It's the most wonderful time of the year! With the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you, “Be of good cheer!” Except you aren't listening to them, because you've always hated the Christmas season. Well, you always hated everything, but there was something about the brightly saturated light displays, the insidious carols in constant rotation the moment Halloween ended, and the saccharinely sweet spirit that characterized the holiday season that really got under your skin.
Wait a minute… Who are you, anyways?
Your name is Michael J. Arseman, but most everyone in the neighborhood calls you “The Jackass,” and for good reason. From the moment you made your less-than-stellar introduction to the people of the Suburban Hills subdivision ten years ago, all of your neighbors have been vilifying you left and right. You hated it at first, but after a while you decided, “Fuck it. If these jackholes wanna hate me so much, I'll give them a reason to hate me!” And you did.
You always went out of your way to be mean, and the Christmas season — a season dedicated to spreading love and joy — was always when you were at your most insufferable.
Hello, and welcome to The Jerkass Chronicles! It's just the same as any other play-by-post Choose Your Own Adventure Game, except you're encouraged to be as much of a douchebag as possible! You have been given the chance to control a man who hates most everything in the world, so you better take it!
Now, the key word in the title is Lawful Evil. Arseman may be mean, but he's not straight up evil. You'll come to find over the course of the game that Mike has a well-developed (albeit pretty funky) moral code, and there's a set of boundaries he refuses to cross under any circumstances. I can't reveal all of them to you right now, but here are the ones that have been uncovered thus far:
- NO Bigotry. Racism, misogyny, queerphobia, ableism and the like are strictly off limits for obvious reasons.
- There's not much stopping you from committing acts of physical violence, but Michael outright refuses to beat up on children (under 18), the elderly (65 and older), and the physically disabled.
- Don't get too sexual. Mike loves a good dirty joke from time to time, but even suggesting the idea of sex crimes is off limits for reasons that should be obvious.
- Try to avoid deliberately hurting Tommy Baker's feelings.
- Eden Hawthorne is, like, your only friend. DO NOT jeopardize your relationship with her.
- The Grand Misgendering, a notorious Walmart microaggression, is old hat and shall never be discussed, ESPECIALLY around Eden Hawthorne.
- The following are Last Resort problem solving methods, only meant to be used when ABSOLUTELY no other options are available:
- Engaging in Karen/Daren behavior
- Blackmailing people
- Minimum wage employees already go through enough bullshit on a daily. Exercise caution when bothering them, and try not to add too much onto their load. Upper and middle managers, on the other hand...
- Don't break character when talking about online music reviewer Ryan Graham. Your hatred of him is played up for the bit, but it's a bit that's too funny to pass up.
- Some of these moral stipulations can be relaxed in scenarios where you can't directly see who it is you're interacting with (i.e. over the internet, etc.).
- If you can help it, try to be in bed by 9:30 PM.
- Given the choice to personally antagonize billionaires, take it without hesitation.
- If you aren't prepared to buy it, then don't bother breaking it.
- Any line longer than a quarter of a mile for an event that you don't already have a ticket for is a line you are NOT standing in.
Now, with that out of the way...
You sit alone, in your desolate room. No light. No music. Just a lingering sense of dread and your thoughts on how you could ruin Christmas this year. The lights are off, but a sliver of light shines in through your window, illuminating the room. In your small bedroom, there is your bed (which you are currently sitting on, a nightstand with three drawers and a lamp on top next to it, and a desk with a drawer in it, on top of which your trusty laptop sits. Your closet is built into the wall. There are no decorations in your room because decor sparks joy, and if there's one thing you loved, it was feeling miserable.
[input command]
Edited by Pogakure on Jul 22nd 2025 at 11:50:22 AM
> Bust out your dusty, cringy, outdated Christmas decor from your storeroom.
Heading downstairs, you open up the coat closet in the foyer, where you last stored the box of old Christmas shit you had no reason to use other than when you were having family.
