These are my 9 favourite pieces from The Shortest Story so far. I’m so, so proud of what I’ve built with this project. It’s made me love writing fiction again.
13 stories narrated by Cecil Baldwin, voice of Welcome to Night Vale, who narrated the trailer
Incredible guest authors, including Robert Shearman (Doctor Who), Helen Marshall (Hair Side, Flesh Side) and Shawn Coss (Any Means Necessary, Cyanide and Happiness)
I’d love if you could check out the book or boost this post. You can also read an album of my 30 best stories on Imgur right now, including unreleased material! Thanks so, so much.
when your reaper boyfriend edits his corporeal form around being slightly taller than you but doesn’t account for heels (or: kravitz keeps a goof going long-term to screw with taako)
Yall there was an OC ask meme on my dashboard that I’m gonna do for my new gang. I initially wanted to post their application interviews but meh. I might still do it cause it’s very funny (to me) and it really introduces the kind of characters you think they’ll be.
The premise of the story is that the US military asks for volunteers to take part in an experimental and “borderline unethical” training in return for a bunch of fucking money paid monthly to their families. Only those are accepted who are physically expected to have a 50+% chance of surviving it, so from the hundreds of thousands, about a few hundred. The Group is one of the youngest applicants (since there’s no age limit). The experiment takes eight years so only the most desperate would really apply, and if the “cadets” choose to leave prematurely their families must repay all the money granted to them up until then. At the end of the eight years they are free to leave without any consequences.
Technically this training isn’t part of the story because the story really starts when of course they’re not fucking allowed to leave and they’re thrown into a submarine hurling towards an interdimensional gate-like stuff in the ocean and then consequentially landing on the other side.
It sounds sci-fi but it is also. Magic.
1: List five basic facts about your OC.
I’ll just describe them in five words. Jisoo: young, competitive, prone to self-destruct Tanner: way stronger than he thinks Kosma: hard shell contains needy baby Mark: grew up way too young Juri: fakes bravery, fakes happiness, sad Tahani: justdon’t talk to her Signe: doesn’t know anything, very dumb (also the POV character) (also her name is Sidney but she writes it as Signe and pronounces it as Signey for reasons)
2: Post a line of dialogue from your OC.
I’ll just post the dialogue lines I did come up with while outlining the premise.
Signe: “Are they going to drown us? Who was best at breath training, Kosma? Yeah you were, you kinky bitch.”
Signe: “Would you really give up what your life could be, for them?” Mark: “Eight years of what we were put through and you still don’t get it, you guys are my life.”
Mark: “You know what a lever arm is? Surely you use those sometimes on your… farm or whatever. To lift things ‘n’ shit.” Tanner: “I’ve heard of arms before.”
Signe (to a bully): “I’d say find someone your age to pick on but… I can’t see any other babies around here.”
Signe: (the oldest (18) to Jisoo, Kosma, and Tanner (who are all around 12/13 at this point) “So you three specifically. What’s your deal, why aren’t you guys in kindergarten?”
Kosma: “Don’t look at me, I’m just here to prove my parents wrong.” Tahani: “If you really hate them so much just say fuck you and leave.” Juri: “Is that what happened to you?” Tahani: “Yeah, which is why I know he should’ve done it a long time ago.”
Juri: “For the record I feel like we came together organically and you only brought in Colin cause you hate uneven numbers.”
Signe: “This is what Moore meant by saying there’s a way to not have to use violence or backtalk if we’re smart enough. People don’t mess with us because we’re a unit now.” Tahani: (looking at Juri who’s repeatedly slapping Kosma’s throat while he’s trying to eat, and Tanner and Colin who are throwing each other peas to catch in their mouths) “Yeah cause you lot are terrifying.”
3: Post a snippet from your writing that describes your OC.
See above.
4: Post a snippet from your writing in which another OC describes your OC.
