#Textual Variants

[mindfulldsliving]

Latter-day Saint Views on the Bible: A Comparative Analysis

Latter-day Saints (LDS) hold the Bible in high regard, recognizing it as the word of God. However, they believe its teachings must be interpreted correctly. This unique perspective is foundational to their faith

Photo by Rachel Strong on Unsplash Words carry immense significance in any discourse, especially when discussing religious beliefs and doctrines. In their latest post, the writer at Life After Ministries blog attempts to utilize 1 Timothy 4:16 to critique what they term the “lies of Mormonism.” The writer emphasizes that Christians should heed not just God’s words, but also be aware of the…

[bigboobshaunt]

Idunno! Alex and Sandra are soooo clearly both alter-egos to Alexandra* that I can't help but feel any read that would treat them as different people is very disingenuous, like... their genderfluidity is a reference to the color-changing nature of their alexandrite core, it could not be any clearer...

[nkjemisin]

I’m always on the lookout for creative, world-specific swears in media, and I wanted to say that I think the ones from the Broken Earth series are genuinely fantastic. “Rust” in particular feels very intuitively like a swear, to the point where I sometimes use it in real life!

Were there any other words you considered for that category that didn’t make the cut?

Not really, though I did consider dropping most of the "our world" swears in the text at one point. I was worried that the occasional "shit" or "fuck" might be too jarring -- but in our own world, most cultures have a derogatory word for excrement, and a lot of them exclaim about sex (though not always negatively), so I reasoned that they could fit into a not-our-world too. "Hell" was the real problem, though, because that's a distinctly Christian word. But it occurred to me that the idea of hell as a fiery place underground actually made more sense in the Stillness than it does in our world. There's not much textual support for a fiery hell in the Bible, but the Stillness has a) way more visual evidence of fiery stuff happening underground, given that it's much more seismically active, and b) a cultural awareness that there's Somebody Down There and that They Ain't Nice. So I went ahead and included that one too, though I interspersed it with some "fire-under-earth"s and other local variants just to make it work better.

I've found myself saying "rusting" too, now and again. Tho I also use "frak," "frell," and other SFF neologisms too!

[anonymouspuzzler]

awright who let puzz play psychonauts again and start Thinking

It Never Ends! I am once again thinking about Psychonauts and specifically thinking about Loboto. Even More Specifically, I replayed the first game Yet Again recently and on hitting the scene where Loboto removes Dogen’s brain, had a moment of “huh, he’s like, way more measured and composed than I remembered,” and God Help Me that sent me on a horrible unending spiral of Revisiting and Thinking About and Theorizing On Things. And Now You Must All Read My Discoveries As Well. (placed under readmore because 1) this is gonna get long and 2) my god there will be major spoilers for Every Psychonauts Game.)

Welcome To The Thunderdome. Let’s Begin. In particular I am going to present to and discuss with you Three Distinct Things I Am Thinking About Loboto Based On In-Game Evidence That I Will Extrapolate, Present, and Argue To You All:

Cal’s childhood lobotomy did not, in fact, remove his psychic powers, only cut off his ability to consciously access and utilize them. He is still unconsciously using psychic abilities at the point that we see him in the games.

One of the most prominent impacts of the lobotomy on Cal appears to be his inability to recognize when he is doing harm, and to a certain related degree, how to interpret other peoples’ responses to him. When Raz helps recover his “moral compass”, Loboto actually becomes significantly more unstable as he struggles to process this, having likely gone most of his life without these capabilities.

Both of the above are causing some variant of Mental Projection to occur in Loboto’s mind, creating multiple conflicting archetypes/personas similar to what’s happening in Cassie’s mind.

So let’s go through each of these one by one! In excruciating detail!!

1) Cal’s childhood lobotomy did not, in fact, remove his psychic powers, only cut off his ability to consciously access and utilize them. He is still unconsciously using psychic abilities at the point that we see him in the games.

So for this one, we’re going to go through my evidence from “most textual” to “a little more speculative” in roughly that order. Obviously, none of this is explicit, but I’m doing my damndest to use things that can be fairly reasonably cited from Actual In Game rather than too deep in fanon/speculation.

The most textual example of Loboto having lingering psychic abilities despite his lobotomy is, in fact, his mental world in Psychonauts 2! This is something that’s a little more obvious on a rewatch/replay.

When you’re going through the game/level the first time, Sasha especially spends a lot of time discussing how Loboto’s mind must have been booby-trapped and messed with by his employer, because otherwise Loboto wouldn’t be able to resist the construct and otherwise give the agents the degree of run-around he’s putting them through. On a first playthrough, that makes perfect sense, especially when this plus additional evidence leads the agents to conclude Loboto’s employer was a mole within the Psychonauts itself. Obviously, a psychic from the agency messed with Loboto’s head and left all these psychic booby-traps for their coworkers!

But once you reach the end of the game and go back and look at this again, you realize, hey, wait. Loboto’s boss wasn’t a psychic at all! Quite explicitly!

Now I’m going to take a moment to argue against my own argument here, because there is evidence that Gristol would have been able to psychically fuck with Loboto despite not having psychic abilities himself.

[Image ID: A screenshot from a cutscene in Psychonauts 2, showing the receptionist at the Motherlobe levitating a ThinkerPrint Reader (a small brain-shaped disc with a blue glowing eye symbol in the middle). End ID.]

We see in-game that these little brain-disc-things - which Gristol would have had access to via Truman, since Truman has one on his person - are able to provide some limited degree of psychic power even to people who don’t otherwise have those abilities. Namely, the front desk receptionist is able to telekinetically lift one and scan Raz with it when he arrives, despite dialogue later on suggesting she isn’t a psychic herself. It’s entirely possible Gristol used that to fuck with Loboto’s head and place all those psychic booby traps.

But ho ho!! Now I’m going to counter-argue this counter-argument, to get you all back on board with my original argument!! Because despite this possibility, it’s also pretty textual that Gristol is a fuck-up who’s not very good at planning. The entirety of Psychonauts 2 is a display of him not really having any back-up plans for any possible hiccups in his original plan (as soon as Lili reveals a boyfriend he didn’t know about, his response is Fake A Coma), and of said plan being undone mostly by his own sloppy work (shipping his own body back to the base in a poorly-taped box with a key to his former residence in his pockets). The thought of this same man having the capability and foresight to set up numerous highly effetive psychic booby-traps in the brain of his hired help, just in case that hired help got captured and psychically interrogated… it doesn’t feel likely.

(Now that I write it all out, in a lot of ways it feels like Gristol just… forgot about-slash-disregarded Loboto after he did the dirty work of kidnapping Truman and swapping the brains. Like, he only appears once in Gristol’s Big Special Mind-Ride of his Brilliant Plan, at the very end, in a barely-held-together-backroom type of area, and Gristol never so much as brings him up by name. Heck, in retrospect, I wouldn’t be surprised if Gristol deciding to Play Coma was equally as prompted by Guy Who Knows Everything, Who He Completely Disregarded and Left For Dead, falling out of a luggage rack unexpectedly right in front of him and Five Guys He's Trying To Fool Into Thinking He's Normal All The Time Truman. This is all totally off the topic at hand, though.)

