#Operation Flashpoint

[videogamepolls]

Requested by anon

[openingversion]

[kegoblocks-blog]

Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (2001)

Operation Flashpoint: Resistance (2002)

[kerri-the-skunk]

Uhhh, Arma? I don't mean the people who are into the multiplayer, I'm talking about all ten of the people who take the Arma games' singleplayer and coop campaigns 100% seriously and enjoy them and do all that fandom stuff

!! STOP !!

You have reached a Mandatory Small Fandom Checkpoint.

Tell me your favorite small fandom. because it's my birthday :3

[fvmods]

Old bunker lamp – cheap. Discounted. Grab it. @renderositymagazine-blog https://www.renderosity.com/marketplace/products/168143/old-bunker-lamp

[kerri-the-skunk]

Live playing Arma: Cold War Assault

[firstoccupier]

Geopolitical Tensions in West Philippine Sea: January 4, 2025

By Cliff Potts, WPS News, Editor-in-ChiefBaybay City | January 4, 2025 I have compiled a detailed report on the significant events occurring in the West Philippine Sea, particularly around Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal, during the stipulated period from 0601 to 1800 Philippine Time on January 4, 2025. News Report: Dateline: January 4, 2025, West Philippine Sea Current Events in…

[mamawasatesttube]

i started thinking about what my dream comic run would be and now im just daydreaming about the pre flashpoint timkon that could've been again …. sighs wistfully. hear me out.

my dream comic run = a pren52 superboy/red robin teamup book, ft. tim moving to metropolis for university and becoming roommates with kon (not instantly, though), and both of them winding up investigating two different ends of an interconnected intergang scheme involving the smuggling of apokoliptian weapons (as a sorta callback to moxie mannheim's stuff in early postcrisis superman).

side plots would include retconning the lex retcon and also flipping the bird to john byrne at the same time, i.e. confirming kon as a clone of superman, kon coming out as gay in a very emotional superfam issue, krypto's constant destruction of every single vacuum cleaner tim buys, etc. the first arc has tim living in the dorms at metropolis university and struggling with secret identity shenanigans at the same time as maintaining classes, and also wanting to clobber the guitar guy in the common room with his own guitar.

there would also be a constant and a rotating cast of guest star teamups (connorkyle! supergirl! steel!) because the superfam love kon and tim is The Teamup Guy. nightwing drops by at some point to give tim entirely unasked-for pointers on his case (intentionally being annoying until tim snaps and starts swinging at him, at which point he backflips out the window and cackles the whole way down). wonder girl comes by to bemoan her love life to kon and ends up fighting an alien mech with him, then turns to him and immediately goes right back into her lesbian agonies. there's a running gag across issues that impulse keeps showing up just to eat the leftovers out of their fridge.

at least one issue would include kon taking tim to visit ma on the weekend and teaching him to milk a cow (in a callback to superman 155). tim would be bad at it and so mad that he's bad at it. kon would be glowing in the morning sunlight, unfairly beautiful, and giggling at his expense. tim gets even more frustrated because not only is he bad at milking a cow, but also kon is ethereal in a pair of old patched overalls and the bisexual crisis he's trying to outrun is catching up Real Fast.

and it would play very intentionally with genre conventions!!! the tim-led parts would have a real noir/detective vibe, and the kon-led parts would be a scifi story and then surprise! they actually are the same story and meet in the middle. you think it's two mostly unrelated stories bc tim is tracking a mysterious smuggling operation (he doesn't know what the weapons are that they're smuggling) (it's apokoliptian and other alien weapons) and kon's trying to figure out what happened to a group of aliens gone missing on earth (they are the very illegal merchants selling these weapons to intergang and related buyers). and then when tim and kon come together and realize they've both been investigating the same grand scheme, it becomes the marriage of both themes, some kind of scifi noir story.

the climax of this arc would include kon taking a [really big] hit for tim (bc it 1000% would've obliterated tim down to the atomic level), and tim freaking the fuck out bc kon goes down and doesn't immediately get up. tim has to process his "kon getting hurt and possibly killed" anxiety disorder, kon has to process "oh shit i think getting killed might actually have traumatized me," and then they end up having a very emotional first kiss about it.

also it's a run that leads into them eventually rebranding as a couple and debuting as supernova and rook (or cardinal or blackbird or what have you for tim), which would be their new teamup book name, replacing superboy/red robin. <3

[zorciarkrildrush]

I think the essence of what drives me crazy about current Enlightened Online Leftist Discourse Regarding My Life Personally And Whether This Time Killing Me Is Morally Correct (as in, commentary about the latest episode in i/p violence) is this:

I want a free Palestine.

