My brain is running with Kermit flail in 17 different directions and so list

FIC: finished

Kay Nicté: Nashuri AU, no powers, porn with plot & feels & family dynamics; Shuri doesn’t want to go to a resort on spring break; she has way too much critical, life-or-death work to do in the lab. Ch'ah Toh doesn’t want to go back home to his cousin’s resort on spring break; he has way too much respect for his culture to sell it out to tourists. One mezcal tasting flight later, they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other. Or any of their other body parts either.

FIC: in progress

1. The Pearl That I Carry in My Heart: Nashuri, Attoye, big damn post-canon fic, world building. Shuri suggests an arranged marriage between herself and K'uk'ulkan to strengthen the alliance between their nations; the slowest burn you have ever burned and then all the smut, stop fucking around you’re on a deadline. 98% finished: –read on ao3–
2. Beautifully Created: Attoye, canon divergence AU, kidfic, world building, what do you call it when you start with smut and end with smut but the whole wide middle is angst and politics? Wakanda already knew about Talokan when Namor made his ultimatum thanks to information from Okoye. Attuma would like to know how she got that information and why the queen & princess seem to hate his guts when he’s never met them before. 15% finished –read on ao3–
3. Kiss Me by the Fence Rails: Nashuri, AU modern day. Shuri is a brilliant engineer who just Does Not Get dating. She wants to get better at it and at sex in order to finally shoot her shot with her high school crush. She asks Namor, an equally brilliant architect, to help her out with all of that. He’s her brother’s business partner so he won’t try anything shady, he’s dated lots, and deep inside under that cranky exterior he’s a good guy. Simple and easy, right? <5% finished: –read on ao3–

Keep reading

datsderbunnyblog:

No no no you don’t understand. I don’t want to write a fic. I want to have written a fic. These things are not the same.

beatrice-otter:

ms-demeanor:

vitruvian23:

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys:

ritavonbees:

ms-demeanor:

It’s *extremely and distressingly* common. We keep having to fight with our clients who are lawyers because they want to keep running their old-ass WordPerfect licenses so they keep using unsupported operating systems. I’ve got three users at one law office who are running Vista. It’s a common issue that software for various types of hospital medical devices runs on XP, so hospitals have a lot of XP workstations; this is a known issue and I have literally seen a hacker give talks about using it to break into hospital security systems for fun while they were getting their chemotherapy infusions.

Nonprofits, governments, schools, lawyers, and doctors are fucking *terrible* about updating software or replacing licenses. The US military pays Microsoft to support XP for their systems because they are still so reliant on it.

But. Fuck. One of our customers does music licensing and until like 2020 he was running a Windows 2008 server because even upgrading to R2 would have broken the royalties processing software that he had had written for him in 1993; in the end it cost more for us to keep his horrible server alive five years past when it should have been retired than it cost him to have someone write him new software.

about ten years ago i worked at the oldest subtitles production company in Australia. most of the computers there were relatively up to date so we could use the latest version of Dragon voice to text, but we had a legacy workstation with two (2) computers and one (1) old bloke called James that used actual VCR tape recorders with knobs and dials to caption, exclusively, the in-flight news bulletin for Australia’s national airline. Channel 9 would stream the show live on a dedicated TV channel and we’d record it to VCR, then type the captions, apply them directly onto the tape and, if i recall correctly, put that tape in a fucking taxi by way of just in time courier to the airport.

The software that interfaced with the VCR players was so old it refused to acknowledge the existence of several centimetres of the screen at the bottom and right edges of the monitor. I have possibly blocked out of my memory which actual operating system it ran on.

I worked for a Natural Resources Wales lab last year, which is a semi-governmental organisation. Their database - used to store information about water and soil samples across the country, including ones that would be used in environmental law cases - is a janky piece of barely-working bug-riddled horseshit that needs an old OS to run. Windows XP, maybe? An old one.

