Wilde_Guess

44013 Good options one and all. But getting the stories moving again will be just a little bit better. Thanx.

44011 The Chatbox went from “working” to not with no changes of any kind on my part. If you’re running Linux/Firefox, you are probably running a newer O/S than me, since Linux by default supports both new and “old” iron in the same base version. I’m running “max-patched” el Capitain, which is old. My other working box is a G5 Mac Pro. Firefox hasn’t run on that in years, and even TenFourFox hasn’t been updated in years. Maybe the G5 might run a newer Firefox, but it won’t run the version of Office I have a license for. Oh, well...

44009 It might be an obsolete OSX/Firebox issue. I don’t like Safari, though I’ll try it later today. I loathe Chrome, and “Edge” is so “edgey” that Microsoft won’t port it onto other operating systems.

44007 (and even James Bond would have to admit that the Chatbox is still broken.)

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Hi, all. I’m a bit late to this, but I decided to add my thoughts. I would generally have to agree with you on bringing “real life people” into a fictional story. B is right out. For “C,” I might bring a “personality trait” into the mix. But while I’ve seen the trait or behavior in real life, neither you nor even the person themselves will realize that I “copied” the trait, and only that trait, from them. There lies the way to lawsuits. My “A” is only slightly more expansive than yours. Since I’m using a real-life set of locations, I also need to be very careful with people holding real-life positions. In fact, my disclaimer explicitly disclaims non-historic actions by historic or public figures. I have one celebrity help the main protagonists in one story. That celebrity’s actions were entirely consistent with how he would have behaved in real life under the same circumstances, and were entirely favorable without any potential slight. That celebrity might be joined by one or two more under the exact same circumstances. None of the “celebrities” know anything about the more “interesting” details of the protagonists’ lives. I’ve also named two different famous local politicians as “background” characters. Their indirectly mentioned conduct is entirely consistent with the “non-criticized” portions of their publicly reported actions and behavior during the time-frames mentioned. In the case of one of the politicians, I invented entirely fictitious additional members of their family who did not exist in real life. I’ve also replaced scores of real-life people with entirely fictitious counterparts even when the behavior of the “replaced” persons appearing in my story were entirely honest, honorable, skillful, consistent with real-life, and beyond any reproach. It’s just easier to do things that way then it is to try (and almost certainly fail) to describe an “almost famous” person I never met from forty years ago without getting sued. I do “reference” the occasional real life villain here and there. In those cases, their real-life villainy was well-known, as in front-page headlines, and followed up by felony convictions. Any non-historical villainy they get up to is entirely consistent with their real-life behavior at the times and places where it takes place. That will also hold true for my Harry Potter fanfiction. Since I’m using a real time-frame for the stories, and since I’m using real-life locations, using historical people (gently) is nearly unavoidable, as well as using real-life positions filled with fictional replacements. The most annoying “reference” I see in HP fanfiction, and I see it all the time, is using the first names of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson as the first names for Hermione Granger’s parents. JKR never even named those two characters, much less had them appear directly; so I get that you have to call them something. But using the names of the actors who play Harry and Hermione in the movies to (not so subtly) claim that Harry and Hermione were only right to date or marry each other is just too heavy-handed for me. Plenty of great fanfiction authors do this in great stories. Plenty of not so great fanfiction authors do this, too. In the case where I had to give the Grangers names, I used the first names of the actors who played them in the movies, and there were actors who played the Granger parents to a sufficient degree that they had to be named and credited. Ian Kelly and Michelle Fairley played the Grangers in Deathly Hallows Part One. Tom Knight and Heather Bleasdale from CoS would also work. Cheers!

Hi, all. Chatbox won’t let me post. It presents a “silent failure,” meaning that no error messages are displayed. The chat screen simply refreshes, but my line of text is not posted. At first I thought that it was just a “stale login.” After logging out and back in, I was able to post one line. However, the Chatbox reverted to no post, silent failure; and logging out and back in would not clear it. Browser is Firefox 78.15.0 ESR on Mac. Thanks in advance.

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Hi, Deadman and all. Generally, you should use the name of a character to clarify identities where they might otherwise be confused. Remember, unlike a [visual production of any kind,] your reader only has your writing to help them picture the scene. As for how you address the character’s identity “outside of quotation marks,” you should generally stick to a single unambiguous name for the character in third-person perfect or unidentified third-person imperfect. In identified third person imperfect or first person, your labeling of a particular character is that supplied by your “viewpoint” character. As a rule, you must be consistent in third-person perfect, and you should be consistent in other tenses. However, deliberate changes can indicate changes in opinion by the viewpoint character or observer. Inside of quotation marks, the character themselves will govern how the particular character is identified or addressed. Cheers!

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Hi, Deadman. The reference is to “Cold Ethyl” by Alice Cooper. If your story is BTVS, that’s even better. To paraphrase Hall and Oates, “Some chicks are better left undead...” Cheers?

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Hi, all. … perhaps even more so if her name is Ethyl? Cheers!

Hi, all. … would spreading your newspaper across her shoulder-blades to read while engaging in the act be a bit too much? Or perhaps using her breasts to prop up your smartphone but not using it for the camera? Cheers!