I don't personally know a lot of people that don't! They might bristle at the tagline, because it's co-opted by people who do in fact want them dead, but as soon as I lay out why it's in literally everyone's best interest, how a non-free Palestine is horrific both to the people of Israel and to the people of Palestine, how pragmatically ridiculous the occupation of the west bank and the siege upon Gaza are (and I am a very pragmatic person), they get it. And I don't mean I debate people online about it - this, too, is a ridiculous concept - I mean having, time and time again, the deradicalization conversation with my friends, and colleagues, and my family. Obviously not only now - I've always been a very principled and argumentative Jew, ever since I became an adult - and I've been alive for, I don't know, a dozen flashpoints and operations and wars at this point, and I don't stop being argumentative and loud in peacetime either, but especially now.

But that's not what "from the river to the sea" means.

When you, gentle soul from across the sea, echo this slogan, you are either:

By apathy or will, ignoring that the sentiment cheers for the mass expulsion and killing of Jews. Indeed, any non-Muslim present from the river to the sea. This doesn't even begin to cover how even Muslim arabs still will not be safe under Hamas rule - and trust me, I don't care if a Hamas apologist told you different. A victory for Hamas (And we're ignoring the fact they do not have the military capacity for it - I hope you are aware of the privilege inherent to not understanding military conflicts) means exactly that. No "rule by the people". No socialistic, Palestinian utopia to be had, which is a fantasy I'm seeing alluded to a lot recently. Just an extension of the horrific power structure in Lebanon and Syria, where Hezbollah - friends and allies to Hamas - have been playing a tango for decades of both refusing to participate in actual government and betterment of civilian lives, while still draining their resources and controlling them with no real contest. "From the river to the sea" is not a sentiment for freedom fighting - it's a sentiment for a final solution to the people living here who are either Jewish, or for some Very Strange And Weird Reason would rather not submit to Hamas rule. You know - Israeli Arabs, secular and Muslim and Christian, Druze, Circassians, Bahai, take your pick. Their suffering, and my suffering - you know, a person who made the strategic error of being born in Israel while Jewish, which is inherently problematic and not okay of me - don't matter to you. Just the fantasy of an easy, morally correct cleanse of the land.

Are well aware of all of the above! You just don't care. You either smugly chuckle that I, and anybody else who will die, deserve it - or that it's an acceptable loss for the aforementioned fantasy. "Decolonization is an inherently violent process", you'll say to me, chillingly, before implying I have a summer home in Brooklyn I can just retreat to when things get tough. Israel is basically Rhodesia, a very popular blog here mentioned flippantly, so what's the issue with all of those lily-white Jews fucking off back home before the righteous freedom fighters strike them down? Well. This might be the part I urge you to open a book, or even Wikipedia or any god damn thing that will explain to you these upsetting, dense things you clearly struggle with.

It's easy for me to discount islamophobes. Like, very easy. It's very easy for me to discount insane evangelistics who "advocate for me" simply because I'm a pawn in their religious rapture. It's easy for me to fight against Israeli and Jewish fascists - I have been long before this news item came across your feed, as did the insinuations that some civilian deaths are okay, actually.

It's easy for me for me to see promotions for donations to non-political aid in Gaza. It's easy for me to see the sentiment that hey! Palestinians deserve safe, healthy lives. That they have deserved an independent state, and were unfairly denied one, for decades. It's easy for me to see people saying "You know, the Israeli government is shit, actually, and their actions endanger and promote to the misery of innocents". Because that's right! I wouldn't be voting and protesting and donating for all of these sentiments otherwise!

