#url origin

[ghostsofchernobyl]

I have to be honest, this has been weighing on my mind since you asked how my url came about. Funny, given that I was hoping someone would ask. It's just a bit... complicated.

I'll give a short version and a long version, with the long version underneath the cut.

Short Version: It's the name of a fictional post-rock band that I came up with.

Long Version:

If you have paid any attention to my post history, you'll know that my primary special interest is Radiation, because naturally that's what I'd be drawn to. Funny, cause I was super scared of getting an x-ray when I was 5 and used to have a very intense fear of nuclear war. (The foreshadowing in this is not subtle).

I've known about the Chernobyl disaster since... forever, I guess? My memory of my childhood is very suppressed, and what I do have is foggy. But that's besides the point. Anyways, what caught my attention is the... solitude? of abandoned places. Like that eerie feeling of being somewhere that's been forgotten.

So, anyways, I used to have a really big fear about nuclear war. I don't remember the specifics, but I know when North Korea did their last test I was at summer camp, and we had also been told that they now had missiles that could hit the U.S. Pretty scary stuff for a kid my age.

My anxiety got so strong at a few points that I hallucinated the sounds of air raid sirens (which don't exist where I live). I also started to do stuff specific ways to *not* have such a war happen (huh, this definitely doesn't become an OCD diagnosis later on).

When I was 16, I started legally doing some Urbex after a mall an hour away went under. I also watched a documentary about the Manhattan project in class, as well as delving into the Chernobyl Disaster through the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video games. I eventually watched the movie that they're based on, and it remains one of my favorites to this day.

Last year of high school sucked for me, but I ended up starting the special interest around radiation and nuclear war. My favorite element for a long time has been Astatine, because we can't compile enough of it to be visible without it tearing itself apart from the heat of its own radiation. Cool stuff.

Anyways, at that point my OCD kept me to only knowing about the disasters (Chernobyl, Fukushima (I actually know a survivor), Three Mile Island, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Windscale, etc) and Fission Bombs (Gun-Type, Implosion, Boosted, Ivy King). It was also the last time I did Urbex because a lot of my spots by then had been torn down, or my pass to go to said places was revoked because they wanted to do construction or whatnot.

Because of this, I got even deeper into STALKER lore. My favorite faction is Monolith, which is basically a hive mind of people who worship the Monolith at the center of the Zone, right in the Sarcophogus. The HBO Chernobyl series coming out didn't help the special interest, although it is very blatantly wrong in many places.

Freshman year of college the dam broke and I started looking into fusion bombs, and damn did I miss a lot. But that's really where the special interest leaves the story. So on to another component: Post-Rock.

I discovered "We Lost the Sea" sometime in High School, but I don't remember exactly when. I had gotten into the genre through Krobak at the start of the COVID lockdowns. Anyways, WLTS has an album called Departure Songs, and it's given me a lot of catharsis. I've always been very musical, and learned how to play both guitar and bass in high school.

My dad had old tapes from when he was taking night classes, and one of them was labeled "Isotope Effect". It's something to do with how different isotopes react with body chemistry differently, something I'm actually going to learn about next year. Anyways, I always thought it was a cool band or song title.

Well, I came up with the fictional band "Ghosts of Chernobyl", and I would dedicate some riffs I came up with to them. Stupid, but the tism gotta tism, and that's how it be for me.

I can't say my faith has had nearly as large a role in my url as yours had, but it's definitely given it more meaning. I'm a Jewish Convert (a Proselyte in the jargon), and I converted for a lot of reasons that would triple the length of this tangent.

It turns out that Tschornobyl, Ukraine (the original name for Chernobyl) was actually originally a village of Jews who had survived everything from the Russian Pogroms to the Holodomor, but unfortunately didn't make it through the Holocaust.

I found that out after my obsession with chernobyl started, and long after I had come up with the band name, but it gave it more meaning. I turned it into my url because it represented a lot about me. It represented my love of post-rock, how it's gotten me through some horrible times in my life. It represents my special interest in radiation, which is how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb (TM). It also represents my Jewishness, cause the original town was an Ashkenazi/Chasidic Hotspot.

