Delirium (Creepypasta x reader)

Acknowledgements

This book was a labour of love forged from some of the most difficult times in my life. It only makes sense to take a second and appreciate those who have allowed me to get this far.

I'd like to thank the variety of friends in my life who allowed me to infodump hours upon hours of my thoughts and ideas for this book. Their listening ears certainly went through the ringer hearing all the aspects of the world I'd created, and the revisions that inevitably followed.

Thank you to the even fewer friends who took time out of their days to read the drafts of chapters before I published them. Venus, my official editor for a time, but also Cass and Henry. Thank you for your help and insights into my work.

To specific fics - 'Trick and Kill' was the first long form work I read with huge deviations from the norm. The origin to the biological specifics, the relationships and the overall world. It inspired a lot of Delirium's world itself. Not without flaws, but a classic nonetheless.

Spill your Guts was one I read in the past year or so. The characterization of the Proxies was top notch and frankly, amazing. I read it all in two days and genuinely felt changed by the end. It inspired a lot of late game changes to the world and the characters themselves. Such a phenomenal book by phenomenal writers.

The real MVPs are the inventors and contributors to the 'Creepypasta mansion' trope, especially those who took it upon themselves when they were young to publish things. All of those writers who went to their keyboards and wrote what they likely cringe at to this day - all of the fics with bad grammar and spacing, the exaggerated personalities and the love at first sight written on microsoft word or in the Wattpad drafts themselves. Reading them in middle school to cope with my real life helped to birth Delirium and whatever will follow. If you were one of those people - thank you. Seriously. Delirium would not even be a thought without you.

Special shout out to Nixieisadaydreamer on Quotev for writing Oneirataxia; I've read along to every update and I love the world you're creating. Thank you for being inspired by my work. Keep it up!

Finally, to you, the reader. The readers who lurked with an open tab and not much else, and the readers who sent it straight to their libraries without a second thought. The readers who silently read each update and those who spammed all caps comments. Those with comments every chapter, and those who commented only when they were finished reading. Those who commented with one or two words, no words but emojis, and those who gave me a step-by-step replay of their thoughts and feelings of what went down. I love you. All of you. You are the other half that made this all possible. If you didn't write, you read. You read vicariously, ferociously, casually. Each of you were a voice telling me to keep going, literally or not. You made Delirium worth writing - you gave me the energy to keep going when I felt like I wanted to give up. You told me that this story was worth telling, all of its beauty and its ugliness. God, you read the prologue likely not knowing who the hell Kate was and settled in anyway. That really means everything to me. And like I try to say on every comment - thank you! A hundred times thank you.

See you on the other side :]