The Asshole Saga: A Story In Screencaps

The internet is a wonderful place, kids. But, just like in real life, sometimes there are a few assholes who spoil things for the rest of us. This is the story of one such asshole. (You know the drill- click on the pictures to enlarge them.)

Once upon a time, there was a Wattpad writer who awoke on a fine Thursday morning to find some preposterous allegations on a story she had written*:

She considered sarcasm: It's true, guys. I stole that girl's story. I stole her story, I camouflaged it with jokes and grammar and plotlines, and to really throw people off, I wrote it before she did.

She considered righteous indignation: Excuse me? I have never stolen anything in my life! How dare you?!

She considered being really defensive: Here: Look at all my proof! Look at all these progress drafts I have saved! Look at all the places I collected quotes and slipped in references to my personal life and all my fandoms! Here's the friend who I tell every chapter to before I write it!

She considered being really mean: Fuck you you motherfucking motherfucker! Why don't you go back to your home on whore island?
 
She considered dressing in drag and doing the hula:

In short, she wasn't quite sure how to react.

She settled on what she hoped was a no-nonsense, Southern-grandmother-with-a-wooden-spoon-who-won't-take-no-shit approach:

The Wattpad writer wondered what the lying girl was hoping to achieve with all this. Did she want credit for an unfinished story? And what then? Was she going to try and finish it herself? Surely she realized that people would notice she wasn't the same author from the first part?

But no. Apparently when the Common Sense Train was boarding, this kid was standing on the tracks being hit six ways to Sunday by the Stupid Express, because she just wasn't letting it drop:

The Wattpad writer had just spent a month writing vicious exams, and had just, mere hours previously, had all her wisdom teeth ripped out by a lunatic claiming to be a dentist. She was not in a good mood. So instead of just deleting the hateful comments like she usually would have, she huffily sent out a call-to-arms:

Then she turned off her laptop and decided never to open it up again. She ate half a thing of ice-cream and a quarter jar of Nutella, and she sincerely believed that all the calories she consumed during this period would find their way to the butt of the lying girl and would stay there. For life.

The Wattpad writer was experiencing the same emotions felt by many others in the same situation. She was realizing how hard it is to prove ownership of anything on the internet, and how easy it is for some random stranger to drop into your virtual life and fuck things up for you. Suddenly you have to defend yourself against something that came so far out of left field that you have no idea how to respond.

It was unfair. It felt like a violation. The Wattpad writer spent some time smothering the sense of injustice with cookies and old musicals.

She wallowed a bit.

Then she turned on the laptop again.

And found that her readers had released a shitstorm**:

As the messages of support came flooding in, the Wattpad writer started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The internet was turning into a wonderful place again, and rainbows and unicorns were slowly peeking through the pixels.

Then she received a private message from the girl who had supported the false claims:

If anybody feels the need to point out that it's a private message so I technically have no way of proving that she actually sent it to me, I will eat you.

Meanwhile, the readers kept fighting the good fight and kicking ass:

Even Tumblr showed its loyalty: 

The girl claiming she wrote Faking It continually deactivated and reactivated her profile. But everybody knew that if she ever came back, they would know how to deal with her. And so eventually, everybody ran out of fucks to give.

The Wattpad writer learned three magical lessons that day.

First, she realized that people are not idiots, and that for every asshole there are fifty , or maybe even a hundred, potential asshole avengers out there. She realized that her readers knew her voice and wouldn't be fooled by imposters, and that they had her back. And those readers were scary as fuck.

Secondly, she arrived at the realization that every person eventually reaches in their life:

Thank you, Bronn.

But the most important lesson of the day came as she read over all the comments and messages again, and marveled at how quickly and efficiently her legion of asshole avengers had assembled. And she got that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with the knowledge that you have brought together a group of people who can possibly take over the world someday.

And that, she believes, is the true meaning of happiness: the legitimate hope of future world domination.

The End (For Now).

________________________________________________________________________________
 
I wrote this post for two reasons. Firstly, to clear up exactly what happened to those of you who missed it, and to point out that if anybody ever tries something like this again, we'll be prepared.

Secondly, I wanted to thank all my fans for being as awesome as they are. And for once, words pretty much fail me. So I figured that I should just put this post together and confront y'all with the evidence of your own awesomeness.

You guys handled the shit out of this situation.

