#this is legitimately one of my worst and most specific pet peeves

[thewiglesswonder]

🔥 tfa Blitzwing

My hot take is that the actual fucking German language of the Indo-European language family does not exist on Cybertron or anywhere else except Earth. Accents are arbitrary at worst and correlated with Cybertronian colonies and cities at best and I am so fucking sick of seeing people pepper actual German into his dialogue like he's a native speaker.

This take brought to you hot from the fires of my irrational yet blazing rage.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 127

Annnnd a-one, and a-two, and a queue-queue-queue!

This chapter has one of my favorite things in the world to write - Interpersonal relationships (if you are surprised, I’m going to assume you are new here....).

Specifically, one of my biggest pet-peeves is when friends or siblings are written in a way that shows that the author doesn’t actually have any friends or siblings they are close enough to that all rules of societal politeness go whizzing into some far-off dimension as soon as they are in proximity.

When I get to write a chapter with such close friends/ersatz-siblings and also have @baelpenrose cackling and egging me on, it literally makes my whole day.

P.S: If anyone has wondered about the ages of the characters, several are clearly lined out in this chapter......

EDIT: Fixed some insane formatting issues.

“The food festival, Sophia? Really?” an incredulous voice asked before the door to my office even opened all the way.

I resisted the urge to scream, but did surrender to pinching the bridge of my nose and breathing slowly. “Hello, Arthur. Do come in. Long time no see.  Of course I’m not busy…” My one day each week to have a few hours to myself - no mentees, no assistant, even Tyche was off work….

“We saw each other last night when I came over for dinner after sparring with Conor, and  you’re never busy on Saturdays, Alistair makes sure of it.” He dragged a chair in front of my desk for what I felt was the sole purpose of putting his boots on my desk instead of the conference table.

“I thought you two didn’t even like each other, how did you - “

He waved a hand dismissively. “Enemy of my best friend’s enemy is my friend, that sort of thing. Anyway - “

“Did you just call me my own worst - “

“You are, let’s not pretend otherwise. Anyway.” Arthur arched an eyebrow at me and waited for any further objections, but I couldn’t think of any. “The Food Festival. It’s my one favorite tradition on this ship until armed combat becomes a spectator sport, and you are putting Parvati and Hannah in charge of it?”

After a beat pause to make sure he was done, I glared at him. “Everyone has asked me that, and I don’t understand the issue.  They’ve both helped in the past, even before they started training to replace me.  I’ve handed more and more off to them each time, and they did great! Plus, they have three months, it will be fi - Wait, why do you even care, Arthur?”

He held up one finger with the authority of a deity who would have smited me if he could. “One, Parvati Fletcher does not like mapo tofu. You do. Specifically, you like it from that one vendor who grows her own Sichuan peppercorns and uses them like they are an infinite resource. Two, I spend entirely too much time working with Zach Khan, and he won’t shut up about how stressed Hannah is. Three - “ I was seriously starting to get concerned he actually could smite me at this point - “As much as I love you in the most platonic way possible, you are an obsessive, compulsive perfectionist who insists on doing everything herself and running herself into the ground so that everyone else has the time of their lives. So why are you trusting this, the largest and oldest event on the Ark, entirely to other people?” Dropping his boots from the desk, he leaned forward, palms down until we were nearly nose to nose.

“Sophia Reid, I swear on any god I can kill if you are dying…”

“WHAT!?” I squawked, jerking back and standing so fast I knocked my chair over. “For the love of little fish, I’m not dying! I haven’t had a near death experience in four years, thank you.”

“Three, not counting the fact that there is a reason Alistair makes you drink anything through a straw anymore.”

“How did - Nevermind.” I shook my head and tried to focus on the topic at hand. “No, I’m not dying. Nor am I injured, having a midlife crisis, rethinking my life choices any more than I ever do, or so much as in possession of a stuffy nose.” Taking a deep breath, I rolled my eyes and started counting off before I could stop myself. “Conor and Maverick and I are fine. No, I’m not arguing with Tyche again. Yes, I’m still going to therapy. Else is fine. No new sentient plagues or rogue cult leaders that I’m aware of. Nor have I become immortal, queen of the universe, savior of humanity, pregnant by Noah, or possessed.” Carefully, I picked my chair back up and sat down.