What they do is run a virtual console (I think that was the term) on the work computers, specifically and exclusively for the database. I can’t remember the details of it now, but I do remember that we had to tell Microsoft Edge to give the database permission to run on Internet Explorer every 30 days, because nothing else could open it.

Oh, and the programme that monitored the temperatures of the cold rooms where the samples were stored could only be run off of a non-internet-connected 2004 laptop that was kept mounted to the wall in Sample Reception. Everyone was very aware that when that laptop eventually broke, they were fucked, because there wasn’t a replacement.

I mean, there’s a whole other side of this, which is once you have legally purchased (or licensed, if that’s technically more accurate based on the EULA or whatever, but it’s perpetual and irrevocable) a piece of software that does what you want to do and does it well, whether that be writing or record keeping or monitoring and tracking temperatures and giving you alarms when they get out of range… why should you be forced, ever, to spend money to move to something new which may or may not work as well for you?

And really, this applies not just to individual pieces of software (or apps, whatever), but even to whole operating systems. If it’s good enough for your purposes and still works fine, what other reason than simple greed is there for you to be forced to move to something newer and shinier?

Sure, some kinds of systems need occasional maintenance and bug fixes and even slight upgrades in order to continue functioning properly, and we can’t really require companies not to offer new versions and to continue to provide full support for every earlier iteration forever and ever, world without end - but in that case why not allow third party support/repair people to operate in that space, or even let earlier versions still be able to be loaded and installed past a certain point? If Windows XP and its ecosystem of programs was perfect for you, and someone has the know how to let that OS and software continue to operate even in today’s Internet (for those things you even need to go outside your hard drive for), why not allow that, unless it’s to seek rent from anyone who wants to continue to use computers and the Internet?

Honestly, the big problem isn’t necessarily that the systems *break* as they age, or that the publishers force you to stop using them, it’s that they are built to the standards of their time. The issue isn’t saying “I want this software to interact with the system I set up in 1993,” it’s saying “I want this software that I purchased in 1993 to seamlessly interact with the internet in 2023.”

Microsoft has a 10-year support cycle. I want you to think about what the internet and computers were like 10 years ago. Think about what cellphone you used, think about what tumblr was like, think about how much RAM came in an average computer and what standard up/down speeds were, think about how much of the internet relied on Flash. Do YOU have the same uses and requirements for the internet as you did in 2013? If not, why should your software?

Nobody is *stopping* you from keeping XP running if you’ve got the ability to get it to play nice with modern hardware/internet requirements, but you literally can’t pay me to do it. I don’t care if you’re going to give me (and the MSP I work for) a thousand dollars a month to support one desktop, it’s not worth the headache. We’ve tried; we stopped offering to do any support for XP in about 2017 because all that kept happening was that the customer would pay us a lot of money to get it working, it would work for a month, and the customer would then get really mad when they had to pay us a lot of money to get it working again for another month. If you can find someone who is willing to keep it running for you, great! If you can keep it running yourself, great! It’s still a *terrible* idea in terms of security, and I would strongly recommend never connecting it to the internet, and I’m not sure how well you’d be able to do things like install a modern version of Firefox and run it anyway.

Back to that ten year support cycle. I don’t think this is what you’re saying, but people often complain that the end of support is “forcing” them to move to a new program, and they believe that if they paid for the program they should get support and patches for it from the manufacturer forever.

I don’t think that it’s rent-seeking to EOL senior software. I think that we can reasonably consider forced subscription models rent-seeking, and I think that as more companies move toward *only* providing subscription services that’s a more legitimate complaint. But if someone had the 2013 tumblr app installed on their Windows phone, I think it would be pretty unreasonable to expect either Tumblr or Windows to ensure that it was functional in 2023. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect Microsoft to provide patches for Office 2010 when new exploits are uncovered. Backwards compatibility is fine, but sometimes discussions about planned obsolescence seem like complaints that older software is not kept in active development by publishers forever.