It's not easy for me to see people, who I honestly held in high regard and saw having well thought out opinions on important matters, inadvertently echo the sentiment that my death is acceptable. That a terrorist organization, who rule over their own territory with fear and violence, are righteous freedom fighters, vox populi, only out to establish a free state. Like hey, their manifesto said otherwise, so it must be all there is - right? That Jews are just hysterical, they can easily live elsewhere - ever since that nasty holocaust business everything's fine abroad. Besides, it was just so long ago who even cares stop talking about it. Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the Ayatollahs in Iran, the fucking Islamic Jihad - are not interested in freedom. They aren't, and echoing their slogan tells me you are either ignoring that, or support them anyway. If antisemitic rhetoric, half truths and lies by omission work on you today, they would have in any period of time. I'm sorry this makes you uncomfortable. I'm not, not really.

So finally:

Know what your fucking words mean. Have a cursory glance at the history of the MENA and why it's so fucked, one that doesn't boil down to "The Jews, with American help, rolled into where they don't belong". This isn't even a joke. I've seen this braindead, history-revising sentiment repeated so many times, both online and in actual textbooks, that I feel I'm going insane. So many well-meaning people handwringing and assuring each other that repeating genocidal slogans is fine, that calling the i/p conflict "a simple problem" (which means it has a simple solution, right? Just kill the Jews.) is a well-adjusted and intellectual take. That "only the Zionists should die! The rest will be fine :)" I dare you to say that and also give me a correct definition of what Zionism is. Why I, a Jew that advocates for Palestinian statehood and rights and safety and always have, won't also face the wall in your little fantasy.

Freedom to Palestine. Peace in the middle east, fucking yesterday.

A curse and a plague on those who don't want either of those, and just want to cheer on the death of "the other side".

A curse and a plague upon you, when you tell me, smugly, from somewhere safe and far away, "from the river to the sea".

[zvaigzdelasas]

[BBC is UK State Media]

At least nine Palestinians have been killed in a major operation by Israeli forces in the north of the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry says.

Israeli security forces said they had begun "a counterterrorism operation” in Jenin and Tulkarm overnight [...]

It also said another four were killed in an air strike during a simultaneous operation in al-Faraa refuee camp near Tubas.

Local journalists said they had not seen anything of this scope and scale in the West Bank since the days of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, two decades ago.[...]

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed [in the West Bank since 7 October] as Israeli forces have intensified their raids, saying they are trying to stem deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel.[...]

Israeli media reported that hundreds of Israeli forces were active in four different cities at least in the north of the West Bank – Jenin, Tulkarm, Tubas and Nablus.

The Palestinian health ministry in the West Bank said on Wednesday morning the bodies of seven people had been brought to Tubas governmental hospital and that two others had arrived at Jenin governmental hospital. The Palestinian Red Crescent also reported that at least nine people had been killed across the West Bank[...] It said they included three who were killed in a drone strike in Misilya, a village near Jenin, and four others who were killed in a drone strike in al-Faraa refugee camp, near Tubas.

However, the true figure could be higher, with the governor of Jenin earlier saying that at least 11 people had been killed.

In Jenin - a regular flashpoint - troops blocked all but one of the entrances to the city and set up checkpoints.

The health ministry said Israeli forces had also surrounded Jenin government hospital and the nearby Ibn Sina hospital, as well as the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent and the Friends of the Patients society.

It warned that they were threatening to storm the hospitals and that doing so would threaten the lives of dozens of patients inside as well as medical staff.

"At this moment, there are patients that are leaving the hospital but after the IDF check their IDs," a local journalist inside the government hospital told the BBC. "It's a scary situation."

The health ministry also accused them of obstructing the work of ambulances, which it said was a violation of international law. The troops have also been searching Jenin refugee camp[...]

A resident of the camp told the BBC that he could hear explosions nearby and the buzzing of drones overhead, but that there was currently no sign of armed fighters taking on Israeli forces.

He said Israeli armoured bulldozers had destroyed the main street through the camp and piled rubble at the entrance to block access.[...]

Hamas later put out a statement mourning six men who it said were fighters killed by Israeli forces in Jenin on Wednesday.[...]

