CoCh

My shuake mini zine is up! Read the rest in the zine.

It’s free for download so don’t feel pressured to pay.

I normally would have made a post of it, but Tumblr only allows 10 images and I’m 3 pages over.

Thanks always for your kind words by the way.

Anyway, I hope you like it even though summer is over! I mean, with global warming, summer never seems to be over.

Some people might be fuming and frothing at the mouth already, but the verdict is out.

What I don’t see is why people find it so difficult to accept this fact. After all, they’re quick to admit that TikTok makes you stupid—a claim backed by studies, by the way.

Part of it is that “stupid” can be rather a strong word for some people. It feels permanent and stigmatizing. If I were to be a bit nicer with my words, I’d say ChatGPT harms your cognitive fitness. It dulls your ability to read, analyze (LLMs are not reasoning machines), and form coherent thoughts. I also find the “instant gratification” element of it rather concerning, but this might be a topic for another day. The point is that just as never working out reduces your physical fitness, not exercising your brain and generating answers and content hurts your cognitive fitness. It really shouldn’t be difficult to see why. If I skip leg days, my quad muscles would eventually grow weaker and smaller.

Here is where most people say, “Oh, I’m not against AI! In fact, AI can be awesome if you use it the right way blah blah blah!”

You know what? I’m not going to say it. Someone has to say that what they call AI—which I think is a greatest misnomer—right now kinda sucks for the planet and every living thing on it. The only instance where I think ChatGPT can be sort of helpful is when someone is trying to code. Even this is despised by many mid-level and senior developers who have to deal with bullcrap put out by ChatGPT that their juniors keep turning in. Another possible application of this crap machine is when you have to write a groveling email to someone you don’t care about.

The problem is that none of these cute perks justify products that guzzle energy like some biblical monster. It’s not worth burning up the planet that’s already past boiling point just so some people can code easily—debatable—or write bunch of insincere emails or whatever “smart application” of ChatGPT that people are arguing for.

ChatGPT harms the planet. It also makes you stupid.

There is a culture that tries to scaremonger everyone, especially younger people, to accept and use AI products like ChatGPT. Despite knowing 99 harms it does, people cling onto the hope that there is one upside. I think a significant number of people know consciously or unconsciously, that stuff like ChatGPT is not all that good. But the wider social culture pressures them to “stay open” to “new technological innovations.” Not doing so makes you “fall behind.”

By the way, I always found statements like “blah-blah is here to stay” ridiculous. Facial recognition exists but that doesn’t mean we should agree to governments making it mandatory for all citizens. Likewise, we don’t have to accept ChatGPT as it is now.

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Hi all!

My comic focusing on my experience during the December 3 self-coup in South Korea debuts in Shortbox Comics this October.

It’s a 20 pages of comics + 2 pages of my personal photos from the protests.

아르다코코님을 알게 된 지 반년도 안 되었지만... 그림들이 너무 개성이 넘쳐서 진짜 멋있다고 생각했어요. 처음에 영어로 적혀있길래 외국분이신줄 알았는데 한국분이셔서 이런 멋있는 분이 한국인이구나! 그것도 얼마 안되는 톨키니스트! 라고 생각하면서 정말 기뻐했었어요. 또, 탄핵 시위... 라고 해야 되나? 거기에 직접 나가신 사진 보고 우와 소리가 절로 나왔어요,,, 멋있어요...! (죄송해요 어휘력이 부족해서...!!)

인삿말이 너무 길었죠... 그냥 제가 아르다코코님한테 질문하고 싶었던 건 사실 별거 없긴 해요. 그냥 그 반년이 넘는 시간동안 무슨 일이 있었는지 너무 궁금해서 용기내서 쪽지 보내봐요! 제가 텀블러에서 아르다코코님을 찾았을 때는 이미 소식이 끊긴 상태였으셔서 아쉬웠어요... 그래도 최근에 다시 돌아오신 것 같아서 정말 반가워요!

사실 그냥 질문을 핑계로 아무말 대잔치 쪽지를 보내는 것 같아요... 최대한 예의 바르게 썼는데, 그래보였으면 좋겠어요! 부모님과 선생님께 배운대로 조금 오글거리지만 초반 간단한 자기 소개도 하고... 인터넷상이 아니라 직접 대화하는 것처럼 써보고...

