#rips off my shirt and under it there's a 2nd shirt that says GET NEON A CAT

[corvuscorona]

fistbump friday. fucking fproject fic friday. 15k-word hot freakish mess of an "outline" so far. Here are 290 of them that I like in-context AND out-of-context (you get them out-of-context).

She's almost to the landing when she sees it—and Astos sees her seeing it, then follows her line of sight—a black shape slinking up the lower flight of stairs, into the workshop, camouflaged among the shadows that pool along the inner wall.

"Rakshasa!"

Neon exclaims this with such indignant disbelief that Astos understands in an instant, and the shape resolves itself into the very tomcat he noticed supervising her in the yard just days ago. She hurries down towards it and it darts around her ankles. Clears the landing; Astos steps through and closes the door just as it sets one pitch-black paw on the first step up, and it pauses, watching him with wary interest as he descends.

So preoccupied is Rakshasa with this wrench in its exploratory plan that, as Neon swoops around and captures it with an air of long practice, it hardly has time to flatten its ears, pale-green eyes widening with belated alarm. "No, you don't," she informs it, lifting what must be all fifteen pounds of the beast with ease. "How'd you even get up here? You..."

The cat, though it settles into place as if by habit, front paws resting on her shoulder, turns its head just afterwards to watch Astos out of the corner of its eye and responds with a muted, back-of-the-throat meow.

"I didn't know he knew how to use the warp pads," Neon says. Astos notes as she does so that she's turned her body as if to give the cat a better view, and is looking at him now with her cheek pressed against its broad back.

Something Astos doesn't quite understand twists experimentally beneath his breastbone again. "They're not exactly complex."

She smiles. "Guess not."

oh god this is so many chapters. "how many" do not ask me this. measure it in multiples of ten in your mind's eye & I'll get back to you someday. I have more different metrics for you:

my outline* (!) is about to be 10k words and I'm MAYBE at the halfway point. there are like 20+ bullet points for Concepts I still probably want to incorporate somewhere but haven't quite figured out how to place yet and AT LEEEEEAST 9 chapter-shaped holes to fill (lowballing so as to not summon misfortune) (middle chunk of fic is the most filled-out**; latter ~half or so is still missing some Events to go with the General Idea (beginning chunk is missing mostly prose and slightly Thinking)).

* not all of the outline is Outline-Shaped a lot of the words are prose. or a lot of the other ones are me giving myself instructions / slapping run-on sentences together to capture a vibe. YOU KNOW

** THE CORE EMOTIONAL PIVOT-CONSTRUCT FOR THIS PART MAKES ME INSANE I'M SPINNING IT AROUND VIOLENTLY IN MY BRAIN AT ALL TIMES

problem defeated: timeline stuff. OR IS IT writing this made me realize that having figured out the timeline stuff for the beginning and middle does NOT mean I figured it out for the parts after that necessarily so much to think about so much to think about

problem to beat going forward: all the Scenes I thought of or placed nicely without having to reach much are in there already so now I have to be like proactive about the ideas FUUUUUCK AAAAUUUghh ok scream over. I'm ready to use my inside voice to go insane thank you for your time