Art, and why you should still do it yourself.

I just finished working on another post whinging about A.I. and you might well be wondering why I care so much about this specific issue, I don't enjoy whining about things that are pissing me off as much as others seem to. Bizarrely motivating though a good rant often is, it's not something I particularly enjoy doing or want to be known for. 

 

Instead then, with this post I'm going to try and approach it from the other side, talking about the positives of human endeavour rather than the negatives of A.I. As Sir Terry Pratchett once wrote, "Real stupidity beats Artificial Intelligence every time." (Incidentally, he came up with Hex, something extremely similar to modern A.I chatbots, in a book released in 1994.) 

 

When I say "Art" I don't mean just pictures, I mean the umbrella term that means any form of artistic expression. Anything at all, whatever medium speaks to you. Incidentally, I suppose performance art is the one I got two degrees in, but in terms of practice (due largely to opportunity to practice) writing is my main one lately, but I've dabbled in others too. 

 

This speaks less to my being in any way multi-talented than it does to me being indecisive and easily distracted by shiny new ideas. This is the main reason I've never managed to finish a novel despite having at least six works in progress at any given time.

Well, I used a word there I don't like to throw around, "talented." In my experience, when people use that word, they treat the concept of talent as a god-given gift that one either has, or doesn't. You know where I'm going with the next part, this is not the case. Talent, or skill, or whatever you want to call it, is not a gift. It is a reward.

 

Sure, some things come easier to some people, we're all wired towards different things, and where on any given aptitude scale we start out does seem pretty random, But anything you practice, you'll get good at, mobility on that scale is not just possible, it's inevitable. Any given artistic skill you may be honing needs practice like your body needs exercise, 

 

I think people in general are pretty bad at understanding the concept of granular progression, or how quickly improvement can build. It's not exactly an artistic endeavour in itself, but in aid of one day being able to write faster, I am practicing touch-typing as I write this, trying to use all ten fingers on the correct keys. Muscle memory still isn't quite there, but trouble with numbers and using the pinkies aside, I flatter myself I've got to be decent at it. Until last year I was a habitual "claw" typer. index, middle, and thumb for spaces was all I used. my then-max speed of roughly 40 words a minute, is now something I can comfortably match and exceed without really trying. (But good lord was the early going frustrating.) 

 

Thing about that is, I was of the age where this was taught in school, which apparently it no longer is, but I slacked off, fell behind, and while I was still looking down at the keyboard and hunting and pecking with my index fingers, I'd look to my left, and one of my school friends (visually impaired I might add) had a black cardboard covering over his hands to prevent looking down and  words were materialising on his screen at speeds incomprehensible to a tween who hadn't got his head around the concept of practice yet. 

Some people, I think, have trouble getting their heads around learning a skill as opposed to having one, and those that don't universally underestimate how much there is to anything. Separate even from that is the challenge of being mindful of your own progress when surrounded by people to whom you compare inferior. I never cared enough about touch-typing to want to get good at it back at school, and it's only a year or so ago it occurred to me to try. But do you know what taught me the value of putting in the time as well as the creeping nature of gradual improvement? It was Kingdom Hearts.

 I am being 100% sincere. The Disney/Final Fantasy crossover PS2 game about using the power of friendship and a massive key to twat the concept of darkness over the head while Donald Duck refuses to heal you. That Kingdom Hearts. I did write the story under this, but it ended up being really long, so I think I'm just gonna make that its own post. The point of it being though, being denied the ability to cheat my way to beating Ansem, and subsequently, Sephiroth, and having nothing else I felt like doing, I discovered the simple joy of actually putting in the time to make things happen, which, bizarrely for a fan of JRPGs, I had not yet internalised. 

Beating a video game might seem trivial, and it is. But that was the first time I accomplished a goal that took any amount of commitment and continuous effort. (no, I didn't do particularly well in school to that point.) 