“Good...to… know?” He gave me a funny look. “Who asked the most disturbing one?”

“Immortal or Savior of Humanity?” I asked for clarification. “Those were Maverick and Derek, respectively.”

The look only got worse. “I meant ‘pregnant by Noah’, but fascinating to see where your priorities lie….?”

“Oh. That was Charly.”

“Dammit,” he swore softly. “I had her pegged for ‘possessed’.”

“I’m pretty sure she is, but the suggestion that I am came from Tyche, on no fewer than 3 occasions, by 4 different entities. She seemed pretty hopeful that Else was potentially mind-controlling me in an effort to make me take a nap,” I admitted.

“That tracks.” A nod of approval prefaced the question I had been avoiding - successfully, thus far, I might add. “Now that you’ve ruled out every possible plausible reason that you would entrust this to literally anyone other than a clone of yourself, why?”

“Why what?” My face was composed in an expression of innocence so convincing that I probably deserved an Oscar.

“I can and will convince Charly to turn all your coffee to decaf, so help me, Sophia.”

Realizing that he was, legitimately, worried about me and at the limits of his usually-impressive patience, I held up my hands in surrender. “Fine. You get the scoop.  Please record this and send me the loop, so I can just flick it at people who ask, please?” When he nodded, I exhaled slowly.  “It is no secret to anyone that I never wanted this job. I made the mistake of establishing the Food Festival, which as you point out is the largest event of the cycle on the Ark - the last three years, literally everyone attended in some capacity.” When he opened his mouth to argue, I held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t get me wrong. I love the Festival. What basically started out as a potluck because we were homesick and needed to meet - you know, the rest of humanity - is a huge, three day holiday.  It’s amazing!” I spun in my chair, arms flung wide for emphasis, before stopping to face him. 

“It also consumes my life, for months, to prepare for.  And that’s just implementing changes to make it more accessible so people don’t miss out! That doesn’t include adding things to make it more interesting or keep it from getting boring, or whatever. I literally don’t have time to do any of that!”

“So, you’re inflicting this on them instead?”

“Inflicting?” I snorted.  “Hardly. This is their final exam, their capstone project, their dissertation.  If they pull this off, I will gladly hand the entire office over to whoever is elected, cheerfully and knowing the Ark is in good hands.  But, they have to pull this off.  It’s the only major part of being Councilor of Resources and Relations that they haven’t done yet by themselves.”

He rubbed his face, looking somewhat impressed. “That’s honestly not what I was expecting.”

“I don’t think it ever is, honestly.” I shrugged at the question he glanced towards me. “For Evan, it was coordinating the weapons exhibitions.  Charly managed to pre-empt her own by designing more efficient aqueducts and filtration for when we reach Von - you know, the ones that also produce light?”

“Of course she would invent glow-in-the-dark plumbing. Who else?” Something caught up with him. “Evania Josue got away with planning an event? Seriously?”

“Oh, that’s right… you weren’t on Level One…” I murmured. When he only looked more confused, I clarified. “She was Maverick’s co-pilot when we needed people to pilot the Ark, which was not designed to pilot manually, via dead reckoning, using cameras pointed out the few viewports we have, for several weeks after the sensors were sabotaged.”

“She was whose co-pilot?”

“You really never heard this story? You practically live with seven people who were there…”

“Usually I get the bits about ‘Sophia nearly got her brains bashed out’ and ‘that traitorous bitch’, then start tuning out while I try to decide what it would take to get Charly to teach me necromancy… If Evan was the co-pilot, then why is Maverick….”

“Not in line to replace any Councilors? Arthur, we know that would be a disaster for him.”

He nodded reluctantly. “Your younger partner is a nice boy.”

“For fuck’s sake, he’s thirty seven!” I groaned.

“Nice man, whatever,” he waved off. “Which is exactly what I would like for you as a partner. You need nice partners, and blunt siblings. But I see what you mean about him being a Councilor… he’d be miserable.”

“What was yours?” I asked mischievously, dropping my chin onto my hands.

That earned me a flat stare, until he finally surrendered when I didn’t flinch. “The Twentieth/Early Twenty First History curriculum.”

“Seriously?” That had literally been the first thing he had done when Eino tapped him as a possible successor.

