How can you consider yourself any sort of leftist when you defend AI art bullshit? You literally simp for AI techbros and have the gall to pretend you're against big corporations?? Get fucked
I don't "defend" AI art. I think a particular old post of mine that a lot of people tend to read in bad faith must be making the rounds again lmao.
Took me a good while to reply to this because you know what? I decided to make something positive out of this and use this as an opportunity to outline what I ACTUALLY believe about AI art. If anyone seeing this decides to read it in good or bad faith... Welp, your choice I guess.
I have several criticisms of the way the proliferation of AI art generators and LLMs is making a lot of things worse. Some of these are things I have voiced in the past, some of these are things I haven't until now:
Most image and text AI generators are fine-tuned to produce nothing but the most agreeable, generically pretty content slop, pretty much immediately squandering their potential to be used as genuinely interesting artistic tools with anything to offer in terms of a unique aesthetic experience (AI video still manages to look bizarre and interesting but it's getting there too)
In the entertainment industry and a lot of other fields, AI image generation is getting incorporated into production pipelines in ways that lead to the immiseration of working artists, being used to justify either lower wages or straight-up layoffs, and this is something that needs to be fought against. That's why I unconditionally supported the SAG-AFTRA strikes last year and will unconditionally support any collective action to address AI art as a concrete labor issue
In most fields where it's being integrated, AI art is vastly inferior to human artists in any use case where you need anything other than to make a superficially pretty picture really fast. If you need to do anything like ask for revisions or minor corrections, give very specific descriptions of how objects and people are interacting with each other, or just like. generate several pictures of the same thing and have them stay consistent with each other, you NEED human artists and it's preposterous to think they can be replaced by AI.
There is a lot of art of the internet that consists of the most generically pretty, cookie-cutter anime waifu-adjacent slop that has zero artistic or emotional value to either the people seeing it or the person churning it out, and while this certainly was A Thing before the advent of AI art generators, generative AI has made it extremely easy to become the kind of person who churns it out and floods online art spaces with it.
Similarly, LLMs make it extremely easy to generate massive volumes of texts, pages, articles, listicles and what have you that are generic vapid SEO-friendly pap at best and bizzarre nonsense misinformation at worst, drowning useful information in a sea of vapid noise and rendering internet searches increasingly useless.
The way LLMs are being incorporated into customer service and similar services not only, again, encourages further immiseration of customer service workers, but it's also completely useless for most customers.
A very annoyingly vocal part the population of AI art enthusiasts, fanatics and promoters do tend to talk about it in a way that directly or indirectly demeans the merit and skill of human artists and implies that they think of anyone who sees anything worthwile in the process of creation itself rather than the end product as stupid or deluded.
So you can probably tell by now that I don't hold AI art or writing in very high regard. However (and here's the part that'll get me called an AI techbro, or get people telling me that I'm just jealous of REAL artists because I lack the drive to create art of my own, or whatever else) I do have some criticisms of the way people have been responding to it, and have voiced such criticisms in the past.
I think a lot of the opposition to AI art has critstallized around unexamined gut reactions, whipping up a moral panic, and pressure to outwardly display an acceptable level of disdain for it. And in particular I think this climate has made a lot of people very prone to either uncritically entertain and adopt regressive ideas about Intellectual Propety, OR reveal previously held regressive ideas about Intellectual Property that are now suddenly more socially acceptable to express:
(I wanna preface this section by stating that I'm a staunch intellectual property abolitionist for the same reason I'm a private property abolitionist. If you think the existence of intellectual property is a good thing, a lot of my ideas about a lot of stuff are gonna be unpalatable to you. Not much I can do about it.)
A lot of people are suddenly throwing their support behind any proposal that promises stricter copyright regulations to combat AI art, when a lot of these also have the potential to severely udnermine fair use laws and fuck over a lot of independent artist for the benefit of big companies.
