#anthony the anarchist

[treesters]

"The next few years were the best of my life. Angel was everything to me. He was my reason to live."

DoubleTale belongs to XWolf26.

[wings-does-art]

"This reality was never yours, Errorphim... This reality..."

"Belongs to the Fortune City Four."

[nando161mando]

watch Ursula K Le Guin's speech

Via @aspiringwarriorlibrarian

https://youtu.be/s2v7RDyo7os

[felicitywilds]

been seein a few popular posts about what could Happen in season 3 that i think are kind of missing the mark a bit when it comes to crowley and aziraphale’s characters and both of their approaches to their relationship? so heres my take

aziraphale is a fighter: all throughout the book and season 1, he’s done his best to fight for what he thinks is right. the fatal flaw in this position is that he only ever does it within the confines of his faith and position as an angel: protesting punishing job until God’s Orders are cited; excusing his eating habits to gabriel by saying it helps him ‘blend in’ on earth; even after an entire day of listing things he wouldn’t be able to enjoy on earth anymore, crowley was only able to convince aziraphale to help him raise the antichrist by framing it as ‘thwarting wiles’ (ie. doing his job). aziraphale has always had a lot of conflict with how his and heaven’s ideals align-- this is why aziraphale went to heaven, so he could make the rules he’s so hesitant to break work for him instead of against him.

crowley on the other hand, is a flier: at the slightest sign of trouble he can’t fix, he flees. no, he does not want to dismantle the systems of heaven and hell, he wants to run away forever and never think about them again! he’s canonically tried to do this at least four times! but the fatal flaw in this position is that it means he sees everything he’s built and collected in 6000 years as disposable, which is not unlike how heaven and hell also think about the earth. he’s built a fragile, peaceful existence for himself, but is willing to run away and dump it all the second its peace and fragility is threatened by something he can’t control.

understanding both of these attitudes makes the middle ground where they realize their mistakes and come together again painfully obvious (imo): its earth! literally the ground in the middle between heaven and hell. crowley and aziraphale both already know that the other is worth protecting-- aziraphale wants to go to heaven so being together won’t be against the rules, and crowley wants to run away so heaven and hell can’t destroy them for being together-- so the revelation that needs to be reached in season 3 is that their lives and their history and their home is worth protecting too. beelzebub and gabriel had ‘heaven/hell is wherever you are’, but that kind of attitude (even ‘to the world’/they are each others world) doesn’t work for crowley and aziraphale because they spent 6000 years building something that makes simply being together synonymous with being on earth.

after all, the Really Big One is going to be all of us vs. all of them-- heaven and hell against all of humanity. when crowley and aziraphale have this exchange in the book and season 1, i fully believe that both them assume that when they say “us”, it means heaven and hell-- even after everything that happened, they’re still aligning themselves against the earth and the history they have there. which is why, after all their wonderful and inevitable character development in season 3, they’re going to realize that “us” actually means humanity.

[saccharinecoffee]

Just remembered that last night I dreamt I met Anthony Fantano and we got it on, but he came in less than a minute and then didn't return the favour.

[tonyrossmcmahon]

America's Most Dangerous Women!

The Gilded Age produced some of the most dangerous women in American history - fierce rebels as TV historian Tony McMahon discovers

At the turn of the twentieth century, America was rocked by rebel movements led by women described by polite society and the powers-that-be as utterly dangerous. Women who advocated bombing, assassination, strikes, smashing of property, and generally breaking the law. In every area of protest, it was female voices that led the way. These were the dangerous women of the Gilded Age. Emma Goldman –…

[thetemplarknight]

America's Most Dangerous Women!

The Gilded Age produced some of the most dangerous women in American history - fierce rebels as TV historian Tony McMahon discovers

At the turn of the twentieth century, America was rocked by rebel movements led by women described by polite society and the powers-that-be as utterly dangerous. Women who advocated bombing, assassination, strikes, smashing of property, and generally breaking the law. In every area of protest, it was female voices that led the way. These were the dangerous women of the Gilded Age. Emma Goldman –…

[disabled-dragoon]

Information regarding the UK riots

If you're worried about the riots right now and are concerned for your safety, the safety of friends and loved ones or the safety of other members of your local community, here are a few posts, organisations and social medias that may help. Feel free to add any others that you know of in the notes.