A woman in Tubas told the BBC that Israeli forces were “bringing more and more military vehicles and bulldozers” into al-Faraa refugee camp.[...]

IDF spokesman Lt Col Nadav Shoshani [...] declined to say how long the operation would last or how many troops were involved.[...]

Mr Katz said the threat must be addressed with the same determination of the threat from Gaza. including “temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents” - something we have not heard in an official capacity before.

A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned that the escalating Israeli raids in the West Bank, alongside the Gaza war, would “lead to dire and dangerous results for which everyone will pay the price”.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh called for urgent international action to “curb this extremist [Israeli] government that poses a threat to the stability of the region and the entire world”.

Hamas - which is a bitter rival of Mr Abbas’s Fatah movement - condemned the Israeli operation, calling it part of the “brutal genocidal war in Gaza”.

A spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office also said such an operation "risks seriously deepening the already catastrophic situation", and that the use of air strikes and other military weapons and tactics by Israeli security forces "violates human rights norms and standards applicable to law enforcement operations".

The UN said 622 Palestinians - members of armed groups, attackers and civilians - had been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between 7 October and Monday. At least 602 were killed by Israeli forces, including 126 in air strikes, and 11 by Israeli settlers, it added.

Fifteen Israelis, including nine members of Israeli forces and five settlers, were killed by Palestinians in the West Bank during the same period, while 10 Israelis were killed in Israel in attacks by Palestinians from the West Bank.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

28 Aug 24

[tomorrowusa]

Musk may have torpedoed the original House bipartisan continuing resolution last week because it would have regulated his business dealings in China.

House Democrats Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut say their Republican colleagues in Congress caved to the demands of Elon Musk, sinking a bipartisan government funding bill that would have regulated U.S. investments in China. Congress passed a separate stopgap funding bill over the weekend, averting a government shutdown. In a series of posts on X, McGovern said more could have been accomplished. The scrapped provision “would have made it easier to keep cutting-edge AI and quantum computing tech — as well as jobs — in America,” he wrote. “But Elon had a problem.” Tesla, run by Musk, is the only foreign automaker to operate a factory in China without a local joint venture. Tesla also built a battery plant down the street from its Shanghai car factory this year, and aims to develop and sell self-driving vehicle technology in China. “His bottom line depends on staying in China’s good graces,” McGovern wrote about Musk. “He wants to build an AI data center there too — which could endanger U.S. security. He’s been bending over backwards to ingratiate himself with Chinese leaders.” SpaceX, Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor, has reportedly withheld its Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan at the request of Chinese and Russian leaders. Taiwan is a self-ruling democracy that Beijing claims as its territory. Taiwan’s status is one of the biggest flashpoints in U.S.-China relations.

There's an obvious conflict of interest here. Musk doesn't want to offend China because he's worried that it may hurt his bottom line.

Musk contributed $277 million to the Trump campaign and other Republican causes during the 2024 cycle, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Since the election in November, Musk has become a nearly constant presence at Trump’s side, including in meetings with foreign leaders. Trump appointed Musk to co-lead a group that’s not yet formed, but will be tasked with finding ways to cut regulations, personnel and budgets.

At least part of the reason Musk contributed heavily to Trump and other Republicans may be to get them to go soft on China for the sake of his business interests.

[classycoffeecat]

If You Can’t Go to the Protest, Here's What You Do Instead

rethinking visibility, labor, and contribution in movement work

Not everyone can, or should, be in the streets. The assumption that physical presence at a protest is the only valid form of political participation flattens both access and impact. It erases the people sustaining movements from behind the scenes: caregivers, immunocompromised comrades, undocumented organizers, disabled activists, low-wage workers, trauma survivors, and those navigating complex material realities. Movements require more than just bodies in public space; they require infrastructure, strategy, and support.

Here are ten ways to contribute meaningfully when you can’t physically attend a demonstration:

1. Redistribute Wealth: Movements need money to function. Bail funds, mutual aid projects, and grassroots organizers often operate without institutional backing. Even small contributions help build capacity. Prioritize local and BIPOC-led initiatives.