I have a snippet where an OC describes other OC’s describing Signe, is that good? It’s their final evaluation where the cadets’ performance is assessed and they’re recommended to either join the squad or leave it. There’s no description in this dialogue cause I just wrote the speaking parts. I have very little outline done and this isn’t even the main story so… Signe’s in a room much like a police itnerrogation room with the Serious but Benevolent Squad Leader Moore.
“Miss Little…”
"Oh no, that voice.”
“How do I say this…”
"Gently and very quickly, somehow in the same time.”
You’ve ranked lowest in… so many tests… stamina, trauma, blood loss, repeated obedience, dehydration, psychological, pain, sensory deprivation, just… the lowest possible scores all across the board. In addition to this you’ve ranked historically low in sleep, breathing, hunger, intellectual training, and solitary confinement. You’re just…
"So bad in every way possible?”
“I don’t know how you haven’t given up like four months into this training. It baffles my whole team how you did all eight years and survived.”
"I guess being a stubborn, insufferable bitch is actually a positive feature in this case.”
“Is it though?”
"I have no idea, I’m grabbing at straws here, probably not.”
“I have never wanted to recommend not staying with the unit this much before.”
"You know you can just… not… talk about me like I’m the literal worst, you could’ve just said “Signe you’re bad at everything, I recommend you don’t stay”, that would’ve been way better.”
“Let me finish one goddamn sentence, god, Juri doesn’t talk this much.”
"Doesn’t she though?”
“Not during her goddamn evaluation, she doesn’t.”
"Right.”
“You’re the oldest in your group which might not mean a lot to you but it means a whole lot to your teammates. In our regular psychological evaluations we asked you all to name the person you respect the most. Most of your teammates named either Mark or you, and those who named Mark added that you are close behind or that sometimes when you step up to the challenge they really do respect you the most. Additionally, Tanner tried to say both your names at once so we couldn’t figure out who he really meant.”
"Oh my god, did it sound like a cute kitten sneezing?”
“Yes, it did, it was adorable, he refused to answer when we asked him to clarify.”
"Is there footage of it?”
“Signe, if you remember the questions we asked…”
"I really don’t.”
“…your teammates also named you when we asked them who they trust the most, who’s always there to take care of them, who gives their best effort in improving, and who they are most likely to share a secret with.”
"O…kay? Not Mark? He’s our superdude.”
“He came up mostly when it came to leadership, level-headedness, and morality. His qualities are very technical and calculating which is not a bad thing at all but could cause problems long-term if he doesn’t let himself be emotional from time to time. You on the other hand are the opposite of the spectrum. You’re everything bit the leader he is but on a more human level.”
"And that’s a bad thing?”
“Yes, because you failed all your frikkin’ tests, Signe!”
“So I take it I’m not allowed to stay?”
“Listen, at the end of these evaluations, all of which have been way shorter than yours by the way, I either recommend or don’t recommend that a cadet stays with the unit. As your contract states I’m legally required to let anybody stay if they choose to. With you I really have nothing to say. You leave, good for you. You stay, good for your teammates. That’s your decision to make. All I know is… you shouldn’t have come here.”
5: Describe your OC’s physical appearance.
Jisoo: kinda tall, muscular, big nose, big teeth, kinda comical-looking, smiley. Tanner: shorter, tan, kinda lean but very agile, big eyes. Kosma: extreme shortness, round face, olive skin with blond hair, blue eyes. Mark: dark skin, light hair that has no idea what way to be, tal, skinny and weak-looking but has a confident stride Juri: shorter, small eyes, big, big smile, long limbs, always moving, always Tahani: chubby tummy, round face, short hair covering her eyes, very unapproachable Signe: tall, slouches a lot, dark eyes, chubby cheeks, cheesy smile
6: Describe your OC’s love life.
They don’t got one, they’re kids when they meet and then they just got more important shit to do.
7: Describe your OC’s fashion sense.
They wear a dull uniform during the experiment but once they’re sent to [redacted] they actually make themselves a better uniform that’s both practical and stylish so they like to mix function and aesthetic.
8: Describe one of your OC’s bad habits.