 

But this is the point. If all you're interested in, is the result, the product, then I understand why things like generative AI appeal to you, and, with all due respect, I don't think you'd even comprehend how people would see the difference, but the difference is there, and people do see it. 

 If you look at things in, what I've come to refer to as a mechanical way, then the difference between a hand-drawn image and an AI generated one may be very little at first glance, (assuming the AI didn't warp it, which I've seen happen a lot, you can't really get away from this stuff on social media these days.)  But, I've come to realise something about people and specialisation. There's always more to it. I'll repeat that for emphasis. There is always more to it. 

I'm not just talking about art anymore, I could be talking about any area of expertise you could think of. Anything anyone could specialise in. I've also observed that people tend to think anything except their specific specialisation can be automated by AI, and I've come to believe, that they are all wrong. 

 During the 2020 lockdown, I saw this anecdote about Chess floating about that also made me think about this, and I'm gonna paraphrase it for brevity. 

Basically, all else being equal, an adult will beat a 5 year-old at chess, 100% of the time, that same adult will lose 100% of games to an experienced amateur, who will lose 100% of games to a Chess grandmaster. To that Chess grandmaster, that experienced amateur stands the same chance of winning as the 5 year-old: 0. To them, they are the same.

Those layers of expertise can exist in any field. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a real thing, it is entirely possible to not even know enough about a thing, to know how little you know. Would you listen to a five year-old who barged into your office, telling you how to do your job? No? What if that same five year-old told you your job could be done with AI? 

 How the hell would they know, right? 

If you need a different example, former professional basketballer Brian "White Mamba" Scalabrine who, as I understand it (I don't follow basketball, I just heard a story, so forgive me if any of this is wrong.) was one of the lower-tier players in the NBA. He famously did a show called "The Scallenge" where he would go one-on-one with volunteers, who were fairly confident due to his relatively low performance (I stress, for the NBA, which is the point here.) he won all four times, letting only 3 baskets past, and scoring 22 throughout the challenge, coining the immortal line "I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me."

So if you wouldn't listen to the five year-old, what about the adult? The one who doesn't play chess, but would still beat them every time? I'm betting, if they're not in your field, the answer is still no. Because even if you're the experienced amateur in this story, you're closer to that grandmaster than they are to you. 

So the next time you think something is doable by AI (which, famously, is wrong about everything anyway.) Remember that, like ogres, areas of expertise, have layers. 

 Even apart from that though, if I have a wider point to make, it is that the process is the point. No Chess grandmaster thought they'd be one from day one, no expert in any field had it fall into their lap, and it's not a bad thing if you don't understand something,  none of us, know what we don't know. All of us are the 5 year-old in most fields, and the only functional difference between the 5 year-old and the inexperienced adult is knowing that those layers exist. 

 The difference between AI Generated artwork and human-made, may be very little to those who don't care, But to anyone who does, even a little, it's obvious when something was made with care and commitment to craft. Machine learning is impressive, but humans are still undefeated in intuition. Let's not give that up. 

Author Brandon Sanderson (Who I will get around to reading one of these days) gave a talk that he titled "We are the art." He made the point better than I can, or indeed, am currently, that the point of becoming an artist is not to sell art, the point of art, is to turn you into the artist you want to be. 

 The product is incidental, the process is the point. You will be amazed how far you go with practice, and what kind of artist you can become. It's worth the effort. 

How Kingdom Hearts taught me work ethic

So, at time of writing, I'm also writing a separate post called "Art, and why you should do it yourself." and I got into the anecdote you're about to see to make a point about the value of putting in the time. The tale grew in the telling and an aside became a tangent, became the vast majority of the post. I do still think there's value in the story but it was quite a grievous diatribe to be an aside in aid of making a wider point, so I'm giving it its own post, for anyone who doesn't want to read a lengthy anecdote in the last one, as well as anyone who would like to read how I came to appreciate incremental progress.  