2. Amplify Strategically: Digital platforms are both battlegrounds and broadcast systems. Share protest updates, livestreams, donation links, and safety information. Algorithms tend to suppress radical content; your engagement helps visibility. Center and amplify marginalized voices, especially those organizing on the ground.

3. Offer Practical Support: Protests are logistically complex. Offer rides, prep protest kits, provide meals, babysit, or create respite spaces for frontline activists. Material forms of care are often undervalued but essential to sustaining resistance.

4. Participate in Jail and Court Support: Those arrested need people waiting when they are released. Bring water, warm clothing, food, and emotional care. Court support is equally critical; showing up at arraignments demonstrates communal solidarity and discourages punitive overreach.

5. Coordinate Communications and Safety: Monitor police scanners, livestreams, and protester reports. Help disseminate accurate, real-time updates. Signal-boost urgent calls for help. Digital vigilance can reduce harm and increase coordination.

6. Engage in Direct Political Pressure: Organize phone zaps, email campaigns, and petitions targeting elected officials, agencies, or institutions involved in the harm being protested. Targeted pressure campaigns have measurable impact when executed collectively.

7. Host Educational Spaces: Facilitate teach-ins, reading groups, or workshops to build shared understanding of the issue at hand. Education creates informed solidarity. Frame your efforts as political education; not charity, not “awareness,” but power-building.

8. Create Cultural Interventions: Art is not a luxury; it’s strategy. Design flyers, zines, posters, or projection campaigns. Use visual media to mobilize, memorialize, and provoke. Culture work shifts narratives and creates shared language for resistance.

9. Write and Document: Narrative control is part of the struggle. Write public reflections, op-eds, social media threads, or personal essays that contextualize and support the protest’s demands. Archive movement histories as they unfold; documentation is defense.

10. Sustain the Long-Term Struggle: Protest is a flashpoint, not an endpoint. Long-term commitment involves joining organizations, redistributing resources, building community safety networks, and practicing political care in your daily life. Movements need consistency more than spectacle.

Protest is a collective ecosystem.

There is no single “right” way to contribute. If you are not able to show up in one way, show up in another. What matters is that we remain connected to each other, materially and politically; and that we resist the idea that visibility is the only form of value.

(Note: This is not mine- I do not have the source. Please let me know if you know the source, so I can give them credit) ✊️💗✨️

[hms-no-fun]

What's your opinion on the new HS^2 update? I'm really excited it's back but I'm a little worried. Like, the fandom has had a real problem with pretending all the horrible shit that caused it to end in the first place never happened. Is this just gonna sweep that under the rug even more? Is James Roach heading the project because he's less "problematic"? I love James roach and I'm sure he'll do great but what about all the transphobia? I just hope they finally fulfill the Toblerone Prophesy and make June Egbert cannon.

short version is, i'm cautiously optimistic! but this is a loaded question you've given me on a lot of fronts, so i'm gonna try to take it piece by piece.

to start with, the sudden revival of Homestuck^2 (now minus the squared) took me by surprise because to my knowledge, it was entirely dead in the water. my involvement with anything Official ended at Pesterquest, and pretty much the entire post-canon crew i was friends with in 2019-20 has moved on to greener pastures. i share a similar sentiment with @pochapal in that i would have put money on hs2 staying dead forever. i have, quite frankly, dreaded the inevitable day when official Homestuck media would resume production, because the fandom at large seems quite eager to sweep the ceaseless harassment and transphobia that ended hs2 under the rug and pretend that it just, like you said... never happened. when that california cafe used older Pesterquest-like character designs that omitted short chubby Terezi and black-coded Roxy, however well-intentioned and ultimately harmless that was, it felt like a sign of things to come. that, as you fear, the sharper & more personal queerness that we tried to bring to this series would be erased, in favor of something meant to simultaneously appease both tenderqueers and redditors, two sects of the fandom most responsible for the aforementioned harassment.

luckily, that really doesn't seem to be the case!

