Alice in Tumblr-land

by Tim Manley

  PENGUIN BOOKS

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  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

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  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published in Penguin Books 2013

  Copyright © 2013 by Tim Manley

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Some of the contents of this book appeared in different form on the author’s blog, Fairy Tales for Twenty Somethings.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Manley, Tim.

  Alice in tumblr-land : and other fairy tales for a new generation / Tim Manley.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-698-13621-2 (eBook)

  1. Fairy tales—Humor. 2. Parodies. I. Title.

  PN6231.F285M36 2013

  818’.602—dc23

  2013031128

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Alice in Tumblr-Land

  A few years had passed since Snow White and the Prince rode off toward their happily-ever-after, and things were, you know, they were fine.

  Okay, so instead of going to bed with the Prince at night, Snow White found herself looking online at photos of Ryan Gosling, remembering the days when she’d felt for the Prince the same complex desire she now felt for Ryan. Like she wanted to simultaneously tear his clothes off and introduce him to her parents.

  But the Prince loves me, Snow White thought. And if I were with Ryan Gosling, he’d be hotter than me, and that wouldn’t be cool at all.

  Beauty and the Beast had been dating for a while now, and Beauty knew it was time for the Beast to meet her friends. But she was a little nervous. All her friends had these superhot boyfriends who worked in finance or modeled for J.Crew or whatever. The Beast was, well, the Beast liked to play Xbox in his underwear. And he was really into his fantasy football team.

  Beauty loved the Beast for who he was, she really did, but her friends were shallow and judgmental.

  “Maybe you should get some new friends,” Siri advised.

  The Ugly Duckling still felt gross compared with everyone else. But then she got Instagram, and there’s this one filter that makes her look awesome.

  Alice drank her tea and scanned the news online. Even she had begun to believe that what she’d “seen” down the rabbit hole was just a figment of her imagination. She’d since majored in neuroscience; the human brain was fascinating!

  Peter Pan was up to something big. He’d been gone for days on what was likely some amazing new adventure, and when he finally returned home he looked like he’d been through his craziest battle yet.

  “What mischief did you get into this time?” asked Tinker Bell.

  “I’ve just been flying around, doing some thinking,” said Peter. “All my friends are getting engaged, and some are having kids. I don’t even have a steady job.”

  Rapunzel chopped off all her hair, and everyone was loving her new profile picture.

  But then she was like, Wait, did everyone hate my long hair and they just weren’t telling me?

  After the whole wolf incident, the ideological differences among the Three Little Pigs only got stronger.

  The First Little Pig went into the arts,

  the Second Little Pig got a stable desk job,

  and the Third Little Pig became a Republican.

  Little Red Riding Hood decided to walk home from her grandmother’s house because she didn’t want to waste money on a cab.

  But soon she was being stalked by a creepy wolf. He cornered her in the entryway to her apartment and started unzipping his pants, but then she was like, “Oh hell no,” and kneed him in the balls and shot him in the face with pepper spray.

  The next day she borrowed money from her mother and moved to a safer neighborhood.

  Cinderella divorced the Prince pretty quickly—no, he wasn’t secretly gay, just kind of a prick—and moved back in with her stepmother.

  As a symbolic gesture, she vowed not to wear glass slippers, or any slippers, ever again. From here on out, all Crocs, all the time.

  Robin Hood sat on a stump, questioning his line of work. Sure, it helped on the local level, but what was he really doing to promote equality on a national level? Or a global level?

  After thinking for a while, he determined that even though the work he did was very small, there was a ripple effect, so it was still a valuable endeavor. Plus, it got him a lot of girls.

  The Hare got a high-powered job in the tech industry straight out of college. He was known for never sitting down at work and always chugging energy drinks. He invented a new app every day at lunch, though many of them were about sandwiches.

  The Tortoise traveled the country by train just looking out the window and thinking. It didn’t bother him that the Hare was out there making the big bucks. He was doing his own thing, something quieter, more spiritual.

  The Tortoise’s travel memoir got published, and the New York Times gave it a glowing review. The Tortoise posted on Facebook about how humbled he was by all this success, and he remembered his old rival the Hare and thought, I knew I’d outshine that fucker in the end.

  After Arthur pulled the sword from the stone but before he became king, he went on a cross-country road trip/vision quest. He went to Burning Man, stayed in the mountains of Montana for a few weeks, and learned to build a cigar-box guitar from some guy on the street in New Orleans.

