E.L.F

[Weaver]

Well, I'd love to hear a more detailed response than "I'm not sure about all your proposed changes."

And they're not proposed. They've been written and have been written for about a week now :D

Super strength. - Just the strength or all the enhancments? It was really the "one in a billion" that felt wrong here. Such an event is so rare it could not have ever happened before, so how could anyone know the probability of something like that happening and then feel compelled to mention it? Better that the changes are an unexpected surprise that is explain by the nanos.

Sparrow - Only if you replace her with something better!

Metch. - Fair enough she is not vital, 'tho she could appear in a sequel.

Ambassador Jorquin - The puppet bad guy, you need him or someone like him in that role.

The lack of sex - Depends on your intended audience, I think the constant suspense and tension is part of the charm.

Jack's death - fair enough

Udo's death - fair enough

The Forget - Only really effects Anna and Metch.

The following has been added:

Edward De-Poupilon Strugatsky the Fourth. Ed for short. - So long as this character does not dilute Pix's.

Jives - ?

The Slayer - Beefed or cut out, it had to be one or the other.

An ending that makes f<bleep>ing sense. - I liked the ending

Sex - See above

Hover Rolls Royce - There needs to be a good reason for using this name, one that goes beyond satirical reference.

More detail about the Yetel, the Tettclickclick, the Arachnos and pretty much everyone else. - This going into a novel, not a bad thing, but be careful you do not stretch the timeline to breaking point.

Hir being even more of an evil bastard. - Yes he was coming over a bit as a school caretaker, albeit a perverted psychotic school caretaker.

The fact that Hir and Udo are brothers (so that's why they share the attraction to human females) - good!

Ed being Anna and Udo's adoptive daughter. (WTF?) - you said it.

Gun battles. More gun battles. - ok

Wacky foreshadowing through use of the Terminator. - err ok

More Serenity references. - will be lost on me and wont impress publishers.

The Tettclickclick hat gun. - sound cool, so long as it not there just to be cool.

A flame thrower. - ok

Anna's revolver, which is modeled off of Hellboy's gun, which is modeled off of the Raging Bull. Except mine fires maaagical bullets. - If Anna is no longer Sparrow's child, (which would be a shame) she does need another purpose, fulfilled with gadgety I see.

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It does remind me of Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines, no bad thing. Sometimes your phrasiology seems odd but that might be me and not you and are a few spellings and typos left in the first version.

[Zoombie]

Yeah, I knew that. What I need is descriptions. What does Hir look like, what do Ping and Jimmy look like? (And I'm talking kinda detailed here. What'll they be wearing, what hairstyle do they have, that sort of thing. And a rough guide on Hir's proportions would help)

Ping? Who the hell is Ping?

Heh, I know, I'm just joshing you.

Really, I never thought about what they wear...until now.


Jimmy wears a rather ratty leatherish jacket, jeans and steel tipped boots. He wears gloves when trash-crawling. He also has a cap. He's an average teenager mostly, with dark hair and the faintest hint of a mustache that he keeps shaving off.

Pix has pink hair, pink eyes, and two rabbit ear antenna's, like on an old T.V. She is a pretty teenager, with a black shirt emblazoned with the caricature of her favorite (and entirely fictional) R and B singer, Jamona, who looks exactly how he sounds like. She also wears jeans, but not boots. Her shoes are more stylish.

Hir is a nine foot tall (three meter), three eyed space lizard. With a long muzzle, lots of sharp teeth, and a green tint to his scales. He's got four fingers and one thumb, but the fingers are long and tipped with very sharp claws. He's also got a stubby tail. In terms of wearing things, he's got a harness with two shredder pistols, a lot of grenades, ammo, a few knives and a medical pack...add a few more guns too. He's strapped to the hilt!


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And, to answer Weaver:


The Super Strength and the enhancements are NO LONGER THERE. Jimmy remains a ordinarily extraordinary boy for the entire book. However, he does have a knack for firearms that he discovers when Anna forces him to practice a bit. The irony being that Jimmy hates guns and he only fires the gun once. By accident. When Pix walks around the corner.

Sparrow has been replaced, in a way, with the Slayer. Harbinger has subtly changed. It is still a warship, right...but it's a warship without a controller. The Slayer is a symptom of this, as the Slayer had originally been designed to be a warrior in ship to ship combat, but is now completely at a loss without a leader and has gone completely INSANE!

Metch...well...away with her.

Jorquin is actually still in here, though he is not really refereed to by name. It's becuase I don't cut back and forth between Jimmy and Pix anymore, for favor of tightening the dialog.

Ah, the sex. Don't worry, there is still build up and tension and all that jazz. Lots of it. Even more, actually. Remember, this version os 29,000 words longer than the original. In terms of pages, it went from 159 pages to 221. That's enough tension for you, right? Also it's not explicit sex. In fact, it's mostly...grah, you have to read it to get it.

Jack is much more sympathetic now. And he looks cooler, acts cooler and has a really neat scale model of the earth. Generally plays up the historian bit more.

The Forget doesn't really make sense if you think about it. So...forget it!

Ed. How can Ed dilute Pix's character? That's just silly. She's comical, and useful in terms of hacking and such. Very useful in terms of hacking.

Jives is Jack's assistant and one of the minor bad guys that gets splashed by Jack after some masterful trickery.

The ending this time is better, believe me. It has a hair raising chase through the Planet Maw, with guns firing and things blowing up. And then Pix kills Hir with a line that I couldn't come up with the first time around. "End of Line, Hir." Splat, squish, whiiir squalch!

Hir...well...yeah, he's much eviler now.

I should have said "More Serenity references that are going to tickle those that get it and not perturb those that don't. So if you don't get it, you won't notice it. But you should get it, because Serenity is an awesome movies)

Well, the book always struck me as being vaguely Terminator like, what with Hir chasing them, and being relentless and hard to kill. So I decided to slide in the scene wherein Jimmy, Pix and Jimmy's mom watch the Terminator (though it is never refereed to by name). And then the book subtly calls back to it later...believe me, it works.

The Tettclickclick hat gun is there for a joke and to be cool. Because Pix is a terrible shot. And it leands itself to the line, "Stop thinking indiscriminately! You'll kill us all!"

Anna has a point. A HUGE point. She saves Jimmy and Pix countless times, is a guide in general, provides some humor, and is just...cool.

And this is not the final version, not by any means. I still need to beat it a lot till it's really good.