#darol ask

[okamirayne]

Hey Rayne-chan! (ɔ◔‿◔)ɔ ♥ It's a TWD Ask. I'm so hyped to know you're a Walking Dead fan and love your pairings. Just curious as I read that you weren't sold on the Richonne pairing. Why is that? And also, are you a Darol fan? No pressure to answer if you don't want, I'm just curious because i love how you write characters and would love to hear why certain pairings appeal more than others. Thanks (✿◠‿◠)

Hey there TWD-fan Anon! 💜

I'm so hyped to know you're a Walking Dead fan and love your pairings.

Just curious as I read that you weren't sold on the Richonne pairing. Why is that?

Right you are. Yeah, it just...didn't gel for me. I get it objectively, but I don't feel it. That might have something to do with chemistry. Andrew Lincoln is a bloody brilliant actor. Hell, he sells it.

Pick any character or actor and Andrew could probably make me believe he was head over heels for them if he wanted to😅. Danai, for me personally, isn't telegraphing on the same frequency. Not saying she's not a good actress, I just feel a disconnect from her side when playing off Andrew's energy. It just doesn't translate for me and I can't quite pin it - it's just a feeling. For others, I appreciate that it does translate and they love the pairing, and that's great. I just don't feel it sadly. Chemistry-wise, Andrew seems to carry it. Character-wise, I can't fully make the leap from friends to lovers for Rick and Michonne...I really tried to, but it just didn't quite land for me. I love the idea, but I just don't feel it as it's played out.

And also, are you a Darol fan?

Not anymore. Once upon a time...like...8 seasons go...during the prison arc. Yeah. Back then? I could get on board with that and I even wanted to see it play out.

But I personally felt the showrunners/writers dragged out the whole "will they, won't they" tension until it fizzled out into a more familial kind of bond (same thing with Harvey/Donna if you've ever watched Suits). I think the slow burn can turn into cool ashes if not done right and I really feel the relationship tease just ran lukewarm then cold for me. Don't get me wrong, she was great for Daryl's growth, but it hit a wall at a certain point. And I think that can sometimes be an obstacle as well as a guardrail for him emotionally.

Post-prison Arc, I feel Daryl shrinks or stagnates when he's around Carol. He doesn't seem to expand or plumb any depths. Sure, I feel his love for Carol, but that doesn't read for me as romantic love. I think the chance of that ran its course. In fact, there are times when I've wanted to literally shove Carol out the bloody way (seriously, I get vexed lol) because I feel she might've posed a hurdle to Daryl actually finding the kind of love or connection that will grow him and deepen him...now some could argue Carol does try to encourage him to explore romantic connections (i.e. Connie) and that's fair enough, but I still feel there's an unfinished agenda the writers are pushing (I may be way off here) which annoys me...and has only irritated me further given the Season 2 spin-off with Carol.

So yeah, long story short: I personally don't see Daryl deepening or growing around Carol. It's the same old.

Now, place him with a romantic interest like Connie...and damn, I could wax lyrical about these two. It rings so true. Developed so beautifully. I absolutely love their interactions. The way he is around her is beautiful to watch. And that goes both ways. The layers that are added given that Connie is deaf, Daryl is naturally quiet so it pushes him to be more communicative. She also totally blows the racist "Dixon redneck" shadow of Merle right outta the water. It's just...*chefs kiss*

Even Isabelle (Daryl Dixon spinoff) feels more enaging for me than Carol. How she is with him. The way he looks at her. How their worlds collide. What they go through in a contracted period, with a kid involved too, deepens him.

So yes, put Daryl with Connie or Isabelle and I see growth, challenge, spark, a more self-actualising character. With Carol, their history, their love, feels like comfort zones and safety (nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but it doesn't make for the dynamic I personally champion or engage with in fan ships). I like how he's pushed and somewhat tenderised (painfully or pleasantly) when he's with Connie (💖) and Isabelle. So no, I'm not a Carol fan. Once upon a time, I rooted for it but now I see them as family. Different strokes for different folks, right?

I'm just curious because i love how you write characters and would love to hear why certain pairings appeal more than others. Thanks (✿◠‿◠)

Aw! Thank you so much. 🥰 I'm hugely chuffed you enjoy the way I choreograph characters on my crazy stage. I hope I've answered your question...I could waffle on and on (probably have) so I'll spare you further ramblings. Of course, Rickyl is a pure fangirl dream of mine that doesn't touch on canon-verse (😆🥰), which Connie and Isabelle most definitely do. And I'm so here for it, for them, though I'd lean stronger towards Connie.

Thanks for the ASK, luv! 💖🫶���💖

[doorsclosingslowly]

thinking out loud about a bit of the Éowyn's Got a Band AU, which is mostly a series of éomer/gríma bdsm pwps with was too much background and plot. anyway. here be spoilers about backstory and central arc

@darol tagging you bc you've always listened to my au gríma rambles but no need to read if you don't wanna, love you

gríma wanted everything--- especially, money, rock star fame, adoration, love, once upon a time when he was younger and started hooking up with recent widower & current rising star théoden and then finagled his way into becoming théoden's band's manager, and then once another tragedy struck théoden and he adopted his teenage nephew and niece too, living fulltime either with théoden and the kids on the road (théodred is in the band but only a little older than éomer so gríma is asked to watch him too sometimes), or staying behind with éowyn and éomer in théoden's house for all intents and purposes the stepmom (as is my perpetual agenda, wicked stepmother gríma) except he's only the band manager. théoden never opens up about the relationship to anyone. [*] gríma encourages this because he thinks that it will gain him more leverage that he can use to make théoden launch gríma's music career.

which never happens. gríma's growing resentment towards théoden--- and during the course of trying to make the man beholden to him, gríma's home his money his life it all depends on théoden--- well, gríma used drugs casually while he was cruising before he met théoden but now he finds the White Wizard and gets *hooked*. and then gríma gets théodred hooked.

revenge, another scheme, something else--- even in the court room this never gets settled. and it ends in court, because théodred overdoses. gríma, who supplied the White Wizard, goes to jail for a long time. no one visits. why would they? they were all théoden's family and friends or théoden himself who dies of the grief.

fast forward! end backstory! we are now in the time of the pwp series. yadda yadda, gríma left prison more fucked up than he entered it and never found his sea legs, and it's winter now and cold and he found a flyer for éowyn's new band and goes in order to beg for money for a room for maybe a week it's so cold, éomer finds him first and that old attraction rears its head and so does éomer yearning the loss of all his family (éomer is in the course of trying to reconcile with his sister after another massive fight) and so he offers gríma his own spare room and sleeper sofa.

yadda yadda more parts i will write longform of éomer and or gríma working thru many issues through such media as cbd, 24/7 puppy play, watersports, control and trust and pain, etc etc

the flatshare works, though it's not balanced (insert parallels to gríma's relationship with théoden here) and gríma's severely depressed and éomer is lying to his therapist and famiy and friends but eh, swings and roundabouts.

éowyn visits. she sees: gríma, killer of her family, sleeping on the sofa, and calls the police. back to the holding cell for gríma.

éomer would not have admitted any of this under his own choice. but unlike théoden then, he's not a rock star with a family, he's a lonely man in a job he doesn't care much about bc it's not music but he couldn't follow in théoden's shoes, with a girlfriend he was never honest about in terms of his desirs and that he's been cheating on for months, and so he goes down to the station and blows up his old life and says: he was allowed on that sofa. he's my boyfriend. he's mine.

gríma's always committed all of himself to another. this time he's claimed back.

____

[*] éomer knows which is how the audience knows bc most of the series so far is planned in his pov. he knows bc he's 16 and fantasizing about punishing the git that his uncle's left him with, that mocking asshole who makes him do all his homework and latin too (while gríma doesn't even listen to éomer's presentations that he forced but does band manager stuff at the same time. prick.) éomer fantasizes about pushing the band manager slash nanny around and hurting him and he's very into it and then horrified, repeat, as he fails to come to terms with sexual sadism. and because he--- does not, and won't for a long time, conceive of that as a crush, he spies on gríma and finds out that théoden is fucking him. cue more guilt. all this is also why he never told éowyn that they were an item.