 So, without further ado, here's how Kingdom Hearts taught me the value of putting in the time. 

See, when I was but a lad, of the tender age of...I don't remember...not important I guess, I was stuck on the last boss in the story of the original Kingdom Hearts. It was frustrating me, so I went to the Olympus Coliseum to do the last tournament in the hope of getting a level-up or a new weapon to make this a little easier.  

I did indeed acquire both of those things, but what I also gained was access to the gold and platinum matches. (I think, I may have had them before, it's been a while.) I did the gold one without much trouble, so when I hit that last row of question marks in the fight menu, I did so with reasonable confidence, and anyone who has played this game knows exactly what happened next.  

 

The match in question is against Sephiroth, who you may remember from Super Smash Bros Ultimate (and I think he's a Glup Shitto in a Final Fantasy or something, I don't know I don't really follow Sega games)

Poe's law being a thing I feel compelled to clarify that that was of course, a joke. I know Sephiroth is the iconic villain of Final Fantasy VII and I was as awestruck by that fight's intro cutscene as anybody, and when his equally iconic theme music hit, I felt my adrenaline spike. "All right! Let's fuckin' do this!" I said aloud as he slowly approached. 

Then I blinked, and my health was at one. I hadn't expected my newly acquired "Second Chance" ability (that lets you keep a hit point if an attack would otherwise kill you) to come into play so soon after getting it. As soon as I realise what's happened, he's hit me again and I'm out.

 After recovering from the short-circuit that immediate loss had shocked my brain into, I tried again, I lasted exactly as long, even without the element of surprise against me. I don't remember what level Sora was at this point, but I seem to remember it being below 50. I never bothered grinding because new weapons and equipment had always given much more noticeable increases. Following that logic, I went to the internet to seek out the best equipment.

 'Twas there I learned, that the best equipment was only available via item synthesis, a mechanic I had all-but ignored, unless I happened to have the materials on-hand at the time. I then found, that the "ultimate weapons" only become available once you have synthesised at least one of every other thing in the shop. I immediately discounted that as an option, because it would've taken forever.

Two days later at school I borrowed a cheat disc from a friend (remember those?) to cheat my way there on his recommendation after I told him of my humiliation, only to find, that it was one of those PS2 discs that was blue at the back instead of a clear reflective surface. This wouldn't be a problem, but my PS2 of the time was on its way out and no longer read those particular discs for some reason, so that was out. 

 By then it was the weekend and I'd been looking forward to beating Sephiroth and finishing the game, and didn't feel like doing anything else. So I went to the internet, found a guide for where to find the raw materials for each synthesis item, and made use of my PC's DVD drive for background noise. 

By the end of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I'd gained some useful new equipment, but the list was still far from complete. I had, however, started to become invested in the task, there was something oddly calming about the repetitive gameplay with movies in the background. 

After Dodgeball and both Kill Bill movies had run their course, I realised something. Hunting down all of these raw materials, some of which were rare drops, meant going through a lot of heartless, which meant gaining a lot of EXP, I had gone from under level 50, to somewhere approaching 80, and I'd barely noticed. I think I also had better accessories synthesised as well, but can't quite recall. The point being I'd become a good deal stronger.

 I decided to take a break from the synthesis quest in order to see how I did against Ansem, the final boss, who, as mentioned above, I originally went to the arena in frustration after failing to defeat, I once again sat through the now tediously familiar cutscene preceeding the fight, and, to my surprise, swept the beach with his face with relative ease. 

There was another phase or two after that I hadn't seen before, but the following too, was almost anticlimactically easy. I watched the ending cutscenes with a sense of pride and accomplishment the likes of which I was not used to feeling. I thought perhaps I'd call that done, but no, I couldn't just let it end here, I owed someone a rematch.

