#crazy dreams from covid vaccine fever

[thewakingcloak]

The State of Things Past

this post is mirrored from the Studio Spacefarer Patreon! please consider supporting me, and you’ll get access to devlog posts, gifs, and other info before the public!

Like I mentioned in my previous post, The Waking Cloak has been in development for eight years.

ProtoDungeon: Episode III has itself been in development for a few years, pretty much since 2019 (oooof). I've gotten plenty of questions about how the project is coming, as well as the occasional question of whether The Waking Cloak / ProtoDungeon is even alive at all at this point. Thank you for asking this. It means people are still interested in these games.

Okay, but still, what happened? Why are things taking so long? Well, this post is the first in the Christmas Carol series, in which the ~Ghost of Spacefarer Past~ appears to explain things (wooo spooky explanation sounds).

Progress has been made, very slowly, on ProtoDungeon: Episode III. I'd love to have done more, but, well… in the time since I released Episode II, we continued adjusting to parenthood for our first kid, went through the pandemic, had a second baby (who is now almost 3yo), and survived through a series of really difficult events, which culminated in a move to a new house in a new town and the start of a new chapter (but that last bit we'll save that for the Ghost of Christmas Present so he feels useful).

But yeah, it's been a rough ride. My wife and I are intentionally open about what's been going on. At the same time, the internet is an extremely public place, and I don't want to overshare, or worse, trigger anything for anyone, so I'll try to keep this list brief:

Two miscarriages (the first one was late term, and absolutely, brutally devastating)

The loss of our faith community due to the pandemic

Loss of job for my wife due to the pandemic (the pandemic was unkind to teachers)

Loss of a dream job prospect for my wife (same issue)

The great Texas freeze and power outage (us huddling under blankets in shifts through the night with our newborn infant (he's fine now!))

Severe, life-threatening post-partum and post-natal depression

Family covid and two-week cabin-fever quarantines (twice, despite being vaccinated and careful)

The death of my grandma (we were not able to attend her memorial due to aforementioned covid and living on the other side of the country)

Multiple heart attacks for my father despite his active and healthy lifestyle

Autoimmune disease scare for my wife (may still be a thing, just dormant?)

etc., etc., ad infinitum.

A lot of people have had things significantly worse, so this is definitely not an attempt to "compare griefs" as it were. This is just context for, no matter how much I wanted it to be otherwise, the fact that I didn't have the mental or emotional (or temporal) space for creativity. It was one thing after another, and we were just trying to keep our heads above water.

Even when we'd mostly recovered from the hits that just kept comin', we moved away from what my wife lovingly refers to as the "trauma house", and she started a teaching job at a brand-new school. Both were good things, but they were pretty big transitions, and it takes time for the ol' brains to adjust. We love our new home now and have a bit more breathing room.

Okay but also I HAVE been working on ProtoDungeon. Dev was really sporadic, but it did happen. The next post will have more detail on the status of Episode III, but there were kind of two big things I worked on during the past three years, big shifts in the foundation of ProtoDungeon and The Waking Cloak.

First, I switched game perspective. I made a few posts about this a while back, but PD/TWC interiors were originally like Zelda interiors (where you see the insides of all four walls). There are good reasons to do this, but it was also kinda making me crazy. So I switched to a more natural front-perspective, keeping things consistent with the exteriors. It definitely was the right choice for the game I wanted to build, but it took time.

Second, and building on that, I made the game fully faux-3D. You can walk behind or in front of stuff--not something the old Zelda games did, and still pretty rare for 2D games. I was toying with the idea for a long time, but I played through an old PlayStation title, Alundra, and that convinced me it could be done. It's way harder than you might expect, and it was a massive block for me for literally years. I was able to slowly work my way past it and finally resolved it with a 3D z-tilting method, but dev slowed to a crawl.

And that's it for now! The ghost releases you from your vision of Spacefarer Past….

Thanks for reading :)

[harpyjoy]

"I can't believe I didn't think of shipping these two before"

After thinking about it for a while I decided that it is better to tell it by a separate publication because it was seriously something too long xD

@rayshippouuchiha here are my delusions while I had a fever from the side effect of the vaccine...

It all started with the scene where Zero absorbs Ichiru towards the end of the second season, well in a way I think this part was a bit influenced by watching Hellsing, because at that point everything was combined with Zero, the fact that for having a life in which everything seems to go wrong (his family was murdered, he was turned into a vampire, he is about to go wild, the girl he loved turned out to be a vampire, he has been used as a pawn by another vampire and has to his brother dying in his arms) feels abandoned by god, so he abandons him in turn and Ichiru's blood flows to him...

(This is where I later realized that it might as well be a nice divergence for another even crazier ship like Alucard x Zero idk, but that's a can of worms I'm not willing to open right now)

...and a voice whispers an offer to him (because there always has to be a mystical and mysterious voice) that if he wants Ichiru to live. Now, I don't remember very well how the deal is going because after all it was a dream in the middle of a fever of like 39ºC but it would be something more or less like the two being born again as twin brothers, but this time there is no hunter's curse, Zero remembering all his past life but Ichiru won't remember anything.

The voice tells him that since it is an exchange of lives, he has to learn to live that new life and pay the price, whatever, between leaving that cell to continue doing what others want and deciding to take the reins for once in his life . Well, it's not difficult to choose, right? Zero chooses and reincarnates in the past as a pureblood baby vampire...

