Subject: [FFML] Re: [fanfic][Moldiver Anime][2nd Draft] War-chapter 1
From: Kyhdin@aol.com
Date: 4/27/2002, 12:39 AM
To: Bert.Miller@unisys.com, ffml@anifics.com



Snipped here and there...assume all grammer and spelling comments were used.

In a message dated 4/26/02 5:00:37 PM, Bert.Miller@unisys.com writes:

Interesting...

Interesting how? As in curiously interesting or "May you live in Interesting 
Times" interesting? Either way, I'm not done yet.

This revision is, IMO, much improved over the
first in showing us more of how Mirai's
character has changed.

It'll change a lot more.

And this seems shorter than the first version,
meatier; it gets going faster, it seems.

I cut out or shortened some of the exposition. Dark Comedy seems to be my 
niche when it comes to writing.

OTOH, some of what I felt were shortcomings
in the original are still present.

I would point out that some of what you call short comings are the deliberate 
witholding of information for various plot reasons. If it helps, most of what 
happens in the first chapter is setup and foreshadowing. And since I follow 
the JMS school of story arcs, nothing in chapter one will make sense until lat
er. :)

For those curious, Chapter 2 is alive, well, and 
being written at a snail's pace. 

Despite how you might understandably react to
my comments, I _AM_ interested in seeing more.
Like with your "The Princess and the Pirate",
you show a vigorish ability to come up with
very powerful, interesting stories.

Coming up with them isn't the problem, ::Looks at chapter 2 of "No Going 
back":: actually writing the damn things is.

"The Moldiver Mark Two? You made another?"

"Yeah. What? I thought you'd be pleased."

"Well duh. Thank you, big brother."

"You're welcome. Um...Mirai, are you sure you want to do this?"

"Are you kidding? This is gonna be great!"



Faster start than I remember of the original.

A bit funnier too.

Roughly about three months after the launch of the Sakigake, 
Machinegal's Superdolls had attacked an office building.

After systematically killing each and every person inside,
they had then leveled it before erecting a banner 
which ordered Tokyo to hail Emperor Machinegal.

Explains Mirai's later comment about Machinegal as "one of
the most evil persons" in a way the first draft didn't.

Are you ever planning on explaining why Machinegal
changed so dramatically, btw?

He got an offer he couldn't resist.

Also might be an effective addition if somebody Mirai knew,
say Mao (if you're not planning to use her), was one of
the people killed.

I have a plot twist in mind for Mao.

"I swear, if one more fat woman puts on a spandex costume 
and tries to help or hinder me..." Mirai replied

Heh.

::Grin:: Mirai has a very dim view of ametures. Y'know, I've always found it 
amusing how new heros ignore the advice of the more senior heros only to turn 
around and say the same things when they run into new heros.

For a moment, just a moment, the temptation to use the 
mol-unit and just take what she wanted reared its head.
Her hands began shaking and moved to her pocket when she
had another vision, this one of a little girl whom she had 
saved from being crushed from debris some months back. The 
kid's face was one of wide-eyed adoration

Nice touch here, I thought.

Well, what would you do if you had unlimited power. Look at the suit. It can 
fly, can protect the wearer even in the heart of the sun, and has unlimited 
strength. In theory, Mirai could alter the course of the moon. Not succumbing 
to the temptations of that kind of power says something about her inner 
strength.

importantly, her soulmate.

Something about this line just made me flinch, not sure
why.  Maybe that it seems presumptuous of Mirai?  She
doesn't really know that much about Misaki's feelings.

She knows he loves her, he said as much during the launch. Plus, calling him 
her soulmate seems like Miraish thing to do.

Mirai stared at him blankly and Hiroshi sighed. Mirai
was very bright, but she had no aptitude for technology.
Most things silicon were beyond her grasp 
and anything more complicated then algebra made her eyes 
glaze over.

Well, it's your fic, and I know I commented on this in
the first draft, but I really don't see why you want to
make of point of this in your characterization of Mirai.
My interpretation of the OAVs is that she's genius-level
in the sense of "top 2% of the population" or better,
hough admittedly not in a class with either brother (who
may be the top 2 in the world).

Don't you think Mirai would be a more interesting
character if she's at least competent in technology?

Hmm. Okay, I know what I can do. It's really less of a grasp of technology 
and more of a lack of interest combined with feelings of inadquecy. As 
brillant as she is, she's surrounded by geniuses. Sort of like Penny Robinson 
was in the Lost In Space remake.

"Huh? Oh...er...yes, um, you can only leave the suite on for 

suit

No, suite. He's reffering to the ECM. I'll clean that up a bit.

Gazing daily into the dark shadows of human behavior had, 
psychologically speaking, altered Mirai in ways that Hiroshi
didn't want to think about.

While good in one way, this is a "tell" rather than a "show".
For "show", you've given us one instance of a Machinegal
atrocity, and multiple allusions to actually-rather-amusing
situations (fat ladies in spandex).

ArbyFish: The beach syndrome is wot it is. 'orrible ting.

The paragraph above suggests, to me, that maybe you want
to not confine Moldiver to Tokyo.  Calming food riots in
Bangladesh, stopping wars in sub-Saharan Africa, etc, might
be a much more effective way to show us where this Mirai
is coming from.  (Rich merchants hordeing food during a
famine?  Imagine what she might see people do if she were
in Bangladesh when global warming submerged the entire
country.)

An intriguing thought, and certainly something to go into later. But not 
right now.

their mother had packed the young genius off to M.I.T.'
youth scientists program, an international effort to find
and develop the talent of young Technologists.

Strikes me as unnecessary; Nozomu is bright enough to get
regular entry into MIT even at his age.

Perhaps. But go re-read that part again. There's a bit (a tiny bit) of 
foreshadowing there.

