#a million little stories

[jamesrodayrodriguezpresents]

In the Season Five Finale of A Million Little Stories, DJ continues his conversation with actor/writer/director James Roday Rodriguez, talking about the Series Finale of A Million Little Things and James' man-crush on DJ. Or maybe it's DJ's man-crush on James. Somewhere there's a man-crush.

[sevenines]

i saw this tweet and found it interesting for two reasons. one is that some people base how good cartoon network would be to toh by how it treated su, and despite the fact that su’s treatment by the network was considered poor at the time, now its thought to be exceptionally good in comparison to modern shows.

two is how exactly su got impacted by a limited budget. a common criticism is how characters like connie, peridot, and lapis are left out of missions. but balancing a lot of characters is not only hard but also costly (extra animation, extra voices—it’s been revealed that the show is limited to a set number of characters per episode otherwise they’re over budget). animation mistakes are not uncommon since retakes cost extra. the entire reason the original show got cut short was due to loss of funding!

[canisalbus]

When did Machete realize he was gay? Was it only when he met Vasco, or was it earlier and he just repressed it?

If you asked him, he might admit that in retrospect he must've had a vague inkling earlier (thinking of all the times he let his gaze linger on a painting of some handsome nobleman a little longer. Which almost makes it like... a 16th century equivalent of having a secret fictional crush). But I think it probably would've been more of a detached, aesthetic attraction than anything he recognized as distinctly gay, bad and worth of repressing. It's not a sin to quietly appreciate art and the beauty of the human form.

I'd say Vasco, his best friend at the time, was most likely the first real person he had actual feelings for. The realization was so distressing he stayed in denial about the whole thing for a good while.

[navree]

"rhaenys could have ended the war by dracarysing all the greens right there" yes because a distant relation to the throne deciding to barbecue an anointed and publicly positively hailed king and his entire family who is well loved within the city and in multiple other parts of the country for the sake of the succession of a far-away princess no one was ever on board with who hasn't been seen by the populace in literal years, her psycho husband, her three obvious bastards, and two toddlers from the psycho husband would go over super well with westeros and especially in king's landing where scores of the still-cheering population were killed for no reason by that same dragon who would do the barbecuing, because when targaryens act unilaterally without thinking of how the people would react there's never any problem, which is why the storming of the dragonpit and robert's rebellion were actually just collective delusions dreamed up by readers who hate rhaenyra and not key parts of the story and house targaryen's history that directly contributed to their demise and are intrinsic to the plot

truly team black stans are made up of only the most genius and media literate amongst us

[bobosbillionsknives]

Concept sketch for a Knives planet gunsmoke figure set because I'm completely fucking insane and I'm losing my mind

[lucyshypemaster]

you will NEVER see anyone writing paragraphs after paragraphs hating on keefe like they do with sophie.

[post-it-notes7]

So… does Mir Authur know about the whole entire Mir Falspar passing out situation ?

He's heard.

[yume-fanfare]

opening night!

(1 2 3 4)

[jamesrodayrodriguezpresents]

Actor/Writer/Director James Roday Rodriguez sits down with DJ to talk about co-writing the series finale of A Million Little Things together. Hear these two friends talk about a five year collaboration that culminated in this very special episode. And a fart joke.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Also on the Eddie’s moustache and symbolism train - there is a short story called ‘the moustache’ by Robert Cormier (which I studied at A Level in English literature!) which is about a 17 year old boy trying to look older and grow up too fast - to conform to societies expectations of when a boy becomes a man.

He also goes to visit his grandmother who mistakes him for her dead husband - his grandfather (she has dementia). He goes along with it and puts his own feelings aside. The moustache in question in the story is a symbol of adolescence and growing up - of growing up too fast and of forgiveness. At the end of the story he shaves off the moustache as a symbol of letting go of the past, moving into adulthood and accepting who he is.

It’s so fitting for Eddie - the idea of him having to grow up to fast - being seen as an adult and as a man, of conforming to other peoples expectations and do what is expected. Then ultimately embracing who he truly is and shaving off the moustache as a symbol of that and as a symbol of not conforming to society because it’s expected!

[lunar-years]

obviously Jamie not being in season 4 would suck mostly because I simply want Jamie to be there and to get more of his story and get to enjoy more interactions between Jamie and the other characters. At the end of the day though, I can just not watch s4, which I'm perfectly okay with.

what sucks EVEN MORE to me, and is far harder to avoid, is that not having Jamie in the show totally changes the *canon* of the character in a way that will inevitably bleed over into fan spaces, regardless of whether or not I'm actively watching. However they write him out (I assume it would just be having him go to another team) becomes the new "Jamie Tartt canon." And that small thing totally changes his story and we don't even get to see it play out! When i was perfectly happy playing in my sandbox of a million equally valid possibilities.

