kindness is strategic and necessary

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
purlturtle
purlturtle

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!

photo of a white woman with short dark hair that's falling into her face, and dark brown eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses. she's shot in half-profile, but looking at the camera with a little smirk. in the background, Venice.ALT
purlturtle

Have an updated gpoy!

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purlturtle

Speak Your Language Day!!

Falls ihr das noch nicht wusstet: ich bin deutsch - in Deutschland geboren und lebe auch hier (nicht das amerikanische “I am German because my grandma’s family is from there”). Englisch ist die zweite Sprache, die ich fließend spreche; meine Muttersprache ist deutsch.

Ist schon manchmal spannend, wie sehr insbesondere Amis denken, dass sie mit einer anderen Ami sprechen, wenn ich mit ihnen auf Englisch kommuniziere. Immerhin ist in den Fandoms, in denen ich unterwegs bin, der Frauenanteil so hoch, dass sie mich in aller Regel nicht für einen Kerl halten 😅

Wie dem auch sei, ich bin gespannt zu sehen, wie viele und welche Sprachen ich heute so alles von meinen Mutuals gezeigt bekomme! Freue mich auf euch!!

Pinned Post
purlturtle
purlturtle

Poll time!


At night (or whenever you go to bed), do you fall asleep

within a few minutes

within half an hour

within an hour

within two hours

I lie awake for more than two hourss

I drop off wake up drop off wake up drop off......

tbh I have no idea how long it takes me

sometimes I fall asleep immediately, sometimes it takes forever

another option (put it in the tags!)

I don't sleep: I snort vanilla extract (show results)

Bonus question for the tags: what is your personal bedtime ritual (or rituals plural) to help you fall asleep? What wizardry do you fast sleepers use?

(no bragging about how you don't need sleep, this is a sleep positive poll!)

timezone reblog
leebrontide
phantomrose96

Character-voice is I think one of the hardest parts of writing and here's two charts to explain my thoughts on why.

The intention:

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The thing I think is maybe happening which I have no idea how to check or prevent:

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alcego-writes

Use references.

I am not joking. Find some audio medium that features someone speaking with similar speech patterns to what you want for your character and translate that to your work. Podcasts, comedy shows, movies, you name it—just find someone whose voice/word choice/rhythm/etc. rings true and scavenge from them. Listen to them until you can summon their voice in your head and then write from that state of mind.

Our own mannerisms will inevitably leak into our work, of course, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It is, in my opinion, often endearing. But if you want to whittle out a very precise, individual voice for your characters, then being familiar with how other people speak will be extremely helpful.

leebrontide

No but for real!!!


All my MCs have someone whose voice I'm referencing, tweaked a bit.

Yael is Finn the Human but slightly less weird

Issac talks like if Tony Stark were gen Z

Jenna talks like Eda the Owl Lady

This is one of the benefits you get from coming up through fanfic spaces. It's a great skill to learn!

Also, OP, those are great things to be evaluating and being planful about. My bet is that you're doing great at this. I even make voice habit cheat sheets while editing.

purlturtle
purlturtle

Poll time!


At night (or whenever you go to bed), do you fall asleep

within a few minutes

within half an hour

within an hour

within two hours

I lie awake for more than two hourss

I drop off wake up drop off wake up drop off......

tbh I have no idea how long it takes me

sometimes I fall asleep immediately, sometimes it takes forever

another option (put it in the tags!)

I don't sleep: I snort vanilla extract (show results)

Bonus question for the tags: what is your personal bedtime ritual (or rituals plural) to help you fall asleep? What wizardry do you fast sleepers use?

(no bragging about how you don't need sleep, this is a sleep positive poll!)

timezone reblog
al-the-grammar-geek
how I met my wife: me: be a fanfic author get a comment on one of my fics then another and another then an email to my address given in the author profile 'hey are you still looking for a beta reader?' within three emails we weren't talking about fic anymore i helped her through coming out to her parents and her then-husband we got flirty (did i mention that my stories were self-inserts?) (did i mention that she had a crush on my self-insert?) reader I married her and tomorrow (i shit you not) is our 9th anniversary i swear to xena and sappho this is not a 'and then everyone clapped'
samsaintjames
barackinaroundthechristmastree

WHAT COLOR ARE MIRRORS

finnickodaired

let’s reflect on this

youaresogayskarth

fun fact! mirrors reflect each color equally, except for green. if you have ever seen a mirror perfectly aligned in front of another mirror, a.k.a. an infinite mirror, you can look through it and see that it becomes greener and greener. therefore, mirrors are technically green!

luminescent-love

holy shit

petermorwood

The glass is greener over here. Not a typo.

If you look edgewise through a sheet of glass you see that it’s green because of iron impurities (Google for it). Reducing the iron reduces the green.

image

Perfectly aligning mirrors to multiply reflections also multiplies the apparent thickness of the glass, and the green tint becomes more apparent the “deeper” each reflection seems to be.

Science is like history: it was never this interesting at school. :-)

elodieunderglass

Yep! And this is because - I’m sorry to say - mirrors are not a unique or separate substance with magical properties. Mirrors are silvered glass. They have two colors: the color of the silver, and the color of the glass. The “silver” doesn’t have to be silver, though it usually is because mirrors are traditionally made with silver nitrate, because it’s a whitish metal. You can have mirrors silvered in gold or black or red. You take literally any piece of glass, pour a coating of silver on it, seal it, and call it a mirror.

You have to seal it because otherwise it tarnishes and spots. Even though the glass protects it from air, the silver oxidizes just like any other silver, which is why antique mirrors have that funky age-spotted look.