Most publishers are not forcing you to stop using your old perpetual licenses, but there are bottlenecks that make them less and less useful as time goes by. The big one for most desktop users is online banking. You keep running your old OS and one day the bank will say “Hey, the browser you’re using doesn’t have the security features we require to interact with us, update your browser!” and so you go to update the browser and the browser publisher says “Unfortunately, your hardware does not meet the minimum specifications required to run this software. Upgrade your hardware!” and so you go to update the hardware and your computer goes “Unfortunately, you maxed me out eight years ago because nobody in 2004 was planning for a time when the baseline RAM in a home desktop would be 8GB. Please let me rest.” Maybe you can install that OS on new hardware, but your browser still might say “I am not written to be compatible with software released during the first year of the George W. Bush administration; I am not going to run on that.”

SOME companies are pretty extreme about preventing use of outdated perpetual licenses, but I kind of view this as another form of forced subscription. I’m specifically thinking of SolidWorks, which - even if you use it completely offline - will report back to base if a licensed copy of the program opens a file created on an “unlicensed” (outdated, or not renewed) copy of the program. So, say you have a 2010 copy of SolidWorks on a disconnected computer you use for designing stuff, you create a file, and you send it to a small machine shop for manufacture. The machine shop has a current license and IS connected to the internet, and as soon as your file is read that license tells SolidWorks HQ the computer serial number, mac address, and original license information for the software that created the file, at which point you will get a nastygram from Solidworks and be threatened with a lawsuit if you don’t pay for a new license ($5k initial fee, $1500 annual renewal). So yes, this is something that does happen, and fuck SolidWorks with sticks. (Adobe too).

But that’s not *most* of what’s happening with old OSs or browsers or programs specifically written to distribute music royalties. What’s happening is that they were written to run on old hardware and connect to an old internet, and as the ecosystem they operate in changes they become less and less functional.

I mean, most people in this thread aren’t just complaining that old software is in use. We’re complaining that old software that is difficult to work with, slow, and only runs on one laptop that nobody is allowed to look at sideways lest it spontaneously combust and permanently destroy access to this system is what we’re expected to work with and keep functional.

VMs do a lot to improve the situation! But they don’t fix everything and I’m always going to be concerned about hospitals running breathing equipment on terminals running Vista because the software may still work but the OS security certainly doesn’t.

That said, this thread was a side-chain to a post that was initially about why Libre Office is wonderful and you should install it and cheerfully tell Microsoft to fuck off, but also even FOSS needs to be updated so please install the updated releases because they don’t have the security issues that older releases have and if it’s FOSS then it literally doesn’t cost you anything to upgrade.

In my perfect world not only would all software be perpetual, it would also be open source and cost nothing. So yes, I very much believe you should run software - even OSs - as long as it works for you, but people probably need to adjust their expectations of how long that will be.

The thing about connecting to the internet is that any time your computer talks to another computer, someone could use that to try and hack in. In order to prevent that, you need security that gets updated. You need somebody looking at the state of the internet and coding and what hackers are doing, and going “yeah, they could use this bit of code that didn’t exist a month ago to break into any of our systems, so we’re going to change part of our code so that doesn’t work any longer.” Or at least “whoops, someone was able to hack into our software using this weakness we didn’t realize existed, we’ll patch that so that they can’t do it to anyone else.” If there is not someone actively monitoring that software for security issues, it is vulnerable. And the more common that software is, the more likely it is that hackers are actively looking for security issues to break into it.

So you bought software and paid a one-time fee. How long is it reasonable to expect that one-time fee (paid by you and by all other people who bought that software) to pay for the people actively monitoring and developing that software for security issues? I think a decade (a la Microsoft) is pretty good.

Now obviously there are companies that are absolutely unreasonable about this. But the general reality of “anything that connects to the internet needs to be regularly updated for security reasons” means that no software can be supported forever unless you’re on a subscription service.

But what about software that doesn’t directly connect to the internet, you say. What about stuff where the software doesn’t?

