LNH/HCC: Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #59 [HCC48]

Andrew Perron pwerdna at gmail.com
Sun Oct 5 23:38:10 PDT 2014


Okay. Time to get back on the horse.

On 10/1/2014 1:17 AM, Saxon Brenton wrote:
> [LNH/HCC] Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #59  [HCC48]

Yaaaaaay! More Saxon LNH is always appreciated. <3

> [There is *no* Silver Age-style roster of characters in the form of
> a series of mug shots in little circles running down the side of the
> title page]

GASP.

>       Alexandry ran for his life.

Nice to meet you, Alexandry. Run for your life!

> Even better in the gathering twilight, he could see
> no indication of the light from the literally burning-with-radioactive-
> fire eyes of the... whatever they were.

Ooooooo.

>       But... wow.  That was just like in the video games.  Adventuring in
> the ruins around Chernobyl, sneaking around, fighting monsters, killing
> people and taking their stuff...
>       Okay, okay, so in real life all it really meant was sneaking into
> the 300 kilometre Exclusion Zone around the Chernobyl reactor, avoiding
> the guards, camping out for a few days, and taking selfies in the ruins
> so that you could post them online.

BUT STILL.

>       Ha!  Talk about a whole 'nother world.  Ever since The Tragedy at
> the nuclear plant, and the Exclusion Zone being set up, the farmlands
> around Chernobyl were in the process of rapidly and aggressively
> reverting back to nature.  It was only a hundred kilometres from the
> capital of the Ukraine, but the place was now a forest nature reserve
> with a rebound in the amount of wildlife, and because of the fear of
> radiation civilization was too scared to encroach.  It may as well be on
> another planet.

Which is pretty cool, no joke; real life or LNH. (Or Real Life Minus One.)

>       Oh well.  He moved inside, cleared out a space, and set about
> waiting.  He wondered who would be the next to arrive.  Boris?  Vassily?
> But as the night continued still no one turned up.  A prickle of paranoia
> began to weight on Alexandry.  What if they'd been caught and killed, and
> no one was going to turn up?  What if they'd been caught and killed and
> turned into nuclear zombies, and were even now on their way here to get
> him as well!?

Mwa-ha-ha! Having that level of paranoia will only ensure you a more 
ridiculous demise!

>       There was a rumble from the south.  Then, like some sort of CGI
> effect, the entire Chernobyl nuclear complex came into view above the
> tree line as the building lifted itself up on two legs, reshaping itself
> into something of a cross between a building and a human form and began
> striding across the countryside, it's crude features resembling enough
> of a face to be able to tell that it was looking about for something.

WELP

>       The reactor room had changed.  It seemed to have opened up like a
> vast bubble, with organic-looking pipes and conduits wrapped around
> the walls and floor and ceiling.  Down towards the bottom of this area
> Alexandry could make out larger misshapen lumps, and despite the fact
> that these too were moving as if they were pumping organs a curiously
> detached part of his mind wondered if some of these might be some of
> the lava-like remains of melted reactor core from the original
> catastrophe.

Corium! (Actually tho, if you're close enough to see it you should probably 
already be dead. I'm just going to assume that a lot of the radioactivity is 
somehow getting sucked away to maintain the golem.)

>       The youngster felt hot.  Well, of course he did; obviously the first
> indication of radiation poisoning.  But whereas the others weakly pushed
> against the semi-transparent before falling unconscious, Alexandry was
> hyped up and anxious to escape.

I wondered if this was going to go more horror or more superhero.

>       The fighter jets arrived.  Their missiles exploded against the
> Chernobyl golem, sending bits of masonry flying.  The platform started
> to tilt.  Alexandry tried to keep his balance, flailed about to also
> keep a grip of the guys heaped over his shoulders, and it was almost a
> minute before he realised he was flying.

That's a good moment, but it gets slightly lost in the way it's described. But 
in a way where I'm not even sure how to improve upon it. Hrm.

> But even then I ended up making it complicated for myself.
> I was honestly planning on having the nuclear zombies ambush Alexandry
> at the village, at which point he would get proverbially bitten by a
> radioactive origin and gain superpowers.  But then I thought: nah,
> that conforms to storytelling expectations, so I deliberately went for
> something unexpected.  He still got powers, but the story took the
> long way around.

Hmmmmmm! But in a way, just being exposed to radiation is an even more 
expected origin - even if it's almost never just done straight anymore.

> Meanwhile, notwithstanding the initial planning I did
> last night in bed with Alexandry running about in the woods, this has
> been written in under 12 hours - which kind of explains why it's run
> off in strange directions and then been tied off so quickly.

Yeah, it felt a bit structurally weird, but that's reasonable. Really, you 
should do more get-it-done-NOW fiction! <3

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, and I should do more get-it-done-now replies.


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