Mars

Gregory was about to shit his britches.
Well, you would be too if were the first man to walk on Mars.
Gregory, a veteran astronaut, had taken to talking to himself in his spacesuit with the radio off.

"Holy FUCK," he said to nobody in particular.
"Oh my-" he started saying to God, before he cut himself off.
"I cannot FUCKING believe it."
"I am actually walking
    -- fucking WALKING --
        on fucking MARS."

Description of a Room

There were two categories of dirty clothes in the room. In front of the closet were the clothes that had been worn only a few times and would be kept on for active duty; inside the closet lie the clothes that were retired from service - at least until next washing. A pile of socks sat to the left of his dresser. Atop the dresser, his alarm sat conveniently close to the bed; the snooze button well-worn. The rest of the dresser was piled with stacks of books, each with a bookmark nestled somewhere between the covers. The sheets of the bed were coming up from under the bottom-right corner of the mattress, and the blankets were half-hanging dilapidated off the side. Under the bed were assorted boxes, most half-full. The floor was, in general, filthy. Dust bunnies adorned the are where wall met floor like chintzy molding. A handful of insect carcasses dotted the hardwood floor. The walls were bare, excepting of course the hideous wallpaper the previous tenent had left behind. One of the bulbs in the ceiling light was burned out.
In the room lies a desk. The desk has atop it a ream of blank paper, pencils, charcoals, pastels, colored pencils, brushes, three rulers, a compass, four pen-holders, a quill, and a stick of chapstick left open. On the floor lies the crumpled-up corpses of used scraps of paper.

Three shortshort stories

John was in a coma. Looks like I didn't murder him well enough. Well, what should you expect from the lesser brother?

"My love, what say you to a night of happiness and music?"
"I have mace."
"That... that was not what I was looking for."
"Then please please try to be less of a creepy motherfucker."

"We've been over this before. You poison him, he falls into a coma, we murder him."
"Problem, sir: I'm not an alchemist."
"Well how hard is it to find some chemical that'll put a man into a coma?"
"Very, actually. Couldn't I just poison him _fatally_? That would turn it into a one-step plan and there'd be less room for error AND I'd actually be able to pull it off."
"NO! The plan is as written."
"... Look, how about we just murder him with poison, but then _tell people_ we poisoned him into a coma? No one would ever need to know-"
"NOO! THE PLAN. IS. AS WRITTEN!"
"... Why did you have to write it in pen?"
"It was all I had on me at the time."
"... Well why can't we just cross it out and write in a new plan?"
"NO! The plan - as written - is ABSOLUTE. It cannot be crossed out until it has succeeded"
"... Sir, I feel your compulsiveness is negatively affecting the organization."
"Nu-uh."
"Sir, I'm not the only one who thinks this."
"Well they're wrong too. My compulsiveness is THE VERY FOUNDATION OF OUR ORGANIZATION!"
"Sir, I'm the only one in here. And I don't care that you're posing."
"Well..."
"Sir, you are not helping your cause with this."

A list of story ideas

A society where shortness is preferable to tallness

Government conspiracy ultimately a cover for man's marriage proposal, gets rejected

Gay man tempted by succubus who learns the true meaning of friendship

Caveman invents masturbation, gets killed by tiger

Sometimes I hope you'd just choke and die. No, come back baby, you know I don't mean it. Well, okay, maybe I mean it a bit but- No no come back, come back. Sweetie, please.

Man named Doof McPain

You THREW a CAT at me

I threw my heart at her, and I broke it

"Where do you get your ideas?" "I don't 'get' ideas, I MAKE ideas!"

You think of these people who create as gods whose work is beyond reproach because their craft seems so intricate, so impenetrable. Then you find yourself two steps from that pedestal and you realize that they're just men and women like you, and they probably didn't have any idea how to start that story either.

A metaphor is like a simile versioned 2.0, and yes I realize how ironic using a simile there is.

I think the most ironic part of the song is how she clearly does not know what that means. Whether she did it on purpose or not is the line between genius and idiocy.

Zombie plan!

Revealing character through mundane, everyday actions
    "His fingers slowly groped the alarm clock, looking for that one button with the extra plastic niblet on it. He found it, pressed the sleep button, and slithered his arm back under the covers."

"There's so much to set up when you use a computer."
"Kind of like in a story; you need a bunch of exposition before you can do anything interesting."
"I guess that's true..."
Suddenly a car crashed through the window.

"Are you a licensed medical professional?"
"No!"
"Oh. Good luck, then!"

Blade

The blade in his hands was held firm. No opening for me to cut the arms. I hadn't seen him swing before, but I knew I would barely have an opening then, either. He was hard, trained. I pressed my killing intent against him with as much fervor as I could muster. He stood before me, unflinching, a rock against the tides. His eyes saw me. No; they saw through me, entirely. In that moment, he knew everything I was capable of, and he was unshaken. In that moment, I felt fear for the first time in my long life. In that moment, I knew that I was going to die.

Response to Responses to Ender's Game

In reading up on Ender's Game, I came across two essays that reacted very strongly (and negatively) to Ender's Game.
Here are my reactions to their reactions.

Ender's Game: short story discussion notes

These are some notes in something resembling an order of our presentation on the short story version of Ender's Game.