*floats in*

Glad you liked it, Ryadian. The idea's been floating ( ) around in my mind for a bit.

But only "kind" of sweet? I was going for a lot of it, perhaps to counteract the bomb I dropped last time.

And the characters are canon in my mind. The twins are new but Molly's mate and Lily have been introduced in my NaNo stories, which are set several decades in the future (compared to the Ditto Story). I did jump even farther ahead, since in those stories there's only the slightest hint of Molly and Emory getting together.

Ok, so I'm trying to gear myself up to jump back into this madhouse we unleashed over 2 years ago. (Has it really been that long?)

I had an idea about the source of the fracture in the universe(s), which we can use or not as it fits with everyone else's ideas:

I think that works for me. Granted, the only story arcs I've had for my characters are either resolved or part of the reaction, so admittedly, this wouldn't affect me as much as it might for some other people. But I do like the idea of saying that this started somewhere, and that seems like a logical place to do it.

A lot of the Ditto Story writers have already seen this, but for those who haven't, there's been some discussion about starting a new Inn Between thread. The idea is that this would start fresh, leaving behind any unresolved plot threads in the Inn Between 8 thread--which would be left open, in case anyone wants to go back and continue/resolve those storylines. The exact nature of Inn Between 9 is still up for discussion, though the consensus so far is have a story more in line with the earlier Ditto Stories, with fewer overarching plots and something more "reactionary".

So, what are everyone's thoughts?

Since the majority of the writers seem to agree the multiverse will be folded together at some point, that would allow us to move forward into the next story as we need to, making notes as to what gets changed in the history. (I know we've talked about keeping some parts of characters' backstories and losing others. With a compressed multiverse, there's plenty of wiggle room for that sort of thing. I already have ideas for where to finish with my characters in the current story.)

I like your suggestions for resolving the multiverse origin and plotline, shastastwin.

I don't have any firm ideas on how it might affect my characters, which might seem a bit ironic since I helped unleash this beast. (I revisited this multiverse in my 2012 NaNo story - set decades after the Ditto Story and focused primarily on my own characters so as not to god-mod other writers' creations - and attempted to come up with some resolution, but while it was great fun to send Erik and Molly bouncing around to those alternate realities, I soon got bogged down in trying to resolve it satisfactorily. But I'm game for brainstorming on this with any fellow Ditto Story writers who might be interested).

Varna only had a glimpse into one of the other versions of London/Great Britain, so it won't affect her Ditto Town history at all. There probably was more to the version of Varna who was in that version of London, but I never had an interest in exploring it. (Should I ever want to explore it, it would be a nice setting for a NaNo project, and something that wouldn't come into the Ditto Story at all.)

I want to write more about Varna's visit to London in the main reality, though, and it would make sense to keep it in the Inn Between 8 thread. Then new segments can be written about her in the Inn Between 9 thread in parallell.

What happened in London will become part of her backstory, but further details won't be known until they get written - and they likely won't be crucial anyway. Varna has been to London and gotten more books for her bookshop. That's the main fact.

I keep saying that I need to PM stargazer with questions (about gargoyles), and I keep procrastinating

I also like the idea of basically just explaining it as "the multiverses came back together, and the new story starts after that" (and individual writers can decide what happens to their characters). I guess the next question is, how would we start the next one? Obviously, this next story would be independent of previous plot lines (probably including any previous villains, like the Nine and the Organization), and we're going to try to avoid creating any new, shall we say, tangled webs?

I've kind of imagined starting the story in one of two ways. One is with some kind of party or festival, a way to get any interested characters together in one place, but in a "low-stress" way... at least, to begin with. We can see what comes from there. Otherwise, I've also imagined starting with some kind of disaster/"disaster", like how Ditto Story 3 began with the Ditto Rider's kidnapping. Basically, they're two different ways to get our characters together, and would be more "reactionary". I hope I'm still making sense.

Okay, I'll just come out and say it: my character is dependent on Silvan's charie, and I am pretty much unable to post. So why don't you just pretend that never happened and ignore the Toa in stasis, lol. If I'm ever in a position to write Vhex again, I'll let you know. Cheers!

I like your ideas, Ryadian. Maybe combine your two beginning ideas...some kind of low-key get-together at the Mansion, perhaps, ending with someone bursting in with some sort of emergency? Or is that silly?

I'm always open to answering your questions, Varna.

Dernhelm, if you ever want to come back--even with different characters--we'd love to have you! Since we're hoping to "reboot" the story, so to speak, in a little while, maybe we'll see you then. (Otherwise, maybe I'll see you in Supernova! )

stargazer, I don't think that sounds silly, I think it could work--depending on what it is. Do we even want to decide in advance what the "complicating incident" (so to speak) is, or should we just let someone have fun (not entirely unlike what happened on April Fool's, though preferably without the complication of alternate realities )?

Meanwhile, I posted a couple of new segments for Ditto Story 8. This is an idea I've been sitting on for a while because I didn't really see how introducing this new element would actually help the story move forward. But, now I have an idea, so I decided to just roll with it. , but I'm not planning on blowing stuff up. (Too much. ) I don't want to step on anyone's toes or run over any plans, so I'm completely willing to lay out my entire idea (which, admittedly, is really more of a rough layout), either here or via PM.

I like the idea of tying the bomber to the person Ryana saw.

I'm all for a plan to move the story forward, Ryadian, perhaps even resolving the multiverse conundrum I opened that April Fool's Day. I'm fine with being surprised by it too, but certainly won't mind learning about it in advance if that's the consensus.

Oh man... so much to think about... I haven't written because 4 timelines is hard enough, and then I decided to make it more complicated! Ugh.

It's wonderful to see you back, Sonny! I've enjoyed writing with you and look forward to doing so again.

Though my brain hurts from keeping it all straight.

So, I've just been looking through the threads here, and it looks kinda like the last Ditto story got wild and unwieldy and everyone gave up. (I can relate. I once wrote a fanfic that I ended up giving up on when I had like 4 different POVs--in different locations--and some of them had swapped bodies with each other. Our imaginations can sometimes get away with us.) So I'm curious: at what point do you scrap that story and think about starting a new one? Or possibly doing things in a different way altogether? I'm also wondering how many people are still around who are actually interested in doing the story thing?

I'd definitely be open discussing these things, Shawna, but I prefer to wait a few weeks as I'm moving at the end of July.