  When he arrived home in Camelot, a wiser man, a man with true insight, he thought, That shit was awesome.

  The Little Mermaid was now a human, but sometimes she still felt out of place. She didn’t get the cultural references people made—and her hips swayed like crazy.

  She tried her best to blend in, and she never spoke.

  But at a party one night she overheard a group of elegantly dressed women discussing an episode of Hoarders about a woman who collected forks, and the Little Mermaid just had to jump in on that one.

  “That’s a very unusual accent you have,” one of the women said to her. “Where are you from?”

  Her past haunted her. She could never escape who she used to be.

  Sleeping Beauty didn’t get out of bed until noon, or even later. Instead she curled up in her blanket, wallowing in her depression and checking Facebook from her phone.

  Then she came across a post from this prince she used to date about how sad he was, how there was a “darkness” that made him feel “like nobody could ever understand” how he felt.

  “Is there anyone else who gets this way?” he asked.

  Sleeping Beauty felt a sense of relief wash over her, a little bit of joy, and thought, At least I’m not sad enough to write about it on Facebook.

  Peter Pan knew it was time to grow up, get serious, and work toward something substantial. So after hours of contemplation and soul-searching, he started a blog of funny anecdotes from his life. The Lost Boys read it, and they thought that shit was hilarious.

  Alice was amazed at the wonder of her life. Her rent was reasonable, she’d just discovered Greek yogurt, and she had the password to her friend’s Netflix account.

&n
bsp; She never thought of the past. Why should she?

  But then the Cheshire Cat posted some photos from an old disposable camera online—of the White Rabbit with long hair, of the night they all stayed up till dawn just talking with the flowers—and God, it just brought her right back.

  Aladdin had really screwed things up with Jasmine this time. Even the Genie thought he’d acted like “a total dickhead.”

  After what felt like 1,001 nights, he decided to win her back, to show her how he’d grown up, that now he was the man she’d always wanted him to be. He wanted to show her how brave he was, how he wasn’t scared of emotions anymore, how he could even, one day, be a father to their children.

  So he texted her, “hey, whats up?”

  Cinderella dreamed of being a photographer. But her stepmother had always told her she would amount to nothing, and at some point Cinderella had started believing her. It felt like the truth, even though a voice inside her pleaded that it wasn’t.

  One night she pulled out a Post-it and wrote a message to herself that she stuck on the wall above her desk: You are in control of your own future. You are capable of amazing things.

  Then she added another one below that: And fuck anyone who says otherwise.

  Thumbelina never got much bigger, but she did get her own reality TV show, so that was cool.

  Puss wore boots so that he would gain more respect, but everywhere he went people just said, “Omigod, look at that adorable kitty in boots!”

  Beauty felt like she and the Beast were getting closer every day. They were totally in tune with each other; they really understood each other.

  But then she accidentally stumbled on some weird porn sites he’d left open, and honestly, was that what he was interested in doing with her? Because, hell no.

  Pinocchio e-mailed his professor and said, “I’ve had a family emergency and need one more day to work on my final paper.”

  The Frog Prince knew that all he needed to do was kiss a girl and he’d be turned back into a human. So he went to the bar and pulled off his signature move: standing in the corner praying that someone would approach him.

  Hansel and Gretel got shitty jobs folding the boxes of gingerbread house kits.

  Hansel thought of their grandfather, who’d gained dignity from his lifetime of work. But this work seemed so dehumanizing.

  Hansel didn’t know what to say about it; Gretel was the one who was good with words: “This blows.”

  Jack kept climbing beanstalks, but none ever got him as high as that first one.

  Chicken Little feared the sky was falling.

  She also feared losing her job, getting told off by her best friend, and going to the gynecologist.

  Snow White didn’t like Mondays, so she sang a song to get her through: “Just whistle while you work, and cheerfully together we can—” Oh my God, how have only two minutes gone by? Somebody kill me now. I want to die.

  Arthur moved into a railroad-style apartment outside of Camelot with his buddy Lancelot. Arthur got a job at Applebee’s, and Lancelot got one at Starbucks. They didn’t care about their “careers.” They just wanted to live.

  Robin Hood was walking through the woods with Little John and wanted to tell him what was going through his head, but they were the same things he’d been stressing about since they were teenagers, and he thought he should really be over them by now . . .

  They kept walking silently, the trees going by, the day going by.

  Then it hit Robin Hood: Is this how you get old? You slowly just stop talking about things?