So, armed with my new appreciation for the value of putting in the time, tempered in good honest grinding and decked out in better gear with a good 30 extra levels, I went back to the arena and...yeah, no, he still dogwalked me, trying to fight him was like trying to wrestle a tornado made of knives.  BUT! I lasted a lot longer that time, it now took him 4 hits to get my health down, 5 to kill me with Second Chance. (I think) Nevertheless though, I was bewildered, at a loss at what precisely I was expected to do.

What followed was several days of headbutting a brick wall. I happened across some strategies to hang in there, and I even managed to damage him enough that it started to show on his health bar, but once he started running instead of walking I just couldn't keep out of reach of his sword. YouTube wasn't something I spent time on at this point, if it existed at all, I'm not sure, if it did it was very new. In any case I wouldn't have thought to look up the fight to see how somebody else did it. GameFAQs was my oracle of choice, but, at least for now, but at this point, looking up a guide felt like admitting defeat. Happily, I never did end up resorting to that, but for now, this fight was beyond me. I returned to the synthesis list, even then I knew that I wasn't closing the stat gap in another 20 levels even if I got there, but perhaps the extra attack power and MP the Ultima Weapon keyblade would give me would allow me a little more versatility in battle. 

 Another Saturday and three Karate Kid movies later, I hit level 100, there was officially no more that EXP could do for me. But there was also another hard limit I'd noticed. I hadn't been doing noticeably more damage for several level-ups now, so just for the sake of comparison, I switched back from the Lionheart Keyblade, to the starting weapon, the Kingdom Key. It seemed to be doing the same physical damage.

 It appeared that there was a hard cap for how much damage one can do in one hit, and I had reached it. How strong the weapon I was using happened to be was no longer relevant. I switched to the Spellbinder Keyblade, which gave me the same 2 extra MP the Ultima weapon would have, and knowing that I was as physically strong as I could be no matter the weapon, I functionally had the same power I would have had I bothered to make the final weapon anyway. 

 

This was it, I was as strong as I was getting with or without the weapon, if I couldn't beat him now, I couldn't beat him. That in mind, I returned to the arena. What followed, was a few more hours of brick-wall headbutting before I developed muscle memory and habits that worked. Even then, he has this attack where he teleports to the other side of the ring, and if you don't get to him and smack him in time, he'll just cast a spell on you that automatically reduces your HP to 1 (rendering second chance pointless) and your MP to 0 so you can't cast magic to heal. Items have a longer use window, and by the time you get hit by it, it's too late to effectively use them because he'll kill you before they take effect. This was often the thing that was undoing me, but then I had an idea.

I'd observed that when one used a recovery item, there would be a short animation where Sora would throw the item up into the air a split second before it takes effect. I had been hit by this spell (which he signals by saying "descend, heartless angel") enough times that I had an idea of the sequence, he teleports, casts the spell, and if you don't hit him before an aura surrounds you, there's no getting out of it, but there is a window of time between that point, and taking the hit. 

 I had just been giving up if that aura got me, because I figured there was nothing I could do about it, but then, once when I tried to use an item to regain health, Sora threw the item up into the air, but he killed me before it took effect. I wondered if I could time an item-use, just right, so that the spell would hit me in that split-second window between use and effect, allowing me to recover. (I would later learn that guides recommend you do exactly this.)

As this was the hardest fight in the game, and the last thing I wanted to do, I saved outside, so as to reload to avoid wasting them, and loaded sora up with every Elixir (very rare healing item that restores you completely) we'd gathered throughout the game, it wasn't many, but it was enough to fill his item slots. It was quite motivating to know that there was a potential way back even if that bullshit spell hit me.

 Over the next several attempts I failed to pre-empt the spell and subsequently failed to get the timing right for the Elixir and died. I was starting to doubt it would work, but then it did. On that attempt, for the first time, I got to phase...3 I think? When he says "I'll lead you to the promised land." (Side note, I don't know who thought that voice suited the character, but Lance Bass from NSYNC gave Sephiroth a very different voice to the one he would have from then on.) and then he proceeded to rock my shit and kill me, everything happened so fast that to this day, I'm not sure what the everything that happened was.

