So I've been intentionally coy on what this story thing I'm working on with Caby is outside of, well, what I've already said. Partially, that was out of practicality. It wasn't really far along enough that I could be or wanted to share much of it with the world.

I just got the first draft of it done before work this afternoon. Just over 4,800 words, spread out over three weeks. The story's done regardless of what happens from here, and Caby draws too much for the illustrations to not follow at roughly the same pace. I intentionally put all else I was up to (including site stuff) on pause more or less to make sure I was focusing all my creative energy on it. Think it's time to share some about it.

Somnolescent has this thing called the Greater Somnolescent Multiverse. I wrote about it for an earlier version of cammy.somnol and that post got rewritten for the blog, so the details are there if you wanna read about it. Essentially, it's this big, undefined void that sits between all our worlds (Pennyverse, Pinede, Wyn, Wisp, Aidew, the real world, etc.). Some characters could survive in the vacuum of the Multiverse, some can't. Some can survive it so well, they know about it and can hop across it at will.

Kevin and Theo's Multiverse Misadventure is what happens when two Multiverse jumpers want to go to another world, but have no idea how to get there. It's two characters, Kevin from Pennyverse, who's a big stupid aardwolf who acts like a big stupid dog instead, and Theophrastus, short Theo, who's Apricot Bay's elderly librarian rabbit. Theo is actually originally from Pinede; in Caerpinwyd, he was a prodigy mage and ravenous bookworm who discovered immortality, then discovered the Multiverse, and set up shop in another world to collect and bring home exotic books.

(Theo on the left, Kevin on the right in the doorway. You'll want to fullview that one. 4.6mb download, careful!)

Over a holiday weekend, Theo decides to bring Kevin home to his big home on the shores of Caerpinwyd, but discovers in having not come home in a few months, he's forgotten where in the Multiverse it's located. Kevin is a stupid dog who was born of Multiverse noise and climbed into Pennyverse, where he was found in a dumpster in The City and had to be told what species he even took shape as.

Theo rested on his back on the island underneath the bubble. Mercifully, he was clothed, but his patience was growing threadbare. "This has been an absolute waste of time!" he growled. "There's more worlds in this Multiverse than I know what to do with."

Kevin stood at his side, having returned from patching another world hole. Theo barely looked in his direction. "Aw, it's here somewhere, Theo," the aardwolf encouraged. "Maybe it'll be the next one we try!"

"I don't even recall which one leads back to Apricot Bay." Theo picked his heavy head off the ground, sitting up with a few spine cracks. "We are pitifully lost."

"I know which one it is!" Kevin put his hand up to point to one before stopping. "It's—um—I think it's that one—"

The bunny sighed. "We will try one more world bubble. If by some occurrence there isn't a large bird trying to eat us in that world, we'll find somewhere to rest for the evening. Maybe we'll return to Apricot Bay before the holiday is through."

It takes them a few tries.

In truth, any time I write something in multiple sittings, it feels disjointed to me. It doesn't help that I really don't map things out too much as I go along. Seriously, parts of that description, I just came up with as I was describing it. I don't think about tone too much, and I'm not good at "zingers"—those moments people really tend to remember from a story. I do plan to rewrite this in a few days. It's good, but I know I can do better. Everyone in the group likes it though, and Caby was especially grateful, since she had no idea what to do for a final school project otherwise.

There's some real neat plans for actually distributing this sucker floating around. We're gonna do a digital copy for all of you to read, and the Somnolians are going to get copies of it mailed to them, since Caby has to print everything out anyway. And of course, her and I will keep copies for ourselves. My work! In print, technically!

Seriously, when the rest of the illustrations are done and it's all assembled, it's gonna be like nothing we've done before. Caby's drawn stuff for my stories before, but not in a while, and never while I've been writing it, so this is both new territory and real exciting territory for me. At the moment, now that the writing is tentatively completed, I'm gonna go back to getting cammy.somnol's aboveground/belowground update ready to go live and probably work on some Quake level designs on paper before I get to mapping. Did I mention I don't plan too much beforehand?

I lied. I'm not conscious of saving money anymore. I've probably spent $200 on the 3DS eShop before it went down today, and $70 of that in the past week. Been squirrelling away some more games to play now that I'm in the mood for new ones. Have a list:

• HarmoKnight
• Star Fox 64 3D
• Rhythm Heaven Megamix
• Kid Icarus: Uprising (this one necessitated a quick upgrade to a bigger SD card)
• Pokémon Picross (if you spent $30 in it, you get future Picrites for free, eShop being extent or not)
• Yoshi and Poochy's Woolly World (this one was in physical because it wasn't much cheaper on the eShop than it was on Amazon)

There was also supposed to be a copy of Ocarina of Time 3D in there, but that's getting shipped in April. That means I'll probably never get it, in my experience.