Posts:

This post by @lovelysakuryay with information on what to do if you are the victim of an attack, as well some information on helplines, mental health services and some charities you can reach out to and/or donate to (which will be listed in the section below)

A list of fundraisers for people and communities impacted by the Southport attack and far-right riots. Post by @octarineblues

Post by @northern-punk-lad listing the times and locations of riots on Wednesday 7th August.

Organisations:

Exit Hate: Helping people and their family to walk away from extremism.

Stop Hate UK: 24 hour hate-crime reporting hotline

Migrant Voice: A charity that helps migrants advocate for themselves.

Refugee Action: Helps refugees to rebuild their lives.

North East Anarchist Group: Some information regarding locations of planned far-right riots on their social media, as well information regarding the location of counter protests in the north east of England.

Green and Black Cross: A "grassroots activist legal support group". They offer "know your rights" training courses, as well as information on your rights as a protester and interacting with the police and staying safe. Find them on instagram as well under @gbclegal.

Netpol: Or, the Network for Police Monitoring. A good organisation to look into regarding protest rights and legal resources.

Migrants Organise: Provides a platform for migrants to organise. Offers advice and support, as well as access to grassroots organising, research, advocacy and campaigning.

The Anthony Walker Foundation: Local anti-hate group in Merseyside.

Note from @octarineblues:

"This is a bit more useful for larger towns/cities, but: a local BLM group will also have up to date info! Antifacist or anti-raids group as well - they will often have access to good info and they are already used to reacting quickly."

Social Medias:

It's worth checking your town/local area's social media pages (if they exist) for information regarding possible planned riots and destruction. There may also be one or more pages regarding news in your county/constituency.

Additional social media pages:

@ukisnotinnocent on Instagram. A group "mobilising against fascism" across the UK, providing updates on the riots as well as information on the locations of planned violence and staying safe while counter protesting. CW: There are some shocking videos and images on here which depict some of the violent scenes seen lately.

@monitoringgroupne_n on Instagram. A group that shares updates, information and concerns regarding the policing and fascism in the North and North East of England. Including sharing information on the location of planned riots, some information on counter protests and staying safe while protesting.

@standuptoracismuk on Instagram. A good resource for riot times and locations, as well as counter protest times, locations, information and footage.

@ukfactcheckpolitics on Instagram. A page dedicated to "exposing government corruption". Great for quick news and updates regarding both riots and counter protests. Like @ukisnotinnocent, they do share videos and images as well, the contents of which can be shocking.

Also, I've noticed that a lot of groups protesting the ongoing genocide in gaza have been very vocally against the far-right riots and have been sharing some information alongside their usual stuff. If you know of a local encampment/group, it's worth searching for their social media.

It's worth checking the lists of people that the listed groups follow on social media as well for more information regarding riots across the country.

Please, please share any more that you know of/find, and I'll update this as and when I can.

Stay safe everyone <3

[halfway-house-in-hell]

angel dust redesign🕷️

(click for better quality)

and since theyre the first sinner ive posted, they get a human design!

rambling under the cut

(if my handwriting in the second image is unreadable you can check the id)

-angel dust was a sinner that died in 1948. they were a member of a large mafia family and led a secret life as a drag queen

-they were born into the family, and were unable to leave bc. you know. life of crime

-much of their family looked down on them and mocked them bc of their feminine mannerisms

-they had a particularly bad relationship with their father, who saw them as a failure of a son

-so they turned to drag and underground queer clubs instead (angel dust was their drag name that they adopted full time after dying, anthony was their "real" name)

-they also turned to cocaine, often stealing from their family's stash

-their death happened because they were lousy hiding the tracks of their theft- the family got a tip off that angel had been stealing and that they were currently in an aforementioned queer club

-mafia family storms the queer club, angel comes out off their head on cocaine, their father finds then and shoots them in the chest before slamming their head against the wall repeatedly, killing them

-their and all of their family's (except their sister) demon forms are spiders, symbolising the web of lies they spun😎 because angel died in drag they also have a much more feminine demon form

-they enjoyed life in hell for a while, but soon enough other members of their family started dying and began looking for them. this caused them to flee to the nearest hiding space they had, a place called Valentino's that promised a safe haven against any threats

-as we know this promise is absolute bullshit

-angel signed the contract that allowed them entry to valentino's. they were panicked and signed it hastily, not looking at the fine print.

