24 October 2025

On diversion completed today. Its conception was primarily spurred on by Merlin James's Oxbow (2023), which I've been studying for a while—the relationship of its marks and the unique character of its surface to the components of its landscape subject. My own painting is loosely based on miles upon miles of open road on Oregon Route 99W headed toward Dundee from Portland International Airport, the memory of which meshed nicely with a bit of Phoebe Helander's aforementioned talk in which she describes repeating a rose petal form over and over as she fails to capture it in shifting light, its glitching buildup becoming visual information that composes the image indirectly. I think I was also holding similar ideas about visually fading in and out, of constantly oscillating relationships between what has just been seen and what is anticipated to be seen. Of focusing, unfocusing, and warping through that process.

The first woman who taught me fear also taught me how to survive it. Though not how to cope.

This is part 2 in an ongoing series exploring how I was made and how sex shaped me for better and for worse.

Read Part 1 Read Part 3 Read Part 4

Prologue

Before you dive in, be aware, this is deeply personal, extremely raw and contains experiences and offensive, triggering or repulsive language. Please proceed with caution if you decide to go on this journey with me.

Names have been changed, otherwise, this is a recounting of real events.

As I stated in part 1, sex has been a part of my reality as long as I can recall a reality. But not in the healthy natural part of human existence way. My understanding was distorted for a long time. And if I’m honest, I still don’t think I have a healthy relationship with it.

In this entry, I explore what would likely be termed a 'found memory'. An experience with an aunt that has never added up and I can only summarize there is something deeper which I cannot explain.

The Rich Relatives

I have always known her as Aunt Dana. My mom called her Lola. She and my grandmother were the only two who used her middle name. Everyone else, my dad included, called her Snake. She loved snakes. She kept a big boa in a glass aquarium in her living room. And a smaller species in the foyer.

I would say it was a cobra. But that seems ludicrous. She did have these two 3 foot cobra statues in her living room flanking the fireplace. So maybe that’s just my imagination.

Aunt Dana, like Mom, was a hell-raiser. The kind of woman who drank and smoked and didn't mind mixing it up. See my previous essay when she and Mom had it out in the front yard. She also, as I would later learn, ran cocaine for a cartel in the area. Specifically, my Uncle Chad did, but Aunt Dana was neck deep. This was the source of their lush lifestyle, not the construction and tile business that gave the family legitimacy.

In any case, her persona was all swagger and confidence.

I don't ever remember feeling super comfortable at my Aunt and Uncle’s house. It was way, way nicer than ANYONE else we knew. The property was packed with all kinds of grown-up toys. Tools. Boats/watercraft. Motorbikes. Lots of guns. Heavy equipment that even today I visualize as overgrown Tonka trucks. And they always drove nice cars. A new Mazda RX-7 and Subaru Brat were Aunt Dana's daily drivers. Uncle Chad drove a shiny white and blue Bronco.

The big A-frame they built still exists here in Dust Meridian. I drove out a few weeks ago as the sun rose and parked across the street. It wasn’t as large or impressive as it is in my memory. Still a very nice home.

I thought about Jenny throwing rocks at her dad's house in Forest Gump and how they later pushed it down with a big tractor.

Real life isn't fiction though. The tall roof and all-glass face of the house sits two acres back from the gate on State Hwy 79, so I'd need a rocket launcher or trebuchet to hit it. If I ever be come a billionaire, I'll fly in on my helicopter and offer them an immoral amount of money, then buy a bulldozer and push it down.

For now, like with Keith's, I just won't ride my bike by there anymore. I hadn’t in decades, no need to start now.

In their big house, there was always what I now know as drug paraphernalia. Not as if I remember them doing drugs around or in front of me, but there were more than a few sleep-overs where the next day I would see the aftermath of drug-parties. Wall splashed with various fluids, spent condoms, empty beer and whiskey bottles everywhere, and mirrored tables (they LOVED mirrored tables) covered in ash, dirty plates and a dusty residue.

Hello, Smut

Another off-putting feature of the home, was my cousin’s showcasing their parent's stash of pornography. I must have been too young to understand it, because it didn't interest me enough to recall it other than to know there were stacks and stacks of magazines in the upstairs closet behind two louvered bifold doors. We had the same doors in our home. I never liked them.

I DO recall the Zap! And FREAK comix collection. They were essentially cartoon pornography. I think my cousins knew I liked to draw and used it as an opportunity for a little grooming, Though they were also very young, so it is likely they were imitating what had been done to them.

While I have no memory of the specifics of what were likely Hustler and Playboy magazines, I'll never forget the outrageous drawing in those underground adult comics. That's what the publishing industry calls them. But they were smut. Huge-breasted anthropomorphic cat-women with bulbous nipples protruding from barely covering blouses, and strangely apparent penises throughout. And the characters were all sort-of grimy, drawn with a heavy ink line and lots of little bits of ink that indicate something being hairy or dirty.

The other kinds of content is fuzzy, but I know it was pornographic. Writing about it still triggers some kind of hormone in me. It's pleasing and disgusts me. How strange a thing. Imagery is powerful, even poorly drawn.

Later I would learn that the majority artist for these was Robert Crumb, and those who would imitate him. I came to love his work and style in other genres, though not the content of those books.

I don't recall my Aunt ever molesting me. I think that's important to state. That even though the trauma clouds the past, there was absolutely a sexual component to life with and around here. All three of my cousins were molested (the eldest who would go on to molest me) by her step-father, uncle Chad. My older cousin, just two years older than me is an absolute basket case today, as are all of her children. Well, those still alive.

Escaping from School

When I was six or seven there was an event that is still clear as day and a recollection that things were never the same after.

My Aunt came to pick me up from grade school. I may have been feeling ill and mom wasn't available, but in my memory, it is a surprise that I got a note to go to the office and my aunt was there saying she was supposed to pick me up.

What child isn't happy to leave school early? So away we went. It was a cold and snowy winter day in Dust Meridian. Back then, snow could last for weeks; now it's gone in hours.

As we pulled away from the school, she asked me if I was hungry. I was a fat kid. Well, I remember being a fat kid. My cousins called me fat. What few photos survived the fire in 1981 don't render me as a fat child. How odd that I remember being so self-conscious of it.

I digress. I said, 'yes! I'm starved'. And aunt Dana took me to McDonalds where I got a cheeseburger happy meal.

Reader, if we're born after 1980, you likely don't realize, McDonald's USED to be a special treat. At least in families of my economic status. So a happy meal in the middle of the day was a HUGE deal.

I had finished the delicious cheeseburger (I still LOVE McDonald's cheeseburgers—though I haven't had one in YEARS) and was working to consume the quickly soggi-fying fries when I heard her ask, “Do you want a DONUT!?'

I MELTED! How could this get ANY BETTER? Happy meal AND a donut in the middle of the day when I was supposed to be bored in social studies? Yes please.

So, Aunt Dana pulls into a parking lot and I hear the little rotary engine start to scream. All of a sudden, we're sliding sideways can and the car's spinning circles. I am pressed against the passenger door worried it will come open and I'd fly into space (we didn't wear seatbelts in those days and I had fallen out of cars TWICE by this point.

She is laughing a guffawing and thinking it's coolest thing in the world. I was scared and wondering when I was going to get my donut. She is VERY amused when I tell her that it was fun, and ask if we were going to the donut shop next.

I recall her brushing my cheek with the back of her hand and telling me I was a sweet child.

What came next is the confusing part.

Thighs and Vaginas

All of sudden, she's driving us out of town to her house on the highway and she has no pants on. Or shoes, or underwear. There is a dark furry patch between her legs that makes me very nervous. Her plaid, pearl snap shirt is open at the navel and parts and drapes to rest on the outside of either hip. I sit quietly, afraid to speak or move. She looks serious as we drive to her home. After we arrive, I remember her helping me out of my puffy orange coat in the foyer adjacent to her dining room and kitchen where she kept the big snake sometimes. The next recollection I have, she reads to me from the comics in the closet.

We are lying in her big bed upstairs with the mirrored tiles on the ceiling. I can see her naked body next to me, long blond hair splashing down over her breasts. I am a black blot in my memory.

I had never seen a naked woman before this.

The Aftermath

At home once, I went down stairs and walked in on my parents having sex on the vinyl couch. But I was bleary-eyed and had no idea what I was seeing. The memory of my aunt left nothing to my ignorant imagination. After then, I knew what all the parts of a grownup girl were.

As I said, I have no recollection of any physical action. My brain worked overtime to put that all away. Just the circumstances and the fact that while I was never fully comfortable in her home, I was terrified after that to be there without my parents. I never spent the night under her roof again.

I hate to dredge this up and maybe it's a young mind completely misreading the situation. It is impossible to know. And maybe pointless, except to try to understand why I am who I am.

The later abuse at the hands of my cousins were integers in the equation that I use to draw the conclusion that she was probably high and out of her mind. I don't think it was this event that led to several years of bedwetting from 6-9, but it certainly was a contributing factor.

Enuresis (technical term for bedwetting) is caused by many factors and isn't about bladder control. Witnessing violence, neglect, prolonged instability, sexual abuse, they can all contribute to an effect a child's nervous system that leaves them apoplectic and in a constant-fight-or-flight state.

The Reckoning

While this is all part of the toolset that built me, I am not bitter. I am sadder that I feel like I never knew my Aunt. Before I would reach ten, my uncle Chad would die of a mysterious heart attack, leaving Aunt Dana to figure out how to run the construction/tile business that was the vehicle for smuggling drugs in from Mexico.

When she lost that tie, she turned to petty theft and armed robbery. I only found this out when she was arrested and sentenced to 20 years for robbing a pharmacy. It wasn't her first, but it was the last one she would rob. In prison, she got clean and got a degree of some kind and when she was released on parole, ended in New Mexico working as an executive assistant for Texas Electric.

Her children's lives (my cousins) were a disaster. They ended up living with and being raised by my grandmother where I suspect they continued to be abused by my uncle. But more on HIM later.