And on the Virtual Console side:

• Balloon Fight (NES)
• Mega Man 2 (NES)
• Pokémon Silver (GBC)
• Mario Bros. (NES)
• Pokémon Puzzle Challenge (GBC)
• Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (GBC)

But Cammy! Why not just grab all this stuff off hShop for free??????

Oh my God, I've gotten so sick of getting asked this. Every time I've mentioned the eShop in some Discord server or on Blips, someone has brought up hShop. Look, buying stuff makes it more special. It's just true. I've downloaded tons of Wii WADs and ROMs and then just never actually played them. Easy come, easy go. Every game or album I buy, though, I feel obligated to really dig into it, and usually I get pretty damn close to it in the process. Plus, it's just cool to be able to say I used the eShop while it was still around.

I'm a fairweather fan of Nintendo; download or pirate if you like. But like, y'know, you're not cool for doing it. Everyone does it. I've done it. I've gotten stern warnings from my ISP for torrenting shit. (Yet I never bought that Harvey Danger album. Hm. Maybe that warning wasn't so effective after all.) It's not cool, it's not a way to show up the man, it's just a thing you can do. And I chose to buy a bunch of games instead.

I think I need to stop hanging out in places where 15-year-olds congregate, mostly.

So yeah, I'm gonna go back to playing Pokémon Puzzle Challenge now. Fun game! (Protip, if you have an XL, hold Start or Select at game boot. Like with DS carts, it will keep the original resolution of the game intact and not stretch it, and in the Virtual Console's case, you'll get a console-specific border around the game instead.) Excited to dig into it all, really. A lot of this is stuff I've never played, but have been thoroughly curious about.

I blew through all 300 pages of Masters of Doom yesterday. Go read it, it's fucking fantastic. Aside from it being consistently fascinating, funny, and getting me to wanna drop everything to load up TrenchBroom several times, I really found John Carmack's continued insistence that happiness is a closet with a computer, a Coke, and a good pizza amazingly relatable. I mean, I don't eat quite that badly, but I'm a simple boy. I want my Caby, I want financial comfort, and I want to be able to pursue my hobbies. Literally whatever lifestyle enables that is what I want.

I would've bought immediately a copy off Amazon to keep (I just read a PDF copy) if I wasn't conscious of the money I'm spending that should really be saved up for my rapidly-approaching trip to see Caby. I'm not sure how much money I'll spend in all; I know the flight costs are mine, and obviously I'll have my debit card, but I don't need to spend money on a hotel or anything because I'll be staying with Caby's folks, and I'm sure she'll partially be paying for anything fun we do because she's hosting me.

That said, here's a small list of stuff, for me more than for you, that I still gotta get sorted before I head off in May. (I know I've been saying April, but May is when Caby's school lets out, and it just makes more sense to wait that extra bit.)

• Actually scheduling the damn flight. I'll probably leave on a weekday since those flights are apparently the cheapest. I'll actually be flying to London, and Caby and I will stay in town for the evening and following together before heading back to Wales. (The UK is small enough that you can take day trips between capital cities! Fucked!)
• Enroll in that TSA PreCheck thing. Hey, if I get to not have my laptop drive wiped and not have to take my shoes off in the TSA line, that's preferred by me. That fact that I also board the plane far quicker is a huge bonus, since I have no clue how long boarding normally takes.
• Letting my bank and phone carrier know I'm going roaming. The former so my account doesn't get randomly frozen, the latter for international text and call support. Also gonna pay some of my bills before I head off since I don't really have autopay set up on the accounts and I don't want the house back home to suddenly not have cable while I'm gone.
• Clothes shopping. I very rarely go out outside of work, so all I have are my work clothes and then sweats and old t-shirts. (It's funny Setter always wears jeans, because I really do not care for jeans at all.) Caby and I don't mind, but I should probably make a better impression on her parents than that.
• Uh, quitting my job. I'm finding it kinda annoying repeatedly explaining to people who hear that I'm about to quit and immediately ask why I'm not just asking for time off. Three weeks is already long enough to ask for off, but when I get back home, I'd like to recharge and not have to worry about a job for another few weeks, and I know I'm not getting six or more weeks in all. I'm putting in my two weeks and doing things the legit way so if I can't find another job when I come back, I'm still in good standing with my store and can reapply. It's not the worst grocery store chain, it's just that my store is uniquely mismanaged. I still don't mind it most nights.

