it's nutcrackin' time!

Late 20s, she/her. Christian and leftist. ✨️ Fighting to write again after being disabled by post COVID-syndrome. Check my "write on" tag for advice from other people. ✨️ I don't have a DNI; instead, I block people and move on. I report potential bots and ED/gore/snuff blogs.

[shaylalaloohoo]

Masterpost

Charities

Clicks for Palestine

Free Rice, a trivia game where every question you correctly answer raises 10 grains of rice for the World Food Programme. There are multiple subjects in many categories: English, Math, Science, Food, History, and Art.

Personal Links

Write on, a catch-all tag for writing advice.

The Ancient Art Dumps Masterpost, a consolidation of all the posts I've made featuring my old art.

ShayLaLaLooHoo on AO3. I generally share original fiction and fairy tale retellings.

Story Inspiration

Untitled "The Nutcracker and the Mouseking" retelling. I have a separate tag for general Nutcracker stuff, like book reviews and others' art.

Untitled "The Snow Queen" retelling

Untitled "Swan Lake" retelling

Untitled "Prunella" retelling

Briar Garden, a retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

Untitled "Giselle" retelling

Wishes for Stars, a retelling of Cinderella

Bonus cosmic tag for more images like "Wishes for Stars"

Rose and Bone, a mashup of various fairy tales set in an isolated village within a cursed forest.

Triggers/Content I try to tag:

#food

#nudity (in paintings/sculpture only, and I avoid frontal nudity)

#faith and #christianity (for religious posts)

#politics, #us politics, #international politics

#mental health, #autism, #ptsd and #cptsd, #avpd (avoidant personality disorder), #suicidality cw

#disability, #post covid syndrome, #chronic fatigue, #brainfog

#flashing, #flashing tw, #flashing cw for epileptics

#body horror (usually drawings; I avoid special effects)

Let me know if there's anything you'd like tagged!

[flowerais-deactivated20211031]

sometimes you only do the bare minimum and that’s okay. sometimes you can’t do anything and that’s ok.

please remember to be extra forgiving with yourself if something is weighing on your mind. it can be hard to function, let alone concentrate. it’s ok to do things at your own pace 💛

[unbotheredmuse]

[commandtower-solring-go]

So I started doing this with some candles my sister gave me, and y'know what happened?

Because I used the candle, realised how much I liked my house smelling nice. So, i did more to fill my house with nice smelling stuff. I bought reed defusers, I bought flowers (which I stopped doing cause they smell quickly), I cared more about making sure my bins were empty and my sink was clear. I also developed more of a sense for what smells I did like. Like, I prefer woody smells. Incense and sandlewood.

And I realised how nice my house looked when it was clean. So I made more of an effort to clean my house. And cleaning never felt like a chore because I only cleaned when I wanted to.

And because I was cleaning my house more, I made decisions that helped to keep the house clean more often. I found homes for the loose things that never had a home before. I started remembering where things were because they were usually in their homes. I found or bought things to put things in.

It was hard because I'm not good at it, but slowly I developed those skills and got better at it. I realised how little pride I had had in my own home, and sought out new reasons to be proud. I bought things to put on my walls. I just bought myself a rug this week. I might even invite people over.

Anyway, just saying that maybe enjoying the small, fleeting things, is more important than we expect.

[amygdalae]

i want cloaks to be brought back but i dont want to wear one until i know theyre actually back in style. like im not gonna be the one cloak guy in a 50 mile radius, i wanna be one of several in my immediate area and have nobody bat an eye. im too much of a coward to be a cloak guy in our current fashion climate but the utopia of cloak world appears to me in the dreaming hours

[writingdotcoffee]

“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”

— Joseph Heller

[eraemx]

As someone that has grown up surrounded by beaches and done surf life saving, I know how the sea works. Lots of people dont. Every summer multiple tourists die here because they don’t respect the sea, if you’re going to the coast, here’s a thing I saw on Facebook.

[i-amneveralone-deactivated20201]

wow.

[robotsandfrippary]

reblogging for all of us that grew up in land locked states, then visit the ocean and are used to just plunging into a lake.

[dannysneksbang]

Going to put my two cents in here. I grew up next to the Great Lakes, specifically Lake Michigan, and this post applies to these lakes as well. There have been a handful of times where I warned people (typically families) that they are setting up to swim right next to a rip, and they were under the impression that because Lake Michigan is a “lake” they would be fine.