[cottonflurry]

meow?

*canine senses*

[frangipanilove]

Beth’s Knife vs Leah’s Knife - update

Last week I wrote about upcoming parallels between Beth’s knife and Leah’s knife. I theorized that we in Diverged will see Daryl give Leah’s knife to Carol in a parallel to the scene in season 5 episode 10 when Carol gave Beth’s knife to Daryl. Beth’s knife is of huge importance, and a callback to the scene from season 5 would mean that the writers are still concerned with Beth’s knife. They remember it! It’s still relevant and it’s still important!

Well, since I wrote that, TPTB have released trailers, teasers and opening minutes from Diverged. And I’m pleased to inform y’all that everything I hoped for has already happened in the opening minutes of Diverged. Me and my fellow over-analysts have found multiple references to various key Beth-scenes, and that's just from teasers and trailers. We haven't even watched the full episode yet, and we have still discovered so much awesome stuff! I will probably have a lot to say about this after I’ve watched the episode, but I wanted to touch on a few things first because it got fulfilled already in the opening minutes.

Let's take a look at the knife scene from 5x10 Them. TF are on a desperate search for water. They are in bad shape after having lost not just Beth, but also Tyreese. Daryl and Carol go out searching for water together. Carol asks if he sees anything, he says «no it's too dry». So no water.

The equivalent scene in Diverged is Darol and Carol walking along the road. This is the day after their argument from Find Me, and that is super significant because of the ridiculous amounts of Beth references in that episode. Carol tries to open her flask, but struggles to open the screw cork, it’s stuck. So no water.

So there we have our first parallel, right? In Them, they were searching for water. In Diverged, Carol has water but can't get to it.

In Them, Carol gives Daryl Beth’s knife.

In Diverged, Daryl gives Carol Leah’s knife.

She uses it to pry the cork open. And then she drinks the water. Also, note how she also gives the flask to Daryl , who in turn gives water to Dog. Remember Dog = Sirius = Beth.

In Diverged:

Carol: You’re not coming back with me? Daryl: I’m gonna stay out a little while longer.

In Them:

Carol: Maybe we should start back.

Daryl: You go.

See how that’s another parallel? They split up at this point in both episodes.

I hope everyone can see how there is no chance in hell the writers didn't think of the scene in Them when they wrote the scene from Diverged. This is a word by word, scene by scene parallel to that time we saw Daryl absolutely shattered and heartbroken over losing Beth. And guys, if you're not on board with how glorious Find Me was from a TD standpoint, I don't know what to tell you! Literally almost every single word of dialogue in Find Me was a callback to a Beth/Bethyl moment. And now, we get this word by word reference to Beth’s knife from season 5, the knife that Daryl carried on him for more than a season. Leah’s knife is a direct parallel to Beth’s knife. Oh, and also, Leah is a hallucination, at least large portions of what we saw in Find Me were.

But guys, I hope y'all realize there's more. A long, long time ago, when I originally started to research the Sirius theory, I read a lot of Robert Frost’s poetry, because his poems Canis Major and One More Brevity basically described the events of Alone. I’ve always seen the Frosty Cola from the white trash brunch as a Robert Frost reference, and the one eyed dog as Sirius. The Sirius symbolism tells the story about returns, because Sirius the dog star disappears from the night sky (it’s «just gone»), and returns one day right before dawn.

Well, in Alone, Daryl suggests they «stick around for a while, and if the others come back, we’ll make it work». And wouldn't you know, TPTB managed to squeeze in a reference to that scene as well in the opening minutes! In the opening minutes of Diverged, Carol mentions that she’s sad they don’t have more to show for, as their original purpose for going out in the first place was to hunt. Daryl replies “you’ll make it work, you always do”

In the Sirius and North Star master post from a couple of years ago I included a picture of Daryl having packed his bike after he agreed to look after Henry at Hilltop. The actual image was never used in the episode, but was released as a promo picture. The book on his bike is House Made Of Dawn, and we know Daryl brought it with him because TPTB made sure to release the pic even if the scene wasn’t in the episode. It must have been real important, right?

In one of the promo pics from Diverged, we see Carol going through Daryl’s stuff, I assume she intends to clean up after the Whisperer war. We see her pick up a book, and study its cover.

I’m 99% sure the book in this picture is House Made Of Dawn.

Remember what I said about Sirius returning before dawn?

It sure looks like it will be dawn pretty soon.

But guys, there’s more!

The Sirius symbolism comes from the Robert Frost poems Canis Major and One More Brevity. It’s a long story, I wrote a bunch of posts about it many years ago, I should probably do an update soon. I also touched on it in the Sirius and North Star masterpost. Anyway. We’ve actually had a couple of other Robert Frost references recently, such as when Siddiq said «Miles To Go Before I Sleep» in 10x7.

But guess what! One of Robert Frost’s most famous poems is one called «The Road Not Taken» but it’s commonly referred to as “Diverged”, because of the line «Two Roads Diverged In A Yellow Wood» in the first and the last verse.

The Sirius symbolism was born from Alone, is this when we get to see it fulfilled? I don’t think it’s an accident at all that Diverged comes when it does. I think Sirius is about to return, just in time for dawn.

[bethgreeneishopeunseen]

I think you're right that Darol may be the one to kill Dw1ght and I think we may have seen it foreshadowed in 7.3 when Dw1ght's former friend kneels and asks Dw1ght to do it because there is no place left to go. That man had also lost his wife. He felt he had lost everything. Dw1ght is almost there now. As much as a crossbow duel would be bad ass to watch, I can see Dw1ght surrendering his bow and asking Darol to kill him. The Dw1ght/Sh3rry arc has been very heartrending to watch

That’s a very compelling possibility, anon. (@allatariel originally suggested the possibility, and I’m sorry that I forgot to mention it in the meta you’re referencing: X.) In the comics, Dwight is Kirkman creating a Daryl-like character. In the show Dwight and Daryl are mirrored adversaries. Sherry even confirmed that Daryl is who Dwight used to be. Dwight is a dark reflection of Daryl, in a pool of blood even.

You can’t be any more clearer with your symbolism. While Daryl’s love for Beth kept him from kneeling to Negan, as her belief in him being the last thing he has left of her, Dwight’s love for Sherry and her love for him poisoned them. Dwight became Negan’s dog while Sherry gave herself up to him. I hope Sherry doesn’t die out there, and I don’t think her story is over, but she and Dwight won’t reconcile. When Daryl and Dwight met each other in the burnt-out forest, they were on the same level essentially. A crossbow duel wouldn’t be as emotionally poignant or as narratively fitting because Daryl is rising while Dwight is falling. Dwight wears Daryl’s angel wings in order to convince himself that he’s doing the right thing, when he’s not. If Dwight asked Daryl to kill him, it would be like a mercy killing for an animal, and that would be appropriate because Daryl is like a dog/wolf in terms of personality. Negan even called Daryl “his puppy”.

[suchabadtush]

you changed the layout of your tumblr! is the background supposed to remind me of funfetti? It's WORKING. Guess who is gonna make funfetti cupcakes in the new apartment? *jumps up and down* WE ARE WE ARE WE ARE WE ARE WE ARE. Our new apartment is gonna have an OVEN!!!!! *throws confetti into the air* CONFETTI FUNFETTI! This ask is a MUSIC ASK! Please answer these asks: 6, 12, 25, 33, 24, 39, 41, 42 (lol wtf), 49! Wait, I forgot one. 40!