Of the three children, the youngest died about 20 years ago from a heart attack. Indications are that the mysterious cause that killed my uncle, also killed my cousin. My middle cousin is an accomplished nurse in Dust Meridian whom I have not seen in about 15 years. The eldest of the three, Misheen—

She was the next to expose me to sex. I'll dive in on that in Chapter 3.

It's a horrible thing to not be able to know with confidence if someone was an abuser or if I'm just assigning baggage where it doesn't belong. I know with certainty that 8-9 year old me wasn't having sex with his 30 year old Aunt. I'm not a father, but I am fairly confident it isn't physically possible. But when people do drugs, everything is on the table. And a defenseless child certainly is a low-hanging fruit.

I've never asked my mother about this. As I stated previously, we didn't discuss sex, or sex organs. It was like those parts of us didn't exist. It is a strange matter looking back. But Mom was a practicing alcoholic until I was 11 or 12 and Dad was raised by an abusive mother and a string of men with whom she shared a bed. Neither of them had the tools they needed to properly prepare a boy for the world.

I shudder to think what my sisters experienced.

In any case. She is dead. Whatever she was guilty of, she paid the ultimate price for it and lived the kind of life that allowed her to do the things she did. What cruelties must have been inflicted on her to put her in this state?

Recently, when my sister-in-law died, my mother opened up to me about how devastating her own sister's death was. I was so preoccupied with being a young adult I never did more than say 'sorry mom'. But she expressed that it was easily the most difficult loss she has ever experienced.

I state this because you may wonder, 'why don't you discuss this with your parents and clear the air?' 
Either my mom was aware of matters (in periphery if nothing else), and chose to ignore it (VERY COMMON pre-2000's) or she was completely ignorant of everything. The truth is probably somewhere in between. In any case, the wages have been paid, my mother has her own crosses to bear in her old age and as a dutiful son, I cannot add another albatross around her neck.

I have little affection for almost any of my family. This is a great loss to me. But I realize that it is a defensive mechanism. My way of coping with a flood of mistreatment and abuse.

Reflection

My advice to parents is always: NEVER let your child leave your sight. The one's you trust the most are the most likely to violate it most profoundly.

Or, in my case, for-go the privilege of parent-hood. It is an extreme measure, but the only way to guarantee that your little Lorien or Seren will never be confronted with circumstances like this.

Fear taught me to survive; survival taught me to remember.

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This was easier to write about than chapter one, leaving me filled with disappointment more than anger.

Cope is a work in progress.

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I got E some dyfne shorts and she looks incredible in them, so good that I felt bad. I felt sad because how am I supposed to feel hot or attractive when she already has such an effect on me but it feels like I can’t do anything similar to her?

si bien entre las ofertas de las diversas franquicias habían productos interesantes y hasta sofisticados quería saber dónde estaba el camino más allá de las apariencias y los coloridos aspectos del folklore

hasta que cayó en cuenta de que no había dejado de caminar

que el camino estaba bajo sus pies la verdad ante sus narices y lo profundo en la claridad de su mente

Eastbound transatlantic travel is a long, exhausting journey. Direct flights to Munich are usually significantly more expensive, and a stopover in Dublin or Reykjavík is also a welcome break from being squeezed into an airplane seat.

i’m sick of staying optimistic all the time. i’m sick of carrying good energy for those who take, take and take from me. i’m sick of entertaining those who check in with me like a show they are flipping through without reciprocating my kindness. and they wonder what’s wrong with me when i’ve stopped giving. when i’ve stopped responding. when i’ve stopped smiling back. 

On MusicBrainz.

I am young enough that most of my parents music collection was in C·D format, altho they did keep a small number of cassettes. I first encountered No Need To Argue in this latter collection, long after my parents had mostly transitioned to exclusively playing from their C·D cabinet. I went many years without listening to it during the iPod era (not having a digital copy), but I returned to it with newfound appreciation once I finally secured a digital version in college. While my parents did have Stars: The Best Of 1992–2002 on C·D, I honestly didn¦t listen to it much; No Need To Argue is The Cranberries¦s best album, and it is best listened to as an album, so the greatest‐hits collection always left me feeling disappointed (not that it doesn¦t have some bangers).

After the cover art, which definitely ranks among the top 20 album covers from the 90s in my opinion, what attracted me most as a kid in the early naughts was the albums opening track, “Ode To My Family”. While it is normally not trivial to cue up individual tracks on cassette, the leading track on the tape is the exception to this rule, and I definitely did rewind and replay it multiple times in my childhood. I was enamoured with the way Dolores O¦Riordan pronounced “mother” and “father”, and I was mystified by the content—my naïve expectations regarding an “ode” were of positive emotions, and yet it confronted me repeatedly with the phrase « Does anyone care? ». At that time in my life, I had been taught to think of swearing as rude and hostile, but the line « Where¦s when I was young, and we didn¦t give a damn? » felt sweet, melancholic, and longing. I didn¦t know how to resolve these tensions as a young child, but I was fascinated by them.

It is incredibly difficult to describe the complicated feelings associated with a break·up in terms that an 8‐year‐old, unable to fathom dating, can understand, but I think O¦Riordan managed it in “I Can¦t Be With You” with « I wanted to be the mother of your child, and now it¦s just farewell », a line which will never be topped despite not even coming from the best break·up song on the album. Motherhood is a concept that artists tend to shy away from, and when artists do depict it, it usually takes on a privatizing manifestation—songs written to or about ones own children, divorced from society at‐large. In contrast, motherhood saturates No Need To Argue unapologetically, socially, and almost virginally: “I Can¦t Be With You” mourns the loss of possibility of being a mother; “The Icicle Melts” empathizes with other mothers after their children suffer violence; “Dreaming My Dreams” portrays the perspective of falling in love with some·one who already has a child. These tracks collectively form the basis of a different kind of ethic than one traditionally finds in punk scenes, and a different conception of love than is typically found in pop. It is profoundly and intimately feminine with·out depending on recourse to either patriarchal tropes or bio·essentialism; this is a fount of motherhood that all women can draw upon, regardless of whether they personally have carried a child to term.

Most of the remaining tracks exhibit a similar fusion of intensely personal emotion and a social awareness, and conscious social positioning, which is broad, feminine, and coalition‐building. Altho some of these songs do make good singles (nothing more needs to be said about “Zombie”), I¦m of the opinion that they all land their hardest in and with the context of the greater whole.

Favourite track: In the context of the album, I think the final track, “No Need To Argue”, is perfect in its minimalism. “Daffodil Lament” stands a bit better on its own.

#AlbumOfTheWeek

This is cute. That is all.

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This one's got sound!

https://youtu.be/rhJXgOREHaM

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Since we're talking cute:

A little girl drew these lovely portraits of the two of us. I'm sure you can figure with one is your Wolf. I love children's drawings. When they draw, it is still that innocent act of play. There is no ego nor bravado, just an energy excited to get out of their hands and on to the page.

#spiders #cute #gif #osxs #100daystooffset #writing #meme

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In a world where polished production and big budgets dominate online video platforms, there’s something radically refreshing about the raw, personal story of one father who simply showed up. With a digital camera, a mini tripod, and a mic in his hands—he hit record every single day, not merely to create content, but to show up with heart, hustle, and hope for his daughters and a community that would grow around them. He turned plain equipment and daily commitment into something remarkable: a thriving channel, a growing community, and a story of consistency winning over time.

Today, you can witness that journey from the first 30 videos in the series by following this playlist: Watch the first 30 videos that sparked the movement. That playlist is more than a set of uploads—it is the seed of a movement.

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Why the Beginning Matters

When this father began, there was no team of editors, no multi-camera setup, no big lighting rig. Just a dad. Just purpose. A digital camera. A microphone. And a simple tripod. He showed up every single day.

That level of consistency isn’t easy. It means: when motivation fades, press record anyway. When the equipment glitches, keep going. When the day is long, the kids are tired, the world is moving fast—still show up.

In doing so, he created something few creators truly capture: authenticity. The kind of daily persistence that viewers feel, that builds trust. Because viewers begin to expect you. They begin to rely on your presence. And when you show up again and again, you signal: I’m here. I care. I’m reliable.

Modern research backs this up: consistency in content creation helps build trust and credibility, improves SEO and online visibility, enhances audience engagement and loyalty. Content Whale+2Retail PR & Digital Marketing+2 Even within video platforms like YouTube, a steady upload schedule signals to both the audience and the algorithm that you’re active and committed. Medium+1

What this dad did was simple—but the implications were far-reaching.

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From 30 Videos to 15,000 + Subscribers and Beyond

What began as a modest 30-video series blossomed quickly. In just 30 days, the subscriber count surged past 15,000. Today, the community spans millions around the globe, and the subscriber count is well over half a million. This is living proof that when you show up with purpose, results follow.

Here’s why this kind of growth happened:

• Daily uploads built momentum. Each video wasn’t just a singular moment—it was part of a chain. The viewer who watched upload #1 came back for #2, #3, then told someone else.
• Authenticity attracted community. Many channels try to look perfect; this one looked real—and that resonated. In an age of filtered reality, raw truth stands out.
• Algorithm responds to consistency. Studies show that channels that upload reliably get more recommendations from platforms than those that are sporadic. Zebracat+1
• Trust builds loyalty. His daughters, his family, his real-life context became the backdrop—not just props—so viewers felt like part of something genuine.

Every video in that initial 30-video drop is packed with authenticity, growth, and the quiet power of consistency.

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What We Can Learn From His Journey

Beyond admiration, there are actionable lessons. Whether you’re a creator, entrepreneur, minister, or anyone building something meaningful, the same principles apply.

