- Unknown
- Cammy, then 12 years old and interested in making videos and the occasional story, solicits YouTube channel name suggestions from his older sister, at the time persuing a degree in psychology. She suggests a pile of names, one of which was "Somnolescent Productions". (This was better than any of his previous ideas--as funny as "BananaTV" sure was.) While the channel was never named such, inspired by shows like Is It a Good Idea to Microwave This? (which he wasn't cool enough to make himself), Cammy creates a bumper with the name and an early version of the half-bulb insignia and puts it at the end of all of his videos.
- While all of the videos are lost (if you happen to have any from a channel called "pacguy19" backed up, would ya send them to me?), this bumper has since been recreated.
- Somnolescent would be conceived in Cammy's head as a collective of creative people hiding the bulb in their respective projects, lending an air of mystery to their affiliation. Years later, this would somehow become reality.
- August 2013
- At 14, Cammy meets a much older woman named chocolate-covered-portals, or Brianna, in Portal fan circles on Tumblr. While Brianna turned out to be a Munchausens-by-Internet child groomer, they talked long enough for Cammy to get attached. Brianna would be counted as a Somnolian for a while, though she never did much except bad fanfic, unfunny Garry's Mod poses, and screenshots of Sims having lol-quirky sex.
- July 1, 2013
- Long before meeting Cammy or any of the Somnolians (possibly long before Cammy knew Wales existed), Caby begins to doodle an elf boy named Dai and his bird-man friend Oke for a comic she would call Gors. Gors never materializes, but Dai is retooled into a melanistic serval for Pinède and Oke simply becomes his owl pet.
- Unknown, presumably autumn 2013
- During a boring study hall in the school cafeteria, a friend of a friend hands Cammy a piece of lined paper with the half-bulb scribbled on it, in color no less. Cammy still has this piece of paper. Here's a scan.
- November 2013
- Cammy would have his first choice encounter with Savannah, also around his age and talking to a much older woman on the Internet. Something dumb happens between him and Brianna, and an anonymous ask appears in his Tumblr inbox, simply saying "fuck a goat". This turns out to be Savannah, who heard about the thing and was encouraged to do so by Brianna. Cammy and Savannah laugh it off when they discuss it together days later; this recounting of this silly interaction does not include the several hours of all caps screaming and crying Brianna would bombard the two with.
- February 22, 2014
- Cammy is expelled from school (ultimately temporarily) and proceeds to spend the spring and summer getting into Pokémon and becoming reacquainted with character designing and writing like he was interested in as a child. Being surrounded by folks who were also interested in making things (Brianna with fanfiction, other real life friends into music production and D&D) would cause him to expand out his Somnolescent creative collective idea in time.
- Summer 2014
- Cammy becomes interested in IRC as a cool old Internet chat thing. As Brianna had lots of Tumblr followers,
#chocoportals would go live on the former Foonetic network sometime that summer. (My earliest logs go back to August 2014, but I recall events happening prior to that.) No one joins except the odd straggler and prengle, a kid slightly younger than Cammy (unbeknownst to him, as prengle didn't often give up details about himself) from California. prengle would stick around for Sims 2 and Elder Scrolls talk.
- August 2014
- Cammy would be properly introduced to Savannah over IRC, through Brianna. Savannah was only marginally younger than Cammy, could draw, and occasionally even drew stuff for him, which meant they became instant friends. Kinda.
- The four of them now being (rather unhealthy) friends and each having an interest in making stuff, Somnolescent would become increasingly creativity-focused, though it was still nothing more than a group chat, really.
- February 6, 2015
- Brianna introduces Cammy to the art of roleplaying. She passes a starter text file about an aardwolf without much to do in his coastal fantasy hometown to Cammy through Dropbox, and Cammy responds as though it were a text adventure. While anyone who knows how the Internet goes can probably extrapolate what these roleplays become with Brianna's guidance, Cammy grows attached to the idea of fantasy animal people and idly comes up with lore and characters during math classes to populate them. (Savannah and prengle are also roped into doing quests with Cammy every so often, and as all involved in these were spergy creative teenagers, they went a lot better.)