Folks, please remember that the Great Lakes (especially the larger ones) are literally freshwater inland seas. They act exactly like a sea, even having their own tides and are able to create their own weather easily (look up lake effect snow!)

My point is: Use caution when swimming in ANY body of water large enough to possibly create rifts! Swim safely!

[em-dash-press-deactivated202410]

Tips for Writing Interrupted Scenes

Scenes don’t always happen from start to finish. When you need to write interruptions, use these tips to get more confident about breaking up plot points and stitching them back together.

Pick an Emotional Cliffhanger

When your character gets the phone call about the job that could change their life, they hesitate to answer it. 

A new chapter begins on the next page from another point of view. 

But what happened with the phone call??

Your readers will keep going through the next chapter because they were left on an emotional cliffhanger with a character they love. The break won’t seem as natural as others, like ending a chapter when your character goes to bed or leaves a venue.

Plot Your Scene Breaks

Write a rough plot line, even if you don’t normally plan any outlines. It helps to know where your story is going so you can insert the rest of the scene more effectively.

Picture your character—they’re running a marathon and they’re starting the final mile. Their focus gets interrupted by something in the treeline to their left. It’s the childhood version of themselves, hanging upside down from a branch and waving. They have to go find out what that is, so the protagonist interrupts their race by sprinting into the woods.

Although the rest of the story may involve spooky moments and weeks or months of drama, the race never gets finished. Maybe the protagonist runs the same last mile after the event is over, when it’s back to being a regular street. They conquer the mile after completing the lesson or purpose of the plot.

That’s much easier to keep track of if there's a rough plotline to follow. Using bullet points can help or try writing a one-sentence description of each big plot moment on a sticky note.

Add More While Editing

If you have multiple moments that get interrupted, like broken dialogue or plot points, you may not remember to tie them together or make the break essential to the plot. That’s okay!

That’s what editing is for.

While you’re re-reading, make a list of every moment when something gets interrupted and another of when those moments get completed or resolved. You’ll easily tell what’s left unsaid that would otherwise feel like a plot hole.

-----

You may not always have interrupted scenes in every story. When you feel like they’re necessary, I hope these tips help you feel more confident about writing and editing them. 💛

[labmousegirl]

one of the things that makes autism a disability (and why some of us choose to label it as such rather than an “alternate neurotype”) is the stress. 

part of autism is just being incredibly stressed. overstimulation? stress. holding a conversation? stress. something happening to our schedule? stress. people talk about how often autism is recognized and diagnosed via our stress responses (like meltdowns) because it is just so common to see autistic people stressed because of lack of accommodations to how our brains work.

and this matters because stress kills. stress causes a lot of health issues, or it can trigger pre-existing ones by making certain chronic conditions flare up. i once had a psychiatrist very unhelpfully tell me i “just need to manage my stress” when the stress i was describing was things i could not avoid in neurotypical society and can’t “just get over”. i can do “self care” all i like but i cannot at the very base level change the way my brain inputs information and reacts accordingly.

[roach-works]

i only learned this year that loud noises aren’t physically painful for other people. i have lived 34 years in a world in which my friends and family regularly physically hurt me at random just by shouting, and i thought everyone else just thought i was kind of a wimp for not dealing with the pain as well as they did.

like. loud noises physically hurt. it’s like a static shock from my ears to my spine that doesn’t stop until the volume goes back down. i thought we all agreed that ‘that’s too loud!’ and covering our ears meant ‘ouch!’. turns out i’ve been dealing with a stressor almost no one else has, my whole life, alone.

autistic people have to keep functioning through debilitating levels of stress that no one else in their life acknowledges or helps them with. it’s no wonder that their most visible ‘tells’ are breakdowns. 

[halcionic]

i know this is a hot take for writeblr but you should be able to start, pause, discontinue, and abandon WIPs without feeling guilty.

[headspace-hotel]

I know people emphasize Finishing The Book No Matter What a lot but sometimes a book is hard to finish because you don’t care about it, or because it’s not the right time, or because there’s a really fundamental problem with it that you haven’t noticed yet. Laying a WIP aside can be and often is a part of the process

[the-writers-bookshelf]

I have two little notes to add here:

1. I got locked into the mindset of “MUST FINISH THIS BOOK” even though it REALLY wasn’t working. I didn’t actually WANT to write the book. But I felt obligated to finish it because I’d started it. I gradually lost interest in writing and trickled to a near-stop because this story was not something I wanted to tell.