to your worry that James Roach was made director because he's "less problematic," i'll just say that's entirely the wrong way to look at it. it's not like WP (such that it even still exists) were cruising to get HS2 back up and running. by all accounts, James is the only reason it's happening again in the first place. i can't stress enough just how small an operation this Homestuck business actually is (or, at least, was when i was involved). this is not a Huge Corporation making cynical cash grab decisions. this is someone who cares about the material pushing to get something made where otherwise there would be nothing. check the new About page, where the principles of the so-called Homestuck Independent Creative Union are laid out in plain terms. this is something the original hs2 team fought for, so for this new version to start from there as square one is huge and a good sign of the possible longevity of the project.

next, let's talk about the question of this new team erasing the legacy of the old one. Kate Mitchell is on the record that she was reached out to about this new hs2, approved it, and declined to be involved. i don't know if the other writers were reached out to, but i have no reason to believe they weren't. this is a tremendously important gesture of good faith and goes a long way towards easing some of these worries.

but let's look at the composition of the team itself. do you remember The Perfectly Generic Podcast? originally hosted by future hs2 writer Kate, pgen became a flashpoint for community discourse, often opening doors between official homestuck and homestuck fandom. what made that show special was that, rather than relying on the imo tired genre of the liveread, pgen focused on a different topic each episode and explored it with one or two qualified guests. Kate's goal with the show was to encourage a more adult and quasi-academic discussion of homestuck, of its successes and its failures. if you weren't there, the weight i'm putting on pgen might seem overblown (not least because you can't find it anywhere anymore except on the internet archive). but it's not! when they decisively criticized the wild contents of the Skaianet debacle in episode 19, Andrew listened and worked to bring a more diverse group of creators into the fold. in the months after the Epilogues were released, Andrew issued a statement through pgen on episode 52 about how the Epilogues are meant to create bridges and offramps for the post-canon fandom. it's an essential piece for understanding the epilogues and their relationship to fanworks! that it wasn't included as the author's introduction to the Epilogues in the book version remains to my mind an astonishing oversight, but whatever. point is, pgen mattered to the folks in charge.

so let's look again at the writing staff of this new crew. James Roach first guested on pgen in episode 7, and would go on to be a regular. Haven, who did the Vriska and Roxy sprites in Pesterquest (and probably more stuff i don't remember), guested in episodes 81 and 87. Miles guested on episode 87 as well (unless it's a different Miles, i'm not familiar with their work and ugh this damnable linkrot). Floral, creator of one of my favorite hs fanworks & huge godfeels influence Liminal Space, first guested on pgen in episode 47, and would go on to be a regular (including once during my tenure as host to talk about Jade). on the technical staff side, Kohi built the hs2 website and has remained a backend mainstay both on the WP side and on Vast Error.

all of which is to say, if you were looking for a crew to cynically erase the past and appease the haters, these probably aren't the folks that'd be at the top of your list. of course, if you *really* wanted to cynically erase the past and appease the haters, you wouldn't bother reviving hs2 in the first place!

and that's the crux of the matter here. what cash is there to grab? what clout could possibly be chased? i struggle to think of a decision less obviously profitable and popular than continuing hs2 with a new crew right where it left off. i have to believe this is happening because the people involved want to make it.

so, yeah, i'm cautiously optimistic. i like this crew, i like the contents of the first upd8, and i'm glad as hell it's not a reboot! i'm grateful that by reviving hs2, the hs:bc crew have instantly yanked the epilogues & the post-canon project back into relevance in the broader community. and i always liked hs2 a lot! i was excited to see where they were going! i'm really looking forward to seeing more YIFFY!!!!!

but the thing is, this won't be the hs2 i wanted. i know that, and i'm not expecting it. my greatest hope for hs:bc, for this crew, is that they get the chance to take up the reins and drive this thing in whatever direction they feel most passionate about. if that winds up looking like the hs2 that was originally planned, great-- but more than anything, i want everyone on this team to feel just as empowered to leave a profound and personal mark on this series as the original team did, as i did working on Pesterquest. i hope the outline changes! i hope they take some really wild swings! i want to be surprised!! i want to be challenged!!!

above all, i want them to have the chance to pick a course, sail it, and see it through to the end regardless of what the public thinks. they deserve the chance that the original crew didn't get.