- Unknown, first half of the year
- Cammy briefly takes up the URL somnolescentproductions on Tumblr. He'd just use it for reblogs and the occasional teenage rant, though. (I'm sure the post where someone called out somnolescentproductions as a "potential rapist" for not thinking "Blurred Lines" was particularly rapey is still out there. What odd times.)
- September 2015
- Spurred on by his first bout of creative angst with the whole writing thing and inspired by low-bit music, Big Black, and bizarre found sound drone collage stuff he was listening to on netlabels, Cammy begins to experiment with making music on his computer. This would manifest in a project he called aphrodisiac and a scrapped EP release called Here Come Monsters that November.
- May 22, 2016
- Cammy's first EP under the aphrodisiac name, Various Murky Basements, is officially released through RouteNote, Bandcamp, and a limited run of CD-Rs given to people at school (none of which he has anymore, which speaks to its astonishing popularity).
- Unknown, maybe mid-2016
- Savannah starts to form the idea of Wisp. Amusingly, it was intended to be a simple, episodic paranormal investigation comic that is currently seven years and several thousand pages into development.
- Unknown, possibly late 2016
- Savannah briefly leaves the group due to quarreling with Cammy.
- Unknown, probably early 2017
- Caby starts to crystalize the idea of a coming-of-age psychological horror comic set in mid-Wales in the early 90s starring a bunch of cats and dogs. It comes to be known as Wyn's World, and they've stuck with her ever since. If you've ever wondered who some of the ones she keeps doodling are, there you have it!
- February 26, 2017
- Savannah returns to the group. She stays mostly inactive for a couple years, but is on friendly enough terms.
- May 23, 2017
- Caby makes gwtagacw, her first Neocities site. It's done on a school computer and looks like this. It wouldn't be until early 2018 that her iconic CGA guinea pigs would make their first appearance.
- May 29, 2017
- borb joins the group. Cammy and borb knew each other from school as two outsiders orbiting the same friend group, and they both had enough knowledge of Internet art nonsense to start talking regularly.
- March 18, 2018
- dotcomboom, a young lad interested in computers, makes his first Neocities site to host some of the software he's been writing.
- April 1, 2018
- Looking for friends as his attachment to an emotional vampire child groomer and to Somnolescent start to slip, Cammy joins Neocities as mariteaux. Arguing, shitposting, and chaos in the community Discords ensues. Through it, Cammy meets dcb and attracts the attention of Caby (who doesn't like him at first).
- July 30, 2018
- The Python version of AutoSite (now AutoSite Legacy) receives its first commit. Cammy, struggling to keep the design of his own site consistent, is one of its first and most fervent users. AutoSite still generates a significant chunk of the sites across our site network.
- August 18, 2018
- Cammy shares his first private chats with Caby. The two learn they fit together amazingly well near-immediately and especially bond over a shared hatred of an infamous Neocities sex pest.
- August 31, 2018
- Realizing that an infusion of new blood is exactly what his art collective idea could use, Cammy invites Caby and dcb into the Somnolescent Discord server. Though they're initially hesitant about not fitting in, they discover the group is in fact barely extant at that moment and thus there's nothing to fit into.
- September 24, 2018
- Brianna is finally removed from Somnolescent. These days, it seems she mostly fakes medical conditions (including heart attacks and strokes somehow) for attention and sympathy in a "horse games" Discord and on Reddit to few replies.
- October 10, 2018
- After about a month in production, Districts for Neocities is launched. Caby provided the graphics and designed its mascot, the dweeby angry Sebastian (whom Cammy later learned was based on himself), dcb wrote a version of his site generator AutoSite specifically to handle the various districts, and Cammy pieced everything together. It'd be the first, but not the last, time the three would work together on a project.
- December 20, 2018
- Somnolescent's Web hosting is unveiled, and Somnolescent as a group becomes official. This date is designated as Somnolescent's birthday. Far be it from the six months some in the peanut gallery gave the group to survive, seven years later and we're doing better than ever.
