Jig

I need a teacher of sorts.

What area/s are you hoping to improve?

Château de Lalune

Sorry if I've missed it, but what's the date of the Friday they get the letters? And what are the deets for the plane ticket, like, arrival times and class? I'm assuming we'll all be arriving at roughly the same time.

Ooh, and a bonus question for TM99: why, when I try

[right][sub]2:05PM
Friday the Xth of Y[/sub][/right]

on the first line of a post, does the forum display both of those lines as a single line of fused text?

Château de Lalune

2:05 PM
Friday the 1st of July

Greg’s neighbours in the apartment block had rarely ever heard so much as a peep from his flat. Today was a very slight exception to that rule as his front door closed behind him rather earlier but also slightly louder than usual, just barely qualifying as a slam. He half-threw down his messenger bag against the shoe-rack and made a beeline for the fridge, which wasn’t far in the single, smallish room of his studio. With a gentle sigh, he pulled open the fridge door and removed half a bottle of red from the dwindling collection of consumables, among which could be counted most of a tub of margarine, a couple of onions, and one solitary egg - not that he gave any of them a second thought. He pulled a large glass from the cupboard, upturned the rest of the bottle into it so that the wine nearly trickled over the brim, leaned against a counter, and began gently sipping. On an ordinary day, he would have taken a shower and got changed first, but today was no ordinary day.

He stood there for a short while in thought, quite unsure what to do with himself. Apart from any more pressing concern, Greg had never been home before gone half six in all the time he had lived in London without having a prior engagement, and simply didn’t know what to do with the newfound time he had now acquired at twenty past two. Brief salvation came when his eyes rested on the airing cupboard where he stored the vacuum cleaner and realised that he could probably clean the flat. The hoover, which was excellent and worth shelling out for, was light and lithe and glided over the faux-floorboard linoleum with ease, casually extracting the few stray bits of lint that had accrued since he had last done a clean, and, given the size of the place, didn’t use up more than ten minutes. He had already washed up his now empty glass, the only unclean item of crockery in the place and so, he supposed, a trip to the supermarket might be in order.

It was only when he picked up his bag did he remember the second most notable thing that had happened that day, and began rifling through the bag's main pocket. Had he not been so distracted at the time, he would expect his keen eye to better remember the man who had given it to him, but, as it was, the only things he could remember was that he had been wearing a suit and had pressed an envelope into his hands before melting away into the London Friday lunchtime throngs. And here it was, the envelope. The paper was thick and creamy - expensive. Greg neatly tore it open from one end of the flap to the other, removed the letter and sat on the futon to read:

Congratulations Gregory Round,

You have been selected for the Vorace Lalune Award for Excellence. You will find your plane ticket inside this envelope, as well as a credit card for you to pay for any expenses you may need to cover. The pin number for the card is 1018. Use it as needed.

Your boss has already been informed of your sudden departure and your spot at work will be held for you during your week vacation.

Au revoir,

Agatha Lalune

A brief examination of the envelope revealed the aforementioned card, classy in black but with no details whatsoever upon it, a plane ticket for the coming Monday from Heathrow, and, more surprising still, a passport for him, the gold letters on the newly-pressed maroon covering glinting gently in the light. The photograph had been taken from his work’s ID badge, he noted, which was odd, because, whatever the award was, it could be safely assumed that it hadn’t come from work. With the slightest of frowns, he replaced the envelope’s contents and leaned back on the foldout sofa the stillness of his body offset by the frantic drumming of his left hand on his knee.

Château de Lalune

Mine isn't, ahem, even started, but I'm about to sit down to take a crack at it.

_{mostly because I was going to do some drawing but only had access to charcoals and thought nah fuck it I'll just dick around with charcoals instead and went to use an as-of-then unused pencil sharpener a friend had given me that is humourously located in a model cat's ass except what I didn't know is that the cat yowls really annoyingly the moment you go near it with a pencil so that's that plan and that sharpener out of the window, metaphorically and literally respectively}

Château de Lalune

1) Holy shit this is happening
2) If Agatha isn't the queen of withering putdowns, I shall be disappoint
3) I note that Felix is making a return appearance
4) Lena?
5) Are thunderbirds now go?

Château de Lalune

I don't check the guild often but obviously will be around for this. Email me if no-show.

Mahz's Dev Journal

I'm an e-tard (and have no tech contributions to make) but props to Mahz for being on this and continuing to provide a community for us. I've had a bit of downtime, but I've heard worse things happen at sea.

Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

but ultimately English is not my native tongue

@tsukune

I'd never have noticed, so, as somebody who is trying to achieve fluency in a couple of extra non-English languages (French, German, and Dutch), I'm frankly jealous of your proficiency. :P

That said, most people here are, I think, American, who certainly speak at least a variant of English with different colloquialisms and slang to British English so it typically doesn't help British English speakers either. Consequently, for American settings I tend to find some excuse to play an immigrant (so I don't have to worry about my character using American English) or, in my games (which I would typically set in the UK for my own ease), try to find some convoluted way to enable people to play characters of their own nationality so that no American accidentally tries to play a Brit and refers to a sidewalk, cookies, (non-under)pants without realising. That thing would really piss me off. Nothing against the players that would make those mistakes, but I think it really shatters at least my suspension of disbelief, so I try to find a way around it. This is normally so convoluted as to be restrictive or at the very least left-field - but is better than the alternative.

Role-Play Advice

This isn't the only edit this passage could have, but it addresses the idea of using periods more frequently than most do.

@Phoenix

It's been a while since I've been in any role-play, and while I would like to join one, I do think I could use some advice before I try and get involved again.

This sentence isn't too long for human comprehension and there are pro's and con's to putting a full stop before the 'and'; while it does make the first clause more direct, you could argue that it makes the second clause less direct by slightly obscuring what 'one' refers to. As you acknowledge yourself, directness is not always the order of the day and I think you over-egg the value of sentences invoking 'finality'. You're right to advise that shorter sentences have a particular feel (while longer ones are appropriate under different circumstances), but your criticism here isn't particularly fair, given that the comma you have corrected is perfectly sound, grammatically, as it precedes a coordinating conjunction that connects two independent clauses.

The Advanced Section sometimes seems to have a really toxic reputation and can scare players off who, mistakenly, believe they're somehow 'not good enough' or fear that they might get picked apart. The consequence of this is that those players avoid certain sections of this community and that community suffers the loss of their absence and subsequently gets lower traffic - a lose-lose situation. I'm not sure that this piece of advice was terribly helpful, nor was the implication that Gendarme doesn't know how grammar works. I've known some fab writers in the Advanced section who do make minor SpaG errors (as I'm sure literally every writer does) and, while it might be better practice if they didn't make those mistakes, their writing is by no means unreadable and is nevertheless excellent. I am the first to require a certain level of SpaG proficiency in my games, but I have rarely seen anybody refused entry to a game based on their SpaG - and Gendarme's SpaG is certainly not in that category. Implying that they need to do some research into punctuation before their induction to the Advanced section based on one short passage of non-IC text is, I think, an unfair comment on Gendarme's writing and an unfair reflection of the attitude and expectations of the Advanced section.

Château de Lalune

I'd be keen to get started. I really do need something to keep me occupied right now.
That said, I still don't have a family section on my sheet so maybe I should stfu.