Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 07:18:18 +1000 (EST)
   From: Brett Handy <darkwnd@sv.net.au>

   On Sun, 26 May 1996, Harold Ancell wrote:

   >    Date: Sun, 26 May 1996 19:07:49 -0400 (EDT)
   >    From: "Erik L. Schweitzer" <elschwei@mtu.edu>
   > 
   >    I think you wrapped it up very well.
   > 
   > Agreed.  SPOILERS BELOW; if you read this message before you read part
   > A of the ending, YOU'LL REGRET IT!
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   > (I'm going switch to addressing the author.) 
   > 
   > I really liked the foreshadowing in the first part, although I didn't
   > quite put it together in time.  I was really wondering what was going
   > to happen to you in this life or the next when some Valkyries looked
   > you up for portraying them as tarts....

   Well.... I guess I could have 'toned them down' a bit... but remember 
   Valkyries are suppose to 'take care of' those honoured warriors that make 
   it to Asgard... and somehow keeping a bunch of warriors happy would 
   probably take more than just polite conversation and the occasional 
   beer....

Oh, I wouldn't tone it down at all (in fact, I should have appended a
":-)" to the end of my comment.  And yes, you're right about the
"polite conversation..."; I guess I'm warped from my fondness for
Wagner's Ring Cycle....

   > Although you didn't intend it, I also thought something was wrong due
   > to the great condition Yggdrasil was in after the "Root Rot" had
   > attacked it; you could put something in the real Heaven part early on
   > about it being a bit messed up and Skuld's robots working overtime to
   > finish fixing things.  (And of course it would be beautiful by the
   > itme our hero comes to at the end).

   Ok.. well in my story.. Yggdrasil the Tree is seperate from Yggdrasil the 
   Computer - I guess it might have been an interesting thing to have 
   happen, but I wanted to keep them seperate (besides... if something 
   *actually* happened to the tree... it'd really stuff things up.. since 
   Yggdrasil 'supports' most of the different kingdoms (heaven, hell, etc, 
   etc) it'd make from some serious problems for me (the author) to 
   overcome....

Ah, good point; it would be reasonable for them to name their main
computer system Yggdrasil (a critical data structure in Multics Emacs
was named Yggdrasil (then again the author tends to write code in
around 6 languages, which is bad when a remote site tries to decipher
a "this can't happen" error message in Latin (true story!)...)).

You could always show just a little bit of blight on it....

   > I also would have expected Belldandy to have removed her limiter and
   > kicked some serious Demon posterior, but then again I'm a Bell-chan
   > fan and this is Brett's and Urd's story.

   Hmm... well Belldandy probably would have gotten upset if Keiichi had 
   been hurt.. he wasn't... but remember that Thor and Apollo are 1st-Calss 
   Gods too and they weren't holding back at all... 

I think she'd be rather upset as soon as she heard they were planning
on killing him too....  Without the limiter, she can accidently wipe
out a city if she's not careful (Hell must have some serious energy
dampers, or the gods must be weak there).

   > It was truly nice when Nilthar got to the "oh, shit!" part; he was too
   > clever by half....

   Yes... I've noticed that *most* villians seem to out-think themselves... 

In drama, at least.

   > A nit: while you don't say this, I got the impression Chia-Yao's
   > armour was just Kevlar (you ought to capitalize it, since it's a
   > Dupont trademark); modern body armour plates might include Kevlar in a
   > composite include ceramic, metal, etc., but Kevlar by itself is a
   > rather soft fiber/cloth, and asorbs kinetic energy by fiber
   > deformation.  Chia-Yao would definitely use lots of plates, probably
   > on top of a chain-mail/Kevlar underlayer (Kevlar by itself is bad at
   > stopping bladed weapons).

   OK... I didn't want to put in a whole discourse about body armour and the 
   different types, so I simplified it down a bit.. most people would 
   recoginse Kevlar as being part of Body armour??? well anyway I guess 
   his armour would be more like ceramic inserts/perhaps even a light 
   metalic substance... anyway... tell me this: would Kevlar burn??? 

Yep; I'd make it "smell of burned Kevar and ceramic" or metal.

   > I'd also expect on of the Security Daemons to be carrying a SAW or
   > the like small belt fed machine gun, or at least a battle rifle and
   > bayonet; a shotgun might be useful, but pistols in Hell would be ...
   > too sporting, I'd thing.

   And where would they CARRY a belt-fed machine gun???? Hmm???  I mean 
   pulling out a shotgun is quite reasonable.. but I didn't want to go 
   overboard....

How about in a briefcase?  There's a .223 (M-16 round, 5.56 NATO, I
think) version of the classic German ~ .30 machine gun (MG-41?) that
will fit (taken down) into a briefcase with 100 rounds.  Something
like that or a SAW (fits the same niche) with a folding stock and a
few 200+ round cannisters would fit under the cloak of a reasonablely
large man (deamon :-), and if you know you're going to storm Hell
you'll take something more powerful than a handgun or two.

You probably haven't had a chance to see it, but I think one of these
was featured in the first GunSmithCats OAV.

Except for special situations like close quarters house clearing,
handguns are like first aid kits; not what you'd take into a situation
if you knew about it in advance, but something you can have with you
for unanticipated events.

   > Anyway, it was very nice, although the side story was the best of the
   > lot; well worth the wait.

   Thankyou - I appreciate that...

You're welcome; the series is great, and the side story is something
very special (of course, for most of us, Dreamtime is truly exotic).

					- Harold