1. Show up. Period.

There will always be excuses: tired, busy, equipment failed, life happened. Yet he pressed record anyway. The reflex to show up daily—even imperfectly—builds a habit that compounds. As noted in marketing research, consistent content leads to better brand recognition, trust, and engagement. Acrolinx+1

2. Let authenticity be your differentiator.

When you show who you are—your family, your life, your why—you invite others into your journey. That’s powerful. Audiences gravitate to truth. Over-polish can distance you; real connections draw people in.

3. Embrace growth over perfection.

The first 30 videos aren’t flawless. But they are present. What matters more than the slickness of the first video is the fourth, the tenth, the twentieth. It’s the growth arc viewers witness. Which means you don’t need perfect gear to start—you just need consistency.

4. Build community, not just content.

In those early 30 videos, his daughters were the audience within his heart—but the global community emerged because he invited it in. He responded. He interacted. He made people feel seen. Community grows when you care about people, not just numbers.

5. Trust the long game.

It didn’t happen overnight. Though 15,000 + subs in 30 days is remarkable, the true value came when he sustained. Over time, the algorithm, the viewership, the community all aligned. According to YouTube statistics, channels that sustain consistent uploads for 12–24 months majorly boost their threshold for monetization and growth. Miss Techy+1

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The Power of a Simple Setup

The gear was modest: a digital camera (not necessarily top-tier), a mini tripod, a mic. Nothing fancy. No mega-crew. No Hollywood budget.

But just because the setup was simple doesn’t mean the mission was small. Quite the opposite: the simplicity enabled focus.

• No distractions from gear perfection → focus on story.
• No scalable setup to maintain → easier to keep daily rhythm.
• No big crew to coordinate → authentic human presence.

In many ways, a lean setup is a strength. Because it allows you to keep the main thing the main thing: showing up with heart. The message over the mechanics. The love over the lights.

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Why This Resonates in Today’s Digital Landscape

We live in a time of content overload. Thousands, maybe millions, of creators. Upgrades, gear sans, big budgets. In that environment, what stands out isn’t always the biggest budget—it’s the consistent voice.

• The algorithm on YouTube currently supports this: there are 2.53 billion monthly active users, and 47 % of YouTube users interact with brands at least weekly. Sprout Social
• The more consistent you are, the more you tell the platform “I’m here” and tell the audience “I’m reliable.”
• Platforms see you as less risky—regular uploads → more watch time → more favorable recommendation. Makarand Utpat+1
• Audiences have shorter attention spans—but paradoxically, those same audiences build habits. When a creator shows up daily, that becomes part of their viewers’ rhythms.

So this journey of one dad, one camera, one mini tripod—for 30 days and beyond—is more relevant than ever.

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Community, Purpose, and Impact

Let’s talk about what that community looks like. Not mere subscriber numbers—but actual connection.

• The daughters who watched Dad show up: there’s a legacy. He wasn’t just creating for YouTube—he was creating for them.
• The strangers around the world who clicked “Subscribe”: they found trust, consistency, and heart in each upload.
• The ripple effect: one channel, many lives touched, multiple languages, global reach.

Purpose drove this. Hustle powered it. And hope pulled it forward.

In that first 30-video stretch you can feel the trajectory: humble beginnings → incremental progress → community forming → momentum building. A movement, not just a playlist.

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What You Can Do Right Now

You don’t need to wait for perfect gear. You don’t need a big team. You just need:

1. A small camera or a phone.

2. A mic (good sound > perfect visuals).

3. A tripod or steady surface.

4. Purpose. Your “why.”

5. A schedule. Daily or regular—choose what you can sustain.

6. A heart for your people. Your real audience.

7. Response. Engage. Make comment replies part of the plan.

In 30 videos—within a month—you can establish pattern. And when pattern becomes habit, habit becomes identity.

This is your invitation: don’t just watch the journey above. Use it as inspiration to take your first step. Because greatness isn’t born—it’s built. And you can build it.

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Final Thoughts

When you look back on the early playlist, you’ll notice something: the authenticity, the daily grind, the simplicity. It doesn’t scream “viral overnight”—it whispers “steady and true.” That whisper is powerful. It becomes louder over time.

Whether you’re creating faith-based talk videos, lifestyle content, family vlogs, or daily devotions—what this journey teaches is universal: show up. Be consistent. Share your heart. Build your community. Use every upload to say: I was here today for you. Because when you show up for your audience, they will show up for you.

And as they do, the ripple grows — the playlist becomes a movement; the single creator becomes a community-builder; the simple gear becomes a vehicle for hope.

Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube

Support the mission – buy Douglas a cup of coffee

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#dailyvlog #contentcreator #familycommunity #authenticity #consistencyiskey #youtubegrowth #dadvlog #buildingamovement #inspiration #dreambig

#NSFW

This post is NSFW 19+ Adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

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In Japanese AV, the face cumshot scene has become a widely popular and conventional trope. This scene goes beyond mere visual stimulation, tapping into the viewer’s latent codes of taboo and desire. After watching numerous AVs, the audience may feel that the urge to ejaculate on a performer’s face is universal across actresses. Yet in reality, a deeper, more obsessive desire is often directed at specific performers—such as Eren Sora (or Eriko Sora).

She is one of the emblematic figures of the face cumshot fantasy. Even in her ordinary opening interview scene in her 2024 FALENO debut (FSDSS-870), where she is fully clothed, a simple close-up of her face triggers an unusually strong urge (she had actually debuted with Moodyz in 2023 but went on hiatus shortly after). The question is why the desire to smear semen on that particular face emerges so intensely, rubbing the tip of a fully erect cock against the cheeks.

Eren Sora’s image radiates both purity and the confident pride unique to a spirited university student. Her face reflects youthful intellectual curiosity, decisiveness. Her cheeks, in particular, serve as a symbolic condensation of “the apex of innocence.” The desire to smear jizz specifically on her cheeks arises because the cheek is the area of the skin where the most sincere emotions of the inner self become visible. Leaving “the most primal and forbidden mark” upon her cheeks—the emblem of purity where sincere emotions become visible—is a transgressive and exhilarating act. This desire, in its essence, is an erotic ritual that exalts the act of leaving a profane mark upon the feminine interiority.

In Connection With This Post: Eren Sora .02 https://hustin.art/eren-sora-02

#AV #japan #debut2024 #ErenSora

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In Summary: * The most significant part of this Thursday in the Roscoe-verse was my decision this morning to sign up for clinical trials studying alternative treatments for my bad eye. Tomorrow morning I'll find out more about the details of what I signed up for.

Prayers, etc.: * My daily prayers.

Health Metrics: * bw= 220.02 lbs. * bp= 139/81 (65)

Exercise: * kegel pelvic floor exercise, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 06:20 – pizza * 07:15 – toast and butter * 12:00 – pancakes * 14:20 – 1 fresh apple * 16:20 – cole slaw * 17:30 – 2 crispy oatmeal cookies

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 05:00 – listen to local news, talk radio * 06:15 – bank accounts activity monitored * 06:30 – read, pray, listen to news reports from various sources * 10:00 to 11:00 – apt. with retina doc * 11:30 to 12:30 – brunch with Sylvia at iHop * 13:00 – read, pray, listen to news reports from various sources * 18:15 – listening to The Joe Pags Show * 20:00 – listening to relaxing music

Chess: * 15:15 – moved in all pending CC games

In September 2025, Hollywood's unions found themselves confronting an adversary unlike any they had faced before. Tilly Norwood had attracted the attention of multiple talent agencies eager to represent her. She possessed the polish of a seasoned performer, the algorithmic perfection of someone who had never experienced a bad hair day, and one notable characteristic that set her apart from every other aspiring actor in Los Angeles: she did not exist.

Tilly Norwood is not human. She is a fully synthetic creation, generated by the London-based production studio Particle6, whose founder Eline van der Velden announced at the Zurich Film Festival that several agencies were clamouring to sign the AI 'actress'. Van der Velden's ambition was unambiguous: 'We want Tilly to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman'. The entertainment industry's response was swift and polarised. SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild, issued a blistering statement declaring that Tilly Norwood 'is not an actor, it's a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers' without permission or compensation. The union accused the creation of 'using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry'.

Yet Van der Velden remained sanguine, comparing AI actors to animation, puppetry, and CGI, describing them as simply 'another way to imagine and build stories'. At a conference in Los Angeles, she reported that in her discussions with studios, the conversation had shifted dramatically. Companies that dismissed AI performers as 'nonsense' in February were, by May, eager to explore partnerships with Particle6. The message was clear: whether the entertainment industry likes it or not, synthetic performers have arrived, and they are not waiting for permission.

This moment represents more than a technological novelty or a legal skirmish between unions and production companies. It marks a fundamental inflection point in the history of human creativity and performance. As AI generates synthetic performers who never draw breath and resurrects deceased celebrities who can tour indefinitely without complaint, we face urgent questions about what happens to human artistry, authentic expression, and the very definition of entertainment in an age when anything can be simulated and anyone can be digitally reborn.

The Synthetic Celebrity Industrial Complex

The emergence of AI-generated performers is not an isolated phenomenon but the culmination of decades of technological development and cultural preparation. Japan's Hatsune Miku, a holographic pop idol created in 2007, pioneered the concept of the virtual celebrity. With her turquoise pigtails and synthesised voice, Miku built a devoted global fanbase, held sold-out concerts, and demonstrated that audiences would form emotional connections with explicitly artificial performers. What began as a cultural curiosity has metastasised into a vast ecosystem.

By 2025, AI-generated influencers have established a significant presence on social media platforms, a virtual K-pop group launched in South Korea has attracted a substantial following, and synthetic models appear in advertising campaigns for major brands. The economic logic is compelling. AI performers require no salaries, benefits, or accommodation. They never age, never complain, never experience scandal, and never demand creative control. They can be endlessly replicated, localised for different markets, and modified to match shifting consumer preferences. For entertainment companies operating on increasingly thin margins, the appeal is undeniable.