-they become trapped at valentino's, forced to be a prostitute

-until valentino himself visits and likes the look of angel, deciding that he wants angel for himself

-he takes on angel as a prostitute/porn star/stripper/whatever valentino wants them to be today, with valentino abusing them behind the scenes

-valentino lovebombs them often, buying them expensive gifts they are required to wear and feeding their drug habit

-despite being famous, most of the money angel makes goes straight into valentinos pocket. this is what leads them to finding charlie's hotel, as they do not have enough money to pay rent and the happy hotel offers free accommodation.

-angel's best friend is cherry bomb, an anarchist who wants nothing more than to free them- but she has no money, no connections and is banned from most places on sight due to her habit of blowing stuff up. when angel dust gets sad and mopey, she gets angry for them

-angel uses they/them, but hell isnt the most progressive place, so few demons use it for them. they dont really care though, they have bigger things to worry about

-they actually physically cannot harm valentino, as part of their contract states that any harm valentino goes through also happens to them

-they like to keep up with the latest trends, and have a decent sinstagram following

-they are hypersexual due to trauma

-i think thats it. if i forgot smth im gonna be so mad

oki thanks for reading :33

[sevenofreds]

Angel revealing the exact wording of his contract with Valentino (and how he can take advantage of it) recontextualizes so much about his and Val's relationship, his friendship with Cherri (and why it's ultimately toxic for him despite them clearly caring a lot for each other), and his reasons for staying at the hotel.

(Buckle up bitches this is gonna be a long one and I spent way too much time thinking about it)

SO, according to Angel, he only has to do what Valentino says while at the studio. Pay attention to that wording. Not "while working". "While at the studio".

Val's rant to Vox implies that, before Angel moved into the Hazbin Hotel, he was basically LIVING in the studio, which means that, by the wording of their contract, Angel was Val's to control 24/7.

While it doesn't really recontextualize Val's whiny bitchbaby moment in episode 2 (because regardless of the contract's exact wording, he clearly wants to be in total control of Angel), it does give us more information about it; Val was upset that he couldn't physically MAKE Angel do any thing at any time anymore, and Angel KNEW that, too.

So why didn't he ever just leave before? That comes back to Val's treatment of him, and how he views himself (or at least DID view himself until his husband friend Husk came along). Val almost definitely got it into Angel's head that nobody would WANT to take him in or help him, which is (one of, at least) the reason why he didn't trust Charlie at first during the prequel comic.

He wasn't just staying at the hotel because it was rent-free; it was because, as long as he "played nice", he was free of Val outside of work.

It does seem like taking advantage of the wording like that goes both ways (Val can apparently extend his hours on a whim without breaking the contract), but if you wanted out of a situation like Angel's, you'd take anything you could get.

And then we move on to Cherri, and her relationship with partying compared to Angel's.

Cherri Bomb is an anarchist. A chaotic partygirl. She's not trying to escape from anything. She parties so hard because she ENJOYS it. It's her way of having fun, of recharging, and it seems like throughout most of episode 6, she thought that Angel was partying with her for those same reasons.

But as we learned in episode 4, that isn't the case. Angel gets drunk and high to escape, to forget how fucked up his situation is, to forget how much he hates and blames himself for being the way he is. And once he found a functioning support system, and people who cared about him beyond his persona, he didn't need that anymore. He learned to accept that yeah, his situation is fucked, and there's not much he can do...but that doesn't mean that there's NOTHING he can do. And he's not alone.

This leads us to view Cherri as a toxic friend towards Angel, at least until she sees that he's getting serious about the hotel; she's perfectly happy with what she does, and was only goading Angel into it because she thought he was, too (she would thrive in Beelzebub's scene if she were able to go there; Angel would fall into the same category as Blitzø). Once she saw for herself that wasn't the case, she said she was glad for him, and that she'd be there if he ever needs her.

It's evident by that point that they care deeply about each other. But Cherri lives a lifestyle that wasn't ever good for Angel Dust; for Anthony. And that's okay.

Whether he was truly aware of it or not, Angel needed friends. He needed a support system. He wanted to be better than he was. And even if he doesn't quite realize it yet...he's well on his way.

[treesters]

It's suffocating, it’s troublesome, it stinks of blood, it’s scary at midnight.