(and then he realized it was a damn cheating offer!)

In the arms of Shizuka Hio smile happily...

(what the hell is my life now?!)

...so apparently the price is to have this bloodsucking woman as his mother and to be a bloodsucker himself too, again ... but come on! at least now he's not going to fall to level E; so even though he's looking at Shizuka Hio's face in front of him now (what the heck? now that he notices it...is it normal for a hunter family to look so much like a pureblood family?) that it seems like now it's his mother, also, if that voice was telling the truth (which is very likely, since not all supernatural entities in the universe have the power to make you a reincarnation / time-dimension travel combo) Ichiru will be able to live a full life...

...and seeing a cute baby Ichiru in the arms of what seems to be his father in this life (that as my brain did not give for more, let's think that Shizuka's lover who was killed in the canon in this alternate universe was also a pureblood Hio cousin or something of her! more than anything because I don't want to think of another last name, and basically because I want her to be happy too) he has high hopes that it's true!

Anyway, the years pass and Zero learns that being a pureblood vampire is not so bad and since in this life Ichiru cuts his hair, Zero is the one who lets it grow (in honor of the Ichiru of his past life) although he still knows pierces because... why not?

Yes, the Council of Elders sucks, he had to live the early years of his second childhood in places without windows and the eyes of some noble vampires when they look at him are somewhat disturbing, but he has his brother safe and sound, and Shizuka...

(when she's not a bloodthirsty bitch fed for revenge)

...is actually a good mother, plus she has more strength in one hand than I could imagine and it feels pretty good to say "to hell with the Kurans", then the war between vampires and hunters breaks out and there are more pureblood gatherings than ever...

(and oh no, the damn Kuran! wait, since when are they three?)

...then, in one of those meetings Zero says "fuck it", because there is a guy who looks like the damn Kaname and a woman who is just like Yuuki ... and these old men from the Council do not shut up! so he escapes to breathe for a few moments and then he meets Rido Kuran and he honestly does not know what to think, he wants to hate him, but so many years have passed, he has Ichiru with him, he hardly remembers his human parents and he has enough with the discomfort he feels seeing Haruka and Juuri Kuran...

...and Rido looks so lonely that Zero almost sees himself in him when he was in his darkest moments in his old life and since Zero is not a heartless bastard he decides to talk to him about something random, and then the guy doesn't stop appearing everywhere!! and he first teases and laughs at Zero and then it seems that he can't understand what personal space is because he doesn't stop touching his hair and playing with the bell braided in his locks that Ichiru gave him and...

then he looks at him like he's...everything.

AND AT THIS POINT!! honestly with everything and my omniscient point of view even I was embarrassed to look at them because I felt like I was breaking into an intimate moment no matter they were just looking at each other because Rido looked so…thirsty.

He's basically a big cat and I think all the love, obsession and longing he felt for Juuri in the canon in this universe is focused on Zero, and the guy is The Yandere…Ichiru isn't impressed, but Zero seems to like him so meh.

And then it seems that pureblood vampires can have babies!! Because...who cares?

(Sincerely Zero no longer believes that something is going to surprise him)

They are not human, they are basically millennial immortal beings, one or two incredible things do not hurt and then the council of elders decides that they want to engage Rido with Ichiru (because he is the youngest), Zero has not even come out of shock when the two involved are already protesting very vocally and aggressively because who the hell came up with such a horrible idea?!, half the world and their mothers know that Rido and Zero are close! and Ichiru and Rido only interact when absolutely necessary (mostly because of Zero), fortunately the Council stops the proposal suddenly before it becomes more than a simple suggestion and...

then...I don't remember if when Rido and Zero get married they are Kuran or Hio?...

BUT, I remember that when you see them together they look like rock stars and they are the most atypical purebloods in history, where the other others look ethereal and fragile, they look dangerous and intimidating but equally or more attractive, like a seductive trap mortal.

They drive the Council absolutely crazy but they don’t care about them and they are a couple of cheeky, like very cheeky, I'm talking about public displays of affection and closeness that has more than one vampire looking away.

And so Zero is Senri's mother? (What the hell?!) Because let's remember that in the canon he is Rido's son with a noble and technically Yuuki and Kaname's cousin (?).... BUT! here his mom is Zero, because when Zero holds his baby for the first time and he is biting his finger to feed him with blood, the little one opens his eyes and Zero knows that look, he recognizes that light blue in apathetic eyes in the past and although now his hair may be more silver than dark he knows who he is, or rather who could have been (and damn he carried it in his womb for who knows how many months, it is his baby of course he keeps it)

THEN I WOKE UP!!  (」° ロ °)」

and I was left with a dazed and feverish haze sitting on the edge of my bed staring at a shoe for like 10 minutes desperately thinking what else I could remember about the crazy cool dream I just had so I could take notes on everything, because that was a damn REVELATION!!, and then do something, anything, just something because it was too good to be true and when I looked for Rido x Zero fics on the internet they were all dark and distressing and unfinished fics and that was a big NO! And guess who's scribbling half-formed sketches and ideas with the happiness of a kindergartener right now? I don't know if this is going to end in a fic or a fanart or a comic or what the hell, but now it's my baby.