I have to say that this has to be the longest and perhaps the craziest story I've ever read. But I do like it. It's kept me entertained for several days, even though it did give me a slight headache a time or two. Now that I've given up a great deal of my spare time to read this, I do hope that you plan on finishing it. It would be a shame and a waste for you to give up on it now, after coming so far with it. Please continue.

I read the opening chapter of your work and determined it was not something I would enjoy reading further. I am writing this review to tell you why, in the hopes that you will take this criticism to heart and use it to enhance your work - either editing what you've already got or at least helping to make better whatever you write in the future. If you desire to have this work widely read, editing this first chapter (the opening) is the most important thing to do. People will try your opening chapter, and if it does not grab them they will go read something else.

The following paragraph will intentionally use some of your writing's flaws to hopefully illustrate their problems. It's easier to see in another's writings than one's own.

The foremost problem that you possess is that you constant attempt to use an extremely large vocabulary and esoteric diction at the expense of clarity, linguistic flow, rhythm, and all those other major tenets of the language that readers desire from their written objets d'art. Francis Bacon once said "There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind." In your case, these obstructions arise at every other sentence, a rate which is wholly intolerable to the reader. A more colloquial tone might not allow one to pack the sentences with evidence of one's scholarship and erudition, but will allow the average reader the ability to view your work bereft of dictionary, thesaurus, and complete encyclopedia. Granted, on the Information Superhighway, such resources are no further than a single motion of one's mouse (or other input device) away, but most readers, for reasons obviously not occluded to astute intellects, prefer to consume media that is rather easier and better written, and being on the aforementioned Superhighway they have access to the complete works of Shakespeare and dozens of other long-dead master wordsmiths. The action of the plot, such as it is, is so densely surrounded by verbiage as to render reading akin to a long forced march over hundreds of miles of broken terrain rather than a pleasant afternoon stroll in a shaded autumn wood. Finally, such sentences of baroque structure as this paragraph and your work contain require a great deal of skill to implement correctly without flaws or imperfections - much as a master jeweller is required for the most intricate lapidary - and if these details are not dealt with perfectly, your spelling and grammar will cause you to accidentally the whole fanfic.

TL;DR version of that paragraph:

-the sentence structure is way too ornate.

-vocabulary is chosen to demonstrate the author's vocabulary rather than to best convey the action of the story, portray characters, etc.

-the whole thing is extremely long and stretched out for the amount of stuff that actually happens in the plot.

-grammar and so forth is even more important if you are writing excessively ornate styles than it is normally, because parsing the intended meaning becomes more difficult as a function of both errors and complexity of structure.

-your work is harder to read than unannotated Shakespeare; you really need someone to edit it.

I mean, for an example, lets pull apart the Caveats paragraph - it's typical of your writing, and it is a good example really early on of your stylistic flaws.

"Caveats: Okay...if you dare yourself to read this fanfic, you will be in for a wild ride. It's lengthy, it's imaginative and drama, it's intense, it's challenging, it's all over the board, and it is written by a published writer. The reading level and content is designated at the intended literary level of a novel. This OMG adaptation deals throughout with real-life issues: drug addiction and recovery; sexual and physical abuse; mental illness challenges; and spiritual and societal alienation. Thus, the characters you know and love from OMG will be redirected into roles and situations far removed from continuity. However, a strong fidelity to continuity is interwoven in the work. The philosophy of this story approximates Dostoyevsky: one most see the dark before treasuring the light. There are occasional forays into the 'lemon' zone, but not for the sake of gratuitous sensuality but more for illustrative fan service and realism. There is an economy of mild swearing throughout."

if you dare yourself to read this fanfic, could be if you dare to read this fanfic and be shorter and punchier

It's lengthy, it's imaginative and drama, this doesn't flow well at all, the wrong word was used, it should be dramatic rather than drama

it's intense, it's challenging, it's all over the board, and it is written by a published writer. -inconsistent use of it's and it is (awkward). Published author isn't a terribly prestigious title, without knowing what exactly you've published.

The reading level and content is designated at the intended literary level of a novel. - Could have been something like - it's written in the style of a novel (also, if one ignores outliers like Ulysses and Amanda McKittrick Ros's body of work, this whole sentence is basically a big fat lie). "I have written this fanfic as I would a novel", would be a sentence which would actually get you out of passive voice(!), and is better in a lot of ways.

Thus, the characters you know and love from OMG will be redirected into roles and situations far removed from continuity. However, a strong fidelity to continuity is interwoven in the work. - This is an example of one of those wonderful obstructions from above - Either it's similar to canon or not, the first clause says it won't be then the second suggests it will be.

The philosophy of this story approximates Dostoyevsky: one most see the dark before treasuring the light. There are occasional forays into the 'lemon' zone, but not for the sake of gratuitous sensuality but more for illustrative fan service and realism. - A gratuitous literary reference, written again in passive voice rather than active. The second sentence then suggests there will be lemon content not for gratuitous reasons but for fan service (which is to say not gratuitously but gratuitously...? Another wonderful obstruction.)

