An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
âIf a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?â Quickly, Ilya adds, âDonât say that you want to know if you win the Cup.â
âWhy not? What if thatâs my answer?â
âIs so boring, Hollander. Of course you want to know this. But Ilya Rozanov and Boston Raiders exist in this world, so crystal ball says, so sad, but no.â
âFuck off. What are these questions even for, anyway? Are you interviewing me for something? Wouldnât you have to, like, tell me if you were?â
Ilya is quick to assure Hollander before his paranoia takes him right out of this phone call. âIt is not for interview, Hollander. I am just wondering. Answer the question.â
âAnd I canât say that I would want to know whether I win the Cup.â
âYes, other than that.â
âI guess⊠I guess I would want to know, like, am I happy?â
Have some crack treated seriously! This is a silly idea I came up with while procrastinating two (!!) other WIPs I have in the air. Fans of the column/podcast Modern Love will maybe get a kick out of this one.
On Saturday I said to my partner, as I have said for months, "A ten thousand dollar a year raise would solve so many of my problems."
As of this morning I was reluctantly looking for jobs because I love my job and don't want to leave it, but see: $10k raise problem solver.
As of noon today this was no longer an issue, because my boss called me with the news that I was getting a $10K merit raise.
I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. This is roughly $200 extra per paycheck. Enough to pay off debt faster, rebuild my savings, and spend a weekend a month in Milwaukee getting obscenely laid. The sex I'm going to have on $200 extra per paycheck. You can't even.
May all of you get the $10K raise your soul has yearned for. And whatever level of sex you can be satisfied with for $200.
I'm 42. If you are writing about someone in their early 40s and would like a reference on what that actually looks/feels like, I would love to assist. Please stop writing 40 year olds like we're 97. Some of my friends have no gray hair yet and most of us are still pretty wrinkle free. We have kids in a wide range of ages, but they're only college age if we had them in our early 20s. My kid is 11 (nearly 12).
Your 40s generally speaking (everyone's experience is obviously different) is more like your 30s plus a little extra aging and more IDGAF-itis which I've been assured only comes in more strongly with your 50s.
Hey so I really love your writing and genuinely have a great day whenever I see an update but I am honestly really disappointed about your take on the whole AI situation. The document that was shared explicitly showed leftover html artifacts from Claude after directly copy pasting into Ao3. Finding that in a work takes the misgivings people had about certain fanworks and confirms them beyond a doubt. For "authors" whose works have these artifacts and who lied about their use, that seems like a very real problem to me... AI is infiltrating every aspect of our lives without our consent. Now even fic authors are using genAI and not disclosing it, effectively resulting in me reading AI in fics without having consented to that. I am deeply ethically opposed to AI for multiple reasons, one among them being the direct harm it is doing to communities.
It's insulting that you would suggest my anger toward authors who blatantly lied and gaslit is somehow a misuse of my energy, especially when I consider my real-world activism inherently tied to my stance on genAI and frankly my stance on AI as a whole. The notion that we cannot ever know for sure if literature is genAI feels very much like something that the owners of LLMs want us to believe in order to force us to accept genAI as commonplace and inevitable in art. I don't know about you, but I think actively fighting against what Sam Altman and Peter Thiel want to be a noble cause, especially as it seems even trad media is crumbling to this narrative despite the measurable, real world harm we are seeing.
When people come into fanspaces and use it, I have to wonder to what end. I don't think that fic prompters using genAI are actively invested in degrading our reading comprehension and critical thinking. I do wonder if the writing is exclusively for the love of the fandom, though. We know a majority of readers actively avoid fic that is tagged AI Assisted and I think a lot of these authors know exactly what will happen to their engagement if they are honest from the get go. Lying about using AI is literally the only option (reddit forums confirm this is what they do and encourage others to do) and that is pretty despicable in my opinion.
Maybe you can see what I am trying to say here?
Brick by Brick continues to bring me lots of joy. Thanks for it.
Good morning, Anon.
I apologize for implying that everyone involved in this big outing post isn't a real life activist. That was not a fair assumption and came from a place of deep upset. I wish you the best in your work. I understand if my fanfic is ruined for you because of this take and I'm sorry for that too. You can stop reading here if you like. The rest of this is not an apology, but an explanation of where I'm coming from and entirely skippable if you're not interested. It's long, so it's under a read more.
I hear your anger, I really do. I want to be clear here that I personally hate AI and have taken great pains to try to keep it out of my life as much as possible. The amount of addons I have in my browser just so I don't see the damn AI summary on google is kind of sickening tbh. Part of my real life job is helping elderly people not get scammed and I am all too aware that AI is making that more and more difficult all the time.
AI is toxic. It's a plague. I hate it with every fiber of my being.
The trouble is that fanfic authors aren't Peter Thiel or Sam Altman. They aren't the enemy, they just aren't. Are they liars? Sure. Does it fucking suck that they've decided to use a machine rather than their own imagination? Absolutely. Do I understand why people are mad? For sure. I get a pit in my stomach every time I read a story and get the sense it's machine-written. But they are still just other normies in this huge ocean of the confusing tide of the internet, not the evil billionaires who have made the use of their products as tempting as the apple in Eden.
Here's what I also understand: I have lived through this before. I have been in fandom for twenty-five years, before tumblr, a near decade before AO3, even before LiveJournal. And what I have seen every time things like this happen is that what started as a fandom thing becomes a real life thing. People who did something stupid on the internet become 'acceptable' targets for people who crave blood. People get death threats, people get doxxed. They lose their jobs, have to explain their fandom presence to family and have real harm done to their actual fucking lives.
