#top programming languages 2024

[psktechnologiesnagpur-blog]

[somesecretpie]

Fans and Creators of Webtoons!

I want to talk about Line Webtoon’s new “Super Like” program and why it sucks for literally everyone.

What is a “Super Like?”

According to their website, super likes are a new way for webtoon creators to monetize their work. Readers can pay real money to buy a super like for their favorite webtoon, and the creator gets a fraction of that money.

Wait, a fraction? Not all of it?

Yep! Webtoon skims quite a chunk off the top.

30% goes to Webtoon, and then another 30% of that amount goes to the payment processor.

So what do creators get? 49 cents for every dollar their fans try to give them. Literally half.

That’s pretty ludicrous, right?

Interestingly enough, they announced that they had a “tipping system” in the works in the same email they ended the CANVAS creator rewards program (and many comic creators livelihoods)

They said tipping system in their social media posts too

Obviously this tipping system is referring to super likes right? They say they’re going to do a tipping system, and then this rolls out.

But “tips” are not something that buisinesses can just take a cut of, at least not in the United States. According to the Department of Labor, it is illegal for any amount of tips from customers to go to an employer.

Webtoon is trying to walk back this language, of course. You won’t find the word “tip” anywhere on their website page explaining how it works. But those old social media posts are still up.

This is all pretty scummy

But wait, it gets worse!

They removed the Patreon button at the end of episodes and replaced it with this:

Yep! That’s right. Webtoon really said “what if we replace the tipping system that already existed with a shittier one where you only get half of it 🥺”

Unsurprisingly, they faced a ton of backlash.

Webtoon was quick to point out that the Patreon button was only removed from the end of episodes and there was still a button on the creator’s homepage. But of course, the end of episodes is where that button matters the most.

Creators know this. Webtoon knows this.

Eventually, after days of continued complaints from creators on social media, Webtoon went on damage control mode and announced that they would be putting the Patreon button back at the end of episodes—

As of right now (May 11th, 2024) the Patreon button is still not back.

***

So…Super likes are “super totally not a tip.”

But if they aren’t tips…what are they?

Well there’s a bit more to the story of what a super like actually is. After announceing the program, the app updated to reveal a new ranking category on the front page

When you click on this ranking tab, you can see that there is now both a daily and weekly ranking

If you’re a CANVAS creator, you know how difficult and seemingly random it can be to get your comic on the front page of the app—so my immediate worry was that comic creators were going to buy superlikes on their own series to get in this ranking and…

Yep, that’s already happening.

But why would webtoon even allow creators to buy superlikes for themselves? How does that make sense?

Surely goading desperate creators into buying superlikes can’t be that lucrative, can it?

No. I think there’s another, possibly even worse reason.

Fandom wars

If you’re into music, you probably are aware of how common it is for super fans to make concerted efforts to get their favorite musician to the top of the billboard charts. They coordinate over social media, stream music on loop as soon as an album drops to inflate the numbers, buy albums in bulk to increase sales, all so that they can say their fav is number one. It’s especially common among K-pop fans and swifties

This phenomena is well documented

Fans of Webtoons can be just as ravenous as K-pop, so I think Webtoon is trying to capitalize on this. They want to encourage fandom war and make money. That’s why they have this ranking. Not only can super fans brag about their favorite series topping the charts but they can wear their super like proudly on their reader profile that webtoon will be rolling out soon.

They’re just testing this super like stuff out on CANVAS right now, but once this starts up with originals? Oh. It will be a very profitable, very terrible mess.

(Oh and I mean profitable for webtoon, not creators, in case that wasn’t clear.)

***

Anyway, if you’re a creator, do yourself a favor and don’t enable super likes.

If you’re a fan of a webcomic, just donate to that creators patreon or Ko-Fi to show your support. Don’t give a red cent to webtoon because they did not do any of the work to make the series you love, alright?

Also check out my webtoon haha.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI is a WMD

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (TOMORROW, May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (TOMORROW, May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Get that? If control over a key resource is diffused among the people who rely on it, then (Garrett claims) those people will all behave like selfish assholes, overusing and undermaintaining the commons. It's only when we let someone own that commons and charge rent for its use that (Hardin says) we will get sound management.

By that logic, Google should be the internet's most competent and reliable manager. After all, the company used its access to the capital markets to buy control over the internet, spending billions every year to make sure that you never try a search-engine other than its own, thus guaranteeing it a 90% market share:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Google seems to think it's got the problem of deciding what we see on the internet licked. Otherwise, why would the company flush $80b down the toilet with a giant stock-buyback, and then do multiple waves of mass layoffs, from last year's 12,000 person bloodbath to this year's deep cuts to the company's "core teams"?

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

And yet, Google is overrun with scams and spam, which find their way to the very top of the first page of its search results:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The entire internet is shaped by Google's decisions about what shows up on that first page of listings. When Google decided to prioritize shopping site results over informative discussions and other possible matches, the entire internet shifted its focus to producing affiliate-link-strewn "reviews" that would show up on Google's front door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

This was catnip to the kind of sociopath who a) owns a hedge-fund and b) hates journalists for being pain-in-the-ass, stick-in-the-mud sticklers for "truth" and "facts" and other impediments to the care and maintenance of a functional reality-distortion field. These dickheads started buying up beloved news sites and converting them to spam-farms, filled with garbage "reviews" and other Google-pleasing, affiliate-fee-generating nonsense.

(These news-sites were vulnerable to acquisition in large part thanks to Google, whose dominance of ad-tech lets it cream 51 cents off every ad dollar and whose mobile OS monopoly lets it steal 30 cents off every in-app subscriber dollar):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now, the spam on these sites didn't write itself. Much to the chagrin of the tech/finance bros who bought up Sports Illustrated and other venerable news sites, they still needed to pay actual human writers to produce plausible word-salads. This was a waste of money that could be better spent on reverse-engineering Google's ranking algorithm and getting pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

That's where AI comes in. Spicy autocomplete absolutely can't replace journalists. The planet-destroying, next-word-guessing programs from Openai and its competitors are incorrigible liars that require so much "supervision" that they cost more than they save in a newsroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

But while a chatbot can't produce truthful and informative articles, it can produce bullshit – at unimaginable scale. Chatbots are the workers that hedge-fund wreckers dream of: tireless, uncomplaining, compliant and obedient producers of nonsense on demand.

That's why the capital class is so insatiably horny for chatbots. Chatbots aren't going to write Hollywood movies, but studio bosses hyperventilated at the prospect of a "writer" that would accept your brilliant idea and diligently turned it into a movie. You prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a studio exec gives writers notes. The difference is that the LLM won't roll its eyes and make sarcastic remarks about your brainwaves like "ET, but starring a dog, with a love plot in the second act and a big car-chase at the end":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Similarly, chatbots are a dream come true for a hedge fundie who ends up running a beloved news site, only to have to fight with their own writers to get the profitable nonsense produced at a scale and velocity that will guarantee a high Google ranking and millions in "passive income" from affiliate links.

One of the premier profitable nonsense companies is Advon, which helped usher in an era in which sites from Forbes to Money to USA Today create semi-secret "review" sites that are stuffed full of badly researched top-ten lists for products from air purifiers to cat beds:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

Advon swears that it only uses living humans to produce nonsense, and not AI. This isn't just wildly implausible, it's also belied by easily uncovered evidence, like its own employees' Linkedin profiles, which boast of using AI to create "content":

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

It's not true. Advon uses AI to produce its nonsense, at scale. In an excellent, deeply reported piece for Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré brings proof that Advon replaced its miserable human nonsense-writers with tireless chatbots:

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

Dupré describes how Advon's ability to create botshit at scale contributed to the enshittification of clients from Yoga Journal to the LA Times, "Us Weekly" to the Miami Herald.

All of this is very timely, because this is the week that Google finally bestirred itself to commence downranking publishers who engage in "site reputation abuse" – creating these SEO-stuffed fake reviews with the help of third parties like Advon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

(Google's policy only forbids site reputation abuse with the help of third parties; if these publishers take their nonsense production in-house, Google may allow them to continue to dominate its search listings):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

There's a reason so many people believed Hardin's racist "Tragedy of the Commons" hoax. We have an intuitive understanding that commons are fragile. All it takes is one monster to start shitting in the well where the rest of us get our drinking water and we're all poisoned.

The financial markets love these monsters. Mark Zuckerberg's key insight was that he could make billions by assembling vast dossiers of compromising, sensitive personal information on half the world's population without their consent, but only if he kept his costs down by failing to safeguard that data and the systems for exploiting it. He's like a guy who figures out that if he accumulates enough oily rags, he can extract so much low-grade oil from them that he can grow rich, but only if he doesn't waste money on fire-suppression:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Now Zuckerberg and the wealthy, powerful monsters who seized control over our commons are getting a comeuppance. The weak countermeasures they created to maintain the minimum levels of quality to keep their platforms as viable, going concerns are being overwhelmed by AI. This was a totally foreseeable outcome: the history of the internet is a story of bad actors who upended the assumptions built into our security systems by automating their attacks, transforming an assault that wouldn't be economically viable into a global, high-speed crime wave:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/automation-is-magic/

But it is possible for a community to maintain a commons. This is something Hardin could have discovered by studying actual commons, instead of inventing imaginary histories in which commons turned tragic. As it happens, someone else did exactly that: Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/

Ostrom described how commons can be wisely managed, over very long timescales, by communities that self-governed. Part of her work concerns how users of a commons must have the ability to exclude bad actors from their shared resources.

When that breaks down, commons can fail – because there's always someone who thinks it's fine to shit in the well rather than walk 100 yards to the outhouse.