I've been feeling more alive than ever lately. I'm maybe a good 1,200 words off from having Kevin and Theo finished for Caby, and once that's done, all bets are off. I've been working a ton on cammy.somnol now that I've got a good testing environment. Lining more graphics, fixing misspellings, punching up alt-text, redoing pages, getting photo galleries ready for all the ones I'll take on the trip... I'm supremely proud of how it's turning out.

I'm just enthusiastic about things again. As I implied, I'd like to return to mapping this year. I'd like to make another EP this year! I miss how quick I used to make everything. I feel 2023, especially sitting in town, working right next to my best friend in the whole world, will be the year all that hits me again like a rocket.

Let it be known that I am still a fantastic worker. When the truck guys are telling you you killed a delivery, you killed a delivery. I know it's just grocery store work, but it was also three pallets of way too much wine I did all on my own. I carry that fucking department.

I set up a WAMP stack on my home server (which consists of a netbook :marf:) to serve up a beta version of cammy.somnol, for my use and to prove to friends I really am working on cool shit for this site. I hesitate to link to it because the pages are wildly unfinished, but the port is 1998, if you know my home IP. (And that's easy to find if you ping the Somnol Radio subdomain. I'm ~doxing myself~, ooh.) You can also check my profile on Discord, if you have my private account added.

I've been really excited about sitebuilding lately and getting this damn site filled out, and believe me, there is a lot coming back from the old site but better, and a lot brand new you'll enjoy. I've already been showing people the half-finished pages (like I said before, text is usually finished, they just need drawings) and they're getting a great response, so hopefully I'll get the graphics done for them and push it all to main at long last.

I'm also collaborating with Caby for her school final! We're finally doing a "my writing, her art" thing involving some Pennyverse lads and the Somnolescent Multiverse. It's coming out surprisingly good, and I hope there's digital copies so Caby and I can share it with you when it's all done and popping. Have some Gonzos (he's only a bit part, this one involves Kevin and Theophrastus the Apricot Bay librarian, mainly) and a snippet of the story:

It's a pretty nice turnaround from a couple days ago. I've long been a Failure fan, but the lyrics of "Heliotropic" were a pretty literal description of my early Saturday morning. No, I wasn't in the throes of heroin addiction, but it was pretty despondent either way. Realized I needed to make a few changes, hop off Blips for a bit (I will return shortly), and figure out what's been killing my mood and desire to do much these past few months. Think I miss making all sorts of stuff, music and Quake maps and goofy stories especially, so that's my goal. Whatever I'm idly fantasizing about in the shower is what my focus shall rest on.

Christ, I need to start updating this more. I never feel like I have much to say until I sit down to write an entry, and then it turns out I can't fit it all unless I bloat it to hell. More info on my forthcoming trip to Wales and some other fun stories of getting awkwardly discovered by adults in my life soon!

I expect nobody but the Somnolians to read it and I am more than happy about that.

Apparently a good chunk of my store knows about this site. That's a thing. I didn't think I'd end off tonight hearing about how popular "Cammy's Island" is, won't lie. (Was probably because I was putting the URL on all my drawings—I'm slow.)

This means that my manager was indeed reading about me shittalking him on this weird basic HTML site I made with my personal journal on it. I don't know if he's still checking here. Probably not. (If you are, what's up, gamer? I hope you're being more honest with your associates at your new store!) He took it in good humor though, apparently. "He's entitled to his opinion" was the reaction, and not immediately firing me. Cool! But uh, that makes every interaction I've had with him since he learned of it in late January incredibly awkward in hindsight.

And yeah, I think the more concerning thing was that apparently folks were passing it around for two months and just elected not to tell me. At least that should mean everyone's over it by now. It also means that I will probably not write that "one year of having a job, here's all the juice" post I've been planning for the group blog.

But uh, good thing I stopped updating this when work really got bad! I had to contact HR and had some sitdowns with the new store management and a bunch of other shit. I guess if there's still anyone lurking, I'm planning to put in my two weeks soon, ahead of my trip to Wales. Looking forward to the time off.

Actually, I lied. The more concerning thing is that a bunch of random boomers and Gen Xers at my store have absolutely seen me draw myself as a dog. Even my family doesn't know that. I sincerely hope that my Setter drawings are somehow on file at corporate. That'd probably break all of space-time, not to mention my desire to live.

Anyway, this place is still pretty bare-bones, sorry about that. Wish I had something other than the journal where I call my store managers ratfucks up on here, but that requires drawing and I'm slow on that. I do have lots of cool photo galleries and stuff I could bring back from the old site, plus new pages, plus I'm bringing the DSi to Wales so Caby and I can take crunchy photos on our adventures. It'll be hot. We'll talk more soon, I promise.