Melrick

9629

The topic from Solaris thanking people got me to thinking. When all the brouhaha hit about the ownership of the site not too long ago, my first thoughts were along the line of, “Oh great, here we go again, back to long periods of no changes or improvements, which means the website becoming more and more antiquated and therefore harder and harder to actually do anything with, until we reach the point where it just implodes in on itself.” I had very, very low expectations. I’ve never been privy to the behind-the-scenes goings on (no one tells peon’s like me anything) so all I could make judgements from was what I could see. Power struggles are never pretty, and the person or group that wins isn’t necessarily the best people for the job, just the strongest. Therefore, my hopes and expectations were low. So imagine my surprise when things actually started getting done, on the website and forum! Actual worthwhile changes started being made, with plans for further improvements made public. Some of my queries from earlier are still there since they were never adequately answered, and I’m not dumb enough to assume everything will be smooth sailing from here on out. But on the face of things, and in the relatively short term at least, things really are looking up for the website, and I hope they continue to do so, for the good of the great number of writers that never view these forums.

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9619

Star Trekkin' ~ Dr Demento

9617

You may be underestimating people's stupidity. lol Perhaps you could simply have the character mention that he knows some countries ignorantly call it soccer rather than football, something like that. You're welcome re. the Inuit link. And I'm glad you like my icon. lol

9614

If he's from Brazil then there's just no way on earth he'd be prepared to call it soccer. But that would be a good reason to have some minor conflict in the story - others keep calling it soccer, and he reminds them occasionally that it's called football, not soccer. If not then just adding a note to the story to explain it would be fine. One way you could have the Brazilian character talk about the food is have an American ask him about it, that would give him an excuse to go into some detail about it. If that's not appropriate then you could either not worry about it at all, or just leave a note explaining what exactly is in the meal if you feel it's important. Oh, I just realised, exactly where is your Brazilian character? Still in Brazil or in America? If he's actually in Brazil then the above things probably won't work, unless you could introduce a foreign character. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit That link will help you with info regarding the Inuit. It also has external links down the bottom for further research. As far as the last question is concerned, that very much depends on the style of the story. There's no right or wrong way to go about it. Look at the old Columbo TV series, with Peter Falk. The start of each episode showed who gets murdered and who did it. The rest of the show is about how Columbo finds out for himself who the killer is. And it works, primarily because of the Columbo character. Both of the options you suggested would work, how well depends on the story itself, and you're probably in the best position to decide which way might work best. I hope at least some of that helps.

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Turn Me Loose ~ Loverboy

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Yeah well some people see Mary Sue's when there simply aren't any to see. You can safely ignore people who say it's a Mary Sue.

Ah I see, thanks.

On my profile thingy, to the left, under the blue "Member" button, I have 5 little black (or possibly dark grey) squares. Erm... is that a good thing or a bad thing?

9603

Well to truly know if it's a Mary Sue or not, I'd have to know you much better than I do - which is not at all - but unless you weigh 475 pounds and have detachable legs, I'd have to say it doesn't sound terribly Mary Sue-ish to me.

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Okie dokie, I'll give that a try, thanks.

Is it normal to have to log in sometimes several times a day, even though I have it selected to remember me? I didn't have this problem with the old forum, so I'm wondering if settings have been changed regarding that or if it's just me for some odd reason.

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