Well, if the machine connects with the internet, the operating system absolutely needs to be updated or it’s a security risk. And programs are not self-contained. They rely DEEPLY on the operating system for many of their functions. Which means that if the OS changes too much … the program isn’t going to work. Which means that instead of being updated to meet security threats, your software needs to be updated to handle the updated OS. Which means you still need someone actively developing that program in order for it to be usable on any modern machine.

And again we’re back to the question of “how long is it reasonable to require active coding changes on software that you paid a one-time fee for?”

fluxxdog:

cobaltaugustao3:

My constant struggle when writing PWP

You know, I never understood why “porn has plot” when I was younger. Why did Playboy have articles? It didn’t make sense at the time. “Just get to the good stuff!”

When I was older, I learned about things like the Hays code and FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation. Now, if someone tries to just get it censored for being “indecent or obscene,” the creators can point to the plot and articles and use that as a defense. They don’t have to be good, they just have to exist.

Of course, writing costs money.

Part of me wonders at what lost opportunities there were for a grand scale porn production. Like, what if you had those tools available to not only explain why they’re screwing in Scene 17, but how it was important to them that it happened in Scene 17 and not in Scene 14?

So when someone takes the time to make it relevant in their fic to give that context and emotion, I FUCKING APPRECIATE IT! WRITE ON!

beatrice-otter:

inkskinned:

good writing is about consequence. and too often writers are misunderstanding “consequence” as being “either death or marriage”. consequence is way more often things that are small. it’s effective because it’s small. part of the reason media can feel trite or unfair is because consequence shouldn’t feel random, unjust, or untethered in the fiction.

“game of thrones” did consequence right at first. the red wedding scene is effective because it was following a tangible, visible series of plot events. it was a consequence. by the end of the series, consequences were actually random - we cannot track why/where/when things are happening, because they aren’t related to each other with followable consequence. unfortunately, writers saw the red wedding and understood: chaos is an acceptable force in a narrative, rather than chaos needs some grounding in the real.

this is “gotcha” media’s problem. it’s why so many “twists” feel stupid rather than shocking - because consequences are predictable, and if they’re not, they run the risk of making the writing completely asinine.

it’s totally fair to have characters die or have everyone end up alone or whatever else you need to do. but it needs to make sense. and it should start on the smaller end of things. you and i are probably not people that can influence anyone on a global scale, so having someone experience a consequence personally (like your hands shaking too badly to eat) feels more real and vivid than just… some vague, huge, random world that anything can happen in. how are we supposed to buy into a fiction that doesn’t even allow itself any kind of rules?

anyway. if you’re a writer please include consequence. it’ll help. okay love u bye

“The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.”

ladyclaudine22:

geekgirlintraining:

This is an important message.

I will never NOT reblog this.

typhlonectes:

theodoradove:

sometimes i am struck by the fact that there are people i follow on tumblr because we were friends on livejournal TWENTY YEARS AGO

mikkeneko:

pervocracy:

My current job has me working with children, which is kind of a weird shock after years in environments where a “young” patient is 40 years old.  Here’s my impressions so far:

Birth - 1 year: Essentially a small cute animal.  Handle accordingly; gently and affectionately, but relying heavily on the caregivers and with no real expectation of cooperation.

Age 1 - 2: Hates you.  Hates you so much.  You can smile, you can coo, you can attempt to soothe; they hate you anyway, because you’re a stranger and you’re scary and you’re touching them.  There’s no winning this so just get it over with as quickly and non-traumatically as possible.

Age 3 - 5: Nervous around medical things, but possible to soothe.  Easily upset, but also easily distracted from the thing that upset them.  Smartphone cartoons and “who wants a sticker?!!?!?” are key management techniques.

Age 6 - 10: Really cool, actually.  I did not realize kids were this cool.  Around this age they tend to be fairly outgoing, and super curious and eager to learn.  Absolutely do not babytalk; instead, flatter them with how grown-up they are, teach them some Fun Gross Medical Facts, and introduce potentially frightening experiences with “hey, you want to see something really cool?”

