#drawing a line in the sand

[drconstellation]

Obligatory Reminders and Crossing the Lines

Have you been wondering why Shax tries to do a mail delivery to Crowley as he escorts the shop keepers to safety from Aziraphale's Eldritch Ball? It seems a pretty random thing to do at that moment.

SHAX: I brought your mail. CROWLEY: Why? SHAX: It stacks up by the front door. CROWLEY: Keep it for now, not a good time.

It's not the first time Shax has tried to give Crowley his mail. We first see her hand a pile over on the park bench in S2E1, while they have an introductory spy vs. spy catch up, in St James Park.

SHAX: I brought your mail. CROWLEY: Anything interesting? SHAX: Bills, mostly. I don't understand why they won't just deliver them to your car. CROWLEY: Send the bills to Hell's finance office. SHAX: I did. They say they can't accept my signature as your replacement.

Bills, mostly. That aren't being accepted by Hell's finance office, unless Crowley signs them. And they expect to find him in the official residence of Hell's ambassador plenipotentiary to this corner of Earth, in Mayfair.

Next, we see Crowley redefining all that mail as "junk" and discarding it.

uh huh. Lets ignore the conveniently placed disposal unit for the moment...

We need to stop and define what those "bills" actually are. Because they are not actually the financial type of bills. Well, they could be. But this is the GOmens AU, so they have a second meaning as well. Paying your bills is also meeting your duties and obligations to another party, and this is something Crowley is refusing to do right now.

I don't think its as simple as Hell being short staffed and they just haven't got around to doing the change over (I know I suggested the latter recently, sorry) and that's why they aren't recognizing Shax's signature. It's that Hell actually hasn't let Crowley go - he is still "on the books," so to speak, despite all that has been said and done since the Nope-ocalypse. He might call himself a "former demon," and he might call Hell his "former side," but that is definitely NOT how Hell sees it, despite the fact they aren't harassing him or giving him tasks to do.

Actually, that should be haven't been harassing him, because since Gabriel "disappeared," they have been back on his case. The mail is a warning sign, but Lord Beelzebub's summons really should have given you the chills.

Crowley protests that they had a "generalized understanding" that he would be left alone, but Beelzebub declares that "we don't."

Ah. So all is not as it appears. They are just playing nice because they want something (Gabriel) and in reality Crowley's position in relation to Hell really is fragile. Yet outwardly he seems more worried about Aziraphale.

It goes downhill from here. Shax begins to stalk him.

This image of Shax is just delish. The sharp "V" of her her decolletage reminds us of a stork's bill, her avatar animal, and it's stabbing down at the snake on her belt. She might be seeking the Frog Prince who escaped Heaven but she's also got a certain snake in her sights.

Shax can't can't cross the threshold of the bookshop without an invitation from Aziraphale. This plays into the old belief that supernatural creatures such as vampires, demons and faeries can only enter a house if invited in. We also see this extended to the Bentley, once "ownership" is extended to the angel, but the door of the bookshop is the important border here for now.

Then have this threat of war being declared:

War on Aziraphale, not Crowley, as they still consider Crowley to be on Hell's side. They don't see it the way Crowley does as Us and Them, to Shax there is still only Heaven and Hell.

So we come back to the second round of mail delivery:

Crowley is about to escort the human shopkeepers to safety and Shax confronts Crowley right on the threshold with his duties and obligations. He really doesn't want to have that conversation right now, not here and not with Shax. As far as he is concerned, he has no obligations to Hell any more, and he's not taking any notice of their demands in any form, either, so Shax may as well just get out of the way and take the mail with them.

And with that, Crowley crosses the threshold, leading the humans out.

At this point in the story you might be asking what's the big deal about that? Crowley has been going in and out over that doorstep several times a day lately, and has crossed it hundreds of times over the last couple of centuries since the bookshop was built. It's not a barrier to him.

The significance of this boundary line has been highlighted to us in S2. We have Shax actually telling us that she knows she can't cross the "threshold" in S2E3, then she asks again in S2E5 where the boundary line is just before Mr Brown is hauled off into the demon Legion. But its even more than that.

On one level its the line that Crowley has drawn for himself. He's not going back to Hell if he can at all help it, and he's quite resolute about that. It's his side or no one's side, from there on in. He reinforces that when talking to Aziraphale in the Final Fifteen.

