Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-35711173-20181124050253/@comment-36815674-20181124211810

BloodySpghetti wrote: So, this kid's an American from Irish descent? Okay... Why on earth is he talking like an Irish person trying to sound American? I mean, there are about 35 million Americans who can trace some ancestor to Ireland. None of them use Irish spellings and ittirations for English words, unless they have migrated themselves from Ireland.

I might be confusing something but isn't Sean supposed to be from an American born Irish American family?

Overall, he doesn't come off as genuinely Irish either way, just because he uses only "Mam" and "Daidi". I'm kind of doubtful people in Dublin or Cork actually use "clan kinship" anymore, so why would an American? There is a sort of cultural revival in that regard in Ireland and there are 240 registered clans as of now, but most of them are modern dating back to the previous century or so. Other than that, again, they don't mean quite as much as they used to - because in pre-fully England controlled Ireland they were the lords of the lands and such. Now if anything, it's more of a pure kinship thing. I think you were just trying to grab hold of "The Irish spirit" and came off almost racist. I say this because your Irish kid came off like a 1890s weirdo more than anything.

I don't know if kids who are 12 know about 23AndMe and other such sites, because you know, they wouldn't have an interest in such things, even if they weren't sure of their parantage.

Now these are all minor issues, the major issue is where is this creepy or scary? Yeah, sure, not telling a kid in his formative years that he had been adopted could be consequential but... still where are the spooks? My suggestion, make Santa and his fellows less human, at least in outward appearence, now Tina could be a human working with Santa... she gets to skoodlipoop with him and they get that boy, Sean who at first comes off completely human but with age becomes more like his actual father which could drive the whole story. You can play this off by taking inspiration from celtic mythological races like Aos Si or Fomorians who have similar attributes to the Norse Jotnar, not exactly humans but can't be really pinned off as "just giants".

I was born in Ireland and moved here when I was 8, now I don't have the accent anymore due to me going to a English school for so long.

I catch my self sometimes saying stuff that only my family will understand. The way I read the story he came from Ireland.