The technology behind these synthetic celebrities has reached startling sophistication. Companies like Particle6 employ advanced generative AI systems trained on vast databases of human performances. These systems analyse facial expressions, body language, vocal patterns, and emotional nuance from thousands of hours of footage, learning to synthesise new performances that mimic human behaviour with uncanny accuracy. The process involves selecting actors who physically resemble the desired celebrity, capturing their movements, and then digitally overlaying AI-generated faces and voices that achieve near-perfect verisimilitude.

Yet beneath the technological marvel lies a troubling reality. The AI systems creating these performers are trained on copyrighted material, often without permission or compensation to the original artists whose work forms the training data. This creates what critics describe as a form of algorithmic plagiarism, where the accumulated labour of thousands of performers is distilled, homogenised, and repackaged as a product that directly competes with those same artists for employment opportunities.

SAG-AFTRA president Sean Astin has been unequivocal about the threat. During the 2023 strikes, actors secured provisions requiring consent and compensation for digital replicas, but the emergence of wholly synthetic performers trained on unauthorised data represents a more insidious challenge. These entities exist in a legal grey zone, neither exact replicas of specific individuals nor entirely original creations. They are amalgamations, chimeras built from fragments of human artistry without attribution or remuneration.

The displacement concerns extend beyond leading actors. Background performers, voice actors, and character actors face particular vulnerability. Whilst audiences might detect the artificiality of a synthetic Scarlett Johansson in a leading role, they are far less likely to notice when background characters or minor speaking parts are filled by AI-generated performers. This creates a tiered erosion of employment, where the invisible infrastructure of the entertainment industry gradually hollows out whilst marquee names remain, at least temporarily, protected by their irreplicability and star power.

Resurrection as a Service

Parallel to the emergence of synthetic performers is the burgeoning industry of digital resurrection. In recent years, audiences have witnessed holographic performances by Maria Callas, Whitney Houston, Tupac Shakur, Michael Jackson, and Roy Orbison, all deceased artists returned to the stage through a combination of archival footage, motion capture, and AI enhancement. Companies like Base Hologram specialise in these spectral resurrections, creating tours and residencies that allow fans to experience performances by artists who died years or decades ago.

The technology relies primarily on an optical illusion known as Pepper's Ghost, a theatrical technique dating to the 19th century. Modern implementations use the Musion EyeLiner system, which projects high-definition video onto a thin metallised film angled towards the audience, creating the illusion of a three-dimensional figure on stage. When combined with live orchestras or backing bands, the effect can be remarkably convincing, though limitations remain evident. The vocals emanate from speakers rather than the holographic figure, and the performances lack the spontaneity and present-moment responsiveness that define live entertainment.

Recent advances in AI have dramatically enhanced these resurrections. Ten hours of audio can be fed into machine learning models to synthesise new vocal performances in a deceased artist's voice. Motion capture data from actors can be algorithmically modified to mimic the distinctive performance styles of departed celebrities. The result is not merely a replay of archived material but the creation of new performances that the original artist never gave, singing songs they never recorded, appearing in productions they never conceived.

The ethical implications are profound. When the estate of George Carlin sued a media company in 2025 for using AI to create an unauthorised comedy special featuring a synthetic version of the late comedian, the case highlighted the absence of clear legal frameworks governing posthumous digital exploitation. The lawsuit alleged deprivation of the right of publicity, violation of common law publicity rights, and copyright infringement. It settled with a permanent injunction, but the broader questions remained unresolved.

What would Maria Callas, who famously controlled every aspect of her artistic presentation, think about being digitally manipulated to perform in productions she never authorised? Would Prince, who notoriously guarded his artistic output and died without a will, consent to the posthumous hologram performances and album releases that have followed his death? The artists themselves cannot answer, leaving executors, heirs, and corporate entities to make decisions that profoundly shape legacy and memory.

Iain MacKinnon, a Toronto-based media lawyer, articulated the dilemma succinctly: 'It's a tough one, because if the artist never addressed the issue whilst he or she was alive, anybody who's granting these rights, which is typically an executor of an estate, is really just guessing what the artist would have wanted'.

The commercial motivations are transparent. Copyright holders and estates can generate substantial revenue from holographic tours and digital resurrections with minimal ongoing costs. A hologram can perform simultaneously in multiple venues, requires no security detail or travel arrangements, and never cancels due to illness or exhaustion. It represents the ultimate scalability of celebrity, transforming the deceased into endlessly reproducible intellectual property.

Yet fans remain conflicted. A study of Japanese audiences who witnessed AI Hibari, a hologram of singer Misora Hibari who died in 1986, revealed sharply divided responses. Some were moved to tears by the opportunity to experience an artist they had mourned for decades. Others described the performance as 'profaning the dead', a manipulation of memory that felt exploitative and fundamentally disrespectful. Research on audiences attending the ABBA Voyage hologram concert found generally positive responses, with fans expressing gratitude for the chance to see the band 'perform' once more, albeit as digital avatars of their younger selves.

The uncanny valley looms large in these resurrections. When holograms fail to achieve sufficient realism, they provoke discomfort and revulsion. Audiences are acutely sensitive to discrepancies between the spectral figure and their memories of the living artist. Poor quality recreations feel not merely disappointing but actively disturbing, a violation of the dignity owed to the dead.

The Legal Scramble

The entertainment industry's regulatory frameworks, designed for an era of analogue reproduction and clearly defined authorship, have struggled to accommodate the challenges posed by AI-generated and digitally resurrected performers. Recognising this inadequacy, legislators have begun constructing new legal architectures to protect performers' likenesses and voices.

The most significant legislative response has been the NO FAKES Act, a bipartisan bill reintroduced in both the US House and Senate in 2025. The Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act seeks to establish a federal intellectual property right protecting individuals' voice and visual likeness from unauthorised digital replicas. If enacted, it would represent the first nationwide harmonised right of publicity, superseding the current patchwork of inconsistent state laws.

The NO FAKES Act defines a digital replica as 'a newly created, computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation that is readily identifiable as the voice or visual likeness of an individual' in which the actual individual did not perform or in which the fundamental character of their performance has been materially altered. Crucially, the rights extend beyond living individuals to include post-mortem protections, granting heirs the authority to control deceased relatives' digital likenesses.

The legislation establishes that every individual possesses a federal intellectual property right to their own voice and likeness, including an extension of that right for families after death. It empowers individuals to take action against those who knowingly create, post, or profit from unauthorised digital copies. Platform providers receive safe harbour protections if they promptly respond to valid takedown notices and maintain policies against repeat offenders, mirroring structures familiar from copyright law.

The bill includes exceptions designed to balance protection with free speech. Bona fide news reporting, public affairs programming, sports broadcasts, documentaries, biographical works, and historical content receive exemptions. Parody and satire are explicitly protected. The legislation attempts to navigate the tension between protecting individuals from exploitation whilst preserving legitimate creative and journalistic uses of digital likeness technology.

Significantly, the NO FAKES Act makes the rights non-assignable during an individual's lifetime, though they can be licensed. This provision aims to prevent studios and labels from leveraging their bargaining power to compel artists to transfer their rights permanently, a concern that emerged prominently during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes. The restriction reflects a recognition that performers often occupy positions of relative powerlessness in negotiations with corporate entities that control access to employment and distribution.

Damages for violations range from $5,000 to $750,000 per work, depending on the violator's role and intent, with provisions for injunctive relief and punitive damages in cases of wilful misconduct. The bill grants rights holders the power to compel online services, via court-issued subpoenas, to disclose identifying information of alleged infringers, potentially streamlining enforcement efforts.

California has pursued parallel protections at the state level. Assembly Bill 1836, introduced in 2024, extends the right of publicity for deceased celebrities' heirs, making it tortious to use a celebrity's name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness for unauthorised commercial purposes within 70 years of death. The law excludes 'expressive works' such as plays, books, magazines, musical compositions, and audiovisual works, attempting to preserve creative freedom whilst limiting commercial exploitation.

The legislative push has garnered broad support from industry stakeholders. SAG-AFTRA, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association, and the Television Academy have all endorsed the NO FAKES Act. Even major technology companies including Google and OpenAI have expressed support, recognising that clear legal frameworks ultimately benefit platform providers by reducing liability uncertainty and establishing consistent standards.

Yet critics argue that the legislation remains insufficiently protective. The Regulatory Review, a publication of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, warned that the revised NO FAKES Act has been expanded to satisfy the demands of large technology companies whilst leaving individuals vulnerable. The publication expressed concern that the bill could legitimise deceptive uses of digital replicas rather than appropriately regulating them, and that the preemption provisions create significant confusion about the interaction between federal and state laws.

The preemption language, which supersedes state laws regarding digital replicas whilst exempting statutes in existence before January 2025, has been particularly contentious. The phrase 'regarding a digital replica' lacks clear definition, creating ambiguity about which existing state laws remain effective. Many state intimate image laws and longstanding publicity statutes cover digital replicas without explicitly using that terminology, raising questions about their survival under federal preemption.

The challenge extends beyond legislative drafting to fundamental questions about the nature of identity and personhood in a digital age. Current legal frameworks assume that individuals possess clear boundaries of self, that identity is singular and embodied, and that likeness can be neatly demarcated and protected. AI-generated performers complicate these assumptions. When a synthetic entity is trained on thousands of performances by different actors, whose likeness does it represent? When a deceased celebrity's digital replica performs material they never created, who is the author? These questions resist simple answers and may require conceptual innovations beyond what existing legal categories can accommodate.

The Creativity Crisis

The proliferation of AI-generated content and synthetic performers has ignited fierce debate about the nature and value of human creativity. At stake is not merely the economic livelihood of artists but fundamental questions about what art is, where it comes from, and why it matters.

Proponents of AI art argue that the technology represents simply another tool, comparable to the camera, the synthesiser, or digital editing software. They emphasise AI's capacity to democratise creative production, making sophisticated tools accessible to individuals who lack formal training or expensive equipment. Artists increasingly use AI as a collaborative partner, training models on their own work to explore variations, generate inspiration, and expand their creative vocabulary. From this perspective, AI does not replace human creativity but augments and extends it.