There is an economy of mild swearing throughout. - this sentence is actually reasonable, sort of, as much as I want to make jokes about the buying and selling of swearing by all of the characters. A passive voice sentence, again, though!

TL;DR version of this review: TL;DR.

You've... You've got the one of the longest stories in the whole website of . It's really amazing how you could manage to write so much. Congratulations, my dear.

This was really hard to read. You're trying to come off as smart by keeping a thesaurus nearby, but anyone can see through that. The smartest thing to do is write your story in plain English instead of looking for synonyms.

Well, here it is in 2012. I started reading this way back in 03. Man there were some sleepless nights I tell you! I love this story, really truly love it. This work has touched me in ways that I couldn't explain even if I understood them. I've drawn both comfort and strength as much as enjoyment from this story, it is truly a work of art. Even now, I go back and reread some of my favorite chapters and story arcs and it feels like visiting old friends. But it's been nearly two years since the last update. I don't know whats going on with you or your life Cevn, all I can do is hope that you wont abandon this. Please, I implore you, don't give up!

I love your story. I haven't finished this chapter completely, but since this is the only contact from fans, I just want to let you know your story had provided me almost 8 years of joy and made me happy. You always took AMG where no one else did. I heard on some other wiki site that you story had reached 200 chapters. Is that true? I tried checking your homepage but sadly it seems to be gone. You don't have nearly the reviews you deserve for such a great story, but you should have thousands, tens of thousands. If it isn't finished I hope you continue to update on ff dot net and try other places like spacebattles to let other people know this great story exists. I found great app fanfictiondownloader that lets me take all the chapters in Epub ebook form with table of contents linking and am now reading it on my new Christmas book nook. I hope your old site comes back, but if not, keep writing and updating.

Sincerely a huge fan.

ps an interesting counter story is the familiar of zero/prtotype crossover Unfamilar by cpl_facehugger. I think he is doing somewhat for dark what you do for light.

I refuse to accept this as a sci-fi genre. I understand drama but not sci-fi.

please change it accordingly.

As of now, I can't continue this anymore. Maybe I spent too much time reading it, and plowing through it, but the emotion driven story and lack of depth and character growth just drive me insane.

Of course there's character growth, but not the one that truly matter. I guess this is why it's 2 million words, and only 1/4 of the way there, nothing is even close to being concluded. I favorited it, but cannot keep on with this story anymore.

Sorry.

After this, I'm not sure I can go on reading it. I had to skip the last 6-8 chapters where they went into the past/future mainly because it was boring as hell.

Aspect such as no line break to determine different perspective break it for me, as well as feel like a lack of character growth.

Quite good. I'm anxious to read all of the chapters.

I think I already reviewed how long your story was but I just had to comment that your in

.org/wiki/List_of_longest_novels

as one of the authors of the longest story ever written.

I've really enjoy this fanfic throughout its myriad genre shifts and sometimes Epic (in the old sense) chapters. Looking back now the first chapter is a bit cliché'd and immature looking, but I suppose when your magnum opus spans over ten years, the earlier stuff won't look as polished.

Now I've no idea if you read these reviews Cevn, but if you do happen to see this, I invite you to check out your all new handcrafted TV Tropes page: /Main/TrialByTenderness

Cheers!

I cannot believe I have not written a review for this story yet. Although to be fair, I've written all of 10 reviews since I started reading FFs. This was the first fanfic I ever read, back in 2005. I believe it was up to Ch108 with a teaser where Keiichi was the god, and Belldandy was the girl getting the wish. At that time I thought it was the end of the story, with the teaser as a way of saying, the story continues well after the play (what the audience can see) ends. Course, once I saw there was more, I was tempted to read again, but I believe I have read the perfect ending, so I'd rather not spoil it.

At one point, I thought you had died, and sent you an email regarding that (pretty stupid, cuz if you had died, you wouldn't have emailed back), but I was happily surprised to hear back from you. Of course being the lazy student that I am, I never bothered to write back. Didn't exactly know what to say in response to your long reply, as anything I would write would feel inadequate and end up getting discarded.

Um..I'm rambling. Uh. Thank you for an amazing story. Your story is what sold FFnet to me (not literally (in case you get sued for gaining money from a story)).

..

Signing off now.

-D

awsome job with this story

This, by far, is the best non-Humor fanfiction that I have ever read. You have really captured the essence of love and its associated pains. All the canon characters are in character, which is more than I can say for most of the fics on this site.

My only complaint about this fic is its references to history...though that might be a good thing, as I am learning a lot from Wikipedia-ing names and concepts every chapter.

Keep up the good work!

If we take each novel to be 120 000 words, currently your story can be divided into 18 books. Very long but well written.