Rachel Helps

@rachelhelps

Graduate student. Former Wikipedian-in-residence at the BYU Library. Interactive fiction writer and Mormon literary scholar wannabe.

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Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· 19d

It turns out that early 20th-century fiction has definite ideas about what the Lamanite curse was and how fast it works. Link in comments. rachelhelps.substack.com/p/the-lamani...

Text: The Lamanite Curse in Book of Mormon Fiction: etiologies of race. Rachel Helps. rachelhelps.substack.com.
Background image: a cartoon boy wearing a blue sweatband looks in surprise as his skin changes from light to dark.

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· 26d

Susa Young Gates wrote a feminist revision of the Book of Mormon in her "Dialogue" play script, published in 1892. Find out more: rachelhelps.substack.com/p/susa-young...

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· 28d

please start getting hyped for the game I'm writing for the Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp)

circus flyer with the following text:
COME TO THE MUTANT CIRCUS
You WON'T be able to LOOK AWAY from our AMAZING circus of UPLIFT MUTANTS.
SEE the humans and ANIMALS who CHOSE a life of performative AUGMENTATION
SEVEN-ARMED SAM can hold FIFTY balls in the air!
SLITHERY SALLY can LICK her own BUTTOCKS!
Horse CLEVER HANSEL can do CALCULUS while BALANCING on STRONGMAN CLYDE!
Ever wondered if a BONOBO can do stand-up? Septimus will have you in STITCHES!
AN EVENING YOU WON'T FORGET

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Jul 25

Adam and Eve are shocked to consider a world where they have no children in Mike Allred's Golden Plates (2017 ed). They also have emo eyeliner.

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Jun 25

very excited to see human annotation in my research

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Jun 20

now that I've played Disco Elysium it's time for some serious debriefing

The detective dandy and the Marxist hypothesis Disco Elysium as critique of the millennial left Nicholas Kiersey and Angel Vazquez Introduction The award-winning indie computer game Disco Elysium is rife with plot lines that echo the anti-capitalist sentiments of what Cutrone (2023) terms “the Millennial Left.” Most interestingly, for the purposes of this paper, while character choice,

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Jun 2

So excited to see that my local library has a pretty good videogame collection!

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· May 20

In which capitalism makes an idol of itself

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· May 15

Tlaloc had "goggle eyes". From DK Eyewitness Aztec, Inca, & Maya p. 32

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· May 1

My thesis on women's short stories from Relief Society magazine with speculative elements is live! scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/11176/

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Apr 29

My friend Michael Austin and I are going to be discussing LDS literature based on scripture this summer! You are welcome to join us if you are so inclined. Our first meeting will be Friday, 5/8 at 10am MDT, and we'll be discussing The Prince of Ur by Susa Young Gates. DM me for an invite!

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Apr 24

Please tell me there will be a rhythm game with singing California raisins

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Apr 17

how the Sonic hedgehog protein was named

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Apr 5

"When Joseph Saw His Bretheren Moved" was published in the 1863 Manchester hymnal. It imagines how Joseph felt when his brothers pleaded with him not to take his little brother at the end of Genesis.

When Joseph saw his brethren moved
by Parley P. Pratt

When Joseph saw his brethren moved
With keenest sorrow and distress,
He could no longer hide his love,
His warm emotions more suppress.

The mystery he did unfold,
Then fell upon their necks in tears,
I am your brother whom ye sold,
Dismiss your doubts, dispel your fears,

‘Twas God that sent me by command,
To save you from the famine sore,
To bring you into Egypt’s land,
Where you shall never hunger more.

What mingled feelings seized their breasts,
Surprise, and grief, and joy, and love,
And shame, and sorrow, and distress
Alternate, did their feelings move.

Lo! this a lively type shall be
Of Joseph’s remnant long unknown,
The Gentiles shall their glory see,
When to their brethren they’re made known.

A curse, a bye-word long they’ve been,
Afflicted by the Gentile race,
Plunder’d and driven, sold and slain,
Or brought to shame and deep disgrace.

But lo! their origin reveal’d,
Brings blessings on the Gentile world,
Their ancient records, long conceal’d,
Are like a banner now unfurl’d.

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Mar 28

Now we're in the red room

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Mar 28

Not even trying to hide it

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Mar 28

okay who is the Lynchhead on the 428 Shibuya Scramble team

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Mar 25

not OC

me: don't look too deep into it
*me 2 seconds later*
(image of man looking intently into a microscope)

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Mar 16

Mildred Tobler Hunt imagines how Rachel and Leah felt when leaving their father's house. Their thoughts show their rivalry, but also their shared anticipation. I wish she'd gone further--were they sick of Laban exploiting Jacob? What did they think of his idolatry?

