USCMRPG

I'm following along fairly smoothly with everyone's posts except for Erika's. I know this might be a grammar issue, but I'm new to writing stories collaberatively with other people outside of classes. If anyone can help me understand Erika's last post, I would gladly post after.

My problem is that I can't understand nearly anything she has written so far.

Erika, I am so sorry. I just need some extra assistance understanding what you say so I might have to post several threads after your posts to get help. I hope you don't mind.

"Private, let's the Lieutenent think to an answer to my questions"

This was said in quotations so it felt strange to understand what she meant by this. Obviously she said it out loud but if she's saying that she was letting the Lieutenant think to answer her questions, I don't understand if she meant to say it out loud, or if it was a gramatical error, or something else? It might be important and I dont' want to just skip over that part of her post.

Erika, if you can explain this to me, I'm itching to understand what you meant.




can you also verify that all the communication works and everybody has enough power in their gear for at leat 24 hours, please?

Was it a single communication that we received? I re-read all the previous posts to see if we received any communication that you might have been talking about.

Then you should make sure that the procedure of MEDEVAC is OK and settled, that there is a communication officer that will be in charge of speaking with the media and that he/she has everything he/she need"

I don't know what a MEDEVAC is. Is this some sort of motion tracker?


" then check for the communication, if they work and if they need a new gear,

Once again, we're only going to receive a single communication? Or is this a communication that we have already received? And what is supposed to be working? People? I assume that Erika meant poeple because the preposition states that someone needed a type of "gear", so this must be a person, and not an inanimate object.

I will fight my war with the Adminitration and it will take a while. The things that our Marines are hunting are pretty smart

All I knew about up until this point was a War with the Xenomorph species. Are we fighting other human beings as well? If so, why are we shooting at our own administration? Is the administration a "thing"? Does this mean that Administration consists of alien beings and we are shooting at them?


I'm so sorry. I've spent a few days trying to understand Erika's post and I gave up on the last ones, but this post of Erika's seems important so I had to post this to get answers before my next post because I am totally confsued.

This might be just bad grammar, but if it's not, then this means:

1. We are fighting against our own administration
2. We have received two communications that I didn't read about
3. There are more people on our team working and we need to give them some sort of gear?
4. The Administration was referred to as "the things that our Marines are hunting" (Aliens?)

Please help. I don't understand and I just want to make sure I understand every members posts' before I continue on with the story.

Its probably best to dicuss this over PM. But I can answer some of the questions.


Questions 2 & 3: She is refering to you comms gear, for you to make sure everyone has enough power, if everyones gear works and that they work underground.

Question 3: Medevac is a term to used descibe air ambulance, so you are being requested to make sure there are preperations in place for it. More info can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEDEVAC

Question 4: The fight with Admistration is refering to the fact that she will have to fight through red tape (bureaucracy) to make sure everything is in place for what we require.

1) she's reprimanding someone to allow the LT to think/gather his thoughts and answer the questions that she asked.

hope this helps .

If I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me.

Two things,

one don't worry about this because it happens a few times of the course of a campaign and it's happened with Erika on more then one occasion. Trouble is we all speak a different way.

Second point, its best to keep these things a bit quieter as to avoid complications.

Thats all i really have to say on this.

Oh! I meant no disrespect on Erika's part.

I just felt like asking everyone in a thread as opposed to PM because I never know who's going to be on and available to ask. Even Erika could help me out. We all make errors in our text. We aren't writing novels. If I ever write something that doesn't make sense, I am fine with anyone asking in public about my questions also.

I'm sometimes busy and not on for a whole day so it's best to ask questions amongst everyone in general. We are writers and we're here to help each other out so I doubt anyone would take the questions in a bad way.

And when it happens with me, I welcome the question in an open thread. We're all bound to make mistakes in writing. If we didn't, book editors would be out of the job. I know for a fact I'll make mistakes too and I want people to call me out on it because it makes me a better writer.

Thank you for the answers. I was thinking too narrow and not allowing for the possibility of "communications" instead of "communication" as a possible error. That makes all the difference in the world. It was plural, and not singular. This means that it was "Communications Equipment" she was talking about. As soon as this was answered for me, I slapped myself in the face for not thinking harder about it.

Thanks for the help.


Erika, if I ever ask a question about your writing, or anyone else’s, it's not because I didn't like, or enjoy your work. I love the ideas and concept that you bring to the story.

I've been home schooled most my life and I've only recently been able to chat, and interact with people online other than high-end cooperative story writing groups. This is pretty adventurous for me and I find these situations exciting, and in no way aggravating or problematic. This is good stuff and I hope no one minds if I openly ask questions when I'm in a bind.

If you see the term Medevac, Casevac or Dustoff, they are mean casualty evacuation.  As you may have noticed that there are quite a few members with military experience so its understandable that we will use the jargon.  I, myself, will use Casevac or Dustoff as thats the proper radiotelegraphy procedures used by the Australian Defence Force (habits are hard to get out off   When i use military jargon or radio speak, i will make an OCC notation at the end of my post explaining.  If you have any questions fee free to PM me.

Cheers

Obi

Hello

do not worry Jean. As I said, English is not my mother tongue, so if you do not understand, just ask throught a MP or a post.

