Hi Don, first of all welcome!
>>>>>Referring to the non-utilization of Duckburg characters that were not created by Carl Barks... I don't remember any great discussion about that, honestly; if you would like to explain more on this (or even different ones) topic, feel free to do it
Some readers tend to think that you are too "strict" in basing you stories on "Barks facts" only, which prevents you from using characters which did not appear in his stories (eg Fethry, or Brigitta - a character I love very much, as you can guess by my nickname). Of course, it's your choice... but when a reader loves a character and an author, they would be happy if that author wrote something with that character, don't you think?
However, I'm particularly eager to better understand what you mean when you write:
So... I'll see what happens, and next time I'll address that business about what characters I am *allowed* to use.
What do you mean, "allowed" to use? Have you been forbidden to use certain characters? This is EXTREMELY interesting to me.
As many readers know, in order that my stories agree completely with the stories written and drawn by Carl Barks that I grew up with, I set my stories in the 1950's -- after all, there's no way that $crooge could do everything that Barks' stories said he did in the years Barks said he did them and still be alive today. He'd be close to 150 years old!
Regarding the fact that your stories are set during the '50s, I see your point... nonetheless, I have always loved to think that Disney stories are something "out of time", where authors are allowed to put time references (or, better even, to avoid them) without being extremely careful (of course, absurdities are not allowed, but with a certain "flexibility"). When I was a child and read "Back to Klondike" I thought it was set in my time (the 70s). As a child, I did not have the historical "awareness" to realize that it would imply Uncle Scrooge being more than 100 year old; but even later, when I grew and realized that, it was never a problem for me to imagine that the same duck that had been in the gold rush in the 19th century could be running business with, let's say, computers, or similar "modern things". So I tend to like stories that have this "inconsistent", "light-minded" attitude rather than restricting the stories to a specific time period. It's probably something similar to the "magic and immortal spirit of Disney who is above the cruel reality where characters grows old and die" Vito told about.
But rather than go into that, let me stop here for now. I mean, how will the above English message be shown to the forum members who don't speak English? I know using Babel Fish is hopeless! And I know that it's quite a chore to translate a text from one language to another -- much more difficult than "simply" reading or speaking another language. Translating is work. So I don't know why anyone would want to do that for me here.
For YOU, I'm sure there will always be someone ready to do it! ZioPaperone already claimed the job, he would be disappointed if you didn't write many more messages for him to translate
[size=9](... and WE would be disappointed too, of course)[/size]
And lastly, I definitively want to know your opinion about
LPSO's "sequel" to the "Scrooge's Tombstone" image... when he first posted it, I bet you would have liked it: please don't make me wrong
(Uncle Scrooge's line in the image is "Hello, what did I miss?")