Halfway through September-2016, I put out a monthly update detailing plans to change the name, along with the aim of changing up the focus of the main site. So while Wattpad became the home of all the free story content, the main website became a showcase site, linking around to various platforms with just some of what I had produced. That new name tying all that content together was DarkRula Media.
It was a name I’d already been using for my Youtube channel, as well as the various forums I was a member of and the gaming accounts on the numerous platforms. It seemed clear that I should retire the old CDS name to use the one my online presence was now becoming. But there was also another reason for the change in name.
With the start of 2017 bringing those changes out to the public, starting this era off, I’d also been crafting something to mark a big entrance into the year. It was around the time I was feeling I had taken the wrong path with the start of my last year of university. Animation was not where I wanted to be. Writing was my home. To that end, I wanted to push out a project before finishing that last year.
I’d made the choice to go with my original idea, so started to rebuild TV and Film Residential Camp for a release. I then put a stop to that while I crafted something else. The Alternate Adventures of Halesowen became the first book self-published to the Kindle Store in April-2017, which created a brand new set of characters and developed them into something useable for Secrets Behind the Truth – the new name of TV and Film Residential Camp.
Those two started off the Alternate Halesowen and Beyond series – a world that was my own, but one that reflected real life. The Alternate Extras of Halesowen was added to Wattpad soon after the first release, giving a few free smaller stories within this world. Two other series were started within this era, with Elemental Heroes launching a video game-like world, and Space Race Championship being my sci-fi/fantasy world inspired by Star Wars. A third addition to the Alternate Halesowen and Beyond series became the last addition to the Kindle Store for this era in September-2019.
Between the first two releases within the Alternate Halesowen and Beyond series was another addition to Wattpad inspired by something that had been part of the website. Crazy Shorts were no more, but I had ideas for short stories still. That’s how Shorts of the Rula made its debut on Wattpad with The Heat of London. While it didn’t get used much, there were three other shorts added to it throughout the years.
Also on Wattpad was the rewrite of Pokémon: Shadow Boom. It took more than a year for a full commitment to be given to it, but the rewrite was to do the same thing as I had done with TV and Film Residential Camp. Along with that, in November-2019, came a story that originally was meant to be part of Shorts of the Rula before it expanded into four points of view. That being Yogsimulated – a fan-created story with the aim of showing love to the Yogscast by recreating their style of video in written form.
The blog and Youtube side of things were also still going strong, with new series starting on the blog – including a look at new ideas for Mario Kart and Animal Crossing. This era also saw the return of Star Wars Month in 2018, with plans to make it larger than it had before. That success saw seven videos showcasing a number of games, as well as five blog posts giving out some ideas and reviews. Star Wars Month also saw the first use of custom thumbnails for videos.
A new month-long event was started in July-2019, with the same idea as Star Wars Month. That being Racing Month. To start this event off, I wanted to feature games I hadn’t featured before, as well as those that had a story personal to me. As such, only four games were featured, but each got the time to shine. Once the month was over, my regular schedule of uploads on those days ending in 5 or 0 began. While not every slot had a video, I kept to that schedule except in certain circumstances.
I also started to expand the videos that would be seen on the channel. The usual games of GTA Online and Star Wars Battlefront had been joined by Forza Horizon 4 when that released, but aside from the occasional Mario Kart multiplayer or Sonic Generations video, hardly anything else featured outside of those two month-long events. November-2019 saw to change that by tying videos and blog posts together, so reviews of games on the blog also saw a video of gameplay featured on Youtube.
The blog was seeing plenty of use, as along with the series looking at ideas for Mario Kart and Animal Crossing, I had also been diving into plenty of other concepts, especially through 2019. That year also started off the general experiences posts, where I could look at games outside of the review formats I had. I could link up multiple games to view together – even if they were completely different from each other – and give some thoughts while sharing what I had done within them.
While such posts had already started, it was at the beginning of 2020 where I announced such posts were a part of the experiences type of posts. And it was at the start of 2020 that I was looking at my site and feeling it could be used as the home of all content rather than just a showcase of content.