It was very worrying to see a lot of fanfic authors in particular clap for the George R R Martin OpenAI lawsuit because well... a lot of them don't realize that fanfic is a hobby that's in a position that's VERY legally precarious at best, that legally speaking using someone else's characters in your fanfic is a much of a violation of copyright law as stright up stealing entire passages, and that any regulation that can be used against the latter can be extended against the former.
Similarly, a lot of artists were cheering for the lawsuit against AI art models trained to mimic the style of specific artists. Which I agree is an extremely scummy thinbg to do (just like a human artist making a living from ripping off someone else's work is also extremely scummy), but I don't think every scummy act necessarily needs to be punishable by law, and some of them would in fact leave people worse off if they were. All this to say: If you are an artist, and ESPECIALLY a fan artist, trust me. You DON'T wanna live in a world where there's precedent for people's artstyles to be considered intellectual property in any legally enforceable way. I know you wanna hurt AI art people but this is one avenue that's not worth it.
Especially worrying to me as an indie musician has been to see people mention the strict copyright laws of the music industry as a positive thing that they wanna emulate. "this would never happen in the music industry because they value their artists copyright" idk maybe this is a the grass is greener type of situation but I'm telling you, you DON'T wanna live in a world where copyright law in the visual arts world works the way it does in the music industry. It's not worth it.
I've seen at least one person compare AI art model training to music sampling and say "there's a reason why they cracked down on sampling" as if the death of sampling due to stricter copyright laws was a good thing and not literally one of the worst things to happen in the history of music which nearly destroyed several primarily black music genres. Of course this is anecdotal because it's just One Guy I Saw Once, but you can see what I mean about how uncritical support for copyright law as a tool against AI can lead people to adopt increasingly regressive ideas about copyright.
Similarly, I've seen at least one person go "you know what? Collages should be considered art theft too, fuck you" over an argument where someone else compared AI art to collages. Again, same point as above.
Similarly, I take issue with the way a lot of people seem EXTREMELY personally invested in proving AI art is Not Real Art. I not only find this discussion unproductive, but also similarly dangerously prone to validating very reactionary ideas about The Nature Of Art that shouldn't really be entertained. Also it's a discussion rife with intellectual dishonesty and unevenly applied definition as standards.
When a lot of people present the argument of AI art not being art because the definition of art is this and that, they try to pretend that this is the definition of art the've always operated under and believed in, even when a lot of the time it's blatantly obvious that they're constructing their definition on the spot and deliberately trying to do so in such a way that it doesn't include AI art.
They never succeed at it, btw. I've seen several dozen different "AI art isn't art because art is [definition]". I've seen exactly zero of those where trying to seriously apply that definition in any context outside of trying to prove AI art isn't art doesn't end up in it accidentally excluding one or more non-AI artforms, usually reflecting the author's blindspots with regard to the different forms of artistic expression.
(However, this is moot because, again, these are rarely definitions that these people actually believe in or adhere to outside of trying to win "Is AI art real art?" discussions.)
Especially worrying when the definition they construct is built around stuff like Effort or Skill or Dedication or The Divine Human Spirit. You would not be happy about the kinds of art that have traditionally been excluded from Real Art using similar definitions.
Seriously when everyone was celebrating that the Catholic Church came out to say AI art isn't real art and sharing it as if it was validating and not Extremely Worrying that the arguments they'd been using against AI art sounded nearly identical to things TradCaths believe I was like. Well alright :T You can make all the "I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a catholic" legolas and gimli memes you want, but it won't change the fact that the argument being made by the catholic church was a profoundly conservative one and nearly identical to arguments used to dismiss the artistic merit of certain forms of "degenerate" art and everyone was just uncritically sharing it, completely unconcerned with what kind of worldview they were lending validity to by sharing it.