Dusting off the box and opening it up (which felt like unearthing an ancient Egyptian tomb) revealed... a poor lot, really: Paper snowflakes that had been crumpled twice over, golden garlands that were flaking at the wire, strings of Christmas lights, most of which had been punched out; a buttload of ornaments, all of them useless since you haven't had a tree in six years... Half of this shit looked waterlogged, even though the box had been shoved so far back into the corner of the closet that there was no way a single drop of water could ever reach them! You knew you didn't have much, but this was shockingly pathetic.
But no worries! You didn't technically have to go all out on decor. Last you remembered, Sabrina wasn't the type to fret about getting all jazzed up with home decorations at Christmas. Or maybe she was? You haven't really talked to her since before lockdown, your memory was hazy.
You'd think of something later. For now, there were other things you could be putting effort into.
> Locate vacuum, mop, and cleaning solution. Begin cleaning of house.
Welp, time to grab the Wetjet and get to work!
You take to scrubbing down the hardwood floors of your living room, the kitchen and the bathroom tile. Once that squeaky-clean polish began to shine, you moved your attention to upstairs, vacuuming your bedroom floor and getting under your bed and the desk. Doesn't kill to be thorough.
>Take break to check comment.
Well, you've worked hard enough to warrant taking a little break, right? And hard work rewards itself no better than with some doomscrolling!
First things first: open YouTube You had four (4) notifications from the app on your phone, meaning that your comment had to have picked up a few responses. And sure enough, it did!
Apart from the obligatory Ryan Graham oiling up for the freak off REAL uncensored footage on my channel bot comment that makes a beeline for the replies of these moderately successful comments like a ballistic heat-seeking missile, there were three (3) replies:
The first was from a guy named David Kessler. Someone's cool art teacher, you suppose? He was a regular commenter on Ryan's channel, and one of the few chill people in the YouTube comment section meta to be brave enough to use their real, bald-ass, bespectacled face as a profile picture. His reply to your insightful comment is as follows:
The next reply was from VacuumWarhead. Some Warhammer 40K-pilled zoomer, if the Imperium of Man logo on his profile pic was any indication. His comment read:
The third comment was from Dax Shima, another Ryan Graham regular and someone who generally gave the lower-ranked artists on these kinds of lists the benefit of the doubt. Their reply was predictably sympathetic:
I will stand by your opinion that Naked by the Fireplace is absolute DOGWATER though. Truly one of the Christmas songs ever made.
You take a second to like all the non-bot replies. Interesting selection we got here...
- Current Time: Sunday, December 19th, 9:00 AM
- Current Goals:
- Get the house ready for Sabrina's arrival.
- See how the comment you left under Ryan Graham's latest video is doing.
[input command]
Don't you ever fix your lips to say that, bruh. I'm sitting right here and I got my daughter in the backseat>Look at comment
Edited by The21zonz on Jan 4th 2025 at 11:38:22 AM
UPDATE FOR RING RACERS ADDON IS OUT>Drink water, then return to cleaning for 30 more minutes.
Ah, hydration. One of the biggest essentials for any good jerkass (or any good person, generally, but you weren't a good person). You needed the water; working and doomscrolling like this worked up quite the sweat!
Satisfied with the progress of your work so far, you get back to it. Popping that tiny handheld section out of the vacuum, you take to cleaning out the recesses of the couch. You stand back, move the ottoman out of the way, and prepare to test whether or not the sofa bed still worked.
You hadn't really used the sofa bed for much since you got this couch. You didn't have guests stay overnight enough to warrant flipping it out all the livelong day and, living alone, no one was gonna banish you to sleep on the couch at night. Wouldn't hurt to make sure that the mechanism wasn't collecting dust. Taking the pillows off the couch, you pull back on the cushion... WHAM! With one pent-up, springy motion, the sofa bed pushes you back as it snaps into place with a hollow thud.
Move back, assess the damage. Wow, that is... shockingly close to the TV set. No wonder you never flipped this thing out. You lay on the bed. The cushion is plush enough for support, but not thick enough to conceal the stiffness of the frame holding it up. Still, it'll do; you wouldn't wanna extend Sabrina too much common courtesy.
