It's now been a bit more than a year for me on this webbed site, so let me make a little introductory post to pin:

Hi, I'm Purlturtle (Purl, Jana, she/her)!

I'm shamelessly and endlessly obsessed with Bering and Wells (Warehouse 13) - this is them, my beloveds:

I will reblog pretty much anything to do with them. 90% of what you'll get here is gonna be Bering and Wells. The rest is usually feel-good/affirmation stuff, queer stuff, cute stuff or historical stuff (bonus if a post meets two or more of those criteria). Also language stuff and writerly stuff, because (drumroll) I am a writer. Find my stuff over on AO3 (and sometimes here too).

Other media that I love include Star Trek and Discworld (my first loves), and more recently Legends of Tomorrow and Wheel of Time. I'm nowhere near as obsessed with any of those other ships than I am with my OTP, though.

I'm old (40+) but a baby in fandom spaces, having only really found my way there in 2020. Before that, I was mostly muddling along on my own. So I'm extra grateful to have found so many friends here!

I love asks, be they from memes or just randomly dropped in my inbox, so if you're curious about something, just go ahead and ask! I'll never mind that (just as I'll never mind comments on any of my fics!), and you won't ever be a bother to me.

Thank you for your attention, and have a wonderful day!

Have an updated gpoy!

It's my three year Tumblr-versary!

I wanna post another selfie to celebrate, and I also want to boost awareness of mental health issues like sensory or emotional overwhelm, and therefore my selfie this year is this:

This is me crying and shaking after getting home from a situation that was just too much. I barely made it inside our front door; I'm sitting right on the inside stairs, coat still in my arms (hugging it, in fact, because I needed to hold on to something).

Some days I look like this. And that's okay.

Things baked into Terry Pratchett books that I didn't realise at first but very much needed and benefited from:

Being unpleasant, weird, socially difficult, off-putting, uncomfortable to be around, annoying, obnoxious, etc does not equal being a bad person

And it definitely doesn't mean others don't have a duty of baseline care about you

They don't have to like you but there is a baseline "we live in a society and I care about what happens to the people around me" type of duty that you are owed

They can think you're unpleasant to be around and even stupid and cringe in your presence but there is a duty of care to your existence

And if you are doing bad things you can stop

There are always chances to think about your actions and why you're doing them and if you really believe it's the right thing

There is always an option to stop

And some people do

And some people don't

But if people do that doesn't mean they aren't still maybe unpleasant to be around or awkward or uncomfortable

The "bad guys" in Terry Pratchett tend to

1. Believe they are in the right

2. Never question that belief

3. Have multiple opportunities to not be doing what they are doing but fully commit

4. May have points that at least feel reasonable on a surface level if you don't think about them too deeply

5. Face consequences of their own actions. Which includes the protagonist having to slap them down. If they didn't put the stuff in motion and refuse to back down they wouldn't be getting slapped

They aren't cartoon baddies they are really realised characters with convictions that they believe in and truly tend to believe their actions are the best thing to be doing. That they are doing what others should have already done

But in Terry Pratchett what makes you on the wrong side of the narrative is not your personality or your looks or how sociable you are

It's your continuing actions that define you AND your unwillingness to change

And I think I very much needed that reinforced in my life

Other unlucky days in the seaman's calendar

The law of statistics may “prove” that there are no special unlucky days, but if a superstitious sailor expects bad luck, he may get it. With all this superstition, one might wonder how they managed to set sail in the first place. But on the subject of unlucky days, in Spain Tuesday can be an unlucky day, because Tuesday the 13th is just as bad as Friday the 13th. Spanish Christians believe that Tuesday the 13th was the date of the Last Supper and the day the Romans arrested Jesus Christ. It is bad luck to marry or go to sea if Tuesday falls on the 13th, regardless of the month. Christian-minded sailors should also avoid sailing on other dates that coincide with infamous events in the Bible, such as 31 December, the day Judas Iscariot hanged himself. In addition to Fridays and Tuesdays, some Mondays should also be avoided. The first Monday in April is the day of the first murder, when Cain slew his brother Abel, while the second Monday in August is the day God destroyed the decadent, vice-ridden cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  

The word “dismal” comes from the Latin expression dies mali, which means “evil days”. In the Middle Ages, people believed that certain dates were particularly unlucky, that nothing should be done on those days and that any journey, whether by land or sea, was at risk. As political correctness was not so widespread at that time, these days were often referred to as Egyptian days. The Saxons believed that there were 24 evil days in a year, but by the reign of Henry VI in the 15th century, this number had increased to 32. January is the worst month with seven evil days (1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 10th and 15th), while October is the best month with only one (6th).  

Rizzles: 2024

I sometimes see people argue about one of these circles as though it were all three circles.

Sometimes something can totally make sense in-universe, and fit with the themes of the story, the characters, etc... And you just don't like it for whatever reason. Maybe it wasn't done well in spite of that, or touched a nerve, etc.

Maybe you loved a story, and it was an excellent exploration of a character, but it would be totally fair to call out the technical nonsense, and how, even in-universe, it doesn't add up.

And maybe you thought this episode of a show was GREAT! But it was non-canon, nothing made sense, and, ultimately, it was UTTER NONSENSE.