I got to the point where I thought I wasn’t really interested in writing because I hadn’t written anything in 2 years.

When I finally gave myself permission to abandon that WIP and write something different, the ideas FLOWED like a tsunami.

2. There are traditionally published authors who have their series discontinued from publishing due to lack of sales. Even professionals don’t finish their WIPs for various reasons.

Yes, you should finish projects now and then. Don’t let yourself fall into the pattern of never finishing a story because once you start abandoning projects when they start to get hard, that’s a tough habit to break.

But if the story is REALLY not working for you, then it’s definitely time to take a serious weigh-in for the pros and cons with that project.

[closet-keys]

I was at a union meeting the other day and the speaker had this great quote

“When you’re a public worker and politicians come around talking about lower taxes, that means they want to lay you off.”

And it’s true. I’m a librarian, so my wages come from tax dollars. Lower taxes means the library has to cut costs, and that means either lowering wages or laying people off. It’s a pretty direct cause and effect.

My dad was a mechanic for public school buses. The first time he took me to vote it was for a local election and he told me even if I did nothing else to vote to pass the budget so they could replace two school busses that were beyond repair so kids were safe.

Politicians who try to sell you on lower taxes are usually just trying to cut social services & public resources and screw over public workers.

[valtsv]

women in gothic horror be like “i’m just going to wander the freezing halls of this old mansion barefoot in my nightdress until either the ghosts get me or the consumption does”

[deanwinchesterapologist]

[why do I feel like I'm losing my fuckig mind] [remembers it's August] ohhhhhhhg.

[whose-line-requests]

Three-Headed Broadway Star: You Are My Butterstick - Season 3 | Episode 2

Requested by @centralsgoldenboy: Can you please do Butterstick?

[lightlyrainy-deactivated2023091]

[16woodsequ]

One thing I genuinely like about writing, is how the story unfolds as you write it. You may start with a general idea, but little did you know that something you put in the story would become a major symbol, or that two characters would grow as close as they did, or that apparently you need a scene between Character A and Character C…

I just love how the story grows under your fingers, and becomes something beyond what you first imagined. 

[sesh]

[buddhabrand]

this video emits so much positive energy

[malzeick-deactivated20221030]

When the bard rolls a 20

[suzirya]

This is the biggest mood

[systlin]

Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them. 

Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.” 

“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”

“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”

It’s just. 

50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job. 

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok

[assasue]

One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.

[anx1ous-op0ssum]

I read something a while back about how pre-columbian Americans had obsidian blades they stored in the rafters of their houses. The archaeologists who discovered them came to the conclusion that the primitive civilizations believed keeping them closer to the sun would keep the blades sharper.

Then a mother looked at their findings and said “yeah, they stored their knives in the rafters to keep them out of reach of the children.”

[whatevercomestomymind]

Omg the ancient child proofing add on tho lol

[pbrim]

I remember years ago on a forum (email list, that’s how old) a woman talking about going to a museum, and seeing among the women’s household objects a number of fired clay items referred to as “prayer objects”.  (Apparently this sort of labeling is not uncommon when you have something that every house has and appears to be important, but no-one knows what it is.)  She found a docent and said, “Excuse me, but I think those are drop spindles.”  “Why would you think that, ma’am?”  “Because they look just like the ones my husband makes for me.  See?”  They got all excited, took tons of pictures and video of her spinning with her spindle.  When she was back in the area a few years later, they were still on display, but labeled as drop spindles.

[catchester]

So ancient Roman statues have some really weird hairstyles. Archaeologists just couldn’t figure them out. They didn’t have hairspray or modern hair bands, or elastic at all, but some of these things defied gravity better than Marge Simpson’s beehive.

Eventually they decided, wigs. Must be wigs. Or maybe hats. Definitely not real hair.

A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”

“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”

So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.

She now works as a hair archaeologist and I believe she has a YouTube channel now where she recreates forgotten hairstyles, using only what they had available at the time.

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Always question anything labelled as for a ritual or religious purpose without explanation because it’s very often shorthand for ‘we don’t know’ as if humans have not been the same since forever and have either made things for specific purposes or simply because they like making them (aka ART. Some things are simply art yet heaps of old research refuses to recognize this possibility.)

This is changing, but change is slow!