> Check Louisa's Twitter account during breaktime.
If you were really gonna go through with this "stealing someone's Twitter credentials" thing, you were gonna have to find the right target. Louisa Rosenthal was new to Twitter — quite literally "just made an account yesterday" new. Perhaps this could be worth checking out…
Her account was relatively barren. Mostly likes of stuff posted by county officials and retweets of girlboss capitalist “seize the day” type posts. The actual tweets she made were sparse, things like “Who’s excited to spend the holidays with their friends and family?” and “Happy Sabbath Saturdays!” There was practically nothing of interest here, which was honestly even more interesting than a page with actual content on it. Mrs. Rosenthal was a blank slate, not yet affected by the platform’s never ending supply of slop. We could fix that…
- Current Time: Sunday, December 19th, 9:30 AM
- Current Goals:
- Get the house ready for Sabrina's arrival.
[input command]
Don't you ever fix your lips to say that, bruh. I'm sitting right here and I got my daughter in the backseat>Respond to Vacuum Warhead with "glory to the imperium, the emperor protects always" you may have been a jackass but you were a cool jackass
In another life I really would have liked just doing laundry and taxes with you> Use Inspect Element to "vandalize" one of Louisa's posts to make it look like she confessed her deepest darkest, most hilariously embarrassing secrets. Perfect blackmail material.
Well, enough loafing around. You folded up the sofa bed, rearranged the pillows and headed upstairs to your laptop. You had some work to do.
Pulling up Louisa's Twitter, you picked out a few choice tweets to utterly vandalize to smear this middle-aged woman into the dirt. One post that read "Going to the spa with my eldest daughter over winter break. Can't wait to get our nails done together!" became "Going to the spa with my eldest daughter over winter break. Can't wait for her to watch in horror as I get my armpits waxed!"
Another that read "It's Sabbath. Make sure to get some much deserved rest this weekend." was warped into "It's Sabbath. Prepare the goat for your ritual blood sacrifice." You screenshotted each of your efforts as you made them, making sure to crop out anything that could suggest they were manually edited. These were class, but you couldn't use them yet. Not before you've even tried to get her Twitter password so you could log in and possibly make those posts real.
Moral Stipulation Added: Blackmail should be used only when no other options are available. Too much effort goes into blackmailing one person for it to be worth doing every time you can't get what you want.
>Respond to VacuumWarhead with "glory to the imperium, the emperor protects always" you may have been a jackass but you were a cool jackass
Hail the God Emperor. You wish you could have more opportunities to play 40K with people. By that, you mean you wish people could tolerate you for long enough to want to play 40K with you.
- Current Time: Sunday, December 19th, 9:45 AM
- Current Goals:
- Get the house looking neat ahead of time for Sabrina's arrival.
- Create an email to scam someone out of their Twitter login credentials.
[input command]
Don't you ever fix your lips to say that, bruh. I'm sitting right here and I got my daughter in the backseat> Create that burner email address. Since you're already impersonating the official Hamilton County Twitter, it's probably a bit much to pose as "Mark from PR" with it to try scamming Louisa into giving you her password because AFAYK, government accounts don't DM their followers for anything and just post news updates publicly. Instead, do the good ol' "I ACCIDENTALLY REPORTED YOUR ACCOUNT! CLICK THIS LINK NOW TO SAVE IT FROM BEING BANNED FROM TWITTER!" trick. You're sure that middle-aged mom will fall for that one, right?
Edited by TroperNo9001 on Jan 9th 2025 at 1:25:28 AM
Still waiting for someone to break him free...>Spend 40 more minutes cleaning the house. Check around for anything needed to clean of make the place look good for Sabrina.
I don't know if Michael is the type to have a blackmail pyramid scheme like Yoichi Hiruma. That guy used to have a network of blackmailing someone who'd blackmail two other people, who'd blackmail more people, until Hiruma was an international blackmailer while still in Japanese high school.