너무 말이 길었죠... 그래도 읽어주셔서 정말 감사해요. 마지막으로, 그림들 잘 보고 있어요! 특히 실마릴리온 관련해서요ㅎㅎ 만화들 정말 재밌어요. 쭉 건강하시면 좋겠어요! (´ｰ｀).｡*･ﾟﾟ

안녕하세요! 포타에서 보고 와주셨군요. 그림 재밌게 봐주셔서 감사합니다 ^//^ 학생분이면 학업땜에 많이 바쁘시겠어요.

반년간 심각한 일(탄핵시위 제외…)은 없었고 그냥 정신이 없어서 그림을 많이 못그렸어요. 어른이 되면 원래 6개월이 2주같고 그렇습니다. 그리고 다꾸도 시작했어요. 재밌네요. 제가 취미가 잡다하게 많은 편입니다. 어이쿠 이렇게 제 연식이… 암튼 남은 하반기동안은 평소처럼 그림도 그리고 만화도 작업하면서 보내려구요.

Thank you for all of your activism and hard work! <3

Been lounging playing Stardew Valley. Penny has been my fav bachelorette since I first played the game years ago though I’d much like to date her mom (I know there are mods, but I’m not too diligent about stuff like that). Playing the game again, I’m more convinced that you should be able to date Pam. I mean, the game lets you date Shane and play out your “I can fix him” story. Shouldn’t there be “I can fix her” option as well? Also, you get Harvey and Elliot if you’re into dating older guys. What if you’re into dating older women? Come on!

I find myself often thinking about how lucky I was to experience the “old internet.” This isn’t to say that things were perfect back then, but anyone who’s old enough to remember how things were in the early 2010’s would agree to some extent that the online space has gotten worse over the years. It’s not just about people being “more genuine”—people have been faking it since the LiveJournal days—or everything being about money—capitalism has been capitalism-ing since day one—but about the pure quantity of shit online. Yes, there were content farms and low-effort memes in the past as well as toxic internet dramas, but there is so much slop now, especially with AI. You can’t even browse through pinterest or enjoy animal photos without questioning if it’s some AI shit. And I’m not sorry if some people like their animal photos fake and generated, but I like seeing genuine photos of pets or wild animals. Once I realize that the image of a cat punching his human is generated, the allure is gone for me.

Hi all, long time no see.

A lot happened (you’d know if you kept up with the international news lol). I’m currently working on a comic about personal experiences after what happened in South Korea last December.

Hi, I’m back.

As some of you would know, the fucker* of a president in South Korea threw a coup.**

*Please understand that I like using concise language. “Incompetent, abominable, murderous dictator wannabe” is rather too long, so I would propose using “fucker” instead.

**Some of you might use the phrase “South Korean martial law,” but please understand that the phrase used by the official Korean press—and quite a lot of foreign presses too, actually—as of today is coup d’etat.

So instead of enjoying my time working on shuake comics and Silmarillion art, I’m constantly checking news and going to protests to pull the fucker down instead.

I’m still working on commercial and personal projects, so there will be art in the future, but this is how things are. I hope I can draw some holiday comics though as I can’t let a little fucking megalomaniac interfere with my art practice.

Anyway, if you feel bummed out by lack of comics, you can quietly say, “Fuck you Yoon Suck Yeol. Give me back my shuake/Tolkien artist.”

A recent OC doodle

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The freelance project I’ve been involved in just got pulled without any warning, so I’m unexpectedly free (and jobless) now. Clearly, it’s not a pleasant thing to suddenly have your source of income vanish, especially in this economy. Still, I kind of feel relieved too. I’ve been working without any legit break since 2021. I guess I had Chuseok and New Year breaks, but those are really short and for 2023 and 2024 I didn’t even get those. It’s not like I worked seven days out of a week, but it wasn’t an awesomely balanced life for sure.

I also hated working on the most recent project (this one Korean romance fantasy novel) so much that I’d go to sleep Sunday night feeling depressed that I’d have to look at that thing again next morning. I mean, some might find it weird that someone might find a novel so stressful, but it was such an… unpleasant work. At times, I found myself wondering how the publishers hoped to sell it to the NA market considering the novel’s rather blatant sexist contents and parts which were, well, slightly racist. And believe me, I’m not the most sensitive reader, so if I find something misogynistic, it is really problematic. If anyone wants an example of how this work was problematic, uh, the author often used attempted sexual assault as a way to show just how attractive and enticing the female protagonist was. And no, this was not an adult title but for general audiences.

That said, I’d really love to go back to teaching in uni. I used to teach drawing and comics before I was drawing commercial art and translating romance fantasy work. Not everyone likes teaching, but I always enjoyed working with students and see them go from nervous to confidently presenting their work at the end of the semester exhibition.