On another level, I'm wondering if we could consider this a step on the eponymous Hero's Journey? Crossing the Threshold is one of the early stages of the journey where the hero crosses into danger or the unknown. We're shown things aren't normal outside by the mist and green light. Then he diverts off unexpectedly to Heaven with Muriel. Just throwing it out there to see if its worth exploring a bit further. I'd say we've only got the early stages of the journey in S2, with the remainder to come in S3.

[teleportzz]

assimilationism is so wack i actually can't. like do you idiots not understand that queerphobes can't tell any of us apart and don't care to? in the eyes of conservatives, we are all faggots. kissing ass and throwing the rest of us under the bus for table scraps of liberty only creates the false image of progress if you're white, abled, neurotypical, and fall under one of the few labels they can easily understand. yet even for you, it's not real. they'll create the illusion of a good life for you in exchange for oppressing your own community members and then turn around and feed your face to the leopards.

like sorry not sorry, man, but we are all in this together whether you like and appreciate it or not. you're sharing your labels and safe spaces with neopronoun users, he/him lesbians, slur reclaimers, old label adopters, drag queens, loveless aromantics, gnc folks, and the kinksters. we've always been part of the community. it isn't our fault you don't value your own history and vehemently refuse to learn it. we still aren't going anywhere. cope.

how sweet is the blood of your queer siblings as you lick it up clean from the boots of your own oppressors? hope it tastes real fucking good

[loganslowdown4]

Janus: Darling, can you do me a favour?

Remus: I would literally cover up a murder you committed, plant my DNA at the scene of the crime, and take the blame for you-

Janus: Cool, can you do the dishes?

Remus: No

[travelling-hydaelyn]

Lahabrea possessed Thancred before this questline even started which means these are back to back Laha interactions. Here is how he greets the WoL in the Waking Sands immediately after his Disney villain introduction.

Meanwhile in Minfilia's solar:

presumably he took a brief break from running Alphinaud's errands to go dramatically laugh at the WoL

[probablyanalienindisguise]

Blows them up

[r0tt3n-gvtz]

wanna know a fun fact??? :3

they could prescribe u any illness u'd like if u define the symptoms of ur ailments >_<!!!!!!

and another,,,, u could sing a pretty malady like a black canary but a crow stll dont know the smell of carbon monoxide!!! X3c

alssooooo, a question!!! how many years have you been on that couch??? cuz yk... they could've quilted u in the throws by now....

[lesbiansforangusmcdonald]

Fig, this episode: “I don’t think I wanna be a bard anymore.”

Me, already planning out the set list for the junior year tour in my head: WHAT?!?

[yonpote]

fuck a j2 i do not care about this at all but i will say like, saying that shipping the actors who play brothers together is just like incest shipping is uh 😭😭😭 like it just isnt, and i know a lot of them are also wincest shippers so like fair this is a moot point but like they very much are not brothers in real life.

anyway it must be sad shipping a fauxcest pairing of a show that ended years ago that the actors were more than happy to finally be free from

[wlwaerith]

i may be alone here but i kind of like the datamined halsin and minthara ultimatum dialogue. i completely understand why that’s an unpopular opinion though, do not get me wrong. but i like the knee-jerk anger/defensiveness reaction, because i do feel it makes sense (even if it makes him look hypocritical, but i also really love when characters are hypocritical and self-contradicting) considering minthara’s role in what could have been the grove’s slaughter. back on the subject of hypocrisy, it also highlights bias; kagha is punished, yes, but it feels like a slap on the wrist compared to what he wants you to allow minthara to subject herself to. but i think it shows how, even though halsin tries to do right by everyone, it’s so much easier for him to cast judgement in anger & defensiveness on someone that he doesn’t know than someone he does, both of whom posed a massive threat to his grove.

[screamingwiththewolves]

Henry, dear, sweet child, this is an awful idea. DO NOT tell this woman to basically form her own Sinister Six.

[twinvenus]

best i can do for gaara bday today, had to do something with the sand siblings for it! ^_^ naruto got him a free bowl of ramen coupon so he can See the Light.