Jisoo: won’t stop competing with everyone Tanner: is usually quite but when he snaps he snaps Kosma: overworking himself Mark: refuses to emotion Juri: what are boundaries? Tahani: refuses to people Signe: can’t mind her own business & has to step in to save everyone except she’s the weakest & dumbest creature on Earth so she always gets her ass kicked
9: Your OC is having a nightmare. What is it?
I’ll just paste the part of the application interview where they’re asked about their biggest fears.
What’s your biggest fear?
Cadet #72 (Dale, Tanner) “Fire.”
Cadet #128 (Ishigami, Juri) “My loved ones being in pain.”
Cadet #37 (Panagopoulous, Kosma) “Uh… dunno? I don’t like sudden loud noises, I guess.”
Cadet #65 (Little, Sidney) “Straight up death.”
Cadet #177 (Wang, Mark) “Being alone.”
Cadet #108 (Mihrabar, Tahani) “No way, you’ll just use it against me.”
Cadet #161 (Jisoo, Hwang) “Toads.”
10: You are conducting a ritual. What 5 items would you need to summon your OC?
A gel pen, a bottle of wine, brass knuckles, a toy knife (i can explain), and a beanie would probably summon all of them.
11: What does your OC want for their birthday?
Jisoo: their friends to have fun together. Tanner: to see his grandma Juri: to see her family Kosma: to see his family (suffer) Mark: a cake Tahani: to not have to be Signe: so much alcohol
12: What does your OC give another OC for their birthday?
They do get Tanner a cat once.
13: Describe your OC’s living situation.
They do live in a prison so…
14: What is one of your OC’s secrets?
Well, their backstories aren’t really revealed directly, they just sort of figure things out about each other.
Jisoo has deadbeat dad who signed her up for the experiment for the money he would get Tanner can’t read/write/count Kosma’s parents don’t love him (it’s more elaborate but that’s the gist of it) Mark went to juvie for attempted murder Juri has six younger siblings she has to take care of Tahani was kicked out of home and lived on the streets for years before she applied for the experiment Signe… well Signe signed up to the experiment, and this is one secret we do find out directly cause its plot-related, because her brother was in the military but was killed in action. Except two days after his funeral she received a phone call from him that said “don’t believe what they’re saying” with a very strange noise in the background.
15: Your OC is given the chance to go back in time. Where do they go and what do they do?
Before the experiment I think only a few of them would go back. Jisoo is too young to know what to do, Mark would probably not attempt murder and Signe would save her brother somehow, the others I think are fine. Maybe Juri would ask her parents not to have so many kids. After the experiment they’d only go back to not be tossed into an interdimensional oceanhole against their will.
16: If your OC could have any superpower, which would it be and why?
Umm they already have a superpower, it’s called friendship.
17: How does your OC do during the zombie apocalypse?
Dude they went through eight years of torture to become supersoldiers, they’re surviving and also saving the entire world. With the power of friendship.
18: What is your OC’s dream job?
Prior to the experiment. Jisoo – unicorn, Tanner – locksmith, Kosma – racecar driver, Mark – teacher, Juri – car mechanic, Tahani – mechanical engineer, Signe – no fucking idea my dude.
19: Your OC’s life is a musical. What’s the title of their big show-stopping song?
Well, dunno if these would suit a musical but…
Jisoo: Colony House – You & I Tanner: Amber Run – Amen Kosma: Ruelle – Take It All Mark: Welshly Arms – Legendary Juri: X Ambassadors – Joyful Tahani: Bishop Briggs – Hallowed Ground Signe: Never Gonna Give You Up, definitely, she’s doin’ it.
so. i think there’s a good chance this was a joke. i lost my mind laughing when i first got it. but also? this is exactly how men talk, so i’m gonna break it down seriously.