Remember when the discourse about the Gay Sex cats pic was going on? One of the things I remember the most from that time was when someone went "Tell me a definition of art that excludes this picture without also excluding Fountain by Duchamp" and how just. Literally no one was able to do it. A LOT of people tried to argue some variation of "Well, Fountain is art and this image isn't because what turns fountain into art is Intent. Duchamp's choice to show a urinal at an art gallery as if it was art confers it an element of artistic intent that this image lacks" when like. Didn't by that same logic OP's choice to post the image on tumblr as if it was art also confer it artistic intent in the same way? Didn't that argument actually kinda end up accidentally validating the artistic status of every piece of AI art ever posted on social media? That moment it clicked for me that a lot of these definitions require applying certain concepts extremely selectively in order to make sense for the people using them.
A lot of people also try to argue it isn't Real Art based on the fact that most AI art is vapid but like. If being vapid definitionally excludes something from being art you're going to have to exclude a whooole lot of stuff along with it. AI art is vapid. A lot of art is too, I don't think this argument works either.
Like, look, I'm not really invested in trying to argue in favor of The Artistic Merits of AI art but I also find it extremely hard to ignore how trying to categorically define AI art as Not Real Art not only is unproductive but also requires either a) applying certain parts of your definition of art extremely selectively, b) constructing a definition of art so convoluted and full of weird caveats as to be functionally useless, or c) validating extremely reactionary conservative ideas about what Real Art is.
Some stray thoughts that don't fit any of the above sections.
I've occassionally seen people respond to AI art being used for shitposts like "A lot of people have affordable commissions, you could have paid someone like $30 to draw this for you instead of using the plagiarism algorithm and exploiting the work of real artists" and sorry but if you consider paying an artist a rate that amounts to like $5 for several hours of work a LESS exploitative alternative I think you've got something fucked up going on with your priorities.
Also it's kinda funny when people comment on the aforementioned shitposts with some variation of "see, the usage of AI art robs it of all humor because the thing that makes shitposts funny is when you consider the fact that someone would spend so much time and effort in something so stupid" because like. Yeah that is part of the humor SOMETIMES but also people share and laugh at low effort shitposts all the time. Again you're constructing a definition that you don't actually believe in anywhere outside of this type of conversations. Just say you don't like that it's AI art because you think it's morally wrong and stop being disingenuous.
So yeah, this is pretty much everything I believe about the topic.
I don't "defend" AI art, but my opposition to it is firmly rooted in my principles, and that means I refuse to uncritically accept any anti-AI art argument that goes against those same principles.
If you think not accepting and parroting every Anti-AI art argument I encounter because some of them are ideologically rooted in things I disagree with makes me indistinguishable from "AI techbros" you're working under a fucked up dichotomy.
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Hey!, I just finished rewatching moon knight and now scrolling through the moon knight tags when I came across a post about how Mr knight is actually Marc Spector and Steven Grant is a playboy billionaire in the comics and I was shook. Then I came across your post of you ranting about the differences from the show to the comics, which blew my mind!, and now I’m so intrigued and curious about the true lore of moon knight, every time I try to search about it on google I just get references from the shows (so frustrating) I can’t afford to buy the comics, so if you can/want could you please tell me all the important and interesting facts/lore that’s in the moon knight comics?
Sorry for the long message, just came across your page and pressed follow, love your content!. ❤️
AAAAAAGGGGHHHH HOLY SHIT. HOLY SHIT. GIIGLING AND KICKING MY FEET IN THE AIR. HEY, LOOK MA, I MADE IT!! I GET TO EXPLAIN THE MOON KNIGHT COMICS LORE TO SOME GUY ON THE INTERNET!!
in all seriousness, this made my day. I'm so glad you enjoy my content, and I will happily explain to you the MK lore!
I completely get you on the not wanting to but the comics thing. Comics are expensive. Honey, imma be real with you, readcomiconline.li is where it's at. It's where I read all of the comics I didn't have.
So before I go on a tangent and explain things, and this goes for anyone wanting to start reading the comics, heres a little list of all the comics I've read so far in what I understand to be chronological order.