[warmcoals]

the absolute rapture of being a trans girl, ~For Me~ (i said it out loud dont get mad etc), is shedding every possible aspect of man-and-boyhood from my life. i will never use he/him pronouns. i will never ID as a boy or phemboy or girlyboy or boygirl. i will never need to humor an unfunny man again. i will never need to lie and say a man looks good ever again. i will never need to have physical intimacy, or emotional intimacy even, with any man ever again. i am a girl living for girls. more than that, i am a tranny living for trannies, tgirl 4 tgirl only until i die one way or another. we can share the same interests and tastes and desires and games and kinks and be in delicious harmony, if not perfect alignment. i do not need to contend with the other of men, ever again. no dads, no brothers, no boyfriends, no husbands. i am truly free as a freak and a girl. i recommend it

[faaun]

we sang in the aeroplane over the sea tgth ☆

[veganslenderman]

The scene where Carpenter and Faulkner discover the Wither Mark at Bellwethers except its Arin's LOOK WHAT WE'RE FUCKING DEALING WITH rant from Game Grumps.

[blackvalor666]

Gold Moon. 5x7inch ink/acrylic.

[rahabs]

the fact that you would defend the israeli government after they’ve murdered 30,000 innocents in the largest bombing campaign in modern history is literally despicable and borderline evil. if a genocide documented ad nauseam cannot make you cognizant of israel’s colonial and deeply racist regime, then literally nothing can and you are beyond reasoning with. actually incredible how multiple history degrees have clearly taught you nothing about how a genocide works — or perhaps more concerningly, they have, and you simply don’t care because the victims are palestinian. the fact that you would use those very history degrees to excuse israel’s genocide of palestinians is deeply disturbing and indicative of the rancid hypocrisy within western academia. history will exonerate the indigenous palestinians, and it will be unkind to those like you who defended and cheered on their annihilation.

It‘s so amazing to me that you actually believe this, and that you‘ve so wholeheartedly swallowed the propaganda Hamas (known for using their own civilians as human shields, known for paying their citizens extra for killing Jews) has been peddling. So I am going to paste here some points others have already made that I‘ve saved over the course of information-gathering, though I doubt you‘ll bother to read or learn, judging from your asinine little comments here.

1) Palestine Gaza is a genocidal nation. The goal of the Palestinian government in Gaza is literally to destroy and commit genocide against Israel and kill every Jew by every means possible. This is literally written in their founding charter. "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.

2) Palestine is an apartheid nation that has ethnically cleansed 100% of their Jews and stole their territory after 1948. There used to be tens of thousands of Jews living in the areas of Judea and Samaria, which was renamed to the West Bank by Jordan. However they've all been ethnically after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and 0 Jews are allowed to live in Palestine today. 3) Palestine is an authoritarian dictatorship both in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas won majority of the votes during an election in 2006, but the Palestinian president simply refused to recognize the results of the election and refused to hand power over to them. This resulted in Hamas siezing power in Gaza, executing hundreds of their political rivals, and they never held another election. Likewise, the leadership in the West Bank also refused to hold any elections and still continue to illegitimately cling to power. Abbas, the president of Palestine had a 4 year term which was supposed to end in 2009. He's still the leader today and has continued to postpone election after election. 4) Palestine supports the outright open murder of innocent civilians. I've already mentioned the charter of the Palestinian government in Gaza above where their goal is to eradicate Israel and genocide Israelis, but the Palestinian government in West Bank is just as horrible. There's the Palestinian Authority Matry Fund where they literally pay a salary / pension to any Palestinians who commmit terrorist attacks against Israelis, be it through stabbings, shootings or suicide bombings, and they've paid out billions so far. The Foundation for the Care of the Families of Martyrs pays monthly cash stipends to the families of Palestinians killed, injured, or imprisoned while carrying out violence against Israel.

5) Palestine is horribly corrupt oligarchy. Palestine receives billions from the USA and Europe in aid every single year. Whatever money isn't spent on paying literal terrorists, or on rockets to shoot at Israel ends up going to corrupt Palestinian leaders. Yasser Arafat, the first Palestinian leader, died a billionaire. Abbas the current President is worth $100 million. The Palestinian leaders in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk and Khaled Mashal have an estimated combined wealth of over $10 billion. Meanwhile the combined GDP of Gaza is only about $2.5 billion, meaning these 3 leaders wealth is equal to 4 years of Gaza's GDP. 6) Palestinians have caused wars and instability in every country that they've sought refuge in. In Jordan, Palestinains assasinated the Jordanian king in 1951, then attempted a coup of a the country in 1970. After they failed, they were expelled to Lebanon where they started a civil war with the Christian Maronites. This war lasted 15 years and killed several times more people than the entire Israel-Palestine war (150k died in Lebanon civil war vs 25k in Palestinian-Israeli wars). In Kuwait, the Palestinians supported Saddam as Iraq invaded Kuwait. In Egypt, they've been hit by several bombings by Palestinians. 7) There is no freedom of speech or equality in Palestine Gaza. No equality of sexes, no equality of races, and definitely no queer rights in the entirety of Palestine where you could be killed for the crime of being openly queer. [If you identify as a liberal, there is literally] no reason to support a country where majority of [your] friends would either have severely restricted rights, be treated like objects, or be thrown off a building just for existing.