- January 1, 2019
- Tesserae, Cammy's idea for a Web design help site, relaunches on Somnolescent hosting. Originally, it was on Neocities, as it was intended for Neocities kids. Both this original Neocities variant and the redesign from 2020 onwards are here on archives. Tesserae would be shut down in October 2024 due to lack of interest in continuing with it and a realization other people did it better.
- January 17, 2019
- Darkpenny is finished! Featuring Seb from Districts, Neocities mascot Penny, and their weirdly tall aardwolf friend Kevin, This is the first Pennyverse story ever written. While it was absolutely written by teenagers, it's an important milestone in our group projects. The vibrant world of Pennyverse starts to come together in writing and in art over the next few months. Read here if you dare.
- January 20, 2019
- Caby and Cammy start dating. They're very much still together. <3
- January 20, 2019
- The announcement of their relationship causes prengle to exit the group. It turned out he wanted Cammy for himself and saw himself as "cucked by a sheepfucker". Cammy cuts contact shortly thereafter. prengle stalks him for a few months, resulting in a very gay and very amusing voicemail sent by prengle being inserted into one of the aphrodisiac tracks to great effect.
- January 22, 2019
- mon, a kid from Neocities who hung around a lot, is invited into the group. mon wasn't very creative and doesn't factor much into the Somnolescent timeline. mon would delete his entire Internet presence in 2022 following unfortunate events happening to him in his real life. (His Somnolescent sites are preserved here.)
- February 2, 2019
- Pituophis would receive its first commit. Pituophis is a Python 3-based Gopher server and powers Somnolescent's Gopher server to this day. (Prior to this, we ran Floodgap's Bucktooth server, but it's more fun to write it yourself sometimes.)
- April 1, 2019
- On the first anniversary of Cammy showing up on Neocities and a bunch of shit happening, In Free Fall, a collection of new and remixed aphrodisiac tracks, is released online as a tribute to the teenager years that came before. The aim was to be paired with a set of new songs--that were then eaten by a hard drive crash.
- April 25, 2019
- Letters From Somnolescent, our group blog, receives its first post! Originally, it ran a CMS software named Nucleus, but following this eating itself that November, we switched to WordPress where it's been ever since.
- August 18, 2019
- w2krepo is launched on dcb's site! Originally a simple directory for browsing desktop and handheld software from the late 90s and very early 2000s, it would be spun off into its own subdomain in early 2020 where it's remained ever since.
- August 19, 2019
- A VB .Net-based offshoot of Python AutoSite, then called AutoSite XL, receives its first commit. This version, featuring in both GUI and CLI flavors, would become the "main" version of AutoSite, and Python the "Legacy" version. Both have the same functionality and are still updated regularly, so choose your favorite flavor.
- May 10, 2020
- Somnolescent's Gopher permanently comes back online after being destroyed in the hard drive crash the previous year. This time, it runs on a Raspberry Pi running a Pituophis-powered server module called Gophew, which enables the user to search the whole server by keyword.
- July 5, 2020
- Feeling ever-sociable, Somnolescent gives hosting an IRC room for stragglers a try. Originally, this is on the SlashNET service, but we've migrated to EFnet in more recent years and been there ever since. Come chat with us!
- November 20, 2020
- The Somnolescent Archives launches! Initially a download depot for stuff we didn't want to see disappear, it slowly becomes a museum of Somnolescent history instead, including full speed browseable versions of all old sites on the network.
- January 20, 2021
- Devon, a person on Neocities that Cammy and Caby and dcb were...aware of(?), joins the group. She spent a lot of time in our group IRC room and chatting with Cammy over email, and we felt at the time she was a good match. You can read her intro post on Letters here.
- Around January 26, 2021
- Cammy launches his second site, cammy.somnolescent.net. It was spurred on by an interest in more "digital garden" retro-y interest sites like dcb and Devon were playing with at the time, though cammy.somnol is the only one to survive into the modern day.
