Starmen.Net

So I’m just absentmindedly browsing old topics and come across the thread Why do people give Paula the last name of Jones? from 2015 in which users chat about how Paula from EB is given the surname “Jones” in the Japanese game but no reference to this is made in the American localization, and mention how “odd” that its. With each response I keep anticipating someone is going to point out the obvious….

…and then I reach the end, and it turns out no one ever did. To these users it would seem that EB never bringing up Paula’s last name of Jones would forever remain a big inexplicable mystery.

I just wanted to scream “Paula Jones is a woman who accused Bill Clinton of sexually harassing her and she was all over the news and tabloids in the US when Earthbound was released and so even if it was a coincidence it makes perfect sense why they would not want their child protagonist named ‘Paula Jones’!!!”

I figure this kind of thing happens pretty regularly so I figured we could have a spot to share when it happens. Maybe it’ll be cathartic?

Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not saying the folks in the thread were dumb or anything, it was just driving me nuts not being able to jump into the discussion.

Ffish:

Paula’s last name is Polestar and i will punch anyone who says otherwise.

“I like paula” THEIR NAME IS TWOSON

While trying to find an actual Paula car like the thanos one, I came across this thing

Ffish:

Paula’s last name is Polestar and i will punch anyone who says otherwise.

Will you punch the Nintendo Official Guidebook?.

The Nintendo Official Guidebook states her name is Pola Jones (ポーラ・ジョーンズ) and that she is 11-years-old. Her father’s name is Paul Jones (ポール・ジョーンズ), and they live in Polestar Pre-school (ポーラスター幼稚園).

It’s like frickin’,,, Ness Burger, I think it was? That was from the Novel. If the Novel uses Polestar as a last name, does that make it canon?

Hope this doesn’t cause an argument! (Now I’m waiting to get punched.)

the mad man has done it

Edit: So I felt saucy and made a really stupid edit in like two seconds of Paula in da Polestar. Who let her drive? She’s too young to have a license!

Cursed? More like blessed.

Regarding the novel, it does not seem to use Polestar or Jones. Though the novel would not be canon anyway, especially considering its extreme divergence from the source material (to the point of being an entirely different story) and the very, uh… weird route it takes with the entire Porky-Giygas relation…

I believe the MOTHER 2 Manga (Ness’s Adventure) illustrated by Benimaru Itoh uses Jones, but that also takes extreme divergence from canon, so as to again essentially be a completely different story with characters having the same names (example: Pokey is a 100% nice kid who never does mean things, does not even do Giygas's bidding at any point in the story, and willingly asks Ness to kill him alongside Giygas because Giygas, who is apparently perfectly rational, is using his memories for psychological warfare against the heroes).

“Jones” consistently appears in manuals and extracanonical material. I do not think it was actually mentioned in the games, however, even in the Japanese version? However, we know unused text refers to Paula’s father as “Paul Jones”.

As for where the “Polestar” name came from, I am not sure. Neither the Japanese nor the English version refers to her as such. I think it was probably just made up by fans.

So “Polestar” seems to be fanmade, “Jones” seems to be present in extracanonical sources including unused text but never actually made canon, and that leaves her surname as technically being ambiguous and up to the player’s interpretation.

Polestar is named because it sounds, and in Kanji, reads similarily to Polestar. Fun fact.

Ffish:

Re: Polestar, it’s literally the name of the preschool her family runs out of their home, and it’s not a stretch to think they named it after themselves. It’s not a stretch at all.

Also the carsona things is giving me the WORST flashbacks to a certain… problematic forum member many years ago.

I also agree that her name is Polestar, but most preschools near where I live have names like “the Gift of Love” “Shake Rattle and Roll” and “Treasure Island”, none of which are people’s surnames that I’m aware of.

Xedic Zyvis:

Polestar = Polestar? Yes.

I meant Paula. I’m sorry, I’m unable to think clearly at the moment.

ALL the fan fests.

I used to always come browse during the seasons and want to make something but my anxiety and fear of failing stopped me from writing.

Getting to be around and contribute to those are some of my happiest moments from the last couple of years.

RedShadow13:

i miss when there were hidden forums

According to legend, there are still some hidden forums locked deep within in the forumvaults and are powered by geo-thermal energy.

The Bat Fax:

Dead Letter Records board.

what were these?

It was one of the secret boards on the old forum. You could find a bunch of them by just changing the number after forum;f= in the URL. That particular board was unarchived though and is just blank, though I assume it once served as the message board on the Dead Letter Records site that Reid designed way back.

This thread is great.

I want it to last forever.

Great. Now we’ll have nowhere to “scratch that bump itch, nawmean”.

I just want to be directed towards any threads or links to all the EB game hacks & easter eggs, but I feel the thread will get deleted or moved to a place where there are visitors once per 5 years.

The Rules

Necrobumping is not allowed, do not post in a thread that hasn’t been posted in for over a month! This rule is flexible based on the board, so check specific board rules for more information.

That’s verbatim from the rules, but I’ve seen this rule bent before.

The way I thought about it, was that a new topic automatically sparks more interest than merely a comment on an old topic. Just by following the forum for a few years, sometimes I get annoyed when I have to open a topic I’ve already read, just to read one comment. I would say, when in doubt, please post a new topic with diligence, for the sake of creating new content. If someone absolutely wants to include content from an old topic, the interesting way to do it is to put a reference to the old topic, right there in a new topic.

On the other hand, hey I don’t write the rules and I haven’t ever reported anyone for posting a comment to an old topic. The reason being that I don’t believe I’ve ever observed anything completely egregious on this forum, in terms of posting a comment on an old topic

p.s. “Sometimes I get annoyed” is an understatement. It’s more like a feeling of total let-down when I gradually realize that a great new remark is just a comment on an old topic and no one will join the discussion because 95% of readers feel like they have nothing substantial they can add to a topic that everyone already developed several years ago

Human beings are failing the Turing Test at exponentially increasing rates these days

Welp, guess Descartes was right all along.

PoliceN64x:

Ffish:

Welp, guess Descartes was right all along.

I stink, therefore I am.

Technically an equally valid statement to the original.