DoubleTale belongs to XWolf26.

[wings-does-art]

a real fortunate one...

[nando161mando]

read this thread that outlines the story behind the haka in parliament

https://x.com/quackpirihi/status/1857762425749074398

[thedreadvampy]

I do not understand subcultural politics discourse and at this point I don't know how much is differences in the national scenes and how much is that we just have very different ideas of what these scenes are.

cause like. Punk I get. Punk is not always left wing (there has always been a Nazi punk problem) but punk IS always inherently and actively political as a definitional factor. Punk is foundationally anarchist, counter-hierarchical, and centred on anger and community cohesion. If you approach punk as apolitical or centrist you are Doing It Wrong. Nazis and right libertarians have always made up a small but vocal chunk of the community, and that's a problem punk has to address in its own ways (ideally with steel toecaps). Punk is definitionally political and has a couple of extremely foundational sets of political beliefs.

Or like, hip-hop. More complicated case cause there's even more corporate cooption involved in shaping the modern genre but hip-hop has a foundational political position. Hip-hop is focused on Black pride and power, and on addressing African-American trauma and injustice, and so it's historically working-class, anti-racist and anti-cop. It means something politically as a genre.

But some stuff people say just Does Not Jam with my experience of subculture. Like people KEEP saying 'you can't be a right-wing goth, goth is radically left wing' and all I'm saying is a) we have spoken to some VERY different elder goths bc as much as I was lucky enough to grow up in the scene, going to the goth weekends, etc, my god did some of those 60 year olds vote Tory or BNP with their whole chest. and b) as far as I'm aware the main thing that goth stands for politically is countercultural provocation and a kind of nihilistic disengagement. like Siouxie Sioux habitually used swastikas and Nazi paraphernalia to demonstrate distance from her parent's generation. a lot of the foundational Goth musicians are either right-wing or prefer to keep their politics private because they consider them separate.

like most of the goths I know are left-leaning, because there are foundational philosophical beliefs attached to goth culture and a lot of those, like fluidity of expression, resistance to established power, and celebrating marginalisation, appeal to a lot of lefties. But frankly I've known a lot of goths who are reactionary right-wingers or full on Nazis because, well, other precepts of goth culture can include stuff like nihilistic individualism and glorification of death. Plus the Nazi iconography thing, plus the widespread racism in the community. and those weren't like 'i found goth on TikTok' goths, these are like 'committed to the lifestyle since 1979' goths.

Like goth is not particularly a RIGHT-WING movement, but I have never experienced it as an explicitly political musical/subcultural movement at all? Certainly not the way that punk or reggae or outlaw country or something is.

(and speaking of reggae. I was watching Anthony Fantano and FD Signifier talking about this whole idea and FD said something as a 'isn't this a silly example' about a white nationalist looking for white nationalist reggae. and they were both laughing about what a silly idea that was

and I'm sitting there like...But that's literally exactly what happened with ska in the UK? like ska is obviously an afrocaribbean genre made by and for Black communities and uhhhh by the late 60s in Britain ska was the white nationalist sound. like skinheads love ska and in particular there are a bunch of neonazi/white nationalist ska acts. not all skinheads are far right but if skinheads have a dominant political identity it is probably more far right than far left.

and that did raise the question of differences in national scenes. like I know that behind the Iron Curtain a lot of punks were using UK and American flags the way Western punks were using Soviet iconography, and Caribbean music has a very different cultural association in the UK than in the US, and British rap has a different political outlook than American rap.

and so maybe American goth is a lot more political than British goth? but I kind of think of goth as a European subculture tbh like I think goth I think England and Germany, and the European goth music and goth scenes I've been in are......not explicitly political?)

[haggishlyhagging]

It was during the early 1870s that the issue of free love and its connection to anarchism began to receive widespread public attention. Victoria Woodhull in 1872, at that time espousing the doctrines of the native American anarchist Stephen Pearl Andrews, announced from a New York stage that she both believed in and practiced free love. Because she chose to raise the theoretical issue of free love during a speech in which she revealed that New York's most popular minister, Henry Ward Beecher, had engaged in an affair with the wife of his close friend Theodore Tilton, Woodhull ensured herself a wide audience. One immediate result of her public affirmation of the anarchist position on sexuality was the alienation of several prominent feminists who had heretofore supported her. Susan B. Anthony led the suffragists in denouncing "the Woodhull," and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose sympathies with liberal sexual notions were more pronounced, reluctantly joined in. But although the Woodhull scandal caused a breach with the organized feminists over the issue of public propriety and private morality, it was in fact merely a public examination of a viewpoint that the anarchists had been developing for about two decades, and which by the 1870s had matured into a full-fledged article of the anarchist faith. . . .