Please tell me that you have posted such post because sometimes I just look in the game and not elsewhere then I discover 3 weeks later that somebody asked me a question 

Erika first wanted to say that the Lieutenent is taking too much time to think and she went a little bit aside with her subordinate to try to plan a little bit.

Support mission can be everything beside combat, and since in the real life I am leaving for 3 weeks, I wanted to make sure that Jean had some work before I leave.

Erika "will be in the command post fighting against the administration" because some of the supply people in the military feel that there is no need that the soldiers go in battle with too many ammunition and usually the procedures to get the stuff are really complicated. This will justify why Erika will be silent for a while.

Now, within our support mission, your character can do whatever she wants. I gave some guidelines just to stay within the rules of support, that are: logistics, medics (once a person is injured it is important to take him/her away from the battlefield and carry him/her in a hospital, that means also to take care of deads), religious support, communication support, power support (we will go underground to hunt strange things, if we have no power for the lights or for the night vision system, how do you think we will survive? The doomdice will hit us... WHOOOO), before leaving for a mission it is important to check if all the gear works (you do not survive if at one point you need the radio and you discover that in the middle of the action that it does not work and you did not check it before...), the food and water (people need to eat) and so on.

If you think that the way I am writing is not right, please, let me know and I will change my post with your help.

Did you receive my PM?

Now I need to go, and I will not have access to Internet for 3 weeks. If you have any question, ask Dugan.

Finally I am sure that you will do a good job.

Thank you.

Dugan wrote: Questions 2 & 3: She is refering to you comms gear, for you to make sure everyone has enough power, if everyones gear works and that they work underground.
Question 3: Medevac is a term to used descibe air ambulance, so you are being requested to make sure there are preperations in place for it.
Question 4: The fight with Admistration is refering to the fact that she will have to fight through red tape (bureaucracy) to make sure everything is in place for what we require.

I love you Dugan 

Radio is very important and they break easily.

Administration requires a lot of work, because the bureaucracy has process and procedures that are very slow and complicated.

We fight agaist Xenomorph, but sometimes the administrative system is not an ally... it is a living thing... a monster that eats everything... I do not know how to explain that, but when you go to the USA and you are from Europe, you shall answer to some questions in a green sheet of paper like:
Did you recently participate in any genocides?
Do you belong or every belonged to the nazi party?
and so on

I think that they are stupid questions, but you must answer to them because it is required.

Then once you land, you have more questions like: "did you came to the US to get married?" Oh, well, I just told you that I came for a symposium... but you do not say that, you smile and say "No, as I said I am coming to attend a professional symposium". My favourite question is "Where will you live while in the USA?" I mean, I crossed the Ocean to live under a bridge?????????????? But, still, you stay polite and answer "My hotel is..."

You see, this is the administration. I hope you have understood.

Erika wrote:

Dugan wrote: Questions 2 & 3: She is refering to you comms gear, for you to make sure everyone has enough power, if everyones gear works and that they work underground.
Question 3: Medevac is a term to used descibe air ambulance, so you are being requested to make sure there are preperations in place for it.
Question 4: The fight with Admistration is refering to the fact that she will have to fight through red tape (bureaucracy) to make sure everything is in place for what we require.

I love you Dugan 

Radio is very important and they break easily.

Administration requires a lot of work, because the bureaucracy has process and procedures that are very slow and complicated.

We fight agaist Xenomorph, but sometimes the administrative system is not an ally... it is a living thing... a monster that eats everything... I do not know how to explain that, but when you go to the USA and you are from Europe, you shall answer to some questions in a green sheet of paper like:
Did you recently participate in any genocides?
Do you belong or every belonged to the nazi party?
and so on

I think that they are stupid questions, but you must answer to them because it is required.

Then once you land, you have more questions like: "did you came to the US to get married?" Oh, well, I just told you that I came for a symposium... but you do not say that, you smile and say "No, as I said I am coming to attend a professional symposium". My favourite question is "Where will you live while in the USA?" I mean, I crossed the Ocean to live under a bridge?????????????? But, still, you stay polite and answer "My hotel is..."

You see, this is the administration. I hope you have understood.

Ah, fun with red tape. 

The reason for the marriage question is because you can become an american citizen by marrying another american citizen. The Nazi Party question kinda threw me off. Are they still up to their shenanigans?

That's pretty wild. I didn't know that you had to answer all those weird questions when coming to America.

The weird thing is -- suppose you did want to come to America to marry someone. If it's legal to do so, then why should they care. That's a personal life kind of thing and not something for some random person to ask.

I wonder if my parents had to ask such questions when they first came to America. Weird stuff. I hope they didn't bug you too much, Erika.

It could have been worse they could have wanted to do a cavity search! 

Eewhh nasty

Jean wrote: That's pretty wild. I didn't know that you had to answer all those weird questions when coming to America.

The weird thing is -- suppose you did want to come to America to marry someone. If it's legal to do so, then why should they care. That's a personal life kind of thing and not something for some random person to ask.

I wonder if my parents had to ask such questions when they first came to America. Weird stuff. I hope they didn't bug you too much, Erika.

The reason why they ask is because people sometimes come to America to marry someone, just to get a green card.

Yes but if they were would they really be stupid enough to say 'yes'. 

Dugan wrote: Yes but if they were would they really be stupid enough to say 'yes'. 

I'd totally do that...........