Endianness is a topic in computer architecture that can give anyone a headache trying to understand exactly what is happening and why. In the field of computer simulation, it is a pervasive problem that takes some thinking to solve in an efficient, composable, and portable way.
This blog post describes how I am used to working with endianness in virtual platforms, and why this approach makes sense to me. There are other ways of dealing with endianness, with different trade-offs and overriding goals.