This is brills!

More than this thought I really firmly believe Boston was a great place for young Ilya to land. Boston has a fuck-off attitude on the outside that hides a much softer interior, and I think Ilya would fuck heavy with that at eighteen. Sure the downtown is tiny and the suburbs are fucking annoying and the whole city has like a total of three skyscrapers and everything but the exclusive clubs close before 3am but he can be an asshole there and the people will love him and be loyal to him. There’s nightlife, there’s lots of young people, there’s enough of a Russian population that he can find little pieces of home, it’s small enough that it’s not totally anonymous but it’s big enough to get lost in. There’s a cult culture around it that he revels in being a part of. It’s the perfect vehicle for him to party and feel expensive and important in and show off his chirping skills and it lets him bury the sense of inadequacy and the sadness and the loneliness in the glamor of his famous pro athlete life.

But that’s not sustainable. He outgrows what it offers him, especially as his relationship with Shane develops and he starts to dare to dream about something that will last, and he sees through the glamor to the lack of real relationships and meaning in his life. And I think that’s why, in his own retrospect, he never felt grounded there. It gave him what he needed at that stage in his life, but for his own reasons he couldn’t build something permanent there — which is honestly a very core Boston experience, considering the number of students and young professionals who live there for a few years and then move away or to the suburbs.

word count: 1465 words

rating: gen

did you hear? my prompts are open!

fic is based on this gorgeous art by @mina-logan

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It's not fair that the farmers market is in the morning, and it's a downright injustice that Shane insists on being there right when it open at 8 AM. 

That's the only reason why Ilya hauls himself out of bed at 7 AM during the offseason. He downs a cup of coffee before brushing his teeth, then brings a second cup as Shane gets into the driver's seat. 

It isn't until Ilya is three-quarters done with his coffee and they're halfway there that he realizes Shane hasn't spoken a word. His husband is staring resolutely out at the road, squinting against the bright morning sun. The gold light washes out his freckles, catching on the glasses that the doctor told him to wear more diligently, and obscuring his expression. 

Ilya leans forward in his seat so Shane can catch his raised eyebrow. "Shane?"

"Yeah." Shane still keeps his eyes on the road. 

Ilya waits a beat for Shane to say more. When he doesn't, he lets out a soft scoff. "What, did you forget the list, and are going over it in your head?" 

"okay," shane says, after their plan has taken crude shape. the details will come later, after they put their phones down. "okay," he repeats, firmer. then soft again, "I'll see you soon."

ilya feels his strings get cut. he leans against a wall. "see you soon, shane."

svetlana is back in the living room when ilya returns. she whips around on the couch, phone in hand, says, "what the fuck did scott hunter do when I left the room? for five minutes?"

it's a rhetorical question. the tv broadcast has—for now—moved onto highlights of the actual game, but she has her social media open on her phone. ilya makes a vague, loose gesture with his shoulder. "kissed his pretty boyfriend on the ice."

she swears quietly, engrossed again in her feed. "unbelievable. it's your fault I missed it, ilya. your niece's gift is in your suitcase," she adds distractedly. it is. the whale plushie sitting atop the stack of kids' novels sitting atop his serviceably folded clothes. not as neat as hollander's always are. ilya runs his thumb over the edge of his phone case.

"svetlana."

"mm."

"I will not be going to russia."

she breaks from her phone. frowns at him. "what do you mean?"

"I have to be somewhere else."

"where?"

"ottawa."

blinking green eyes. svetlana knows him better than anyone on this planet. he sees her gears turning. there is nothing on the surface of his life that would take him to a place like ottawa, nothing even on the deeper layers svetlana has almost exclusive access to. but there are few things about him that she is completely unaware of. what he has refused to lay bare for her she's deduced the shape of anyway, purely from the nature of his refusals. he sees her eyes flick to the tv. an ad for beer is playing. that's not what she's thinking of.

"is it for a person."

she says more than asks it. either way ilya responds, "yes."

"jane."

"yes."

she lifts her chin, slowly. "montreal jane who is from ottawa." they look at each other, ilya doesn't speak. eventually she shakes her head. "shane hollander, ilya? really?"

So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.

Pro GenAI websites/Programs:

Facebook

Instagram

X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)

Threads

Pro Writing Aid

Grammarly

Duolingo

Google Docs

Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.

Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)

Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.

Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)

Canva Takes and feeds their machine.

Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.

Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.

Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.

Neutral ground:

Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai

Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.

Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).

Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.

Strong positions against AI:

Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.

LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)

Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.

yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.

Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.

Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.

Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.

Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.

Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.

Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.

Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.

Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)

Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.

Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.

Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)

Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.

But you need a pro website...

Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/

Use cloudflare:

Use Nightshade:

https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html

which will poison the algorithm

Use Glaze:

Take Away:

The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.

And why not help that along?

For the fanfic authors who don’t get art of their fics

For the fanfic authors who can’t get to 1000/500/100 hits

For the fanfic authors who don’t get comments/reviews

For the fanfic authors who write for small fandoms

For the fanfic authors who write rarepairs or gen fics

For the fanfic authors who get hate for the ships/characters/fandoms they write

For the fanfic authors who write in English despite it not being their first language

For the fanfic authors who don’t write in English

For the fanfic authors who don’t think anyone reads or likes their work

For the fanfic authors who aren’t big name fans

For the fanfic authors who don’t get requests in their inboxes

For the fanfic authors who can’t write stories that are more than a thousand words

For the fanfic authors who only write one ship

For the fanfic authors who are just starting

For the fanfic authors who have been writing fic for years

For the fanfic authors who use fanfic to practice writing

For the fanfic authors who write self-insert fics

For the fanfic authors who write about their OCs

For the fanfic authors who write to vent or cope

For the fanfic authors who are just waiting for their big break