Epsilon's Blog

Sex is not essential. You can live without it. Full stop.

Not having sex isn't shameful or a sign of failure. It also doesn't make anyone boring.

You are not entitled to having sex with anybody and nobody is entitled to having sex with you.

Sex is not what makes someone an adult.

Nobody's worth is defined by how much sex they have or don't have.

Sex is not equally important to everyone.

You can have fulfilling and happy relationships without sex.

You should only have sex on your own terms, not because you feel like you owe it to someone, or because you feel like you'd be incomplete without it.

Know your boundaries around sex and be firm about them. Know how to respect other people's boundaries.

The previous point also applies when it comes to discussing sex. If someone doesn't wanna talk about it or hear about it you have to back down.

Yes, we do have the right to make demands on public behavior. Of course we do. Have you never heard of laws and etiquette? I’m not allowed to grocery shop naked. You can’t rummage through my purse. I can’t have a work meeting in the middle of a movie theatre.

I remember when it was taboo simply to answer your cell phone in public. The person answering would apologize and try to go to a more private area. Then public calls were normalized. Then putting people on speaker. Then listening to music without headphones. Do you know how many times I have hiked up a mountain or driven to the beach, only to be met with someone blaring shitty top 40 music from their portable speaker, because Heaven forbid you go one hour without noise?

It was obnoxious when it was youtube.

It was obnoxious when it was music.

It was obnoxious when it was the radio. 

It was obnoxious when it was dudes wanting to talk to you instead of letting you just read your freaking book.

Do you want to be this guy? Because being obnoxious in shared spaces is how you become this guy. 

Barbarian: Well, [Barbarian] wants to prove that he's still a good person. To himself, mostly.

Ranger: Yeah, [Ranger] wants to prove herself capable. With her family, she's got a lot to measure up to.

Early in the playthrough, our paladin said he had no new magic items for Gale to consume. Due to a bug, this made Gale so upset that he left the party permanently. No big deal, right? Well, soon enough that same paladin gets the ability to summon Shovel the Quasit, whom he promptly named New Gale.

Good times so far. In our 8th episode we actually took New Gale with us to the underdark quests with the Duergar and the mines and such, and despite having poor attack options and seven hit points, he rolled very well and survived nearly every combat. The same cannot be said for the rest of us that session--we had numerous speech check errors and TPKs that meant we had to reload several save states. A convenient, in universe explanation? Well, a wizard did it. THE wizard did it. New Gale can send us back in time, I guess.

So we had fun and kept the bit going until, about 2 hours in, we face off with a bunch of magma mephits in the underforge. No big deal, except they explode when they die and two of them are surrounding New Gale. Our monk, not realizing that New Gale would take lethal fall damage if thrown like 30 feet away, threw New Gale like 30 feet away, killing him instantly. Such an amazing streak ended by friendly fire.

New Gale was too good a bit to let die so easily though. The very next session, we used a hireling mechanic to summon a gnome wizard to hang around our camp, who we decided was New Gale's reincarnation. We haven't taken him into battle onscreen, but we've kept the bit up so much that his time loop powers are actually canon to our party's made up story (check out episode 12 for that, I won't spoil it here). However, recently we realized that we can put this hireling gnome in the mirror that changes your appearance and/or name. We call him whatever we want in game. So now we have this fucking guy hanging around our camp all the time and I have to stop myself from howling with laughter every single time.

But this is completely different! And do you want to know why? Because, previous changes were consumer led. They came AFTER the technology had run its course, had viable alternatives, and didn’t force a majority of customers to adapt for profit. Also, Apple is lying. This isn’t innovation, it’s a purposeful manipulation of the market that makes physical ownership of content more difficult.

The Floppy Disk wasn’t just abandoned. It was replaced by CD-ROM in the 90s as a more portable & less expensive alternative. And even then, CDs had existed for more than a decade before computer manufacturers made the permanent switch in 2003. And despite the switch, the production of the floppy disks themselves continued until 2011. By the time floppy disks truly faded from production, most ppl didn’t even own one. And when CD-ROM became “obsolete,” they weren’t ripped from the market and even today it’s fairly easy to find readers that are cheap and/or included with desktops or laptops.

But here’s the thing? CD’s aren’t obsolete. Neither are DVDs, USB, and Ethernet and SDs. Not really. What is there to replace them? You could say cloud, streaming, etc. But those aren’t actually replacements, they are just different forms of consuming materials. And a majority of consumers will be inconvenienced without those things. Like how would you even connect a wired mechanical keyboard? That’s not adaptation, it’s inconveniencing consumers until they get used to it.

But it’s more than inconvenience. What all of these exclusions do is get rid of physical data. It slowly ostracizes consumers from the very concept of physical data and that is incredibly dangerous. All softwares, ad-ons, recordings, and medias being relegated to downloadable accessibility makes these things harder to pirate or share. It also encourages monopolies as it makes smaller, independent production and sharing much more difficult. It also makes the distribution of softwares tied to research & employment more easily controlled by corporations rather than people. And most of all, it takes away consumer control of the things that they use.

Like even PlayStation did this with the PS5? Do you really think not having a physical drive is an innovation? With physical games you can reuse, share, and save. I can play Spider-Man, give to my cousin, and then let any friend borrow it. And unless I bought the physical game online, neither google or Amazon can add that to their algorithmic perception of me. But without that…you have content strictly defined on individual basis and algorithms.

It’s just that all of the growing exclusions aren’t adapting. They are willful manipulations for the sake of changing how large scale consumers ingage with technology and the internet.

