Apparently some ISP out there is blocking or throttling traffic to and from Europe. I found someone in Sweden - Alvaro from Comicboards, no less - who has the problem and hopefully will help me diagnose it. Since very technically inclined viewers from Europe are so rare, it took me a while to find someone to provide the constant supply of data support needs to fix interconnection issues.





To be more accurate about that first story I wasn't sure about contains an appearance by Hatman around part 3 or so. It's brief, but long enough that I'd have to re-write an entire chapter if I can't use him, worst case. Also, the Foundation is mentioned in the same chapter, same rule there. Best case, even if I can use them, I'd have to post part 1 and 2 and then hold indefinitely until the Untold Tales plot is wrapped up (or go ahead and rewrite part 3 anyway out of caution).





Sadly I don't have any of those at the moment. That means a delay while I write a couple of them.





Usually when I'm itching to post one of those, it's because I already have most of it written, and I'm becoming worried that it has an expiration date - a point at which either things have moved on, or previous events have faded from memory - and I end up scrapping the entire story altogether rather than going back and writing in all kinds of recaps and changes to an old story. It's happened before.





What worries me about that? That this "temporary lull", though less than permanent, will be far longer than I expect - that instead of it being a holiday lull a week or so in length, or between now and July 4th, it becomes a "summer lull" and the board will essentially die completely for the next 3-4 months. If I'm mid-story, when it dies for months, I'll be stuck with that annoying choice to finish posting the story and watch no one reply, or re-post it all again in a few months when and if people come back.





I usually do - the question then is when and whether to post it.