“I didn’t budge on points even he admitted he would have, out of fear of offending people.”

“Which is a fear you very much lack,” I pointed out.

“The truth is the truth. Coating it in sugar only makes it taste worse.” He shrugged nonchalantly before suddenly looking dangerously like he was thinking again. “There’s two of them.”

“Yes, Arthur. Hanna and Paravati are, in fact, two distinct and separate women-type-lady-people.”

“Thank you, Fee, I was well aware.” I suppressed a growl at the nickname - he knew I hated it. “I meant, only one can win the election, smartass.”

“Better to be a smartass than a dumbass,” I muttered.

“Sophia, you are forty five. Please grow up just a hair?”

“Tyche doesn’t want to be HR forever, you know.”

That brought his mind to a visibly screeching halt. “Wait, what?”

“What what?” I asked. “She does it because she is phenomenal at it, but it isn’t her passion.  She only stuck around as long as she did to make sure I didn’t trip over a chair and brain myself while I was at work.  When I’m gone, she’s gone, loser take the spoils.”

He whistled softly before shaking his head. “It’s bizarre to think of you two retiring around the same time I’m just starting the position.”

“I’ll have been a Councilor for a decade when I step down,” I pointed out.  I almost included unless I die first, but that never seemed to be as funny as I thought it was.

“But you aren’t that much older than me,” he sighed dramatically. “Anti-aging technology is frustrating.”

“Annnnd this is a natural extension of your career, with a ten year break thereabouts the middle.”  My grin was so bright it made him scowl before I finally got a begrudging smile.  “Think of it as getting elected head of the school board.”

The groan he let out probably echoed for several levels throughout the ship. I had basically just pointed out that he was becoming that which he most hated.

Or not. He seemed to recover with a gleam in his eye. “Pfft. Dean of Students, at the very least.”

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[jolie989]

@lovefrombeelzebub666 tagged me to do this!! (Thank you so much!!!) Ignore if you want, but I’m excited to do this :)

1. If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go?

Probably Los Angeles or New York tbh! I love love love large cities and I hope to live in one some day. I’m forever captivated by the lights.

2. If you won the lottery what would be the first thing you’d do?

Ultimately, I’d save my money. But for the very first thing, I’d probably have a spending spree day in celebration.

3. Least favorite word and why?

FURBISHED. It’s such an awkward word it has no place in the English language!

4. Biggest pet peeve?

Interrupting me when I’m speaking. It’s the worst, I just wanna be heard!!

5. What’s your ideal date?

We’re at home, with pizza and video games. Night time specifically. And we just hang out and talk about deep shit.

6. What’s something you like that people only do as friends?

Tbh idk about this question because there’s not a whole lot that only friends do, but I’m just gonna have to say having each other’s backs.

7. What do you find attractive in a person you like?

Humor. Idc about your looks. Just make me laugh, 100%.

8. If your house had a flood what would be the two things you’d save?

Welp I live in central Texas in a two story home, but I was affected by Hurricane Harvey so I suppose this is something I’d have to consider. Most likely my pets, and if I can, my limited edition Ghost merch.

9. What video games do you play and why?

Don’t Starve and Borderlands 2 and some of my favorites. I love aesthetically pleasing games, which is why I love Don’t Starve. And the combat mechanisms and storyline of Borderlands 2 is to die for.

10. Favorite food?

Velveeta Mac n’ Cheese. Omg.

11. What’s your favorite activity? (This said active so I think they meant activity? Apologies if I’m wrong)

Drawing, watching things, listening to music, playing video games and playing my bass! All very basic, I know.

Tumblr isn’t my main social media site, I spend 99.7% of my time on Instagram, so I don’t have legitimate friends on here. So I guess I tag all my followers that feel like doing this!!

[wuggen]

I mean I'm mostly just complaining but the EVM is legitimately an annoying architecture to work with. Haven't had to touch it in a while so my memory's a little foggy, but some things that I do remember:

It being a blockchain VM, every instruction directly costs literal money to execute. The more computationally expensive the instruction, the more money it costs you.

256-bit word length. What even the fuck, why do we need all that space. Is it really worth it just to be able to fit a SHA-256 into a single word? Those extra bytes also cost more literal money.