[moomeecore]

spent a good portion of the last few days babysitting my little cousins who are between the ages of 0 and 6 (theres 4 of them but i wasnt with all of them the whole time), and im just thinking like. i think people overdramatize how "annoying" kids are. like i rarley get annoyed with small children. teenagers, absolutley - but little kids? it kind of befuddles me how people can "hate little kids"when they are so sweet and well intentioned and devoid of negative intent. like its so hard to get mad at someone who is just a little guy that is so in awe of the world and everything in it. like ? yeah sometimes its annoying when theyre loud, but not more annoying than when adults and teens are loud. honestly. its often less annoying. again, hard to get mad at small children when they are so well intentioned and so unaware of so many things. they have such a bare bones concept of what is causing issues for other people...and the great thing is if you explain it to them theyre a lot more receptive to it than adults tend to be. as someone with severe auditory sensory issues, im well experienced with asking adults to stop doing things that are making noises that are causing me intense physical pain, and they tend to get up in arms about it. they have an entitlement that children honestly dont. a lot of people think of children as entitled, but when i tell my 6 year old cousin "hey, could you please stop kicking the wall, that makes my headaches worse, and that makes me sad" or "could we take a break from listening to music, im starting to feel overwhelmed" or something like that, they either do the thing i asked or they dont but they just politley ignore me about it instead of getting defensive and angry and insulting me. and if the second thing happens you can just go to plan b, which is finding something that they like, and drawing their attention to that, so they stop doing the thing that was annoying. i think a lot of people who think all children are entitled and annoying maybe do too much yelling at children and not enough talking politley to them and explaining why they want them to do certain things. it does wonders to just tell a child, "please stop, thats making me sad." or "i know youre having fun, but can we do a different activity for a little while?". i think theyre more receptive to this sort of thing than adults because theyre so early in the process of "figuring out how the world works" that they are openly accepting of the idea that they sometimes need to learn new things! they dont feel threatened by the idea that theyre in the wrong, unless you make them, by being mean to them about it. and so if you just dont be mean to them about it, it works out in the end.

[purble-turble]

Hello hello friends, I haven’t posted any drawings in awhile, and I have been working on the next chapter of my time travel fanfic, so here have some Demon King Red sketches :3c

[couchtaro]

Do you get together with your friends once a week to imagine best friends you made up holding and getting held in desperation and terror as one of them rapidly turns to stone, the other flooding her with his literal life force, which manifests as a visceral compulsion to survive, in the hopes that it will somehow help her resist, offering “the closest thing to a prayer he has” as he begs his warlock patron to do anything at all, telling said patron “you don’t know her, but she’s everything” and pleading for her to live while watching her literal actual light gradually extinguish as the petrification overtakes her, all the while she is using what little mobility she still has to hurl lasers at the monsters attacking their friends who are defending them so he can focus his energy on saving her. Or are you normal

@justabitscrewy used every single one of her turns in a session-long combat to hold Phaela and RP her guts out and like. My word. I have to lay down. Let them hug. They’re goin thru it

ID and slightly more context below the cut

Image 1: a roughly sketched digital drawing of two D&D characters. Izen, a drider, is shown in his form of dread, a defensive state designed to frighten off attackers. In this form his face is bare skull, with four pairs of hollow eye sockets and purple mandibles on either side of his jaw. Tears run down the stark bone of his face. He is wearing the bracers that Phaela decorated for him by wrapping them in ribbon. With both hands, he holds Phaela’s face. She is a tiefling woman who looks up at him with wide eyes. Izen’s prized possession, a talisman secured by a ring of straps, is wrapped around her shoulders. Her chin is tilted up as if the stone spreading up her body is a rising tide she is trying to stay afloat in. She is petrified up to her neck with only her head and extended left arm free. Both are suffused by a starry blue glow, which is no longer present in the dull stone overtaking her. She holds starlight in her free hand that she has been trying to defend them with. Her expression is a mixture of desperation, determination, fear, and guilt.

