Kath's a Fan

What's the first "big news story" you remember from when you were a kid?

It's something I love to ask mixed-aged groups sometimes because I think it's really interesting to see the responses. I've gotten answers from the Olympics of [whatever year] to Watergate to more recent stuff from my niblings.

“Chopping carrots with Ilya,” Shane sings under his breath. “Making salad with Ilya.”

Yuna smiles softly from the dining room. This is one of her favorite things about her son. From the time he could (barely) talk, he made up little songs about anything and everything. The first time he’d done it, he’d been strapped into his car seat and watching cars go by. When he’d caught Yuna’s eye in the rear view mirror, he’d smiled with all 8 of his little teeth and waved.

“Dwiving,” he’d sung, all of 18 months old and barely able to say the word properly. “Dwivin’ wi’ Mama. Wuv Mama.”

Yuna’s not sure if it’s Shane’s way of processing the world around him, just A Thing some people do, or something special about her baby boy. All she knows is that from the first time he’d made up a little tune about Driving With Mama, everything turned into a song. When he’s comfortable and feeling at ease, Shane turns little things around him into music.

Learning to tie his shoes? “Daddy’s teaching me to tie my shoes. One lace over the other. Make the bunny ears!”

Gearing up for practice when he was 8? “Going to practice. Gonna be great. Gonna score a goal!”

Studying for a science test? “Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Everyone says it because it’s true. Moving on—organelles and cell walls.”

Gearing up for his first Metros game as captain? “Taping my hockey stick. Going out on the ice. Gonna kick some ass.”

It’s something so uniquely, adorably, perfectly Shane.

Today, though? As Shane’s in the kitchen preparing a salad for lunch? For the first time, someone else sings along. For the first time in Shane’s life, someone hears the tune and lyrics that only exist in his head and joins in.

“Making salad with Shane,” Ilya croons along, hooking his chin over his boyfriend’s shoulder and wrapping strong arms around his waist. “Preparing lunch with my love.”

Shane smiles and sings back as Ilya nuzzles his neck. “Being domestic with my boyfriend. Thinking of boring things we can do together.”

Ilya laughs and kisses his ear before finishing the song. “I love to be boring with yooouuuu.”

Shane pauses on the other line, breath catching as he holds back overwhelming emotion.

“Mom,” he croaks. “I…fuck.”

Yuna stays calm. She mentally takes stock of the situation. Ilya’s fine—he just texted her, a few seconds before Shane called, to warn her of the incoming storm. David’s fine—he’s sitting right next to her, confused and alarmed as their son has some manner of episode on the phone. She’s fine. So what’s—

“—wi’ Dada!”

…oh. Oh.

It’s soft at first, but picking up in volume. Tiny pit-pats in the background accompany the most beautiful little voice Yuna’s heard since Shane made up his first song, Driving With Mama, from his car seat all those years ago.

“Eating,” the little voice sings in the background. It’s garbled by what Yuna assumes are half-chewed remnants of an afternoon snack; probably organic peanut butter on apple slices. “Eating wi’ Dada. Eating wi’ Papa. Dada on phone! Who on phone, Dada?”

There’s wet laughter in the background, further from the phone. “Oh God, Shane. It’s genetic. She’s a little you!”

More tearful laughter, this time from Shane. “That’s not—she’s adopted, Ilya.”

“I don’t care what the papers say. She is you. Listen to her, she is perfect. She must be part you, sweetheart.”

there's been a lot of talk about not stealing gifs and not supporting people who do, but it might not be easy to spot shady posts for everyone. so i made this little guide with things i personally look out for. at the end there's also a guide on how to work the search function. i hope this will help out there on the wild tumblrmachine!

im evangelizing this on every platform i have access to right now: last night i started (and finished this morning) "type help", a browser based mystery game inspired by obra dinn. you must recover the investigative files regarding 12 dead bodies found in a home.