  Sleeping Beauty kept turning off her alarm and falling back to sleep, so she decided to move her phone to the other side of the room, this way she’d be forced to get out of bed to turn it off. But then she just woke up lying on the floor halfway across the room.

  Peter Pan’s blog was a hit, but he knew that in today’s market he’d need a multiple-platform approach to connecting with colleagues and branding himself, so he started a Twitter account.

  For his first tweet he wrote: “Productive day w/ @LostBoys. Kicked Hook into crocodile’s mouth AGAIN. #bangarang”

  Little Red Riding Hood checked out the bougie bar in her new neighborhood, but even there she kept getting approached by wolves. She held her drink close to her and politely rebuffed them.

  “Are you okay?” asked the gallant huntsman who approached her next.

  “Ugh,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Can’t a girl just go out for a drink and be left alone?”

  Alice found herself in a magical world she’d only dreamed about: Tumblr-land.

  And there were so many marvelous sites! In ten minutes she’d researched the history of the Eiffel Tower, donated twenty dollars to a Kickstarter for a not-entirely-comprehensible art project, and learned, most important, never ever to go on Chatroulette again.

  The Ugly Duckling read obscure works of literature in other languages and listened to indie music even the guys at the record store had never heard of.

  If I’m not going to be prettier than anyone, the Ugly Duckling thought, then I’m at least going to be better than them.

  The Frog Prince still needed that true-love kiss in order to turn back into a human, so he went to the park with a sign that said “Free Hugs” and figured he’d pull a switcheroo at the last second.

  But this was, uh, not the best strategy.

  After college, the Three Billy Goats Gruff moved to Brooklyn and started an indie rock band.

  Arthur was driving home from Applebee’s one night. Tired, cranky, his clothes smelling like dishwater and buffalo wings, he told himself, I can’t keep living like this. Tonight is the night I clean my apartment and make a to-do list. Tonight is the night I get my shit together.

  But before Arthur even had the chance to bust out the Swiffer, Lancelot showed him the page on Reddit where people post photos of themselves naked. What?! How did he not know about this?!

  Aladdin wanted to prove his love for Jasmine in one grand romantic gesture, so he texted her an Emoji heart.

  Jasmine was a religious woman. She tossed aside the phone and knelt down to pray, seeking answers to the unanswerable questions.

  “Why, Allah?” she said quietly. “Why do I always fall for such jackweeds?”

  Hansel and Gretel’s boss was this sweet old lady who dressed all in black, cackled, and ate only candy corn.

  But one day Hansel and Gretel had to use their boss’s computer for a second, and they were horrified by what popped up.

  Witch porn. Old ladies in cloaks bending over steamy cauldrons. And their boss with a broom disappearing into her—

  “My eyes!” cried Hansel.

  The Little Mermaid never knew what to say when somebody cracked a joke making fun of merpeople. Should she tell them she was offended? But it would require so much explanation. And nobody would believe the part about the octopus witch.

  Wendy had kids right when she got back from Neverland, and then she was too fucking tired to do anything else.

  It was spring, so Rapunzel took her new hair for a walk through the park, feeling like a woman reborn with the breeze tickling her scalp.

  The past is only as meaningful as we decide it is, she thought. We can become someone new, let ourselves be whoever we dream, and no one can tie us to who we used to be . . .

  Then she ran into that douche she used to let climb up her hair at night.

  “Oh my God—Rapunzel?!”

  Alice was stuck in a small room in Tumblr-land with a tiny door the only exit. She tried the password for it a few times, but couldn’t get the right combination of uppercase and special characters. It gave her a hint question, but who could remember their childhood best friend’s cat’s maiden name?

  Peter Pan was all over the Internet now, racking up followers on social networking sites so new they hadn’t even been acquired by Facebook yet.

  But he found it had a weird effect on
his psyche. Any time his brain was not 100 percent occupied, he felt the need to check the Internet. He’d checked his e-mail at the urinal at a bar, live-tweeted his phone call with Tiger Lily, even Instagrammed a photo of his laptop opened up to his Tumblr.

  Cinderella’s day job was killing her, but she was too broke to quit. A part of her didn’t care enough to quit anyway. What else would she do? It was stupid to think she could really be a photographer. Better to just accept her life and get used to it.

  But another part of her wouldn’t give up. As she lay awake listening to the mice scratch the walls, she closed her eyes and whispered,

  “A dream is a wish your heart makes

  When you’re fast asleep . . .

  I don’t need everything to go right in my life, God;

  I just wish I could care again.