The catalyst from the theory comes from how uncertain he sounds when first introducing himself. The “uhhh……shrek” definitely sounds like something he kinda came up with on the spot. It’s even supported when he first introduces himself to Fiona, saying it in almost the same way.

But it’s a theory that seems to make sense. None of the signs or decorations in his swamp are marked with his name (unless you count the title card in the mud, but that’s probably not diagetic). There’s no record of his existence outside of simply “ogre”. And that’s all he’d ever really been to the world. The theme of him being seen as a monster is obviously seen throughout the movie quite a bit, but that can also be seen with how he’s addressed throughout the movie.

I took a look over the transcript for the point. Up until halfway through the movie, there are only two characters who say Shrek’s name. Shrek himself, once when introducing himself, and Donkey. The first time anyone else says his name is when he first saves Fiona and asks his name, still believing him to be Prince Charming. Of course, after finding how unorthodox he is and then learning he’s an ogre, she doesn’t refer to him by name at all until the next day after the Robin Hood encounter. At no point in the movie does anyone else say the word “Shrek”. Not even Lord Farquaad. Farquaad always refers to him as “the beast” or “this thing” or “the ogre”. And that’s part of the theme of how he is seen by the rest of the world. As far as he knows, he doesn’t have a name. He’s just…an ogre.

not one single character has worn an eyepatch in over 20 years of this 1,000+ chapter pirate manga

there's like… laser guns and cyborgs and CCTV but everyone's still using sailboats to get around (with square sails no less)

there are canonically three different kinds of furries

Luffy hangs around all day with the only person in the world who knows where the Death Star is, but he doesn't give a shit

Eiichiro Oda has spent more than half of his life so far writing and drawing One Piece. at age 22 he created his first ever manga series and it became the bestselling comic book in history and when it finally ends he can probably just retire

Oda planned One Piece would last about five years. This was in 1997

Oda just casually confirming his universe has SECRET ANCIENT MOON CIVILIZATIONS with ROBOT ARMIES and FUCKING SPACE PIRATES, and possibly ACTUAL ALIENS… in a fucking chapter cover story. And then never mentioning it again for 14 actual real-world years

eat a devil fruit. is it the one that makes you a godlike indestructible force of nature, or the one that makes you a rubber band who can't swim? welp

Sengoku is one of the most serious characters in the whole series, he runs the military, but he has a giant stupid afro and a pet goat that follows him everywhere and he can turn into a giant buddha with an even bigger afro

Chopper was just vibing as an animal and then one day he ate a weird fruit and woke up with self-awareness and hopes and dreams and anxiety and now he has a medical degree? the reindeer, he walks like a man

Dr. Hiliruk is basically one of those hippie moms who tries to cure measles with essential oils and shit but he's also one of the most heroic characters in the entire series

it's one of the goofiest wackiest manga out there but when you look closely the setting is actually a morally grey hellworld mostly run by a corrupt government built on secrets and lies which only exists to support cartoonishly evil aristocrats who live on a mountain beating slaves all day, and the rest is either lawless wastelands or controlled by 10 foot tall invincible psychopaths who could easily take over the rest of the world if they didn't all hate each other

the Celestial Dragons commit horrific atrocities every 0.001 seconds but they all dress like fucking idiots and have Dr. Seuss haircuts

there's a guy named Dragon who has dedicated his life to destroying them

Luffy meets people and goes "you're my friend now" and they have like no choice in the matter

Luffy: I'm not a hero! also Luffy: I will not rest until I crush this cruel tyrant who is taking food away from little kids

his grandpa is a world-famous war hero and his dad is trying to overthrow the entire government but Luffy doesn't even care

characters will show up and be like "I'm an 800-year-old time traveler from a lost period of history" and the story is like "that's neat. time for fifty pages of men crying"

Buggy the stupid fucking circus clown with blue hair and a flying penis, who spent his formative years with the literal greatest pirate in the entire world and yet somehow completely sucks shit, has more screen time than the main character's mentor and beloved elder brother combined. love it.

now that Jinbe has joined the crew Robin finally has another person with more than one brain cell to talk to

Brook became a global rockstar while being a skeleton and his fans just rolled with it

me as demeter

some lines (this was a joint effort of a bunch of greek-savvy 10/11 year olds):

athena: ‘im the goddess of wisdom but you don’t notice me telling everyone. i’m too smart for that’

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aphrodite: is zeus chasing some mortal woman again?

athena: no this time he and hera have gone for marriage counselling

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athena: we can ask hades to let them out of the underworld to help

aphrodite: he’ll never agree, he’s such a deadly bore (we made a fucking pun im so angry)

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demeter: hades wont pick up. he’s too busy torturing the dead in tartarus

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hades: i can’t undo the laws of death. just think of the paperwork.

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aphrodite: the humidity is messing up my hair. it’s getting all frizzy

athena: is that all you care about?

aphrodite: no, it’s also messing up my dress

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demeter: it’s so dark, and there aren’t any trees or flowers

hades: what do we need trees for, everybody’s dead

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paris: yeah, and i can shoot straight! isn’t that right, achilles?

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(hades enters)

paris: who are you? do we know you?

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achilles: im mighty achilles

odysseus: im wily odysseus

paris: and im hungry paris

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kronos: i really am awesome, aren’t i

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aeton: one wrong move and you’re history

odysseus: fool! we already are history!

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demeter: where are those mortals? i left them right there.