"Leah and Rachel" by Mildred Tobler Hunt. Leaving Dad's house to make it in the world.
The background engraving shows a man on a donkey, with two camels in the background. On one camel sits a woman with two boys. On the other camel sits three women (probably Leah and the two handmaidens who married Jacob as well).

(Leah) What a caravan we make, as we journey to Ephrath
The home of my husband where we can have peace
With our camels, our asses, Our horses, our cattle
Will his brother receive us? Prepare us a feast?
My camel sways forward follows Jacob my husband
And all my sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah,
Gad, and Asher, Issachar and Zebulon,
With Dinah, my daughter on fast mount beside.

CHORUS: (Leah and Rachel)
My eyes mist with longing, with longing to see us all settled in peace.
In that land that my husband describes
As promised and flowing with milk
And with honey. And where Jehovah will bless, bless our lives.

(Rachel) I follow the wife of my husband's first marriage
In this troupe, yet I'm first in his feelings, I know
And with me my maid's sons, my own little Joseph
My joy in whom God took away my reproach
We go to a land flowing milk and sweet honey
A land where my husband was promised by God
A land where my Joseph can find his true stature
And where my new child can grow up in the word.

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Mar 9

Also why does Rebekah have to lie to get Jacob the blessing? Seems kinda shady.

What is it that a father finds in one
to favor over others?
Did Isaac know what grace was his
in primogeniture
while Ishmael wandered?

Did Esau find
his father’s way not right
And think the issue
of the pottage just
a specious way
to further
predestination,

To choose my father—

He passed along that
odd selection too,
So Joseph was his pet—

I heard him say that Rachel
was his love,
and saw her eyes
in Joseph’s face.

I know such ancient tales
of brothers—
one chosen,
the other not,
inexplicably—

And like Abel’s brother
wish I knew
why God must choose.

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Feb 23

...and a playful poem about Babel by Darlene Young. what do you think of the Tower of Babel? It reads like a "just-so" story to explain why we have different languages. But it implies that God could punish humanity by confusing them.

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Feb 23

Continuing to post poetry about the Old Testament by LDS authors. Today is a poem by Heather Harris-Bergevin about Hagar...

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Feb 19

the idea that the BoM prophecies that Native Americans will ultimately rule the American continent. See pg. 451 archive.org/details/pdfy...

And if the white American Gentiles did not repent "after the blessing which they shall receive, after they have scattered my people," the Amerindian "remnant of Jacob,"

Then shall ye, who are a remnant of the house of Jacob ... be among them ... as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he goeth through both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver. . . . For I will make my people with whom the Father hath covenanted, yea, I will make thy horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass. And shalt beat in pieces many people (3 Nephi 20:15- 16, 19).

In this searing prophecy, Amerindian peoples become "invincible weapons of divine indignation," a force that will reverse the effects of white American Gentile imperialism, reclaiming for Indian Israel what The Book of Mormon reveals is rightly hers (Jensen 2000, 181). Implicit in this apocalyptic vision is the definition of white Gentile repentance as acknowledging and abiding by Native sovereignty. White American salvation depends upon being adopted into the Amerindian "remnant of Jacob." Book of Mormon eschatology thus prescribed for white EuroAmericans an ethnoracial conversion into Amerindians, the exact mirror image of the white Nephite — and, often, white Mormon — fantasy of converted Lamanites becoming "fair and delightsome." It is hard to imagine a vision more profoundly disruptive of US state ideology than The Book of Mormon's Indianized millennium.

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Feb 15

Noah's ark is cosmic horror, change my mind. #molit #mopoetry #bible

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Feb 15

bonus

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Feb 15

Here's some cringe library valentines I made

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Feb 10

Just discovered that my copy of Joseph Fielding Smith's Doctrines of Salvation was owned by Boyd Petersen. Hope you're doing okay Boyd.

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Feb 10

struggling to find the "container" name for the LDS Church's website to cite this webpage. It doesn't make sense to say the container is TCoJCoLDS when that is also the publisher. I went with #2.

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Feb 10

is this too unhinged for my department's 3-minute thesis competition? I'm trying to argue that Mormon women changed scriptural narratives to show their own theological ideas.

Rachel Helps@rachelhelps· Feb 9

The Reorganized Church of Christ, now called the Community of Christ, published their own hymnal in 1870, which included this hymn about Enoch. Find the whole hymnbook digitized at the LDS Church History Library catalog. #hymns #molit #mopoetry