And so on, and so forth. Heck, you could fairly add more circles to this. I'm keeping it simple with three.

My point is mostly that there's nuance to opinions, and sometimes, someone not liking something in a story has nothing to do with whether it made sense, or complimented the narrative.

Those things can be separate points. Stories don't have to be a failure at everything to be disliked, or succeed at everything to be liked, and arguing as though that were the case is silly.

Oh my god I have it in my 1946 Lily Wallace New American Cookbook too I’m screaming

This is it! This is the white culture we’ve been looking for!

I’m sorry are we just not gonna mention “Beef Tea” “Raw Beef Tea” and “Cooked Raw Beef Tea” one after the other

#WHY

Because the majority of human existence has not been to the knowledge and supply level we are at now.  You can’t just give someone electrolytes in the 19th century, you have no idea what the fuck they are. Someone is sick, and can only keep weak liquids down, but you know enough at this point to realise that man cannot live on water alone.   So you work out really weird ways to infuse foodstuffs into liquids they can handle to try and keep food into them. A lot of these also come from a way to stretch nutrient sources in times of poverty and scarcity. 

Thank you for this addition. People are curiously comfortable assuming everyone in the past was stupid and illogical, and it’s always struck me as showing a sad lack of empathy for fellow human beings. It’s like people in the past aren’t seen as, you know, people

Your local 19th century PhD researcher popping in here to add to this. Toast water is 100% a drink for treating illness. It turns up listed in several household medicine guides in the 19th century, and is listed as for treating people with fever, diarrhoea and vomiting, who can’t keep anything down. It’s essentially oral rehydration therapy. 

It interestingly starts turning up in literature in the period covering five major cholera outbreaks in the UK and US (this was obviously an English language Ngram search).

And peaks several times at epidemic peak points (1830s, 1850, 1880s), including its first peak in 1831/2, which corresponds with the first cholera epidemic in the UK. 

It also corresponds with the year William Brooke O’Shaughnessy discovered that a lot of people who were dying of cholera were severely lacking water and salts in their blood and urine. Dehydration was found to be a major cause of death in cholera patients. “Toast water” was suggested in the Lancet medical journal in 1832 as an initial treatment for cholera patients. 

Most of the recipes in household medicine guides I found suggest sweetening or flavouring the toast water with something if the patient could keep it down in order to cover the terrible taste.

People in the past were just people. And in this particular case, they were trying to keep their loved ones from dying of cholera. 

And here is a link to possibly my fave ever book, with some modern recipes to do the same job , including the water you cooked rice in with the water you cooked rice in plus half a teaspoon of salt - so really toast water was pretty smart - https://en.hesperian.org/hhg/New_Where_There_Is_No_Doctor:Dehydration#Rehydration_drinks

I could do another one about offspring… but this is specifically about children, not adult progeny of main characters, like Jack or Sidney.

Didn’t include Miral Paris because we just barely meet her. Would have liked to have seen more of her!

Fun fact: Ziyal & Nog are the same age! I almost didn’t include Ziyal, because I thought she was older. But we meet her as a teen, just like nog. So Molly & Hiroyoshi got the boot…

Rhianna Pratchett confirming her father wouldn't be a """gender critical""" activist (whatever the hell those GCs stand for) if he were still alive

The GCs are Terfs. A specific type of transphobe. Quite a few British celebrity got recruited to their ranks and they have the money and clout to do a lot of damage unfortunately.

Terry passed away before Rowling started her downward spiral and played a significant role in creating the current toxic atmosphere around Trans rights in England . It is good to see that his daughter ,who is also a writer, stands up for human rights.

That’s despicable trying to “recruit” someone who’s DEAD. Not to mention there’s NOTHING in Pratchett’s books—including the ones of essays, articles, and speeches—to suggest he join in if he was alive.

And obviously his own kid would know his private opinions so hopefully the assholes will see her tweet and back the fuck off.

(GC stands for “gender critical”, when you see that it usually means that you’re talking to/about terfs who are trying to rebrand their image).

For those of you who are wondering who else the original tweet is referring to, they are talking about Margaret Atwood, a very prominent feminist author (probably best known for The Handmaid’s Tale). Because she is a feminist the terfs assumed that she’d naturally side with them, and it came as a massive shock (for some reason) when she very publicly opposed and humiliated all of  terfdom.

But yeah I don’t know how terfs can possibly get through Discworld books without any kind of self-awareness but apparently they do. I’ve also seen them talking about how the Wives in the Handmaid’s Tale are all trans women (solely based on the fact that they are infertile). If you know anything about the plot or even the basic premise you’ll know how ludicrous that suggestion is.

Terf rhetoric basically revolves around throwing shit at the wall and then crawling around in anything that sticks, but the underlying transphobia is always present.

Rhianna Pratchett is the best.

“Terry Pratchett” is now a trending topic on twitter and everyone is just slamming the people who claim he would be transphobic. It’s been really nice to see

Also there’s this

And this. Bless @neil-gaiman

I’d already seen most of this on Twitter, but the Tom Hatfield tweet was new to me and got some laughs.

Also, this is the one that made me get all teary:

Flower goldfish

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please bring some sort of antiseptic

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

every time star trek discovery mentions "action saru," i think of all the nicknames we could have had. he could have been SARUTHLESS