Anyway! So Gristol being able to do anything significant and sophisticated vis-a-vis “psychic traps in Loboto’s mindscape” is wildly unlikely. While there’s still other possible explanations - Gristol maybe having other psychics in his employ in the Delugianaries or secret police, for example - that’s purely speculative and not supported by the text in any kind of reasonably-explicit way, which is what I’m trying to focus on for the purposes of this argument. Hey, you know what is explicit in the text, though? Loboto once having psychic powers, to a degree that he was using telekinesis Very Capably as a Literal Infant. That, combined with all the above evidence (plus other circumstantial stuff we’ll get into in a second), means the most likely answer to “how is Loboto resisting the agents and the mental construct?” is “his psychic powers are still There, and acting subconsciously to protect Loboto in this situation, even though he’s no longer able to access and use those powers by conscious effort”.

Now let’s get to evidence of a “still textual, but not as compelling” flavor. For this, we’re going to go back to the original Psychonauts, and also touch on Rhombus of Ruin a bit.

As some of y’all probably remember from messing around in the original game, because there’s still some of that point-and-click inventory flavor, you can try to use the psycho-portal on characters that don’t have mental worlds, and you’ll get some flavor text explaining in some form or another why you can’t do that. This includes Crispin (you get a note from Loboto saying he’s protected “his patient” from psychic procedures, Haha Hey Man Uhhh How Did Y), Sheegor, and most pressingly for this line of argument, Loboto himself, who claims his shower cap is protecting his mind from being entered.

This Is All Well and Good until Literally The Next Day In-Universe when his mind is able to be entered. Twice, in fact. Please recall that the start of Psychonauts 2 is, at a stretch, maybe a few hours after Rhombus of Ruin. (“Haha well Puzz clearly they just retconned it so they could do a Loboto mental world–” no. That’s not Fun and it’s not Text. This overthinking-ass essay is about Engaging With The Text As It Stands.)

So what’s different about the first time Raz (et all) attempts to enter Loboto’s mind (in the original game) and the second-slash-third time (during and after Rhombus of Ruin)? Nothing that would particularly have an impact, except for one big thing: in the latter cases, Loboto is either “immediately in the presence of” or “has just barely left the immediate presence of” Like A Lot Of Psilirium. You Know. The Rock That Dampens Psychic Powers. Which leads me to believe Loboto’s psychic powers are still active, just in an unconscious way (protecting him from psychic invasion without him even realizing it) instead of in a way he has to consciously act on.

Now, why am I categorizing this as less compelling evidence than Loboto resisting the mental construct later on? Because unlike that case, there actually is a reasonable, textual alternative to the answer of “yeah Loboto’s still unconsciously psychic”. The answer is named Coach Morceau Oleander.

Unlike Gristol, Oleander has a lot going for him on the level of “could fuck with Loboto’s mind a bit to put up some psychic defenses”. For one, Oleander is a psychic, and despite everything, a highly trained and very powerful one. (Like, much as he’s kind of a goofy fuck-up, Oleander’s also implied to have been an agent for at least as long as Sasha and Milla, and he’s able to hold his own in a fight against both of them at once - it literally takes Ford flying in and de-braining him to win that confrontation.) Two, we already have textual evidence of Oleander messing with people’s brains to his own ends, in the form of both Linda (though in some ways that could loop back around to supporting Loboto Is Still Psychic, since he seems to have had some degree of a hand in that) and more prominently, poor ol’ Boyd. If he was able to do that much involuntarily with Boyd, it doesn’t seem out of the question for him to hop in and put up some psychic defenses for more voluntary subjects like Crispin and Loboto. It would also make sense for those defenses to either wear down or wear off once Loboto was in the presence of Psilirium, thus continuing to explain why Loboto’s protected in the first game but not in any of the games following.

So - taken on its own, not particularly decisive evidence. In combination with the much-stronger “resisting the mental construct” example, though, I’d say it presents a pretty strong case.

Now comes my most tenuous and speculative example. This is about as much as a stretch I’m going to let myself go with any of these - a case of “well you can extrapolate this from the text provided, I guess, even if it never says it explicitly to any kind of degree”.

Ladies, gentlemen, and those rightfully opting out. It is time to talk about Loboto’s Fucking Prosthetic.

[Image ID: A full rotation of Loboto’s “Monstroboto” character model, which shows him shirtless with the full prosthetic right arm visible. It is attached to his torso with several straps and has a single visible hinge at the elbow.]

Look at this thing. This is a fucking mannequin arm with a pepper grinder on it. How Is This Thing Able To Operate With Any Kind of Sophistication Without Telekinesis. Like, the man is gesticulating and grabbing objects and tapping his little knife fingers, how in the Hell.

There’s a lot of reasons this is tenuous evidence at best. For one, we only get this super clear view of the entire prosthetic construction inside Loboto’s mind, which means it’s extremely possible it’s abstracted, metaphorical, or an abstracted metaphor in one form or another. (I don’t interpret Loboto’s exposed brain as textual in the “real world” for this reason - we only ever see it exposed in his mental worlds, and in both cases in a scenario where him having an exposed brain under the cap serves some kind of symbolic/metaphorical purpose - but for several reasons, the prosthetic feels more grounded in reality despite this. Anyway, that’s all a tangent regardless.) There could also be hidden mechanics that allow it to move the way it does, or it could just be an abstraction of the art style (though again, I’m trying not to let out-of-story things like that be answers to these questions). But it’s really hard to imagine the Hinged Peppermill With Claws having the range of movement it does without Loboto unconsciously moving it with telekinesis.

For that matter, I feel similarly about his eye lenses - we see them moving around independently, zooming in and out without him touching them, and so on, and like… how? How?? Maybe it’s just that I’m not biomechanically minded-slash-informed, but “yeah he’s just moving them psychically without realizing” does feel like a more viable answer than any alternatives, if not one with a ton of super obvious and textual evidence behind it. Once again, though, in combination with other evidence, it does have more weight behind it.

In summary: Loboto’s able to resist psychic interference, actively fight back against trained Psychonauts in his own mind, and move his various prosthetics and augments in highly refined ways. All these things, especially taken all together, make the most sense if you assume his psychic powers are still acting subconsciously, and he’s just not able to consciously access and use them in the ways he did pre-lobotomy.

2) One of the most prominent impacts of the lobotomy on Cal appears to be his inability to recognize when he is doing harm, and to a certain related degree, how to interpret other peoples’ responses to him. When Raz helps recover his “moral compass”, Loboto actually becomes significantly more unstable as he struggles to process this, having likely gone most of his life without these capabilities.