Yet critics contend that this framing fundamentally misunderstands what distinguishes human artistic expression from algorithmic pattern recognition. Human creativity, they argue, emerges from lived experience, emotional depth, cultural context, and intentionality. Artists draw upon personal histories, grapple with mortality, navigate social complexities, and imbue their work with meanings that reflect their unique perspectives. This subjective dimension, grounded in consciousness and embodied existence, cannot be replicated by machines that lack experience, emotions, or genuine understanding.

Recent psychological research has revealed complex patterns in how audiences respond to AI-generated art. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2025 presented participants with pairs of artworks, one human-created and one AI-generated, in both preference and discrimination tasks. The results were striking: when presented without attribution labels, participants systematically preferred AI-generated artworks over stylistically similar pieces created by humans. Simultaneously, a separate group of participants performed above chance at detecting which artworks were AI-generated, indicating a perceptible distinction between human and artificial creative works.

These findings suggest a troubling possibility: in the absence of contextual information about authorship, AI-generated art may be aesthetically preferred by audiences, even whilst they remain capable of detecting its artificial origin when prompted to do so. This preference may reflect AI's optimisation for visual appeal, its training on vast datasets of successful artworks, and its capacity to synthesise elements that empirical research has identified as aesthetically pleasing.

However, other research reveals a persistent bias against AI art once its origins are known. Studies consistently show that when participants are informed that a work was created by AI, they evaluate it less favourably than identical works attributed to human artists. This suggests that knowledge about creative process and authorship significantly influences aesthetic judgement. The value audiences assign to art depends not solely on its intrinsic visual properties but on the narrative of its creation, the perception of effort and intention, and the sense of connection to a creative consciousness behind the work.

The devaluation concern extends beyond aesthetic preference to economic and professional domains. As AI tools become more sophisticated and accessible, there is genuine fear that they may displace human artists in commercial markets. Already, companies are using AI to generate stock photography, book illustrations, album artwork, and marketing materials, reducing demand for human illustrators and photographers. Background actors and voice performers face particular vulnerability to replacement by synthetic alternatives that offer comparable quality at dramatically lower cost.

Yet the most profound threat may not be displacement but dilution. If the internet becomes saturated with AI-generated content, finding and valuing genuinely human creative work becomes increasingly difficult. The signal-to-noise ratio deteriorates as algorithmic production scales beyond what human labour can match. This creates a tragedy of the commons in the attention economy, where the proliferation of low-cost synthetic content makes it harder for human artists to reach audiences and sustain creative careers.

Defenders of human creativity emphasise characteristics that AI fundamentally cannot replicate. Human artists bring imperfection, idiosyncrasy, and the marks of struggle that enhance a work's character and emotional resonance. The rough edges, the unexpected juxtapositions, the evidence of revision and reconsideration all signal the presence of a conscious agent grappling with creative challenges. These qualities, often called the 'human touch', create opportunities for connection and recognition that algorithmic perfection precludes.

Cultural authenticity represents another domain where AI struggles. Art emerges from specific cultural contexts, drawing upon traditions, references, and lived experiences that give works depth and specificity. An AI trained on global datasets may mimic surface characteristics of various cultural styles but lacks the embedded knowledge, the tacit understanding, and the personal stake that artists bring from their own backgrounds. This can result in art that feels derivative, appropriative, or culturally shallow despite its technical proficiency.

The intentionality question remains central. Human artists make choices that reflect particular ideas, emotions, and communicative purposes. They select colours to evoke specific moods, arrange compositions to direct attention, and employ techniques to express concepts. This intentionality invites viewers into dialogue, encouraging interpretation and engagement with the work's meanings. AI lacks genuine intention. It optimises outputs based on training data and prompt parameters but does not possess ideas it seeks to communicate or emotions it aims to express. The resulting works may be visually impressive yet ultimately hollow, offering surface without depth.

Defining Authenticity When Everything Can Be Faked

The proliferation of synthetic performers and AI-generated content creates an authenticity crisis that extends beyond entertainment to epistemology itself. When seeing and hearing can no longer be trusted as evidence of reality, what remains as grounds for belief and connection?

Celebrity deepfakes have emerged as a particularly pernicious manifestation of this crisis. In 2025, Steve Harvey reported that scams using his AI-generated likeness were at 'an all-time high', with fraudsters deploying synthetic videos of the television host promoting fake government funding schemes and gambling platforms. A woman in France lost $850,000 after scammers used AI-generated images of Brad Pitt to convince her she was helping the actor. Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, and Selena Gomez have all been targeted by deepfake scandals featuring explicit or misleading content created without their consent.

The scale of the problem has prompted celebrities themselves to advocate for legislative solutions. At congressional hearings, performers have testified about the personal and professional harm caused by unauthorised digital replicas, emphasising the inadequacy of existing legal frameworks to address synthetic impersonation. The challenge extends beyond individual harm to collective trust. When public figures can be convincingly impersonated, when videos and audio recordings can be fabricated, the evidentiary foundations of journalism, law, and democratic discourse erode.

Technology companies have responded with forensic tools designed to detect AI-generated content. Vermillio AI, which partners with major talent agencies and studios, employs a system called TraceID that uses 'fingerprinting' techniques to distinguish authentic content from AI-generated material. The platform crawls the internet for images that have been manipulated using large language models, analysing millions of data points within each image to identify synthetic artefacts. Celebrities like Steve Harvey use these services to track unauthorised uses of their likenesses and automate takedown requests.

Yet detection remains a cat-and-mouse game. As forensic tools improve, so too do generative models. Adversarial training allows AI systems to learn to evade detection methods, creating an escalating technological arms race. Moreover, relying on technical detection shifts the burden from preventive regulation to reactive enforcement, placing victims in the position of constantly monitoring for misuse rather than enjoying proactive protection.

The authenticity crisis manifests differently across generations. Research suggests that younger audiences, particularly Generation Z, demonstrate greater acceptance of digital beings and synthetic celebrities. Having grown up with virtual influencers, animated characters, and heavily edited social media personas, they possess different intuitions about the boundaries between real and artificial. For these audiences, authenticity may reside less in biological origins than in consistency, coherence, and the quality of parasocial connection.

Parasocial relationships, the one-sided emotional bonds that audiences form with media personalities, have always involved elements of illusion. Fans construct imagined connections with celebrities based on curated public personas that may diverge significantly from private selves. AI-generated performers simply make this dynamic explicit. The synthetic celebrity openly acknowledges its artificiality yet still invites emotional investment. For some audiences, this transparency removes the deception inherent in traditional celebrity performance, creating a more honest foundation for fan engagement.

Consumer protection advocates warn of exploitation risks. Synthetic performers can be algorithmically optimised to maximise engagement, deploying psychological techniques designed to sustain attention and encourage parasocial bonding. Without the constraints imposed by human psychology, exhaustion, or ethical consideration, AI-driven celebrities can be engineered for addictiveness in ways that raise serious concerns about emotional manipulation and the commodification of intimacy.

The question of what constitutes 'authentic' entertainment in this landscape resists definitive answers. If audiences derive genuine pleasure from holographic concerts, if they form meaningful emotional connections with synthetic performers, if they find value in AI-generated art, can we dismiss these experiences as inauthentic? Authenticity, in this view, resides not in the ontological status of the creator but in the quality of the audience's experience.

Yet this subjective definition leaves unaddressed the questions of exploitation, displacement, and cultural value. Even if audiences enjoy synthetic performances, the concentration of profits in corporate hands whilst human performers lose employment remains problematic. Even if AI-generated art provides aesthetic pleasure, the training on copyrighted material without compensation constitutes a form of theft. The experience of the audience cannot be the sole criterion for judging the ethics and social value of entertainment technologies.

Some scholars propose that authenticity in entertainment should be understood as transparency. The problem is not synthetic performers per se but their presentation as human. If audiences are clearly informed that they are engaging with AI-generated content, they can make informed choices about consumption and emotional investment. This approach preserves creative freedom and technological innovation whilst protecting against deception.

Others argue for a revival of embodied performance as a response to the synthetic tide. Live theatre, intimate concerts, and interactive art offer experiences that fundamentally cannot be replicated by AI. The presence of human bodies in space, the risk of error, the responsiveness to audience energy, the unrepeatable present-moment quality of live performance all provide value that synthesised entertainment lacks. Rather than competing with AI on its terms, human artists might emphasise precisely those characteristics that machines cannot capture.

Navigating the Future of Human Expression

The questions raised by synthetic performers and AI-generated content will only intensify as technology continues to advance. Generative models are improving rapidly, making detection increasingly difficult and synthesis increasingly convincing. The economic incentives favouring AI deployment remain powerful, as companies seek cost reductions and scalability advantages. Yet the trajectory is not predetermined.

Legal frameworks like the NO FAKES Act, whilst imperfect, represent meaningful attempts to establish boundaries and protections. Union negotiations have secured important provisions requiring consent and compensation for digital replicas. Crucially, artists themselves are organising, speaking out, and demanding recognition that their craft cannot be reduced to training data. When Whoopi Goldberg confronted the Tilly Norwood phenomenon on The View, declaring 'bring it on' and noting that human bodies and faces 'move differently', she articulated a defiant confidence: the peculiarities of human movement, the imperfections of lived bodies, the spontaneity of genuine consciousness remain irreplicable.

The future likely involves hybrid forms that blend human and AI creativity in ways that challenge simple categorisation. Human directors may work with AI-generated actors for specific purposes whilst maintaining human performers for roles requiring emotional depth. Musicians may use algorithmic tools to explore sonic possibilities whilst retaining creative control. Visual artists may harness AI for ideation whilst executing final works through traditional methods. The boundary between human and machine creativity may become increasingly porous, requiring new vocabulary to describe these collaborative processes.

