Tag: autobio comics

This Year’s Adventures in AI Ethics

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Out of curiosity, I started experimenting with ChatGPT this semester. There’s not much to say about it, save that it generates stale and flavorless writing that’s easy to recognize once you know what it looks like.

Unfortunately, now that I can recognize text generated by ChatGPT, it’s hard not to see it. It’s also hard not to get my feelings hurt when my students submit work written by ChatGPT. Why would they do me dirty like that?

So I’m not saying that I like ChatGPT. I actually kind of hate it.

Still, the potential for this sort of writing engine is incredible. What if it could work not just as an actually functional grammar checker, but also as a translator between different ways of self-expression? Wouldn’t it be interesting if the model could be developed to “translate” an outline or quickly written sketch of an idea into a piece of writing that was more easily understandable by a broader audience? Wouldn’t it be nice if people who felt embarrassed or otherwise unable to express themselves had a means of putting their thoughts on paper?

I understand how unrealistic it is to think that ChatGPT won’t be abused by bad-faith actors, and I also understand that there’s no point of people in marginalized positions having a voice if the venues where they could be heard are shut down due to AI-generated content spamming. At the same time, I think it’s probably healthy to keep an open mind and be as inclusive as possible when defining who (and what) counts as “human.”

August 2026 Update: I made this post in December 2023, when LLMs had just started to enter mainstream use. I didn’t articulate the point I was attempting to make as thoroughly as I could have, so I think it’s worth adding that I was speaking from the position of someone who supports disability rights and generally wants to give the benefit of the doubt to accessibility aids.

I also now feel more comfortable saying that I was writing in the direct aftermath of the October 7, 2023 event that precipitated the most recent flare-up in Israel’s ongoing colonial aggression against the Palestinian people. What I saw in those two months were people who didn’t speak English as a native language using LLMs to create English-language text in urgent cries for international help. The thought of condemning people for using ChatGPT as a tool to direct attention to severe human rights violations that would shortly escalate into a genocide felt deeply disturbing to me at the time, as it still does today.

Regardless, it has since become clear that the negative consequences of LLMs far outweigh any potential benefits of this technology as an accessibility tool, and it’s almost painful to look back on my earlier optimism, however guarded it may have been. For anyone interested in a more nuanced position, especially with regards to disability, I highly recommend Cory Doctorow’s essay “Pluralistic: The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI,” which can be accessed via the author’s website (here).

Scotland

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

This is a sequel to my “Demonic Women in Fiction” comic.

I think perhaps the most amusing aspect of that comic was how much hate it got on Twitter. I actually had to lock my account for a few days because randos kept popping up and commenting with long lists of every demonic man who has ever appeared in popular culture. Those dudes don’t know me, so they would have no way of knowing this, but I am in fact very familiar with demonic men. I’m even something of a connoisseur, one might say.   

Still, I haven’t read that many m/f romance novels, so I have only recently learned about Scotland.  

I should add that I’m referencing a line from Lucky Penny, a comedy romance (graphic) novel about romance novels. Lucky Penny‘s story is a lot of fun, and the writing is fantastic.

Today’s gender is…

~ Kathryn

…lizard! 🦎

I used to have a pet iguana, and I never learned whether it was a girl or a boy. It was fascinating to me that this beautiful and handsome creature could exist in the world without a gender and be perfectly fine, and I still think that’s neat. I was a weird kid, but I knew what I was about.

My Great Outdoors

~ Kathryn

When I moved to West Philadelphia at the beginning of the pandemic, the neighborhood was a mess. The city sanitation workers were on strike (good for them!!), and trash was everywhere. No one had trimmed the vegetation growing along the sidewalks, and there were all sorts of weeds and flowers pushing their way up from underneath the piles of loose rubbish. Most of the university students and faculty had evacuated the city, and no one was walking around outside to begin with, so the crows and opossums had gotten bold. It was quite nice, actually.

I don’t intend to suggest that there was anything “good” about the pandemic, which was and continues to be a nightmare, but I have to admit that it was still a welcome relief to be able to walk around outside while feeling like I was just another part of nature.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This is a comic I created for the third issue of Nature Held Me Close, a zine about “gender dysphoria and the great outdoors.” Free digital copies of all three issues of the zine are available on its website (here).

Emotional Support Photo

~ Kathryn

Embarrassingly enough, this actually happened to me in 2018.

The one thing I didn’t miss in 2020 was having to go to academic conferences. I’m not crazy about infinite Zoom meetings, but flying across the country to spend two nights in an expensive conference hotel so that I could work sixteen hours in one day wasn’t fun either. I used to love flying when I was younger, but I eventually got to a point where it started to stress me out. If nothing else, it’s nice to be able to take a break from conference travel.

I still use (this photo) to help myself cope with Zoom meetings, though.

School’s Out

~ Kathryn

I’m like this at the end of every semester, but it hits especially hard this year.

It’s tough to get to know a group of interesting and talented people as you watch them learn and grow from week to week, only to then no longer see or talk to (most of) them ever again.

Like An Adult

~ Kathryn

A conversation with a friend reminded me that “self-care” means actually taking care of yourself at work. “Working through the pain” is sometimes necessary in special circumstances, but it shouldn’t be expected, and it definitely shouldn’t be the default.

Sweaty & Upsetty

~ Kathryn

Sweaty & Upsetty is a collection of short comics I posted on Tumblr between 2014 and 2018. Some of these comics are about fandom, and some are about anxiety, but most of them are about the experience of being on the internet as a weird little gremlin. There are also a few comics about my Super Mario Bros. headcanon, which is that Bowser and Princess Peach are not-so-secretly dating.

This zine is twenty pages long, standard half-letter size, and professionally printed by Mixam with a velvet-touch cover and full-color glossy interior pages. It was an experiment in formatting artwork for print, so I only made fifty copies to give to friends. I also dropped off a few copies at my local comic book store in Washington DC, Fantom Comics, and I have three last copies that I’m going to leave at Quimby’s Bookstore when I visit Chicago for an academic conference in late October.

My artwork has improved in leaps and bounds since I started sharing it online five years ago. I don’t think I’ll ever reprint this zine, but I’m looking forward to putting together another comics zine early next year!