This is going to be a little less “I cite direct evidence in support of my argument” and more “I point out specific scenes and instances of behavior, how I’m interpreting them, and why I’m interpreting that way”. Hopefully you will stick with me here.

So, as I stated waaaay back at the start of this, what set me off on this whole journey was going back through some of the original Psychonauts cutscenes, seeing Loboto in action, and going, “Woah, hey, he’s like way more measured than I remembered him being”. So let’s go into more detail on that and unpack it a bit!!

There’s a consistent and distinct pattern of behavior Loboto exhibits in his scenes in the first game: screeching, in-your-face Mad Scientist rambling, and then suddenly, these dips into like… oddly quiet, composed, weirdly Professional (if decidedly eccentric) behavior. The cutscenes with Dogen are a really good example - he has his big INSANITY OF A MANATEE THIS WILL ONLY HURT TILL YOUR BRAIN COMES FLYING OUT speech, but in-between and especially after that, he kind of quiets down and starts acting like an Actual Slightly Eccentric Dentist. (In fact, here’s the full transcript of the scene that sent me down this whole rabbit-hole, for context:

Dr. Loboto: Oh, good boy! There's that pesky brain. Here's a tissue. Now don't you feel better, my dear lad? Dogen: [Now brainless] TV..? Dr. Loboto: Of course! Right here. [Loboto picks up Dogen's brain off the floor.] And THIS bad tooth, we'll just drop it in the ol' garbage chute. Now don't chew solid foods for the next six hours!

It really knocked me off balance seeing it, so I made a point of going and watching the full Lili’s bracelet clairvoyance cutscene in full, to see if he behaved similarly there. And he didn’t! He’s full Mad Scientist Haha Crazy there, the entire time!! I had to think on it for a while, and I realized there was one major difference - Lili continues to be defiant and difficult in conversation the entire time, while Dogen responds pretty calmly and doesn’t start freaking out until it’s clear His Brain Will Be Removed, which is also when Loboto starts going more Mad Scientist again. (Again, below’s the full transcript of the Lili scene for context.)

Dr. Loboto: Well, I've reviewed your chart, little girl. The bad news is, we're going to have to remove your brain... strap it into an armored battle tank, and have it shoot down innocent civilians with its concentrated psychic death beam! Lili: I'm gonna kill you so much. Dr. Loboto: The good news is that your insurance is going to cover the whole thing. So! ... Hey, is it getting warm in here? Lili: No, I'm trying to set you on fire through this stupid hat! Dr. Loboto: What a delightfully mean little brain you have! Just what we want! Here, do me a favor. Tell me if this smells like... YOUR DOOM! Heh heh! Lili: I-I can't smell anything. Dr. Loboto: Curses! [Lili laughs at him] You're a stubborn little ball of phlegm, ain't ya? Well, that head cold won't protect you forever, little girl, and when it's gone you'll be sneezing a different tune. A tune in the key of... brains! HAAA HA HA!

His last big cutscene with Sheegor really hammers everything home. He’s full Mad Scientist again, he’s screaming and experimenting and Actively Threatening and Tormenting Her the entire time. Then Sheegor leaves and just, measured and nonchalant as anything: “When you're a dentist, you have to learn to have a sense of humor, you know. It helps to calm the patient down.” (It’s also worth noting a lot of the torment, at least to me, comes off as kinda “dipshit older sibling who commits to the bit of teasing Way Way Past where it’s all in good fun for the younger sibling”. Like he just keeps Going and Playfully Backing Off and then Actually Still Going. It’s so awful it loops around to being funny again. I'm so so sorry Sheegor I love you and you don't deserve this but I am laughing)

I think Loboto really, unironically, genuinely thinks this is what he’s doing in all these situations. He’s a dentist, he’s got all these difficult patients around, so he’s going to joke with them! A bit of friendly teasing and playing up his eccentric behavior to get them to calm down for the procedure! At the point where all this is happening, I think he’s genuinely incapable of comprehending-slash-accepting that he’s actually doing harm and that they’re actually, rightfully scared of him. Not in a like “oh uwu he didn’t know he did anything bad he’s just a nice guyyyy” way, but in a “his brain is literally, textually, physically damaged in such a way that he cannot comprehend this” way. As far as he can tell, he’s doing some freelance dentistry (plus or minus a few things, you know how it is when you’re doing work-for-hire type stuff, you never know what the client’s gonna ask you for) and sometimes he’s gotta joke around when he gets a patient that’s nervous or difficult. All in good fun!

Then, of course, we get Rhombus of Ruin and the mental compass. If you’ve played or watched that game, you know all this already. Raz recovers the mental compass from the vault and Loboto’s demeanor completely shifts again. He recognizes aloud, for the first time since we’ve been introduced to him, that he has done Horrible Things. (We will see him continuing to do this in his level in Psychonauts 2, but we’ll get to that.) He seems, very genuinely, saddened and horrified with himself as he says all this. Raz has very literally reintroduced Physical-Slash-Psychic Capacity To Recognize Harm to Loboto’s brain. Given what we learn about Loboto’s past here, it is very much possible that this is the first time he has had this capability since he was a very young child.

Another thing that happens is, in rapid succession, Loboto chooses to Immediately Make Reconciliatory Actions (releasing the Psychonauts, telling the fish henchmen to leave), and then also Blow The Building Up Right Now. For No Clear Reason. For Zero Benefit, In Fact, The Opposite Of Benefit, He Also Has to Frantically Escape This Now. It’s completely illogical, erratic behavior that’s in conflict with itself. And that pattern… kind of stays consistent from that point out, actually! Almost his entire appearance in 2 is him very literally arguing with himself, acting in erratic and conflicting ways - pretty much going to the Psychonauts for protection and redemption yet also actively giving them the run-around and preventing them from finding his boss; alternately trying to connect with or get pity from the agents, then being aggressive or insulting towards them, then being kind of playfully, teasingly antagonistic at worst. While Raz reintroducing his moral compass is probably objectively a good thing for Loboto in the long run, in the short-term having that level of major, major change in his damaged brain seems to have significantly destabilized his behavior and sense of identity (we’ll get into that in just a moment) in ways that make him much less predictable and more erratic compared to how he was pre-RoR.

In summary: Loboto at the time of the original Psychonauts is eccentric and dangerous, but he’s also consistent and stable in his behavior and identity, acting consistently as a freelance dentist who plays up his eccentricity, teasing or otherwise joking around in an effort to “calm down” his “patients”. It’s likely he’s physically unable to comprehend that he’s doing harm and scaring people, due to the brain damage from his childhood lobotomy. Raz reintroducing his moral compass in Rhombus of Ruin fixes this, but makes Loboto much more unstable and unpredictable as he grapples both with the harm he’s done over the years, and with trying to suddenly live with a brain function he hasn’t had for most of his life.

3) Both of the above are causing some variant of Mental Projection to occur in Loboto’s mind, creating multiple conflicting archetypes/personas similar to what’s happening in Cassie’s mind.