This is a victory, guys.

Well fucking done.


I know what you're thinking now: "Gee, Misha. Banding together like that to crush the evil forces of the internet was fun. So what're we gonna do tomorrow night?"

I feel that this is a reasonable response to most of life's more important questions.

_________________________________________________________________________________
*For those few readers who don't know me from Wattpad: I publish stories in serial installments on several websites. Of all those websites, I've been most successful on one called Wattpad, and on Wattpad, my best known story is called Faking It.

**I've blacked out the names of my fans because I wanted to respect any privacy issues they may or may not have.

P.S. Since this is a Wattpad-themed post, I'll throw this in here. @Twila_B on twitter (BerkleyDrive on Wattpad) puts together outfits to go with stories - sometimes written by her, and sometimes by other people. She put together this outfit for the prologue to Faking It, and I'm pretty much loving it. Check out her tumblog for more.

Disclaimer: I'd like to just clear up that my dentist is actually the nicest guy in the world and I felt almost no pain after he took out my wisdom teeth. However, I was confused because I had a Lord of the Rings-themed cartoon dream while I was knocked out, and I was grumpy because I can't smoke or eat bacon for the next two weeks.

I'm back, bitches.

I know I've been gone for a long time. If you're here because you know me from wattpad (which is probably the case) you know that sometimes I take unexplained breaks from the internet because life happens. So as a virtual friend I'm pretty unreliable. But, like my real life friends are forced to do, y'all stick with me anyway because sometimes I'm accidentally entertaining.


Here's a run-down of some of the things that happened since I last blogged:

-I finally got a laptop that works properly, which is why I'm talking to you right now (blogging at you? I don't know. Cyberspace is confusing.)

- I turned 21. This is cool, 'cause I can now legally get drunk in all the countries that matter, but it also caused an extended moment of "holy-shit-I'm-not-mature-enough-to-be-21" panic, which led to me trying to avoid my birthday by refusing to acknowledge it.

My mother supported me and we spent a lot of the day making cake. Here's my mother's:

Even though I've never decorated a cake before, I foolishly attempted to do a book-cake. Thankfully it turned out okay:

That's the book I modeled it on at the back. I had never touched fondant before, but I discovered that it's much easier to work with than the internet would have you believe. You just have to cover yourself and your entire kitchen in powdered sugar so it doesn't stick to anything.

See? I really did spend most of my birthday in my pajamas. But mostly because I'm too badass to do anything else. I don't have to go out to find fun. Fun finds me.

-I finished my first semester studying Languages and Literature with four distinctions and one I-don't-even-fucking-know-what-happened (in Communication). So first year university? Also not quite as hard as the internet (and everyone else) would have you believe. At least not so far.

-I drew enough of Brigitte Bardot's hair to last me a lifetime.

Seriously though. Nobody has that much hair.

- My love for tumblr grew exponentially. Here's my tumblog. I only reblog cool stuff, I promise (although my definition of cool probably isn't the same as yours. Or anyone else's.)

-I realized that the porch where I write/read/smoke/drink coffee/basically do everything looks like a fairy cave, and now, instead of telling people I'm going to the porch, I mysteriously tell company that they can "find me in the grotto".

 -I went to my first carnival.

-I wrote an exam while a riot was proceeding outside the venue (although I wasn't technically aware of it and by the time I got outside everyone was gone. Except my mother, who was scared shitless and hanging out with the security guards. I did smell the teargas, though, so I wasn't completely oblivious. I might write a proper post about it later.)

-I read a lot.

-I watched a lot of films.

-I studied. I studied FOREVER.

-My mother climbed Lion's Head on Doomsday with a tarantula on her head.

- I discovered the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman. I'm currently busy with the second book and HOLY SHIT it's good. Seriously. I'll probably do a real post about it when I'm finished with the whole series.



That's all I can think about right now, and I've got a book to read so I'm not gonna hang around here forever. I'll totally be blogging more often from now on, though, so keep checking in.

Stay strange!

Completely fucking terrified

For almost a week now I've been teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

I have no idea why I'm so scared of doctors, dentists, and hospitals. Really, no idea. There was no unfortunate hospital-related explosion in my childhood. I wasn't kidnapped by a mad doctor who wanted to turn me into a super soldier so that I could one day fight in the imminent zombie uprising. Okay, so that last one wouldn't have been that bad. Actually it would have been pretty fucking awesome. My point is that there wasn't even one teeny tiny little marginally traumatic event that might have caused this insane level of fear.