What remains non-negotiable is the need to centre human flourishing in these developments. Technology should serve human needs, not supplant human participation. Entertainment exists ultimately for human audiences, created by human sensibilities, reflecting human concerns. When synthetic performers threaten to displace human artists, when digital resurrections exploit deceased celebrities without clear consent, when AI-generated content saturates culture to the exclusion of human voices, we have lost sight of fundamental purposes.

The challenge facing the entertainment industry, policymakers, and society more broadly is to harness the creative potential of AI whilst preserving space for human artistry. This requires robust legal protections for performers' likenesses, fair compensation for training data, transparency about AI involvement in creative works, and cultural institutions that actively cultivate and value human creativity.

It also requires audiences to exercise discernment and intentionality about consumption choices. Supporting human artists, attending live performances, seeking out authentic human voices amid the synthetic noise, these actions constitute forms of cultural resistance against the homogenising tendencies of algorithmic production. Every ticket purchased for a live concert rather than a holographic resurrection, every commission given to a human illustrator rather than defaulting to AI generation, every choice to value the imperfect authenticity of human creation over algorithmic perfection, these are votes for the kind of culture we wish to inhabit.

In the end, the synthetic performers are here, and more are coming. Tilly Norwood will not be the last AI entity to seek representation by Hollywood agencies. Digital resurrections of deceased celebrities will proliferate as the technology becomes cheaper and more convincing. The deluge of AI-generated content will continue to rise. But whether these developments represent an expansion of creative possibility or a diminishment of human artistry depends entirely on the choices we make now.

SAG-AFTRA's declaration that 'nothing will ever replace a human being' must become more than rhetoric. It must manifest in legislation that protects performers, in industry practices that prioritise human employment, in cultural institutions that champion human creativity, and in audience choices that affirm the irreducible value of work made by conscious beings who have lived, suffered, loved, and transformed experience into expression.

The woman who lost $850,000 to a deepfake Brad Pitt, the background actors worried about displacement by synthetic characters, the families of deceased celebrities watching their loved ones' likenesses commercialised without consent, these are not abstract policy questions. They are human stories about dignity, livelihood, memory, and the right to control one's own image and voice. The technology that makes synthetic performers possible is impressive. But it cannot match the lived reality of human artists whose creativity emerges from depths that algorithms cannot fathom, and whose work carries meanings that transcend what any machine, however sophisticated, can generate from pattern recognition alone.

We stand at a juncture. The path we choose will determine whether the 21st century becomes an era that amplified human creativity through technological tools, or one that allowed efficiency and scalability to eclipse the irreplaceable value of human artistry. The machines are here. The question is whether we remain.

Sources and References

Institute of Internet Economics. (2025). The Rise of Synthetic Celebrities: AI Actors, Supermodels, and Digital Stars. Retrieved from https://instituteofinterneteconomics.org/

NBC News. (2025). Tilly Norwood, fully AI 'actor,' blasted by actors union SAG-AFTRA for 'devaluing human artistry'. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/

Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. (2025). Official statements on synthetic performers.

US Congress. (2025). Text – H.R.2794 – 119th Congress (2025-2026): NO FAKES Act of 2025. Retrieved from https://www.congress.gov/

US Congress. (2025). Text – S.1367 – 119th Congress (2025-2026): NO FAKES Act of 2025. Retrieved from https://www.congress.gov/

CNN Business. (2025). Celebrity AI deepfakes are flooding the internet. Hollywood is pushing Congress to fight back.

Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP. From Scarlett Johansson to Tupac: AI is Sparking a Performer Rights Revolution.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. (2021). Dead celebrities are being digitally resurrected — and the ethics are murky.

The Conversation. (2025). Holograms and AI can bring performers back from the dead – but will the fans keep buying it? Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/

NPR. (2025). Could 'the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman' be an AI avatar? Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/

Reed Smith LLP. (2024). AI and publicity rights: The No Fakes Act strikes a chord. Retrieved from https://www.reedsmith.com/

The Regulatory Review. (2025). Reintroduced No FAKES Act Still Needs Revision. University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Frontiers in Psychology. (2025). Human creativity versus artificial intelligence: source attribution, observer attitudes, and eye movements while viewing visual art. Volume 16.

Frontiers in Psychology. (2024). Human perception of art in the age of artificial intelligence. Volume 15.

Interaction Design Foundation. (2025). What Is AI-Generated Art? Retrieved from https://www.interaction-design.org/

Association for Computing Machinery. (2025). Art, Identity, and AI: Navigating Authenticity in Creative Practice. Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Creativity and Cognition.

Scientific Research Publishing. (2025). The Value of Creativity: Human Produced Art vs. AI-Generated Art.

Recording Academy. (2025). NO FAKES Act Introduced In The Senate: Protecting Artists' Rights In The Age Of AI.

Sheppard Mullin. (2025). Congress Reintroduces the NO FAKES Act with Broader Industry Support.

Representative Maria Salazar. (2024, 2025). Press releases on the NO FAKES Act introduction and reintroduction.

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

This morning I was given the choice: will I accept the standard treatment for my particular stage of Wet Macular Degeneration, or will I consider enrolling in ongoing Clinical Trials in which alternate treatments are studied? I chose to sign up for clinical trials.

Tomorrow morning I have an appointment at another office where these trials are conducted where there will be additional pictures taken of my bad eye and where I'll find out which specific type of trials I'll be enrolled in.

And the adventure continues ...

Introduction: The Living Word That Still Speaks

The New Testament is not merely a record of history; it is the continuing voice of the divine. Written nearly two thousand years ago, these twenty-seven books remain the most influential and transformative collection of writings in human civilization. Through them, billions have encountered forgiveness, redefined their purpose, and found the courage to live differently.

This New Testament Journey invites you to walk through Scripture book by book—from Matthew to Revelation—discovering the heart of God as it was revealed in Christ and preserved by the apostles. Each study brings historical depth, linguistic insight, and spiritual reflection designed to move beyond surface reading into deep comprehension.

Start your journey here: Watch the full New Testament journey. This companion video series explores every book in order, helping viewers connect academic understanding with personal transformation.

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The Importance of Context: Why Historical and Cultural Insight Matters

Every book of the Bible emerged from a distinct setting—political, linguistic, and social. Understanding that context not only enriches faith but prevents misinterpretation. As the BibleProject explains, “Context is what allows the reader to hear the text as its original audience heard it.”

The first-century Mediterranean world was a crossroads of Greek philosophy, Roman power, and Jewish tradition. Aramaic, Greek, and Latin intermingled in daily life. Knowing this backdrop reveals why the New Testament reads the way it does—why Jesus speaks in parables familiar to farmers, why Paul writes about citizenship, and why Revelation borrows imagery from imperial pageantry.

Modern archaeology and textual scholarship—supported by institutions such as the Biblical Archaeology Society, the Smithsonian, and the Israel Antiquities Authority—continue to confirm the reliability of this historical framework. Artifacts such as the Pilate Stone (discovered in 1961 in Caesarea) and the Pool of Bethesda (John 5) ground the New Testament firmly in verifiable history.

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Section I: The Gospels — Meeting the Messiah

Matthew: The King and His Kingdom

Matthew’s Gospel, written primarily for a Jewish audience, portrays Jesus as the promised Messiah who fulfills the Law and the Prophets. More than sixty Old-Testament quotations are woven into its narrative—more than any other Gospel. Scholars note that Matthew structures his work around five major discourses (chaps. 5–7, 10, 13, 18, 24–25), mirroring the five books of Moses.

In doing so, Matthew presents Jesus as the new Moses—not merely a teacher of the Law, but the giver of a new covenant written on the heart (Jeremiah 31:33). The Sermon on the Mount remains one of the most studied ethical texts in world literature.

“Matthew invites readers to see in Jesus not the abolition but the culmination of Israel’s story.” — Craig S. Keener, IVP Bible Background Commentary

Mark: The Gospel of Urgency

Mark, likely the earliest Gospel (c. AD 60–65), is brisk and vivid. His frequent use of the Greek word euthys (“immediately”) propels readers into action. Scholars believe Mark’s audience was Roman—accustomed to deeds more than discourse—hence the emphasis on miracles and motion.

The Gospel’s abrupt ending (16:8 in earliest manuscripts) is not failure but artistry: it leaves the resurrection as a call to faith. The British Library’s Codex Sinaiticus attests to this shorter ending, one of many examples of textual evidence confirming the Gospel’s authenticity and antiquity.

Luke: The Historian’s Gospel

Luke, a physician and companion of Paul, writes with the precision of a scholar. His prologue (Luke 1:1–4) resembles the Greco-Roman historiographical style of Thucydides and Josephus, signaling careful research. Archaeologist Sir William Ramsay—once skeptical—famously concluded after decades of fieldwork that “Luke is a historian of the first rank.”

Luke highlights the marginalized: women, the poor, foreigners. His genealogy traces Jesus back not to Abraham but to Adam, underscoring universality. The parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son encapsulate Luke’s theme—grace without boundary.

John: The Eternal Word

John’s Gospel stands apart in structure and theology. Written near the end of the first century, it opens not with a manger but with eternity: “In the beginning was the Word.” John’s Greek term Logos bridges Hebrew revelation (“And God said…”) and Greek philosophy, conveying divine reason personified.

Seven “signs” and seven “I Am” statements frame John’s Christology, culminating in Thomas’s confession, “My Lord and my God.” Modern textual criticism confirms John’s theological unity; papyri such as P52 (Rylands Fragment)—dated around AD 125—prove the Gospel’s remarkably early transmission.

“John wrote that we might believe; belief gives life.” — F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

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Section II: Acts — The Birth of the Church

The Acts of the Apostles, authored by Luke, chronicles the explosive growth of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. Written around AD 62, it functions as both sequel and bridge—linking the Gospels to the Epistles.

Historically, Acts confirms names, titles, and customs verified by secular sources. For instance, Luke’s reference to “politarchs” in Thessalonica (Acts 17:6) once puzzled critics until inscriptions bearing that exact term were unearthed.