In connection with the above, It’s Time To Talk About the Multiple Lobotos.

[Image ID: A screenshot from Psychonauts 2, showing two Lobotos in his mental world - one in bright light sitting in a dentist chair on the right side, the other standing in the shadows on the left. End ID.]

Every time we see Loboto’s mental world, there are multiple distinct, individual, and simultaneous versions of Loboto Himself in operation. Not different and distinctly individual personalities, like Fred and Napoleon. Not separated alter-egos representing a part of oneself, like Edgar and El Odio, or Bob and Turnip-Bob. Not even fragmented personalities that appear one at a time, like the different versions of Ford. There are multiple versions of Loboto that are Just A Loboto - literally the most different they get is “one time one of them pretended to be a whaler” - operating at the same time as each other, in the same scenes as each other, interacting with each other, sometimes in direct opposition to each other. There is only one other place in the entire series where we see this happening.

[Image ID: A screenshot from Psychonauts 2, showing the “librarian” Archetype of Cassie O’Pia tearing up a book with Raz on the left side and her three other Archetypes on the right. End ID.]

THAT’S RIGHT BABY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS I FINALLY RETROACTIVELY FOUND AN EXPLANATION FOR THE CALLY O’PIA AU anyway where was I. Yeah.

The way the different versions of Cal operate in his mind and interact with each other is more similar to Cassie’s Archetypes than anything else we see in anyone else’s minds. The only major differences are “Loboto’s Archetypes aren’t flat paper illustrations” (and I think it’s remarkably easy, even reasonable, to assume that’s a Cassie-specific stylization that Raz only retains because Cassie directly teaches him and he’s thus using her Archetypes as a reference point - Cassie’s a writer; what reason would everyone else in the world have to render their Archetypes as if they were illustrations in a book?) and “Loboto doesn’t refer to or treat the other versions of himself as Archetypes” (of course he doesn’t, I don’t see any reason or scenario where he could have reasonably learned about Archetypes, in either a psychological or psychic sense - he literally does not have the knowledge or the language to do this). Honestly, interpreting the different Lobotos as different Archetypes explains a lot about how they act, what they’re doing in Loboto’s mind and why they’re in the parts of the story they are. I am going to talk about each individual version of Loboto and what I think they’re doing Archetype-wise based on the text now, because none of you can stop me.

Psychonauts 2 Loboto #1, AKA Patient Loboto: This guy, and Psychonauts 2 Loboto #2, tie in the most to the above discussion on Loboto becoming more outwardly unstable after recovering his mental compass, and so I’m going to refer back to and expand on that with the both of them. This Loboto is explicitly the one we see in the patient chair during those cutscenes in his level, the one we see speaking to Raz directly in the poster hall section, and I would argue he’s likely the version we see at the very start of the level in the office construct (or at the very least, he's the one "running" Loboto at that point, in the same way the Librarian is "running" Cassie when we first meet her). He’s the version of Loboto we see most blatantly grappling with the return of his mental compass - he regrets the things he’s done in the past, he’s seems to be vying to connect with the agents on some level, he’s genuinely upset about being tricked and about being unable to tell Raz what’s up with his boss. This puts him in direct conflict with…

Psychonauts 2 Loboto #2, AKA Doctor Loboto: This guy is also the result of Loboto’s Newfound Ability To Recognize Morals, but in the opposite direction. He’s the one who’s fully embracing the identity he’s built as an amoral mad-scientist-for-hire, figuring he’s better off just continuing the path he’s already on and disregarding the new knowledge that It’s Wrong, rather than go through all the trouble and misery and Active Risk To Self of trying to Be Redeemed. Basically, he’s the one looking at OG Psychonauts version of Loboto and going What If We Just Went Back To That Actually. Fuck Character Development. He is, obviously, the one we see as the dentist in the cutscenes in Loboto’s level, as well as pretty textually the one who grabs Raz from behind the painting in Lili’s section.

Monstroboto: Back to RoR now! This one’s pretty textual as well - this the uncontrolled, untethered, don’t-know-or-care-if-it-hurts-someone version of Loboto. (As I type this, I realize it’s worth noting, this version of Loboto is very obviously “playing” as he attacks, in the same way I observed Psychonauts 1 Loboto having a playful tone to his antagonism, as if he’s not recognizing that he’s actively hurting and terrifying people while doing so. All his attacks are either that, or actively retaliatory. I'm Simply Saying I Can Read Some Subtext.) Between that and the exposed brain, it’s pretty obvious this is representing the post-lobotomy Loboto (how he sees himself? How he thinks others see him? All that’s speculation, mine friends…) - wreaking havoc on Loboto’s ability to engage with other parts of himself and develop a fully fledged mindscape.

First Mate Loboto: This one’s a little more speculative and could mean a lot of things, but bear with me. As above, this could well be the part of Loboto that wants to distance himself from what he became after the lobotomy - whether that means ignoring it entirely and trying to go back to how things were “before”, or more likely, based on his dialogue, trying to move on and grow past it; “sail for new waters”, in his own words. It’s also possible he’s something of Loboto’s idealized self - he’s just as eccentric and dramatic as the real deal, but at least more theoretically heroic and adventurous - and/or, tying into a lot of the themes of the RoR version of Loboto’s mind, kind of a childish “what I want to be when I grow up” version of himself. (We see lots of nautical themes in Loboto’s childhood, after all, with the sea life toys and the little sailor boy outfit and all; while it’s certainly speculative, it’s not a huge leap to think little Loboto might have wanted to grow up to be like, a sailor or something of that ilk.)

Young Loboto: This one’s pretty obvious; he’s very literally the Inner Child. (You Know. Like Psychology.) Just like Li’l Oly in Oleander’s mind, this is the part of Cal who was Very Hurt when he was Very Young and has never had the means or opportunity to process it - he’s just stuck in that mental vault, buried away, playing out what he’s experienced over and over and over again as a helpless, outside observer. (I think it’s Very telling that Raz releasing the vault and, in essence, establishing a connection between Inner Child Loboto and the other parts of himself is what restores Loboto’s ability to use his moral compass.)

So, in total, we’ve got five distinct Lobotos in play through what we see: Inner Child, First Mate, Monstroboto, Patient and Doctor. And, in a case very similar to what we see of Cassie’s Archetypes, each of these versions of him are a result of a Very Specific Point in his life and a subsequent need to fulfill a Very Specific Purpose for his continued functioning and survival. The Inner Child is, well, Loboto As A Child (and less literally, the version of him that’s kind of holding on to his trauma so the rest of the versions of him don’t necessarily have to reckon with it); Monstroboto is what’s taken over post-lobotomy; First Mate is what he either Wanted or Wants to be and isn’t because of said lobotomy; and Patient and Doctor are the two options he has post-recovering his moral compass, either continuing on the path he’s already on, or abandoning it for the hard road of Trying To Be Better.