It's bad enough when it was anti-shippers who were just assholes. Now it's people who have a real cause. Because we know AI sucks and we all feel shitty when we find out something we love wasn't made by a real mind. So people have righteous anger and that is so so dangerous.
It's already happened in the HR fandom. This isn't theoretical. Peoples real lives have been impacted severely. I'm sorry if this make me a bleeding heart, but I don't think any fandom sin is enough to justify hurting people's lives, mental health, incomes and maybe even safety.
And it isn't even always the guilty. Ok, some of these people used LLM to write their whole work. A pox on them and their hollow crown of kudos. But what about the person who used it to write some code and didn't know? Or maybe even copied someone else's code not knowing they used Claude? They are all equally guilty under the eyes of fandom. They will all suffer equally because there is no court here, there is no lawyer and jury.
And here's the thing: I don't fucking care if someone used AI if it means that five new young authors who didn't never write a damn word because they're terrified of being targeted. If it means that people I like and respect delete their work because they were being harassed or got scared they might be. Innocent people can just have anxiety and not be guilty, but once they've deleted, the assumption will be made.
Fandom is a community. We're all in this together. You cannot have a place free of sin (this time around it's AI, but it has been so many other things) and also a fandom where people feel good about posting their work. It fucking sucks. I wish we could have both. I don't see how we can.
I'm in a very testy mood today, so I'm going to say this:
If people took all the energy they spent into chasing down works they find impure for whatever reason (anti-shipping, 'wrong' kinks, possible AI use) and put that energy into commenting on works they enjoyed, not only would fandom be a better place, but I think they as individuals would actually feel better on a day-to-day basis.
And if that energy went into volunteering or working to better their immediate local community? What a wonderful world it would be.
Gen AI is nothing special I can also draw / write badly, help you with math inconsistently, answer you dubiously, and consume amounts of water you would think are physically impossible
the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
heated rivalry fic: so you must like me for me - COMPLETE, 36K
art by @anonymouspinkturtle
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Summary: Shane wants to figure out if he's gay before he gets draftedâand no, the way he felt when Ilya Rozanov smirked at him with a cigarette between his lips in Saskatchewan has nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, the random guy he hooks up with to try and make sure one way or another takes a picture, and Shane gets outed before the draft. In the ensuing scandal, he goes seventh overall, to Ottawa.
It turns out having the worst thing you can think of happen to you when you're seventeen years old can end up being pretty liberating. And land you an unexpected best friend.
Chapter 1 of 2 on Ao3 HERE
Chapter 2 of 2 on Ao3 HERE
âYou going sevenâis bullshit,â Rozanov replies. âOkay if you go second, because Iâm better than you, but seven⊠fucking bullshit.â
Shane has the âfuck you, youâre not better than meâ on the tip of his tongue but, the thing is, according to at least six MLH GMs, Rozanov is.
And yet, Rozanov looks like heâs deeply offended, like he means what heâs saying, not chirping or bullshitting at all, and that. That heals something in Shane. Theyâve been one and two, back and forth, for at least three years now, and the fact that Rozanov acknowledges it, tooâŠ
âThank you,â Shane says. âItâMontreal told me it was about optics, or whatever. I donât know.â
Rozanov shakes his head quickly, harrumping. âWhat, optics are you suck one dick and canât hold hockey stick anymore? Bullshit. They will all regret, Hollander. Trust me.â
Closer to where you are (is where I must be) [Hollanov][Heated Rivalry]
Chapter One: Doubt is not a pleasant condition (but certainty is absurd)
Chapter Two: if the word doesn't exist, invent it
Chapter Three: Sudden deliriums / And slow tremors
Chapter Four: Paris with all its smoke
Chapter Five: Try to be happy, just to set an example
Chapter Six: Even if happiness forgets you a little bit
Chapter Seven: A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in
Chapter Eight: You who suffer because you love, love still more
Chapter Nine: If you can stay, remain; leave, if you must
Chapter 10: Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats
Chapter 11: The sky was pouring down its gloom upon the dismal, torpid world
Premise: In January 2017, Ilya and Shane stay an extra night in Paris, after an exhibition series brings both of their teams to Europe, then find they can't return back after a volcano in Iceland erupts and grounds all air travel across Europe.
My latest Heated Rivalry WIP. Got the idea for this one while finishing up The Shape of Things We Know, took hold of me, now we're 7 chapters in and I don't exactly know how many it's going to shake out to be. Maybe 10 or 12?
Literally, straight up, my inspiration for writing this fic was how much I wanted another 100k words of Home Economics that took place in just Switzerland. I almost considered writing a direct side fic to that one, because I love Christmas Markets and they were offhandedly mentioned, and I want to seeee that.
But then of course I ended up putting a totally different spin on the basic same premise: what if Ilya and Shane find themselves stuck together in Europe for an indeterminate amount of time? I almost set this in late 2016 Rose Landry era again, but I think I've beaten the Tuna Melt dead horse enough with TSoTWK and I'm satisfied with that. Instead, this one takes place in late January 2017, instead of the All Star Game.
I swear, I don't start out writing fics that end up just being odes to poetry, but then they end up just becoming them anyway. Somewhere around the time I was writing this chapter I realized I was just writing a big ode to Victor Hugo, and I had subliminally set myself up for that in Chapter 4. These two absolutely belong in a Romantic poem, though, they are so gone for each other. No one can do the yearning and codependency justice like Hugo or Baudelaire.
tangentwithtanner
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
gracieabrams
