#FOR THE BETTER PART OF A DECADE-

[synthwavecryptid]

Hey babes, c’mere for a sec, I’m gonna hold your hand while I say something we both need to hear

It’s okay, and encouraged even, to make and create things that (maybe) only you’ll like. You need to feed the creativity, appeal to your id in a way that literally no one else can. Allow yourself to be a little self indulgent without expectation, especially in this hellscape world.

And also, you’re allowed to be sad if, in sharing that work, it doesn’t receive good feedback, or even little to none. It can feel very personal, especially with things close to heart like that. It doesn’t make you a bad, selfish, or arrogant person. Just remember that social media nowadays is unkind to artists for a variety of reasons, and don’t let yourself get caught up in the numbers game. Lots of likes+reblogs+shares etc. ≠ worth, don’t chase that rabbit.

I know there’s no high like validation, and that it’s hard to create when it feels like presenting to a void, but you’ve gotta create for you at the end of the day. Create for kid you, for teenage you, for the you who hasn’t shown up yet. Don’t let the internet, other people, or the world take that from you.

Keep doing what you want to do, not what you think will be popular or well-received. There’s folks out there who will love it, sometimes it takes time for them to find it.

Anyways. Love u have a good day

[holy-reference-in-a-username]

introducing bing and also larry. wahoo

in my version larry is bings nephew. bings (significantly older) sister heard hes a scientist now and was like "oh my darling larry you should go ask your uncle for an internship!!"

[finalgirlminamurray]

i know people who are into horror talk about this all the time but the experience of being a kid and reading descriptions of and seeing ads for horror movies without actually being able to watch them and imagining what the film must be like in your head is truly unmatched. i think for a lot of us we're always going to be subconsciously chasing the high of what we imagined those super scary movies for grown-ups to be based on what little we knew about them, no matter how good or effective the actual movies turn out to be once we finally get a chance to watch them

i remember when i was 10 and insidious had just come out and i was reading a review of it in entertainment weekly (a magazine my parents got but allowed me to read and i felt very sophisticated reading discussions of adult media i would rarely even have an interest in watching myself) and they made it sound soooo cool and scary and exciting and i was like i HAVE to see this movie. not now of course because it's rated r and i am a mere child who should not be watching such things. but when i'm old enough (it's not even r it's pg-13). i built this movie up for myself so much based on a brief review that only mentioned a few of the scary things in it. anyway then like 9 years later i see insidious is on netflix and i'm like oh hey it's that movie i really wanted to see when i was 10. i guess i'm old enough now. and i watched it and it was fine. like it was alright, pretty decent as far as 2010s haunted house movies go. it might not have helped that i'd recently watched poltergeist for the first time and my impression of insidious was largely "this is just poltergeist but not as good", but it was okay. nothing like what i'd imagined as a kid though

i only have dim memories of our local blockbuster being open (it closed down around the same time, when i was maybe 10-11 years old) but i still got to have the formative experience of being very young and wandering into the r-rated section and pulling out dvd covers to marvel at the imagery. at the time it was probably mostly shitty cgi-laden 2000s horror but not like that mattered, it was still my introduction to movie covers that evoke a terrifying experience that is probably much better than the actual movie. (could not tell you any specifics, i was really little.) similarly, though, another ew issue i saw as a kid had some retrospective of various creature features (maybe for a jaws anniversary?) and i was googling all these very evocative posters and delighting myself with the imagined horrors within based on the brief plot summary you'd get from the first part of the wikipedia article, and it was for like. lake placid and deep blue sea

of course i like being able to actually watch whatever i want now, but i do sometimes miss those days of allowing movie marketing to work on me.