And again, much like Cassie, none of those Archetypes on their own are getting the job done on their own. Doctor and Monstroboto are extremely destructive and don’t seem much able to form meaningful relationships because of it, Patient is an erratic coward who’s constantly miserable and collapsing under the weight of What He’s Done, Inner Child is a Child, and First Mate is a cartoon character. It’s very likely that a theoretical healthier, more functional version of Loboto would have to reconcile these different Archetypes the same way we eventually see Cassie do, or at the very least get them on terms where they’re not Actively Opposing Each Other At All Times.

In summary: Loboto has multiple Archetypes active in his mind the same way Cassie does, and much like Cassie, the Archetypes being in conflict with each other plays a major role in his instability, especially post-RoR. Again like Cassie, it’s likely Loboto would have to reconcile his different archetypes - especially the ones in direct conflict, as we see in his mind in Psychonauts 2 - in some form or another to become more mentally stable.

SO IN CONCLUSION, I hope this Rambling Essay and Cited Evidence has convinced you all that:

Loboto is still psychic, but his powers only manifest unconsciously, and he isn’t able to use them by conscious choice as when he was a child. (Whether or not it’s possible for him to eventually re-access those powers consciously is very much a “your guess is as good as mine” situation - Loboto's the only lobotomized psychic we see in the series, and no other in-game sources on the history or results of the practice.)

Regaining his moral compass for the first time since childhood makes Loboto behave significantly more erratically and unpredictably, in no small part because–

Loboto has several mental Archetypes in direct conflict with each other, especially after regaining his moral compass.

What does all this mean? I’m gonna be honest. I don’t know. I just wanted to get all this out of my head. Now it lives in yours instead. Have fun!!

[ilookattextile]

Cutwork lace from the Magnes Collection at UC Berkeley:

"A textile most likely used as a wall hanging, including Hebrew verses recited in conjunction with the reading of the prayer, "shema' yisrael" before sleep. The verse on the right of the textile includes a textual variant of the incipit of "hashkivenu," ("hashkiveni") the second blessing before the recitation of the "shema'" during the Evening Service. The verse on the left is a biblical quotation: "When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid; yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet." (Proverbs 3:24)."

[walkswithmyfather]

This is fascinating! By Stefan Hager (FB)

“We currently have 5,800 plus Greek New Testaments manuscripts, 10,000 plus Latin manuscripts, and 9,300 plus manuscripts in various languages). if we were to stack the manuscripts we have found today it would reach more than a mile high). Beating all other historical records of the ancient world. for example, no one doubts the historical person “Homer” as we have 1.800 plus manuscripts of his life, yet we have 25,000 plus manuscripts of the life of Jesus, and that doesn’t include secular sources). And considering that the earliest copies of the New Testament are written within 25 years after the death of Jesus, but the earliest copies of Homers works are written 400 years after the death of Homer. Jesus is the gold standard for historians. If we’re going to doubt Jesus. We might as well doubt all ancient history.

Comparing these manuscripts we find that the teaching, stories, doctrines of the bible are all surprisingly the same. reading a bible in English vs reading a bible in Russian. It may be worded differently but you get the same story/biblical doctrine).

Tho no one manuscript is perfect. Through the centuries, minor differences arose in the various copies of the Scriptures. The vast majority of these differences are simple spelling variants, inverted words (one manuscript says “Christ Jesus” while another says “Jesus Christ” or different ways people have spelled names). or an easily identified missing word. In short, over 99 percent of the biblical text is not questioned. Of the less than 1 percent of the text that is in question, no doctrinal teaching or command is jeopardized. In other words, the copies of the Bible we have today are pure. The Bible has not been corrupted, altered, edited, revised, or tampered with.

“The early books of the bible” were so vastly copied and wide spread that if one group in Africa wanted to change any part, believers in Israel, Rome, Alexandria would have easily identified the change to the wide spread text/message.

This is also evidenced by the Dead Sea scrolls (large portions of Old Testament) which were found in 1947. These scrolls are dated 200BC. So Jesus would have those as scripture during his earthly time, and the content of those scrolls match. If we look at any bible in any chapter and we look at the Hebrew and the same chapter it’s going to read the same way we have today, now it is true there are variations in reading/wording or translation. Every book prior to the printing press has variations. The Quran has variations, The point is, variations don’t give you a different text, a different theology, a different meaning.

Here’s a scaled down example. using textual criticism and cross checking manuscripts. We can pretty much reconstruct what the original said. How does this work?.

Consider the following example. Suppose we have four different manuscripts that have different errors in the same verse, such as Philippians 4:13:

1.I can do all t#ings through Christ

2.I can do all th#ngs through Christ

3.I can do all thi#gs through Christ

4.I can do all thin#s through Christ

Is there any mystery of what the original said?. None whatsoever. By comparing and cross checking manuscripts. the original can be reconstructed with great accuracy and the reconstruction of the New Testament is easier than this, because there are far fewer errors in the actual New Testament manuscripts than there are represented by this example. Plus a vast amount of material to work with.

Any unbiased document scholar will agree that the Bible has been remarkably well-preserved over the centuries. Even many hardened skeptics and critics of the Bible admit that the Bible has been transmitted over the centuries far more accurately than any other ancient document.

There is absolutely no evidence that the Bible has been revised, edited, or tampered with in any systematic manner. No one group has ever had control over the biblical text. The sheer volume of biblical manuscripts makes it simple to recognize any attempt to distort God’s Word. There is no major doctrine of the Bible that is put in doubt as a result of the inconsequential differences among the manuscripts.

Ancient scribes often copied books letter by letter (one by one). not sentence by sentence. It was a long process but they assured Accuracy. And they would count the letters of the copies and count the letters of the original. if the original had 500 letters and the copy had 497 letters, they would destroy the copy and restart.”

[transgenderer]

The Epic of Manas is a traditional epic poem dating to the 18th century but claimed by Kyrgyz tradition to be much older. Manas is said to be based on Bars Bek who was the first khagan of the Kyrgyz Khaganate. The plot of Manas revolves around a series of events that coincide with the history of the region in the 9th century, primarily the interaction of the Kyrgyz people with other Turkic and Chinese people.

The government of Kyrgyzstan celebrated the 1,000th anniversary of Manas in 1995. The eponymous hero of Manas and his Oirat enemy Joloy were first found written in a Persian manuscript dated to 1792–93.[1] In one of its dozens of iterations, the epic poem consists of approximately 500,000 lines.