Until relatively recently, no bit-shifting instructions. You had to cobble that together with multiplications and divisions. And of course those are more computationally expensive than bit shifts, so have fun getting a particular byte out of one of those 256-bit words lmao.

Stack-based, rather than register-based. Which is not a problem per se, perfectly reasonable choice for keeping code size down, but it only provides instructions to access the top ~16 (I think?) slots of the stack. Which wouldn't be a problem, you can just spill local variables to memory if you can't keep them on the stack anymore, except that writing to memory costs more money than pushing to the stack. In practice this means you can't have more than about 10 local variables in a function without paying exorbitantly for it. (Compilers that target EVM will actually give errors if you use too many local variables.)

No instructions to query the amount of money the program's already burned on an execution. This is a really niche complaint that is probably only relevant for the very specific bullshit I was being paid to do with it, but it's weird nonetheless.

This one's more a problem with the compilers that target the EVM rather than with the EVM itself, but it's incredible what absolute garbage code they emit. You wanna save an in-memory array to non-volatile storage? Well the solidity compiler is gonna first copy that array to a brand new freshly allocated array in memory, and then write to storage from the copy, and then never use the copy again. For some reason. This is with optimizations enabled. This costs more money.

Also most of the compilers are written in javascript. Who the fuck writes a compiler in javascript. Ethereum developers, apparently.

And finally, as a very general pet peeve/source of amusement, EVM is in this family of virtual machines (WebAssembly is another) that were designed in theory to make it easy to produce safe and secure code, because the memory space of the code is completely segregated from anything else running on the host system. There's a quote from the paper that introduced WebAssembly that goes something like "At worst, a buggy program can only make a mess of its own memory." Of course the problem here is that, if the things in a program's memory are themselves meaningful then making a mess of it can still have disastrous consequences even if nothing outside of that memory can be messed with. Memory exploits that were completely eliminated in native code via hardware, OS, and compiler memory protections in like 1995 are relevant again in WASM, because no one thought they needed to implement those protections. EVM smart contracts lost people millions of dollars because no one thought to consider the consequences of smart contracts invoking themselves recursively. It's just absolutely, darkly hilarious to me that this shit keeps happening. "It can't be hacked, it's isolated!" But what's inside the isolation matters on its own, and in the case of EVM directly manages money. Like, come on.

I truly hate how much knowledge I have of the Ethereum virtual machine

[bughead-fic-request]

I would like to thank @leaalda for making these amazing banners.

This is an effort to spread the word about all fan fiction writers in our little fandom. If you would like to be featured or nominate a writer, please contact me. Please reblog this post if you can and check out some of @sylwrites work!

1. First things first, if someone wanted to read your stories where can they find them?

They’re posted exclusively on AO3.

2. Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m in my mid-twenties and I live in Canada. I have a giant dog that’s a lumbering buffoon of an animal and less free time than I’d like.

3. What do you never leave home without?

As a true millennial, my cell phone.

4. Are you an early bird or a night owl?

Early bird.

5. If you could live in any fictional world, which one would you choose and why?

Probably something totally unachievable like Harry Potter, just to be escapist.

6. Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met.

Literally no one. I saw Billy Bush from afar once (pre-Trump tape days), but that’s it.

7. What are some of your favorite movies/TV?

I’m a big fan of mafia movies from the 70s through the 90s, like Casino and Goodfellas. Shows like Riverdale are a guilty pleasure, but I also love Game of Thrones and Westworld.

8. What are some of your favorite bands/musicians?

I mostly listen to alternative rock/pop and indie, but honestly lately I mostly listen to podcasts.

9. Favorite Books?

For purely sentimental reasons, Harry Potter. I’m also a pretty big fan of dystopian fiction (like 1984, not YA).

10. Favorite Food?

Chicken, probably, in various forms.

11. Biggest pet peeve?

They’re probably all driving-related. I have hella road rage.

12. What did you want to be when you were little? What do you want to be now?

I wanted to be a writer when I was little. Now I am pretty fulfilled in my current job and its career path, but to be super-broad, I just want to contribute meaningfully.

13. What are your biggest fears? Do you have any strange fears?

I have thalassophobia (a persistent fear of the sea or of sea travel), for sure, and I really hate earthworms for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

14. When you are on your deathbed what would be the one you’d regret not doing?

Not travelling more, probably.