It's a little bit cheesy and a VERY long run, but Marc Spector: Moon Knight from 1989-94 is maaayybbeee where you want to start off, but maybe not. I didn't start off with this run, but even as bad as the old comics are, they're a bit important.
But, I HIGHLY suggest you start out with the Lemire and Smallwood run from 2016. It was the first run I completed, and it's an amazing run and VERY important to read. Many people say it's the best run. It's certainly a run, I'll tell you that. ( Also I didn't read that one online, I received it last year as a Christmas gift. Also readcomic doesn't have all of the issues, so be warned on that. )
Next I read From The Dead. And I moved on to Vengeance of The Moon Knight from 2009. And after I'd suggest reading Age of Khonshu, Devils Reign and then The Midnight Mission. You can read all of these for free on readcomiconline.li ( don't type in comics plural because it will direct you to the wrong site ) be warned though because there are a lot of ads and you will get jumpscared by anime boobies.
~~
Now moving onto what you asked me for. The important stuff, right.
I'm new to this whole comic reading stuff as well, and for anyone else reading this who knows more than I do, please add additional information I missed down in the reply section. It would mean a lot. So now I'm going to give a you a quick run down on Marc's origin story. ( And for a quick disclaimer, I will come off as not taking myself seriously in some parts of this post because I don't take myself seriously lol. )
Marc Spector was born on March 9th, 1987 in Chicago Illinois into a Jewish family. His father was Elias Spector and his mother was Wendy Spector ( his younger brother being Randall Spector )Elias was a rabbi who manged to escape Nazi prosecution during the days of Hitler and all that jazz. Because Elias was a rabbi, Randall would get picked on at school a lot, and Marc would be there to stand up for him. Even at a young age Marc was exposed to a lot of violence. That could come from growing up yk... Kinda poor and having to stand up for your lil bro.
Marc's violent nature was really born when a close family friend of his, Yitz Perlmen was discovered to be a secret serial killer who targeted Jews. From what I understand, Perlmen tried to Kill Marc ( mind you Marc was like 11 or 12 ) but Marc had escaped but his traumatic experiences led him to form D.I.D
As seen in the Lemire run, the first time Marc had encountered Khonshu was when he was 12 and was getting diagnosed for his D.I.D Marc wasn't told to his face from the doctor about his disorder and was told to step outside the office. Marc tried to evesdrop on the conversation, and from outside of the doctor's office, he meets Khonshu. Khonshu tells him, " That man in there is not your true father. I am. " Mind you, Marc is 12!!! 12!!!! Khonshu began manipulating Marc since he was twelve because he was, obviously really fucking young, and traumatized. Khonshus tactics were to strip Marc away from his religion and culture and make him submit to him.
So anyways, Marc was sent to Putnam Psychiatric Hospital and would stay there until he was 18 when his father funeral came along and he was let go for a week to go visit his family. This is where we learn Marc's relationship with his father was complex. Marc tells his mother, Wendy, that his father must have been happy to send him away because he was embarrassed by him. Wendy and Marc have an argument, which ends in Marc saying he's going to the bathroom, when he actually leaves to his childhood bedroom and escapes out the window when he hears Khonshus voice.
Marc later enlisted into the U.S marines Corps and served as a private for a couple years. But on Marc's second tour to Iraq, superiors started to report his odd behavior and they found out that Marc had lied about his disorder, leaving him to be discharged. Marc joined the CIA and served with his brother Randall. Randall was jealous of Marcs talents and killed Marc's girlfriend, Lisa, because she was going to expose a gun scheme. Marc then like... Threw bombs at Randall and shit and then assumed he was dead...but he wasn't.
Marc left the CIA after that and started doing illegal boxing, where he met his soon to be best friend, Jean-Paul Duchamp ( usually refered to as Frenchie ) and they became mercenaries together and started killing a bunch of people, in Marc's case, for mooonnneeyyy!!! Get that bag, girlie. And then Marc got put on trial for war crimes!! His crime being yk...assistanting the president of this south African country called Bosqueverde as one does.
