Somebody left little plastic Jesus figures all over one of the woodland trails I like to walk. They have big, cartoonish grins, white robes, and brightly colored sashes in a variety of colors. I’ve been picking them out of knotholes and tree-forks for days, dropping them in the recycling bin by the parking lot.
At first, the whole thing just made me very angry. It wasn’t just litter; it was litter that felt like an invasion of my own sacred space with a cheap, mass-produced icon that felt like the sacredness-equivalent of empty calories.
Honestly, it made me furious, my rage directed at a kind of deeply American-feeling religiosity that is sold in packs of 72 for $29.99 (I checked). Religion as cheap, brightly-colored, disposable eyesores littered somewhere quiet and gentle and authentic. Religion that is colorful and easy and leaves a mess behind for somebody who actually gives a damn to clean up.
Perhaps worst of all, I suspected that somebody thought of scattering the little figures everywhere as a moral act.
I’m still not happy about it, but my anger has cooled through many walks and the imaginative empathy that always arises from my long contemplations. I reasoned that it was probably a child (encouraged by adults). I reasoned that I wasn’t always respectful of wild places when I was a kid. I reasoned that there is huge, institutional religious machinery at work that seems designed to shrink participants’ worldviews down to a pinhole.
So, my anger slowly resolved into sadness.
And I’m left hoping that whoever tucked trash all over one of my favorite woodlands meets with some moments of clarity and self-reflection. I hope they consider the real value of plastic sacredness sold in bulk. I hope they consider the usefulness of virtue expressed as litter. I hope they question who they expect to comfort or convert with mass-produced trash that smells of a chemical tang, trash abandoned to block sunlight from a tiny patch of moss or wedged in tree-bark like a pebble in a shoe.
I hope they awaken to the symbolism of dropping something inert and obstructive in a place that otherwise grows and breathes and provides.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
What's the point of a diary if you're not lying in it?
On Anaïs Nin, literary self-mythologizing, and why personal writing should always be slightly dishonest. (from my substack)
If you’re not lying in your diary, you’re just journaling, and journaling is for people who don’t know how to edit.
A diary is not a record of events; it is an act of creation. The best diarists know this instinctively. Anaïs Nin knew it better than anyone. Her diaries were not mere confessions but performances, half-lit mirrors where the truth shimmered, distorted but no less real.
Nin understood that life is not lived in a single register. Her diaries are a study in contradiction—one moment, she is in love; the next, repulsed. She is independent yet wholly consumed by those around her. But contradiction isn’t falsehood; it’s literature. She rewrote and edited her diaries, sculpting herself into the character she wanted to be. And is that really so dishonest?
People love to be outraged by the idea of a diary that is not entirely factual. But fact is not the same as truth. Diaries, at their best, are emotional truths, shaped by mood, by desire, by the need to impose a narrative on the chaos of daily life. Nin was not interested in being objective—she was interested in being immortal. She once wrote, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” But why stop at tasting? Why not rewrite, reshape, embellish? If we can curate the lives we present to others, why should we not do the same for the versions of ourselves we leave behind?
Nin herself was a master of this. She edited her diaries before publication, removing, refining, turning herself into a protagonist. She blurred lines, shifted timelines, made herself more alluring. She called it shaping reality. Others call it lying. The truth, of course, is that all personal writing is selective. Even in confession, there is curation.
The danger, of course, is that history will take the performance at face value. That the diary, once private, will harden into biography. But this, too, is a kind of truth. A diary is not a static object. It lives, it breathes, it deceives, but always in service of something larger than the mundane details of existence.
maybe this is just me But hear me out. since i was a very young kid, i’ve had this weird inexplicable love for tickling that i knew was unusual and that i actively felt ashamed of. i didn’t know why it felt so shameful, but it just struck me as something that i could never tell anyone about.
before i went to bed on school nights, i would make sure to clear my search history of anything related to tickling. i would have been utterly mortified if anyone had ever seen those searches. i would literally pride myself on how long i’d lasted without indulging in tickle content, and i’d feel like i’d basically relapsed whenever i “gave in.”