 Attempts during which I lasted long enough to get to that point were rare, but it didn't take me by surprise again. I'd taken to the "Strike Raid" cheese, locking myself into a long animation of repeated throwing attacks during which I could not take damage, this, coupled with Aeroga, allowed me to survive things like Octoslash, and also damage him from a distance. (though as the fight went on, hitting him for damage became less reliable.)  

I don't even know how many attempts it took, over how long a time, that particular context has faded from memory, it was 20+ years ago (Jesus Christ, time is terrifying,) But eventually, after many, many failed attempts, by a sliver of health and a lucky 4-hit combo, I got him.  (the memory of which, as well as the adrenaline I was feeling, seems permanently seared into my brain.) The next few days I experienced another new phenomenon that anyone who's ever finished a really good book will be intimately familiar with. After the comedown, I felt bereft, and didn't know what to do with my free time. I occasionally feel this when I finish a really good book, or any other media that pulls me in.

From that day forward, I've been much less hesitant to put one foot in front of the other, so to speak. It was too late to salvage my schoolwork, but, I did go on to get a BTEC and two degrees, (rawdogging unmedicated ADHD made that a challenge, but I made it) due largely to understanding the one lesson this taught me;

 

There are no shortcuts, if there were, they wouldn't be shortcuts, they'd be the taught method, and there is value in the journey, the process is the point. I've never again shied away from a good grind in a game, in fact, I relish the opportunity to throw on an audiobook, or a podcast, and grind some levels. 

Make time for your art, or hobbies, whatever your medium of choice, and enjoy the process, and the result will be all the sweeter. Don't let life take that joy from you.

5 Ways of Spotting GenAI slop in the wild.

 Regular readers of this page, (if there are, or ever come to be any) will know that I recently became slightly re-obsessed with the Mortal Kombat series of fighting games. that particular hyperfixation is still present, though I feel I might be on the receding end of it. So how is this relevant to the title? I am so glad I imagined you asking that as I type this. 

 

So one night, I was having trouble falling asleep, so I reached to the shelf above my bed and pulled down the Kindle Mum bought me for my upcoming birthday (Bookshelf real-estate is an ongoing problem.) my eyes drifted to the copy of The Legend of Final Fantasy 7 my brother bought me one year which I really should get around to reading, and I then wonder if there's a book anywhere about Mortal Kombat. I see on Kindle Unlimited, there is a beginners user guide, and I think "Ooh, there's probably some tips here I can use to maybe get a bit better in online matches." I'm not a beginner by any means but the fundamentals are, well, fundamental.

 

So right off the bat, this book is obviously written by an A.I, not just that, it pretends to be written by a ten-year fan of MK that doesn't know which is the block button, and proceeds on a foundation of incorrect information that I was not keen to follow the developments of. Aside from being A.I generated, it wasn't even proofread. There were tells and signs that I'll get to, but this was making me actually angry, so I stopped reading and returned the ebook. Then I saw the option to buy it, for actual money. I looked at the author, and they (if they are an actual person) had not disclosed that A.I was used in the creation of these materials, so I suppose I cannot prove it, for that reason, and also not wanting to give this slop farm the oxygen of attention, I'm leaving the name out. 

 

That said, I looked on Amazon and this "author" has 38 books to their name, the first published in late August of 2025 and the latest published on the 25th of November 2025. A little over a month apart, Basically around one book per day. So, either this "author" is the nom de plume of The Flash, or they don't actually author these books. (I'm fairly certain they weren't proof-read either.) And again, the use of AI to write this, incorrect-on-the-basics book, was not disclosed, and these books are available for purchase, for real money.