The book’s turning point, Pentecost, represents the outpouring of the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus (Acts 2). This event empowered disciples to transcend fear, language, and geography. Within thirty years, the Gospel spread across three continents—an unparalleled movement in antiquity.

Sociologist Rodney Stark notes that the early church’s inclusive ethic and care during plagues led to exponential growth, estimating Christianity reached six million adherents by AD 300.

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Section III: The Pauline Epistles — Theology in Motion

Paul’s thirteen letters are both pastoral correspondence and profound theology. Written between AD 48 and 67, they address fledgling congregations navigating Greco-Roman pluralism.

Romans: The Manifesto of Grace

Romans synthesizes Paul’s theology—sin, salvation, sanctification, sovereignty. It was written from Corinth around AD 57 to a church Paul had not yet visited. Martin Luther called it “the purest Gospel.”

Modern scholars (e.g., N.T. Wright) emphasize its covenantal narrative: God’s righteousness revealed in faithfulness to His promises. Archaeological finds such as the Erastus inscription in Corinth confirm the social network Paul describes in Romans 16.

Corinthians: Church in the Real World

The Corinthian letters confront moral chaos in a cosmopolitan port city. They prove that early Christianity was no utopia; believers wrestled with division, immorality, and pride. Paul’s imagery of the body (1 Cor 12) offers one of the earliest models of spiritual community.

Galatians and Ephesians: Freedom and Identity

Galatians defends the gospel of grace against legalism. Ephesians, written from prison, expands the cosmic scope of that gospel—Christ reconciling all things. The phrase “in Christ,” appearing over thirty times, defines Christian identity.

Philippians and Colossians: Joy and Supremacy

From confinement, Paul writes of joy (Philippians 4:4) and the preeminence of Christ (Colossians 1:15–20). Scholars often cite the “Christ Hymn” as evidence of pre-Pauline worship, indicating the early church’s high Christology within decades of the resurrection.

Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, Philemon

These later epistles address hope, leadership, and reconciliation. 1 Thessalonians is the earliest surviving Christian text (AD 50). The pastoral letters provide early governance frameworks—elders, deacons, and doctrinal integrity.

“Paul’s epistles turned theology into biography.” — John Stott

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Section IV: The General Epistles — Faith Under Pressure

Hebrews: Christ, the Better Covenant

Hebrews, author uncertain, integrates temple imagery with Platonic contrast: shadow and reality. Its Greek style is the most refined in the New Testament. The argument is clear—Christ surpasses angels, Moses, and priests because His sacrifice is once for all.

James: Faith That Works

James, the half-brother of Jesus, grounds theology in ethics: “Be doers of the word.” His epistle reflects Jewish wisdom tradition, echoing Proverbs and Sirach. While some medieval interpreters misread James as contradicting Paul, modern consensus (see Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary) recognizes complementary perspectives—Paul addresses the root of salvation; James, its fruit.

Peter, John, and Jude: Endurance, Love, and Discernment

1 Peter encourages persecuted believers in Asia Minor, linking suffering with participation in Christ’s glory. 1 John defines love and truth amid emerging Gnostic heresy. Jude, brief but potent, warns against moral compromise.

“These writers preserve the moral vigor of the apostolic age.” — Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament

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Section V: Revelation — The Triumph of the Lamb

Revelation, penned by John during exile on Patmos (c. AD 95), concludes Scripture with apocalyptic symbolism rooted in Old-Testament prophecy. Contrary to sensationalism, scholars emphasize its pastoral intent: to comfort persecuted believers under Domitian’s reign.

Imagery of beasts, trumpets, and seals echoes Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. The repeated refrain, “He who has an ear, let him hear,” calls each generation to faithful witness.

Archaeological and textual studies show the seven cities addressed—Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea—were genuine first-century communities whose ruins still testify today.

“Revelation is not about predicting an escape from history, but proclaiming God’s victory within it.” — The BibleProject

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The Canon and Transmission of the New Testament

The process of canonization was neither arbitrary nor political. Early church fathers—Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus—quoted New-Testament writings extensively, showing broad recognition long before formal councils. By AD 200, twenty-two of the twenty-seven books were universally acknowledged.

Textual reliability is unparalleled: over 5,800 Greek manuscripts, some dating within decades of composition. Comparatively, works like Homer’s Iliad survive in fewer than 650. As Daniel Wallace of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts notes, “The wealth of evidence makes the New Testament the best-attested document of antiquity.”

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Linguistic Insights: The Power of the Original Words

Greek was chosen providentially—it was the lingua franca of the empire, precise yet expressive. Key terms illuminate doctrine:

• Charis (grace): undeserved favor, the foundation of salvation.
• Agape (love): self-giving, divine love surpassing emotion.
• Pistis (faith): trust, allegiance, relational fidelity.
• Ekklesia (church): a called-out assembly, not a building.

Understanding these nuances reveals depth often lost in translation. Modern tools such as Blue Letter Bible and Logos Software make such study accessible, bridging scholarship and devotion.

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The Transformative Power of Scripture

According to the American Bible Society’s 2025 State of the Bible Report, frequent Bible engagement correlates with higher well-being, generosity, and resilience. Neuroscientific studies (Baylor University, 2024) show habitual Scripture reflection reduces stress markers and increases empathy.

Yet transformation depends on obedience. As Jesus declared, “If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples” (John 8:31). The New Testament was written not to be admired but to be lived.

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Practical Application: Walking the Word

1. Read Daily – Even five minutes builds continuity; repetition forms memory.

2. Study Deeply – Observe context, cross-reference passages, consult commentaries.

3. Pray the Text – Turn verses into conversation with God.

4. Live It Out – Apply one principle per reading; faith matures through action.

5. Share It – Teaching others solidifies understanding.

Churches using systematic Bible reading plans—such as Ligonier Ministries’ TableTalk—report greater member retention and service involvement. Scripture engagement reshapes culture from the inside out.

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The Global Impact of the New Testament

From its first translation into Syriac (Peshitta) to today’s 1,600+ languages, the New Testament remains the most translated text in human history. The United Bible Societies project aims for full accessibility by 2033.

Pew Research (2025) reports that 2.6 billion people identify as Christian—a direct legacy of these writings. The Word that began in a small corner of the Roman world now circles the globe, carried by print, radio, and digital media alike.

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The New Testament and Modern Scholarship

Contemporary studies confirm rather than diminish faith. Textual criticism, archaeology, and socio-rhetorical analysis illuminate meaning without undermining inspiration. Even secular historians like Bart Ehrman acknowledge the remarkable preservation of the text.

Institutions such as Tyndale House Cambridge and Wheaton College continue to bridge rigorous scholarship with devotion, showing that faith and intellect are allies, not adversaries.

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A Call to Rediscovery

The challenge for the modern believer is not access but attention. We hold in our hands what saints once risked their lives to preserve. Yet distraction often steals the Word before it roots in our hearts.

To journey through the New Testament is to reawaken wonder—to stand again at the empty tomb, to sit beside Paul in chains, to glimpse the heavenly throne. The same Spirit that inspired these words now illuminates them for you.

“The Scriptures are shallow enough for a child to wade, but deep enough for an elephant to swim.” — Gregory the Great

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How to Begin the Journey

1. Start Here: Watch the full New Testament journey — walk through every book with clear teaching and historical insight.

2. Prepare Your Heart: Pray for understanding before you read or watch.

3. Study Systematically: Follow the canonical order to see the redemptive flow.

4. Invite Others: Form a small study circle—learning multiplies in community.

5. Stay Consistent: Growth comes not from intensity but from continuity.

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Conclusion: The Word Still Lives

The final words of Revelation—“The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all”—remain the benediction over the human story. From the first Gospel proclamation to the closing vision of a renewed creation, the New Testament reveals a God who entered history to redeem it.

In an age of confusion, these writings still offer clarity. In a world of despair, they offer hope. And in hearts that are willing, they still perform the miracle of transformation.

The invitation is open: come, read, listen, and live.

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Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube. Support the mission: Buy Douglas a cup of coffee

#NewTestamentJourney #BibleStudySeries #ChristianScholarship #FaithAndReason #BibleBookByBook #SpiritualGrowth #DailyDevotion

— Douglas Vandergraph

Hace una semana termine mi texto diciendo que no veia la luz, que la esperanza parecia muy lejana. Pero basto una accion, para que mi esperanza regresara (bueno, 4 especificamente), empecemos diciendo que las pasadas elecciones para alcalde me dieron esperanza de nuevo y un poco de fe en la humanidad y el futuro de este pais. Mamdani fue electo alcalde de la ciudad mas rica del mundo, si, un musulman, migrante, democrata/socialista, joven y con ideas frescas, es la cara y la representacion de miles de personas que sintieron lo que yo en los ultimos anos y especificamente 11 meses. El es la cara del cambio en un panorama oscuro. No profesamos la misma religion, no venimos del mismo pais, nuestro primer idioma no es el mismo, pero como yo, el representa los suenos, la fuerza y el trabajo del migrante.

Yo se que muchos culpan a los migrantes de la decadencia del pais (no es el primer lugar, de donde vengo la migracion venezolana y por ende las personas de Venezuela son culpadas por el crimen, pobreza y todas esas cosas que ya sabemos en Colombia por ejemplo) no es coincidencia, es una forma de distraccion, y si para mi es tan claro, por que para otros no? La frase original es confunde y venceras, pero en estos tiempos algidos se podria decir: distrae y venceras. El actual gobierno de US pone toda la culpa en los migrantes, legales y no legales, los que cruzan por frontera y los que tienen todo su papeleo en regla, por una parte es xenofobia pura y dura y por otra una distraccion del problema real (en otro momento hablaremos de la xenofobia tan marcada en US), pero ahora mismo quiero hablar de la distraccion.

