reaperfromtheabyss

[reaperfromtheabyss]

“The Slur Song” by @bigfoots-biggest-fan as performed by Cisero @ The Prohibition Cabaret

I fucking love this song so much and as soon as my friend played it for me for the first time, I knew I had to perform this. This is just such a banger song to perform at any drag show bc I am given plenty of people to point to. Not to mention that I had my family front row for this one.

The coat for this look took 40 hours to bedazzle alone (and gave me a serious case of solvent poisoning-) and the paper pad took me about 4 hours to complete in total. I’m glad I managed to get these pictures from @/solcm15 on insta so I at least have some good pictures of this beast. Needless to say, I’ve changed how I bedazzle from now on.

Just look at this hot bitch… Everyone gets to have a meeting with the Drag HR Manager and I hope to perform this number so many more times ❤️

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okay slur song streaming money got paid out finally so as promised all $2016 dollars have been sent to a charity for homeless LGBT teens

even though what you are apparently supposed to do when you make money is use it to destroy democracy I guess we can always do that next time

thank you all for contributing

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It really is 2003 again Jesus Tapdancing Christ.

Like, all Republicans did was replace Iraq and gay people with Iran and trans people.

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what i’ve failed to understand since i was a kid is why these ghouls want war with iran so badly. is it resources? do they have money in defense contracting? is it just that iran is too strong an opponent to us hegemony? why specifically do they want to see iran destroyed?

There is not one singular motivation behind the drive to send the US to war with Iran. There are multiple motivations which often overlap, but which are held in different orders of prioritization by different advocates of war. Most of these motivations are irrational and/or immoral, while others are legitimate complaints that could be addressed through diplomacy far more easily than they could through militarism.

Here's ten common motivations and arguments for a US war with Iran which you might encounter:

Independence from the US: The Iranian government is among the world's least-willing governments to obey US demands and subjugate themselves to the US-led order. For certain US primacists, this independence means that their very existence poses an existential threat to US dominance (similar to North Korea, Cuba, etc.) To a particular type of US militarist, it is necessary for the Iranian government to fall in order for the US to remain the unquestioned leader of the world.

Real Fear of their Nukes: There is a substantial contingent who really does believe that Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon and that they could well use it if they were to develop it. Logically, the best way to address this concern would be through a diplomatic deal similar to the 2015 JCPOA, which Iran complied with! But the intensity of anti-Iranian sentiment among US hawks tends to convince them that direct military confrontation is somehow a better option, thus explaining why Trump decided to break this deal.

Desire for Revenge: Many older foreign policy hawks in the US have never forgiven Iran for 1) the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis, and 2) the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Lebanon, which was orchestrated by a terror organization with ties to the Iranian government. In their minds, both of these incidents were embarrassments to the US' military prestige which we have never properly gotten revenge for. (These people tend to ignore the massive wrongdoings which the US has carried out against Iran during this same time period, like the US destruction of Iran Air Flight 655). There are people in and around the Pentagon who have wanted to bomb Iran over a grudge for more than 40 years now.

Iran's Regional Proxies: Over the last several decades, Iran has engaged in an aggressive campaign to expand their influence throughout the region by supporting proxy paramilitary forces in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, etc. Many of these proxies have undeniably engaged in acts of terrorism. This strategy is both opportunistic (taking advantage of the power vacuum caused by the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein) and defensive (countering the regional influence campaigns of Saudi Arabia and Turkey). This is probably the most legitimate cause of US anger towards the Iranian government, but it is a grievance which will only be worsened by backing Iran into a corner militarily.

Israel (and Saudi Arabia) Hates Them: Iran is unfriendly with two of the US' closest partners in the region: Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Israeli government, in particular, has long been laser-focused on the overthrow of the Iranian government, and they are fully committed to dragging the US into such a regime change operation. For the most fervent defenders of Israel in the US, overthrowing the Iranian government is near the top of their wishlist.

They Got Oil: Oil is a factor which is often overstated in these discussions, but it definitely is one of the factors. Iran currently produces 5% of the world's oil and has the potential to produce far more were the current sanction regime against it to be removed. They also have the ability to shut down the Straight of Hormuz, an important chokepoint through which 25% of the world's oil flows. Regime change in Iran would significantly increase the leverage that the US and its allies hold over global oil markets and further weaken the strength of OPEC.

And Other Commodities Too!: Though the separation between the US and Iranian economies hurts the US economy as a whole, there are certain sectors of US industry that benefit enormously from having Iran so heavily sanctioned. Some of the big names in the US pistachio industry have lobbied heavily to keep US-Iranian relations unfriendly, because the elimination of US sanctions on Iran would allow the massive Iranian pistachio industry to compete with the US industry. As long as these two governments hate each other, a few politically-connected US businessmen make way more money.