I did, yeah. And sure, I like funfetti! And speckles and freckles in general. Confetti coming out of the oven makes me think of doublefix. I’m excited to have an oven and a home yes. Okay!6. A song that reminds you of a place you've beenI’m sure there are many, like a billion from Japan. But I’m going to say that one, from that place that you and I visited many times, but Kim visited with us only once.12. A song that reminds you of someone you hateUgh, why are we doing this? Anything by John Denver, but especially “Annie’s Song.” Gross. I don’t listen to that anymore.25. A song that you listened to ironically, but now you genuinely loveOoh, um. I don’t know! I’m sure there are some, but I can’t think of them! JAM??33. A song whose message you don't likeThese are such good questions. “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry? I really don’t like that. Maybe I dunno, like “Mazohyst of Decadence”? I mean yikes. Also “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction.

sorry it was getting long!!24. A song that you think is really overplayed“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” at Christmas. It’s hard to judge ‘cause the music I usually hear is like... kidz bop version, or radio disney or something. That one about oh-oh-oh-oh-oh I’m fallin’? I don’t know what song it is. But I don’t care that much about like any of the songs I hear at work. Oh, no wait, I know one I don’t like, “Sorry” by Justin Bieber. Bleh.39. Your favorite instrumental (no lyrics/singing) songJesus, how can I possibly choose. Does it have to be, like, meant to be a song without words? Or could it be a karaoke track? Or a piece from a soundtrack? I reeeeeeally like アシタカせっ記 エンディング from Mononoke Hime, as like a piece of a score. I also like “Spring Gesture” by Darol Anger. And a lot of other things.41. A song from the year you were bornUm, the internet says Sting’s “All This Time” was from that year. Which is a good song. Have I answered this question with that song before? Can I cheat and say all the songs from Beauty and the Beast ‘cause that movie came out that year?42. Your favorite "old" song (pre-90s)Yikes. My FAVORITE? Umm. Man, I don’t freaking know. I guess “The Sun and the Rain” is from the ‘80s, is that a cop-out?49. A song whose lyrics you have memorizedI have a lot of freaking songs’ lyrics memorized. I would say “Boyfriend” by aiko (because it’s what I’m listening to rn), but sometimes I mess up the second chorus. “Colors of the Wind.”40. A song by a band from your hometown(100% cheating) “Wonkavision.” What a great freaking song.

That was a lot of music questions, thank you!

[robinsoncenter]

[Qsc_asuw] SPRING! Newsletter Week 6

Welcome to Week 6!    <3 

QTBIPOC Artist Spotlight of the Week:

YallaRoza

YallaRoza is a queer, Muslim artist of    colour who is currently based in Tkaronto/Toronto (Dish with One Spoon    Territory). Her art centres qtpoc and explores themes of radical self-love,    collective care and healing. 

The Queer    & Trans People of Color Alliance (QTPOCA) will    be meeting this Friday, location TBD!

LAVISH    QTPOC Art Showcase    (Tuesday, May 21, 2019) 6:30 PM -    9 PM @ Ethnic    Cultural Theater    3931 Brooklyn Ave NE, Seattle, Washington 98105   

Lavish         is a multi-arts showcase opportunity centering Queer and Trans People         of Color (QTPoC). We will provide a platform for UW students to         receive mentorship (by way of building a sustained relationship with a         teaching artist) and community building among QTPoCs and artists on         campus and in the greater Seattle community.

    There         are many ways to participate in the showcase. Opportunities include         (but are not limited to): emcees/MC, deejays/DJ, performance artists,         fine artists, spoken word, poetry, musicians, dramaturge, stage         managers, community organizers, and more.

    The         showcase is student-driven and its final form will be created         organically among the participating artists. Lavish centers artists         who identify as QTPoC. White allies/accomplices are also welcome to         participate. Artists of any experience level are enthusiastically         invited to participate in this low stakes/high support experience.   

Please consider filling out the following form if you are    interested in participating at Lavish: https://forms.gle/dq7TMqV8YQAfvtu2A        We will host an Informational Session on May 3, 2019, 3:00PM at the Q    Center (HUB 315). Note: Prospective performers may submit their application    using this form or in person at the informational session.        Questions? Please contact Juan Franco or Jaimée Marsh @ the Q Center: qcenter@uw.edu or    206-897-1430.        Accessibility    Information:  

The         Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Theatre is near landmarks such as         Alder Hall and Lander Hall

    For         a map, search HUB on the campus maps: www.washington.edu/map

    The         ECC’s front entrance is wheelchair accessible. There is an elevator in         the building

    There         are universal, all-gender bathrooms in the building, as well as gender         binary bathrooms with multiple stalls.

    The         ECT is not kept scent-free, but we ask that you do not wear         scented/fragranced products (e.g. perfume, hair products) or essential         oils to/in the event in order to make the space accessible to those         with chemical injury or multiple chemical sensitivity.

    University         District Metro Bus Routes can be found here: metro.kingcounty.gov/tops/bus/neighborhoods/university_district.html

Legendary Children

(Friday, May 10,    2019) 8 - 11 PM @ Seattle    Art Museum    1300 1st Ave, Seattle, Washington 98101   

Legendary         Children is an all-ages celebration of house and ball culture and         queer and transgender Black, Indigenous, and people of color (QTBIPOC)         communities. Optional RSVP is encouraged.

    Celebrate         Legendary Children on May 10! Our May edition celebrates Indigenous         Sovereignty and house-and-ball culture, along with our broader QTPOC         (Queer and Trans) communities. Legendary Children is where arts and         social justice get real, with QTPOC voices ringing loud and clear.

    Enjoy         fab in-gallery performances, hot DJs, and the sublime artistry of the         Pacific Northwest's house-and-ball performers and premier drag royalty         (kings, queens, and the crowns in between). Come for the art, stay for         the public runway. Plus, don’t miss the SAM special exhibition "Like         a Hammer" by Jeffrey Gibson and a deluxe Seattle Public Library         reading station focused on trans and queer BIPOC authors.   

This event is all ages, but must be 21+ and have ID to    drink.        Legendary Children is made possible with generous support from The Seattle Public Library Foundation and    the Seattle Art Museum.        Co-presented with:        Indigenize Productions        Somos Seattle        Official Pride ASIA        Q Center at the University of Washington        festival:festival 2019        Hyena Culture        Photo credit Meagan Mishra (photographer) Erik Warren (HMUA)

The Luxurious "No"    (Friday, May 10,    2019) 1- 3 PM @ Samuel    E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center    3931 Brooklyn Ave NE, Seattle, Washington 98105

In         the Chicano Room!

    Join         us for an afternoon of saying "no" with Seattle civic Poet         Anastacia- Reneé Tolbert!   

Here's her website:    https://www.anastacia-renee.com/        Please RSVP At this link!    https://tinyurl.com/ARTPoetWS    Our planning committee is composed of Indigenous women who represent    interdisciplinary academic fields of study and philanthropy in the    Northwest Coast; women who are committed to Indigenous food sovereignty and    environmental justice, and whose lived and scholarly experiences, personal    passions, and academic research are firmly grounded in their homelands and    communities. We volunteer our time to host this annual community-driven    event as we recognize the need to come together in dialogue and action as    we build collaborative networks to sustain our Indigenous food practices    and preserve our healthy relationships to the land, water, and all living    things.         ACCESSIBILITY    INFORMATION:    The Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Theatre is near landmarks such as Alder    Hall and Lander Hall.        For a map, search HUB on the campus maps: www.washington.edu/maps        The ECC’s front entrance is wheelchair accessible. There is an elevator in    the building.        There are universal, all-gender bathrooms in the building, as well as    gender binary bathrooms with multiple stalls.        The ECT is not kept scent-free, but we ask that you do not wear    scented/fragranced products (e.g. perfume, hair products) or essential oils    to/in the event in order to make the space accessible to those with    chemical injury or multiple chemical sensitivity.        University District Metro Bus Routes can be found here: metro.kingcounty.gov/tops/bus/neighborhoods/university_district.html     

Black Radical    Imagination: Fugitive Trajectories    (Saturday, May 11,    2019) 1-3 PM @ Frye Art Museum Auditorium    704 Terry Ave, Seattle, Washington 98104

Black Radical Imagination: Fugitive Trajectories is a film    showcase programmed by Jheanelle Brown and Darol Olu Kae, originally    co-founded by Erin Christovale and Amir George.   

Black         Radical Imagination is an international touring program of         experimental short films emphasizing new stories from within the         African diaspora. The series builds on afro futurist, afro surrealist,         and magical realist aesthetics to interrogate identity in the context         of cinema. Black Radical Imagination has screened in museums, art         spaces, and film festivals, most notably MCA Chicago, MoMA PS1, Black         Star Film Festival, and articule in Montréal.

