#yeah i know we're already freaking out over a new set of surprise songs I DON'T CARE

[cruell-summers]

taylor swift saw my blog with "the albatross #1 stan" on it and chose the one day i decided to go out with my friends for once to play it live WITH DANCING WITH OUR HANDS TIED

[euphoniouspandemonium]

Me : *is dressed in that interviewer garb but like tis a pantsuit with a nik tac toe twist 😏*

Greetings viewers from afar !! Today we are here with the esteemed Jana euphomoniuspandemonium ik I didn't spell it right ok shh now let me continue who is the very menacingly gorgeous author of several notable works including but not limited to cotton mendings <3

A couple of questions for you by the masses my lady

1. talk about a notable time a narrative or character has looked you dead in the eyes and said “fuck your plan, here’s what we’re actually doing.”

2. talk about a writing experience that has pleasantly surprised you. or talk about several. seriously, writing is cool. you’re making up whole stories out of your brain, revel in that shit.

3. tell us about a character who’s very different than you who you love a whole lot

4. tell us about one of your characters who’s an absolute joy to write 

5. do you know how you want the story to end when you start, or are you just stumbling through the figurative wilderness hoping to find a road?

THANKS FOR THE ASK, NIK!! Also yes, you did misspell my URL. But it's okay. I don't know how it's spelled either.

• 1. You saw the post about Salvatore stealing the spotlight in Cotton Mendings so! Here's another notable time that happened, a very recent one actually. You see, for the past few months I haven't been Feeling ANTRM, I was just bored with it but I didn't want to like straight up stop working on it cause it's just too big of a part of my personality now and I was just waiting for Something to happen with it. And a couple days ago, it did. Halcyon looked me dead in the eye and said "Jana. Jana I wanna steal." and I realised. That brilliant, dramatic piece of shit is a gentleman burglar. And his sister, a literal detective? Yeah, she's supportive. Aaaand the plot is somehow not that different?? Now I have to come up with a new title and plot some stuff out and reintroduce it.

Putting the rest under a cut cause this got Very Long oops-

• 2. Writing Cotton Mendings, actually?? It's like. Almost the opposite of any of my other WIPs, other than the murder and the fact that it's in a historical setting, and at first I actually thought I'd write like five sentences and then abandon it (and lemme tell you, that seems to happen a lot) but then It Took Over My Life. And I also came up with it while listening to Angie by The Rolling Stones which is like a 3 min song I don't even like That Much?? Anyways yeah, thematically and conceptually Cotton Mendings likes to surprise me.

• 3. Ah yes, so we're looking at the few OCs who aren't emotionally repressed and nihilistic. Anyways. CYNTHIA!!!!!!! I haven't really thought about Tragedy's Bones these past few weeks so I figure it shall be nice to talk about my wonderful gay redhead. Cynthia is so so kind and empathetic and sassy and nurturing (I hate that word btw I just can't think of a better one to use) I'm <333333 and she's like. The first person to show any kind of love and understanding toward Victorine which... is sad, but is it unexpected? Unfortunately not. We have already established that I am evil. Also as an adult she would support the suffrage movement 1000000%. Also m' girl's into fashion and I love that for her. Give me a sweetheart who can kick your ass in the most fashionable skirts you've ever seen <3 and!!!!! Cynthia and Victorine have an orange-green colour scheme! Cynthia being the one with the orange colours <3

• 4. LEONINE LEONINE LEONINE!!! She's like. My comfort OC <3 and I mean how can she not be wHO WOULDN'T ADORE AN AUTISTIC ASEXUAL LESBIAN DETECTIVE. Right so the woman is. Intelligent. Like really freaking intelligent. Sucks at emotions tho, which - same! And she's protective of her loved ones, as she should. And she's autistic so I can <3 validate myself <3 by implanting many of my traits into such an awesome character and watching her shit on ableists <3 aNYWAYS. She's a joy to write mainly because of her way of speaking cause she's so sophisticated, actually- and of course. Also even more mainly because she sounds aloof and closed off for the most part BUT THEN. You see the Emotions. And suddenly you're crying. Bitch.

An example of this is when she has that lil monologue on crime and art near the beginning of The Story of Madam Poppy and then. "Have you ever felt like you could fall in love with an artist?" [...] "I suppose you can understand me, then." Like. That severely harmed me. Another example can be found later in the same story when she says, "I don't think I could have loved her the way she would want to be loved, though. She wanted someone ordinary, and gentle, and grounded, and... I am not that. But you know, I think she would have liked you." Because we love pain here.

