Ascendant Lizard, the Pained Pioneer

My day gecko...

Another reel-ified comic, featuring @minamothart again as Gal Famous!

Original comic post:

For the record, I’m not really sure if the maintenance team in my office building checks for stuff like loose toilet seats, but it was driving me crazy so I took matters into my incredibly capable, *experienced* hands.

This feels like the first comic I’ve made that’s actually like, a “comic” comic, as opposed to what these strips have been so far: mostly just stories through my first twenty two months of transitioning, or general concepts that I wanted to express my feelings on.

Like, this story is rooted in a real event, sure, but bringing in Jack and Gal Famous for this makes the strip feel like… a “comic” comic, whatever that means.

Ok, so… “Gal Famous”…

She wasn’t named in her initial appearance, but this was tentatively her name at that point already, and I’d like to credit Fran Sundblad for it. 

When writing that strip, I sent the draft to Fran to ask her opinion.  The character was initially listed in the draft as “Guy”.  Fran said that she was going “to refer to him as ‘Guy Famous’ from now on”.

I really liked that name, and once the character became a lady she was “Gal Famous” to me.

…also I really like drawing her, she’s a fun draw.

Will we see a ton of Jack and Gal Famous moving forward?  Not sure!  My guess is that strips will still often include little vignettes about stuff that happens to me, but when they can be utilized, I’d like to get them involved.

They’re kind of new territory for me, I’m not really a character writer… or like, a “writer” writer…

my girlfriend is making me advertise this visual novel that she worked on for toxic yuri jam even though it honestly reeks and is stinking up the blog.

I have no idea where I was going with this, I was doodling during a conversation

Anyway yeah I'm glad for everyone who's able to ignore their CAGAB but I can't. I'm agender AND transfem, and being transfem affects my daily life in a specific way that I can't detach myself from.

New @whitehouse Update!

Yah know trans people aren't the ones making your bills go up.

This is a bit of a sticking point for me, and it’s such a bummer in so many ways.

I'm Still Alex - Webtoon | Tapas | Linktree | Patreon

I believe art to be a uniquely human endeavor, so anything that’s created by an AI is by definition not art.

It sucks that it steals from artists.  It sucks that artists get put in positions where they are now required to defend themselves against AI use accusations.  It sucks that it’s stealing jobs: draftsmen, voice actors, editors, photographers, videographers, designers, etc.

It sucks that people think writing a prompt that an AI then reads, scans its rolodex of real artists, and spits out a cheap, passionless imitation makes them an artist.

To that last point, the reason that sucks is that AI user is depriving themselves of working on their craft; they’re giving up on their passion, passing the buck to an automated theft machine, then displaying the work as their own.

They’re not just depriving themselves, they’re depriving the world of another artist.  Maybe that person puts the time in, develops the skills of their medium, gets creative, and becomes the artist they want to be.  The world is better with more art in it.

Art is communication.  If you’re letting a machine do that for you, you’ve removed yourself from humanity.  If we let creative AI do our thinking, writing, drawing, etc… what’s left for us?

What’s the point of existing if we outsource the cultural enrichment of the human experience to a computer?

One other thing that sucks is that there are people I respect, some of whom are friends of mine, that do use generative AI for creative work.  It sucks that I’m afraid I’ll have offended them with this strip.

But to anyone offended, I’ll present a counterargument. 

When you use AI to create your art, you’re asking us to do something that you won’t do yourself. 

An AI “artist” asks their audience to give their human care an attention to something that they didn’t put human care and attention into making.