 

In any other line of work, that would be called fraud. In fact, given how A.I works, in That line of work it's called "plagiarism." I was aware that this was happening, and this particular story is definitely on the more harmless end of A.I Slop horror stories. I heard once of an A.I-generated outdoor survival guide that resulted in someone eating poisonous mushrooms. But it's one thing to know something is happening, it's quite another to see it with your own eyes. 

 

 As someone who wants, and has always wanted, to be a writer. As someone who has in one way or another made effort to hone the skill of the written word since I was old enough to spell, seeing this with my own eyes made me apocalyptically angry. I actually don't think I've ever been this angry while reading a book and I've scoured entire university textbooks that seemed like they'd be helpful to an assignment for hours at a time only to find nothing of practical use. 

 It isn't even just the undisclosed A.I generation itself, though that is bad enough, it's the disrespect for the very act of writing a book. An insult to anyone who read, and especially bought it. You prompt a generator, 

 and have the nerve to call yourself an author? You have the unmitigated gall to charge money for it?! 

 

I have no idea how well this works as a grift but that doesn't change that A.I is everywhere, so I think it's time more people started talking about ways to spot it. So here's a handy beginners guide to recognising A.I-generated writing on the internet, just a few things to look out for that don't necessarily mean something is written by an AI, but taken together can add up to, at the very least, a bad look. 

 Disclaimer, I'm talking specifically about writing here, I assume visual AI-generation is still obvious enough if you know what to look for, extra fingers, that telltale sheen over everything, etc. Also, I acknowledge that a lot of these tells are things many human writers do, the fact that they are kind of ubiquitous is how they end up in A.I writing patterns in the first place. 

 

1. "That isn't (just) X, it's Y." 

 

This is the big one for me. A version of this sentence popped up every paragraph or two in that AI-generated book, I also saw an animated short on Facebook that was a minute long and used it three different times, two of them back to back. (The short also had one  character refer to the other as "manager." Which may or may not have been an A.I decision but it speaks to a similar laziness either way.) 

 

 2. Talking in circles

 The "That isn't X it's Y" thing alone isn't enough to confirm something was written by an A.I, and as something of a writer myself, I hate how knee-jerky I myself have become at that particular sentence. Some things become cliché for a reason, and sometimes that reason is because they're useful shorthand for comparisons. I've probably used it myself a time or two, though I can't call a specific example to memory.

If however, it comes up once every paragraph or two, you might have AI-slop on your hands. A.I is repetitive, it works on patterns, and it doesn't have a sense of style unless specifically instructed to ape the style of another, and even then it will be a surface-level imitation, and won't be free of clichés. A.I doesn't do length well, and it won't be long before you start seeing the same wording repeated to match the subject.

 

3. Corporate Yes-manese

Whenever someone has showed me anything an A.I has said to them, it reads to me like one of those mealy-mouthed corporate social media posts. The kind that tries to soften the blow of anything bad and verbally fellate anything good. Put simply, it's a sycophant by design when you talk to it, so everything it writes follows a similar bent to whatever you happen to be talking about more than not, at least from what I've seen. A.I writes like it's angling for a promotion. 

I suspect, and this is just my conjecture, that being trained on social media as you know it must be on some level, and geared towards engagement as we know that stuff is, that A.I has inherited a tendency to fish for positive reactions. I've said before and I'll say again, there is no intelligence there, artificial or otherwise. Think of it like a parrot that can say "Hello" but a tad more advanced. 

 

4. Inconsistency

 Pretty self-explanatory on this one, the talking in circles I mentioned earlier speaks to...well, I don't want to say "a short attention span" but something that looks like one, and with each iteration things can get lost, or just outright fabricated like a game of telephone that isn't being taken seriously by every player. A short memory and habit for what they call "hallucinations" doesn't bode well for a written piece any longer than your average social media post. Which leads me, finally, to...