when i reflect on these moments, i see them as the times where i have felt the most profoundly alone that i’d ever been. i felt so scared of this part of my life, but i was also so enthralled with the topic — i loved tickling. it was something so personal and frighteningly vulnerable to me. i didn’t even know why i loved it so much — everyone around me actually seemed to hate it! it was just so beyond special to me. something about the uncontrollable laughter and smiling really had me in a headlock! i’ve just always been so in love with tickling and i will continue to be in love with tickling forever ☺️
i keep thinking of the set design of this movie because it's phenomenal. especially the medusa carving in victor’s workshop. it doesn’t feel like decoration. it feels like the heart of the film, the thing that tells you what kind of story this is before anyone speaks. del toro’s said that this film is his lifelong dream project, the story he’s been building toward, not as a horror tale but as a kind of prayer about creation, forgiveness, and the impossible love between maker and made. when you know that the medusa motif makes sense. the carving looks straight out of caravaggio’s medusa. the head severed but alive, mouth open, eyes wild, that second between life and death stretched out forever. caravaggio painted it on a convex shield, so it was both weapon and mirror. del toro loves that kind of double meaning, the beauty that cuts and reflects at the same time. he’s talked about wanting this film to move like an adagio, slow and full of shadow, where light and dark never stay separate for long. you can feel that in this scene. the flicker of candles, the glimmer on stone, victor’s face going pale as he realizes what he’s done. in that moment the medusa behind him, especially one with that startled face, mouth open, isn’t random. it’s a reflection of him. both are figures punished for crossing sacred boundaries. medusa was changed into something monstrous after being wronged. victor tries to master life and ends up creating a reflection of his own guilt.
this whole film revolves around that mirror effect, the way every act of creation holds a trace of destruction, and every monster carries the image of its maker. when victor looks at the creature, he freezes. not because it’s terrifying, but because he sees himself. he’s the one turned to stone. del toro’s world is full of this kind of symbolism. you see it in the lighting, in the faces half in shadow, in the way every surface seems alive. the medusa carving is just the most visible form of it. it makes the lab feel like a sacred place, like athena’s temple, where transgression and revelation happen at once. and because del toro doesn’t treat horror as fear but as awe, the carving becomes almost holy. it says that power doesn’t disappear when it’s punished, it transforms. throughout the movie, that’s the tension del toro keeps circling. creator and creation. parent and child. reflection and shadow. the medusa face stays there like a silent witness to it all, reminding you that beauty and monstrosity are part of the same thing. del toro has said his frankenstein is about compassion, about what happens when you see the thing you made and it sees you back. the carving makes that literal. it’s a mirror in stone, showing us that horror isn’t always something outside us. it’s almost always what we recognize.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
VERSO (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33): a reflection on him as a character
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
Bear with me because this is a very long rambling.
I would love to read your opinions and inputs on the topic in the comments!
I believe Verso to be a dichotomy incarnated, the more I find myself thinking about him as a character.
He exists in a perpetual state of identity and agency crisis, as he was made aware at some point in his life that all of his memories are fabricated, that he has never actually experienced them, and that he was created with the sole intention of resembling and replacing a deceased son in order to alleviate the pain of a mother who has lost her child in a fire.
He has never been at peace in his whole life, and because he was made immortal, he can't even die on his own terms.
He constantly doubts whether his feelings and relationships are a product of his own, or are instead simply built upon the personality and the experiences he has inherited from the original Verso.
He doesn't know if he's loved for who he actually is or for who he's meant to represent.
And yet, although he isn't sure if he deserves to exist, he loves his family unconditionally (even when he sometimes doesn't agree with their actions) despite knowing that the feelings and memories linked to them aren't completely his own.
His love for his mother, who created him as a copy of her original son, is tainted by resentment: she, his creator, is the cause of his agonizing life as a replacement, and, at the same time, he must live eternally with the guilt of being a reminder to his mother of the son she lost, preventing her from finally overcoming her child's death and moving on with her life.
Later on in the story he experiences again the feeling of being seen only as a replacement, this time through the player's lenses, as he overtakes Gustave's place in the party: he uses the same weapons as Gustave, the same outfits and even takes his role as Maelle's brotherly figure. The players initially reject Verso's arrival to the team: they want Gustave back not a "cheap" imitation, in the same way that Verso's mother wants her son to return from the dead.
Even in the game's final scenes, Maelle (or Alicia, if we refer to her by her identity outside the painting) unconsciously addresses him as if he truly was the original Verso. Painted Verso wants to live apart from his role as a substitute for the original, to forge his own identity. It is tragic that during his final moments with Maelle, he is once again denied his own personhood.
His unwanted existence as a copy is the consequence of a battle that erupted and continues between the members of the Dessendre family, who process grief, after the loss of Verso, in different ways and try to impose them on each other, ending up denying their relatives and their sentient creations in their paintings any agency or consideration.
And yet, copied Verso is the only one who shows compassion and listens to the fragment of the original Verso that remains in the canvas: what would the original Verso think of seeing his family corrupting the world he loved creating in his painting and harming each other in the process because they cannot accept his death? Wouldn't he want to avoid becoming the source of his own family's misery?