The machines make me nervous, the sterile smell makes me sick, all that goddamn fucking white looks like a nineties movie version of heaven and reminds you that this is where people come to die, and all the so-called professionals look like sociopathic serial killers who are just barely containing their homicidal urges so why the fuck are we giving these people drills and scalpels?

When I was a little kid my parents took me to the dentist and I was so overcome with fear that I kicked and screamed bloody murder until they had to force one of those mask things on me to knock me out. My mother recently told me it was so bad that the nurses thought my parents abused me.

You can probably guess that I haven't been to the dentist since then. For years my mother has been nagging me to go have my teeth cleaned, especially since I started smoking regularly. After several bribes I finally gave in about a week ago, and even then I almost had to be dragged into the car.

The only reason I even agreed to go in the first place was because I was placated by assurances of what a "simple, easy, and painless" procedure it would be. Just a quick clean. Ha! Famous last words.

The dentist put me in something resembling a lunar module and after some deliberation about whether keeping my piercings in would give me cancer or not, and several X-rays later, I was informed that there were eight holes to fill in and four wisdom teeth to pull. Apparently the easiest way to do all this would be to knock me out for three hours and finish it all in one go. The dentist and I clearly disagree on the definition of "easiest".  And it has to be done within the next two weeks because the dentist wants to get in a nice long torture session before going away for the christmas holidays.

Yeah. I can't even begin to tell y'all how fucking terrified I am. And don't even try to tell me that it's not that it's not a big deal, because I have seen way too many movies where someone's soul escapes from their body while they're unconscious and an evil soul rushes in and takes over their life and nobody ever notices and then their real soul is stuck in limbo forever and it's all because some asshole told them going to the dentist wouldn't be a big deal.

My vampire snail went missing on Halloween. Coincidence? I think not.

I have a pet snail! How awesome is that?

I mean, it’s not like a real pet. Like, I don’t have a leash for it or anything. Maybe I should explain.

So this snail has been coming into our house for weeks. It only ever comes in around midnight and it always leaves before dawn, which leads me to believe it might be a vampire snail. Either that or it just has a really accurate little snail-watch. Also, it never leaves the two square meters of space immediately adjoining our front door. I kind of grew really attached to the punctual slime monster, and I had to keep telling people to watch their step at night and not to kill it, and then I started writing exams and everything went down smoothly, and naturally I assumed that the snail was good luck.

I named him Snail, because I was afraid that if I gave him a real name he would start feeling pressured to be a house-snail and be all domesticated and shit. But it seems that even Snail was too much, because last night while I was studying he never showed up. And I should know, because I stayed up all night and I kept checking.

I felt abandoned, and friendless, and was sure I was going to fail now that my good luck charm was gone.  But then my exam went even better than the exam for the first part of that module and I actually finished before the time was up, and then I got to thinking: Holy shit. All that time, was Snail actually holding me down? I felt betrayed.

And then I forgot all about the Snail debacle because I realized that IT’S HALLOWEEN. I haven’t slept much for the past week and shit’s been so hectic that I hadn’t even remembered the best holiday.

Let me say that again: THE. BEST. FUCKING. HOLIDAY.

For those of you who live in countries where trick-or-treating is a thing, have fun literally taking candy from strangers. I’ll be over here, catching up on lost sleep. Yeah, it’s obvious which one of us is getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop here. (Hint: it ain’t you).

So…

Happy Halloween motherfuckers! Have fun and don’t step on any snails.

How my grandparents tricked a priest

My grandfather Ross is the only grandparent I never got to meet, and stories like this one make me think we would have gotten along like a house on fire. Actually, scratch that. There’s nothing good about a house on fire. We would’ve gotten along like a perfectly normal house.

My grandmother Jude and grandfather Ross had three kids: Mike (the oldest and my father), Martin and Carl. Raising three boys, particularly these three boys, would probably have had Mother Theresa reaching for the wine bottle, so it’s completely understandable that Ross liked to have the occasional drink. However, he wasn’t keen on letting any family members catch him in the act, especially his nephew, who was both the local minister and an insatiable gossip. As part of his strategy for avoiding unexpected guests, Ross never answered the door himself and often hid away somewhere, leaving it to Jude to make up excuses for him.