Okay… lets talk about your writing!

15. Which is your favorite of the fics you've written for the Bughead fandom?

My favourite fic I’ve written is ”a million ways to bleed”.

16. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?

Honestly, the most recent one – “meet the morning”. It wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do for no reason at all and it ended up as sort of a fluffy garbage-fest, which still made a lot of people happy, but it’s not my best work by a long shot and it’s put a little bit of a hit in my self-image haha.

17. How do you come up with the ideas for you fic(s)? Do you people watch? Listen to music? Get inspired by TV/movies?

Usually it starts with a basic plot point. In the case of Fall in Light, for example, it was – hey, let’s write a roommates AU. Then it just got way darker. Sometimes it’s informed by life experiences (I’ll go camping then suddenly sit with an idea about camping for two days, for example).

18. Idea that you always wanted to write but could never make work?

I’m still trying to figure out a way to write some kind of a Jason-Blossom-never-died canon divergent thing, but I’ve never hit on a great plot driver and at this point a lot of fics with that premise have been done so I’m no longer that interested in it.

19. Least favorite plot point/chapter/moment you’ve written?

I shall refer you to question 16 :)

20. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment you’ve written?

Man, I’m not really sure I can pick a favourite. I tried really hard to handle a certain event that happens to Betty in Fall in Light with as much respect, sensitivity and care as I possibly could, and I am pretty satisfied with how it turned out, so maybe that.

21.Favorite character to write?

Betty, because as a fellow Type A overachiever, I relate too hard.

22. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you've written?

I don’t have any specific lines of dialogue that I have been proud of in terms of their phrasing or anything like that. To be honest I think my fics are a little heavier on the prose than dialogue.

23. Best comment/review you’ve ever received?

Any review where people are able to break down multiple things in a chapter that they liked and explain them and why they liked them is my favourite. Particularly on new and/or ongoing fics; I hope those people understand how valuable I find the detailed feedback to be and just how much it gives me confidence to continue. A lot of these people are also writers, like @lessoleilscouchants and @onceuponamirror but there are a lot of them on and off tumblr that I am so grateful for.

I suppose if I had to pick one or two, there were a few people that reached out to me about Fall in Light who said that they were sexual assault survivors and that they were grateful to see their recovery experiences reflected in a respectful way, which I really valued. It wasn’t something I wanted to discuss if I couldn’t do it right.

24. How do you handle bad reviews or comments?

Really, really poorly, which is why my anon ask is not on and why for the first bit I didn’t even allow anonymous commenting on AO3. I totally welcome and love legitimate feedback, but rudeness for the sake of rudeness isn’t something I deal with well.

25. If you could change anything in any of your stories, what would it be?

Never look back, man, you’re not going that way.

26. What is your favorite story you’ve ever written? Any fandom?

Ever? Man, probably Fall in Light and its codas, honestly. Before this I wrote a little for The 100 and before that, I hadn’t written in many years, so there’s not that much to choose from.

27. What are you reading right now? Both fan fiction and general fiction?

I’m reading a fair bit of fic, I think. Trying to keep updated on a few long-running multi-chapters that likely everyone else is also reading. There are a lot of others out there that I need to catch up on/start reading as well, but I’m waiting for a little more free time to hit me as I do have a really stressful job and a pretty demanding ‘real life’.  

As far as general fiction goes, I’m not actually reading anything at the moment. I try to keep as updated on current events as possible and consume what is probably an unhealthy amount of news media instead. I am aware that this is not ideal, thank you in advance for your concern :)

28. Do you have an advice for writers that want to get into this fandom but might be scared?

A few key points:

Make a plan/outline, that’ll help to keep you going forward if you get distracted or lose your drive halfway through

Get a beta reader to help keep you consistent, in-character and on track

Get a tumblr to introduce yourself to the community and help promote your work

Then, once you have a finished product: just post it! What’s the worst that can happen?