And then he started to do missions under this group call the Karnak Cowboys and fell in love with one of his groupmates, Layla El-faouly, as seen in later issues of The Midnight Mission. Then she fucking died when an escape went wrong.
So anyways Marc meets this funny lil guy named Raoul Bushman ( he is not funny lil guy, he's killed hundred of people, probably) So Marc works for him with Frenchie and they, together, set to north Sudan to raid a dig site. ( This should start to sound familiar, as it was briefly touched on in the show when Arthur's guys captured Steven and put cuffs on him and slammed him in the back of their car ) Looks like raid shadow legends went down again, and things started to get not so epic when Raoul killed the lead Archeologist of the dig site, Peter Alraune in front of his daughter Marlene. This pissed the ever loving shit out of Marc because even though Marc likes violence, he doesn't enjoy violence against innocent people, and so he punches the fucker but uh oh! The Raoul Bushman Strikes Back, and he fucking KILLS MARC IN RETURN AND EVERYONE ELSE EXPECT FOR FRENCHIE AND MARLENE AND THIS ONE MF WHO TOLD HIM HE WOULD TELL HIM WHERE THE DIG SITE WAS. ( really Raoul left Marc mortally wounded, but he was on the brick of death, basically)
Marc was able to regain conscious and drag himself halfway to Khonshus tomb ( which is what Raoul was looking for ) Marlene and a bunch of other citizens find Marc and they carry him to Khonshus tomb. Marc hears Khonshus voice for yet another time, and Marc is revived and becomes the Moon Knight we all know and love. Then he basically killed Raoul's guys and then fell in love with Marlene.
So that's his origin story. Now onto the stuff I know as fact but it won't be explained in chronological order because I haven't read a ton of comics to explain it in chronological order.
He used Steven as a a way to handle money and build wealth so they could have recourses like vehicles, weapons and a ton of other random bullshit ( go!! ) that they don't need. Jake was used as a new York taxi driver so that he had his eye in the streets and knew when shit was goin down. They're both kind of horny. Jake literally spends some of his free time in a strip clubs drinking rum. ( As seen in the midnight mission and implied on in the Lemire run. )
His relationship with Marlene was long, but didn't last because, if I'm recalling correctly, Marc had a mental breakdown and decided to basically stop working for Khonshu so he could be with Marlene. But soon after he started hearing Khonshus voice again and Marlene couldn't take anymore of it, so she left him.
And then there's that bullshit with The Midnight Man. All I know is that he passed away from cancer and had a son named Jeff Wilde. Jeff aspired to Marc and wanted to be his sidekick, kind of like Robin and Batman in the Lego Batman movie with a little less adoption, but Marc kept on refusing as a way to protect Jeff. The Jeff had this whole thing where he turned evil or some shit idk and I guess Marc killed him? I'm not sure. Please, moon knight gang, let me know what happened in the reply section because I'm ignorant.
Marc had his independence from Khonshu after banishing Khonshu to Asgardian Prison ( seen in Age of Khonshu and discussed in The Midnight Mission) and decided " fuck you, I don't need need you anymore. Imma do my own thing and you can't do nothing about it " and then he became Mr. Knight. Mr. Knight is kind of a detective and he consults with policemen ( as seen in From The Dead ) Moon Knight is the one who does all the fighting.
From where Marc's development is at right now, Marc was running a thing called the Midnight Mission, which was a place where citizens would go to to report strange things happening in the city.
Additional, fun information:
Marc has a daughter named Diatrice. He only knows about it because Jake had a secret relationship with Marlene on the side after Marc and Marlene broke up.
He sleeps all day in the tomb of Khonshu and fights crime at night. He's like a bat!!
His ringtone ( as seen in the midnight mission) is The Killing Moon by Echo and The Bunnymen. ( Y'all should listen to it, if you haven't. it's really good. ).
