#Big Jolt

[notbecauseofvictories]

as much as I love history and Chicago history especially, I do sometimes forget how recent everything here is. I was at the Hull House Museum with a friend of mine the other day, and we had a wonderful time listening to the curator talk about the birth of social work, the women who drove it forward, and the ghost stories that haunt their stomping grounds despite no one really dying there.

As we were walking around after the tour, my friend pointed out that Jane Addams' dress (the one on display in that room, black and small and otherwise unremarkable) had an uneven hem. "Oh, good eye!" the curator, who was walking alongside us, exclaimed. "Addams' tuberculosis left her with some spinal curvature, even after corrective surgery. She had most of her dresses altered to ensure the hem would be straight when she wore them---but on a standard dress form, the hem looks uneven."

"I always forget that having a tailor or dressmaker was considered typical back then," I said.

"No, by that point it was much more common to buy a dress from Sears and have it altered," the curator replied cheerfully. "That's what Addams did."

The whole exchange was maybe a few seconds, but it sticks with me even now. The idea that Jane Addams bought a dress from Sears---where I have also bought dresses, where my mother bought dresses---makes me feel insane. And yet, we're only talking about a hundred years ago or so. Is it so unreasonable that I, as a disaffected teen, was drifting through racks of mass-produced garments, just as Jane Addams did a century before? The exact location of the hands making those garments has changed of course; the workers' protections that Addams' contemporaries fought for have resulted in offshoring that work to less-guarded parts of the world. But it gives me a strange sort of fellow feeling to think about it, all these many decades later.

[justplaggin]

14!skk very much REAL

[joltedfox-06]

Was on a bit of a Splatoon kick a bit ago. So here's some recent stuff lol

Alt versions of my Octoling underneath

[swordsandspectacles]

Having played Mouthwashing I went back to play How Fish is Made and naturally I’m saying nothing new here but I really like how the two pieces work as a pair.

Also I now understand why I’ve seen so much art of curly in a sardine can but that’s beside the point-

[b4kuch1n]

tdov was like a week ago already but I just wanna say when I came over to vacation slash help my sworn brother move flat he told me, "ever since you said you wanted to get top surgery I've been thinking about it. it's straight up number two on my bucket list"

[prommytheus]

[darabeatha]

/ I've noticed that at this point I'm not even writing on any blog anymore, I just come and yell about some blorbo and leave. Rinse and repeat my lieges

[llycaons]

I'm looking at the other d20 campaigns and going oohh the pirate one looks fun and FUCKING

"Unlucky" Jack Brakkow, played by Matthew Mercer

[jellybuttons]

thinking a lot about how powerful seeing a character like aziraphale is when it comes to something like a traumatic christian upbringing. so much of his arc is directly tied to being "dirtied" by desire, by learning that the Good thing isn't always the right thing, and that's the very thing that crowley loves about him. i don't know, there's just something very potent about being loved not despite being sinful, but because of it...because it allowed you to be who you really are. i don't know if people would get it who didn't grow up in church, but watching aziraphale NOT be forgiven for some of the "wrong" parts of him (even things that are inherently unkind or selfish), and instead being loved even more for them because he is a whole and deserving person, is a lot to unpack if you've based a lot of your sense of self on the need to be perceived as Good.

im sure this isn't the only media to do this, nor am i saying it as clearly as im sure someone else has, but watching aziraphale be loved has mattered a lot to me.

[emdotcom]

Hater shit incoming:

Yeah, Indigo Park is really cool, but it blew its load a bit too early by immediately killing off the cool stalker enemy from ch.1. The effect of the bird mimicing phrases is really neat, but you don't get to hear her do it much, especially because the warbling effect + loud af chase music drowns out what is being said, which sucks! Those voice lines are good!!

[onaperduamedee]

I finished reading Nynaeve's Aes Sedai testing and this chapter is bugging me: for a culmination, it's a clunky conclusion to Nynaeve's arc. Nyn is a pragmatic even when she's prideful: it feels odd that her big moment of warning the Aes Sedai about their connection to the world would come to the surface in a test that's very much made up.

The point of the test is to show she can keep her head under stress, which she did. The AS were dicks about technicalities, as always, but it's in these circumstances that Nyn would point out their isolationism and not in Kin dealing for example?

And there's the matter of why she wants to be Aes Sedai: Nyn doesn't care about that recognition from Aes Sedai, she still would be able to channel without it, and she's doing it to help Egwene's position, but she also explicitly says wants to be Aes Sedai.

Why? Is it because despite all their flaws the AS' initial purpose to serve all is strongly in line with her value of community? Probably, but we don't get that explicitly. We only get this middle ground where she's both invested in and rejecting this group.

I feel like this chapter would not feel like 3 different important Nyn plot points (testing, isolationism condamnation and Lan's bond) jammed into a chapter if the books had deigned giving her an actual arc that's not about helping Rand or Lan after the BA hunt and ter'angreal search.

Both RJ and BS love writing detailed dives into the psychology of the characters except Nyn for the last few books and it's really frustrating. The chapter in itself is quite nice, but it's the crystallisation of my dissatisfaction with Nyn's arc.

The reason why no one but Nyn could have delivered that judgement about AS is that in some ways Nyn is a reflection on the Aes Sedai's inner tensions on a micro and individual level: as a Wisdom, she holds a position of power and knowledge. Yet she fights constantly for respect and appears a bully with too much pride and too little awareness to others. She's fiercely anchored in her beliefs. Once you go on a systemic level with these elements, you get the Aes Sedai. Nyn grows, the Aes Sedai very slowly.

So this character who is all about people and healing, and still says she wants to be Aes Sedai, a rot of a public service, pretty much washes her hands of them and doesn't even work with the Kin, the actual more functional Aes Sedai entity she dreams of?

In the end, it's merely frustration because her character started as the most fascinating but ends up on the back-burner by book 8. Arcs that should have been hers are just featuring her, like the cleansing and the Kin. She has key moments but the connective tissue or word count isn't there, like a tertiary character like Siuan is used. The result is something like this chapter that feels surface level for a main character, especially in comparison with other main.

[joltedfox-06]

They're going on a family vacation :)

I hope nothing bad happens to them on their trip

[speedofsoundsketches]

@ everyone that left a super sweet message in their tags on the newest Shadow and Jolt update, thank you so much. Your words are so encouraging. 🥺

I'll be taking a break for the holidays but will get to work on the next pages early next year! I'm expecting there'll be about 40 more new pages left to tie the beginning arc together thus completing issue one of the series.

Issue two will mean a new cover and will start where we left off with the duo heading to Space Colony Ark!

Thank you all again for your kind words of encouragement. Doing this project is a joy in of itself but to see any enthusiasm for it really makes it all the more meaningful. Bless you all and I hope you have an electrified day!

[dailyeca]

why dont u like cars eca

what's there to like about em.

[ncat]

Not my ass not completing a 2/3rds finished homebrew because im tempted to write a fucking setting of all things im fucked

[abracazabka]

3am. no sleep. only johnny lawrence brain worms.