unitedstates0fdakota - Tumblr blog

unitedstates0fdakota · 7 hours

Text

It was!!!! Just looked for it, it’s “ponies” by Kij Johnson

I'm collecting a list of Short Stories That Fucked Us Up As Children. reblog and tell me what I'm missing.

here's the list so far:

the yellow wallpaper

all in a summer day

fever dream

the lottery

hey come on out

by the waters of Babylon

the most dangerous game

flowers for Algernon

a good man is hard to find

skin

to build a fire

silent snow secret snow

bartleby the scrivener

i have no mouth and I must scream

harrison bergeron

lamb to the slaughter

the cask of amontillado

the telltale heart

the vampyre

where did you come from, where did you go

the monkey's paw

I'll add a poll in case it helps haha

3K notes · View notes

unitedstates0fdakota · 9 hours

Text

I love A Rose for Emily!!! I ended up writing a paper about her relationship with her father and how that impacted the rest of the story, but that was when I was 18 so very sorry to the younger fellas who finished that going “what” 😭

Harrison Bergeron definitely fucked me up as a 7th grader who got her hands on that on pure accident. Loved how it was worded, just was jarring to little ol me. But the big one I read in 7th grade was flowers for algernon

So I was an autistic kid who liked to read so I had finished my required reading like it was nothing, and my 7th grade English teacher was like “hey you’re a mentally ill child i think you should read this book” and she gave me flowers for algernon and I was like “swag ok” and like i think she hated my ass cuz what the fuck. Anyway that was my asexual awakening cuz towards the end of the book (gonna try avoiding major spoilers here) there’s a scene where (iirc, cuz I read this in 7th grade) he’s looking at this girl showering until she closes the blinds, and my 7th grade brain was like “oh, at this point in the book, this makes perfect sense, because sex is weird and not something people usually think about, and if they do it’s also weird, as evidenced by the rest of this book. This is a normal thing to think that isn’t concerning or abnormal at all.” And then my freshman year of high school I kinda figured that one out sorry fellas. In my defense I was in middle school.

Also, not sure if this one is on the list, but there was another short story we had to read about how to be accepted into society if you had a horse you had to cut off its wings, horn, and make it unable to talk? But like they presented it as a choice, that you only had to pick 2 and keep one, but that was a lie. So when the horse tried to run away the other horses beat it to death and then all the girls shunned the other girl cuz she didn’t have a horse. It was fucking crazy why did they make us read all this in middle school?!?

Lastly, this year I had to read “the most handsome drowned man in the world” and it didn’t mess me up for the same reason a lot of these other ones did, but it definitely messed with me a bit. It was so charming in such a weird way

I'm collecting a list of Short Stories That Fucked Us Up As Children. reblog and tell me what I'm missing.

here's the list so far:

the yellow wallpaper

all in a summer day

fever dream

the lottery

hey come on out

by the waters of Babylon

the most dangerous game

flowers for Algernon

a good man is hard to find

skin

to build a fire

silent snow secret snow

bartleby the scrivener

i have no mouth and I must scream

harrison bergeron

lamb to the slaughter

the cask of amontillado

the telltale heart

the vampyre

where did you come from, where did you go

the monkey's paw

I'll add a poll in case it helps haha

3K notes · View notes