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Katreal's Creative Corner

@katreal-fic / katreal-fic.tumblr.com

Katreal | 30 | she/her | Check AO3 (under Katreal) for my fics. Current projects: Defragmentation and Ersatz Abyss (Homestuck) | Status Rambles every Tuesday | Updates every Friday | Art Rarely but Sometimes I Swear
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Anonymous asked:

its nice seeing u again :)

I've been here! Just been posting other fics.

...sometimes.

Okay I did vanish for a while.

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Defragmentation

Chapter 76/??

Dirk > Figure it out later

Summary:

A gamebreaking glitch tore the game session to shreds, right before they reached the end. Dirk Strider was already dead at the time. Temporarily. Which left him to revive in the aftermath. As the Prince of Heart, he doesn't have much experience putting souls back together, only breaking them, but at this point he seems to be the only one who even knows shit is broken.

He's the last person who'd trust himself with this. Not when he's out of time, out of place, and over his head being responsible for a little brother, a life, and a body his conveniently dead asshole of a splinterself already, thoroughly fucked up.

AKA: A game crash creates an unholy mashup of who the hell knows how many sburb sessions, and Dirk-as-Bro attempts to figure out wtf happened and how to fix shit for the brother who fears him, and the friends who don’t remember him. Because that’s what he does. But no Dirk has ever excelled when truly alone. Good thing he isn’t, he just needs to learn how to accept the help.

Preview:

It’s a long day.

Unbearably long.

Followed by another.

Followed by another.

You’re running out of time, despite having too much of it.

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Hi I’m alive I finally got back into my tumblr lol

I might attempt to start posting update posts again. Maybe.

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Amberina by Morning

Chapter 17/??

Dirk > Descend

Summary:

The downing of the Aurora was one tragedy among many in the long history of Planet 4546B, but it is, perhaps, one you can survive.

Once a young boy stood on a sterile, white sand shore, dreaming of the stars.

After the fetters of broken dreams rain down with the thousands of red-hot meteors that scatter across an endless ocean with no hint of land in sight–maybe this tragedy will set you free.

Preview:

Luckily, the fall seems to have broken the crawlers, or else you might have never come to. Succumbing to the fate of your fellow crew members as they finally worked their way through an already over-tasked dive suit to the waiting flesh inside.

As it turns out, they’re just. There. Legs twisted and snapped by the force of the impact–you should be too–Shells shattered and lifeless–christ can you even move? Maybe you are. Maybe something snapped and now you can’t feel anything but pain–slowly sinking into the depths, still quite visible in the bright early evening sun-filtering in through the surface above.

The depths.

Your eyes sluggishly open, something’s missing. You can feel it. Even as you float there, the timer on your O2 meter ticking down and down as the muffled rumble of the collapsing earth and the wail of the damned echo through you.

The display flickers. Again and again. Fuzzing. As if a signal is just out of range.

Read the rest => [Link]  

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Amberina by Morning

Chapter 17/??

Dirk > Descend

Summary:

The downing of the Aurora was one tragedy among many in the long history of Planet 4546B, but it is, perhaps, one you can survive.

Once a young boy stood on a sterile, white sand shore, dreaming of the stars.

After the fetters of broken dreams rain down with the thousands of red-hot meteors that scatter across an endless ocean with no hint of land in sight–maybe this tragedy will set you free.

Preview:

Luckily, the fall seems to have broken the crawlers, or else you might have never come to. Succumbing to the fate of your fellow crew members as they finally worked their way through an already over-tasked dive suit to the waiting flesh inside.

As it turns out, they’re just. There. Legs twisted and snapped by the force of the impact--you should be too--Shells shattered and lifeless--christ can you even move? Maybe you are. Maybe something snapped and now you can’t feel anything but pain--slowly sinking into the depths, still quite visible in the bright early evening sun-filtering in through the surface above.

The depths.

Your eyes sluggishly open, something’s missing. You can feel it. Even as you float there, the timer on your O2 meter ticking down and down as the muffled rumble of the collapsing earth and the wail of the damned echo through you.

The display flickers. Again and again. Fuzzing. As if a signal is just out of range.

Read the rest => [Link]  

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Amberina by Morning

Chapter 16/??

Ascension

Summary:

The downing of the Aurora was one tragedy among many in the long history of Planet 4546B, but it is, perhaps, one you can survive.

Once a young boy stood on a sterile, white sand shore, dreaming of the stars.

After the fetters of broken dreams rain down with the thousands of red-hot meteors that scatter across an endless ocean with no hint of land in sight–maybe this tragedy will set you free.

Preview:

The Aurora didn’t stop being a hazardous deathtrap just because you found the flimsiest of silver liningings.

The higher up the wreckage you go, the more certain you are that this is the bridge. It’s collapsed onto and through at least four floors by your count now, judging by the signs dotting the gutted wrecks of hallways you pass that have been crushed by the much thicker, shielded room.

It hasn’t just been a straight shot either, the path almost seems to curve, abandoning the open sky for the shadow of the grave instead, ending up under the overhang of an upper deck and a smouldering hull fragment that results in the occasional burning chunk of metal and debris coming loose with the shifting of the ship and smashing into the metal flooring around you.