If you really want to embitter Mirai and not use Nozomu,
however, how about having Nozomu also go crazy, commit an
atrocity as Moldiver III, and have Mirai forced to kill him
in order to stop him?  (I didn't think of this last time,
as you weren't making such an obvious effort to give us
an embittered Mirai.)

Oh, I really wish I could say something about the story here, I really do...

"How is he?" Mirai asked. 

"Hard to say," Hiroshi said. "It was a short note. Sounds 
ike they're keeping him pretty busy."

In other words, he's busy building an interstellar
spaceship during his spare time...

Heh heh heh

ago. Her gaze fell on her clock. It had been only ten
minutes ago. 'I'll kill him,' she thought. 'Where's my
bokken?'

Nice touch, I thought.

Commandment 11 (To Paraphrase one of my GF's AIM away messages): Let Mirai 
sleep or face her wrathness. The scary part is, she means it.

All we know at this point is that message contains 
audio and video elements and is on the same hyper-
wavelength radio frequency used to communicate with
the Sakigake during the launch sequence."

Okay, this tells us that the message came in faster
than light, which (if memory serves) draft 1 did not
do at this point.  Good.

Or at least not as clearly.

"This is Pilot Kenchi Misaki of the Dimension Jump
Project >SZZZZZKK< ontact, repeat, First Contact
FSHHHHKKKK< Heavy Damage. I-" There was the 
sound of an explosion and a tortured, animalistic howl. 
">PSHHHHNNNKT< gake completly destroyed >RRRSKKKK<
requesting assistance.  >FSHHHHKKKK< Moldiver 
SKZZZZNIKT< " There was another explosion and the
sound of someone shouting in an unknown language. The
picture vanished to be replaced by the newscaster,
her face completly pale. "I'm...I'm told that the 
message repeats after that...second explosion.

To repeat my comments from draft one:  this is not
enough information for your characters to come to
the conclusions they do.  All we can reasonably
deduce from this is that Misaki met some intelligent
aliens ("First Contact") and that the Sakigake was
destroyed.  We don't know if it was by accident or
malicious.  We can surmise that Misaki was requesting
assistance from Moldiver, but can't be completely
certain that that was his intent.

Which leads to certain other actions.

All over the world, most people were in a state of
shock, prompting one journalist to note the similarity
to nearly fifty years ago when terrorists had flown
two jetliners into the World Trade Center in New 
York, and a third into the Pentagon, killing thousands
of people. For several days afterwards, people, both
back then, and now, had only gone through the 
motions of their daily business as they tried to cope.

Repeating my earlier comment, I just don't find it
believable that a journalist in 2048 would make this
particular comparison.  (Obviously you do.)

To my mind, finding definitive proof that we are not alone in the universe 
would generate similar shock. Then when people recover, that's when the flame 
wars start.

the transmission came from the star Altais, a star of
medium brightness a hundred point twenty-three 
light years from Earth

Good; a concrete distance.  I think this was missing the
first time.  Presumably our scientists know how fast
"hyperwave" travels, so they know how long ago the
transmission was sent.  So why don't you tell us?

What would be the point? Besides, who said it was hyperwave? I'll say this. 
It's not.

However, they had discovered a series of mathematical
symbols encoded directly into the transmission itself.
When decoded, the symbols spelled out a date, time and
the coordinates for the crossover point where Pluto crossed 
Neptune's orbit to once more become the outermost planet.
The date was for two months after the arrival of the
transmission.

Still don't understand why you couldn't have simply
had an obviously-alive Misaki give this rendezvous (and
maybe explain that the aliens he met are at war...)

Who said he didn't? Much of the message is garbled.

As it is, it's not even clear why humanity would try
o meet this rendezvous.  What do the decision-makers
know that you haven't told us, that leads them to their
decision(s) below?

A better question would be: why was the transmission announced to the public 
in the first place?

"Think, Mirai," Hiroshi said. "You gave Misaki a 
mol-unit. An extremely powerful mol-unit and he
encountered something that made him call 
home for help."

From, as far as they know, Moldiver.  The most likely
conclusion is that Misaki lost the unit or ran out
of power.  Granted, Hiroshi is being prudent here, but
both of them should consider it to be ONLY prudence,
not a necessity.

True.

pretty. "If you would excuse me, I'm not feeling very well 
all of a sudden."

"Yes, you are a bit pale," Amagi said, peering at her. 

"Here." he fumbled in  his pocket and came up with a small package. "Take 
these."

"Thank you," Mirai said. "I should go get some water." and 
she ran off.

Didn't understand the point of this scene.  Presumably
Amagi, knowing that Mirai is Moldiver, is slipping her
a tracking device disguised as a pill?  Or just poison?
Otherwise, why have this scene at all?

But he doesn't. As far as he's concerned, he's just helping out the sister of 
one of his most prized pupils. It's regular medicine, nothing more. Again, 
the differences between Amagi and Machinegal are huge.

and then back down at the communicator. "You might as well 
get rid of the Christopher while you're at it. I doubt
our friend the Chief wants to take the chance of anyone
getting back with a warning about the Prides." 

Ah, another change from draft one.  So Amagi is in with
the enemy?  Might explain how he turned into a sociopath,
too.  And hints as to the enemy:  Kzinti would be my
guess, based on this (though it would have to be a much
powered-up Kzinti).

Nope. My own creation. Never heard of the Kzinti, actually.

some sort of gun and pointed it at Moldiver. She was tall
and slender, dark-skinned and blonde haired. An eye patch
covered her right eye and her face was expressionless. The
other was seated in some sort of hovering chair, 
her teal-green hair braided and falling over one shoulder.

As before, having Mihoshi and Kiyone change this much
is possibly the best hook in your story.  Nice.

Wait till you find out how. That's chapter 2.

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