Enshittification is the process by which control over the internet moved from self-governance by members of the commons to acts of wanton destruction committed by despicable, greedy assholes who shit in the well over and over again.

It's not just the spammers who take advantage of Google's lazy incompetence, either. Take "copyleft trolls," who post images using outdated Creative Commons licenses that allow them to terminate the CC license if a user makes minor errors in attributing the images they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

The first copyleft trolls were individuals, but these days, the racket is dominated by a company called Pixsy, which pretends to be a "rights protection" agency that helps photographers track down copyright infringers. In reality, the company is committed to helping copyleft trolls entrap innocent Creative Commons users into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use images that are licensed for free use. Just as Advon upends the economics of spam and deception through automation, Pixsy has figured out how to send legal threats at scale, robolawyering demand letters that aren't signed by lawyers; the company refuses to say whether any lawyer ever reviews these threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

This is shitting in the well, at scale. It's an online WMD, designed to wipe out the commons. Creative Commons has allowed millions of creators to produce a commons with billions of works in it, and Pixsy exploits a minor error in the early versions of CC licenses to indiscriminately manufacture legal land-mines, wantonly blowing off innocent commons-users' legs and laughing all the way to the bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

We can have an online commons, but only if it's run by and for its users. Google has shown us that any "benevolent dictator" who amasses power in the name of defending the open internet will eventually grow too big to care, and will allow our commons to be demolished by well-shitters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Catherine Poh Huay Tan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/49729911222/

Laia Balagueró (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbalaguero/6551235503/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[dedalvs]

Fiat Lingua Top 10 for 2024

It's time for the annual Fiat Lingua rewind!

Background: I created Fiat Lingua over ten years ago with the idea that it could be something like the Rutgers Optimality Archive: A place where conlangers could post work that they wanted to showcase, or work that was in progress. We've had tons of contributions over the years, and some standout work I'm really proud of.

Using our fancy statistics program (you know, the free version) we're able to determine the top 10 visited posts for this year (though, note, the numbers for the current year's December post will always be down a little bit, since it didn't have a full month. If you'd like to take a look at it, Carl Buck created a new workable orthography for Klingon from the original!). Here they are!

NUMBER 10

We have a tie...

"A Naming Language" (November, 2016) by Jeffrey Henning: A fantastic (and short!) essay about how to create a conlang sketch (or naming language) specifically aimed at authors. The author, Jeffrey Henning, was the most important person in conlanging from the 90s through the mid-2000s before his seminal website, Langmaker.com, died.

"Down with Morphemes: The Pitfalls of Concatenative Morphology" (March, 2014) by David J. Peterson: Honestly, I'm touched. And baffled. Why this paper, published ten years ago which hasn't touched the top ten the past two years, is suddenly on it is absolutely beyond me.

NUMBER 9

"Afrihili: An African Interlanguage" (April, 2014) by William S. Annis: Afrihili is an a posteriori auxlang from the late 60s that uses Bantu languages as its source. If you haven't read about it, you must. This article took sixth place the past two years, but this year dropped to ninth!

NUMBER 8

"Tone for Conlangers: A Basic Introduction" (April, 2018) by Aidan Aannestad: This is the third time this article has been in the top 10, but it slipped one place to number 8. Conlangers continue to find this introduction to tone quite valuable.

NUMBER 7

"Names Aren’t Neutral: David J. Peterson on Creating a Fantasy Language" (March, 2019) by David J. Peterson: Down two spots from last year, this is my article on best practices when coming up with names in a fantasy setting—even when no conlang is present.

NUMBER 6

"Introduction, A Note on the Terminology and Linguistic Methodology of This Paper, and Section I" (February, 2012) by Madeline Palmer: So...this came out of nowhere. This was an early series that helped me avoid having to do a bunch of work for Fiat Lingua in the early years. I was grateful for the runway! I have no idea why, after more than ten years, the dragon language Srínawésin is now getting attention after getting next to none in the past, but…it's getting attention—in a big way. Anyone know why?

NUMBER 5

"Patterns of Allophony" (April, 2015) by William S. Annis: Definitely one of the most popular papers on Fiat Lingua, William illustrates graphically a number of very common sound changes. This article has been at #3 the past two years but tumbled two spots this year to #5.

NUMBER 4

"Hieroglyphs of Fneise" (April, 2024) by Jason Lynn: New to Fiat Lingua this year and new to the top ten, everyone loved this new article about the hieroglyphs of Fneise, created by Jason Lynn, friend of LangTime Studio!

NUMBER 3

"A Conlang-Venture: A Select-A-Feature Adventure" (January, 2024) by Jessie Peterson: This MAMMOTH .pdf is honestly one of the greatest conlang achievements ever. Clocking in at over 700 pages, Jessie created a hyperlinked choose-your-own-adventure demonstration of how to evolve a naturalistic conlang. This document is nothing short of amazing.

NUMBER 2

"Grambank & Language Documentation: Zhwadi and Its Features" (June, 2023) by Jessie Peterson: Even her massive conlang-venture .pdf couldn't top her incredible resource from last year. This is a short description of how to use Grambank in conlanging with a link to a fillable Google spreadsheet any conlanger can copy and use to introduce their conlang to others. Last year this made #4 on the list, and this year it jumped two spots!

And now for the top viewed article for 2024 on Fiat Lingua...

NUMBER 1

"A Conlanger's Thesaurus" (September, 2014) by William S. Annis: The king is back! Last year my article on how to create a surreal conlang took the top spot. This year? Not even in the top THIRTY! It's like it was wiped off the face of the internet! Whether it's top spot or not, though, William Annis's resource on how to create unique words with unique interrelationships and associations has proved useful to conlangers of all stripes. As a reference work, it is unparalleled in terms of usefulness modulo brevity.

* * * * *

And that's it for 2024! I'm looking forward to posting more conlang articles next year. If you are a conlanger, a conlang-researcher, or conlang fan who has something to say in .pdf format about a specific conlang or conlanging in general, please consider submitting something to Fiat Lingua! We take any and all articles related to conlanging in whatever form you have them. I'm also happy to help you think up ideas, or refine those ideas you have. There is no strong review like in a fancy journal: I just want to get what you have up. I'm especially in interested in hosting personal conlang stories—stories about how or why you started to create a language, or your experience creating your own language—personal stories that are often lost, but are so vital, as there is an absolute dearth of literature about conlangers! If you think you have even the seed of an idea, please get a hold of me! I want to share as many stories and ideas as I can.

[481mclarg]

Scared to love you | AL65

★ I've never been good at telling people how I feel, but you make me want to try.

STLY       •       FANFIC + SMAU.

    • Arthur Leclerc x Male!Oc driver

« K » This is my very first smau/ff on here & my very, very first work on ENG. I was trying to write a MV33 AU, but clearly things happened

Warnings: homophobia, sexual content & mention of sex, absent parents. (basically, shitty childhood). !! English is not my first lenguaje. I'm trying my best.

★          introduction. | one. | two. | three. | four. | five. | six. | seven. | eight. | nine. | ten. | eleven. | twelve. | thirteen. | fourteen. | fifteen. | sixteen. |

Deaken Bluman as... Matteo Lombardi.

📱matteolombardi

LOLO . . . 22yo : 5 de February '02. aquarius.

🇮🇹📍sicilian boy, english-italian driver ; 🐎 Ferrari Academy ; 🏎🏁Prema Powerteam.

 ┈─ Just stay with me. Lean on me today. In my warm arms, take a break. I want you to. ─┈

Arthur Leclerc as... Arthur Leclerc.

📱arthurleclerc

LELEC . . . 24yo : 14 de October '00. libra.

🇲🇨🧾 monegasque ("french") driver ; 🐎 Ferrari Academy ; 🏎🏁 Prema Powerteam.

          STLY     •                                     Introduction.

[ 💻 ] Google News. 2020.

Matteo Lombardi joins the Ferrari Driver Academy.

Lombardi takes another step towards Formula 1. The British-Italian driver was selected by Maranello to join the Ferrari Driver Academy.

FDA | Arthur Leclerc, Dino Beganovic, and Matteo Lombardi for the Scuderia’s young driver program.

Ferrari Driver Academy is pleased to announce three new talents joining the group of students in the company's driver training program. These are Arthur Leclerc, Dino Beganovic, and Matteo Lombardi, three young drivers who demonstrated during 2019 that they have the qualities to participate in the Scuderia training school.

   

   

[ 💻 ] Google News. 2021.

F3 | Prema Powerteam announce 2021 line-up.

The Prema Powerteam will feature Dennis Hauger, Arthur Leclerc, and Matteo Lombardi.

  

  

[ 💻 ] Google News. 2023.

BREAKING. Matteo Lombardi to race for Ferrari in 2024.

  

   

[ 💻 ] Google News. 2024.

Scuderia Ferrari HP: @/Charles_leclerc and @/arthur_leclerc7 will be taking part in Friday's FP1 session as team-mates. You won't want to miss this 🤩

  

 

          It's finally happening. «We made it.» He thought, as he went back to bed, hiding under all his blankets.

  

 

 

  

   

  

[ 🗺; 🇮🇹 ] Maranello.

          With Giancarlo Girotti as his trainer, Matteo had become one of the most feared and hated drivers on the karting grid. He was only eight years old, competing with other little kids but also many other older drivers. Age wasn't an impediment to having resentment towards the Italian.

          When the news of his joining the Ferrari Academy was published, none of the drivers who knew him could be surprised. If it wasn't Ferrari, it would be the academy of some other big team.

          Most still remember him as a little kid, shorter than the rest and who could barely manage a mix of Italian and English that only a few could understand. Neither his age, size, nor the language were an impediment for him to lead in more than one race, placing himself comfortably within the top positions of the championship.