[sheriffofmagic]

im so fucking sad man. polygon started as a labor of love and that energy was what made people resonate with it for years and years even with vox trying their best to strangle all the life out of it!!

this didnt come out of nowhere but at the same time its still ridiculous to me. the yt channel still pulls views, articles still go viral on a semi-regular basis, i mean clayton and simone WON AN AWARD earlier this year for the shit they do. if they cant make it in this industry then who can?

it sucks. i absolutely loved the stuff polygon produced for YEARS. gill and gilbert, monster factory, awful squad, overboard, game ogre, unraveled, video game theatre, please retweet, peacecraft are all series i still go back to all the time and thats only the tip of the iceberg. so many of my favorite guides and thinkpieces came from the incredibly talented staff of this silly little gaming site.

i made some of my best friends in the world because i decided to start blogging about polygon, because we bonded over loving pat gill. its just so sad to see this thing that changed my life get blown up because of corporate greed and its ever-growing disdain for art and the people that make it

im glad i was here. im so happy to have been part of this community and i will continue to be part of it. polygon (or more specifically the people who made polygon what it is) changed my life. thank you <3

[sliipperypeople]

Alan Cumming shot by Sam Waxman for Nasty Pig, 2025.

[lobotomy-lady]

U have a lot of bravado on here. Is it to make up 4 the fact that when you tell ppl about ur beliefs irl they look at you like a maniac they hate and you're too much of a pussy to handle it?

a truly colossal crashout taking place in my inbox rn. all of these are from the same anon, sent one after another in the span of a few mins. i guess this is what rejecting ones true self & reality in general does to a person's psyche. sad!

[bishopsbelova]

Dominick Carisi Jr Husband + Father

[finelythreadedsky]

 On one level the book is about the life of a woman who is hardly more than a token in a great epic poem, on another it’s about how history and context shape how we are seen, and the brief moment there is to act between the inescapable past and the unknowable future. Perhaps to write Lavinia Le Guin had to live long enough to see her own early books read in a different context from the one where they were written, and to think about what that means.

-Jo Walton

[tenderjock]

BUFFY BROKE UP THE COVEN (but make it gay) ->

in which DARLA is the vampire cursed with a soul who falls in love with the slayer; and DRUSILLA is the monster who remakes herself in order to earn a chance at buffy summers' love.

insp | insp

[mixmangosmangoverse]

Hawaii Part II has begun to take over my brain

[swordscleric]

I think as a result of their indecision, general dithering on every possible decision and inability to provide a single sliver of rationale behind the actions they have taken, I personally don't think we can judge Bell's Hells on whether or not their decisions are moral or not. Have they wishy-washily and passively avoided every hard question that could have been asked of them? Yes; but that speaks to a lack of interesting ideas and a lack of curiosity on their collective behalf in dealing with the scenarios set before them. I think if we judge them on anything it is the consequences of their actions (or inaction). Realistically, I reckon (depending on how releasing Predathos goes) they will be treated in a similar way to how someone like Vespin Chloras was treated by history - a damned fool whose actions lead to the annihilation of civilisations, the destruction of millions of lives and as such has been (rightfully!) condemned by Exandrian history as one of its greatest villains. Our softening of our view as a fandom on Vespin comes from his editing of Zerxus' pact to save the world from the rage of the Primordials. I think his actions, typical of the Age of Arcanum, echo Ludinus' fatal ideological folly in assuming that they would lead to prosperity due to a change in the divine structures of Exandria; Bell's Hells, having followed Ludinus' plan to the letter, now risk becoming as big of villains as Vespin Chloras for even worse reasons - a total lack of imagination and a deep unwillingness to engage with any hard question that would force them to face their lack of interiority as a party.