Who could understand him better than a copy of himself? With whom he shares his love for music, the memory of painting a canvas full of fantasy and the pure desire for adventure typical of a small child, his bitterness and frustration at not being able to dedicate himself to the piano in a family that venerates only the power of painting?
A central aspect of Verso's character, both the copy and to some extent the original, is that over the years he has developed, a tendency towards deception and lies to protect himself, his family, and his goal. He hides himself behind masks.
Accidentally revealing his immortality and the nature of his existence forced him in the past to end the lives of people he cared about, who suspected, rightfully so, he hid his true nature with the ill intention to betray and sabotage the mission of destroying the Paintress (Verso's mother), who they mistook as the source of their suffering.
From this point on, Verso's interactions with others became somewhat insincere. However, he still desires companionship, to connect with people, and has shown himself capable of sharing touching moments with the other expedition members who he has come to care about: wanting to elicit a smile from them, offering them a dignified place of rest for a fallen comrade, sharing and showing his passion for music or helping someone overcome their fear of swimming, among other kind gestures.
But in the end, he fears that if they come to know who he truly is or his intentions, they will oppose his goal, which, in simplified terms, involves sacrificing himself and all beings of their painted world to save his mother (and later on, his sister) from a deadly fate. Thus, his purpose is defined by both selfishness (to destroy an entire world full of sentient beings so he can finally put an end to his life) and self-sacrifice (to save his mother from a self-inflicted illusion, the painted world itself, that is slowly draining her life force and her sanity).
That's why he lies, withholds information and diverts the attention of the other characters when they get closer to the truth. He has convinced himself, after being conditioned by decades living in solitary immortality, estranged from his family, with an identity he doesn't feel is his own, and the accumulated guilt and frustration of betraying previous expeditions and failing to reach his mother through the years, that his way of fulfilling his mission is the only correct one. He is incapable of opening himself to other possibilities, of trusting his companions (even though he cares for them), of telling them the truth, and of working together to find a common solution that would allow him to avoid bearing the guilt of condemning them to their end.
He sacrifices the painted world and forces his mother and Maelle, original Verso's sister, to leave the Canvas that serves as a refuge for them to cope with their grief. He supposedly expels them for their own good, so they can have the chance to live outside the Canvas without endangering their lives, but selfishly, he also does it to rid himself of his immortality.
The life that awaits Maelle outside the Canvas is no better than the one she has lived within it: in the outside world, her face and throat are disfigured by the fire, a fire for which she was partly responsible, a fire that took her brother, Verso, when he sacrificed himself to save her. Outside the Canvas, Maelle cannot speak, breathe, or swallow without feeling pain; her family is broken by grief and lacks the drive to confort her; her mother and sister, while they love her, they also subconsciously blame her for Verso's death; and her overprotective father has constantly threatened to destroy the Canvas where she has lived an entire new life and where she has found another family that loves her unconditionally. The world that awaits her outside is a condemnation to a life marked by disability, guilt and grief.
The only words of comfort Verso is able to offer Maelle when he casts her out of the Canvas are based on an assumption: he doesn't know if Maelle's life outside the canvas will truly improve. He can only believe and hope that his lies will ultimately prove true, that he hasn't condemned the inhabitants of the canvas and Maelle herself in exchange for a worse outcome.
The more Verso lied, the more he became trapped in a dead end. Until one day he reached a point of no return, and all that remained to do in the end is to lament that things hadn't turned out differently (even though he had the power to change things if he had shared the truth from the start) and wishing that lying, after so many years, wasn't still so painful.
He Who Guards The Truth With Lies, to protect and to control.
easiest way to write a paper on literally anything :
1. leave your intro and conclusion for the end, I mean it don’t try to write your intro until the end, just trust me.
2. figure out your main point and get at least three defensible (credible) reasons to argue that point.
3. start your body like this:
introduce what you’re gonna say. Provide evidence (citation). Connect it to the bigger picture. Show your understanding. [add in transitions for fluff]
-> sentences for each if you need your paper short, paragraphs for each of you need your paper long
4. then rinse and repeat
5. need to add in other sections like a rebuttal or gaps in the literature? do the same paragraph format :
intro sentence. main discussion (citations as needed). connection to bigger picture. show your understanding.
6. now write your intro :
first get the readers attention, idc how just hook em. what the hell are you talking about? why does it matter beyond your main point? what do you want the reader to be thinking about as they read your paper? what is your main point? summarize your evidence.
-> again sentences = short, paragraphs = long & transition statements for fluff.
7. the conclusion is basically the introduction but ordered differently and use different wording - you can literally just copy and paste what you wrote in the intro, use a thesaurus and rewrite it.
What the hell were you talking about? what evidence did you give? what was your main point? why does it matter in a broader scope? What did you want the reader to think about?