He drives a red convertible car ( as seen in the Brain Micheal Bendis run, don't read it it's REALLY bad and insufficient. ) and also a motorcycle ( as see in Vengeance of The Moon Knight)
He was originally supposed to fight mainly just werewolf's and um... Writers at Marvel had different ideas.
His favorite drink is an ice cold vodka ( as seen in the Midnight Mission)
He had a mansion and then his money went bye bye and now he lives in a haunted house ( as seen, once again, in the Midnight Mission)
Frenchie is also gay! Hes married to a man named Rob! ( And this is only from what I've heard, by he apparently had a secret crush on Marc at some point.)
And yeah. That's all I have for ya today. Thank you if you made it this far, and I hope I was able to satisfy your curiosity a little bit!
Goodknight everyone!!!
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WIP ask game: "backflip, faceplant", please! (also what's your ao3 handle? if you got one/don't mind/other)
Backflip, faceplant! Of all of these working titles, this is the one I think might work best as an actual title. It’s fun to say—imagine me tilting my head one way and then the other as I say it—and more importantly it doesn’t require a full six-degrees-of-kevin-bacon word association game to make sense to a viewer outside my head: it’s what happens in the first scene of the fic.
Essentially, this is my Dick Grayson character exploration, turned sort of emotional fix-it. Dick gets kicked around so consistently in canon that he often doesn’t actually have the opportunity to live up to the Eldest Daughter characterization fandom loves to give him, and I am in the fashion of comics fans everywhere creating my own timeline mishmash to allow for a different outcome.
What if before Jason died, Dick had managed to carve out a little space separate from his anger with Bruce, for the foundations of the brotherly relationship we all want them to have? What if the first time he laid eyes on Tim, Dick turned a piece of his grief for Jason into determination to grow an even better brotherly relationship with him? And what if Dick’s choice to grow those relationships had knock-on effects all the way down the line?
Featuring such highlights as: Tim and Babs conspiring to make sure Dick is never without backup in Bludhaven, professionally emotionally and otherwise; brain-scrambled Jason still pretty much autopilot adopting Damian in Nanda Parbat because when a kid falls over in front of you, you pick them the fuck up; ongoing ‘who can spill punch on the worst gala guest’ competitions between the Foxes and Waynes (surprise winner Kate Kane); the Titans and the Teen Titans and Timmy’s Weirdass Friends Too all working together better and more often; me rejecting p much everything New 52 except Strix, Strix can stay; a gargoyle with Dick Grayson’s perfect butt being commissioned for the Gotham Belltower as a loving and heartfelt tribute to everybody’s best big brother.
I’m just writing whatever nonsense makes me happy with no regard to pacing, so it's gotten pretty sprawling—past sprawling, really, probably if I were going to post it up, I'd have the main story as one work and then a second work with multiple chapters of excerpted scenes—but it’s emotionally rewarding and an excellent thought exercise for me trying to decide what parts of DC’s bonkers-ass timeline(s) I think are important.
Crime Alley natives only respond well to respect, and they never feel comfortable unless they’ve got the advantage. Dick settles at the edge of the mat, dropping into an easy flat-footed squat, eye-level with the kid. The kid immediately stands up from his crouch, and Dick doesn’t smirk, just tilts his head up to keep meeting his eyes.
“That was a good tumble.” The kid’s looking for a lie, but he won’t find one. He’d landed on his face in the end, sure, but he’d fallen well. “You’ve got good balance, got reach—great instincts, which is more important. Once you get the footwork down, you’ll be set.” Dick, looking up into those suspicious eyes, realizes as he says it exactly how true it is. It’ll be tricky, walking the line between Crime Alley and Bruce’s particular brand of do-goodery, but once the kid gets his feet underneath him, he’ll be amazing.
Well. Nothing else for it, really. There’s nobody better at finding a tricky balance point than Dick.
“Here, let me show you.”
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