i made that post after dinner with my friend’s family. his dad, let’s call him john, was belittling his wife so she wasn’t talking much and he’d made a few jabs about his son’s painted nails so his son was kind of wilting. john’s a nice guy, smart guy, really likes me & thinks i’m smart. i was pretty much carrying all the emotional labor at that dinner–trying to make my friend and his mom feel comfortable while also engaging with john. we were making conversation about lots of things, it wasn’t a particularly controversial or heated discussion at really any point in time. again, john’s a cool guy–he’s liberal and progressive and knows that i’m a lesbian and all sorts of nice things. he works for a bigggg banking company–i don’t wanna say which one, but you’d know the name. we were talking about #metoo and he starts talking about how sexual harassment isn’t really an issue where he works.
three hours before he said this, a man in times square had grabbed my boob. at a restaurant i worked at, a rapist who worked there got my number off the scheduling app and would text me vile things while we were both working to make me uncomfortable. he’d also touch my ass every shift but always managed to pretend like it was an accident. it wasn’t. my best friend, who was also at dinner with us, worked at her moms law firm when she was 17, and the man across from her had a countdown on his whiteboard to the day she turned 18 and every day he would look at her as he changed the number. i’ve been sexually assaulted multiple times outside of these instances, and so has she.
but other men don’t see these things.
and this man looks at me, and tells me sexual harassment doesn’t happen, because he doesn’t see it. and here’s the thing: that’s not why i’m mad. i’m not mad because he didn’t know.
i’m mad because i know this man. he is my friend’s father, he is my father, he is my uncles, he is my professors, he is my cousins, and my bosses, and my colleagues. i know how you have to talk to these men. it’s a game. and you have to play along whether you want to or not, because they won’t hear a word you say if you don’t.
here’s how the game works: john talks about everything like he’s the authority on the matter, because he can’t get it through his brain that someone, especially someone who is not a man, could possibly know something he doesn’t. so john starts talking about things very confidently. and because nobody knows everything, he gets a lot of things wrong. things that i refuse to let him be wrong about. so if i want to change john’s mind, if i want him to hear my point of view, i have to speak to him in the only way he will listen. i have to be, above all, pleasant. john has been taught for years to laugh at a woman’s anger, so if any hint of indignation sneaks into my voice, he won’t take me seriously any more and i’ll lose him entirely. i have to smile and laugh a little and be charming. but i also have to be articulate. i have to make sure i sound intelligent or else he’ll dismiss me as a stupid teenage girl who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. but i also can’t sound too intelligent because if he starts feeling threatened by my intelligence he’ll get defensive. (sidenote! he has a tiny dick.) so it’s quite a complicated game but i’m good at it. in fact, i’m one of the best. so here i am, carefully navigating the best way to hold this man’s hand and babysit him as i give him a kindergarten level course on sexual assault in the workplace, while also not letting him realize that i’m having to condescend to him because his brain is as tiny as his dick, and can only handful little bits of new information spoonfed to him like applesauce. i have to make it sound like i think he is not only smart, but smarter than me. i have to scatter in little phrases like, “in my experience” or “i could be wrong” and constantly undermine myself, even when speaking on a topic i am incredibly well-versed in, because i have to suggest that i think he is smarter than me or else he won’t deem me worthy of his attention.
i’m good at it. i play the little fucking game and before i know it, i’ve got john here nodding along and acting like he agreed with what i’m saying all along, acting like he came up with it, acting like he DIDN’T totally contradict what i just told him minutes before. but since he didn’t come up with it, he’ll likely interrupt me before i even get to the end of my point and say something totally misinformed and now i’m trying to educate him on both of the things he got wrong but before i can even do that he’s interrupting me again and now there’s THREE things i’ve gotta teach this guy without him catching on to the fact that i’m teaching him.
now. here’s the best part about the game. it’s soul-shatteringly dehumanizing. to disregard your own trauma, your own emotion, your own incredibly valid anger that you have fought and fought and fought to believe you have a right to feel, to tone down your beliefs in order to make them more palatable to someone who is this deeply ignorant, to force yourself to giggle and be charming as you discuss the thing that has ripped you into shreds, to ignore how triggering it is to even breach this topic in conversation, to be complicit in making yourself small in order to get your point across, to look into the eyes of a man who has, unwittingly, because of his ignorance, enabled other men to engage in this same behavior–it turns a dinner conversation into a thing that is traumatizing in it’s own right.
