well, it looks as though Bender, my trusty WDTV Live Hub did, in fact, get fried by lightning
and didn’t just need a new power supply.
the plus side is that i got it working enough (despite the strobing video that’s making me want to vomit) to copy all of its files onto my external hard drive.
the shitty part is that i need to spend $170 to replace it.