#Chernobyl of Hope

[wickedzeevyln]

Ennui

This is where dreams come to die. My personal Chernobyl. No one told me. So, I asked. Past an age of no return where even open mics are shutdown. Worries pile up like Lego bricks and the loose ones are hard on the foot—barefoot literally, and as I pepper the air with expletives gurgling out of my throat, my life flashes before my eyes. Ouch! Tranquility and I are not in speaking terms and my…

[sagawanuno]

[beevean]

I went here into how much Hector's plan in S4E6 makes zero logical sense, but the layers of suckage of this onion keep being unpeeled to reveal even more suckage, in a Mobius strip of pain.

Hector planned to die at Isaac's hands and also to live and escape at the same time. This is profoundly stupid for all the reasons I said in that post. But clearly, his A plan was to die. So, in short, he wanted to:

help with Dracula's resurrection to "atone" for his mistakes; the fact that this would likely lead to him returning to his mass slaughter, something that he opposed in S2, doesn't seem to cross his mind

"protect" Lenore from Isaac's rampage by keeping her in a magical cage

die, leaving his former colleague, his owner/girlfriend and his former Lord alone without a proper apology/closure

if all else fails, set into motion that complicated plan of escaping that took all of his efforts offscreen and rebuild a life outside. or perhaps killing himself with his own hands, who knows anymore

Got that? Okay.

First assumption: how could Hector be sure that the spell would have survived past his death? What if magic in this setting doesn't have ontological inertia? It's said in S2E6 that magic carries intent:

Sypha: I have to be able to see [the castle] to put my intent on it. Alucard: Your intent? Sypha: That's all magic is, Alucard. Changing things in accordance with my intent.

We can assume then that, if the person exercising the intent dies, the magic stops working. I know that Hector, despite his epic "I'm a wizard, not to be trusted" comeback, is not a real wizard, but surely he would know something about magic since it's a topic that fascinates him, right?

Second assumption: if Isaac assaulted the castle thirsty for revenge, how could Hector be sure that he'd spare Lenore? Sure, he has no personal beef with her, but she's still a vampire queen that aided Carmilla and an obstacle. Again, Hector is assuming that the cage will keep existing after his death, so Lenore will still be trapped and not a threat (not that she tried a thing to get free, like turning into mist)... but Isaac can enter that cage. Hector doesn't know Isaac enough to assume that he'd be merciful. The last time they spoke, Isaac still carried a ton of hatred and disdain for everyone, and he wasn't particularly fond of vampires either.

He's also assuming that Lenore, who two months prior beat him to a pulp and slashed him with her claws, would be no match for Isaac. Hector never saw Isaac in combat, by the way. We know he's a Gary Stu and that she's a coward who wouldn't seriously hurt someone if she doesn't have the advantage, ofc, but as far as Hector knows, a human with a dinky knife would totally chop into pieces a super fast, super strong, shapeshifting, pissed off vampire. okay.

Even the idea that Hector took into account that Isaac would bring an army of Night Creatures is flawed, because Isaac himself was surprised when he realized he could just do that for himself. Until then, both of them made Night Creatures only under orders, and took one year to create a sizeable army. And that's not mentioning that Hector had to guess that Isaac would go on a slaughtering rampage on an absurd scale to make said army in two months. And if he was willing to kill a shitton of innocents just to give himself a leg up, why in the fuck would he spare Lenore??? Again, Hector has no idea that Isaac found Enlightenment a few days prior the assault of the castle! Can you imagine S2 Isaac leaving Lenore alive out of courtesy for Hector, the same man he looked down on and spoke to like a stupid child? Because I can't, and neither should he!

Third assumption: did Hector even consider about how his beloved Lenore would feel? So let's assume that Hector was right, and Isaac would have killed him but spared her in a bizarre showcase of honoring the wishes of a man who ruined his life (Isaac stopped thinking so, Hector certainly didn't, since he wanted to "atone"). Okay. So Lenore would have been the only survivor of a dead castle. She would have lived on, for eternity, with the crushing failure of not being able to protect her home. She would have watched as Isaac slaughtered Hector in front of her eyes and then went to kill Carmilla, perhaps Striga and Morana too if they returned and attacked him in retailation. She would have lost everything, her home, her friends, and her slave/boyfriend who chose to die and leave her alone, and chose to make her watch everything. And, if Hector really assumed that the magical cage would have kept existing past his death to keep Lenore safe and harmless, then she would have been stuck there, Hector's corpse rotting under her eyes, until she starved to death, which at this point might have been more merciful!