Age 11 - 14: Extremely variable.  Can be very childish or very mature, or rapidly switch from one mode to the other.  At this point you can almost treat them as an adult, just… a really sensitive and unpredictable adult.  Do not, under any circumstances, offer stickers.  (But they might grab one out of the bin anyway.)

Age 15 - 18: Basically an adult with severely limited life experience.  Treat as an adult who needs a little extra education with their care.  Keep parents out of the room as much as possible, unless the kid wants them there.  At this point you can go ahead and offer stickers again, because they’ll probably think it’s funny.  And they’ll want one.  Deep down, everyone wants a sticker.

This is also a pretty excellent guide to writing  kids of various ages

thegaymertrainer:

They did it again

xenokattz:

My brain is running with Kermit flail in 17 different directions and so list

FIC: in progress

1. Kay Nicté: Nashuri AU, no powers, porn with plot & feels & family dynamics; Shuri doesn’t want to go to a resort on spring break; she has way too much critical, life-or-death work to do in the lab. Ch'ah Toh doesn’t want to go back home to his cousin’s resort on spring break; he has way too much respect for his culture to sell it out to tourists. One mezcal tasting flight later, they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other. Or any of their other body parts either. DONE –read on ao3–
2. The Pearl That I Carry in My Heart: Nashuri, Attoye, big damn post-canon fic, world building. Shuri suggests an arranged marriage between herself and K'uk'ulkan to strengthen the alliance between their nations; the slowest burn you have ever burned and then all the smut, stop fucking around you’re on a deadline. 90% finished: –read on ao3–
3. Beautifully Created: Attoye, canon divergence AU, kidfic, world building, what do you call it when you start with smut and end with smut but the whole wide middle is angst and politics? Wakanda already knew about Talokan when Namor made his ultimatum thanks to information from Okoye. Attuma would like to know how she got that information and why the queen & princess seem to hate his guts when he’s never met them before. 10% finished –read on ao3–
4. Kiss Me by the Fence Rails: Nashuri, AU modern day. Shuri is a brilliant engineer who just Does Not Get dating. She wants to get better at it and at sex in order to finally shoot her shot with her high school crush. She asks Namor, an equally brilliant architect, to help her out with all of that. He’s her brother’s business partner so he won’t try anything shady, he’s dated lots, and deep inside under that cranky exterior he’s a good guy. Simple and easy, right? <5% finished: –read on ao3–

FIC: planned (in no particular order)