    This         year’s showcase, FUGITIVE TRAJECTORIES meditates on the ways black         people tend to the complexities of our lives while forced to move         within, through, and around structuring narratives of power, violence,         confinement, and trauma—thereby negotiating how the         multi-dimensionality of diasporic blackness is understood in         relationship to prevailing notions of death, resistance, and freedom.         The films featured in this program explore concepts of grief, kinship,         an idealized homeland, and the dynamism of blackness and black         culture.   

FILMS    Garden​ ​by​ ​Alima​ ​Lee​ ​    2017, 5 minutes    Garden focuses on black women's healing and daily rituals in order to    overcome anxiety & depression on a daily basis. Our protagonist    struggles, yet persists to honor herself by accomplishing tasks that seem    mundane but are essential for her survival.        Clean Water by Kamau Wainaina    2017, 7 minutes    In a three-part visual soliloquy, Wainaina outlines his ideological    journey: immigrating from Kenya to England, and finally New York. Beginning    from his parent’s earliest fears and hopes of what life in "the    West" would bring to where he is now, Wainaina explores how he sees    the world, how others see him, and the ways in which the two perspectives    interact with each other in contemporary global society, portraying a    cognitive journey that he believes many African immigrants experience in    their own ways.        Fluid Frontiers by Ephraim Asili    2017, 23 minutes    The fifth and final film in an ongoing series of films exploring Asili’s    personal relationship to the African Diaspora. Shot along the Detroit    River, Fluid Frontiers explores the relationship between concepts of    resistance and liberation exemplified by the Underground Railroad,    Broadside Press, and works by local Detroit artists. All of the poems are    read from original copies of Broadside Press publications by natives of the    Detroit Windsor region and were shot without rehearsal.        Mugabo by Amelia Umuhire    2016, 7 minutes    A short experimental film about a young girl's return to the idealized    homeland, a place full of borrowed memories.        Rebirth is Necessary by Jenn Nkiru    2017, 10 minutes    This film explores the magic and dynamism of Blackness in a realm where    time and space are altered. The now, the past, and the future are rethought    and reordered to create something soulful and mind-bendingly visceral.    Unfolding through the gaze of Jenn Nkiru, it is an audio-visual feast,    which pulls on broad yet unique sound and visual references to push the    story forward. The soundtrack features music and sounds from James Baldwin,    Sun Ra, Chance the Rapper, Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment,    Rotary Connection, Pharaoh Sanders, and Shafiq Husayn. It also includes    quotes and moments from Alice Coltrane, Audre Lorde, Kwame Nkrumah, Sun Ra,    and James Baldwin.        Under Bone by dana washington    2017, 5 minutes    A narrated experimental drama featuring ethereal vignettes linked by a    woman’s devotion, grief, and ancestral evocation, as she traverses stories    beneath her rib cage.    ---    REGISTRATION    Tickets to this program are free of charge, and our seating capacity is    limited. Free tickets, limit 2 per person, may be reserved in advance, up    to two days before the program. The reserved tickets may be picked up on    the day of the program at the desk in the foyer outside the auditorium.    There is no late seating, so please arrive at least 15 minutes early. All    unclaimed tickets (regardless of reservations) will be released to standby    10 minutes before the program!        TICKETING    On the day of the program, pre-registered and standby tickets will be    available at the desk in the foyer outside the auditorium.    Tickets for Members may be picked up beginning one hour before the program.    Pre-registered tickets for nonmembers may be picked up beginning 30 minutes    before the program.    All unclaimed tickets (regardless of reservations) will be released to    standby 10 minutes before the program.

Collective Liberation    Workshop    (Thursday, May 9)    6:30 - 7:30 PM @ Q Center       Broadening Our Vision: Collective Liberation through Black & Arab    Solidarity        Presented by Anisa Jackson and Alia Taqieddin        Poster Design: Eli Kahn        Please consider completing the following form as an RSVP: https://forms.gle/KGQyDGDd5Y85agy88        The purpose of this workshop is to explore collective liberation through    constructions of the “other”. We will discuss overlapping struggles against    white supremacy and western imperialism, while reframing our conceptions of    solidarity away from shared lenses informed by oppression and towards    shared lenses informed by liberation.        What systems and institutions today make it important to use a multi-issue    approach to organizing?        How can we consider the similarities and unique distinctions between    Orientalism & AntiBlackness as tools to bridge gaps between organizers    and imagine a shared future?        How do we draw on contemporary examples of Black and Arab solidarity to    move beyond theorizing into action-based, collective organizing?        Alia Taqieddin is a Seattle-based organizer of mixed Arab descent. She    graduated in 2018 with her degree in Community Health and an interdisciplinary    concentration in Critical Arab Diaspora Studies at WWU.        Alia co-founded her campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.    She has also worked with SWANA-LA, an anti-imperialist collective that aims    to raise political consciousness and advocate for the self-determination of    all people from the Southwest Asian and North African regions and their    diasporas. Her work can be found in various conferences in Bellingham,    Seattle, and Los Angeles, as course syllabi, and in publications including    Jaffat El Aqlam and Mondoweiss.        Alia currently works at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project as a legal    advocate for immigrants facing detention. She continues to build a critical    conciousness around abolition, drawing from Women of Color feminist thought    and the stories and imaginations of her cousins, and aunts and grandmother    in historical Bilad al Sham.        Anisa Jackson is an artist, writer, and organizer of South Asian and    Afro-Caribbean descent based in Seattle. With a background in geography,    Anisa’s research-based practice draws on care ethics and black feminist    thought. Their work has appeared as installation, moving image, and as    print and digital text.        They are the project manger of #BecauseWeveRead, a radical international    book club with over 30 chapters internationally; and facilitator for miXed,    a zine collective which centers the experiences of multi-racial,    multi-ethnic, trans-racially adopted folx and those who hold a multitude of    identities.        Anisa graduated from the University of Washington in 2015 where their    research explored relational poverty knowledge and geographies of    embodiments, and they will be starting a doctoral program in the Department    of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU in the fall of 2019.        ACCESSIBILITY    INFORMATION:   

The         Husky Union Building is near landmarks such as Allen Library,         Padelford and Sieg.

    For         a map, search HUB on the campus maps:http://www.washington.edu/maps/

    The         HUB’s front entrance is wheelchair accessible and the common area is         to the right of the main desk.

    An         all-genders restroom can be found at the 3rd floor, down the hallway         from the Q Center. Gender binary bathrooms with multiple stalls can be         found on each floor of the HUB.

    The         HUB IS not kept scent-free but we ask that you do not wear         scented/fragranced products (e.g. perfume, hair products) or essential         oils to/in the Q Center in order to make the space accessible to those         with chemical injury or multiple chemical sensitivity.

ASUW QSC 17th Annual DRAG    SHOW    (Thursday, May 16, 2019) 7:30 PM -    10 PM @ HUB Lyceum        The ASUW Queer Student Commission is proud to present this year's ASUW QSC    Drag Show! This historic event is a showcase of student and local drag    performers from the UW and Seattle community.        featuring a queer student art market! if you are interested in vending art,    please fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf7opdkIGeiGSOXGTaBeUi1o3M94H6NqYqSG1eIDKWsIp4MkA/viewform?usp=sf_link        Directions    - The HUB is near landmarks such as Mary Gates Hall and Drumheller    Fountain. For a map, search HUB on the campus maps:http://www.washington.edu/maps/        - University District Metro Bus Routes can be found here: http://metro.kingcounty.gov/tops/bus/neighborhoods/university_district.html        - Driving directions can be found at: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Husky+Union+Building/@47.655762,-122.3076257,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x5490148d64534c71:0xc91793fd02335246        - The Central Plaza Parking Garage is the largest parking lot to the close    to the HUB. Accessible parking is available in the lot located next to the    HUB. Additional information can be found at:    https://www.washington.edu/facilities/transportation/park        - There is also potential street parking surrounding the campus, on 15th    Ave, University Way, and Brooklyn Ave.        ACCESSIBILITY    INFORMATION:   

We         are in the process of securing CART captioning for the event.

