Tiny Stories

Billy loved to read but others told him it was better to kick a ball, so he gave himself paper cuts to stop and they all got infected.

A classmate told Amy she could never get a date if she didn't drop a few, so she pulled out all of her teeth. What good is it being skinny if you're dead?

Her parents told Rachel to remove her lip ring because no one would understand her. She refused; her dad ripped it off taking the rest of her lips with it.

Brandon's roommates called him weird for his music taste so he cut off his ears to please them, except now he can't hear their praises of his docility.

They told Josh his God was fictional. To prove them wrong he pointed a rifle to the sky. His God wasn't fictional but his God is dead.

Artist Statement:

For the 5 stories, I guess you could say I went in a more morbid direction. I initially got my inspiration from people watching. I look around and can see the automatic change in people behavior and means of carrying themselves when they think no one is watching. That began me thinking about how often the people that love us want us to be so much the version of us that they see when they look at us as an individual and how so many of us comply and it eventually kills pieces of us off. These stories represent that in a much more exaggerated way. The hand drawn images are just cartoon like pictures of the scene described in the story and the image at the bottom of each story in the name of the character spelled out in different pieces. I chose to do this because I wanted the name to really represent the identity of the characters, to show that these are indeed individuals. I wanted the names to be spelled out in pieces because I wanted to show that so many small pieces make up our identity, so that the message in the stories stands out more about killing someone by altering just the smallest thing about themselves. The names are also in color and everything else in pencil because I wanted the viewers eye to be drawn to it first, to pay attention to the identities of the characters first. The rest of the story presentation (the fact that it’s on notebook paper and written in cursive) is supposed to give off a very innocent and childlike quality to offset and counter the morbidity of the actual stories themselves. I wanted a diary/school book look to the images (though they may be my lack of drawing skills) to make the stories as intimate as possible.

Throughout the week and within the readings we talked about the origins of stories and where we can find inspiration, and I found myself looking externally for the most part and after reading the book for the second time I really felt impressed to see how looking external affected my metacognition and how I look for inspiration within. With that, these stories are inspired as much externally (form people watching) as they are internally (my own experiences in life).

As I finished the assignment I began to look at the stories with a different perspective, focusing on what the internal conflict would be inside the main characters and reflecting on what they would be saying to themselves giving in to other people’s desires.  Immediately the song Snuff by Slipknot came to mind. The specific lyrics I focused on were—

I only wish you weren’t my friend

Then I could hurt you in the end

I never claimed to be a saint

Ooh, my own was banished long ago

It took the death of hope to let you go

So break yourself against my stones

And spit your pity in my soul

You never needed any help

You sold me out to save yourself

The “I” being the characters talking to themselves. I feel like on the outside they would be hiding their true self away, giving in, because it’s easier, what others want from then, and to pleasing society. They want to get back to whom they truly are but all hope is dead and they have to let that person go. They are angry and yelling at their pretend self stating, “You sold me out to save yourself”.