Para nadie es un secreto que el discurso conservador en estos momentos es: Make America Great Again, yo pense que era una frase del actual gobierno o al menos de anos cercanos, pero no, encontre esa frase tambien en la plataforma de elecciones en donde el candidato a la presidencia de 1980 era Ronald Reagan, lo que obviamente desde el partido conservador, se desea volver a anos pasados, pero como? para que? en anos pasados, muchos de los derechos conquistados actualmente no existian, las mujeres no podiamos votar, no podiamos abrir una cuenta de banco sin permiso de nuestros esposos, no podiamos manejar, basicamente no eramos duenas de nosotras mismas, sino que un representante masculino decidia por nosotras. Y algo mas claro que el agua para mi es que hay dos cosas seguras en la vida: la muerte y el cambio. Pero por que tanta resistencia al cambio? por que querer una sociedad en donde la segregacion y las diferencias no son celebradas, sino perseguidas y he aqui, estamos anos despues con esos mismos temores, que se resumen en una sola cosa, lucha de poderes, de eso quisiera hablar tambien en otro momento, porque Michael Foucault lo explico muy bien.

Pero es eso, poder y no querer soltar el poder, sin importar porque medios, a lo maquiavelico, el fin justifica los medios. Y bueno, la distraccion (yo misma ando distraida porque tengo tanto por decir, pero retomemos). Se habla que el problema son los migrantes, para quitarle atencion a lo mas evidente, los duenos de este pais no son las personas (como en papel la democracia deberia funcionar), sino las empresas. Las empresas que cada dia se vuelven mas ricas a costa de quitarle derechos fundamentales a las personas. Derechos como la salud, la educacion, el trabajo justo, el descanso, esas cosas que yo daba por sentado en mi pais, pero que aca son un privilegio. He conocido personas con dos o tres trabajos que no tienen seguro medico y muy dificilmente llegan a fin de mes sin deudas (aca la mayoria esta endeudado, los bancos hacen tan facil tener una tarjeta de credito, para que les debas mas y mas dinero al final del dia). US llamado el pais de la libertad, donde se le hace propaganda en todo lugar, anuncio, y la gente tiene la ilusion de ser libre, libre porque puedes comprar un iphone? libre porque puedes manejar un auto? libre porque el gobierno te da la posibilidad de crear un negocio?

Pues aunque la libertad es un concepto tan complejo, al menos creo que coincido en algo, y es a tener la posibilidad de decidir, decidir, sobre tu tiempo, sobre tu cuerpo, sobre como quieres transportarte, pero no, el aborto en US ya no es legal, es una OBLIGACION tener un auto (a menos que vivas en las ciudades centrales y no todos pueden pagar por vivir ahi), te obligan a pagar un seguro de auto, porque no hay suficiente transporte publico y obviamente el auto en si tambien debes pagarlo, pues eso a mi no me parece libertad, porque aunque tienes la ilusion de que decides, no te dan mas opciones. A ese apartado, tambien quiero darle otro texto.

La gente esta distraida echando culpas a los que ni la tienen, mientras las empresas se vuelven mas ricas y poderosas, sin diversidad no hay libertad, dice la cancion colores de la banda espanola ska-p, ahi esta la verdadera fuerza, en las diferencias, en la diversidad, en escuchar al otro y tomar lo mejor (respetuosamente, sin apropiaciones culturales) y vivir lo mas en paz que se pueda (aunque el humano por naturaleza quiera vivir el conflicto).

Hoy quiero decir que tengo esperanza, para mi, para los mios, para nuestro futuro y amo ese pequenito rayo de luz que me dieron las elecciones a alcalde de noviembre 2025: Mikie Sherrill es la nueva alcaldesa de New Jersey y en Virginia, tambien se eligio una mujer Abigail Spanberger, Helena Moreno (de origen mexicano) en New Orleans y la cereza del pastel Mamdani en NY, no le di tanto protagonismo a las mujeres en este texto, porque mujeres en el poder lo dejamos para otro dia y me despido diciendo que el cambio esta lejos aun, pero vamos pasitos pequenos, lento pero seguro, hasta la victoria!!

#theatre #boundedimagination

Warning: Contains some mild spoilers

So Young is a play about five people, one of whom is dead. Central to the play is Helen, who died of Covid but around whose absence the remaining characters continue to orbit. We are witness to a single evening when couple Davie (Andy Clark) and Liane (Lucianne McEvoy) are invited by Milo (Robert Jack), Helen’s widower, to meet Milo’s new girlfriend Greta (Yana Harris). At twenty years old, Greta dramatically fails the ‘half + 7 rule’ for forty-something Milo, and his friends are unsurprisingly unimpressed. What follows is an evening of escalating strife as tempers rise as fast as glasses of wine get downed, and each friend wrestles with grief, death, aging and loss in their own way.

The 2025 production of So Young performed at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow is superbly acted, with Liane frequently stealing the show with biting diatribes on the folly of men. All actors bring copious energy and pathos to the play, managing to navigate the fine balance between comedy and tragedy. And this is necessary, because from the first minute So Young is fighting a rearguard action against the cliched nature of its subject matter. “Older man fucks younger women instead of dealing with his emotions” is after all a tale as old as time, or at least as old as English Literature professors, as Liane points out. Can So Young offer us something new?

The answer is an ambivalent “yes and no”. So Young very productively shifts the centrality of this story away from both the older man and the younger woman, instead putting the focus on Liane and her unresolved grief about the death of her friend. Liane is the real star of the show, and the only character with an emotional arc, going from feigned tolerance of Greta to belligerent disavowal, to cautious acceptance. Although the play cleverly alternates group settings with the pairing off of each potential dyad of characters, Liane is the motive force throughout, compelling the other characters to react to her. At its best, the result is a powerful reflection on grief and friendship.

Unfortunately, despite frequent moments of brilliance and hilarity, So Young remains caught in the narrative cul-de-sac that is the midlife crisis cliche, because of the inherent difficulty of refreshing it. Inevitably both humour and pathos must spring from observations on diminished sex drive, faltering careers, marital fissures, and above all an inability of adults to communicate except when lubricated by copious amounts of wine. So Young further handicaps itself by buying instant laughs with a steady stream of revelations from Milo and Greta (‘we’re in love, we’re engaged, we’re getting married next month, we’re moving to London’), at the expense of the otherwise serious note it is trying to hit. Milo and Greta’s relationship is unnecessarily over the top. Had Greta instead been 28 and Helen’s death a year ago, the play would arguably have worked better, creating at least a chance of portraying Milo as a sympathetic and understandable character. The widower who after a year tentatively tries to move on with a new partner, and who is aware that she is borderline too young, has more potential than the traditional man-child who hides from his emotions in the bed of a girl half his age.

It is not only Greta and Milo’s relationship, but also the characters themselves which further weaken the play. Milo’s man-child stereotype may be funny, but by its very nature it is arrested in its development and hence devoid of complex motivations or emotions, which means it isn’t really interesting. Lacking compelling interiority, the man-child is neither a compelling subject nor a useful lens through which to reflect on society more broadly, a flaw that also marred Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx & Crake. And insofar as Milo proclaims his reaosns for loving Greta, the situation gets worse. For with the narcissism typical of a toddler, all his reasons are about how Greta makes Milo feel. None are about who Greta herself is. Milo’s love is based on the complete objectivication of Greta, using her to achieve an emotional fulfillment that he is too immature to attain himself.

Where Milo’s interest in Greta is egotistic, Greta’s interest in Milo is entirely unexplained. Not that So Young requires the love interest to have any agency or motivation, but in failing to provide either, it prevents Greta from acting as the counterpoint to Liane in the way the play implies she might. Greta’s forceful retort that she is not in this relationship because of unresolved daddy issues would have been significantly more persuasive if we had been given any insight into what attracts her to Milo. Do they share a passion for travel? A love of the performing arts? A commitment to revolutionary socialism? The only thing we do know is that they do not share their respective social circles, and it is legitimate to ask what a 20-year-old would get from a partner who is otherwise completely detached from her life.

What we are missing here is context. In So Young, we have four individuals and the links between them, but not the wider social ecosystem in which they are embedded. That is not surprising, and So Young is far from unique in this. The ‘common sense’ of our times is that we are not a society, but a collection of individuals with particular relations to one another. But humans are social creatures. We aren’t atoms linked to other atoms by unchangeable bonds, but parts of complex and dynamic social ecosystems. We can only be understood through the whole web of relationships we create.

Isolation from social context is also at the root of the clichés that So Young interrogates, but ultimately cannot challenge because it accepts the premise that they have some universal truth. Again, it is hard to fault the play because our culture does regard the midlife crisis, the manchild, the poorly communicating couple, as universally recognisable archetypes and patterns. Yet our familiarity with these clichés obscures their historical and geographical contingency and how they are resultant from how contemporary society is organised. Would Davie fear old age if we revered the wisdom of our elders in the same way as the virility of our young? Would Milo have the same escapist urge if we continued to have transcendental experiences throughout our life? Would all of us communicate better if we had more quality time for our partners, family and friends?

These are the sort of questions a play could ask, but So Young ultimately doesn’t. In this, it is not unlike Make It Happen. Both plays offer powerful critiques of the world we live in. Both plays combine dark comedy with searing insights and genuine pathos. Yet both plays remain stuck within the limited imaginative horizon of contemporaneous bourgeois discourse and are therefore both left with nowhere for their critique to go. In So Young, this is most palpably felt at the conclusion, where after many narrowly averted fallings-out our friends agree to go forward together. It is a brave and mature attempt to resolve the play’s central problem, but ultimately fails to convince because we have not been offered any reason to redeem Milo, and because beyond that, it i not transformative. So Young shows that we can potentially overcome our crises of middle age, but never wonders if what it would take to build a world where we might not suffer them in the first place.

Notes & Suggestions

• For a humorous and surprisingly insightful take on how we might reckon with the anxieties of growing up, one can do worse than giving Marvel’s Thunderbolts* a watch.
• Both Capitalist Realism and Hegemony Now! explore how neoliberal ideology constrains our imaginative horizons, and so limits what futures we might think are possible.