not-someone-who-matters

[not-someone-who-matters]

heres an idle battle animation based on that noelle sprite that was teased which i assume was supposed to be an angel???? i guess???????

tbh im not a big fan of this design but eyY whatever

[not-someone-who-matters]

Thinks about the fun gang and breaks down sobbing

[not-someone-who-matters]

They don't remember this.

What they have is patchwork, fragments. The dark under the trees. The chain or tail or string around her leg. The way they'd held onto her hand, tried to pull her up.

The way that, suddenly, there had been nothing to hold.

There had been nothing to hold with.

Their memories regain order and sense hours later, laying half-frozen in a snowbank as people yelled and rushed around them.

They had tilted their head, a little, and looked at their hand.

In the predawn light, it had looked gray.

—

There’s a shape their hand remembers.

They sketch a shape again and again, even though they can't even make out what it's meant to be. Their hand traces lines in the air, on loop. Even as they try to wash it clean, even as they try to will it to stop, the shape keeps coming back again and again.

The people they talk to after drawing ask them to explain what it is they're drawing, and they try.

The words never come.

They just keep sketching the same shape in the air.

—

There's a song their hand remembers.

They're at Noelle’s again, half-waiting for her mom to get home so they can talk about the latest phone call, half-hoping that she never comes by at all.

They try to play with her. They try to have fun the way they used to. But they keep circling back to what they know, what they did, the fragments in the dark, the duet that won't come because they��

Sometimes the piano helps.

It doesn't today.

As they sit in front of the keys, staring at them, their hand lifts. Presses four notes, twice over. Shifts a little deeper. Plays the sequence again, twice. Shifts back up. Repeats.

It's a little nice. It's like stimming. It at least works out some of the nervous energy.

But they don't know where the notes are from.

It's easy to keep playing them, at least, and so they sink into that for a little while.

—

There's a trick their hand remembers.

They lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, barely able to do anything else. They'd managed the insertion of the connection - her terms, and probably nicer than anything they thought to call it - a month ago, and every day and night since has been like this.

Their limbs heavy. Their mind empty. The world so distant.

“The connection is there. The other end is not,” she had said. “For now, it’s dormant. You’ll have to learn to work against it.”

And they manage enough - they eat, they go to school, they shower, they have basic conversations. Everything feels like they're pushing against a heavy, numbing fog, but they can learn to do that.

But tonight. Tonight they're tired, and they can't muster enough will to even properly roll onto their side.

With effort, they lift their hand to their chest, rest it over their hoodie. If they could just take it out, they think. They know - it can only be coaxed out with the Dark World’s power, and otherwise it's seated deep within them, but - but if they could just grab hold–

Their hand looks gray against the pale light of artificial stars.

It sinks in, and grips onto something, and pulls.

There's pain, burning, blinding, unbearable–but–but–

But the pain ebbs, and takes the fog with it, and they are themself again, with their hand clutched around something brilliant red.

They stare for a second, and then they break into disbelieving laughter.

(They go three days before the guilt makes them call her - but she doesn't sound disappointed. If anything, she's eager to put them back to use.)

(They wish they'd kept a secret.)

—

There's something they almost remember.

They stand on the street outside the school, still hazily numb from everything that had happened. Their thoughts are rushing, stumbling. They feel more awake than they have in months. They feel bone-deep exhaustion.

There's a tug from their chest, and they frown as they rummage through their pockets, checking what's there. Pencil, some sort of amorphous blob–

They feel a sting of sharp pain.

They lift the thing out of their pocket.

It's just a piece of glass, a jagged shard from a window or something. They look at it, tilting their head–

Through the glass, they see the street beneath their hand.

Like it isn't there at all.

They jolt, and the angle breaks. Just glass in their hand, nothing more.

They tuck it back into their pocket as quickly as they can.

They don't want to think about it any more.

—

They promised to remember this.

Despite that, it's still fragmented. The room picked out in shades of green. Someone telling them that copies were grayscale but colored in with care. A story, behind a tree, and a man.

They had said something, in the gap they knew would be forgotten by everyone.

Maybe it had been gratitude. Maybe it had been dismay. Maybe they had just asked why, what it meant, why he'd bothered, if it was theirs at all, if they'd lose it again or forget it or–

The man had only smiled, and pressed an egg into the palm of their hand.

Blue against eggshell white.

They remember those colors, when the rest fades.

