All Comments on 'Elements'

When the story was edited to correct a few typos, it was resubmitted as a single post instead of by chapters.

I am confsed didn't this get publshed before?

Phenomenal, can’t wait for your Brandt saga to continue!

bit disjointed but a good read

Wow, another amazing BobbyBrandt story! Thanks you so much! 5/5 Can't wait for more!

Far better as a single submission rather than separate chapters. Another great story of the family. Keep them coming.

Wow. What a story.

Another awesome story, well done!!!

I gave it 5☆ Even though the last 2 pages fucked up the story. There always has been climate change. Just another way to enslave the populace. The day I die the world will cease to exist.

Very good story. I sincerely hope you can produce more great stories.

I really enjoyed the scientific detective story at the heart of Elements. The mutant archaea, the Gaia Hypothesis, and especially the way the mystery was solved through the collaboration of an inter-disciplinary group of experts self-assembled through happenstance. No individual had all the insights to solve the problem, but each contributed parts of the puzzle. Excellent (and realistic)! I’m not close enough to those areas of science to judge whether the science is possible, but it sure looks plausible to me. Of course it’s unlikely, but that’s how evolution works, and it’s how good stories are plotted.

Another bit I really liked is the nonviolent diplomatic jiu jitsu applied to India and their Prime Minister at the very end. I would have liked to see that developed further. More on how the idea was inspired, the objections and refinements, and how the leverage actually worked out in practice. It advances one of your signature themes: instead of grabbing public credit, focus on accomplishing your actual goal and use the credit as a tool. You could salvage some space for this by omitting the car-jacking scenario, which didn’t really contribute to anything important to the story.

I understood the role of the scenario when Bobby swept away the credit-hungry former head of the task force. But the nurse in charge of the ER has a tough job, and needs to shut down self-important blow-hards who get in the way of the ER saving lives. Given the information she has, how is she supposed to tell the difference between Cile (on the side of the angels) and some self-important Karen demanding special treatment? How about demonstrating how Cile (even in a panic over Jules) can clarify the situation with calm and courtesy, rather than pulling in the Secret Service?

You’ve taken some noticeable steps away from making everyone a Mary Sue. At least Huma and Didi have reasonable insecurities that they struggle with and surmount in the course of the plot. I thought it was unnecessary and distracting to suddenly reveal that Huma is very wealthy in her own right. Let her and the group deal with the tension of friends in very different economic circumstances. How about adding a Good Will Hunting character to the group? Super-brilliant in his own area, but with a chip on his shoulder from the stress of his working-class background. Still, Cile and Bobby are world-class Mary Sues. (Of course they are! They are world-class everything!)

I do have a grammatical nit to pick about compound phrases. Every now and then you write something like, “Her and me went home”, when it should be “She and I went home”. Check the sound of replacing the compound phrase “her and me” with the individual parts: “Her went home” is obviously wrong; it should be “She went home”. I guess you notice this when it’s a free-standing sentence, but it’s easier to miss when it’s an embedded clause, like “They saw when her and me went home.” (Should be “They saw when she and I went home.”) Every time I see that, it’s like fingernails on the blackboard. (I made up the above example, rather than searching for an actual one, but there are plenty of them.) You’ll be happier once you can avoid these.

Anyway, nice work.