"Don't Wake Me Up" is Copyright 2024 Baudelaire Welch. All rights reserved.
To James. For being the first person in real life who loved Don't Wake Me Up, and teaching me in turn to love it again. For making me believe Don't Wake Me Up meant so much more than just my childhood, it was a sign of the future, and the start of everything else to come. For following me around the goddamn world, fuelled only on damned faith in a new world for games. For making my writing so much better, just with all of the love you put into every comment, discussion, and idea I share with you. I'll forever only be Asterius around you.
To my mom, Kathleen, for being the guiding light teaching me to want to write. For raising me to believe in myself too much. Because of you, I've never had a single doubt that this day would come, when I published my first large solo writing. For teaching me to never quit—making me someone who wouldn't give up on a work like this, even after eight years.
A massive screw you to my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. You weren't able to stop me, even though you tried.
To Tucker, for being the biggest bundle of happiness and somehow more overjoyed than is in any way reasonable every time you see anything about my work. The support means so much.
To Jamie, for being the first friend I started to share in my love of games with. Don't Wake Me Up's themes are the product of extreme isolation, written by someone who lived life mostly through fiction. Whose thoughts, feelings, and twisted parasocial emotions about games had spent years just bottled up. Games started to make me friends instead of fictional surrogates when we started playing tabletop together, and having friends in a group like that was the start of making me a person I'm much happier with today.
And to the hardest lesson I learnt. Sometimes a camp dumb video game character does make people happy.
Baudelaire Welch wrote most of Don't Wake Me Up in 2015 as a teenager who spent more time in Fanfiction than reality - it was their first original work. Now, they work as a designer for RPG companion characters and romances in Dublin. There, they spend their time writing serial killers, degenerate sex scenes, and even some vampire angst. Previously, they worked as a designer for the sordid affairs of Crusader Kings III. They dress like Oscar Wilde on a daily basis.
Choice of Games LLC is a California Limited Liability Company dedicated to producing high-quality, text-based, multiple-choice games. We produce games in house, including Choice of the Dragon and Choice of Broadsides. We have also developed a simple scripting language for writing text-based games, ChoiceScript, which we make available to others for use in their projects, and we host games produced by other designers using ChoiceScript on our website. All of our games are available on the web. We also produce mobile versions of our games that can be played on iPhones, Android phones, and other smartphones.
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