          His professional career was successful from the beginning, but complicated. Money was a big problem for the teams, just as his isolation was for him.

          "He is a talented child, what the teams want" without friends, Matteo learned at an early age to hate the press. "Beginner's luck, right?"

          Luck? An innate talent? Talent would have been getting into a karting and winning races without training; lucky to win a championship that way. Spending months training from the morning to the night was not talent, or even luck. He hadn't spent years working hard on his training for them to classify his achievements as random, detracting from him.

          —Never give them the pleasure of seeing you angry, Pupo. —His coach told him, noticing on his face that feeling that was beginning to brew deep inside him. —That's what they want, for you to react, for you to lower yourself to their level. —With curious eyes, the dark-haired boy saw the gray-haired man next to him, listening to him attentively. —Are you going to stoop to their level? —

          —No. —he quickly denied. The old man almost let out a half smile.

          —Things are shown on the track, Pupo, and you have already proven to be better than him. Than all of them. —Matteo nodded. He had to be better than the others, show that it wasn't luck, that he tried harder than anyone there.

          He wanted to scream at them, to explode, but he knew it wouldn't be necessary. Hitting another driver wouldn't help, it wasn't good for him either. Beating them on the track would be more rewarding, when he can see them from the top step of the podium, smiling at the camera in interviews, posing with a brighter medal or a bigger trophy.

          He is better than them on the track. He had to be better, and he trained to be the best. He didn't need to talk in interviews, brag with words, if the results made it clear who is on top.

          —What do I have to say? —he asked his coach, knowing that he was next for the post-race interview.

          —You know what to say. —Simply, but it seemed to be enough for the boy, who nodded and start walking towards the journalist waiting for the champion of the race.

          «Last question, are you worried about any of your rivals?» The boy didn't have to think, before denying:

          —My only rival is myself. —

481MCLARG | 11 . 01 . 2025 | CORREGIDO.

[rinaforpages]

how (not) to survive academic invalidation

park gunwook x reader

hahahha...

using the american hs system bcs wow! im american... (i half wrote this at the end of last school yr so)

warnings: swearing, self-deprecation (obv), yn hits themself, angst with a bit of fluff at the end, reader is actually smart but surrounds themself with geniuses.

2.6k words

________________________________

# 1 dont compare yourself

"junior year kicks everyones ass." you wanted to kick whoever said that ass. not only was the school work kicking your ass, your friends and classmates seemed to be doing just fine.

they were working on ap chemistry minus laura and gunwook who were working on ap environmental science, and you, who took neither of those classes, felt extremely out of place, doing your ap us history homework.

"whats species richness again?" laura asked gunwook, who quickly answered her question. you looked up, planning to ask the soon-to-be early graduate a question, only to see him helping sarah with a chemistry problem.

you weren't like them and you despised that. your friends were top of the class, an average of a 4.4 gpa, an early graduate (and first in the 2024 class overall) and there you sat with your measly 3.75. they were in 3-4 ap classes, and you sat there, struggling through your 2. (in your defense, ap lang and apush are the two hardest aps juniors could take).

you didnt excel in any way shape or form. they had just about an a in every class (minus ryan in french, who had a b), and a b was your most common grade.

a good 10 minutes later you had finished struggling through apush, you moved on to mandarin. you were the only one who took mandarin, everyone else opting for french. the characters jumbled your brain as your friends spoke in french, seemingly coming easy to them.

you heard footsteps walk by, and ricky laid a hand on your shoulder, looking over. "thats wrong." he said simply. the french kids careened their necks to look at you. he grabbed your pencil and wrote the right character, then walked away. you hummed as you circled the characters you didnt know, opting to ask zhang hao over bothering ricky again.

"you ok over there?" gunwook asked. you scowled.

"i dont understand why there are so many idioms! im losing my goddamn mind." parker laughed, mumbling that you chose the language. you couldnt (or didnt want to) voice your doubts as you thought you could.

as they focused their attention on their homework again, you waved over zhang hao, who hanbin had asked to help cut fruits for you and your friends. he set down a plate in front of you, then sat down.

"what does 开夜车 mean zhang hao please im gonna kill myself." he laughed as hanbin looked up, extremely concerned.

"you know 熬夜, right?" you nodded "so its kind of like that but youre doing work. it literally means burn the midnight oil" you thanked him as he patted your head, pulling the plate of fruit away from your friends and toward you, gunwook making a sound of discontent.

you sighed, packing up your bag at a text from your oldest brother. he was home from his masters program in germany, apparently, and was now waiting outside the dorm. you loved your older brothers, you really did, but they were so much smarter than you ever will be. the oldest graduated magna cum laude from mit, now achieving an accelerated masters for mechanical engineering, and the younger was attending harvard for premed, both completely full ride.

your friends, finally re-noticing you, looked up. "where are you going?" gunwook asked, shushing yujin.

"brothers here," you mumbled, not wanting to wreck your self-esteem any more than you had. sarah pouted, but nodded, whipping out her phone. gunwook opened his mouth, but then quickly closed it. "bye hao, thanks for the help. bye, hanbin and jiwoong!" the three oldest members waved back, hanbin hugging you as you walked by. when you got in your fathers' car that your brother was driving, you spilled your guts.

# 2 dont fall behind

at some point, your motivation fell through. all you wanted to do was lie down and stare at the ceiling all day. sadly though, education laws (and school rules) prevailed.

as you trudged up the stairs from last lunch to pre-calculus, you cursed the architects of the three-floor building and whoever required you to go to school.

two of your friends—laura and ryan—had junior priv, which meant they left early. sarah and coral (who had missed the study session) were in ap chem, and gunwook left for a shoot. without your friends to motivate you to work harder, you felt there was nothing left for you to do.

you had fallen asleep in mandarin earlier that day, so why were you still exhausted?

quick answer: you had stayed up late finishing your apush bonus points.

actual answer: you had no motivation to do anything.

you were falling behind on homework: what used to be doing homework as soon as you got home turned into doing it right before class. a teacher had approached your freshman-year english teacher about it, the one teacher who you could talk easily to. yujin was standing right there; they mustve not have realized you two knew each other.

ricky and zhang hao had invited you over for a cdrama binge session. (ricky said "itll help you" in his texts.) but yujin quickly pulled you aside.

"youre falling behind?" he asked, pointedly. you sighed, nodded, opening your mouth to reply as gunwook walked by, asking what you were doing.

"nothin! ricky and hao invited me over." the words rushed out, and they were so not convincing, but gunwook shrugged and moved to sit down beside ricky and gyuvin. you hushed yujin and walked over and sat down beside hao. gunwook stared at you.

"come here." he motioned, shoving ricky off the couch. you hesitated as you made eye contact ricky, but eventually, there were only so many thumps against the couch you could take. "see? more comfortable over here" you hit him, and he let out a yelp.

"do you have much homework, yn?" taerae asked, setting down a bowl of popcorn.

"only a couple of classes," you replied, shoving a kernel in your mouth.

matthew laughed, "the usual suspects, im guessing?" you nodded. gunwook threw a (toned) arm around you as the two chinese members debated the drama.

"how much have you done? its sunday." gunwook asked, lightly, rubbing circles on your arm with his thumb.

"i can do it all tonight and tomorrow." you sighed, the sentence reminding you of where you are in school. gunwook hummed.

"make sure you get sleep, though. you need sleep, its not healthy if you dont." fuck. you were in deep shit in two ways. you were falling deeper into your rut, and you were falling deeper in love with your childhood best friend.

# 3 dont be too hard on yourself

...was easier said than done. your mind cursed you every time you got a bad grade. you wondered what was the point: you werent good enough to get into the likes of yale, or any of your colleges for that matter.

you had long since fallen off the ladder. it had injured you your 8th-grade year, and every attempt to climb back to where you were or any pushing from a 3rd party proved futile, as you only slipped and fell back down again.

the sat was fast approaching, and every practice test you did was never where you wanted them to be. every stupid math problem you got wrong brought a punch to your head. you had called gunwook, only realizing when he didnt pick up that he was in a shoot. panicked, you hung up before the voicemail. when he called you back (10 times with his members also calling you), you opted to ignore it. it was getting late, anyhow, and you had to go in early for apush in the morning.

apush lab made you want to kill yourself. sarah sat next to you, but everything always seemed to favor her. the quizzes, the teacher. it was unfair, really. american history was supposed to be your thing. so why were you struggling? after lab, sarah asked you what was wrong. "gunwook had called us in a panic because you didn't pick up." you shook your head, lying through your teeth.

"i had a question, but then passed the fuck out like 5 minutes later." sarah laughed and nodded, saying she was glad you got proper sleep, mumbling something about the aforementioned friend. when you asked, she waved you off, the man himself standing outside your classroom. he swung an arm around you as sarah walked in the opposite direction to her next class. he asked you the same thing. you lied to him too, but he looked less convinced. he didnt press you further, though, as you two began to walk down the stairs to your creative writing workshop—a senior elective you had begged your guidance counselor to take. gunwook took it to fill spots in his schedule.

the teacher loved him. as did everyone. you wondered if you could ever experience that. your oldest friend was everything you weren't and it was a point of contention inside your mind. you cursed yourself that you were nothing like him. gunwook nudged you in the middle of class when you were given an opportunity to work, asking what was wrong.

"i know thats not why you called me and then didn't pick up. you're also in your head right now." he pointed out, softly. you hummed, scribbling down something in your notebook.

"i just... i had a question but it was stupid. i figured it out." he looked at you pointedly, a look that told you to tell him the truth. "seriously! im ok!" he nodded, grabbing your hand for a squeeze.

