So between 2004 and 2015 I was part of a fanfiction project called Next Era. Astute readers will notice a similarity to the URL. Yes, next-era.net was the domain we got for the website for it back in the day, and I still use the same hosting we got for it at the time. So when the time came to put this website up, putting it on a subdomain to that felt fitting. Anyway, it was a Mega Man X fanfiction project, and the final story published for it was one of mine, back in 2015. Since then, the most that was done with it was myself putting down pieces of a draft for something intended to be a finale to the whole thing in 2017-2018, as it never got a proper ending (well, I also broke the wiki while trying to update it in 2017, but that's irrelevant).
You're probably seeing where this is going.
Last month (starting in February, but anyway) I played through the Mega Man X Collections on Switch (do as I say and not as I do: Do not play Mega Man X7). This, especially Mega Man X8 for reasons, just got me in the mood for telling stories in that universe again, stories I was planning but never told back in its heyday... I had a lot of ideas in those days. Ideas that never became anything. Some ideas were in some ways transplanted over to Pure Corruption, some characters definitely owe parts of their personalities to Next Era characters. I can directly trace Rink back to one of them, even if Rink is very toned down from that "source". So anyway, I ended up doing a complete rewrite - a full remake, really - of the very first Next Era story I ever wrote, contacted two of the peeps from the old crew, and really did start writing one new story, one I had several plans for back at the time but never wrote. I thought I did start writing parts of it at some point, but I can find absolutely zero evidence that I ever did after digging through documents.
This in no way at all means I'm giving up on Pure Corruption! I'm rather hoping it's going to be a net positive, giving me another creative writing outlet, and the Next Era stories are chiefly oneshots of varying lengths, rather than one chronological chapter-by-chapter story starting at the very beginning and going to the very end. So it's a somewhat different approach to writing those stories, which could be useful to loosen up some writer's blocks I absolutely have from time to time. And I absolutely promise that Pure Corruption is where my main priority lies - it's absolutely my primary project and revisiting Next Era is, for the time being, a side gig. I still can't believe I'm actually doing it, but now I really, at the very least, want to finish this one I'm currently writing.
So... yeah.
Me getting in a writing mood just in general is good too now that everything is annoying and I don't get any work and don't make money.
Bah.
/Kenny
