Worked on this a couple weeks ago. I am, as stated, a monkey slapping keys in Atom and I finally figured out how to make the UI not default-as-fuck. The menu is now vaguely theme-appropriate, the menus are all gothic-ky and default names are white, not green. I'll be poking away at the game's UI and general appearance as the updates roll on. A marathon not a sprint kind of deal.
Big thanks to @maroder#7487 on discord (and Patreon) for pointing out that the default puke-green Ren'Py menu actually looks pretty bad, and does a disservice for the writing inside. I mean - I wrote that last part. Sounds arrogant. But in retrospect that menu probably did a good job at turning folks away before they even got to try the writing and decide for themselves. I'm not exactly holding players hostage with the feeling of "oh god I spent 800mb downloading this I have to try a little" - my baby's lean and mean and also easy to toss. Whoops!