March🎈 and April🌼 works from my illustration fanbook “A year at Dawn Winery”.
There's an EU initiative going on right now that essentially boils down to wanting to force videogame publishers with paid games and/or games with paid elements such as DLC, expansions and microtransactions to leave said games in a playable state after they end support, or in simpler terms, make them stop killing games.
A "playable state" would be something like an offline mode for previously always online titles, or the ability for people to host their own servers where reasonably possible just to name some examples.
I don't think I need to tell anyone that having something you paid for being taken from you is bad, which is a thing that routinely happens with live service and other always online games with a notable recent example being The Crew which is now permanently unplayable.
Any EU citizen is eligible to sign the initiative, but only once and if you mess up that's it. You can find it here. (https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en)
Even if you're not European or you signed it already, you can share this initiative with anyone who is, even if they don't care about videogames specifically because this needs a million signatures and there is different thresholds that need to be met for each EU country for their votes to even count and could also be a precedent for other similar practices like when Sony removed a bunch of Discovery TV content people paid for.
the group chat when i ask whos available to hang out next week
Smite me, Crowley thinks one day, about three or four days into the Beginning of the World. You cast me out, why not just finish it off?
He feels rather daring about it, especially when God doesn’t answer. Puts a bit of a swagger in his slither, or so he tries to tell himself.
If he’s being honest with himself (which he hardly ever is), it’s not the the daring of standing up to someone, but the daring of standing at the edge of a cliff with a backpack that may or may not contain a parachute and opening your mouth to invite a person who may or may not be standing behind you to give you a good hard shove. It is exhilarating. It is terrifying.
It quickly goes downhill from there.
It becomes a silent litany over the next few days. He tries to provoke Her, mostly by thinking a lot of annoying questions as loudly as he can, because that worked the first time. It doesn’t work now. He might as well be alone with his thoughts. He tries new things – he dunks ducks underwater, he convinces one particularly nimble mosquito to buzz right around Adam’s left ear for four hours straight, he uproots plants here and there. Smite me, he thinks. I’m meddling. I’m putting my sticky fingers all over this lovely thing you made. Smite me.
Smite me. I’ll make them touch that thing you said not to touch. I’ll do it. Don’t think I won’t, because I will. And he does, to boot. Adam and Eve eat the apple, and he turns his back for two seconds and they get kicked out. He’s furious – God is apparently paying attention, just not to him. He’s going to have to escalate things, and he looks around for something that might be more precious to Her than a bloody tree.
Smite me, he taunts. Smite me down. Look how evil I am, oooooh, I’m talking to this angel on the wall, I might tempt him if you’re not careful, God. COME ON, YOU COWARD, DO IT.
He doesn’t hear Her reply. He hasn’t heard any of Her replies, and in any case he’s very busy talking to the angel about that flaming sword, but nevertheless She answers: Smiting, is it? Well, if you insist.
The angel mumbles, almost too quiet to hear, “I gave it away,” and Crowley is… poleaxed. Utterly poleaxed, and more than a little impressed, and so delighted that he entirely forgets his other, silent conversation.
“You what?”
“I gave it away!” cries the angel.
There, God says, infinitely satisfied with Herself: There. You’re smitten.
(edit: ok i put it on AO3)
is he talking about his kids or the justice league? probably both
og text post
good riddance live