and i feel obligated to put myself through this because of my privilege, because as an attractive, white twenty year old, i can hold this man’s attention better than a massive portion of the population, who he likely wouldn’t give the time of day to. i refuse to let him live his life unchallenged, so i do what i have to do to make myself heard.
and i feel the repercussions of this so strongly i dissociate more viciously than i have in weeks and lose all memory of a solid 3 hours of my life after this conversation.
and i come on here, and post: men are useless and exhausting. because i am angry at what men have done to me. at what they continue to do to me. at what i must do to myself in order to force them to wake up and realize what other men are doing to me and to please, for the love of god, MAKE IT STOP.
and i get this message from you, a dumbass who’s got his head shoved so far up his own asshole that it’s about to come back up through his esophagus, assuming you know what i’m talking about. assuming you know more than me about men and about my experiences with them, about why i made this post. assuming that because you’re not the scum of the fucking earth and because you do three good things, it somehow balances out the treatment i have received for years from men, and makes my anger towards them, and my hatred of them: unjust. and my post wasn’t even me being angry! it was me being exhausted!!!!! if i’m tired of men, why the fuck would you, “a male” deem it at all appropriate to come near me, to send me a message, to engage with me at all? leave me alone! you know nothing!
and as much as i thought this was a joke at first, the more i read the message the more i’m convinced that it was written by a man, because even a girl pretending to be a man as a joke wouldn’t manage to sound this fucking stupid. i have dozens of stories exactly like this over the course of at least 10 years of my life. i know more than you. and this isn’t FUCKING about you. if you weren’t useless and exhausting, you would have happily scrolled by and went on with your night. but by sending me this message you proved yourself to be IMPRESSIVELY: useless and exhausting. shut the fuck up for about 3-4 years. you might learn something. also, read men explain things to me by rebecca solnit. she says all this better than i do.
Anhedonia – not finding pleasure in things you normally take pleasure in – is a symptom of depression.
When depressed, you will also be reluctant to start things, and won’t find things appealing.
This sets up a nasty vicious cycle where ‘life feels bleak’ -> ‘nothing sounds fun’ -> do nothing -> don’t have fun -> ‘Hey I’m not having fun, life really is pretty bleak right now’ -> More depressed.
The way to break that cycle is to do things that you enjoy. Doing things solely for the sake of having fun is an important part of handling depression. Not only does it keep you from getting more depressed, but it can make you go ‘Hey I’m having a really nice day’ and give you bouncy energy to do productive things with.
I get so focused on all the things that need doing that I forget that when depressed, doing things solely because they’re fun is the practical thing to do if I want to get thing done.
There is a difference between procrastination and having trouble activating. If there’s a thing you need to do and you know you aren’t going to be able to do it now, do something fun, and afterwards you will have better odds of actually doing the thing.
If you find yourself in the situation in the picture, pick something that you are intellectually aware you would find fun if you were feeling better and start doing it.’ This means that you are focusing on something other than *sigh* and playing a game can make you feel productive, put ‘life is good!’ and ‘I can succeed at things!’ chemicals into a brain that is sorely in need of them.
A couple weeks ago when I couldn’t even find any interest in reading fanfic, I eventually managed to start playing a random RPG and felt much better a few hours later.
i certainly wasn’t expecting anything close to actual, halfway decent advice that might help some folks out when i threw this little Funne Picture out into the wild, but that’s nice. thank you. i’m not sure if i’ll ever break this little cycle for more than a few hours, but .. yeah man. it’s just a little nice to see folks trying to help other folks out on posts of mine instead of the usual terrible nonsense
Exactly what I needed right now.
Easy to parse version:
Anhedonia is a symptom of depression, it’s not finding enjoyment in things that once made you happy.
If you find yourself in this situation, pick something that you KNOW you would find fun or enjoyable.
When you’re depressed, the best thing to do is do things BECAUSE they’re fun, it’ll help motivate you more.
Pass Through Fire 