Blossoms From A Lithium Flower

This comic is, as is usual for Wednesday’s comics, chosen by my Patrons. Speaking of…

Argent, a cat sable rampant contourné guardant, holding a cat toy gules in its mouth.

I understand maybe 50% of the words in this post

In brief:

tradcaths: Traditional Catholics; folks who profess to be Roman Catholic, but oppose the reforms introduced by the Catholic Church in tie Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican in 1962 (colloquially known as Vatican II). Mostly they tend to have a problem with local priests being allowed to administer rites in whatever language is spoken locally rather than only in Latin, though there are other reforms they often object to as well.

The Traditional Catholic movement is closely associated with sedevacantism, the belief that the apostolic succession of the papacy has been interrupted and the Holy See is thus vacant – or, in plain English, the belief that somewhere along the line, one of the popes lost God's support, and thus, that pope and all of his official successors, including the current pope, have been imposters. Sedevacantists usually identify Pope Pius XII (who died in 1958) as the last real pope, though there's some disagreement on this point.

(Note that not all tradcaths are sedevacantists, and not all sedevacantists are tradcaths – there's merely substantial overlap.)

Antipope: Anyone other than the official pope who claims to be the pope. All antipopes are sedevacantists, though their justifications for why they're the real pope vary; some are self-elected, while others claim to be the legitimate successors of a secret lineage of "true" popes that branched off when the official popes lost their legitimacy. Naturally, no antipope would describe themselves as such – as far as they're concerned, they're the real pope, and it's the guy currently warming the big chair in Rome who's an antipope!

He is my favorite astronaut for any number of reasons, but he’s also one of my favorite visual artists.

Like, look at this stuff????

It’s all so expressive and textured and colorful! He literally painted his own experience on the moon! And that's just really fucking cool to me!

Just look at this! This is one of my absolute favorite emotions of all time. Is Anyone Out There? is like the ultimate reaction image. Any time I have an existential crisis, this is how I picture myself.

And then there's this one:

The Fantasy

For all of the six Apollo missions to land on the moon, there was no spare time. Every second of their time on the surface was budgeted to perfection: sleeping, eating, putting on the suits, entering and exiting the LEM, rock collection, setting up longterm experiments to transmit data back to Earth, everything. These timetables usually got screwed over by something, but for the most part the astronauts stuck to them.

The crew of Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Al Bean, and Dick Gordon) had other plans. Conrad and Bean had snuck a small camera with a timer into the LEM to take a couple pictures together on the moon throughout the mission. They had hidden the key for the timer in one of the rock collection bags, with the idea being to grab the key soon after landing, take some fun photos here and there, and then sneak the camera back to Earth to develop them. They had practiced where they would hide the key and how to get it out from under the collected rocks back on Earth dozens of times.

But when they got to the moon, the key was nowhere to be found. Al Bean spent precious time digging through the collection bags before he called it off. The camera had been pushing their luck anyways, he couldn't afford to spend anymore time not on the mission objectives. Conrad and Bean continued the mission as per the NASA plan while Dick Gordon orbited overhead.

Fast forward to the very end of the mission. Bean and Conrad are doing last checks of the LEM before they enter for the last time and depart from the moon. As Bean is stowing one of the collection bags, the camera key falls out. The unofficially planned photo time has come and gone, and he tosses the key over his shoulder to rest forever on the surface of the moon.

This painting, The Fantasy, is that moment. There have never been three people on the moon at the same time, there was never an unofficial photo shoot on the moon, this picture could never have happened.

"The most experienced astronaut was designated commander, in charge of all aspects of the mission, including flying the lunar module. Prudent thinking suggested that the next-most-experienced crew member be assigned to take care of the command module, since it was our only way back home. Pete had flown two Gemini flights, the second with Dick as his crewmate. This left the least experienced - me - to accompany the commander on the lunar surface.

"I was the rookie. I had not flown at all; yet I got the prize assignment. But not once during the three years of training which preceded our mission did Dick say that it wasn't fair and that he wished he could walk on the moon, too. I do not have his unwavering discipline or strength of character.

He did an illustration of what he saw and it brings me to tears

The original sketch:

The final painting:

Functionally what this means is that 6 kids get to come out of class last thing on a Friday for me to GM a TTRPG campaign for them.