Dude weed lmao

The final draft of Kevin and Theo wrapped on Tuesday! Bunch new scenes in it, things are better fleshed out, they make more sense, and characters and dialogue just hit better, more vibrantly, more sensically. Much happier with the new draft. We did agree to go through and switch all the US spellings and names for stuff to their British equivalents, but I'm gonna let her do that, because I don't know the full extent of what I'm looking for. Caby's nearly done with her illustrations too; all that's left is the poster, which will also be the book cover.

I'm really happy with the way it all panned out. This is really the first in the new wave of Pennyverse stories (a term I am endlessly frustrated I couldn't use in Kevin and Theo itself), which has changed a lot since 2019, in tone, in the strength of the writing and the maturity and the likability, frankly. Not a lot of that's gotten online since it's mostly been ideas and talks as we've stopped working on it for a few years, so it's nice to have the new era officially begun with this story.

To elaborate on that last point: I stopped working on Pennyverse for a while in part because I felt being a more empathetic and better-adjusted person would help me do the material better justice. I'm not particularly proud of the early days of the project. It was funny how "saccharine" and optimistic it was made out to be back when we started it, because we still joked lots about characters dying horribly, and I sure wrote a lot of miserable things with Seb and especially Colton (who I regret putting through so much despite him being a fictional teenage raccoon), miserable to the point where they basically made no sense. (So many adults bullying this kid, despite him being literally orphaned and probably malnourished. He'd be the first everyone would protect.)

I've stopped regretting it quite as much as I used to, but really, I won't rest until it's all the way it should be. The first step towards that was just growing as a person myself, and I'm happy to say I feel I very much have, but it does mean the flow of new Pennyverse media dried up for a while, and what is there (like the toyhou.se bios) is woefully out of date.

I'm pretty fond of it all again, all the stories and music and level design and site building and art I've always gotten up to, so to focus my attention, I've been thinking of it in phases. These aren't set in stone, they bleed together, they're months-long, and there's no deadlines, but my time gets more limited, I have more I want to do, and I've gotta start picking. Here's how I've been thinking of it:

1. The first phase involves my websites. I fell off of sitemaking over the lockdowns, and like Pennyverse, the way I presented myself (like my dislike of about pages or only having sections for what I feel people would care about from me) doesn't sound right to me anymore. cammy.somnol is just the cute little hobby and interest site, but I'd really like to have mari.somnol redone, nice to browse, and filled up with damn near everything I've made for some kinda audience before I go and make more of it with (currently) no place to put it.

2. The second phase involves my writing, both the stories themselves and the meta media around it. My toyhou.se is both barren of my new lad ideas and very out of date of my old lad ideas. Colton's updated personality, where he's less "vulnerable kid" and more "vulnerable teenager trying to make it look like he can handle himself when he has no idea what he's doing", isn't up there. Seb's totally overhauled personality, less "grumpy" and more "socially anxious to the point of defensiveness and basically ashamed of it", isn't up there. I'd like to make the actual profiles more visually appealing as well—the infobox thing is still cute, but it's a little stale by now.

   For the proper story end of things, I'd still like to do that PMD fanfic I started, Gonzo has a few more prequel stories in him (I was imagining one based on the Centralia mine fire, which isn't far from me, as a way to explore settlement guardians in greater detail), Under the Rain Shadow still needs its rewrite and illustration pass, and I'd love to start an in-character blog for Seb now that I have a good reason for him to make one. (I think he'd rather enjoy talking and talking about himself when he opens up a little.)

3. The third phase involves music. I would really like to return to guitar, get myself an amp, get a professional looking at my cheap Strat clone, take some online lessons, and actually be able to contribute that playing to my music. I haven't made a true attempt at an album since I was working on mtlx stuff in 2020, and all that feels rather stiff to me now. I know I have so much better music in me now, both using the sounds I've created for myself in these various projects and in new, yet-to-be-discovered sounds, and I know Caby would love to contribute her art skills to working on my album art and sleeve designs.

Art and level design aren't up there because they're not true focuses of mine. I fucking love them both, but they're much more "hobbies" than the rest of the stuff on the list, which feel like things I truly want to pursue and get better at and show off to people. Art is a means to an end (that being a way to get my ideas for cute animal people out into the world) and a way to blow off steam between bigger projects, and while I've been toying with TrenchBroom again and playing a bunch of Quake, I'm never going to be a professional level designer, so I don't really see that as being a focus of mine at current. Maybe someday! (That being said, while I'm at it, you can probably expect me to branch out into other games—can you imagine a Cammy Doom WAD? It's more likely than you think.)

This is really just a brain dump and a bunch of waffle about some plans for the future. I haven't even gotten to all the new stuff I'd like to do, like start up some kind of YouTube presence doing comfy retrocomputing videos and rambling into a MiniDV camera, or all the travel I'd like to get up to once I have a car. I've got that trip coming up! The next era in my life is truly starting soon, and it's going to be a busy time, so I figured I'd just lay out a few priorities on here for all my hobby stuff as I attempt to keep it all in check.