    The         HUB front entrance is wheelchair accessible.

    The         HUB Lyceum is located on the first floor, to the right of the         entrance. It is a reception space, with overhead and natural lighting.         There are large windows on the right side wall of the Lyceum.

    All         gender restrooms will be available on the first floor of the HUB on         the night of the event. There is also an all gender restroom on the         third floor of the HUB.

    The         HUB is not kept scent-free but we ask that you do not wear         scented/fragranced products (e.g. perfume, hair products) or essential         oils to/in the HUB in order to make the space accessible to those with         chemical injury or multiple chemical sensitivity. We will have baking         soda and scent free soap available if folks are asked to wash off scents.

    For         more information about MCS and being fragrance-free:

    http://billierain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Myths-and-Facts-About-Chemical-Sensitivity.pdf

    To         request disability accommodation contact the Disability Services         Office at least ten days in advance at: 206.543.6450/V,         206.543.6452/TTY, 206.685.7264 (FAX), or e-mail dso@uw.edu.

    If         you have questions, concerns or accessibility details that were not         addressed here email asuwqsc@uw.edu!

    All         updates concerning the event and its accessibility will be posted here.

Gathering Our    Matriarchs - Addressing Our MMIWG    (Sunday, May    12, 2019) 12 PM - 8 PM @ Peace    Arch Park    19 A St, Blaine, Washington 98230

Come and join us on Mother's Day and help honor our    Matriarchs.    With our growing awareness of our Missing and Murdered Indigenous People.    We want to Decolonize our people and bring them together. We want our    Indigenous Women to come together and help resolve some of our issues that    are facing our people yesterday, today, and tomorrow.        - Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Washington will be walking from    Olympia WA beginning May 5, 2019 during the National Day of Awareness for    our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. They will arrive to    the PeaceArch Mother's Day.        We encourage other organizers to Walk, Run, or March and join us!        - Potluck Salmon Dinner will be served. Share your favorite food and drink.        Bring your Matriarchs, your medicines, songs, your drum, your rattles, and    prayers.        *Drug and alcohol-free event    *We are not responsible for injury, theft, or stolen items.

 Transgender & Gender    Diverse Support & Social Group    (Wednesday, May 8,    2019) 6-8 PM @ U.T.O.P.I.A Seattle     205 E. Meeker St. Kent, Washington 98032   

[trans]         ACTION is         a support/social group for sex workers that is held every first         Wednesday of every month. It is an opportunity that provides sex         workers a safe space to engage in topical discussions relating to         their life and/or work. This gathering is open to transgender and         gender diverse sex workers with current or past experience in the sex         trade.   

Discussions include topics such as:   

*Safety         and self- care

    *Decriminalization         and Destigmatization of sex work

    *Know         your rights training

    *Legal         assistance

    *Employment         & housing 

    [trans]         ACTION promotes and values confidentiality regarding interactions         within the group.   

The undisclosed location has ample    parking, all-gender and ADA-accessible restroom. Come and build community    with us! For more information please email Ara-lei at ara@utopiaseattle.org         Upcoming Dates :    

Wed         May 8 (6-8pm)

    Wed         June 12 (6-8pm)   

 DARK AT DUSK - The Final    Suicide    (Friday, May 10, 2019) 7 PM -10    PM @ Gay    City: Seattle's LGBTQ Center    517 E Pike St, Seattle, Washington 98122        Nic Masangkay Presents...    DARK AT DUSK - The Final Suicide   

After         a medication overdose, our protagonist lays unconscious at a Seattle         hospital. Piecing together their past via music, film, and spoken word         poetry, we retrace what led Them to suicide - perhaps They aren’t the         true killer. Find out if They live to tell Their own story: May 2019.   

Cast and Team:    Brian is Ze    Falon Sierra    Guayaba    Moonyeka    Lourdez Velasco    Son the Rhemic    Queerbigan    Vanna Zaragoza    Zora Seboulisa   

Help         compensate this talented team at http://www.patreon.com/nicmasangkay.

    More         information on the album and show at http://www.nicmasangkay.com/dark-at-dusk.

    Project         made possible in part by Jack Straw Cultural Center's Artist         Support Program.   

ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION:    

The         Calamus Auditorium at Gay City is ADA accessible & minimally         scented. 

    There         are two single-stall all-gender restrooms.

    There         will be scent free soap in the restrooms. More info: gaycity.org/access         

 Seattle Launch:    Tongue-Breaker    (Tuesday, May 14, 2019) 7 PM - 9 PM @ Third    Place Books Seward Park    5041 Wilson Ave S, Seattle, Washington 98118        Seattle family, please come celebrate the New York launch of writer Leah    Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's latest book of poetry, Tonguebreaker.   

Tonguebreaker         is about surviving the unsurvivable: living through hate crimes, the         suicides of queer kin, and the rise of fascism while falling in love         and walking through your beloved's neighbourhood in Queens. Building         on LLPS' groundbreaking work in Bodymap, Tonguebreaker is an         unmitigated force of disabled queer-of-colour nature, narrating         disabled femme-of-colour moments on the pulloff of the 80 in West         Oakland, the street, and the bed. Tonguebreaker dreams unafraid femme         futures where we live -- a ritual for our collective continued survival.    

about the weirdo who wrote the poems:    LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA is a queer disabled femme writer, cultural    worker and educator of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. They    are the author of Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Dirty River: A    Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home (short-listed for the Lambda and    Publishing Triangle Awards, ALA Above the Rainbow List), Bodymap (short    listed for the Publishing Triangle Award) ,Love Cake (Lambda Literary Award    winner), and Consensual Genocide, and co-editor of The Revolution Starts At    Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities. Their next    book, Beyond Survival: Stories and Strategies From the Transformative    Justice Movement (co-edited with Ejeris Dixon) is forthcoming in 2020. A    lead artist with Sins Invalid, her writing has been widely published, with    recent work in PBS Newshour, Poets.org's Poetry    and the Body folio, The Deaf Poets Society, Bitch, Self, TruthOut and The    Body is Not an Apology. She is a VONA Fellow and holds an MFA from Mills    College. She is also a rust belt poet, a Sri Lankan with a white mom, a    femme over 40, a grassroots intellectual, a survivor who is hard to kill.        ACCESSIBILITY    INFORMATION: wheelchair accessible including bathrooms,    armless chairs available, coffee tea and snacks for sale, please come    fragrance-free. Free. Bring your kids.

Let’s Talk is a free    program that connects UW students with support from experienced    counselors from the Counseling Center and Hall Health Center without an    appointment. Counselors hold drop-in hours    at four sites on campus:        

Mondays, 2-4 PM, Odegaard Library Room 222

    Tuesdays, 2-4 PM, Ethnic Cultural Center Room 306

    Wednesdays, 2-4 PM, Q Center (HUB 315)

    Thursdays, 2-4 PM, Mary Gates Hall Room 134E   

Let’s Talk offers informal consultation – it is    not a substitute for regular therapy, counseling, or psychiatric care.    To learn    more, visit letstalk.washington.edu.        The HUB’s front entrance is wheelchair accessible and the common area is to    the right of the main desk.    An all-genders restroom can be found at the 3rd floor, down the hallway    from the Q Center. Gender binary bathrooms with multiple stalls can be    found on each floor of the HUB.    The HUB IS not kept scent-free but we ask that you do not wear    scented/fragranced products (e.g. perfume, hair products) or essential oils    to/in the Q Center in order to make the space accessible to those with    chemical injury or multiple chemical sensitivity. 

Thank you for being a part of our community <3     We are so glad that you are here, and we are so glad to get to know    you!     Have questions about the QSC? Just want to get involved? Find our office    hours online at hours.asuw.org.    To hear more from the QSC be sure to like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter & instagram to stay up to date with all queer and    trans related happenings on campus and in Seattle!         With love,     Mehria, Outreach & Engagement Intern. 