Hector banked on all of this happening. This is what he was genuinely expecting to happen.

And what happened in reality is only marginally better, because he lived on... to then aide Isaac into killing Carmilla and destroying Lenore's life anyway. And then keeping her trapped with him out of a horribly misguided sense of caring. (Lenore, being Lenore, probably missed the incredible irony in all of this, just as she missed how bitchy she'd look when she chose to kill herself and leave Hector alone with his trauma. more likely, it's just the sanitized writing)

Now, obviously, I'm not asking for a victim of abuse to care about his abuser's poor feefees. The show did that enough already. As I detailed here and here, in a vacuum Hector showed Lenore the mother of all middle fingers, and I should be satisfied. But the story framed this whole scene, of Lenore running to Hector to hide him somewhere safe (without thinking of removing the ring to free him from the confines of the castle, naturally: reminding us that she trapped him, and the way she did it, would make her look bad 🙂 except that now she looks even worse because she did jack and shit to truly make up for how horribly she treated her "pet") and Hector protecting her at the cost of his life, as tragically romantic. I'm meant to be touched, that Hector thought of her safety before his own, aww they really do love each other and he forgave her for abusing and raping him and mocking his trauma because her puppy dog eyes were just too cute 🥺

Lenore raping Hector into slavery for the sole purpose of keeping a pet, even when he became useless to the plan and he would have accepted to belong to her anyway, is deeply selfish. Lenore only talking about her woes and dismissing Hector's is deeply selfish. Hector planning to force Lenore to live on in grief is deeply selfish. Hector forcing Lenore in a "cage", useless and depressed, just to have some company in his miserable life is deeply selfish (deserved, don't get me wrong, but he had no malice in doing so so it's not even cathartic). All of this could have been elaborated on and showed a toxic relationship between two horrible people who don't know the first thing about love and did nothing but cheat and lie and ruin each other's lives under the pathetic desire of being cared for. Those two should fucking despise each other by the last episode! Have some genuine drama already!

But the shippers wouldn't have been happy, so here, have this absolute clusterfuck of a plan that was not thought for more than 5 seconds, for the sake of giving a bone to both Lenector fans and even N!Isaactor fans, with the whole "cutting the finger" and "absolving Hector of the sin of being stupid" thing. Look at this! Look at how the writing bends because the writer knows what is supposed to happen and how to forcibly smooth any conflict!

... and I didn't even touch that stupid ass escape channel that breaks every sense of logic and only exists to make Isaac's life even easier than it already is i hate it i hate everything - and you know what, it's even stupid from a Lenector perspective, because you're really telling me that Hector planned to both "protect" Lenore from Isaac (not considering how she would have been driven insane by grief, but whatever at this point) and also to run away leaving her alone under the mercy of Isaac, or even Carmilla, since she was going mad to the point that Lenore was lowkey scared of her? bruh??????? is it too much to ask for one (1) consistent character in this joint 😭

[oddfamiliar]

Happy anniversary to one of the greatest movies ever made!

[creatureprofessor]

it is by will alone i set my scheme into motion. i will re-timecode & finish proofreading and correcting the hungarian subtitles for ep1. and then i unleash it on my parents on the weekend. let's see how it goes!

[chernobylchronicles]

My honest reaction when my professor said that I have to start writing my article all over again:

YOU ARE A WILD MAN

@fuerst-von-argot pls i thought that this day will be amazing but it was not

[party-pixie]

i JUST changed all of my blogs' themes and you're telling me we might ACTUALLY have to jump ship soon?????????

[wicked-wkd]

Damn haha you're so obsessed with that bad internet person someday all that attention you're giving them is gonna transmute into them turning into a good person huh?

What? You're not giving them attention because you want that? It's just cheap entertainment to watch a real life bad person do bad things to other real life people?

Have you ever heard of hannibal? The girlies love that, how about you watch that instead of wasting your time and moral standards?

[comicsmithy]

Well. Good!

[swagging-back-to]

i hope they never stop.

america never shouldve had a good reputation but i hope now, no matter what we do, every country will view us as the laughing stock we are.

i hope theyre hesitant to initiate trade deals and ally with us, because they don't want to be associated with such a pathetic country.

i hope our visas hold no power. i hope our leaders hold no power. i hope we lose resources. i hope we are invaded and annexed.

i hope death to this country because the people in it are nothing. they are NOTHING.