Let me reiterate: Jews are indigenous to Israel. Jews have existed and lived in what we now call the Israel-Palestine region for thousands of years before the foundation of Islam, and even before the foundation of Christianity. In the game of “which Abrahamic religion came first?” Islam ranks dead last.

Israel as an identity as a people has existed for thousands of years and has been recorded as far back as the Iron Age on:

i) The Mesha Stele;

ii) The Tel Dan Stele;

iii) The Kurkh Monoliths; and (potentially)

iv) The Merneptah Stele.

While scholars have argued over the translations on the Merneptah Stele, the general consensus among historians, classicists, archaeologist, etc, is that it refers to the existence of Israel at the very least as a collective identity that existed at the time, and was called Israel.

They were eventually repeatedly forced out by other powers such as the Romans and many others, but that doesn’t change the fact that Jews had a continuous existence in Israel before being forced out by what people like you would normally call “colonising powers” were it not so contrary to your own ill-supported arguments. It also doesn’t change the fact that Jews, and Israel, existed before both Christianity and Islam, and long, long before Palestine.

So if your entire argument boils down to "who was here first" and the ideas of "colonialism" and "anti-colonialism" and "decolonisation", then I am telling you, Jews were there first. You could argue Canaanite groups like Moabites and Ammonites were there too, but Moabites and Ammonites don't exist as a continuous group anymore. No matter how you look at it, you are wrong, so let me parrot your horrible argument right back at you:

The fact that you would defend Hamas, a known organisation whose founding Charter literally calls for the annihilation of Jews, who have systematically purged Jews for years, who launched multiple attacks against innocent Jewish people (the music festival, the babies and the woman and the children slaughtered), the fact that there's a Palestinian Authority Matry Fund where they literally pay a salary / pension to any Palestinians who commit terrorist attacks against Israelis, be it through stabbings, shootings or suicide bombings, and they've paid out billions so far; the fact that you defend the existence of the Foundation for the Care of the Families of Martyrs which pays monthly cash stipends to the families of Palestinians killed, injured, or imprisoned while carrying out violence against Israel, etc... that you would defend this is "literally despicable" and not only outright evil, but ignorant to the nth degree.

If the continuous genocidal nature of Hamas against Israel cannot make you cognizant of Hamas' deeply racist, violence, and terrorist regime (to the point where none of the Muslim countries around them will take Palestinians in; even their fellow Muslim countries want nothing to do with them), then I'm not sure what to tell you. You say I am beyond reasoning, but from where I'm standing, your head is so far up your own ass that I don't even know if you're aware of anything that isn't the smell of your own shit.

It's actually incredible to me how you can ignore what multiple historians and scholars are saying because you want to cling to your idea that Hamas are just a bunch of "poor innocent brown people" who need help from the "evil white Israeli regime". Or perhaps, more "concerningly," that is just it: you hate Israel because you erroneously perceive them as white, and so therefore they must be evil. I don't know, but that is what a lot of anti-Israel sentiment seems to boil down to in the world of people like you.

The fact that you would excuse and ignore Hamas' outright horrific acts and ignore history is deeply disturbing and indicative of the rancid hypocrisy within the west, but particularly within western circles that claim to be "progressive", "liberal", and "leftist."

Hamas has said no to every ceasefire. Hamas has said no to every compromise Israel has offered even before October. If Hamas stops fighting, the war ends. If Israel stops, then Israel is annihilated.

History has already shown that Palestinians are not indigenous if we are playing the "who was there first" game with Israel and Palestine, you're just so ignorant that you will refuse to see the evidence right in front of you. You are the one cheering for the annihilation of an indigenous group, and the one history will frown upon is you.