# 4 do your best

you were nervous. ok nervous was an understatement. you rocked from heel to toe as you awaited the announcement that the doors were open. your friends chattered nervously around you. for them, this was the first time they were taking the sat. this was your second. you had gotten a 1340 on your first try—nowhere near where you wanted it to be. your brothers had gotten 1600 and 1590, respectively.

you were on call with all your friends the night before, gunwook coaching you guys through certain questions. he had texted you, (only you, but you didnt know that) wishing you luck. ricky and zhang hao had wished you luck as well.

everything seemed like bricks in your bag. it was only a couple of things—a computer, for the digital sat, a pencil, a calculator, a water bottle, and a banana. but it felt like you had hundreds of textbooks in your bag for no reason at all.

the doors swung open, and you rushed up to your assigned room. the setup was a blur, and the reading section seemed to be so too. during the break, your friends voiced similar opinions. then, during math, you began to struggle. somewhere along the way, though, gunwook popped into your head. you dont know if it was   because you wanted to make him proud, or you didnt want to disappoint your oldest friend and crush, but it worked. you powered through module 1 and 2, module 2 being the toughest one by far.

when the results came back two weeks later, you waited with baited breath as your friends skipped class with you to check all of your scores. gunwook held your hand as you refreshed the page.

"i dont want to look." you said, hiding your face in his chest.

"ill look for you." he mumbled into your hair, scrolling down. you felt him smile into the crown of your head, "i knew you could do it, sweetheart." you looked, and a big glaring 1590 stared back at you.

"wook!! holy shit a 1590!!" you wrapped your arms around him, squeezing him tight.

# 5 talk about it

you sat with your friends and the members as you awaited gunwook's family's arrival. gunwook smiled from his seat on the gymnasium floor, holding up his phone. almost on instinct, you all checked your own.

wook🩵: this'll be you guys next year. ill be up there watching you all.

sarah burst in to tears. laura full on sobbed, and ryan and carols eyes were brimming with tears. as you read the text again and again, you got a separate text.

wook🩵: i'm proud of you y'know? i saw you struggling a bit at the end there but you made it through. i love you, yn. im glad to call you my friend.

i love you i love you i-

"hey yn sweetheart!" gunwooks mom sat next to you. his brother waved, and his father gave you a curt nod.

"hi. you guys must be excited." his mom laughed, nodding, then shoving your shoulder.

"im more excited about something else." you opened your mouth to ask her what, but the ceremony started

giving gunwook his graduation flowers made him blush. he shook his head. "do you not like them, wook? i thought theyre your favorites." he shook his head again, dropping the flowers into his mom's hands, grabbing your face.

"you are clueless, yknow that? i gave you so many hints. everyone knows." when you asked him what he meant, "yn, you didnt think id notice you putting yourself down? you know i cant fucking stand that. sorry mom. it kills me that the love if my life doesnt realize how fucking amazing they are, and it kills me that they dont realize that im in love with them." at this point, you dont know what you were doing. because gunwook was confessing to you that he both likes you and that he knows about your self-deprication. so now, surrounded by friends and seniors, gunwooks family and members, you kissed him.

it wasnt like anything you had imagined. your first kiss, you mean. peering seniors were waved off by shouts from matthew and gunwooks brother—both burly enough that even the biggest varsity football players would shrink away.

gunwook smiled on your lips as your friends cheered amongst themselves. you heard a loud "闭嘴!" from zhang hao to what you presume was ricky chatting with the senior mandarin class. when you broke off, gasping for air, gunwook tore off his graduation gown, pushing it onto his poor unsuspecting leader. he grabbed your arm, and the two of you sprinted as fast as you could.

out the gymnasium doors, out back by the cafeteria, through the back-woods path. he stopped when he was sure no one would follow him.

"so whats going on? with the whole." he gestured to your head. you knew what he meant, so you nodded. you told him everything, how you compared yourself to everyone, especially your friends and brothers, you were falling behind, your motivation was close to 0, and you never really believed that you could do it. he was quiet for a while. you knew he was trying to find the right words.

you wanted to cry, or throw up, probably both. it felt like the trees and the birds and your boyfriend? were judging you. but gunwook just apologized, for not noticing sooner, for not knowing how to help. you shook your head, tears threatening to fall, but he shook his too.

"no, no, im your best friend, yn, i need to be here for you. im serious, you have people to rely on, you dont have to shoulder this all by yourself." the tears threatening to fall were not a threat anymore, and the dam broke. gunwook grabbed the back of your head, pulling you into a hug.

—

mandarin guide:

开夜车: kai ye che, lit. burn the midnight oil

熬夜: ao ye, stay up late

闭嘴: bi zui, shut up/close your mouth

[captainsophiestark]

Partners

Grant Ward x Reader

Masterlist - Join My Taglist!

Written for Fictober 2024!

Fandom: Marvel

Day Thirty Prompt: "I won't let you down."

Summary: Grant's SO is tackling the biggest project SciTech has to offer an academy student, and he's about to be dragged into helping with it.

Word Count: 2,879

Category: Fluff

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

"Out of every single other member in your class, the board has decided to trust you with this assignment. Do you think you're up to the challenge?"

I kept my face carefully neutral, a skill I'd learned from my Ops boyfriend. Inside, my heart was racing and threatening to make an escape across the room and out the door, but in front of the entire SHIELD SciTech Academy board? I could not let that show.

Instead, I kept my back straight, and forced the slightest of smiles onto my face.

"Yes, ma'am. I am up to the challenge. I promise, I won't let you down."

"Good. We look forward to seeing what you come up with."

I kept the smile on my face and nodded, leaning forward enough to be at the very edge of a bow. Then, I turned on my heel and kept my head high as I walked out of the room. My boyfriend had taught me exactly the body language required to convey confidence, and I was putting all of it to use right now.

The second I cleared the doors, I let everything drop.

I took off at a sprint through the hallways of the main SciTech building, ducking through the hallways I knew better than anywhere else on earth, avoiding anybody that might try to stop or question me. I didn't slow down, even once I made it outside. Instead, I sped up, heading for the edge of the SciTech campus.

I was in my last year at the Academy. I was at the top of my class, so for a final project, the board had tasked me with creating a new tool for Field Agents and Specialists. They wanted something the agents could have on them that worked like an emergency button, transmitting information and location if the need arose. But, they also needed it to be basically undetectable to any sensor, easy for agents in the field to operate and conceal, and durable enough to do its job no matter what punishment it got put through. A nearly impossible task outside of these walls, and despite my preparation, still pretty damn hard for me.

I'd been workshopping a prototype for a similar idea all semester, and the board knew it. They liked what they'd seen, so they'd made it my job to finish a true prototype for them to present and then further develop on Monday. It was currently Friday, and my project still had one gigantic, glaring weakness.

No matter what we could come up with in the lab, our field inventions almost inevitably came back with complaints from the agents who actually used them. We could run simulations and tests and try to recreate conditions pretty well in the lab, but it never stood up to the hardships of actually being in the field like we thought it would. Which meant, if I wanted to keep my promise to the board and my standing within SciTech, I needed to get creative.

Fortunately for me, I happened to be dating the best Operations student in generations. Grant Ward and I had met last year and we'd been happily dating ever since, despite how hard it could be sometimes to spend time with each other from different Academy campuses. We'd found workarounds whenever and wherever we needed to.

Thank goodness we'd both agreed to spend time breaking the rules at the beginning of our relationship. I was on the brink of a crisis, and I didn't have time to try to find a way to break into the Fort Knox that was the SHIELD Operations Academy.

In almost record time, I made it to Grant's dorm, using the routes we'd scouted together forever ago. Luckily for both of us, he was a senior enough student with high enough standing to have his own small apartment. I quickly scaled the wall to his second story window, something else I'd learned how to do from Grant.

I didn't even pause as I climbed through the window, landing in Grant's bedroom. I didn't see him, so I closed the window behind me and then hustled into the small living room/kitchen at a jog. I found Grant in the middle of the room, apparently halfway through walking to the kitchen, but he froze in his tracks and was already looking at me as I burst into the room.

"Grant! Thank god you're home. I need your help."

Before I knew what was happening, Grant had pushed me behind him. He kept one hand on my waist, and when I turned to see what the hell he was doing, he had a gun in his other hand and was alternating pointing it at his bedroom door and the front door.

"What's wrong?" he asked me without turning around, his voice deadly serious. I fought to hold in a laugh and didn't bother fighting back against the smile.

"Not that kind of help," I said. "Sorry for scaring you, though."

Slowly, Grant holstered his gun and turned around to face me. Both his eyebrows were raised in a demanding type of question.

"You run in here like you're being chased by a murderer and it's not that kind of help?"

"No, but it is the kind of help that will determine my entire future and has the potential to ruin me and everything I've ever worked for in my entire life ever."

Grant just stared at me for a moment. He blinked, slowly, then let out a long breath. Finally, he nodded.

"Alright. What do you need help with?"

I blew out a breath of relief, then quickly explained the situation to Grant. He'd heard plenty about the leadership of SciTech and how important it was to me to keep impressing them, so this latest project and its associated stakes weren't news.

"So... what exactly do you want me to do?" he asked once I'd finished telling him about the events of my meeting. I gave him the most charming, persuasive smile I could manage, and he immediately frowned.

"I want you to try out the device I've put together. I have a few prototypes, and it's easy enough for me to make another handful for testing. I need feedback on how well they actually work for the intended purpose, for field and ops agents, in a way that I can't predict or test in the lab."

Grant sighed, then nodded and held out one hand towards me.

"Alright. Give me the thing, let's do this."

I grinned. "I love you so much."

****************

Grant and I spent the rest of the day and then some putting my device through various tests. Exactly as I'd been expecting, when Grant took it through various exercises that he went through at Ops, the device had weaknesses I hadn't predicted. From static electricity via crawling across the carpet turning the thing on before its time to the waterproofing failing after being submerged for too long, Grant and I found one problem after another, and each time, I fixed the issue.