>look around to see if you have any dark edgy clothes, you need the mark the pr guy fit complete
Michael isn't, we're gonna do like low level blackmail that most people will just shrug off "hahaha I got you saying you like pineapple on pizza (I might be stoned but I love it)"
In another life I really would have liked just doing laundry and taxes with you> Create that burner email address.
Well, it's time to put your scam into action. The question remains: under what persona?
> Since you're already impersonating the official Hamilton County Twitter, it's probably a bit much to pose as "Mark from PR" with it to try scamming Louisa into giving you her password because AFAYK, government accounts don't DM their followers for anything and just post news updates publicly.
On the other hand... misusing a government official email to collect people's online information seems like it'd be perfectly on brand with "Mark from PR's" type of idiocy... Decisions, decisions...
-OH! You had an idea.
You could work under the guise of a public opinion committee. Pretend to be a board dedicated to improving the public services in Hamilton County! This is perfect! You put together a short Google Form with some nonsense waffle questions about "what do you think about the performance of the Secretary of State?" and "How clean are the parks?" and shit like that, all to dress up your scam in a brilliantly corporate coat of paint. At the end of the form, you'd force your target to write down the names of and passwords to at least two of their social media accounts. If all goes well, you could gain access to Louisa's Facebook, too!
You published the Google Form, creating an email through which to send your scam: HamiltonCountyPublicAffairs@gmail.com. Louisa put her email in her Twitter bio, so finding her was easy; the difficult part would be finding a way to present this to her. You had to look professional, but also casual. You needed to be a comforting presence one could safely trust their login information with. If Mrs. Rosenthal answered your email with any kind of suspicion, you needed a way to reassure her that you were "legitimate."
You needed to become Mark from PR.
>look around to see if you have any dark edgy clothes, you need the mark the pr guy fit complete
Pulling out your best suit jacket and turning your Rust Buckets shirt inside out (you still haven't properly gotten dressed, btw), you slicked back your hair and took a few photos trying to achieve that "Mark from PR" look. Nothing really clicked. Your hair was too damn long; she'd be able to tell it was you unless you cut it, which... um, fuck no.
You dug through the images in your computer and eventually stumbled upon a semi-formal photo you took in your sophomore year of college. Obscenely dorky, un-reverse image searchable and, most importantly, nigh-indistinguishable from your current self. This was perfect. This was flawless. This was him: Mark Bennett, the Hamilton County PR Guy.
>mark from pr exists now, we've gone too deep
We have our guy, we have our form and we have our target. Now all we needed to do was craft an email in which to place our live bait.
- Current Time: Sunday, December 19th, 10:30 AM
- Current Goals:
- Get the house looking neat ahead of time for Sabrina's arrival.
- Scam Louisa Rosenthal out of her Twitter login credentials.
[I liked the part where the jerkass said "It's scammin' time!" and then stole some milf's twitter account]
Don't you ever fix your lips to say that, bruh. I'm sitting right here and I got my daughter in the backseat>Perfect you had truly become Mark the pr guy, now you just need the room to look like it; turn off the lights and put on some totally not copyrighted death note music and get to writing the form. Put some basic questions about the park before asking for Louisa's information to "send the information" back to her
In another life I really would have liked just doing laundry and taxes with you> Dear Mrs. Rosenthal: As one of our valued residents of Hamilton County, I apologize for the misinformation regarding the Christmas Tree Lighting Event schedule. My colleague, Peter Sanderson, was attempting to tarnish my reputation, and my department is currently investigating the case. I have also sent this apology to all our followers of our official Twitter account, @HamiltonCityREAL, and we assure you that this issue will be cleared ASAP.
(Of course, you're not being sincere with your "apology", but putting Scare Quotes on that word would definitely tip Louisa off.)
> In other important matters, we are surveying improvements on Hamilton Square for future public events [insert Google Form here]. This will only take 5 minutes, and completing this survey will allow you to win $50,000 from our raffle draw at the Lighting Event. If you are chosen as the winner, we shall ask that you provide us with your account information so we can transfer your winnings to your bank account. Your opinions on improving Hamilton Square are highly appreciated.