okay so i have been Ruminating on this for like... a month now... because i truly do believe most craft conversations have already occurred they just might not always be like a hit post right. but salad passed me this post a few months back and i think it really encapsulates a lot of what i like to touch on: this post by andthepeople. most specifically:

if the scene is in a bathroom you don't have to tell me there's a toilet. i assume there's a toilet. if there's NOT a toilet in the bathroom, this is strange and you must tell me.

and it is a little funny i am using their post to make a Writing Tip Post (but this isn't really that... i feel... or am i a hypocrite? very possible. many such cases.) but we move on. i think all of this comes back to my very ardent love for close third person point of view. whenever i write i am always thinking: would the character whose POV i am writing in notice this? and if the answer is no, they wouldn't think about it unless they are actively interacting with (object/character/weather/whatever) then the way i will include it is by staging that interaction. this is how i try to ground the world in a very close third perspective, on top of sort of forgoing more standard "character has a thought" formatting. (thought in italic or thought ended with he thinks. et cetera.) instead of writing a paragraph about what ilya's room looks like, i am a lot more likely to write him moving through it while trying to hit the specific beats i need to: like, is he picking up laundry off the floor with an offhand comment about the terrible schedule he's been on, is he wiping a lipstick stain off the en-suite bathroom mirror, does he think maybe it's time to buy blackout curtains because his head throbs and he wakes too easily. i like inserting these details by having my characters actually relate to the world around. i would be less inclined to write five sentences about ilya's room this way: it was messy, laundry strewn about, curtains doing a shoddy job at keeping it dark at night which was making it hard for him to sleep, and he needed sleep badly right now. though that kind of writing also has time and place. again, it's about balance.

this is why my dialogue is, for better or worse, usually riddled with characters drinking something or touching each other or themselves or fiddling with something and wandering about the space. i am always always thinking about how characters exist physically in the world and how i can use that to convey personality and desire and other things necessary for # my narratives. shane is probably not going to describe the metros locker room to great extent in my fic because he has spent so much time there and as humans we tend to get hung up on what's new, not what we're used to, but if there's suddenly a new paper on the wall, well, he would notice! and i can use that.

to maybe extrapolate further. in salad's words: "what a character does or does not notice says something about them. how observant they are is a characterization choice." i think this is helpful to keep in mind and also plays into what i've been harping about above. i like unreliable narrators and by being in really close third person, by really committing to not telling the reader everything, by forcing both myself and a reader to have to make do with only what my character can reasonably observe and provide, i think i can create a lot of tension and "aha!!" moments, which is what i love experiencing personally.

sunday blue relies entirely on obscuring what shane knows. shane can't know how that scene will unfold because as the writer i have taken away everything but the crucial information. shane can only tell the reader what he knows about the world based on previous scenes (as in kink scenes) with ilya. that's why in the bathroom scene he doesn't say "ilya is offering me his jacket because this is a point where i can choose to end the scene or use a safe word" he just calls ilya's action "a white flag" and you, the reader, have to make assumptions about what shane means by that because he's not going to go into a long tangent about how their safe word system works. he doesn't need to. he knows how it works. basically, the internal narration is not acting as a vehicle of information. it's there to immerse you in a singular character's lived experience. (again—balance. you will need to give information to your reader! but there's tons of ways to do that which doesn't involve 3 paragraphs of exposition.)

Shane’s jacket hangs over Ilya’s arm. A white flag. (...) Ilya doesn’t ask if Shane’s fine: instead he holds his jacket out. The corner of his mouth twitches. Shane shakes his head. He’s not there yet, is barely drunk, barely—his chest lurches. He spits in the sink.

i'm always writing stories HOPING that they will be read a second time around. i love leaving little bread crumbs for someone to pick up on a second read and go oh!! that's why there's that one sentence two chapters from now that i didn't one-hundred percent get the first time around. that to me is part of the fun.

i'm not sure this is a very helpful tip but it is something i AM very conscious of in my writing. so you know. i hope this maybe sparks some thoughts in people whether this is something you vibe with or not in writing.