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[republicstandard]

Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness

The wisdom of the Ayatollah Khomeini:

“If they have intercourse with a cow and sheep and camel [the animals’] urine and dung becomes unclean and drinking their milk will also be unlawful and [the animals] must be killed and burned without delay, and the person who had intercourse with them must pay money to the owner. Further, if he had intercourse with any beast its milk becomes unlawful.”- Resaleh Towzih al-Masa’el, #2412

“A man can have sex with animals such as sheep, cows, camels and so on. However he should kill the animal after he has his orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in his own village, however selling the meat to the next door village should be fine.”-Tahrirolvasyleh, fourth volume, Darol Elm, Gom, Iran, 1990

“After urination, one must first wash the anus if it has been soiled by urine; then one must press three times with the middle finger at the base of the penis; then one must put his thumb on top of the penis and his index finger on the bottom and pull the skin forward three times as far as the circumcision ring; and after that three times squeeze the tip of the penis.”- Resaleh, #72

“There are eleven things which are impure: urine, excrement, sperm, bones, blood, dogs, pigs, non-Muslim men and women, wine, beer, and the sweat of the excrement-eating camel.”- Resaleh, #83

“Every part of the body of a non-Moslem individual is impure, even the hair on his hand and his body hair, his nails, and all the secretions of his body.”- Resaleh, #107

“Female prisoners who are virgins must be raped before execution to prevent them from entering heaven.”

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This ain’t your daddy’s Europe. Trash-strewn streets in the City of Light, acid attacks on the Thames, cannibalism on the Tanaro—this is life in Europe now, nothing more than a re-creation of from whence the migrants came. Every single aspect of this civilization-deteriorating experiment has been some combination of ignorance, gross miscalculation, paralysis from apathy or fear, and something infinitely more sinister, the entire enterprise fraught with the most profound arrogance, illogic, greed, and often willful denial. As Douglas Murray puts it, human being are not figures in a math equation, and the notion that if you can somehow generate just the right proportions, you can create a post-racial, harmonious, globalist utopia is a heinous grotesquery that makes a mockery of existence itself. That Europe and the Western world more broadly should begin to regress to their changing mean is utterly unsurprising; that a Netherlands comprised of Turks and Moroccans or a UK comprised of Pakistanis and Nigerians should have a decidedly different “flavor” a tragic, transformative inevitability of what was first coined by Renaud Camus as “The Great Replacement.”

The West has proven willing to sacrifice even its most sacred cows in the interests of furthering “diversity”; when taboos against cannibalism are broken twice in Europe less than two weeks apart, when animals are raped in front of children at petting zoos, when pedophilia becomes normalized, and when our natural reaction of shock and disgust to all of this is condemned as “bigotry,” there can be no other conclusion than that the very fabric of our societies is disintegrating. By essentially recriminating our hard-wired response to these gross bodily violations and societal taboos, we are being asked to partake in an inversion of not just our culture and moral code in favor of the alien Other, but to deny our basic human instincts that this is wrong. Roger Giner-Sorolla and Pascale S. Russell make the useful distinction that:

With the recent upswing in research interest on the moral implications of disgust, there has been uncertainty about what kind of situations elicit moral disgust and whether disgust is a rational or irrational player in moral decision making. We first outline the benefits of distinguishing between bodily violations (e.g., sexual taboos, such as pedophilia and incest) and no-bodily violations (e.g., deception or betrayal) when examining moral disgust. We review findings from our lab and others’ showing that, although many existing studies do not control for anger when studying disgust, disgust at non-bodily violations is often associated with anger and hard to separate from it, while bodily violations more consistently predict disgust independently of anger. Building on this distinction, we present further empirical evidence that moral disgust, in the context of bodily violations, is a relatively primitively appraised moral emotion compared to others such as anger, and also that it is less flexible and less prone to external justifications.

The infantile notions of “hate” and xenophobia predicated on the idea that those opposed to wholesale demographic change are somehow small-minded and ignorant, and are irrationally raging against “progress,” is itself a simple-minded and ignorant reduction of something much more complex into a playground sense of morality. Art Markman states:

Studies suggest that there is a tight relationship between our sense of moral purity and the emotion of disgust. Violations of our sense of moral purity lead us to feel the emotion of disgust. When we experience the emotion of disgust, we also change our judgments of the moral purity of others… This view of disgust suggests that the emotion of disgust is strongly connected to our sense of morality. That is, when we feel disgust, we should also express feelings of moral outrage. And to counteract those emotions, we should increase our concern with purity.

If we perceive ourselves to have been wronged, or worse, violated, and our desire for redress is ignored if not outright condemned, the mechanisms of disgust and outrage—real outrage—will rightly find themselves in the embrace of righteous anger. If left unchecked, this increase in concern for purity can have momentous consequences. What starts as a very legitimate desire to maintain both purity and sanctity, if not properly channeled, can lead to the most extreme cases of violence and even genocide. I’ve no doubt many people on the Left are simply viewing both historical and contemporary events through an opposite prism, that is, essentially, “they know not what they do” (though clearly many of the so-called “elites” have a particular agenda), but the accelerating polarization between Left and Right, and the Left’s unwillingness to engage in dialogue, is producing rhetoric that is, and I mean this literally, genocidal. This is not emanating from the Right, the supposed home of the “Nazis,” but on the Left, where the global extermination of whites is viewed as the highest moral calling.

Of course I believe that the Right is in the right to want to not only preserve that which we hold dear and most sacred—family, nation, tradition, religion for some—but that we are morally justified in fighting back to reverse these trends of dissolution and dispossession. The collision course is set because I truly believe that the radical Left has passed the point where they no longer view us as equals but as both corrupted and de-humanized obstacles to attaining utopia. Our extermination, as buck-toothed, inbred hillbillies or backwards fossils of another era is morally justified in their view. Purity on the Right involves far “cleaner” distinctions such as male-female, right-wrong as opposed to relativism, or ethno-cultural-derived demarcations between nations; for the Left, it is moral purity that is of the utmost concern, and for us, their morality is alien and ugly. It luxuriates in its impurity, and that disgusts us.

People have always been divided, both in real, fundamental terms like race and sex, and in more socially-constructed terms such as taboos, dietary restrictions, and cultural customs. Tribalism is ingrained in our very nature, and we are being compelled to deny our nature by the Cult-Marx globalist utopians. Even that which is a product of culture is informed by biology, though there is in this current age the inclination to dismiss tradition as somehow antiquated, and thus of no use to us in the present day. As Jonathan Haidt writes:

If morality is about how we treat each other, then why did so many ancient texts devote so much space to rules about menstruation, who can eat what, and who can have sex with whom? There is no rational or health-related way to explain these laws. (Why are grasshoppers kosher but most locusts are not?) The emotion of disgust seemed to me like a more promising explanatory principle. The book of Leviticus makes a lot more sense when you think of ancient lawgivers first sorting everything into two categories: “disgusts me” (gay male sex, menstruation, pigs, swarming insects) and “disgusts me less” (gay female sex, urination, cows, grasshoppers).

Many of these religious prohibitions look absurd to us today, especially through the prisms of modern scientific knowledge and atheism, but Haidt is wrong—there were perfectly legitimate reasons for these decrees, even if they seem a bit obscure or strange. First, they helped define who the in-group was versus the out-group through specific practices that could be held in relief against surrounding tribes or societies; second, with an incomplete understanding of viruses, germs, and pathogens, ancient peoples could still make observations and practice deductive reasoning, and might rightly conclude certain foods and/or activities had a propensity to produce illness; and third, outsiders may well bring foreign pathogens with them that could decimate the tribal unit or local settlement that didn’t have a specific immunity.

We know, for example, that sodomy does carry an increased risk of certain STDs as opposed to vaginal intercourse, particularly due to both the exposure to fecal matter and the sensitivity of the anus to micro-tears, and given that most STDs are contracted from bodily fluid transmission, especially as it pertains to blood and semen, this makes a lot of sense; menstruation, though obviously not an illness, is often accompanied by mood changes, nausea, cramps, and dizziness, and so, coupled with the discharge of blood, might give ancient peoples the impression that there was something to this monthly occurrence that was either harmful or at least significant in ways they may not fully have understood.