"Okay, what if we had standard placement be on the stomach," I suggested, sticking the little round disk of my latest prototype just above Grant's belly button. "Would that protect it from the kind of weapon strikes we don't want it taking on your forearm?"

Grant hummed. "Maybe, but it's no garuntee. Besides, you want an agent to be able to activate the thing when we don't have another option. If my hands are tied behind my back, I won't be able to get to it."

"Dammit. You're right. Okay... what do you think, then?"

"How about the wrist, on the pulse point? I can probably find a way to activate that no matter what, and if a weapon really hits hard there, it won't matter if the device is destroyed."

I frowned. "I hate it when you talk like that."

"I thought you wanted good, honest feedback to improve this device for the SciTech board."

"Yeah, but I still don't like to hear my boyfriend talking about ways he could potentially die." I huffed and crossed my arms. "Still, you're right, and it's a good idea. But... maybe I can find a way to give the device a little death sequence."

"...Meaning?"

"Meaning, if it gets fatally hit like that, it automatically activates. And maybe I could even get it to deploy something that'll have a chance at stopping the bleeding."

"That would be pretty impressive," Grant agreed. I nodded, my mind already whirling with the possibilities.

"Okay. Okay, let's try to add that in, and then we can run it through the tests again."

Grant's eyebrows shot up. "The same tests we just did? Again?"

"Yeah. If I make major changes like that, we need to make sure it doesn't compromise any of the existing systems. Which means re-checking the systems we've already figured out."

Grant let out a long sigh and shook his head. He walked over to me, put an arm around my shoulders, and placed a kiss on the top of my head, then moved towards the kitchen.

"I don't understand why you like all this stuff. But I'll brew some coffee, since you're gonna need it. And I'll make sure the Ops pool is reserved for us when you finish your updates."

I grinned. "You are seriously the best boyfriend in the world, you know that?"

"What was that?" Grant asked, looking up from the coffee pot and feigning innocence like he hadn't heard me. I just smiled and shook my head.

"I said, you're the best boyfriend in the world."

Grant's feigned surprise immediately morphed into the charming smile I loved so much.

"Good. Just checking."

We spent the rest of the weekend like that, making updates and improvements to my little device and then testing how well they worked. Despite Grant's differing opinion, I genuinely loved doing this, more than just about anything in the world. But, even if I'd hated it most of the time, I would've put in the same amount of work for this project. It could very literally save my boyfriend's life some day in the future, after all. Now was not the time to half-ass something and call it good, even without the pressure of the SciTech board looming over me.

Finally, by about two in the morning on Monday, we'd managed to put the device on the wrist through every single test without fault or flaw. It worked as intended, and not a moment before it was supposed to, and if it was destroyed it sent out a final beacon and deployed some emergency blood clotting tech before it went. It was perfect.

"Thank you so much for all your help on this, babe," I muttered, the sleep finally digging its teeth into me now that my task had been accomplished. Grant and I had flopped down on the couch while I'd been going over the data, and now I curled against his side, resting my head on his chest. "I seriously couldn't have done it without you."

"Yeah, you could've," he said, stifling a yawn of his own as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. "It would've taken you longer, but we both know you still would've pulled this off eventually."

I hummed, a smile on my face as I curled further into Grant's chest.

"Thanks, babe. I love you."

"I love you too, sweetheart."

He kissed the top of my head, his arms wrapped tight around me, and that's the last thing I remember before the world faded to black.

****************

"Babe. Baby. Come on, you need to wake up."

I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut tighter and rolling away from the voice of my boyfriend trying to wake me up for god knows what reason.

"Sweetheart, you have your presentation today. You need to get up."

And just like that, I was wide awake.

I shot straight up, my heart dropping all the way to my stomach. I was in Grant's bed—I guess he'd moved us before passing out himself—but I had no idea if he'd remembered to set an alarm last night. If I missed this presentation, after all the work we'd done-

"It's okay, you have plenty of time," Grant said, probably reading the panic on my face. "It's six thirty, you have another two and a half hours to get ready and get back to SciTech."

I turned to Grant with a scowl.

"You woke me up at six thirty in the morning?" I demanded.

"...You wanted me to let you sleep later?"

I huffed and threw the covers off my legs, scowling as I stood.

"No. I need time to wake up, get back to SciTech, get ready, put together my presentation materials, practice my presentation... I need the two and a half hours. But I'm still mad you woke me up at six thirty."

Grant snorted, but I caught him staring at me with a fond smile in the reflection of the bathroom mirror.

I moved as quickly as I could, gathering the materials I needed and that I'd brought with me to Grant's apartment, then giving him a quick kiss and heading back to the SciTech campus. I showered, put on my most impressive professional outfit, and then spent almost all my remaining time putting the finishing touches on my presentation. Luckily for me, I knew the device in and out after how I'd spent my weekend, and I was absolutely confident in what it could do. Both things helped immensely when it came to giving a good presentation.

I walked into the main building of SciTech with my head held high, and this time it wasn't an act. I found the board waiting for me, and I didn't hesitate to launch into my presentation with absolute confidence. The surprised, excited reactions came almost immediately, and they only fueled my confidence and excitement.

Of course, everyone had a few questions, but I answered them easily. When I'd finished answering questions and officially completed my presentation, the board literally clapped. I beamed at them; I wasn't sure they'd ever done that before.

"Excellent work," said the SciTech chair, her smile beaming. "This is above and beyond what we could've expected. We'll put it through a few final tests, but honestly, I don't expect it to need much. I know you're in the middle of your final semester here, but be prepared to take a trip to the Hub before graduation to help us present this development to Director Fury himself."

My heart exploded in my chest, and I couldn't wipe the smile off my face as I shook hands and said thank yous before heading out of the room. I had a slightly dazy smile on my face as I walked through the SciTech halls, and my shoulders were relaxed for the first time in days as I stepped through the front doors and into the bright sunlight.

"Hey!"

I jumped so high I might've cleared the first floor windows at the sound of a voice coming from the bushes. I whirled around to find Grant crouched there, lurking in the shadows like a murderer.

"Grant? What the hell are you doing?" I demanded, trying to keep my voice low. He wasn't technically supposed to be on our campus, and I didn't want to get him caught, but he'd also just given me a damn heart attack.

Instead of answering, Grant reached up and grabbed my forearm, pulling me into the bush with him. I landed hard against his chest, but I didn't totally mind it as he wrapped his arms tightly around me. Still, I met his gaze with a slightly raised eyebrow. He just smiled.

"I wanted to know how it went. And maybe get a little payback for the heart attack you gave me on Friday."

I huffed a laugh. "Well, mission accomplished."

"Great. So how'd it go?"

I grinned. Grant smiled back, his arms tightening around me, but he waited to celebrate.

"It went amazing. They loved it. I'm gonna help them present it to Fury sometime in the next few weeks."

Grant's eyebrows shot up, and he actually took a shocked half-step back from me.

"You're going with them to present it to Fury?" I nodded. "They never let recruits do that!"

"I know!"

I squealed and jumped up in the air, and a moment later, Grant caught me. He let out a breathy laugh as he spun me around, and neither of us let go for even a second when he set me back down on my feet.

"We need to do something to celebrate," Grant declared, his low voice right beside my ear. "Are you working on any world-changing inventions this weekend?"

I leaned back just enough to grin at him. "No. For once, my schedule's actually pretty clear."

"Good. You wanna come to me, or you want me to come to you?"

"Mm, I'll come to you. As much as I love what I do, I also wouldn't mind a little break from all the work I've been doing lately."

"It's a deal. Come over after your last class on Friday. I'll take care of the rest."

Grant and I shared a smile, then we closed the distance between us for a long, sweet kiss. From making out in the bushes to letting me test my most important projects on him, Grant was always there for me. And no matter what else came out of my career at SciTech, in the Academy and as an agent afterwards, the relationship Grant and I had built together would always be my proudest accomplishment.

***************

Everything Taglist: @rosecentury @kmc1989 @space-helen @misshale21

Marvel Taglist: @valkyriepirate @infinetlyforgotten @sagesmelts @gaychaosgremlin

[wanderlustinwonderland18]

Turkkila & Versluis: “We Want To Differentiate Ourselves From Previous Years”

Earlier this month, ice dance couple Juulia Turkkila and Matthias Versluis skated in the show L'Apprenti Sorcier (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) organized in Champéry, Switzerland. The choreography was done by Salome Brunner and Stéphane Lambiel. The Finns were the only ice dancers in the show. How did they end up there?

“Last year, I edited the music for Deniss Vasiljevs' free program The Lion King,” Matthias says. This season, Matthias has done ten different music cuts for Lambiel's students.

“Towards the end of May, Stéphane asked us if we would be interested in joining the show. It was a great honor,” he continues.

“We were with an amazing group of skaters, some of the world's best. It's unique to skate with a live pianist,” Juulia shares.

In the show, Juulia and Matthias performed to Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No 2. They presented wonderful lifts and spectacular movements. The international audience was impressed by the couple's soulful performance.

Finland's top couple has been training hard throughout the summer.

“Early May, we went to Rome for new choreography. In June, we had some vacation time and in July, we went to the Czech Republic for five weeks of summer camp,” Juulia says.

The rhythm dance theme for the 2024–25 season is Social Dancing from the 1950s–1970s.

“We chose music from the 1960s because we suspect that many teams will use disco from the 70s,” Juulia explains.

The pair found a go-go jive song that they immediately liked, and combined it with James Brown's classic I Got You.

“We wanted high energy music that the audience can recognize. There is no slow part in our rhythm dance. It is challenging,” Juulia reflects.