One evening Jude and Ross were sitting in the kitchen having a drink when the doorbell rang. They both froze as they heard the minister’s booming voice echo through the house.

“Mike! Are your parents here?”

“Yeah, they’re in the kitchen. Come on through.”

They figured he was there to inquire after Ross’ father (my great-grandfather), who was ill in the hospital at the time. The minister was there with the best of intentions, and Ross was having none of it. He wasted no time and bolted through the back door. In the next split second Jude decided that she was tired of making up excuses for her husband and followed him. It was pouring rain; Ross dashed across the back yard towards their small shed, Jude hot on his heels. Once they arrived they found the tiny room dripping, with only one dripping-wet chair available. Ross took it. They waited quietly.

Meanwhile my father had led the minister back through to the kitchen, where there was no sign of life save for two half-full glasses sitting abandoned on the countertop.

“I don’t understand, Uncle Joos,” said my bewildered father, who was fifteen at the time. “They were just here two minutes ago.”

Back in the shed Ross had just anxiously told Jude, for the umpteenth time, to go check if the minister had left yet. Obligingly she crept through the rain to the house. There was a problem, however. The house was built on large foundations, and the windows were too high up for her to see anything. However, Jude was a determined woman. Drawing on her fifteen years experience as a financial consultant, which didn’t help one bit, she scaled a large rubber tree, finally reaching a height where she was able to see through their bedroom window. A sliver of the kitchen was visible through the doorway, but the minister was nowhere to be seen. Sensing a trap, Jude snuck around to the front of the house, sticking to the shadows. Her suspicions were confirmed: The minister’s car was still there.

She reported back to the shed and the couple resumed waiting, rather wishing they had thought to bring their bottle with them.

Meanwhile the minister was walking curiously through the house, his search yielding nothing but three bewildered and apparently abandoned children. Eventually he left, and Ross and Jude happily returned to what they had been doing before, which was nothing at all, really.

*

The next day Jude got an urgent phone call from Ross: she should be ready to leave directly after work. The minister had called and asked Ross where they had been the night before.

“We were visiting my father in the hospital,” he had said.

“What’s wrong with you?” the minister had demanded. “You don’t even tell your children. You just disappear.”

“Oh, no. We didn’t tell them because Carl always cries when we leave.” (At the time Carl was an exceptionally independent six-year-old boy who didn’t give two hoots where his parents were. My grandmother would like me to point out here that my fondness for making up stories probably comes from Ross).

The minister had said he was going to visit Ross’ father that night, so Ross and Jude had to rush to the hospital after work and get there before the minister to ensure their cover.

“What if he’s already there?” asked Jude as they sped towards the hospital.

“It’s not seven yet. He said he was going at seven.”

“He suspects something. I think he’s trying to trap us.”

“No, he said seven.”

When they pulled into the hospital parking lot they spotted a cream-colored Jetta.

“He’s here,” said Jude. “That’s his car.”

“No man, that car has a CAM number plate.”

“That is his number.”

“He lives in the city! It’ll be CY.”

“The car’s registered in the country. For cheaper insurance.  CAM.”

“That’s not his car.”

They both got out, Ross jogging ahead of Jude. When she was halfway up a flight of stairs Ross came streaking back down, nearly knocking his wife off her feet . “He’s there! Quickly! Get out!”  My grandmother says she’ll never forget the look of absolute terror on his face.

They drove halfway back and parked under a tree, waiting under the cover of foliage until the enemy cleared out. They had narrowly escaped a trap. When they returned the first time the cream Jetta was still in the lot. The second time they struck it lucky.

They ran up the stairs and into the room. Once there Ross zeroed in on his father. He didn’t bother with pleasantries like saying hello, but got right down to business. This was it. The moment of truth. Had their cover been broken?

“Dad, when last did you see Joos?”

“Now that’s funny that you should ask. He was just here not two minutes ago.”

“Did he ask if we were here last night?”

“Yes, he did ask.”

“What did you say?”

The old man shrugged. “I said my son visits me every day.”

*

And so our story ends with what could possibly be the most ingenious guilt-trip ever. I’d just like to add that it makes me happy to know that my family history reads like something out of a screwball comedy.