• 5. I have started making loose outlines of Stuff That Happen for my newer projects and I do end up figuring the ending out while plotting or drafting or daydreaming but like nothing's set in stone with my writing at this point so it's kinda in-between. Am I gonna know how something ends early on? Yeah. Am I gonna change it approximately a million times? Absolutely. Not in the case of Cotton Mendings tho, I must say. Sincere apologies to @olimpias but bestie. I shan't cave❤️

[let-it-raines]

Yesterday i saw this "The NBC Manifest star would love to take up skydiving but isn't sure his wife, actress Ginnifer Goodwin, "is going to let me do that," he says, laughing. "She has said, 'well you can do it but don't tell me.' So, you know, as long as I don't die, we're good. And basically that's my prompt, so i was thinking if you can write a fic with that but obviously with captain swan hahaha

“No.”

“Emma, please.”

“Killian, no.”

“Swan,” he pleads, and he’s about to do something dirty and unfair to get her to change her mind, but sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures.

Throwing the sheets back so that Emma’s legs are bared to him and yanking on her ankles to pull her to the edge of the bed, he starts kissing up her calf, lingering in all of the sensitive spots while working his way up to her inner thighs. He can hear and feel her breath hitching the closer he gets to her core, and he smirks to himself over the fact that this is most definitely going to work. Until Emma knees him in the stomach and he’s left holding onto his stomach as he flops down on the bed.

“Shit, love. What was that for?”

“You can’t use sex to get me to agree.”

“You do that all of the time.”

“No,” she corrects, pulling the sheets back over her body and crawling back to her spot, “I have sex with you because I love you, and you just happen to be very agreeable after you get laid, you big oaf.”

“Why won’t you let me do this?”

“Why do you want to do this?”

“Because I’m turning thirty-five, and I was supposed to do this before I turned thirty.”

“You also have ‘marry Angelina Jolie’ on that bucket list, and that’s not happening.”“Well, she is single now, and I did see her at the event last week. I think she might have waved at me.”

She playfully (maybe) hits his chest, and he grabs her wrist to kiss it. “You’re being an ass.”

“You’re being protective.”

“Fine,” she acquiesces, slamming her free hand against the mattress, “you can go skydiving, but I better not know about it. You come home alive and unscathed, or I will kill you.”

“But I’ll already be dead.”

“I am your wife, Killian. I’ll haunt you forever, even if you’re dead.”

“You’re so loving.”

“I’m really not kidding, babe. If you have your heart set on doing this, I know you’re going to do it. And I want you to be happy. But I’m not going to tell our kids ‘daddy died because of a bucket list he’s never followed until he started having an early mid-life crisis.’ So seriously. You can do it as long as I never know.”

He makes an appointment to go in two weeks. He doesn’t tell Emma, and it feels weird not telling her that he’s going to do it. Of course, he really does think she was serious telling him that if he dies doing this, she’ll somehow still haunt him. Maybe he is going through an early mid-life crisis, but this is something he’s always wanted to do. Maybe it’s the adrenaline or maybe it’s that he jumps from high buildings and planes in his movies all the time. He’s just never done it in real life.

He’s also probably just the tiniest bit crazy.

A large group of people are going up in the plane with him that day, eleven jumpers and eleven professionals to jump with them, and he wasn’t nervous until another man was strapped to his back and the plane door was opened.

There are no other words for this but holy shit.

But he’s going to do it. He’s got to do it. He might not marry Angeline Jolie (he’s very happily married to Emma Jones, thank you very much), but he’s going to skydive. And then never tell Emma about it and most likely block it all out from his mind.

Isn’t there a country song about this? Maybe that should be playing in his head. Or some Tom Petty. Except he sure as hell hopes that he’s not about to be free falling. He’ll have a parachute. Isn’t there a band named Parachute? No, that’s Paramore. There’s got to be another song out there about a parachute. He thinks it might be a country song. But a different one than the first.

He’s freaking out a bit.

“You ready to go, Mr. Jones?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

One. Two. Three. Jump.

When he gets home that night, his hair still sticking up all over the place and his face still flushed red from all of the wind hitting him for the ten minutes it took him to get to the ground, Emma’s sitting on the couch with the kids watching The Incredibles. None of them pay a lick of attention to him until he picks Will up and places him in his lap so that he can sit next to Emma, kissing her shoulder in greeting.

“How was your day, love?”