Diaspora Pressure Campaigns: Most Iranian-Americans hold the following two opinions at the same time: 1) they hate the current Iranian government and want to see it replaced, but 2) they strongly oppose US efforts at regime change in Iran. However, there is a vocal minority of Iranian-Americans that do support regime change efforts, and they tend to cluster into two well-organized groups that wage pressure campaigns against the Iranian government. The first are the monarchists, who want to see the son of the former US-backed Iranian dictator restored to power. The others are those who are loyal to the MEK, a cult and former terrorist organization which has been extremely effective at building relationships with US politicians. Both of these groups work full-time to push the US towards overthrowing the Iranian government so that they can step in and take over; it's fairly easy to find both of these groups in online social media threads about US-Iranian relations.

Who Cares, We Want War: As I have written about many times before, the US military-industrial complex encourages the US government to engage in militarist behavior in order to boost their profits. Iran is one of their favorite boogeymen to justify increased levels of US military spending, second only to China. These companies fund think tanks and other policy initiatives to argue that Iran is an immediate threat to us, and then they fund political candidates who want to spend more money preparing for this "threat."

They're Crazy! You Can't Trust Them!: We are led to believe that the Iranian government cannot be negotiated with because they are irrational, they're anti-Western religious zealots incapable of reasoned decision-making. This is a convenient excuse for war, but it's entirely incompatible with the restraint that the Iranian government shows in responding to Israeli attacks, their continued willingness to sit down for diplomatic talks with their aggressors, the way that they helped the US government deal with al Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11, and a million other indications that the Iranian government is just as rational as any other government in its geopolitical decision-marking.

Add all of that together, and you get a deranged political ecosystem obsessed with inflating the scale of foreign threats, finding excuses for maintaining the trajectory of our militarist status quo, increasing regional tensions, and rejecting obvious opportunities for diplomacy and a peaceful resolution of our differences.

[reaperfromtheabyss]

[reaperfromtheabyss]

So, fun fact about the skinned FurReal pony - I got the ID wrong, but only because Smores and Butterscotch's necks are semi-fixed in position, and I didn't think to google if the image I had of Butterscotch was mirrored.

The skinned horse IS Butterscotch, not Smores, but all of that's besides the point.

The reason I'm making this post is that y'all need to know that they skinned Butterscotch to turn her into a flamethrower

[reaperfromtheabyss]

now feels like a good time to reiterate that Iranians have been martyred by america + israel already, both empires that possess nuclear weapons, and that Iran does not have nuclear weapons. so now is not the time to joke about america getting nuked-- any retaliation on Iran's part is justified and the only way we escape this situation, but Iran is not going to nuke us, because the entire premise that Iran has nukes is how america justified bombing them and also the exact same rhetoric we used against Iraq and how we killed my countrysmen when there was again no evidence of nuclear warfare. New York City is not going to get fucking nuked. go listen to a podcast or something

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it is DASTARDLY outside today, but the humidity has herps on the move! I helped a turtle across the road on the way to work this morning, and then I found this dusky salamander!

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I took my little brother (autistic, mostly non verbal) out and he was using his voice keyboard to tell me something, and this little boy (maybe 4 or 5?) heard him and asked me "Is he a robot??" I tried to explain to him that no, he isn't a robot, he just communicates differently, but my darling brother was in the background max volume "I am robot I am robot I am robot I am robot"

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Check out my ongoing comic Crow Time. It has crows, and also neat pantheons of epic beasties.

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Happy winter solstice! The light begins to return tomorrow!!

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(Going off of the initial Japanese release dates as to which generation was current at the time excluding remakes that came out during that period. For simplicity's sake)

For example I turned 10 in 2007 so I would be starting in the Sinnoh region! Bonus if you tell me your partner Pokémon 👀 doesn't have to be one of the three starters!

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Yeah, Eliot, you do.

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People put so much into seeing Stonewall as this symbol. And at the time we just thought, ‘Oh, I guess it’s just that time of the month when cops raid the bar, so they can make their numbers for arresting fags for the month of June.’ But people get so concerned about the details. I don’t know about all the crap I’ve heard all these years. Sometimes it’s ‘Oh, someone threw a high-heel shoe.’ Sometimes it’s ‘No, gurl, it was a Molotov cocktail,’ or ‘Somebody slugged a cop.’ All I know is that night, they came in, and nobody budged. I guess we were just sick of their shit. And suddenly we were fighting, and we were kicking their ass. The cops had to back up into the bar. We had them cornered. Next thing you knew, the riot squad was there, and baby, it was on. ‘The night of Stonewall’ is how people talk about it, but it was more like a week. People want to know the little details, but what I remember most is being scared as hell. We were fighting for our lives. They’re still killing us; they’re still not giving us the respect we’re due for putting up with their shit all these years. I’m giving you the facts about how shit’s been from the beginning, and what’s gone on, how the law was in our daily lives—the facts! And so with regard to that producer lady, the whole time I just thought to myself, ‘There’s gonna be so much of me on the cutting-room floor.’

—Miss Major, from Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary