Hey everyone,

First off — 2000 subscribers. That’s honestly is very humbling. Thank you, friends! Especially considering I’m fully aware I’m not the easiest creator to follow.

I’m not one of those neat, predictable guys who just keeps making the same pretty rows of samey characters. I’m chaotic. You might have subscribed for fantasy and then suddenly get ten modern-world bots. You might be here for the and then I hit you with boring Dostoevsky Christian torment. You might want wholesome romance and instead get some silly with huge asses... or some arcane art-house nonsense (no one asked) that makes you wonder about my substance habits. Yeah. That’s just how it is.

Anyway. Today’s news is a bit lame, but I’m trying to deliver it in stoic-informative mode rather than full whining mode (even though I’ve been there before).

As some of you know, a while back Google pretty hard-blocked Gemini access from Mordor (Russia, where I happen to dwell). That was a painful hit. I relied on its generous daily gens a lot for pre-production — refining faces, clothes, items — before putting everything together in the final GPT images.

So I started leaning harder on GPT, kind of milking the free opportunities with a few burner accounts. At moments it felt almost too good, and honestly I had a huge suspicion it wouldn’t last. Obviously I wasn’t the only such smartass. And of course it didn’t last.

I’m in private business myself, so I don’t blame them — I understand how the ledgers work, how you get market share and then monetize. It’s all pretty clear. But our little hustle here it doesn’t help.

Right now GPT (at least with my current VPN setup) only gives me 1 (ONE) free image per day per account. That’s nowhere near enough for the bigger projects, even with endless annoying re-logs for one image (or even prompt refusal). A single character can easily take 10–15 rolls just to lock in her appearance, and action scenes or collages are even hungrier.

Which leaves me with:

• Severely outdated low-resolution Perchance;

• Free Grok’s rather humble 5 or so mediocre gens a day;

• Leonardo, where I can get some lame versions of popular models for a couple of rolls (with censure so heavy that it's almost useless).

So effectively I’m out of business for new bots at the level I’ve been reaching lately (you’ve seen them — pretty art-heavy, and that’s something I genuinely enjoy, maybe even more than the text part).

And yes, in theory I could just post bots the way I did a year ago — simpler art, or a lot less of it. But I feel horrible about that idea. First, it would constantly remind me of my current “downgraded” state and make me miss the previous fun. Second, anyone active on the scene already knows that avatars and art are a huge part of the visibility competition on Janitor these days...

I’m going to try figuring something out and experiment with local models on my PC or ask some of my IRL friends to buy me a sub from the lands of the free and unsanctioned.

But just in case... I might not have much to post while figuring-outing is happening. Don’t assume I’m dead or anything.

Thanks for reading. And thanks for sticking around this long despite the chaos!