I've been seeing frequent posts online where people are searching for the remnants of NextGenSM. Since the site went down in 2001, it's been difficult to locate the art and the fan fiction. Most of us who can claim to have been there don't even remember the address to the website (and why should we? the site is down, right?). We're all grasping at straws.
I think it's a blind stroke of luck that the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine archived even a portion of this website - anyone who had a freebie Homestead account at that time was not so lucky. (Honestly, I am not so sure that most people even know the Wayback Machine even exists, but that's another issue entirely.) Combined with a stash of Phil's art that I found on an old backup CD of mine (I am notorious for keeping everything under the sun, especially digital copies of art that has inspired or affected me), I think what I have found merits the creation of this blog.
I've tried making this blog look as bad-ass as possible with my limited skills and Blogger's limited font options, while still keeping it decent to read. I remember websites during the internet hay-day when NextGenSM existed that were atrocious. I think it's fairly safe to assume that most of us who got swept up in Phil's fan world have grown up in the mean time, so perhaps a more grown up appearance is appropriate? If anyone hates it enough, make me a new layout and we can go from there...
I'll keep everything up here as long as Blogger allows it, unless Phil himself contacts me and demands it taken down. Legally, I can't do much of anything else if he asks that. So, I ask Phil that if he finds this blog out here on the vast expanse of the net and hates it, please don't make me take it down.
Also, I will post the link to the Wayback Machine's archive. Visiting the website feels kind of like walking through the ruins of a city. You know where certain things should be, but they are missing. The flash version is inoperable and most of the graphics are gone (the Wayback Machine only archives a small fraction of the graphics). The forums are still there, mostly, but some threads forward to a website about dogs instead. And, as I said earlier, forget getting access to any archived content of a Homestead website. But a lot of the fiction is still there, and you can "listen" to the ghosts of NextGenSM "talk".