The couple's free dance is the Argentine Tango La Rubia Mirella, which is based on true events. The story was introduced to the couple by an Argentinian tango dancer, who worked with them on and off the ice.

“The beginning is quite soft, but the end is really strong. We want to show that we can be strong and fast. The language of movement is traditional tango, but the program is not built from typical dance movements,” Matthias shares.

Juulia plays a strong woman initially, but is used and abused by men. Matthias plays the role of a villain. The ending is dramatic.

“When there is a clear story, you have to bring in more emotion and drama,” Juulia states.

The pair's programs will first be seen in the Challenger Series competitions, followed by the Grand Prix events in Finland and China.

“We are aiming for medal positions in both GP competitions, and thus a place in the GP final. We are trying to collect world ranking points so that we can start competitions in the right groups during the Olympic season,” the couple says in unison.

With a fierce tango, Juulia and Matthias will be taking a different path this upcoming season, changing their image as classical lyrical skaters.

“We want to differentiate ourselves from previous years. A new combination lift is in the works for the free program, and the choreographic elements will be totally in character with the tango,” Juulia sums up.

[wyllzel]

get to know your tumblr mutuals tag!

i was tagged by @nfly5, thank you laura!! :))

1. what's the origin of your username?

i think wyll ravengard of bg3 fame and lae'zel also of bg3 fame should kiss and fall in love and ride dragons into the sunset (or, rather, the astral plane) together :)

2. otps + shipname

wyllzel 🥰 and vivwall (vivienne x blackwall dai) at the moment for sure!

i'm trying to think of more, but honestly i'm p easygoing when it comes to ships haha i'll take a peek at almost anything that seems compelling 🫣

3. song stuck in my head

"purple lace bra" by tate mcrae for uhhh no reason 🤫 and "feel it" by d4vd for also no reason LOL (🎶 you told me once that i was crazy i said babygirl i knooooowww but i can't let you gooo (away!) 🎶)

4. weirdest trait/habit

i have a growing aversion to cold drinks lol it's starting to feel odd drinking something that isn't hot... that's not that weird though, i think i'm just becoming a grandma LOL

5. hobbies

photoshop!! i like making gifs and edits and such :) i've also been writing a lot more recently which is crazy, i haven't felt this inspired or productive in forever :'D thank you DA lol 🩷

i am also v much a webtoon enjoyer (my all-time fave is "trash belongs in the trash can!" but i'm currently v invested in "nevermore," "i'm the queen in this life," "sisters at war," and "momfluencer"!), but i'll read manga (tatsuki fujimoto my GOAT) and comics (invincible also my GOAT)

6. if you work, what's your profession?

i write internal software documentation which means it's architectural, high-level design stuff... not so much code-specific, but the reasoning behind why software components are organized the way they are. it's not very fun, mostly mind-melting... i work closely w engineers and it's kind of a toss-up whether they'll be nice/patient or think i'm stupid lol

but my brain now contains so many company secrets :^) if you ever have any questions about data storage/virtualization i can possibly help lol

7. if you could have any job you wish, what would you have?

funny story—i applied for grad school, and i've been accepted to an english m.a. program that starts this fall!!! 🥹 we'll see where i go w that, but i'll likely enter education!

8. something you're good at?

uhh i suppose BG3 LOL i beat honor mode twice! 🎉 (i'm still trying to figure out how DA works 🤔 DA2 hard mode is chill idk if i'd ever do nightmare tho 😬)

9. something you hate?

ok it's not rly a "hate" thing but it does irk me when i see fandom claims/arguments that don't cite specific quotes/screenshots/instances lol (the english major in me activates and i am consumed by the thought "🚨‼️ where do you see this in the text 👁️👁️🫵" LOL)

10. something you forget?

the grief 😂🖐️ it creeps up on me! almost cried in my cubicle multiple times this week. haha.

11. your love language?

receiving is probably words of affirmation? giving is probably gifts, i like making silly things for my bestie (eg. fenris keychain lol) and finding weird stickers for my brother 🤡

12. favorite movies/shows?

my letterboxd top 4 are:

everything everywhere all at once (2022) (saw it twice in theaters and sobbed thru both times)

nope (2022) (BRILLIANT movie, so smart)

challengers (2024) (so fascinating!)

lust, caution (2007) (i need to rewatch this one expeditiously)

as for shows, i love succession (2018-23), invincible (2021-), and the twilight zone (1959-64)!

13. what were you like as a child?

apparently very friendly, outgoing, and extroverted! i would just run up to my fellow kids and yap at them?! i do nooot do that anymore lol

14. favorite subject in school?

english/literature!!

15. least favorite subject?

oh man, i was so bad at science, especially biology/chemistry... i could scrape by in physics bc i was decent at math, but it was still awful...

16. what's your best/worst character trait?

worst...??? according to my last annual review, i need to be more confident in the workplace LOL 💀 + sometimes i let my anxiety get the better of me... i think that's just a lifelong struggle thing though, but i know i can improve to be a better friend and such 💪

best... multiple reviews from mom-aged women say that i am a "nice" and "sweet" person so hopefully at least that means i can leave a good first impression haha

17. if you could change any detail of your life right now, what would it be?

i'm not a huge fan of what-if-ing personally, but i do wish i were on vacation 😆

18. if you could travel in time, who would you like to meet?

i'm currently very curious about my paternal grandparents... it's hard for me to conceptualize why they got married... and how my dad grew up... i guess i would want to witness some of that??

tagging: hello again haha!! @creaking-skull @andrewknightley @coolseabird @genderdotcom @bladeweave @grey-wardens @maironsbigboobs no pressure again :))

[mariacallous]

The GOP-controlled House approved its rules package on Friday evening, including provisions targeting transgender and immigrant rights, but notably did not include the trans bathroom ban Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) had proposed.

The Republican introduced her controversial ban in November to restrict access to all “single-sex facilit[ies] on Federal property” based on “biological sex.” She admitted to HuffPost the ban specifically targeted incoming Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first transgender woman to be elected to Congress.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who narrowly won reelection to the chamber’s top job earlier on Friday, had reportedly assured Mace that her bathroom ban would be included in the package.

Mace congratulated Johnson on his reelection and did not make any mention of the bathroom ban’s absence from the rules package.

“Speaker Mike Johnson has rightfully been reelected to lead the People’s House once again. His leadership offers a clear path forward to restore safety, security, and accountability in our nation,” she said in a statement.

“We have a mandate to secure our borders, rebuild the economy, and hold Washington accountable. Speaker Johnson understands this, and with President Trump’s leadership, we are ready to fulfill those promises and deliver on the America First agenda.”

Mace spent much of the last weeks of 2024 drumming up support for the ban while using anti-trans slurs and engaging in anti-trans theatrics. After protesters were arrested for staging a sit-in at a U.S. Capitol restroom, Mace loudly read their Miranda rights through a bullhorn at the jail where they were held.

Mace also introduced legislation in September to ban medical providers from offering gender-affirming care for minors. Twenty-five states have passed similar bans, with the Supreme Court set to decide this summer whether such bans are constitutional, determining the future of health care for trans youth.

Mace and McBride did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The rules package, passed at the beginning of each congressional session, sets the rules for the next two years in the House of Representatives. Most of its provisions are uncontroversial.

Notably, this Congress’ package raises the threshold for a “motion to vacate,” the tactic conservatives used to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023. While previously just a single member could introduce such a motion, now nine members of the majority party need to agree.

While Friday’s rules package does not mention restricting access to sex-segregated government facilities, it does take several swings at the rights of transgender people, immigrants and people seeking abortions.

One item in the package would fast-track a bill to amend Title IX, a federal law that bars sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding. The new bill would restrict school sports based on one’s sex assigned at birth, undoing Biden’s Title IX guidance that expanded protections for LGBTQ+ students.

The amendment, introduced by Rep. Gregory Steube (R-Fla.) and cosponsored by Mace, would recognize sex as defined “solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” The language mirrors that of dozens of state laws that currently bar transgender students from participating in sports that align with their gender identity and other policies that restrict trans people of all ages from updating their sex marker on government IDs.

The package also fast-tracks legislation that would target abortion providers, prevent sanctuary cities from being able to provide benefits to undocumented immigrants, and bar immigrants convicted of certain crimes from being admitted to the United States.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) criticized the rules package for fast-tracking a dozen bills that target vulnerable communities ahead of the vote on Friday evening.

“This package tries to fool the American people by scapegoating immigrants and trans people in the hopes that it will distract you from the fact that the first move from Republicans in the 119th Congress is to do absolutely nothing to help you and your family build a better life,” Jayapal said.

[izicodes]

Mini React.js Tips #1 | Resources ✨

I thought why not share my React.js (JavaScript library) notes I made when I was studying! I will start from the very beginning with the basics and random notes I made along the way~!

Up first is what you'll need to know to start any basic simple React (+ Vite) project~! 💻

What you'll need:

node.js installed >> click

coding editor - I love Visual Studio Code >> click

basic knowledge of how to use the Terminal

What does the default React project look like?

Step-by-Step Guide

[ 1 ] Create a New Folder: The new folder on your computer e.g. in Desktop, Documents, wherever that will serve as the home for your entire React project.

[ 2 ] Open in your coding editor (will be using VSCode here): Launch Visual Studio Code and navigate to the newly created folder. I normally 'right-click > show more options > Open with Code' on the folder in the File Explorer (Windows).

[ 3 ] Access the Terminal: Open the integrated terminal in your coding editor. On VSCode, it's at the very top, and click 'New Terminal' and it should pop up at the bottom of the editor.

[ 4 ] Create the actual React project: Type the following command to initialize a new React project using Vite, a powerful build tool:

npm create vite@latest

[ 5 ] Name Your Project: Provide a name for your project when prompted.

