[Spoilers ahead, especially serious ones for Lain]

	The biggest problem with this 'fic is not its deviation from continuities, 
or the characters that are OOC.  The first has been done successfully with 
few problems; most 'fics are minor alternate universes.  When fusing or 
crossing series, a certain amount of adjustment to accommodate both 
continuities is not unusual.  Spamfics also shouldn't be held to any great 
level of characterization, the way a normal story is.

	The problem with this story is that it is about the Abh kicking Lain's ass 
in a morally justified manner.  The bias does not automatically make it a 
bad story, Zen's "The Bitter End" is a very good read.  However, making 
that bias the center of a spamfic was a great mistake.  Spamfics are about 
one idea, usually amusing, interesting, or disturbing.  They are ideas that 
would not be worth making an original story out of, but, because the reader 
has already absorbed the background information necessary to understand 
what is being conveyed, are perfect for fan fiction.

	In this case, the idea is that Lain bites off more than she can chew by 
annoying the Abh.  Quite simply, that idea is not particularly interesting 
to most people.  Furthermore, the Abh's ability to do so is a question in 
many of the readers' minds, and the author does nothing to convince us it 
could happen.

	Now, Jinto could be around - remember that the immortal officer's 
grandfather received those genes, not his parents in vitro.  So Jinto could 
gain immortality with little stretching of the cannon.  If there are other 
methods of FTL travel, then the Tenchi cast could be around.  For that 
matter, the war in CotS starts with the humans capturing and using a 
sord.  These are minor matters.

	However, the treatment of Lain is very poor.  Lain's ability to affect 
reality, alter everyone's minds, and the nature of the Wired as more than a 
human creation is just not addressed.  Exactly what happened at the end of 
Lain is open to interpretation.  You don't have to explicitly say that Lain 
isn't the messiah or God herself.  However, the image of the city in a dome 
on an asteroid really needs to be dealt with.  If it doesn't mean that Lain 
is part of a strange experiment by others or that Lain eliminated the rest 
of the world so that she could learn how to run the universe by dealing 
with a single city instead of a planet, then what did it mean?  Without a 
central theory of the series, you cannot write in it well.  This is also 
why good Eveangelian stories tend to be very good - the author has taken 
all the strange things that are never explained and constructed a reason 
they happened, then interacted with it.

	Now, if I assume that I'm just not getting the idea behind the spamfic, it 
could be that the Abh are being used to illustrate the author's idea that 
Lain is an unstable child that managed to gestalt into the Wire, shattering 
her fragile mind, which was teetering on the edge due to disinterested 
parents and a lack of friends.  Most of the strange happenings in Lain were 
hallucinations and the mad girl managed to challenge a very real world enemy.

	If that is the case, then a great deal more clues are needed to show 
it.  Personally, if you want to say that Lain is just nuts, I think that 
CotS is not a good series to convey it.

	Now, the spelling and grammar are well done; although the formatting could 
use a little work.  Although the text wrapped at a good point, there was 
not always a blank line between paragraphs.  Still, it didn't interfere 
with my "seeing" the story.  A good list of pointers for your next story is:

	1) Only use the cannon you know.  That means that you're going to have to 
write a divergence if you haven't read all of the source material, or set 
it in the material you do know.  Do not use cannon that you know of, but do 
not know.  You will get it wrong.

	2) Have a good center for the story.  In a spamfic that is the idea it is 
trying to get across.  In a longer story that would be the plot.  Do not 
confuse an idea with a plot.  An idea (and stories can have several of 
them) is almost part of the setting, such as Ranma's sex changing.  The 
plot is what happens in the story.  The trials, successes, and setbacks 
Ranma deals with to unlock his curse after Herb splashes him form a plot.

	3) Characters' actions should have believable motivations; characters' 
motivations should lead to believable actions.  Comedies give you greater 
leeway on this, but you still need it.  The characters aren't interesting 
if they don't act like real people.

                               ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._
       Bastet's Chosen          `6_ 6  )   `-.  (     ).`-.__.`)
bastetschosen@comcast.net      (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-'
                              _..`--'_..-_/  /--'_.' ,'
                            (il).-''  (li).'  ((!.-'

Beware of organizations that proclaim their devotion to the light without
embracing, bowing to the dark; for when they idealize half the world they
must devalue the rest.
                            -Miriam Simos


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