The very picture of an ancient hellscape. All you’re missing is the rivers of magma that would seem more at home on planet 1531, may you never have to return there again. That particular warp-gate was recently serviced, however, so the demand for on the spot fabrication wasn’t likely unless something catastrophic happened and then it wasn’t your fucking problem.

Not that...it’ll ever be your problem again.

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Amberina by Morning

Chapter 15/??

In the Shadow of the Grave

Summary:

The downing of the Aurora was one tragedy among many in the long history of Planet 4546B, but it is, perhaps, one you can survive.

Once a young boy stood on a sterile, white sand shore, dreaming of the stars.

After the fetters of broken dreams rain down with the thousands of red-hot meteors that scatter across an endless ocean with no hint of land in sight–maybe this tragedy will set you free.

Preview:

You don’t get right up next to the Aurora, although you could. The bulk of the ship is just a couple hundred meters of your right hand side, a pittance considering the extra speed afforded to you by the introduction of the Seaglide. Even so it fucking towers over you, blocking out half the fucking sky.

From this distance, if you poke your head above the water and peer through the trailing sea spray lapping up against your visor you can pick out a number of potential breach points. Dark and twisted patches, openings forced into a metal hull. In some, embers continue to glow, indicating fuel still burns.

The question is, how deep, and would they get you to where you want to go?

You doubt it. Even without access to the ship’s schematics--Lexie refused to produce them when you asked, once again citing policy, and the grudgingly produced maintenance map didn’t tell you how thick the hull was. You only got that one because you fucking argued that the automated message said any crewmember--you are pretty confident there’s more than enough layers of shielding and unsalvageable (and possibly still half-alive systems) between you and any of the interior pathways.

Read the rest => [Link]  

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Anonymous asked:

We can't reblog replies from on tumblr so we usually take screenshots haha

Thank you! I'll def check the trailer and then start reading <3 it's been a while since I read a story of yours, I love your fics so much and miss reading about Dirk haha

It's so exciting to see that there are many chapters ahead to read haha

Duly noted haha. That seems counter intuitive tho! Like there is a reblog button on the reply! Why does it not wooooork???

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it ;n; again pls lemme know if there's anything that I haven't managed to work through to an outsider's perspective since that is a goal I have with this fic.

Teeechnically Glitch is also about a dirk adjacent haha but yea. It is nice writing Dirk again, tho it's a bit odd to have him entirely outside the homestuck universe. His backstory is my oyster! (though I try to keep it in vein with Dirk's usual but eh. It's still odd.) It's fine, I'll be dragging more homestuck-y stuff back in eventually I promise.

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Anonymous asked:

Oh hey hello! I've got a question I've forgotten to ask lmao, so you fic amberina, is based on some game, right?

do I need to know anything about the game to read and understand it? Or like what are the basis I need to know?

I've been wanting to read since a good while ago but I always get distracted or smth

I really like to think I've written it in a way that you don't neeeeed to play the game to understand it?

Obviously if you've played subnautica you'll likely get a better visual representation of the environments, and maybe guess the behaviors of certain sea creatures, and anticipate some of the early plot points before Dirk finds out, but really, he's brand new to this place too so anything you need to know he'll figure out somehow. I'll even be diverging from the plot and established world building anyway into more of my own thing once I get Dirk exploring rather than just surviving,

I've mostly taken the game mechanics and expanded them into world building anyway, so I don't even know if you need that either. I guess it'd be just as easy to just imagine it as a homestuck-shipwrecked-on-an-alien-planet au, where you as the reader will learn things about the world and it's... issues... along with the survivor (Dirk)!

Hope that helps! If you do get to reading it please lemme know how you think I'm doing with all that trying to make it self-contained thing.

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I can’t figure out how to reblog a reply (help I’m not very tumblr literate) but a friend mentioned that they suggest to watch the trailer for the game and that has enough context to fill in some gaps that they had.

(also novie pls tell me what those were I’d like to fix them if at all possible)

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Anonymous asked:

Oh hey hello! I've got a question I've forgotten to ask lmao, so you fic amberina, is based on some game, right?

do I need to know anything about the game to read and understand it? Or like what are the basis I need to know?

I've been wanting to read since a good while ago but I always get distracted or smth

I really like to think I've written it in a way that you don't neeeeed to play the game to understand it?

Obviously if you've played subnautica you'll likely get a better visual representation of the environments, and maybe guess the behaviors of certain sea creatures, and anticipate some of the early plot points before Dirk finds out, but really, he's brand new to this place too so anything you need to know he'll figure out somehow. I'll even be diverging from the plot and established world building anyway into more of my own thing once I get Dirk exploring rather than just surviving,

I've mostly taken the game mechanics and expanded them into world building anyway, so I don't even know if you need that either. I guess it'd be just as easy to just imagine it as a homestuck-shipwrecked-on-an-alien-planet au, where you as the reader will learn things about the world and it's... issues... along with the survivor (Dirk)!

Hope that helps! If you do get to reading it please lemme know how you think I'm doing with all that trying to make it self-contained thing.

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