The epic poem's age is unknowable, as it was transmitted orally without being recorded. However, historians have doubted the age claimed for it since the turn of the 20th century. The primary reason is that the events portrayed occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries. Central Asian historian Vasily Bartold claimed that Manas was an "absurd gallimaufry of pseudo-history,"[1] and Hatto remarks that Manas was

"compiled to glorify the Sufi sheikhs of Shirkent and Kasan ... [and] circumstances make it highly probable that... [Manas] is a late eighteenth-century interpolation."[2]

Changes were made in the delivery and textual representation[3] particularly the replacement of the tribal background of Manas. In the 19th century versions, Manas is the leader of the Nogay people, while in versions dating after 1920, Manas is a Kyrgyz and a leader of the Kyrgyz.[4] Use of the Manas for nation-building purposes, and the availability of printed historical variants, has similarly had an impact on the performance, content, and appreciation on the epic.[5]

Attempts have been made to connect modern Kyrgyz with the Yenisei Kirghiz, today claimed by Kyrgyzstan to be the ancestors of modern Kyrgyz. Kazakh ethnographer and historian Shokan Shinghisuly Walikhanuli was unable to find evidence of folk-memory during his extended research in 19th-century Kyrgyzstan (then part of the expanding Russian empire) nor has any been found since.[6]

While Kyrgyz historians consider it to be the longest epic poem in history,[7] the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata and the Tibetan Epic of King Gesar are both longer.[8] The distinction is in number of verses. Manas has more verses, though they are much shorter.

Manas is said to have been buried in the Ala-Too mountains in Talas Province, in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. A mausoleum some 40 km east of the town of Talas is believed to house his remains and is a popular destination for Kyrgyz travellers. Traditional Kyrgyz horsemanship games are held there every summer since 1995. An inscription on the mausoleum states, however, that it is dedicated to "...the most famous of women, Kenizek-Khatun, the daughter of the emir Abuka". Legend has it that Kanikey, Manas' widow, ordered this inscription in an effort to confuse her husband's enemies and prevent a defiling of his grave. The name of the building is "Manastin Khumbuzu" or "The Dome of Manas", and the date of its erection is unknown.

heroic levels of cope from the kyrgyz

[scribefindegil]

mmmmm . . . textual variants in early modern print my beloved . . .

[maniculum]

So, this one is from Cambridge's MS Kk.4.25, which Cambridge's digital library describes as a "didactic miscellany". There's actually quite a lot of information on this manuscript accompanying their digitization... I'm putting a cut here before I start throwing in the links and images and stuff.

All right, link:

The manuscript is from England circa 1230, and is apparently from the same tradition as another of their bestiaries (Fitzwilliam MS 254). One of the major differences between the two is that this contains a couple extra chapters, including one enigmatically titled "The Four Ways it is Sinful". (The four ways what is sinful? You know. It.)

The description also tells us this is "a masterpiece of bestiary imagery, often overlooked in discussions of the most beautiful examples," which is not the vibe I was getting from the Flat Crocodile at the top of this post, so hold on a bit while I flip through the digitization.

Okay, so Flat Crocodile is not representative, this is really good. The section on sea creatures is quite charming also. I recommend everyone go follow that link above and flip through it a bit -- there's a table of contents you can use to skip straight to the bestiary.

Anyway, to the point of this whole thing. This critter is supposedly a scorpion, and in fact appears in the "worms / vermin" section of the bestiary. If I'm reading the Latin correctly, it comes between the leech:

and the caterpillar:

Despite that context -- i.e., it being in the correct section and surrounded by other things that fall into the medieval category of "worm" (remember, that's a broad category for them, it includes insects and arachnids like scorpions just fine), our artist has drawn what is clearly the only reptile in the chapter:

It even says "Scorpio vermis" right under the image, jfc.

Also, the lumps around the base of the tail can't be credited to Pliny's "knots" as mentioned before; I counted at least three other lizards with those same lumps when I was looking through the digitization, so it's just part of the artist's style.

Speaking of the artist's style, this one should be exempt from the "identifiably a different animal" penalty because it has little ears and a generally mammalian head... except that's, again, how this artist draws all their lizards. In fact, this "scorpion" is basically identical to the Botrax/Botruca a few pages earlier:

I'm making the executive decision than this penalty applies when the artist is just re-using the design of another critter in the same bestiary, even if technically that's not a real animal.

All right, points:

Small Scuttling Beaſtie? ✓, sure, in context we can assume such

Pincers? ✘

Exoskeleton or Shell? ✘

Visible Stinger? ✘

Limbs? 4

Vibes... I dunno. It's fine. It's a lizard, which is nice enough, but we've had much better lizards. And it's kind of losing out in comparison to the other illustrations in this manuscript. I went back and forth between a 2 and a 3, and eventually decided to just settle at 2.5 / 10.

As previously mentioned, -1 for copying. Which... oh dear. Makes this officially the Third Worst Scorpion, sorry Flat Croc fans.

Final points:

2.9 / 10

Eyes on your own work.

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

Idk how to feel about there being very few on-screen examples in canon of women being friends, or just getting along. I’ve always viewed Zhanna and Pauling’s relationship as mostly platonic, where Zhanna grows to respect Pauling for being smart, despite her being ‘weak little baby’, and Pauling respecting her strength and kind of thinking she’s hot, but being too busy to really hang out. I understand why people ship them, but them being friends or otherwise respecting each other’s company scratches an itch for me

Oh tf2 SUCKSSSS when it comes to canonical friendships between women. There are like, four women with actual speaking roles (Pauling, Admin, Zhanna, and Maggie), and out of them there are only two actual textual interactions/relationships - Pauling and Admin, and Pauling and Zhanna. Admin is an ambiguously evil Villain with ambiguously evil Schemes who Pauling is subservient to but not exactly friendly with, and Zhanna directly antagonizes Pauling multiple times, threatens her, and attempts to instigate the WORST kind of woman-on-woman interaction in fiction by insinuating that Pauling must "stay away from her man." Idk I think people get so caught up in a bunch of. not exactly "superficial nonsense" but also not Groundbreaking Representation when they praise tf2 for having very variant body types among its men characters (already a staple of videogame designs, tbh, "the tall, wide tank" is breaking no new ground) and like, women with different nose shapes, and then take that praise to pretend like tf2 is some Beacon Of Feminism when like. it still has problems lol! BUUUT regardless, I do really wish Pauling had more textual women friends, idk just smth abt the way her and Zhanna are written makes me not Super love shipping them lol. Like I understand the appeal and I've definitely reblogged art of them before, but it does remind me of how absolutely slim the pickings are with textual women in tf2. Oh well! Let's hope they put estrogen in the Teufort water instead of lead next comic

[caraecethrae]

" . . . The problem is that they’ve come to take the concept origin as an exclusive category of the 'real,' thus unconsciously replicating the error of some of the less-intelligent nineteenth-century mythologists (including at times even Frazer, Bachofen and the Grimms), who believed they had discovered literal and exclusive origins (everything is 'solar,' or 'vegetative,' or 'matriarchal'). In other words, modern empiricists agree with the nineteenth-century amateurs that origin is an exclusive category—only they claim that it cannot be known.