 

5. Being wrong about basic things

 

You've all seen those Google A.I overviews, right? The ones that say things like Willem DeFoe was in Star Wars or that it's safe to use gasoline in cooking, or glue cheese to pizza? Those happen for a few reasons but I think the two main ones are that, firstly, A.I is built, not to provide answers, but to predict the next part of a conversation, and to that end, the accuracy of anything it's saying is not a priority, and secondly. A.I has trouble rejecting premises. Sometimes it can, but it's not designed to, it's a predictive text engine meant to "Yes and" anyone using it, and crucially, can't verify information, and can only assume a rough facsimile of the next part of a conversation based largely on algorithmic probability. 

The most concisely I ever heard it put, and I'm sorry I don't know the name of the poster who said this, and I am paraphrasing, but the gist of it was that the only question A.I can answer is "what would an answer to this question look like?" If you were to ask it to write an essay for you (frankly, if you ever did this, you deserved to fail the assignment) it will show you a pretty good example of essay formatting, but the sources will be made up quotes from books that don't exist. But it doesn't matter to the A.I because that's what an essay basically looks like, so job done. 

I need people to understand that, and to also understand, that it is literally, not an A.I's job, to care whether or not anything it says is true, or accurate. It's job is to keep the conversation going. They call these errors "hallucinations." I'm sure on some level they're trying to iron them out to a point, but I have to wonder if the powers that be consider it in their best interests to do so. 

 I'm reminded of some advice I was once given for Reddit. I was told that if I ever wanted to get a question answered there, I shouldn't ask a question, but make an incorrect claim about whatever I wanted to know, because statistically, people were far more likely to jump in to correct someone than they were to help them. 

I don't know and cannot prove, that A.I errors are not a priority to fix by this same logic, but I do believe it. Algorithms have been ruining everything good about the internet for years, why should this be different? 

Yeah, basically, google something you already know the answer to sometime, watch the A.I overview be confidently wrong and cite, as it's source, someone on Reddit 5 years ago who was clearly joking. 

 

 Y'know, when I started writing this, I was angry. But now, I'm just sad. I long for the days of the pre-A.I internet. Not because I think the internet not being flooded with that shit would make a material difference to me. I'm a complete failure as an internet creator, I came to terms with that long ago, I've been putting out whatever I write or make without being willing to do what it takes to get eyes on it for over a decade, and I have, like, maybe a 100 people who know my name for it, if that. But I don't mind, because I'm doing something I want to do, and that's the point. 

 

I was content with obscurity when the competiton was human creativity. There is honour in, to paraphrase Hello Future Me, "drowning in the dreams of others." But not this makerless sludge that clogs up the airways in 2026. I hate that whenever I see something on the internet, I now feel the need to look for telltale signs of A.I like I'm trying to spot an evil spirit. I hate that that's now just something we all must learn to do, and that it's getting worse. It's so invasive. my laptop has copilot on it, y'know. I didn't ask, or make any move to install copilot on it, but it's there. Update put it there...I don't seem to be able to get rid of it either. 

 if A.I is so good, why can't it do anything good? For that matter, why do A.I companies work so hard to force their shit on you?

But yeah, back onto the original point, I hope you found something in this post helpful, thanks for reading, and keep using your brains!

Mortal Kombat and commitment to the bit.

 So, I was scrolling YouTube for way too long for no clear reason, as one often does, and my recommendations delivered to me a video called The Insane Lore of Mortal Kombat by a channel called 'ClementJ64,'. The video is three hours long.

I'm pretty fond of and familiar with that particular franchise, so I figure I'll throw it on for some comforting background noise while I try and write something. Long story short, guy goes deep into this veritable mountain of backstory for a series of fighting games on a level I didn't know about. Three hours later I haven't written a word because I've been watching too intently, which I can almost never manage to do for something that long anymore. 

Thanks to that, I currently have Mortal Kombat on the brain and I've replayed the tenth one (not touched since pretty much release) and thrown on the 1995 movie (R.IP Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa) while I'm writing this to  try and unpack what it is I find so compelling about this, when examined objectively, extremely silly franchise. 

