#lightning rods

Helen DeWitt's first novel was the literary fiction masterpiece The Last Samurai. The premise of her second novel, Lightning Rods:

Joe, a salesman, is obsessed with the idea of seeing the top half of a woman, fully clothed, sticking through a window or hole in a wall, while someone has sex with her lower half on the other side and she pretends nothing is happening. This inspires him to invent a clever way to reduce sexual harassment in the workplace: a contraption between bathroom stalls where anonymous female employees, termed lightning rods, present their lower halves for high-risk male employees to use as a safe outlet for their urges, thus preventing the HR costs from them venting those urges elsewhere.

My sister's reaction when I described this to her: "Yeah, I think I've seen that Literotica story."

There's a book by Jackie Ess I really like, called Darryl. It's about a guy, Darryl, who's into being cuckolded. He has some pretty involved misadventures, narrated in a ridiculous, charming voice.

Lightning Rods is definitely a Darryl. One of the telltale signs is that while reading these books, you feel compelled to read bits out loud to whoever's around, in a Get A Load of This Guy tone.

It's possible to write a book that's a Darryl but without a goofy sex focus: this gives you something like Notes from Underground or The True Story of Ah Q. (And with comparisons like that last one, it makes sense that Lightning Rods is concerned with describing the essence of a nation.) Sex comedy is the purest form for it, though.

Lightning Rods is executed extremely thoughtfully, on a number of levels. The book goes into the various practical issues with Joe's plan in detail. Not 100% comprehensively — if you tried this in real life, of course you'd encounter more logistical issues than what's covered — but an impressive amount does get addressed. We get perspectives from lightning rods, men making use of them, other people in the company, all carefully fleshed out. You really start to care about Joe's vision.

It's an outlier compared to DeWitt's other works, but not by as much as you might think: She does write a lot of Weird Guys (often women), and even a lot of characters with odd detached attitudes toward sex. Sibylla from The Last Samurai would be able to support a Darryl-style plot, if the focus hadn't been elsewhere.

The real thing setting Lightning Rods apart is the prose style. It's full of cliche-heavy folksy business speak: "As any salesman knows, you think you've covered all the angles and all of a sudden when you least expect it out of left field comes a boomerang." This is the real target (well, one of the targets) of the satire, and it's why the book needs the classic porn setting of generic offices where what the business actually does isn't worth specifying.

But I just noticed that the first three numbers

745

Are the same as the room number that Sam (the lottery announcer and the woman that was with DuJour/Rimmer and he kills) was staying in with FBI guy Nathan in the hotel.

Which made me wonder if there is some meaning to the 15 0 1 in the number

A discord friend suggested tea saplings in my empty spaces around the bottom junimo huts. If you do this make sure part of the hut is accessible as I have found out you cannot walk through tea saplings.

I kept the 3 lightning rods behind each hut because I don't like dealing with dead crops. If you don't like the look of the rods I find it best to hide them behind buildings.

Hope this helps.

Good luck, have fun, and don't forget to be phenomenal!

Hello and apologies for taking so long to get on this one.

A "lightning rod" when it comes to Flash Lore is basically someone who prevents a Speedster from becoming one with the speedforce, or acts as an anchor to find their way back when otherwise lost in speed related... debacles. Like a bolt of lightning to a metal pole they are attracted to them. They are people of whom a speedster has an emotional bond with, romantically, platonically or even antagonistically.

The comics naturally focus more on those that share a romantic bond with a speedster, but there is evidence to support that any strong bond can make a lightning rod regardless of the type of bond they have.

Jay's lightning rod is his sweet Joan of whom being his lightning rod had her own aging 'slowed' to match his (it's a little more complicated than that but for simplicity that is what is going on).

For Barry, Iris is his lightning rod which he was able to use on several occasions to pull himself out of the time stream and back to his own time.

Wally's legendary bond with Linda as a lightning rod is blatant as she helped pull him from the speedforce after he had already merged with it.

There are other instances of Iris and Linda both being lightning rods where not only do they help their speedsters manage their own powers, but by being lightning rods it helps the speedster keep them safe and prevent their own deaths or grievous harm, or in Jay's case extend Joan's life.

The tell-tale sign of a lightning rod for a speedster is of course a romantic bond, or a persistent attraction bringing the two together.

The comics will also blatantly tell you who a lightning rod is eventually using those words, where by then they get... bonus features (like Joan having her aging impacted, Linda getting powers etc).

For Bart we don't have the comics using those specific words for anyone, but in looking at the behaviors of other lightning rods and their speedsters we can sort of extrapolate that Kon, Cassie and Tim are his lightning rods with possibly Cissie (realistically she would be one but she dropped off from continuity so we didn't get to see her much after 2003).

Kon being one with an intense 'pull' for Bart is something that has the most evidence in Young Justice 2019 when Bart worked exhaustively to find Kon and to bring Young Justice back together.

When the newly formed Young Justice sans Kon were all zapped to Gemworld they were all scattered but it was Bart who appeared literally right next to Kon. Everyone else had been deposited in more random places, but not Bart. This suggests that while he does have a bond with Tim and Cassie, it is to Kon that he may have a special bond with.

There are other instances of Kon's existence being a focal point for Bart throughout their comic relationship such as during the World Without Young Justice arc where a de-powered mundane Kon was able to give Bart the courage and strength to overcome his deep paralyzing fear to reabsorb his dying scouts.

Also Kon and Bart have an intense friendship where there are multiple instances where they pick each other up and seek each other out which is at least the grounding basics for a lightning rod. For further reading on that you can look at the Konbart Manifesto.

To quantify if a lightning rod is a soulmate is a little mushy. If you are a romantic sort and the idea of soulmates pleases you tremendously then yes a lightning rod can be used to describe one, but there are more 'extras' that come with a lightning rod than just an intense burning love and a 'meant to be' attraction.

There is something more physical, metaphysical, spiritual and atomic about their bond than it being a divine uncontrollable force. There is an element of spookiness involved for sure, but there also is an element of choice about who become one based on built up love.

A lightning rod is something as profound as a gravitational pull for a speedster; their relationship is like Earth and our moon where Earth is a speedster and the moon is a lightning rod. Without the moon as a ballest Earth's stability in orbit would likely change catastrophically and for a speedster this is also the case.

I hope this makes some semblance of sense.

National #LightningSafety Awareness Week 2025 concludes Saturday with a look at protecting your home.

"While lightning rods help protect a structure from a direct lightning strike, a complete lightning protection system is needed to help prevent harmful electrical surges and possible fires caused by lightning entering a structure via wires and pipes."