I hope they know other countries are pointing and laughing at us

[artbyblastweave]

I think I've mentioned this, but in my head the best of all possible Wards is set 15 years after Gold Morning and it's a Fallout/Borderlands tinged Neo-Western. The post-apocalyptic Red Queen Race has laid low all higher aspirations, and the law of the land is split between oppressive cape-backed state-sec regimes in the cities and cult-of-personality driven strongman parahuman feudalism in the boonies. All parties involved make liberal use of classic heroic and villainous aesthetics that signify absolutely nothing beyond danger to the unpowered serfs caught in the crossfire. The land is plagued by tinker-spawned mutants, runaway robots, and shadow-of-Chernobyl-styled altered physics bullshit resulting from the ice break depicted in canon, and the closest you get to "superheroes" in the classic mold are bounty hunters and knights errant whose prices to help to deal with that shit aren't too exorbitant for the average farming commune. Victoria is a burnout in her mid-thirties, keeping her head down in a small settlement on a corner world, until she and her unresolved issues are dragged back into the fray kicking and screaming by the power of Plot. In other words, Old Man Logan if it was good instead of just fun, and also probably without the sliver of hope that there's going to be something better soon

[luthiest]

09.04.2024

my friend and i went hobonichi shopping the other day in preparation for the new school year :) i got the plaid with the red case for 2025, she got the chartreuse with the pretty cover, and the cat portrait is my 2024 that’s rapidly approaching its end. kinda scary to think about, but this is my last semester in school for what will probably be a looooooong time if not the rest of my life.

i always start out super strong and spend the rest of the year slowly burning out, but i don’t really have the luxury of doing that this time around lol… gonna do my best, see how far it gets me. hope the start of the school year is treating you guys well! 🤍🤍

as far as personal interests go, i’ve been playing a lot of genshin, knitting, beading, and reading nonfiction this summer. anyone else seen the hbo show chernobyl or read midnight in chernobyl? i’m reading it currently after watching the show during my wisdom tooth surgery recovery (rip) and i’m firmly down the rabbit hole, i fear !!!!!!

🎧 : blue skies - ella fitzgerald

[cerastes]

I’ve been checking comments sections regarding the CEO shooter, because I can’t go into Chernobyl so I make do with the next best thing, and it’s actually been funny as hell how the vast majority of people regardless of political leaning all agree it was awesome and hope they never catch him. Goes a long way to reaffirm a long held belief of mine that insurance companies are the lowest of the low, that’s not even a political statement, it’s just a truth.

[chernobylchronicles]

All summer with them is coming

Sweet blorbo dreams to everyone

[andre-and-cal]

hiii!! this might be a stupid question, but do you have any headcanons on how andre + cal would act online? like would they have their own webpages, and how they would chat and stuff like that :p

also, i love your writing so much <3

Hii!! :3 That’s not a stupid question at all !! And TYSMM IM SO GLAD :D <33 These were fun to make, I hope you like these!

Andre and Cal Online Headcanons,,

Andre’s username on his favorite social/chatting websites is @ak47_0717, while Cal’s is @gunslinger83. The reasoning behind their usernames, first of all, is that Andre’s initials are AK. Because of his unsettling interest in firearms, he’s bound to be interested in one of the most popular guns in the world— the AK-47. He likes having his initials similar to the “AK” in AK-47. The four numbers at the end of his username are his birthday. Cal’s username is pretty self-explanatory; he calls himself a gunslinger, and the ‘83’ at the end of his username is the year he was born.

Andre and Cal talk to each other on AOL, which was one of the most popular online services for internet users at the time. They also chat on MSN Messenger, and they used to communicate on ISQ, which was more popular in their middle school years and early high school years— the late 90s.

With Blogger having been established in 1999, Andre and Calvin created accounts. They follow gun blogs and blogs dedicated to books, movies, and bands they like. Also, Andre follows— although he doesn’t really interact with— the Iroquois Track Team and Science Club blog pages. Cal follows the school band’s page. Despite following different blogs, they don’t really post much on Blogger; they like to stay relatively quiet and unnoticed. Andre does leave hate comments on posts from people he doesn’t like. Since anonymity wasn’t as robust as it would come to be in the mid 2000s— the years following Cal and Andre’s deaths— he made an alt account with a fake name for the sole purpose of hating on the Iroquois Wrestling Team blog page… for obvious reasons having to do with Brad Huff. He also leaves hate comments on Rachel’s posts. Cal mentions this mysterious user to Andre sometimes, mentioning how Rachel talks about how this unknown person on the internet criticizes her posts. Andre plays dumb and acts uninterested, yet he listens intently, replying with soft “Mhm”s, as well as a “Damn, that sucks”. He doesn’t want Cal growing suspicious.

