 successfully strikes Ness with a ray... giving him a cold.
Final Boss Preview: One appears in Moonside. For those familiar with Earthbound, you know by now what we're dealing with.
For Science!: Apple Kid's excuse for having a nuclear-powered doomsday microwave.
Heroic Sacrifice: Played with when Paula throws her teddy bear to divert Mondo Mole's attack; she'd been manipulating him off-panel to give it the illusion of sentience, so this part was played out as the bear sacrificing his "life" for hers.
Horrible Judge of Character: Monotoli describes Pokey like "such a nice boy, but a bit troubled". Seriously. It is not a wonder Pokey was able to exploit him.
Electra the maid as well, thinking Pokey to "be harsh at times, but is a kind, caring soul." Just because he gave her a potato sack and called it an "exotic dress."
Hot Blooded: Ness, while fighting the Dept. Store Spook. Also see the page quote.
Ness invoked this trope to achieve the PK Rocking attack.
Ignored Enemy: The worthless protoplasm was too worthless for Jeff to even notice
Large Ham: Out of ALL characters and enemies, the Worthless Protoplasm is, unexpectedly, one. Not that it makes him some good, but still...
Worthless Protoplasm: “Once upon a time, a lone worthless protoplasm looked upon his very soul and found what it means to become a master of supreme POWER! Power unlike any the world has seen before! Oh, yes, you will feel the burning hot fury that flows through my system, like a brewing cup of coffee too bitter for even the evilest of evil entities to sip upon!
Oh, may the furious nectar of life spring forth from this very body and pounce upon thee, rending body from soul! Never count your chickens before they’re hatched, otherwise said chicken will peck at your eyes, and this chicken has a beak that will show no mercy!
Shake, shake in fear of my many forms of martial arts, including the legendary Sleeping Monkey, Contemplating Giraffe!"
Love Bubbles: These appear when Paula kisses Ness.
Subverted by the Plague Rat, whose attempt at invoking this only serves to show how unsympathetic he is.
Mood Whiplash: Fourside is MADE of this. We go from the usual humorous plot development, to the minor Fanservice that is Venus, to a rather scary burst of Unstoppable Rage from the main character, to the freaking nightmare that is Moonside, to major revelations about Giygas, then crazy Hot Blooded antics, and finally talking monkeys again. Whew!
Mushroom Samba: A mushroom monster in #66 puts Ness in a musical version by placing an actual mushroom on his head (utilizing a song from the original Mother soundtrack, no less). It continues for another page even when the mushroom was removed!
Mythology Gag: The second time the above-mentioned Arc Words are said is when Ness first uses PSI Rockin'; the first "default" option for "Favorite Thing" in Mother 2 (which "Rockin'" replaced) is Kiai. Similarly, Ness remarks that the only way the pencil statue could be weirder is if it were an octopus.
Another of the "Don't Care" options for "Rockin'" is "Gifts". This gets a Take That in the form of Ness wondering who would name an attack "Gifts".
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ness's little outburst at the top of the Monotoli building is what eventually causes the events of MOTHER3.
Worthless Protoplasm: Prepare for a spanking most legendary!!
This is, in fact, a subversion, since while he was throwing dramatic speeches and one-liners around and being so hammy as possible, Paula and Jeff were ignoring him completely. They did not even notice he was there.
Spell My Name with an S: Darrow plays with the various examples of this trope from the games in his comics. For example when jokes are made in the comic related to Jeff's MOTHERcounterpart are made, the name is spelled Lloyd. But when Jeff and Ness encounter an illusion of Teddy in Moonside, he spells the name Loid. Also, the name Giegue (the spelling from Earthbound Zero) is used to describe the physically and mentally intact version of the antagonist, while Giygas (the spelling from EarthBound) is used to describe him after his body and mind broke apart.
That's No Moon: A variant. During the journey to Scaraba, a deafening rumble sounds when they are passing by an island and one of them wonders if it is the nearby volcano. Then Kraken emerges out of the sea and the captain stares at it with a Oh Crap expression and mutters "That's no volcano".
Unusual Weapon Mounting: The Clumsy Robot has a rocket (and bologna sandwich) launcher mounted in its butt.
Unwinnable: Threatened (to the point of nearly restarting the comic), but miraculously averted...in just the way it happens in-game. How Paula managed is an open question.
Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Giygas. He's introduced telling Master Belch to outright kill Ness and friends, while his face is clearly cracking apart, and he only gets much much, much worse from there.
What Beautiful Eyes: Paula suddenly gains these when she meets Ness in the Monotoli building.
You Are Already Dead: Subverted in a very -of course- funny way, doing a Fist of the North StarShout Out. Ness is lost inside Dungeon Man and getting angrier, more upset and more frustrated every second. A Gruffy Goat tries to harass him, and he replies telling "No. YOU listen. You are already dead", suddenly looking right like Kenshiro. It is subverted because Ness had not actually done anything -yet-, but the goat got so scared -wondering if he was dead and he was now a ghost- that he answered Ness' question.
You Shall Not Pass: Parodied. Paula's stuffed teddy bear regrets he not even got to yell "you shall not pass" while charging in heroically before committing Heroic Sacrifice.
by Darrow and is currently over 600 pages. The comic can be found and read here
0 reviews 