[ 6 ] Select 'React' as the Framework: Navigate through the options using the arrow keys on your keyboard and choose 'React'.

[ 7 ] Choose JavaScript Variant: Opt for the 'JavaScript' variant when prompted. This is the programming language you'll be using for your React application.

[ 8 ] Navigate to Project Folder: Move into the newly created project folder using the following command:

cd [your project name]

[ 9 ] Install Dependencies: Execute the command below to install the necessary dependencies for your React project (it might take a while):

npm install

[ 10 ] Run the Development Server: Start your development server with the command (the 'Local' link):

npm run dev

[ 11 ] Preview Your Project: Open the link provided in your terminal in your web browser. You're now ready to witness your React project in action!

Congratulations! You've successfully created your first React default project! You can look around the project structure like the folders and files already created for you!

BroCode's 'React Full Course for Free' 2024 >> click

React Official Website >> click

Stay tuned for the other posts I will make on this series #mini react tips~!

[cursed-spectre]

Character Profile: Ai Morgenstern

Summary

Ai is the first daughter of Spectre, and her self-proclaimed "greatest creation." She is a drone who was built and programmed from scratch by Spectre, and as such, has several differences from other drones, the most notable of which is her short time of existence compared to her mental age.

Basic Details

Name: Ai Morgenstern Chatroom Nickname: [AngeiAi] Race/Species: Worker Drone (Research Assistant) Age: 10 (Mentally) (Actual Birth: November 4th, 2024 irl) Birthday: November 4th Location of Origin: The Cube Gender: Female Pronouns: She/Her Romantic Orientation: Panromantic Sexual Orientation: N/A Job/Role: Citizen of Sanctuary Height: 4'4" Astrological sign: Scorpio Vocal Reference: Eris from Konosuba

Appearance

(Art done by @annoyinglyyyloving)

Ai is a shorter drone, the same size as Uzi, with short curvy orange hair and an emerald green core, which extends to her hands and eyelights, which have small lashes. She also has a mechanical tail similar to a disassembly drone's, but tipped with a mechanical recreation of the needle found in Solver tail heads, which is as sensitive to touch as the head of a solver tail. She often wears a combination of 2 to 4 of the tail beads she got from Apollo, with different color combinations based on the day, outfit, etc.

Ai's basic outfit consists of a green cropped hoodie worn over a black form fitting shirt, matched with a pair of green short shorts and black knee-high boots that feature a pattern similar to the hazard stripes of female disassembly drone legs. She also wears a light grey bag around her waist, usually stocked with things such as emergency medical supplies.

Ai's pajamas consist of a matching loose black tank top and pants with a light green circuit board pattern throughout the entire outfit.

Her formal outfit, seen during the Soulbond Festival, is a knee-length black dress sheer material making up above the chest, back, and short sleeves. It also includes black opera gloves, and simple black boots with a small heel. She also wore her pink silicone tint during the festival.

She also owns a light pink silicone tint (Hex Code: #FFD1DF) that she often applies to her lips.

Personality

Ai is an energetic and excitable child. She is often seen with a smile on her face, and loves to spend time with others. She has a big love for fashion and playing with looks. At times, she can get a bit too into it, and forgets to think of the other person, if there is one. Although she doesn't often voice it, she believes that anybody can look good in all sorts of things, and doesn't put labels like gender on clothing. She especially thinks Apollo looks great in some of her dresses.

Ai is also deeply empathetic. Her first instinct to seeing someone potentially hurt is to go up and ask if they're okay. When she can, she will usually insist on helping somebody who needs it in her eyes, and gets sad when that wish is denied. She is also very romantic, and loves the emotions and actions associated with affection, easily getting caught in something romantic, like when the atmosphere and compliments led to her kissing Apollo on the cheek during the Soulbond festival. She has since developed a large crush on him.

As a result of Spectre hand programming her from scratch while being around so many drones with the Solver, Ai adopts some traits seen in drones with the Solver. These include huddling close to sources of warmth, such as a Solver drone core, wanting to build a nest and get her mother's approval on it, and emoting with her tail. Before obtaining it, she often vibrated when excited or happy, something done by drones with the Solver before they get a tail.

Finally, while she herself does not speak multiple languages, Ai refers to her moms in the language they each speak, calling Spectre "Mom," Tera "Mamá," and Kiara "Maman."

Abilities

Intermediate First Aid

Ai is capable of performing first aid to drones who need it at an intermediate level.

Knowledge of Caring for Drones

Ai is very knowledgeable how to care for pillbabies and young drones. This includes things like feeding, enrichment, and much more.

Pre-programmed Knowledge

As part of her creation at an older stage, Spectre programmed knowledge into Ai so that she had a grasp on the world and its inhabitants.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Shuham at HuffPost:

A memo from the Trump administration’s top human resources official Monday laid out expansive descriptions of workers who could be stripped of civil service protections this year. The memo concerns a broad new category of federal workers that could be removed from the so-called “competitive service” and exempted from protections against “adverse actions” like being fired or suspended. These employees would be eligible to be transferred into “Schedule Policy/Career,” which was previously known as “Schedule F.” According to an executive order President Donald Trump issued in 2020 — and reissued, with some changes, after taking office last week — this new “schedule” of workers will include people in “policy-influencing positions,” defined as “positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.” And according to an interim guidance memo sent Monday by Charles Ezell, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, the Trump administration thinks this description could fit a whole lot of government workers. In a bulleted list, Ezell wrote that agencies should consider “rescheduling” positions involved in, among other things, “directing the work of an organizational unit,” “being held accountable for the success of one or more specific programs or projects,” “substantive participation and discretionary authority in agency grantmaking,” including “evaluation of grant applications,” and “publicly advocating for the policies of the agency or the administration, including before the news media or on social media.”

Only a few thousand government employees — political appointees — typically leave their jobs when a new administration comes in. They are far outnumbered by those in the competitive service, who are hired based on merit and have strong employment protections. The broad descriptions in Ezell’s memo could make tens of thousands of career, nonpolitical employees — such as project managers, analysts and clerical workers — eligible to lose those protections, leaving their futures in the hands of their politically appointed superiors.

[...] Trump’s new executive order goes further than the one he issued in 2020 by stating that jobs eligible to be rescheduled include any involving “duties that the Director otherwise indicates may be appropriate for inclusion in Schedule Policy/Career.” This line, which Ezell mentioned in his memo, expands the Trump administration’s authority to reclassify workers. The executive order and memo both contain language asserting that civil service protections won’t be stripped based on individual workers’ political beliefs. But the memo says federal employees are required “to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability,” and the new executive order requires they carry out their work consistent with “the vesting of executive authority solely in the President.”

[...] Trump’s original “Schedule F” order was issued in October 2020 and therefore never fully put into effect. But before Trump left office, a few agencies did put together lists of positions they thought were eligible to be stripped of civil service protections. Among them, according to public records obtained by the National Treasury Employees Union, were IT specialists, human resource specialists and office managers, in addition to policy analysts, economists and legal roles. Notably, in addition to revoking Trump’s 2020 “Schedule F” order, Joe Biden’s administration also went through a formal rule-making process, completed in 2024, to codify existing civil service protections and put up barriers to future presidents attempting to copy Trump’s order. Now back in office, Trump appears intent on simply bulldozing through that 2024 Biden rule. Not only has an OPM press release for it been erased, but Ezell’s memo also states that Trump used his executive order to simply “directly nullify these regulations” where they stemmed from presidential authority.

Trump’s war on civil service in action: Schedule F is back, and it’s ramped up.

See Also:

HuffPost: Trump's Smear Campaign Against the Federal Workforce

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jaryn Crouson

Professors connected to anti-Israel protests head programs that received millions of taxpayer dollars, according to a report released Wednesday by government transparency group Open The Books.

The Department of Education has spent $283 million on foreign studies grants since 2020, with over $22.1 million going towards programs studying the Middle East, Open The Books found. The study analyzed the top three grant recipients, Indiana University, Columbia University and Georgetown University, and found that each highlighted anti-Israel professors as distinguished staff in their programs.

“These universities all have multibillion dollar endowments,” Amber Todoroff, deputy policy editor at Open The Books, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They get tax breaks, government-backed student loans, and enormous sums through federal grants and contracts. Through these Title VI grants, they’re getting funding specifically for departments that have hosted radical professors, instigating shameful protests nationwide. It’s high time Congress takes a closer look at how this money is being spent, and, with so many new ways to learn languages and international culture, if it’s even necessary at all.”

Universities received these funds in the form of two different grants: National Resource Centers grants, which go directly to departmental programs, and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants, which can be used to give students fellowships to study foreign regions or languages, according to Open The Books.

Columbia received $2.8 million in FLAS grants from 2020 to 2024, according to the report. Its program is meant to “examine transnational connections, develop Islamic studies, and deepen specialist expertise on the region,” according to Columbia’s 2018 grant proposal.

The 2018 application mentioned Joseph Massad, a professor in the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department, as a selling point for the university’s program, noting that his classes “focus on the modern history, gender, political economy, international relations, politics and culture of the region.” The university received $653,632 in an FLAS grant in the 2022-2023 school year that was used in part to fund a fellowship for a student to take Massad’s “Gender and Sexuality in the Arab World” class, according to Open The Books.

Massad was alleged by students to be biased “against both Israel and the West” in his classes, according to Open The Books, citing nonprofit group Middle East Forum. The professor published an article the day after Hamas’ attack in 2023 calling it a “stunning victory,” and he gave a talk at the university in 2002 titled “On Zionism and Jewish Supremacy.”