They play girls’ flash games both for the hell of it and for the irony. They get relatively entertained from these online dress-up, salon, and cooking games, with Cal being aware these games are aimed at girls. He intentionally makes his character look ugly and goes into hysterical laughter over it— he absolutely laughs at the stupidest shit. However, Andre actually tries and is surprisingly concentrated on the game, face frozen with stoicism and focus. Andre would never admit it, but with his family having a cat, Mel, he finds pet care flash games to be genuinely fun.

Andre and Cal illegally download music and share it with each other by Napster or by email. They’ve sacrificed their computers for the sake of copying a System of a Down song onto their files for free, instead of physically buying the CD. In 1998, when Andre was still a freshman in high school, he ended up getting the CIH virus (Chernobyl virus) which practically wrecked his software and ruined his computer. Whole Calvin teased him for getting such a destructive virus on his computer, he ended up informing his parents. He’d told them that Andre needed a new computer, and he suggested that they pitch in to help Andre’s parents buy him a new computer for his 16th birthday in the summer. Because for the time being, Andre would have to use Cal’s.

Andre and Cal share similar humor in most areas. And since internet memes were beginning to rise in popularity, the two boys send or email each other dark humor memes and chuckle at them.

If they were alive in 2003, they would have used 4chan !!

Andre uses all types of different acronyms when chatting, such as but not limited to “ROFL”, “LOL”, “LMFAO”, “BRB”, “ILY”, “IDK”, and “BTW”. He often capitalizes the first letter of his messages and types faces like “:-)” and “>:(”.

Cal, too, uses many acronyms online. He also types with no capital letters, and he often takes shortcuts when he’s chatting with Andre. He creates little faces with the keys on his keyboard and copies and pastes special symbols online. When he’s typing to Andre first, his first message is usually a simple, “hi” of some sort.

They both play Doom together, considering how 1993 Doom was multiplayer when it first came out.

GeoCities !! Cal and Andre created their own website for the Army of Two. They didn’t necessarily say much on the site, and they didn’t give the site name to anyone they knew. But they still specified who they were and their interests without giving away their last names.

In addition, Andre and Cal used GeoCities to make a screamer site, and they made different alt emails to troll Brad Huff by sending the link to him, without him finding out who they were.

Sometime during the final week before Zero Day, their last few days of being alive, they’d both typed up a short, lovesick letter in their notepads— two messages they’d always wanted to tell each other but never got the chance to. Cal had gone on a tangent about how much he enjoyed being Andre’s comrade, how much he enjoyed Andre being his. Also, he was saying his goodbyes before their final mission and how he loved Andre and hoped he’d see him on the flip side. Whereas Andre was saying how he was looking forward to escaping the school with Cal and how he hoped they’d have a better life together, even while they were wanted from the cops. He mentioned how he loved Cal, too, but with his own phrasing of that declaration. But that ended up being an unrealistic expectation on Andre’s end.

[nirvenmeows]

Gabv1el in traditional ukrainian clothing!!! Woo!!

Erm symbolism time?

So the flower crown in the ukrainian culture is symbol of respect for your ancestors, as our history is.. pure oppression and needing to survive

So Gabriel is wearing it as he's the "righteous hand of the father" and wears it to respect the god as he's dead in the game

The multiple red beads is a sign of higher class, the more beads the higher, Gabriel wears as archangels are one of the highest hierarchy in the game (not religious accuracy but more.. in-game as other angel types are nowhere to be seen)

The embroidery is the tree of life embroidery, representing the underworld, the earth and heavens in ukrainian paganism, as an archangel he's responsible for each layers in order to protect humans and the heavens

For V1

He's wearing a sunflower, which is a sign of mourning of those who have died in the Chernobyl disaster and those who have lost their homes in Pripyat

Idk how I connected Chernobyl with V1 but I hope yall see my vision

His embroidery is the Crosses, which in ukrainian paganism represents both masculinity and femininity at the same time, for v1 it means his non conforming nature and appearance