[not-someone-who-matters]

Story from another world

[not-someone-who-matters]

Girl help im brainrotting about arena fighters!sbi again but with tommy being emduos secret little apprentice guy (emduo being the top two fighters of the arena) and tommy, upon starting his first fight, ends his opponent so quickly that everyone is like. Wait. What happened. What just happened

[not-someone-who-matters]

The Lady of Shalott is an 1842 Arthurian poem about a lady who is cursed to remain confined within an isolated tower, weaving on her loom. She is forbidden to look out her window, and is only able to see the world through the shadows that appear in her magic mirror. One day, however, she turns away from her work. This poem was also turned into a song by Loreena McKennit.

[not-someone-who-matters]

Feeling a lot of feelings about how Hadestown doesn't present the story as "Orpheus turned around and everything fell apart and there was nothing anyone could do to fix it" and instead presents a story that says "he turned around, he doubted, he failed, but if we keep telling his story maybe one day Orpheus won't" and it's not just about Orpheus as a single character, it's a bout every Orpheus, everyone who runs up against a system they can't change and fails and everyone who sees that failure and gets back up and says "maybe I can change it now" and tries again. That Orpheus failed isn't the takeaway of the story. The takeaway is that one day he might succeed.

[not-someone-who-matters]

Me at 4 am thinking of how in Hadestown the story is narrated as if Orpheus has failed and changed nothing even if "the walls have ears" because in the end the tale will repeat itself from beginning to end exactly the same again and again, but how in the original concept album Anaïs Mitchell wrote the show ends in Orpheus singing "What have I done? Mother, what have I done? / Squandered the gift that you gave me / Gambled with Hades and Hades won / And there's no song now that can save me. / Mother, I failed! Oh, Mother, I tried / And I fell like a fool would fall / And I left my love / On the other side / On the other side of the wall" which yes it's objectively true that Eurydice is on the either side but Anaïs says alternatively the last two lines were "There's a crack in the wall / It's a little bit wider / It's a little bit wider, that's all." and that would change everything because the next time the tale begins it will not begin from zero but with a wider crack and the new version of Orpheus will turn around again but the crack will have become even wider, and eventually the wall will fall, the kingdom will fall for a song. And Hermes might know this, hence his insisting on telling the tale again and again "as if it might turn out this time". And we might think that sentence was only present in an outdated version and in being eliminated from the show it was "corrected" to the idea that nothing changes, but in the pre-Broadway versions of Hadestown Persephone asks Hades "are we gonna try again?" Hades answers "it's almost spring, we'll try again next fall" but in the Broadway version (the most complete version) this line was corrected to "it's time for spring, we'll try again next fall", so no longer is it almost spring as in a moment that is arriving soon, but Hades is telling her the time is now for her to leave, and in the beginning of the show we are introduced to how one of the ways Hades has worsened the living conditions of people in the surface is by making Persephone come up late and going to get her early, so this sentence could mean Persephone won't be late this time, it's time and she can leave. Did Orpheus' song on Hades' love move him enough to, not only let the lovers try (as for the latest version of the text, it's no longer a trick, it's a test), but to start to restore the weather? Did Orpheus' song bring the world back into tune, a little bit?? Do they eventually accomplish it through repetition??? Should I just stop thinking about hopeful incorrect interpretations and go to sleep????

[not-someone-who-matters]

Are you ever typing something that your phone autocapitalizes and you go back and re-type it just to force uncapitalize it. Like no sorry mcdonalds doesn’t deserve that level of respect from me

[not-someone-who-matters]

Do not think for a moment that this admin is only going after trans folks. They are ultimately going after the whole LGBTQ community. They start small, like getting rid of a hotline option, then go BIG.

[not-someone-who-matters]

[not-someone-who-matters]

everybody give it up for female characters who are WEIRD and OFFPUTTING. maybe even LOUD and UNAFRAID TO TAKE UP SPACE. round of applause. NOW.

[not-someone-who-matters]

bonding with friends over your favourite fictional little guys

[not-someone-who-matters]

it's not easy being green

[not-someone-who-matters]

Cortana can actually go fuck itself it wants me to take all the FLAVOR out of my writing, you can pry my dashes and ellipses and fucking fragments out of my COLD DEAD HANDS you fucking AI motherfucker

[not-someone-who-matters]

NEVER GIVE UP

[not-someone-who-matters]

(◡‿◡✿)

(ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what you say ‘bout me”

(ʘ‿ʘ)ノ✿ “hold my flower”