Columbia experienced intense anti-Israel campus protests during the spring semester that resulted in over 100 arrests and multiple safety concerns. (RELATED: Many Pro-Palestinian Protesters Remain In ‘Good Standing’ At Columbia)

🧵On October 8, Professor Joseph Massad described the Oct. 7 brutal terror attack as “awesome” and a “stunning victory.” He also happens to be the chair of an important academic approval Committee. Watch as @Columbia President claims: “he is no longer a chair of that… pic.twitter.com/rRU32HQnTv — House Committee on Education & the Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) April 17, 2024

Indiana University raked in $2.84 million in federal grants from 2020 to 2023 for its Middle East program, and touted professor Abdulkader Sinno its 2018 grant application for his specialization in “the evolution and outcomes of civil wars, ethnic strife and other territorial conflicts; Muslim representation in Western liberal democracies; Islamist parties’ participation in elections,” according the report. Sinno reportedly served as a faculty advisor for the university’s Palestinian Solidarity Committee, which was involved in hosting an “anti-Israel counter protest” where members confronted participants of a Hillel demonstration.

Sinno attempted to sidestep university policies to host the pro-Palestinian speaker Miko Peled for the organization, booking the speaker as an academic event rather than student event, according to the university’s students newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student. The decision led to a two-semester suspension from teaching and a year suspension from advising student groups, according to Open The Books.

Even after the suspension, Sinno gave a speech at an “alternative” graduation for anti-Israel activists during which he praised them for being part of a “proud tradition” and said that their protesting showed “empathy and caring,” according to WFYI.

More than 50 protesters were arrested on Indiana University’s campus in April after a clash with police that left multiple injured, according to Fox 59.

Georgetown received $2.64 million from the Department of Education from 2020 to 2023 in FLAS funding, and it named Associate Professor and Director of Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Dr. Fida Adely in its 2018 grant proposal, the report found. Adely is a member of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine’s National Advisory Board, according to Open The Books, which is a group that “encourages academic and cultural boycotts of Israel and Israeli academic institutions,” according to its website.

Hundreds rallied on Georgetown’s campus during the spring semester, hosting an encampment that lasted more than a week and scuffled with police, according to the university’s student newspaper, The Hoya. Adely participated in an October rally, calling on the university to divest from Israel-linked companies, according to a separate student paper, The Georgetown Voice.

“By funding schools that teach radical ideologies and practice a far-Left DEI philosophy, controversial professors and administrators are also gaining access to a vast ecosystem of tax dollars, and influence over impressionable young people,” the report concluded. “These funds can be used to advance their research, build their standing as credentialed academics, gain tenure, and impact international policy discussions. Meanwhile, our national interest in these grants comes into considerable question. Are we encouraging more professionals who will be credible in these fields and represent U.S. interests, or more folks who are determined to ‘dismantle’ the ‘settler colonialism’ they see all around them?”

Columbia, Georgetown, Indiana University, Massad, Sinno and Adely did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

[dimalink]

GVim – it looks like Windows 3.11 and it is a advanced text editor

GVim – it is very interesting program. Code editor, text. With interface of style – retro under windows 3.11. And, something like, a program for a cool programmers! For those one, who is ready to jump into a rabbit`s hole!

Fist time, I give a try to use this program in 2023. But! But, once again - here it goes different – but words! Complicated! Hard to understand! Unknown! I want it, but I cannot to do this! Interesting, but too complicated! Give a try – something to understand, to learn. And, it not works for me, I failed. And, I take a decision to left it at the level of the idea. So, it was a year 2023 experience.

And, with this background, what a surprise I have. When in 2024, I find a programming language Free Basic. And they give you a compiler. Compile by yourself. And. write with code editor – the one you want.  So. this is a serious attitude. And, I decide – I have, already, give a try with GVim. I want this try again! And, with easy way, I roll into this theme. As a hedgehog I roll. At the most easy level. Write code. Commands, some easy of them. And everything is ok, it works for me! Yes, I need to read and learn, to dig a theme. But, everything works! And it is not looks hard for me! Level of difficulty was normal, very ok level! It was a very positive step!

To write a code from something like a text and compile by your own hands - it is so cool! And it is so cool to use such programs like GVim. There is also EMacs. But, I know nothing about it, except that such program exists. It is, also, as a code editor. Also, for a programmers. Also, it is a serious theme. And even, there are something like a conversations. At the level – what to select – GVim or Emacs.

GVim – it is very advanced editor for text or code. Very advanced. For me, it is something with the ideas of frontier as a Norton Commander for MS Dos. Or Volkov Commander for MS Dos. I am serious. So, it is a most simple way to understand about, that it is a very advanced soft. For a true programmers. And this is a thing of intelligence and habit to use such tools. So. from the first time, I guess, you cannot to start to use it easy. You will fail. In the end, I am for myself, use it at the simple level. Most minimum. File open, to go some place. Copy and paste strings. To compile! Fascinating! This GVim works with command line. So, straight from the GVim you can to compile! Or go to catalog with the help of MS Dos command. Class! It is, looks like, a program with unlimited capabilities.

Maybe, because of this kind of programs. Programmers looks like in a movies, as a super-humans. So, everything is flashing at the screen, then yes it is. So, it jumps a picture here. Programmer writes a command there. This makes a call for something else. So, everything is so bright! Lots of colorful text at the screen. Beautiful pictures. Lots of code fragments.

By sides. By center – picture. And, this kind of way – it is shown as programmer. And, this is co cool and positive! I, even, think, it is true and it is like this! When, you have a knowledge and head works well! At this level – you still need to reach it! And all of these miracles and different colors – they are in your head! World is starting to bloom! So, with this I can to agree!

One more interesting thing, there is a Vim code editor. And, I use GVim. So, this is, also, a  standalone theme. And, I start, of course, with first impression. It is, of course, a visual side. It, looks, someway, close to some retro. GVim interface makes a surprise on me. It is so black and white. White background. As, it looks for me. Some little pictures at the top. Points of menus. As Windows 3.1 or windows 3.11, it is first things, that came into my head! And I like it! Beautiful interface! This visual side, it is, also, a valuable!

And next, even, more – lots of capabilities for a syntax. Syntax support. Even, Free Basic, I can find there! Wow! But, you need to search it for yourself and select settings for yourself. Once again, before this, I write in Visual Studio – and, something, I never think about compile, about syntax, light some keywords method. Everything is works automatic there for me. And, also, a dig – it is very hard and complicated! And, I am as Alice from Wonderland. I touch the mystery. So, these example of feelings from using GVim. For this points, I like a program! I. just. still waits to meet in this program – a rabbit! Kind and funny one!

iron (hardware) and programs. From time to time i restore computers, retro computers. Try retro soft. Check some programs. And write about all of these. Dima Link is making retro videogames, apps, a little of music, write stories, and some retro more.

WEBSITE: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html ITCHIO: https://dimalink.itch.io/

BLOGGER: https://dimalinkeng.blogspot.com/ TUMBLR: https://dimalink.tumblr.com/

[archivewriter1ont]

20 Fic Writer Questions

I saw this and it said “whoever has AO3” so I assume I can join in, maybe? I’m so new to all of this social media stuff and even the SW fandoms!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

36 (since May 2024)

2. What's your A03 word count?

137,911

3. What fandoms do you write for?

The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch (I've got unpublished stuff for Leverage and the Librarians but it's not postable yet and likely never will be.)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

A Tale of Two Snarks: Echo and Crosshair (9,089 words)

I Know Your Name as My Brother: Adopting Echo (25,972 words)

Echo and the Cadet Batch (8,284 words) (WIP, updated on Wednesdays)

Safe Place (11,063 words)

You're an Idiot (But You're Ours) (1,797 words)

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don’t think I have a ton of angsty endings... I try to end everything off on a good/comforting/happier note.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Adopting Echo! Or maybe A New Hope or First Word... I can’t decide! I love fix-it happy endings with the reunited Batch on Pabu.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Thankfully I don’t! Most comments people leave have me grinning, giggling, or kicking my feet (sometimes all of the above).

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Nope. Nada. Zilch.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Not yet... That’s when we start getting into that Librarians and Leverage territory. Christian Kane’s characters are so good in both of them, but it’s difficult to decide on the mechanics of a crossover. 

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of, thank goodness!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I'm aware.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I’ve done some collaborating with my sister on a few but nothing to the point of being cowritten. Some of the bigger ones we have planned may require it though!

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Canon? Tech/Phee!! ♥️ 

Headcanon? Commander Cody/Riyo Chuchi. Rare pair, I know, but once I had that thought I can’t get it out of my head! He’s competent, she’s competent: he’s two hundred-ish pounds of walking tank and she’s a little spitfire who has zero issues stating her opinion, no matter how unpopular. I’m working on a fic starring these two but work/writing/life balances are making it difficult. 

15. What's a WIP you'd like to finish but doubt you ever will?

I plan to finish all of them! 😁 The one that will probably take the longest, though, is a novelization of the four TBB episodes in CW season 7. There’s so much to touch on and explore.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'm still polishing up pretty much everything since I used to mainly write nonfiction and that's so different from writing fiction, but if I had to pick one I'd probably say sibling interaction. I feel a kind of similarity to the Batch in some ways because I'm also tactile and very clingy. Being a twin informs a lot of the hurt/comfort or just plain comfort scenarios I like to write.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Definitely endings and beginnings.🤣 If I write the ending out before the rest of the fic, I'm usually okay, but crafting the beginning line always seems to take longer than everything else!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

If I have a good translator program I don't mind. I haven't done a lot with that in my nonfiction, but I am using a ton of Spanish in a novel I'm currently working on.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The Bad Batch!

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

It's a 3-way tie between the ongoing Protect Them series, Adopting Echo, and Cadet Batch.