[kirkwallguy]

i agree with your takes on dragon age's relationship with queer content a lot. a straight female inquisitor (bonus point if elf) gets the most romance options, zevran and leliana's romance feels secondary *by narrative* compared to romances of characters who's a warden/king alistair and morrigan, sebastian being bisexual being a cut content*

* i just don't get it why the templar boys always got to be straight. like why can't men engage with their romances and experience this narrative when chantry and religion is so important for the story of these games? after all romance adds a different perspective for all characters.

here we have veilguard, the pansexual crew, and well... the romance content is the weakest in franchise

and i'm not saying queer romances were bad btw!! its just that i wish people who wants to play mlm or wlw get to see such perspectives in the story or these characters' stories too. like a male warden romancing alistair and all the juicy stuff that comes with it (the hurt or angst or the complications. are you sparing loghain? did you just marry the love of your life off to his sister-in-law for the future of your beloved country? did he become a drunkard visiting bars after bars because of the decisions you made even tough you were intimate?)

no exactly! i do tend to want to give them some slack given they're very Of Their Time (for a 2009 game even including bisexual options was scandalous, and dorian's bare bones coming out narrative was pretty standard for 2013 tv shows / rare in aaa games) but it annoys me when people act like they're these flawless beacons of queer rep that you can't criticise just because we should be happy with being given anything at all. even if you don't count seb, 1/2 of the games pretty much require you to play an f/m relationship in order to experience a narratively relevant relationship. i find dai more insidious tbh because like... sure, don't make solas bi for whatever reasons you want to give. but cass and blackwall? there's 0 reason for them to be straight lol. (especially the bait and switch where you're allowed to flirt with cass as a woman for AGES before she turns you down despite characters like cullen shutting you down on the first flirt. it's funny when you do it intentionally but just feels cruel otherwise?) at least leliana and zevran feel like they're doing the most they were allowed to do

a gay or bisexual chantry/templar character who struggles with their sexuality would be SO interesting. honestly it would require more introspection about thedas' attitude towards sexuality than da has ever done - i feel like they could have done a fun subplot with this in da2 honestly.

and the thing about the dav characters is... they went to great lengths to make sure they avoided the playersexual allegations, multiple characters had a past where they dated people of various genders, taash having a preference for women was mentioned (in the weirdest way possible) but i still... don't know how they feel about their sexuality at all? neve is a tevinter mage, did her liking women play a part in her seeing through the issues with the system? does bellara have any lingering feelings about irelin at all? did harding realise she didn't have to be straight when she joined the inquisition and met people outside of her small ferelden town? (potential extra dialogue for an f/f romancing inquisitor???) it doesn't need to be a big Thing, but just a one-off dialogue during romance (davrin m/m exclusive dialogue on your date: "the first time i brought a man to meet my uncle i was so nervous etc etc") or a comment during a banter. it just establishes a little bit more about the characters and stops them feeling so flat... then again ig that's an issue with the whole game LOL.

[disenchanteds]

not to be a stereotypically angsty teenager who listens to my chemical romance but there is unfortunately a knot of anger in me and it won't go away and the fuck of it all is that I know I can make it go away someday and I know what's causing it but I am. stuck with it

[butchlifeguard]

transmisogyny is genuinely brain poison. my parents can't watch a women's sporting event without some dumbfuck joke about how a trans woman would dominate, can't watch a men's sporting event without some dumbfuck joke about how if one of the men transitioned he would dominate in women's sports, can't watch a para sporting event without joking about how if trans women can compete with cis women, abled people should be able to compete with disabled people. like i hope this post does not reach any transphobes for my own sanity but if you do this know that the people around you resent yr bullshit. even the people that don't say anything usually just fear the power you hold over them and what the consequences for standing up for trans women would be

[chasing-stardust-22]

Dream's stage presence during the TWWTH tour was great, and frankly a lot more than I expected from a guy with little to no experience with live performances. I had no doubt he'd be good at it, but he truly blew me away. And the fact he was able to pull it off so soon after a major surgery that left him unable to walk on his own? Absolutely incredible

I really hope he decides to do another tour in the future, it would be awesome to see how well he could command an audience now that he has a better idea of what he's doing/doesn't have to rehearse through a recovery period

[tenspontaneite]

Me when default rain world keyboard controls

(I have since remapped)