Thank you very much for reading, we're glad you enjoyed F&FW so far.  I'm
going ahead and making replies to both you and Brian Welch in the same
email as it seems you're replying to eachother as well.

It's important to note that when we originally plotted Faith and Free
Will two years ago, the american manga had not progressed to it's current
point, and we had no familiarity with the Japanese manga whatsoever.
Because some of the details had not been fleshed out, and because the
manga is constantly evolving, we had to make a few guesses on how things
work.  Given how deep we wanted to go into the meaning of being a
goddess, it was necessary for the sake of our plot to address some of
these questions on our own, as opposed to leaving them unanswered.

"Well, there is actually a kinda funny story behind that."

Would you like to know the real story behind Keiichi's parents? You
might want to rewrite this section if you knew what his parents were
really like. For example, Keiichi would NEVER refer to his father as
'dad'. He'd get whacked for it.

Yeah, as I understand it, this was brought in recently with the Japanese
manga.  I haven't actually read up to this point, so I would be
interested in a quick summary (or a volume or chapter so I can look it
up) if you could spare the time.  Plans for F&FW that we've worked out do
involve Keiichi's parents to some degree, and we've come up with vague
characterization concepts for them already.  I'd really like to stay as
consitant as reasonably possible with character portrayals and events in
the manga, but if something recently introduced directly conflicts with
our plot, we might have to adjust things as necessary.  In fact, since
some of the recent events in the manga disagree with with what has already
been written, we've decided that it might be better to live with a few
of these minor inconsistancies than scrap the entire story.

"the First Annual Nekomi Tech Nonstandard Motorized Vehicle
Invitational!"

That's such an original idea! You, know I just realized that I haven't
read too many AMG fics where racing was the focus.

Actually, as it was in Mirror, the racing is just a subplot.  The main
plot will become more evident as the story goes on.

"No, that wouldn't work." Megumi interjected.  "All the wheels are on
different pivots, so it'd be next to impossible steer it."

I believe it is possible. All the office chairs I know their wheels on
shafts. Adjust the height properly and you can put you legs on them and
steer by shifting your legs. Also, it should be possible to lock some of
the wheels in one orientation.

Ultimately, the motorized roller skates would be easier to do, and
probably quite a bit faster.  We threw in the office chair as well as a
number of other things as rejected ideas, not really meant to be viable.

Belldandy had insisted that Keiichi put a light jacket on as he left
for classes.

Question, why isn't Bell accompanying Keiichi to class?

That's a good point.  It really didn't occur to us.  Mind you, they're
just now getting into the swing of things, and we needed a reason for
Belldandy to be alone with Urd to advance the plot.  I'll see if we can
work something out without gutting everything, though.

"Tamiya and Ootaki will sign the Motor Club's university charter over
to me."

Have fun, what will Aoshima has to pay if HE loses instead?

What Aoshima has on the line isn't mentioned yet.  It's left intentionally
vague.

It seems that most of the remaining issues are related to Belldandy and
her angel.  Since the majority of them stem from conflicts with canon,
we'll address all of those here.

In answer to one of your questions, at the time, we were not aware that
Urd had an angel of her own--in fact, given that she had just ordered an
angel egg, we assumed that she *didn't* have one.  That said, some of the
facts about angels introduced into the later manga volumes didn't exactly
match ours.

This is a good example of where we had to go out and fill in the details
ourselves about how the Oh! My Goddess universe works, as there was so
little written about angels in the english manga, save for The Fourth
Goddess story arc.  Also, the weakened link between Belldandy and her
angel is a big plot point.  It allows the angel to experience things
seperately from her goddess--thus having seperate wants and desires.  This
is *absolutely essential* to our plot, and really isn't something that can
be changed now.  It is also what is preventing Belldandy from being able
to sense or recall Blessed Bell.  We ask our readers to suspend their
disbelief on this point, and satisfy themselves with the fact that our
story is at least internally consistant.  :)

Well, that's about it.  As mentioned, we're trying to keep as close as
possible to existing precepts given in the current manga wherever
possible.  As new things are introduced, original premise withstanding,
slight modifications to make this story fit in better with canon can be
implemented.

Again, thank you for your comments, and we're all ears if anyone has
anything to add. :)

Thomas Dye - Bart Kelsey


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