If people are wondering about comment/kudo ratio and hit count and ways to increase all of those things, I’d say that length and frequency of updates are a couple other contributing factors to success (in addition to what a lot of other people have said in great posts elsewhere on tumblr). If you’re concerned about not having a lot of time to write in between updates, I encourage people to stockpile a few updates and release them at a reasonable rate so that you don’t put a lot of undue stress on yourself later when you have twenty-five asks all bugging you for updates. I think this goes without saying, but nobody who is writing fic is doing it for any reason other than enjoyment, and if it starts to cause you stress and unhappiness, that goes against its entire purpose. This is one of those areas where I am a big hypocrite, because I never do that (see: my impatience, greed, and need for validation through the kindness of internet strangers), but I do think it’s a great concept if you would like to keep your fic in the top few most recent pages of the Bughead tag without sacrificing quality because of frantic late-night writing that’s done simply to appease reviewer644 in Tulsa, or whatever.

[inkarsterated]

1.WHAT’S YOUR NAME? Flannery P: It’s okay. Most people can’t get it over the phone though so I get called Sunny, Connie, Lonnie, Franny, etc a lot. It’s unique I guess.

2. HOW OLD ARE YOU: 24! I’m old T_T I don’t want to be 24. There’s so much I haven’t done yet.

3. WHAT ARE YOU TALENTED AT? My first thought is “nothing” but I know people will give me shit for saying this. I can draw somewhat average. I’m honestly not that good compared to what’s out there. I can also write somewhat average. I can also write fast. I can cook somewhat average. I’m not very good at video games but I have experience with them. But what am I TALENTED at? Bondage scenarios. I get a LOT of commissioners who specifically want ME to come up with an idea, because I can take a very vague topic and run with it. :| I’ve gotten a shitload of these requests with people leaving  EVERYTHING up to me because they want to see what I come up with, and somehow, I never disappoint?? The best part is that I have literally no kinks or interest in sex? Yet somehow I’m good enough at this???

4. WHAT IS A BIG GOAL YOU ARE WORKING TOWARDS/HAVE ALREADY ACHIEVED? Graduating. :s Been six years so far. I’m so very far behind, and going through this hell has taught me a lot. I’ve been struggling with depression for so long too, and my self worth is practically in the negatives because I can’t say that I graduated with my friends on time. It’s a constant struggle. I hope one day it’ll be over. But then I expect to never find a job in my field so.

5. WHAT’S YOUR AESTHETIC? Dark and gritty. Think eldritch gods, plague, monsters, fights...I also love wasteland scenarios and sci fi. Think Star Wars, Borderlands/Mad Max, and Bloodborne. Surprisingly enough, I’ve never really been into magic or fantasy that much. Just enough. What I really like though, is a happy ending after the story has been hell.

6. DO YOU COLLECT ANYTHING? Fountain pens, and art of my OCs. Like, draw my OC, earn my eternal love. Hell, even willingly talk about my OC or read about my OC, win my eternal love. ...even with this, I don’t get a lot of people interested. It’s okay though. :3 It’s a hobby for me.

7. WHAT IS A TOPIC YOU ALWAYS BRING UP IN CONVERSATION? How everyone is. I want to know how your life is going and if I can somehow make it better, and if I can’t fix your problems maybe I can still buy you pizza or coffee?

8. WHAT’S A PET PEEVE OF YOURS? Apparently, back seat gaming. I didn’t realize until I tried to play Breath of the Wild. The more you know. XD I also HAAAATTTEEEE. Being kept track of. I don’t know why. When I was driving to Utah and people were like ‘text me when you stop so I know you’re still alive’ I was just so pissed at having to do it. I did it because it’s legitimately the right thing to do! To make sure people know I’m okay! But I HATTTEEEEEE being kept track of. Even if someone asks me like ‘when are you going to be home’ I get annoyed. The worst part? I do that shit to people all the time. OTL

9. GOOD ADVICE TO GIVE: It’s okay to change yourself. Don’t blame people for not liking you if you feel they don’t. Instead, look at yourself and think, am I the type of person that is likable? I have had anger issues for my entire life as a result of abuse and passive aggression. I���ve been working on it slowly but surely for YEARS now. I want people to like me for me. I dunno this is probably shitty advice be true to yourself or something

10. RECOMMEND 3 SONGS OR MORE: Fall Out Boy - The Phoenix Amaranthe - Hunger Caravan Palace - Clash, or Lone Digger

I tag @batrabies​, @sakinthra, @takran, @regalrey, @pidge-pudge