- January 27, 2022
- The primordial form of what would become the Somnolescent Radio starts to get toyed with. As of right now, there's still a lot to sort out with it, and technologically I still don't know what's wrong with it. Maybe someday it'll come back, because it's still a fun idea.
- February 5, 2022
- mon exits Somnolescent. He'd been absent for at least a year by this time, and it seems his thirst for hanging out died out with some of the things he'd been through in the years prior. Unlike most people who leave the group, this wasn't on bad terms, so hopefully he's doing better wherever he is these days. (And is actually playing with some of those classic Macs he has hoarded. Ahem.)
- March 17, 2022
- borb is acrimoniously booted from Somnolescent. All she really did was fight with everyone anyway. Now her time is spent wasting money (probably close to $5,000 now) on really hideous adoptables and trying to look smart on the toyhou.se forums. It turns out to be a blessing in disguise, as Somnol grows much friendlier with each other and Savannah returns to be much more active. Now we can't imagine Somnol without her. Thanks borb!
- May 4, 2022
- The Somnolians finally manage to convince Caby's brother Cramble to join the group. He only does so because we have an "honorary Somnolian" role in the Discord. Still, he's got a (woefully old) site and a government-mandated sona, so it counts. No refunds!
- June 6, 2022
- sushi joins the group for a time. An old Neocities friend we were quite fond of, he's never terribly active and apparently quit Discord without us even noticing, so there's not really a "leave date" to cite here either. Ah well, he wrote us a nice introduction post at least.
- November 12, 2022
- Savannah launches fwd.somnolescent.net, her own site! You can read all about the experience on her post about it on Letters.
- May 17-June 7, 2023
- Cammy flies off to Wales, his first plane ride and first international trip, to visit Caby and Cramble! This is the first time formerly Internet-only Somnolians have met in person. Read about the entire trip on cammy.somnol!
- May 2, 2023
- Jake joins the group! Jake's an old Neocities friend of dcb and really all of ours and current purveyor of comedy videos on his channel DeleteYourEmails.
- November 16, 2023
- Devon's kicked out of Somnolescent for being a violent, schizoposting femcel racist. We miss her hastily-deleted 2AM breakdowns about Ukrainians very much. (We do not.)
- December 8, 2023
- Cammy releases Last Summer under the name mtlx, his first finished music project in four years! It concludes a funny little saga from 2020 where dcb made up a fake album from MP3.com and Cammy, ever the fooled, was determined to make it real.
- December 20, 2023
- On Somnolescent's fifth anniversary, Connor joins the group! Connor's an old Neocities mutual we knew as pinkerton (ain't that a throwback?). Read his introduction post on Letters here.
- February 6, 2024
- The newest part in our weird jigsaw Gopher server architecture, SomnolCCSO, comes alive! CCSO is an 80s-era phonebook lookup server protocol with only (as of 2024) five active servers left in existence, and featuring group members and our characters, Somnolescent became #6. Read all about it in the Letters post from the time!
- February 8-March 17, 2024
- Cammy again flies off to Wales to see Caby and Cramble and their family! Trip diary is forthcoming, years later, yes. It was still very lovely.
- July 20, 2024
- Savannah begins work on Desertbound, a fantasy animal people adventure novella-turned-novel based in our group world Pinède! It's still undergoing editing, but expect it out summer 2026.
- July 30, 2024
- Connor releases the first MoriHime record! We got to hear it come together in the server, and it was lovely. (I still haven't received my physical copy, so thanks whoever was putting that out for him!)
- October 18, 2024
- Jake ultimately leaves the group due to not really meshing with our specific weird friend group culture. We're still friends and chat decently regularly, so the split was amicable, no worries. (Still gotta scrape him off the site though.)
- July 13-August 24, 2025
- The third Wales trip and Somnolian crossover commences! This time, Cammy stays for six weeks, barcades and university retrogaming exhibits were visited, and plans for a "Caby and Cramble visit the US" trip are discussed instead... (Trip diary is forthcoming!)
|