But most of all, it represents my feelings of being forgotten. Chernobyl is a town with a lot of ghosts, and was practically built by them. It is those ghosts, who have unsung tales and live in the ruined apartment blocks, that I wish to embody the spirit of. The cathartic feeling of distant, forgotten memories, where the land has been salted over.

I also found out later that there's a movie called "Ghosts of Chernobyl", but it kinda sucks and has nothing to do with my url.

Nice url. How'd you get it?

It’s a bit of a long story. To condense it, it’s a reference to a Psalm that was popular with a famously weird Mormon seminary teacher of mine, and a character that I felt like was the most human and interesting depiction of Mormonism in pop-culture: Joshua Graham.

I started using the name when I was in online exmo support groups because of the religious significance it once had to me, and for its literal sense of mourning. At some point I stopped spending time in ExMo circles and just wandered off into the regular online world, but I kept the name. It feels right.

How about you?

[sweets-gun]

this image is what my url was inspired by and although I mainly blog abt spn now I am emotionally attached to the sweets-gun url and I refuse to relinquish it for something more fitting

[souvenir116]

Charles saying what Max did is over the limits but he would do the same, George going "Max is a 3-time world champion, he knows what he’s doing, he’s aggressive, and I think that’s great." Alex "F1 is not a gentlemen sports, it’s of course not golf" Ocon "I like a bit of a show" Pierre "He did the best mathematically" Magnussen "I would do the same"- WHAT IM SAYING IS

[sophalopod]

hello

[hydrossity-zone]

[6/8/2024]

I don't care if Heaven won't take me back

(click for better quality!)

[2/12]

[dailyhatsune]

miku as yukari

also shes holding a leek

[fortheturnstiles]

[lonelystarbuckslover13]

Do you guys ever think about how crazy it must feel to be the girl who started 123 let’s go bitch??? Like she just said something funny at a concert once and posted it online, and now she’s started a fandom tradition that millions of people participate in across the world, and even 5 years later ​we all still scream it at every show and Taylor quotes it on social media??? THAT’S a real fucking legacy to leave

[hyunpic]

DAILY HYUNJIN GIFS UNTIL HIS BDAY: love you and all your little things - hyunpic & hyuncam

[faggotry-enjoyer]

thinking about how so much of the left spent so long making dual loyalty accusations that so many jews had to reiterate that "judaism != israel" as in "just because i'm jewish doesn't mean i support anything and everything the israeli state does wtf" only for the left to turn around and start saying "judaism != israel" as in "israel has nothing at all to to do with judaism" as in "any and all discussion of antisemitism with regard to israel is irrelevant derailing" (at best) and have the gall to act like they're saying the same thing because those are the Right Words, right? forced them to put up a shield only to rip that shield from their hands and beat them with it. vile. fucking vile.

[royalarmyofoz]

RETURN TO OZ (1985) dir. Walter Murch

[undead-knick-knack]

[i-really-should-change-my-url]

So what I'm hearing is that we ALL fell in love with Ronald "shows his autistic inventor friend A Bugs Life" Gladden

[coldswarkids]

every time i see a post on tumblr dot com by some prot shitting on catholics, i have to remind myself that i am not going to change anyone's mind online, this is my fun place for shit posting, and also i will not go to heaven if i bite someone's face off

[dark-wil-wheaton]

hey so are u garakspaddedbra in like a big trenchcoat or are you an entirely different person

No, I just live in his mirror. If anything, we're roomies

[selfcarecap]

Plagiarism

The account @/BriiiiGon_za_lez on Wattpad is translating full tumblr fics from various fandoms into Spanish without permission or credit to the original tumblr authors. They also stole a fic of mine so I’m assuming none of the other fics are approved for reposting and translation by the original writers. I can’t remember the original writers of any of the specific fics I recognise but the description of the work on Wattpad is this:

so I assume everything is stolen. I haven’t reported anything yet because I don’t know what to do tbh but I thought I’d make a post and we can try to help each other and figure this out 🙃

here’s the link (i think anyway idk how fucking wattpad works)