If you're not familiar, Mortal Kombat is a series of fighting videogames that began in 1992 (almost as old as me) It has since spawned twelve mainline entries, a bunch of side-games and spinoffs, three movies, one a reboot with a sequel this year, and two TV series' one animated, one a live-action serial in the vein of something like Xena back in the day. There was also a short web series in the early 2010s. 

If you're a fossil like me, you might remember the series being a figure of some controversy in the early days because of the cartoonish levels of blood and gore in the games, which, I believe was what caused the Videogame industry to form the Entertainment Software Rating Board and give games age ratings like other visual media (that books are still not subject to age-ratings to this day is wild to me, by the way.) 

That controversy didn't stop Mortal Kombat from becoming a popular multimedia franchise, in fact it probably helped. I believe that's called 'The Streisand Effect.' The controversy only piqued people's curiosity, and the developers, I assume probably felt they had a reputation to uphold, because they did not change a thing in respose. 

 The games have done a bit of growing up in their presentation for recent entries. In some ways at least, the gore remains comically excessive, but character designs are more realistic, and outfits less...obviously geared towards teenage boys. (Quick aside, this has become a pattern observable across the entire medium, and, I have to say, whatever else one might say about videogames today, I would no longer be embarrassed to show them to somebody, at the very least.) 

 More realistic outfits aside, which I think is a good change anyway, Mortal Kombat has, to a tee, maintained everything about the series that brought it to the dance, so to speak. The over-the-top violence is visceral and intentionally disgusting, yes, but it can also be comical and downright goofy in places. Whatever the series may do, the one thing it has never once even entertained doing, is apologizing for any of it. 

Thinking about it, I think that might be what keeps me coming back to the series, and what has kept it interesting through the years. Maybe not of a consistent quality all the time but each entry oozes with palpable enthusiasm. Co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias started something in 1992, and Ed Boon serves as creative director and team leader to this day. 

That consistency in direction, coupled with obvious earnestness, and commitment to the premise does a lot to carry the more ridiculous aspects of the series. I'm reminded of my early days studying Performing Arts at BTEC level, I had a small voice and confidence issues, my director at the time would always tell me the same thing. He'd say "Don't apologise for your performance." Better advice, I have never heard, and I think it bears out here.  

 Confidence is important sure, but I'd argue that sincerity is just as important. People can absolutely tell when someone isn't behind something they make, and sincerity can save the life of a bad piece of art. Conversely, a lack of such can hamper even technically better things. I'll happily sit through Mortal Kombat: Anihilation a thousand times before I ever watch Batman v. Superman again. 

I guess I do gravitate to the unabashed as a rule. I've touched on how much I like sincerity in my media a whole bunch of times, so I won't retread here, but basically, if you don't care, why should I? This, I think is the essence of what I'm talking about here. Silly, gory, and goofy as Mortal Kombat often is, everything it does, it does with its whole damn chest, and I can't help but be drawn in by that. 

 The games have technically rebooted twice now, but even the reboots are not only soft, they're straight-up diegetic. The continuity has reset twice in the last four games, but those resets are part of the same ongoing story.  I don't like every decision the last reboot (which incidentally is the latest game) made, but the same focus on fun and love for the characters is still very much there. 

Not everything out of that franchise has been good, in fact some parts of it have been pretty damn terrible, but you can never accuse them of going through the motions, and enthusiasm is contageous. I can never be too mad about any story decision this series makes, because I'm never in-doubt that the creators are loving what they do. 

 Mortal Kombat endures, not because of a consistent quality, but unfaltering commitment to the bit. If there is a lesson to be learned there, it's that no one will ever care about your own art more than you, so show them why, and lean into it hard Irony is a crutch that punishes your audience for caring, don't fear the cringe, detachment is for the weak! 

Which is to say, if you care, and you show it, others will too.