Woodhull is an apt symbol for the free-love controversy of the 1870s because she espoused three causes that were often united until that decade: anarchy, free love, and spiritualism. Most anarchists were not spiritualists during the period preceding the spread of Marxian materialism within the movement, but many spiritualists were attracted to anarchism. In a sense, both anarchists and spiritualists were engaged in a struggle to comprehend and come to terms with the chaos and uncertainty of mid-nineteenth-century life: the rupture of the secure religious doctrine of orthodox Protestantism; the urbanization and industrialization of the East and Midwest; the growth of national corporate and governmental power and the subsequent sense among many Americans that their most important decisions no longer rested in their own hands.

The spiritualists came to terms with questions of morality and evil, earthly success or failure, by concluding that death did not exist; consequently, the individual never had to admit to final loss of control. Spiritualists developed a contempt for government that complemented their belief in eternal existence. Government after all had no control over the spirit-world, which to the spiritualists was just as tangible as corporeal life, and more important. It was not that government had to be overthrown, it was simply irrelevant. The anarchists, who in the sixties and seventies welcomed any allies they could get, sometimes found the spiritualists trying, but the spiritualists' opposition to both government and organized religion lent credibility to the view that the two groups were natural allies in the fight against dogmatism. The anarchist position in the 1870s is connected to the issue of spiritualism since during this period anarchists welcomed most nonorthodox thinkers. Later, when anarchists became more self-consciously revolutionary, they would show less tolerance for those whose views coincided only partially with theirs.

-Margaret S. Marsh, Anarchist Women, 1870-1920

[ghelgheli]

The Stuff I Read in December 2023

favourites in bold

Books

Calling a Wolf a Wolf, Kaveh Akbar

The German Ideology, Marx & Engels

The Dark Forest, Cixin Liu

Yuri/GL

Hanamonogatari, schwinn

The Moon on a Rainy Night / Amayo no Tsuki (Vols 1-2), Kuzushiro

Run Away With Me, Girl, Battan

Opium, Aji

Asashi to Satsuki, Fujita

The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy At All / Ki ni Natteru Hito ga Otoko Janakatta, Sumiko Arai

Free Soul, Ebine Yamaji

Short Fiction

Yon & Mu, Junji Ito

A Day in the Life of Anmar 20X1, Abdulla Moaswes [strange horizons]

Muneera and the Moon, Sonia Sulaiman [fiyah]

The Center of the Universe, Nadia Shammas [strange horizons]

Honeydew Toxicity Event, Porpentine Charity Heartscape [link]

Palestine

Palestinian Anarchists in Conversation: Recalibrating Anarchism in a Colonized Country, Joshua Stephens [link]

Anarchist, Liberal, and Authoritarian Enlightenments: Notes From the Arab Spring, Mohammed Bamyeh [link]

Our Siege is Long, Esmat Elhalaby [link]

Anti-Zionism as Decolonisation, Lara Kilani & Leila Shomali [link]

What's the matter with the Israeli working class?, Daphna Thier [link]

Inside the Pro-Israel Information War, Lee Fang & Jack Poulson [link]

Refusing Genocide, Rasha Abdulhadi & Beatrice Adler-Bolton [link]

‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza, Yuval Abraham [link]

"Theory"

Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat, and Christian Culture, Jones Manoel [red sails]

On Contradiction, Mao Tse-Tung [marxists dot org]

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin

Other

Multimodal datasets: misogyny, pornography, and malignant stereotypes, Abebe Birhane, Vinay Uday Prabhu, Emmanuel Kahembwe [arxiv]

On Anthony Bourdain, Lz. A. [red sails]

The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts, Abigail Anderson et al. [doi]

Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots, Jasbir K. Puar & Amit Rai [link]

Deaths Pulled From the Future, Beatrice Adler-Bolton [link]

In The End We All Do What We Must: Universal Paperclips, Clicker Games, AI, and Agency, Sam Keeper [link]