Ancient mythologists would never be guilty of such naivete. They would probably list all the origin myths or variants, without worrying about logical exclusions. The variants describe precisely the field of potential meaning—the multivalency of the myth, its layered and folded structure, its complexity: Some say . . . but others maintain... I have heard....' The Rg Veda already abounds in such variants, which, to linear thinking, appear as so many contradictions or textual corruptions. As Henry Corbin pointed out in the Shiite context, the Ta’wil or hermeneutic exegesis or 'taking or tracing a thing back to its source' or origin, cannot be reduced to the operation and deployment of rational or exclusive or absolute categories. Ultimately, all origins are 'divine' and hence ambiguous. Inner sense may violate outward expression, at least on the level of ordinary consciousness. The sacred contradicts itself; indeed, this is very nearly a definition of the sacred.

I have found it fruitful to “believe” in any origin (or complex of contradictory origins) precisely in the manner of the ancient mythographists—as meaning. To 'believe' (to participate existentially) in this way is a non-exclusionary process—each origin is to be taken both literally and as a code that can be (partially) cracked, but also as a drifting point, an area of divine ambiguity. The palimpsest of all origins defines the structure of my explorations. Even science is welcome at this feast, so long as it can renounce its monopoly of interpretation (or refusal to interpret), its flaccid totalitarianism, its absurd paradigmatic hierarchies, its pathetic triumphalism, and its lack of playfulness. 'Who really knows?' says the Rg Veda ( 10. 129.6). The origin is a subject (or object) not for false reverence but for true reverie."

Ploughing the Clouds: The Search for Irish Soma by Peter Lamborn Wilson

[bestworstcase]

How exactly does intertextuality work?

I'm trying to improve my media literacy, but I'm not that great at understanding certain terms.

intertextuality is a REALLY broad term. in the most basic sense it refers to the relation between one text and another and how that relationship informs the meaning of the text being examined. think about parodies: the humor is referential, either to a specific work being parodied or to conventions of a genre, and relies on the audience having familiarity with the parodied text. a great parody should be able to stand on its own merits as a story, but knowing the parodied text(s) enriches the parody because you’re in on the jokes. that’s intertextuality in a nutshell.

as a writer, there are myriad ways to do this: direct parody or pastiche, quotation, allusion, translation, so forth. and as a reader, intertextuality needn’t necessarily be an argument for authorial intention—you can (and indeed should, if you’re interested in textual analysis, because it’s a good exercise) apply intertextual analysis to a text by comparison or contrast against another text in which you find resonant ideas or themes or patterns, and build an argument about the text you’re reading using reference to that other text, regardless of whether the author intended it that way. the author is dead: the point of textual analysis is not to divine the One True Meaning intended by god.

(that said, steer clear of joseph campbell and monomythic analysis; it’s notionally similar to an intertextual approach, but the underlying thesis that all stories, or at least all stories of mythic scope, are variants of a sort of pancultural ur-story, is ethnocentric garbage that incentivizes deliberate misinterpretation in a when-all-you-have-is-a-hammer way. intertextual analysis encompasses both similarity and difference because both are meaningful.)

rwby, for example, makes very deliberate use of intertextuality—in the character allusions and also in its weaving together of a few key texts (marvelous land of oz, petrosinella/persinette/rapunzel, the little prince, and cinderella) into the backbone of its original narrative. a lot of the fandom tries to rely on the character allusions to guess what will happen in the plot, with generally poor accuracy, because that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what rwby uses intertextuality for. 

its purpose in rwby—in rwby, this is a common use of intertextuality but not a universal one!—is to develop a symbolic and thematic vocabulary that enhances and clarifies what the story is trying to say. what does it mean, for example, that ruby is red riding hood? well, little red disobeys her mother and endangers herself and her grandmother. she’s also gobbled up by a wolf and survives unscathed with the aid of a huntsman. her grandmother, too, is eaten and at least metaphorically revived. the wolf is undone by his own hunger. it’s a story about childish rebellion and dire consequence, but also a mistake ultimately bringing about the end of the danger little red was warned against. and it is, symbolically, a story about death and resurrection. the wolf eats the girl and the girl is reborn from the wolf’s stomach: thus children become adults. and then in v9 we have ruby straying from her path, drinking the tea, facing the wolf, returning to life whole and unchanged. see how it rhymes?

that holds true for the narrative allusions as well. the marvelous land of oz, boiled down to essentials, is about restoring  balance to a world upset by the hand of unworthy ‘gods’ (the wizard, whose machinations are maintained by his co-conspirator mombi alone after his departure from oz); the conflict is principally between deceptive illusions and ruthless honesty. 

likewise the maiden-in-the-tower tales all twine around the central conceit of an imprisoned young woman who is both rescued and rescuer: petrosinella outwits and slays her captor to win herself and her lover free, and both persinette and rapunzel suffer in exile until their voices guide their lovers home and they heal their lovers’ blindness with their tears. 

the little prince is about growing up and what it means to be alive not just in body but in soul—and like red riding hood, it uses the symbolic motif of death and resurrection to explore these ideas—and one of its core themes is that uncertainty and fear and acceptance of reality, of death, of danger as unavoidable, are necessary to truly live. 

and cinderella is a story about cruelty and injustice and having the courage to do what it takes to survive, and also—inherent to the course of the fairytale narrative—a story about the obligation for those on the outside to help in the ways that they can. cinderella saves herself by asking for help. rwby doesn’t turn this story upside-down, exactly: both cinder and salem ask for help, and suffer brutal retaliation for it. how does cinderella save herself alone?

and so on. rwby handles intertextuality very well, so there’s a lot to tease out and a lot of threads to pull. it is that deep. but this is how intertextual analysis works, in the essentials. you connect one text to another and use the second to examine the first: why is ruby little red riding hood? what’s the common thread weaving the marvelous land of oz, the maiden-in-the-tower tales, the little prince, and cinderella together into the story rwby tells? the wolf eats red riding hood and red riding hood is reborn from the wolf and petrosinella’s ogre is eaten by petrosinella’s wolf: what does the wolf mean in rwby, and how does that color the parallelism between ruby and salem? it’s like if subtext had a megaphone. 

[synthient]

Been thinking a lot about tjlc lately, as I wade back into superwholock from a different point in the trifecta. "The showrunners will actively lie and misdirect to avoid spoilers, so any extra-textual commentary should be taken with a big grain of salt" seems relevant to the rtd comments, for one.

And if tjlc was right about sherlock s4 (which I still think is honestly plausible). Then the needle the creators were trying to thread was a finale that was both fake enough to effectively set up an incoming reveal, while still being competent enough in its own right that it would scan plausibly as a "real" finale. Casual viewers would be satisfied, and the superfans would be disappointed but not devastated. (Which failed because they made the finale Too Bad to actually get another season made)

And whether that was true about sherlock or not. If we assume doccy who is going for something similar, as part of any one of the truman show theory-variants. Then empire of death would actually be a pretty effective execution of the concept. Outside of a small but vocal group, I don't think most viewers Hated the finale. The general consensus seems to be that eh, the ending was a little silly, but the performances were great and the adventure-thrills were still fun and engaging enough.