i have plenty of bitterness and cynicism in my heart over the events and circumstances of 2019-20, but as far as i'm concerned it has no place here today. i would never, ever wish the trauma and stress of that era on anyone. let the fandom at large react in whatever way it will, but i want things to be different this time. this is a second chance-- not just for hs2/hs:bc, but for all of us. even people who hate homestuck post-canon! this is an opportunity for everyone to choose to be better this time, and to push back when others might squander that opportunity. this team is not a group of celebrities, not an abstract fiction on the other side of the world, they are human beings who took a job. they've earned the opportunity to do that job, and they deserve to be treated with the respect and dignity that was so often absent a few years ago.

as to your last point, about june egbert and the toblerone. i've been saying for years that andrew's confirmation of june was less "the granting of a wish" than it was "a spoiler shared without input from the creative team." that there is any doubt about june's providence in hs2 can only be attributed to willful, aggressive ignorance on the part of people who refuse to engage with the written word in any way other than plodding literalism. the original team didn't unveil june ~immediately~ because they didn't think of june as a wish, they thought of her as a character in an ongoing story who needed time to develop naturally. i have never not felt entirely crazy about how thick everyone has been about this!

but will the new team make june canon? obviously i have no way of knowing for sure, but i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that probably the answer is "yes, when they're good and goddamned ready." just, please, for the love of god, don't go after every upd8 like "where's june? where's june? why hasn't june yet????" this was one of the worst results of the toblerone spoiler and it put INSANE pressure on the hs2 team. so just... just let this story be what it is. let this new team make the homestuck continuation they want to make.

and in the meantime, if you're really hungry for june... there's always godfeels :)

[zahri-melitor]

Ok thinking about this again: Jason at least gets the acknowledgment that the Bats, that Gotham, changed while he was ‘dead’.

Steph does not.

It’s just gaps and silences nobody will talk about and probably nobody even thought to mention to her.

Does she know her identity as Spoiler was blown on Gotham news? That her father regretted her death and fought Bruce over it?

Has anyone ever told her that Dana is dead? That Tim moved to Blüdhaven in part because of Steph’s death, and Dana was in treatment there so they could be close, and that when Blüdhaven went up, Dana did too, and Tim carries a quiet unacknowledged guilt that he caused the death of another parental figure?

Does she know the reason Babs is operating out of shitty rental apartments and the College and parts of the Cave is because Babs had to blow the Clock Tower due to the gang war? That she moved away and didn’t rebuild? That she’s only back because Bruce…isn’t?

Did Cass find the time to talk to Steph about what happened after Steph died and what Cass went through? That Cass is Shiva’s daughter, that David Cain tried again and again after Cass left to replicate where he succeeded with her, that Cass carries guilt for what Deathstroke did to her? That Cass is a ball of guilt and left partly due to the fact she’s still processing what happened?

Who told her about Damian? Who told her about Jason? What did they tell her, what did they say?

And because all this exists in silences nobody will explain, Steph’s adrift as to why people look at her the way they do. Whether they blame her for causing the war (Cass) or do not (Tim) they don’t talk about it.

And then Flashpoint hits and it’s all wiped and Rebirth hits and it’s still wiped and remains unacknowledged.

Did Steph know?

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Canadian mining company that controls a massive copper mine in Panama says it has no plans to alter its operations despite widespread local protests against the firm's mining contract that have escalated and turned deadly. Last month, Vancouver-based First Quantum Minerals Ltd. was awarded a contract to continue operations at a massive open-pit copper mine in Panama. The terms of that deal, which give the company the right to mine the site for at least the next two decades in exchange for $375 million US a year to the government, have become a flashpoint for local groups — some of whom oppose the mine plan for financial and environmental reasons. That opposition has escalated into broader anti-government protests that officials say are costing Panama $80 million US a day. The mine faces legal and constitutional challenges from the country's top court, and citizens may get a chance to vote on the contract extension in a referendum next month. But last week, First Quantum said it was "confident with respect to its legal position" and reiterated the economic benefits of the mine. 

Continue Reading.

Tagging @allthegeopolitics