Mirrors used in science are usually pure clear glass with no impurities (so the glass has no color) and are silvered in gold or aluminum, so they are white or gold. A warm-toned mirror would have a pink glass and would make things have a rose-gold look. Phryne Fisher, in the books, has a mirror with pink glass.

(Mirrors silvered in silver - that is, most mirrors you’ve seen - are probably faintly grey from the silver and faintly green from the cheap glass, but it doesn’t need to concern you at all - even if you noticed a strong color, you’re often so used to looking in them that your brain edits out any discrepancy - like how your nose doesn’t get in the way of your vision even though it’s right in front of your eyes all of the time.)

beezelbubbles

My grandmother had a mirror that was silvered in gold. It was a little disconcerting. The silver in mirrors is why vampires don’t have reflections. (And why the cutlery at Castle Dracula was made of gold.)

elodieunderglass

IS THAT TRUE ABOUT THE REFLECTIONS BECAUSE IF SO THAT CHANGES ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING???

zamboni-whisperer

It’s true!  (Source is The Journal Of I Read It Somewhere One Time, so take it with a truckload of salt, but I’m pretty sure it was a published book and not the internet, so like, only a pickup truck, not a dump truck.)

Watsonian explanation:  Silver as an entity and/or concept was upset about being used to pay Judas, so as some kind of compensation God gave it evil-fighting powers, and this is why vampires don’t have reflections in silvered mirrors as well as why werewolves are killed by silver bullets.  (Also works for vampires not showing up on film, because silver nitrate, although obviously that isn’t part of the ~*~original folklore~*~ and also doesn’t explain digital cameras.)

Doylist explanation:  A lot of things that are traditionally anti-vampire turn out to have antibacterial properties- the only ones I remember are garlic and silver, but I think there were others- so supposedly when anti-vampire treatments helped somebody out of a decline or whatever they were actually helping fight off an infection.

@elodieunderglass

elodieunderglass

Ahahaha I love the conversations we have

idhren

A lot of things that are traditionally anti-vampire turn out to have antibacterial properties

fromthemindofatwentyorotherlycan

So would that mean vampires are weak to antibacterial soap?

thetruenomenfictus

The power of hand sanitizer compels you!

ultralaser

antimicrobial soaps were just banned by THE VAMPIRE CABAL

marquessbrie

@unseelieaccords @t-raith @tarnishedcoins @harry-the-lizard

unseelieaccords

Does that mean that a vampire would see themselves in a gold mirror but not a silver one?

amalthea-oberon

What about a gold mirror with antibacterial soap or something sprayed on it?

And if it’s the silver in the cameras that made them not show up on film, that means that digital is entirely different (unless they use silver in the manufacturing - which i’m pretty sure they don’t - or if some rich person has a silver encased camera - but that still probably wouldn’t work because the lense couldn’t be encased in silver otherwise it wouldn’t work) so basically we need a modern story where the Vampires are having to come up with clever things to stay out of photos where possible because DIGITAL, but there’s that one vampire who photobombs everything and is famous on the internet for it because he’s literally everywhere.

@chipofftheoldsoul @moonlitfandom @marian-ette @iviegh @megupic

nanodash

Some good scientific discussion in this thread

praise-the-lord-im-dead

I’m 100% here for vampire hunters ferociously wielding hand sanitizer and cheap plastic spray bottles full of cleaning fluid.

marlynnofmany

“THE POWER OF WINDEX COMPELS YOU!”
*spritz spritz*
*vampire hisses like a wet cat*

{(Side note: I left this tab open, scrolled to the bottom, and completely forgot how we got here from the color of mirrors.  Tumblr science is fun.)}

bloodthirstypandasfromthesky

Fun addition: DSLR digital cameras still use mirrors to flip the image into the viewfinder (and do some fun light flippy shit). The Vampire would not show up when you look through the scope but would appear in your finished photo because the mirror gets flipped out of the way when you take an actual picture. Most digital cameras now are mirrorless (there’s no viewfinder, you look directly at the screen to see what you’re photographing). HOWEVER there are some trace amounts of silver in traditional LCD displays (mostly in the receptor strip… which may impact?) and plasma displays contain a lot of silver so the only way you would be able to see the vampire is if you printed a picture out on paper.

petermorwood

This gets more interesting and convoluted every time it crosses my dash… :->

anonymousedward

*thinks about my allergy to rubbing alcohol, regular iron deficiency, and preference for rare steaks* 

….hm…..

al-the-grammar-geek
anarcho-skamunist

You would think that the biggest risk of trying out something new is that you won't like it, but it's when it's so good it raises your standards where the real problems start

anarcho-skamunist

"out of provolone? How am I supposed to eat a sandwich without provolone?" - girl who put provolone on her sandwich for the first time this week

i grew up next to a strawberry field and it made me a strawberry snob fucking MISS me with artificial strawberry flavored anything storebought strawberry jam is on thin fucking ice demand the best
samsaintjames

Calling all Artists

anamatics

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I’m starting my dissertation research! I’m looking to talk to visual artists (think painters, fiber artists, potters, illustrators, etc.) about their experiences sharing – or not sharing – their art on various online platforms like tumblr.  You don’t need to be a professional, or do art as your full time job, you just need to be an artist doing stuff online.

This study is for people over 18 who live in the US presently (though this may change). If you’re interested in sharing your thoughts about what it’s like being an artist online, feel free to read the information about the study  check out our interest survey at bit.ly/cuartistsurvey

signal boost!