It helps that the Storytelling motif has been front and center from minute 1 (which is why the various truman show theories have gotten so popular in the first place). And it helps that they spent the whole season cranking up doctor who's already-extant camp and artificiality, so a Fake Finale wouldn't feel tonally out of place. So while it's still entirely possible that everything in empire of death can be taken at face value, and it was just kind of a mid finale, I don't think we can count our chickens yet. And I think they've left themselves in a strong position for a rug pull

[littlesparklight]

(different anon, responding to that last anon)

ah, yes, i know if someone cursed me, i'd absolutely love it if someone got "retributive justice" for me by...murdering my little sibling! (heavy, heavy sarcasm if it wasn't obvious)

Right, of course, of course, that's what we would all want! /s

I have seen many strange statements around Greek myth in general and the Trojan war participants in particular (especially the Trojans), but this is... definitely among the most out there weirdest ones.

There's absolutely no connection between Kassandra being cursed and Troilos being murdered - neither in whatever scraps that have survived textually, nor among scholiasts. You can't just up and decide a couple thousand years later that "this unconnected event is not just connected to another event, but is retributive justice for this other unconnected event!"*. Like, on what grounds??? (*You know what event is sometimes connected to Troilos' murder in the visual representations? The murder of Priam! (Also sacrilegious!) Priam is in a few paintings shown sitting on an altar when receiving news of Troilos being attacked/killed, and sometimes Troilos' death is juxtaposed with that of Priam's. Guy Hedreen in his Capturing Troy talks about this, pointing out that the later prophecy/Troilos' death being made one of the conditions of Troy's fall does in a way connect it directly to the death of Priam.)

And if there would be any "retributive justice" it should come through, or because Kassandra wants it, shouldn't it? By someone connected to her, if not she herself. And Achilles is not at all connected to her. He wouldn't even know anything's happened to her!

Never mind that, exactly, Troilos is her little brother. We don't even have sources until late that says he was the son of Apollo! It doesn't mean he wasn't always Apollo's son, or that it wasn't a variant that was early, but Troilos definitely have more sources stating him as Priam's son than Apollo's. Apollo being the biological father (sharing the role with Priam) adds more pathos, certainly, to the murder of Troilos. But Apollo can be exactly as rightfully vindictive if Achilles has murdered a Trojan prince unrelated to him on his altar. Because regardless of if Troilos is his son, Troilos is a suppliant, and even just pulling the suppliant away from the altar (like sometimes is the only thing Ajax the lesser does to Kassandra) is still a crime against the god! Never mind murdering the suppliant on the altar/within the temple/sacred precinct.

Kassandra would know Troilos as her little brother, her full little brother even if Apollo is the biological father. And compared to the probable negative feelings Kassandra might always have had about Paris, even when he hasn't done anything wrong yet, Troilos has nothing such attached to him. Why the hell, indeed, would she ever want him to suffer for some so-supposed "retributive justice" for her sake?

Where is the justice in that, anyway?

It's not just Apollo losing something or being injured, after all. The Trojan royal family are losing a child, in a very cruel manner (Achilles is shown on several paintings using Troilos' head as a distraction to the rescue team for fuck's sake), and, what, this is in any way "justice" for Kassandra?

The only thing even vaguely "defensible" in Achilles killing Troilos is the potential of his death being a condition/necessity for the fall of Troy, that he otherwise would've become the next Hektor if he got old enough and forever blocked any chance to Troy falling. But sorry, I don't exactly consider that any defense, and even if it was, the way Achilles goes out of his way to kill Troilos in Apollo's temple/on the altar, and then beheading/dismembering him... Yeah no.

And Troilos is, again, not armed and armoured. Even if he'd be midteens (which he could be, that is probably as old as he would be at most, since his murder happens somewhere earlier in the war and if we use the "end point" of his age, twenty, he'd have to be killed sometime before that), he's still not a warrior, or on the battlefield.

Achilles ambushes him, and then runs him down. And if Troilos takes refuge in the temple, Achilles certainly doesn't attempt to remove him from there (of course, as noted earlier, even that would be a crime against a suppliant, but even so).

And again, this hasn't even taken into account Achilles' potential desire for Troilos, where his brutal murder (if not the murder itself), is in response to being rejected*. Again, where is the ~retributive justice~ in that? Would Kassandra want that? Be real now. (*Another bit from Capturing Troy; there's a fragment survival from a tragedy about Troilos, mentioning being violently mounted like an animal... I mean we don't know it's necessarily about what Achilles wants or attempted to do, but that it's there at all...)

But no, of course it's so wrong to defend Apollo aiding Paris in killing an enemy combatant, on the goddamn battlefield, in defense of the city he's guarding and in response to a sacrilegious murder of a child of his.

[queer-starwars-bracket]

Queer Star Wars Characters (Round 3): Well Known Characters Match 3

Lando Calrissian | Identity: Pansexual | Media: Solo WoG

Sigh, I’m sure you all remember this clusterfuck. During the promotional tour for Solo, the screenwriter Jon Kasdan established Lando as pansexual, seemingly because of his attraction to L3-37 and did some pretty textbook queerbait about Lando x Han. Unlike other instances of authors clarifying what specific identity they intended or that the subtext audiences were seeing is entirely intentional, this is more the maligned “Making a character queer just in marketing”. 

Despite the good track record for queer representation in Star Wars publishing, there has been almost no follow-up to this. Lando has appeared a bit since then, and all his flings have been with women. The only exception was that he featured in the 2021 Pride Variant covers. 

Update: As of August 29th, 2023 Lando has finally been established as textually queer in a narrative format. In the short story “The Buy-in” by Suzanne Walker and "When Fire Marks the Sky" by Emma Mieko Candon, he flirts with a non-binary member of Gold Squadron and Wes Janson.

Ahsoka Tano | Identity: bisexual | Media: Established in Ahsoka

While there is strong romantic subtext between Ahsoka and Barris Offee, that isn’t the reason for her inclusion in this list. Rather, it is because that in the novel Ahsoka, E K Johnson got as close as she was allowed to- both by the constraints of the Story Group (since movie characters couldn’t yet be quietly established as queer in a book) and what made sense for the story- to establish that Ahsoka reciprocated the feelings that Kaeden Larte had for her. Unfortunately, the Ahsoka novel has practically been erased by the Tales of the Jedi episode “Resolve”, where the basic outline that the novel was based on is told again, except without Kaeden. However, a recent reference book has established that these are two separate events that are coincidentally very similar. Ahsoka’s queerness barely crossed the line we set for counting as canon rather than subtext.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by Elijah Hixson | Spurgeon loved the King James Version of the Bible — it was the version he used the most. But Charles Spurgeon was not King James only. On occasion, Spurgeon mentioned textual variants from the pulpit. Sometimes he even rejected the reading of the KJV in favor of the reading in the critical Greek text, represented in…