Images 2 and 3: a roughly sketched comic. 1) Izen faces us. Phaela wraps her arms around him with her back to us, her head pressed into his chest and shoulders hunched. His hands rest on her back. 2) Izen bends down to hug Phaela properly, wrapping his arms around her and resting his head on her shoulder. His pedipalps also wrap around her for extra huggage. 3) Izen straightens and lifts Phaela up off the ground, his pedipalps forming a sort of platform that she sits on. 4) Phaela curls into Izen like a child, tail hanging limply down. One of his hands securely circles her back, the other rests on the back of her neck. He rests his head on her shoulder and one of his spider legs comes forward to hold her as well. Maximizing points of contact here. 5) Phaela wildshapes into a cat just to get super extra held. She is nestled in his arms, tucked under his chin, being gently stroked. Her face is still not visible.

End image ID.

[hell0mega]

guy wakes up in a place he recognizes but doesn't know why or how he got there. he's a bit confused but he lives out the next few hours just like he normally would, just a bit dazed. but once he goes to sleep, it immediately restarts back to where he woke up.

he realizes this is a time loop... but something is different about it.

he realizes pretty quickly that this is some sort of dreamscape. it's a time loop, but for some reason, things around him do change, and he can pretty easily change things too just by thinking of them, like a lucid dream. but he always wakes up in media res once it gets to some sort of end point, and no one else around him remembers previous loops.

as he's trying to figure out what the goal is to end the loop, he's suddenly thrown for a loop when he's attacked and killed by someone he's never seen before. he wakes back up, shaken, but at least it was something new and out of his control.

he starts to go about as he had been but is killed again. faster and faster, sooner and sooner after he wakes up, he's killed by increasingly horrifying ways, all because of this other dude. finally, it stops when he manages to get a word in to the other guy before he's killed. turns out this guy is also in the time loop, and our guy was the first thing he saw that was different. thinking he was the test, or had something to do with it, he attacked him. his time was reset, so he knew he was onto something, hence the repeat killings. he was obviously taking this a lot harder than the first guy.

they decided to work together and figure out a way to stop the loop. they could both affect things with their lucidity and they tested what they could do. they could do a lot, though none of it seemed to matter. if one of them died, or got to some sort of "end point," they'd both reset. they slowly stopped really trying to get out and started just enjoying their time. they imagined things they'd always wanted to experience or see, and it would happen. it was fun.

eventually, they started noticing a certain girl was around more than any other person. she didn't seem to also be in a time loop, but she wouldnt completely forget who they were with each reset, either. they decided to befriend her and bring her along because it was nice to have company after all this time. she enjoyed the experiences they were conjuring but didn't find it incredibly impossible like a real life person would at seeing what was essentially magic. typical dream-based character acceptance behavior.

at one point, they're sitting on the pavement of a parking lot watching the sunset they thought up of, just talking casually. guy one notices that the sunset starts moving backward and forward in time, rhythmically, preventing the sun from setting. things would "escape" their control sometimes, but he realized the sun was going up and down at the same rhythm that the girl was rocking back and forth. she simply looked upon it in calm awe, not acknowledging that she may be influencing it. before guy one could say anything, guy two reached past him and shot her in the head.

time did not reset.

things went on, as much as it does in a dreamscape time loop, and they had settled into some kind of pattern of normalcy. most days they didn't even talk about trying to get out of there. they were able to carve some comfort out of their situation.

eventually, guy two runs up to guy one with the girl. he's excited and says he's thought of another thing to try to get them out. he says they just need to get into a truck and drive backwards really fast. confused, guy one asks why he thinks this would work at all. guy two says he has no idea. he just knows it'll work. he has a feeling.

so they go to an open nature area with a long road and conjure up a pickup truck. guy two is driving, with guy one in the passenger seat and the girl in the small backseat. guy two revs up and barrels backwards, whooping and celebrating the stunt, saying they're getting out of here.

guy one sees the trees whip by. they go over a bridge crossing a lake. the sky is bright with sun. he looks at guy two. his eyes are wild, his mouth in a gruesome open smile as he hollers. the girl in the backseat simply looked on in ignorant bliss.

guy one knew then.

he opened his door and jumped out, tucking and rolling. as he did, he thought about the truck barreling backwards off a cliff. when he stopped and got up, he saw just that. time slowed as the truck lost traction with the road and started to soar. guy two's face fell as he saw guy one standing there, looking down at them from the edge, face solemn. a look of shocked realization spread across his face as he descended towards the ground below.

then i woke up with a splitting headache. so. i guess i escaped the time loop???

[drunkenlion]

Okay if I got a dollar every time I hyperfixate on a plot with two (twin)brothers who suffered immense psychological trauma in childhood, hence older brother became a psychopathic menace with his own goals (destroying humanity) , who’s an introvert and enjoys art; and more sensible and empathetic depressed younger brother who copes and hides his depression by humour and tries to save everyone and stop his brother, then trying to bring him to redemption.. I would have two dollars.