“No talking during the movie, daddy!”

“Sorry,” he apologizes, not realizing that The Incredibles was such serious business to his five-year-old, but this would explain why the three of them were all so quiet.

Not a word is spoken until Lizzie and Will are in bed, snoozing away while he and Emma settle in their own room. All he wants to do is tell Emma what he did today, but he believes her when she said that she didn’t want to know. She already freaks out enough when he gets injured at work, and while he’s not injured, things could have gone wrong. They didn’t, though. So Emma never has to know.

“So I was watching the local news today,” she begins, rubbing her moisturizer over her skin as they settle down under the covers, “because Lizzie’s school play was on for some reason. I’m not really sure why. I think it was something about supporting the local arts, but anyways, right after the segment, they show a video entitled ‘local star falls from the sky.’ Would you like to guess who that local star falling from the sky was?”

Well, shit. She knows. How does she always know?

“U-uh,” he stutters, reaching up to furiously scratch behind his ear because this is just one of those situations where he’s not getting out of it. “So you know?”

“Yep.”

“Are you mad?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say mad because you’re here alive and seemingly unscathed. I just can’t believe you actually did it.”

“I told you, love. I’m a survivor…and a bit of a daredevil.”

“Yeah, a daredevil who screamed bloody murder the entire fall. G’night, babe,” she yawns, leaning over and pressing a deep kiss against his lips that leaves him reeling as much as skydiving did. “I love you, and I’m glad you’re alive. Today and every day.”

Weeks later he’s on a morning talk show with Kelly and Ryan promoting a new movie, this one not an action movie but a drama of which he’s incredibly proud, but he’s not even the slightest bit mad when Kelly brings up something else to talk about.

“So your wife, Emma,” Kelly begins, clapping her hands together, and he has absolutely no idea what’s coming, “is possibly the sweetest woman alive. The two of you met while on the set of The Heist, correct?”

“Yes, correct,” he confirms, smiling thinking about how the first time he saw Emma she was dressed in her pajamas because she was late to the table read, looking like a rumpled, adorable mess. “She played my love interest, and in the first scene, she punched me in the face. It was bloody glorious.”

“So you two had a bit of a rough relationship in the beginning then?”

Killian lets out something close to a full belly laugh thinking about how he and Emma had a bit of a rough courtship until halfway through the movie when it was his birthday and she got him a cake with a picture of himself hanging upside down during a stunt practice gone wrong screened on the cake. He’d laughed so hard then, and later, after they finished shooting for the day, he asked Emma out on a date and she kissed him in return.

“Let’s just say that all of the chemistry in that movie was some pretty intense sexual tension until we started getting along. And I hope that this scars our children when they are old enough to know what sexual tension is. But yeah, Emma’s the love of my life, undoubtedly, and as much as that was one of my earlier movies and not the best acting wise, I’m thankful for it for letting me meet her.”

“It’s a good thing you say Emma is the love of your life,” Ryan begins, and Killian does not like where this is going, “because she has a surprise for you on the video screen.”

Suddenly he hears Emma’s voice and sees her face on the giant projector behind him, and oh man does he miss her.

“Hi, babe,” she greets on the prerecorded video, “I hope you’re having a great time in New York, and while I’m super proud of you, we’re excited for you to be back home next week. And while I say that, you’ll likely not be excited to come home after what’s happening in the next five minutes. So everyone knows that you went skydiving, but what everyone doesn’t know is that I only agreed to him doing that if I never knew about it. Well, obviously I know, but what you don’t know, babe, is that I emailed your instructor to get the video that captured your entire fall instead of the small video of you landing at the end. Love you. Enjoy!”

The next three minutes may have been the most embarrassing three minutes of his life, and he laughed for every minute that he watched himself freak out as he fell through the sky. Emma’s a bloody minx, and he cannot wait to get home to her to talk about this. And kiss her. To definitely kiss her.

“If anything,” Kelly begins, tears running from her eyes from the laughter, “this tells us that, men, you don’t mess with what the wife says because if you do, you become a viral video. Anything to say, Killian?”

He smiles to himself as he thinks about how very much he loves her before saying, “Darling, I have a video on my phone of you at our daughter’s second birthday with a piñata, and just so you know, payback is something I very much believe in. I love you.”

His kids never find the video of him talking about having sexual tension with their mother, but they do play his skydiving video every chance they get.

Emma keeps it as a favorite on her phone.

He never does make another bucket list.

He doesn’t need to.

With his family, he’s got everything.