Returning to Haidt’s list, there are many bacterial infections people may contract from swine, especially with limited knowledge of hygiene and none of bacteria. Per the South African Pork Producers’ Organisation:

If all the causes of foodborne disease are analysed, pigs and pork could theoretically be implicated in over 40% of cases. The CDC (Center for Disease Control) in 2003, found that in America, Salmonella caused 26% of all food poisoning cases. Salmonella is commonly found in the intestine of pigs. The other causes of foodborne disease that pigs might carry…are Clostridium perfringens (4%), E. coli (6%) and Campylobacter (4%). These last three are also common in the intestine of pigs.

Finally, pertaining to swarming insects, locusts (technically a kind of grasshopper) are notorious for wiping out crops and thus, in a far less technologically-advanced age and with no bug-resistant pesticides and GMOs, the ancients would be right to regard swarming insects with apprehension as locusts often were harbingers of famine. As noted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):

A swarm the size of Niarmay (Niger) or Bamako (Mali) eats the same amount of food in one day as half the respective country. A swarm the size of Paris eats the same amount of food in one day as the half population of France; the size of New York City eats in one day the same as everyone in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey; the same size of San Francisco eats the same has half of California, the size of Sydney (Australia) eats the same amount of food in one day as Australia eats in 1.5 hours…There are 10 species of locusts but the Desert Locust is the most notorious (destructive). Found in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, they inhabit some 60 countries and can cover one-fifth of Earth’s land surface. Desert locust plagues may threaten the economic livelihood of one-tenth of the world’s humans.

Conversely, other grasshoppers can make for a decent snack, and though I know they are not the same thing, their crepuscular cricket cousins can be ground into a type of flour for baking. We need to be very careful of trying to impress our modern understanding and morality on to the past. That said, there are certain dangers in clinging too tightly to tradition, ranging from cultural ossification and the inability to adapt, evolve, or innovate, to lashing out in the most extraordinary violence at a world changing too quickly to be understood. Incidentally Islam checks all of these boxes, yet we foolishly compound the error of importing fundamentalist Muslims in the first place by further increasing their numbers via immigration, and they’re all too happy to reproduce well above replacement level while we fail to do the same.

Returning to the argument that biology is the primary driver of culture and thus civilization, I offer here an ancient example contrasted with a trio of modern ones. The first sewers were laid in Rome well over 2,000 years ago; Strabo, writing around the time of Christ stated:

The sewers, covered with a vault of tightly fitted stones, have room in some places for hay wagons to drive through them. And the quantity of water brought into the city by aqueducts is so great that rivers, as it were, flow through the city and the sewers; almost every house has water tanks, and service pipes, and plentiful streams of water.

In the year 100 AD, an early form of indoor plumbing was implemented by the Romans, and their waste and their potable drinking water from the aqueducts, several of which are still presently in operation over two thousand years later, never came into contact. Contrast this with modern-day Mozambique, where people are literally crushed to death by mountains of garbage; or Ghana, which loses almost $300 million a year due to the costs associated with poor sanitation and where 90% of human excreta ends up in the same rivers and lakes the country gets its drinking water from; or Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which has no sewer system at all to service its three million people. Still think all civilizations are created equal? And once again, who creates these civilizations? Is the “magic dirt” about which Steve Sailer joked responsible?

According to the World Bank, around one-seventh of the world’s population still defecates out in the open where the human waste often finds its way back into the water supply and the fecal bacteria spread disease. Listed here by percentage of the population still practicing “open defecation,” see if you notice a pattern:

Eritrea: 76%

Niger: 71%

Chad: 68%

South Sudan: 61%

Benin: 55%

Togo: 51%

Namibia: 50%

Burkina Faso: 48%

Madagascar: 44%

Liberia: 42%

According to the World Health Organization, 56% of deaths in sub-Saharan Africa are attributable to communicable diseases, many of which would be preventable with proper sanitation.

In 2010, Haiti suffered a severe cholera outbreak that killed around 10,000 people and sickened close to a million more; although according to the CDC the last cholera outbreak in the U.S. was over a century ago, countries like Malawi, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Niger, Nigeria, Angola, Ethiopia, and Uganda have all wrestled with cholera outbreaks this decade. In 1994, over 12,000 people in what was then Zaire died from a cholera epidemic. Approximately half-a-million people have been afflicted with cholera in Yemen since 2016. Other countries that have had issues with cholera in the last few years include India, Pakistan, Cuba, Mexico, Malaysia, Iraq, Bangladesh, Namibia, Kenya, Liberia, Burkina Faso, and Cameroon. Britannica defines cholera as, “an intestinal disease that is the archetype of waterborne illnesses. It spreads by the fecal-oral route: infection spreads through a population when feces containing the bacterium contaminate water that is then ingested by individuals.” From NPR’s All Things Considered:

Public health authorities say cholera will stay in the environment for a long time, because Haiti has the worst sanitation in this hemisphere. It’s hard for Americans to imagine what this means. The cumulative sewage of 3 million people flows through open ditches. It mixes with ubiquitous piles of garbage…Follow pediatrician Vanessa Rouzier on a tour of a Port-au-Prince slum called Cite de Dieu—City of God—to get an idea of what it means to live in a city sans sanitation…We cross over a wide canal that cuts through the slum. The garbage-clogged channel brings sewage down from the hillside precincts of the capital. “So you can imagine that if human waste goes through there, and if it rains, [it] just really spills into the environment and ends up in the sea,” Rouzier says. She takes us down to a small, garbage-cluttered beach on the edge of the slum and points to a ramshackle structure perched on stilts over the water. Those who have seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire will know what it is — an outhouse. “If you live close by the water, you may use these over-the-sea hanging toilets during the daytime,” Rouzier says. “But at night you wouldn’t come out in the dark to use that. You would have a bowel movement in some sort of plastic bag and...throw it out during the day out here.”

As a woman, the primary reason you would not use the outhouse at night is that many women in the Third World, especially Africa, have expressed fears that using a public toilet alone, or even going to the bathroom in the bush privately, will result in their sexual assault, and the data support this fear. Numbers ranging from 20-50% of African women report having been sexually assaulted in the last year, with 40-70% reporting sexual abuse at some time in their lives. Ethiopia—never colonized by the West save a brief five-year Italian occupation—is particularly bad. Per Ejaz Khan:

Ethiopia is estimated to have one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world. A report by the UN found that nearly 60% of Ethiopian women were subjected to sexual violence. Rape is a very serious problem in Ethiopia. The country is infamous for the practice of marriage by abduction, with the prevalence of this practice in Ethiopia being one of the highest in the world. In many parts of Ethiopia, it is common for a man, working in coordination with his friends, to kidnap a girl or woman, sometimes using a horse to ease the escape. The abductor will then hide his intended bride and rape her until she becomes pregnant. Girls as young as eleven years old are reported to have been kidnapped for the purpose of marriage. Also the Ethiopian military has been accused of committing systematic rapes against civilians.

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But it’s the West that suffers under the oppressive thumb of the Patriarchy, right? Ethiopia, by the way, is a perennial “leader” in the number of Diversity Lottery recipients the United States imports. Good stuff.

Now there’s something very crucial in all of this that people seem either unwilling or unable to deduce—these conditions don’t just happen. It isn’t by chance or some kind of miracle that certain societies produce landscapes that would more accurately be described as hellscapes, whereas others look clean and orderly, and where those societies produce spectacular architecture and lasting infrastructure. Each outcome is a by-product of its unique civilization, and civilizations are only as good as their people. You didn’t perchance see Japan or Iceland or New Zealand among the countries listed, did you? The troublesome intractability of biology is a thorn in every Leftist’s side, but they’re working to remove these thorns and fashion them into a crown before crucifying us for the otherwise unanswerable sins of inequality.

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine https://ift.tt/2Jud6Ah via IFTTT

[okamirayne]

Hi Rayne-chan! ❤ Thank u for answerinf the Richonne and Daryl Qs I sent you. I admit I'm a fan of Darol (╥︣﹏᷅╥) so was like NOOO but I get what you mean with 'will they won't they' and dragging it out. I'm still holding on! ( ✿˃̣̣̥᷄⌓˂̣̣̥᷅ ) But I wd be cool if he got with Connie too! Not fan of Isabelle (probably because she keeps Daryl away from home! haha.) Thank you for taking Qs on characters in fandoms. I get scared to ask or share thoughts on ships sometimes. Thanks for answering (◍•ᴗ•◍)❤

Wey! Hey again, TWD-fan! 🥰

Hope my response finds you well, dear.💜

Thank u for answerinf the Richonne and Daryl Qs I sent you.