1. When It Rains, Leave Me Alone: Attoye, companion piece to The Pearl, angst with eventual HEA but first make them hurt: Okoye, daughter of the Border, former general of the Dora Milaje, Midnight Angel, Head of Security of the Kingdom of Wakanda. She has reached the highest heights as well as the lowest lows possible in her career. W'Kabi, who she had once thought of as the other half of her heart, has chosen exile over their marriage and admission of treason. Her undeniable attraction to General Attuma could add further fractures in the already tenuous Talokan-Wakanda summit. All the while, she also needs to protect Wakanda’s people, especially Princess Shuri, who seems to be determined to break her own heart.
2. Transcendence to Endure: Nashuri, Talokan prequel + The Pearl sequel, mildly angsty babyfic for all, history of Talokan world building, Talokanil dads are the cutest. Péepen Xail Almehen of Xel-há and Yzniquanto of the Iréchikwa Tzintzuntzani navigate a world slowly burning from the invasion of the Conquistadores. Shuri kaRamonda, Black Panther of Wakanda, and Ch'ah Toh Almehen, K'uk'ulkan of Talokan, navigate eleven years of marriage.
3. Wholly, Thoroughly, Completely, Drowning: Nashuri, Attoye, AU Canon divergence. Talokan & Wakanda have always known about each other. When T'Challa got sick, Shuri asks for Namor’s help. In return, he wants her to stay in Talokan for a year and help undo the damage he perceives T'Challa made when he opened up Wakanda.
4. Para Siempre: Attoye, AU modern day, no powers. Megapop star, Okoye, is burnt out from back to back to back touring plus a very public divorce from hip-hop star, W'Kabi. One of her longtime security personnel, Attuma, suggests decompressing at his family’s little hotel-resort in the Yucatan during the off-season. Please stop, I don’t have time for all this help
5. Know You Better: Nashuri, Attoye, AU modern day, no powers. Ch'ah Toh was a rock star called Namor but he left that life after a tragedy. He and his cousin, Attuma, now have a permaculture farm and retreat. Shuri is a brilliant tech company owner on the retreat with her bodyguard, Okoye, after years of health issues and company troubles.
6. Untitled Bridgerton-style Black Panther AU: Attoye, Nashuri, AU no-colonisation alternate history, alternate powers. In an alternate history 1800-ish, Princess Shuri of Wakanda, of the Transafrican Alliance travels to Talokan of the League of the Mayapan in order to cement their alliance against the European powers encroaching on both their lands. For protection, she and some of her entourage disguise themselves as shipmates and servants while General Okoye and some of the kingsguards dress as tribal leaders. K'uk'ulkan, halach uinik of Talokan and de facto leader of the League, asks his highest ranking nobles to look for possible spouses among the visiting Wakandans to tie their kingdoms by blood as well as treaty. Lord Attuma, nacom and favoured cousin of the K'uk'ulkan, agrees to court Princess Shuri. But the woman he escorts off the pier is not the princess. And the real princess has her own agenda on this diplomatic visit that promises to wreck all the Feathered Serpent’s plans.
7. Untitled Single Dad Namor + Dr Shuri: based on a fanart by @milkfromcats, Nashuri, AU X-Men style mutants, TW: refugee experience. Namor has lost almost everything in Mutant Purges and the trek to get safely to Wakanda, one of the few countries in the world that accepts mutant refugees. The most important thing in his life now is taking care of his sisters’ children, Namora and Attuma. But he has no idea what to do with kids, nevermind traumatised orphans. Shuri is a brilliant doctor, younger than many of her colleagues, and privileged to have the funds to volunteer her time with the influx of newcomers to Wakanda. Every one of them is wonderful but she has a soft spot for Attuma and Namora, who often visit with lopsided braids and sugar-stained tops, tugging their exhausted father along. His love for them tempers the tragedy etched in his face and she can’t stop wanting to ease his exhaustion.

NONFIC

1. Scholarship/bursary applications: grad school ain’t cheap, well no, it COULD have been cheap but you decided to go international you beautiful dum dum
2. Garden: Repot your damn seedlings, plant more peas. Get some Vitamin D. No, not that much now you’re sunburned. PS: i am sunburned; tropical gene/ melanin fail. Plant for winter/spring harvest.
3. QI projects: it’s one email, vaj up and write it, jesusmaryjoseph Fuck it. No one has the time or energy to volunteer for QI projects, least of all me.
4. Transplant the plants: Tropicals. Brassicas/ legumes. Nightshades.
5. Teaching notes: Just start over; the formatting from work sucks and there’s no colour coding. Rude.

One more fic idea!

I’m sorry I’m being so slow updating The Pearl. I’m still tired earlier than I’d like and my brain goes randomly haywire. When I do finish, I’m just going to post it all in one go!

nashuriweek:

Happy Nashuri Week!

At the end of the day, we will list all the fic submissions so far for day 1 in one long post with links!

for now, please check out the Nashuri Week Collection on AO3! We have 10 fics and counting so far!

Nashuri Week 2023 | Archive of Our Own

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

archiveofourown.org

wilwheaton:

fallfeatherspony:

sandandglass:

The Creative Act of Listening to a Talking Frog

Kermit the Frog gives a talk on creativity and creative risk-taking

did a puppet just fucking give some of the best advice ever.

I hope you heard this in Kermit’s voice, just like I did.