Aw. No problem. Cheers for the interesting ASKS, luv!

I admit I'm a fan of Darol (╥︣﹏᷅╥) so was like NOOO but I get what you mean with 'will they won't they' and dragging it out. I'm still holding on! ( ✿˃̣̣̥᷄⌓˂̣̣̥᷅ )

Hell yeah. Go down with your ship, right? I totally respect and celebrate your right to fangirl over Darol even if it's not a ship I'm onboard with (anymore) for reasons I stated in my last response. But who the hell cares, right? It's literally just an opinion. I can totally appreciate why the Darol ship is still sailing strong regardless of my thoughts on the pairing. So you ship, ship, ship away, my dear!💕 The showrunners are giving you major wind for your sails.

Please never be like "noooo". You do you! I'm mature enough (and rational enough) to be of the mindset that we don't all have to agree on ships to happily sail the Fandom Sea together. I think it's great you still love the Darol pairing. Just because I don't vibe with it anymore doesn't mean I don't recognise or accept/appreciate that other people absolutely love it. I said the same thing for the Richonne pairing, which got the standard deranged identitarian reaction from the usual bad faith actors (which is sad) as I celebrate that people enjoy different pairings: a notion that a lot of people within fandoms sadly seem incapable of grasping nowadays, and for the most absurd and nefarious reasons. I mean hell...

But I wd be cool if he got with Connie too!

Ha. You and me both, luv.

Not fan of Isabelle (probably because she keeps Daryl away from home! haha.)

HA! Totally legit point. I can see why that would grind your gears. It got mine spinning in interesting directions. But hey, Darol fans are in for a treat right? The latest season of DARYL DIXON is hugely Carol/Daryl centred, no? (Yes, Captain Obvious here, given it's called The Book Of Carol.) There's usually a lag before it hits the UK (assuming you're on the other side of the pond!) but I'll still be giving it a watch. Either way, you lucky buggers get your fangirl treats. The rest of us poor bastards will subsist off fanfiction and/or our wild imaginations, just as the Showrunners and the good gods of storytelling intended! 🤣

Thank you for taking Qs on characters in fandoms. I get scared to ask or share thoughts on ships sometimes. Thanks for answering.

Aw, thank you for feeling chilled enough to ask me those Qs. That's important to me, because I love talking about characters and shared fandoms. Even my perceived annoyances are nothing more than a fangirl feather-ruffle or character-centred ramble of a writer who adores characters/storytelling and is just expressing a humble and different opinion, which we're all entitled to...

Which brings me onto a more serious point...

I'm so sorry (and empathetically livid) that you've felt scared to ask or share your thoughts on ships -- and yet, I can completely understand why you might feel that way (as mentioned above re: bad faith actors). Christ, I remember when people used to be able to have civil, interesting, and fun conversations regarding diverse opinions or preferences without getting pilloried or attacked. Maybe I was just lucky to engage with happy and chilled people in the past? I don't know, but it seems nowadays the fandom climate can be insanely hostile and rife with demented levels of reactivity, absurdity, immaturity, tribalism, and outright hate.

It's truly sad to see. Please know you'll never get that nasty character-assassination BS from me if you're sharing your love, or your critical analysis, of a pairing we both engage with, even if we disagree. In fact, you've got an open invitation to go ahead and share with me the reasons why you personally love Darol 🥰 even though I don't ship them anymore. I'm invested in his character arc, so it interests me.

I enjoy when people engage in GOOD FAITH conversations and are positively and respectfully passionate about characters/ships they love, whilst respecting another fan's right to feel/think/experience the characters/story differently. Your fangirl love is safe in my forum, TWD-Fan-chan, if you can accept me sharing any contrasting perspective(s) whilst respecting your right to love your ship and sail that baby joyfully. 🫡💖

Not sure if that helps you feel a little less scared. I champion your right to share your thoughts when we talk about characters we love, and if it's really not my cuppa chai (usually if it's something I personally consider outta my wheelhouse, morally incompatible with my values, or a story/preference/character/pairing/theme that I have zero interest, enjoyment, or engagement with), I'll respectfully tell you that I'm the wrong person to serve you good interaction.

I hope you feel comfortable to engage here, sweetie, and I thank you again for taking a chance to poke your head back in. I know that so many of us are dodging the most inane bullets these days. Do no harm, take no shit. Hope you can let your guard down here and chill. Such a pleasure to hear from and respond to you again. Big love! 💖🫶🏼💖

[doorsclosingslowly]

WIP ask game

tagged by @jackwolfes and @randomcat1832

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descript or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it!

I'm only doing stuff I haven't half-posted to cut down on the 123455 WIPs i have

LOTR: Bravery Beyond the Call of Duty, gríma wank

Star Wars: the naboo empire, early in the morning is the only time of day, amargi

Six of Crows: Night of the Jackal, Corws circlejerj, sexy glasses au, 3some @ wedding, restaurant assholes, uni heist fake date, feels like the buildup takes forever but you never touch my cock, space wesper, mockumentary wesper, kuwesperthrower, burn menagerie, furries, psych ward, autistic kaz canon, not having a good time bro, a thousand kisses deep, no trial of separation, cut of jesper's arm, poppy/jes, djel comes into matthias, IC geezer, king & seer, yugioh! murder, sex machine, necromancy, take off my hand and give it to you, jes/pekka voyeurism

watchmen: ruat caelam

tagging @rainstormdragon @humanformdragon @expatgirl @sl-walker @irenadel @apeculiarkindofloneliness @anonniemousefics @darol if you want!!

[cottonflurry]

Midnight crew quadrants?

Espade ♥ LilacaCalubs ♥ Eyvinn  Hester ♦ CalubsEspade ♦ → Deamin Espade ♠ Bonoco (unhealthy and later broken off)Parsil ♠→ EspadeVoudun ♠ → Hester (later abandoned)

[blazingnewhiphop]

Mike Darole – Hello

Tracklist 1.6.24 2.Lyin 3.They 4.Don't Ask (Ft. King Lil G) 5.Hello (Ft. RJ & Compton AV) 6.Work It (Ft. Ray J & YG) 7.Pull Up (Ft. Justin Love) 8.Better 9.TBT (Ft. Jerry Purpdrank) 10.Often (Ft. Ray J) 11.LM2U (Ft. B Martin)

The post Mike Darole – Hello appeared first on Rap Crooks.

from Mike Darole – Hello

[doorsclosingslowly]

Tagged by @genuineformality thank you!

Post the last line you wrote (from any WIP) and tag the same number of people as there are words.

From a fic with a fun horrible premise that fully got derailed into the softest t4t canonverse Kazper ever

All he has to do is play dumb, and Jesper will never ask to sleep with him again.

tagging @jackwolfes @feelinglikecleopatra @booksnchocolate @darol @0363thisisdifficult5915 @siixofdoves @randomcat1832 @freshwaterseas @wylanvanfeck @aneiria-writes @desidarling123 @anonniemousefics @sl-walker @shadowmaat @skitter-kitter @humanformdragon @expatgirl @merfilly

[doorsclosingslowly]

whump asks! 6, 17 and 19! (whump has lost all meaning after reading that list and, i’m sorry, whumperflies!? i had to include that one just because)

6 What are the traits of your ideal whumpee?

self-loathing, wants to survive at all costs

17 When was the last time you got the whumperflies?

when you brought up russian roulette for the possible follow-up to The Same Dark Road https://archiveofourown.org/works/39070191 one of the best and painful fics about Jesper ever

19 Who are your favorite whump bloggers? Tag them!

@0363thisisdifficult5915, @darol and @specializationisforinsects

[cottonflurry]

I love your intermission AU :D

!!!! Tysm!! I’m glad you do!!