> Signed, Mr. Mark Bennett, PR Manager (include a forged, but legit-looking signature above the printed name)
Edited by TroperNo9001 on Jan 13th 2025 at 10:40:05 PM
Still waiting for someone to break him free...> Dear Mrs. Rosenthal: As one of our valued residents of Hamilton County, I apologize for the misinformation regarding the Christmas Tree Lighting Event schedule. My colleague, Peter Sanderson, was attempting to tarnish my reputation, and my department is currently investigating the case. I have also sent this apology to all our followers of our official Twitter account, @HamiltonCityREAL, and we assure you that this issue will be cleared ASAP.
(Of course, you're not being sincere with your "apology", but putting Scare Quotes on that word would definitely tip Louisa off.)
> In other important matters, we are surveying improvements on Hamilton Square for future public events [insert Google Form here]. This will only take 5 minutes, and completing this survey will allow you to win $50,000 from our raffle draw at the Lighting Event. If you are chosen as the winner, we shall ask that you provide us with your account information so we can transfer your winnings to your bank account. Your opinions on improving Hamilton Square are highly appreciated.
> Signed, Mr. Mark Bennett, Hamilton County PR Manager (include a forged, but legit-looking signature above the printed name)
And... sent!
Now this was class. Absolutely despicable on your end. You couldn't wait to start wreaking havoc with Mrs. Rosenthal's socials in your hands. But Rome wasn't built in a day. For now, the best thing you could do would be to sit and let your scam marinate for a few hours while you wait for a response from her. It's almost 11, you should probably put some pants on.
- Current Time: Sunday, December 19th, 10:45 AM
- Current Goals:
- Get the house looking neat ahead of time for Sabrina's arrival.
- Wait for a response from Louisa Rosenthal.
[input command]
Don't you ever fix your lips to say that, bruh. I'm sitting right here and I got my daughter in the backseat> While listening to totally not copyrighted Death Note music, put on some pants, and then get back to cleaning the house for Sabrina. Don't forget the decor!
You've put off getting dressed for long enough. You head into the shower, turning on a playlist of "Moody Video Game OST to make you feel like Light Yagami" to awaken your inner darkness as you get yourself clean. By Jove, the extent of your villainy could surprise you sometimes.
>switch out from your Mark the pr guy fit into a normal fit, and change the music -the song is only meant for when your in the mark the pr guy form- and get to cleaning (does decor really matter?)
You flip your shirt back out, revealing the Rust Buckets logo underneath. Hanging up your suit jacket, you put your actual pants on and get your hair combed. Enough goofing off, time to lock in. The next step: Dusting.
As for decor... Well, the Christmas stuff you had was unequivocally garbage, so there was no way that dressing your joint up in that shit would make the place feel inviting... Then again, your house wasn't really all that inviting as is. As established, you enjoy reveling in misery the moment you get home from anywhere, so you didn't see it fit to have any decor in the first place. But you don't wanna start on the wrong foot with Sabrina; you haven't seen her in years, and the last thing you needed was another person in this neighborhood (let alone another cousin) who thinks you're a freak!
> Okay yes, the decor matters, but you prolly have plenty of time before you need to do that, so cleaning it is! And play Rust Buckets songs to make it more fun!
...Yeah, you were definitely gonna have to spruce up the place eventually. Maybe you could take care of that later today. For now, you slid your earbuds in, put your Rust Buckets playlist on shuffle and proceeded to dust every possible surface that looked even slightly dirty. Christ on ice, that was a lot of dust. You really needed to dust your shit more often.
- Current Time: Sunday, December 19th, 11:30 AM
- Current Goals:
- Get the house looking neat ahead of time for Sabrina's arrival.
- Wait for a response from Louisa Rosenthal.
- Buy some Christmas decor for your house.
- Current Inventory: Phone, Wireless Earbuds
[input command]
(Note: New gimmick: Idle Thoughts — Tasks written in gray under Current Goals aren't nearly as imminent as other goals (as in you don't have to finish them within the current day), but you can take them into consideration if you're looking for something to pass the time.)
Don't you ever fix your lips to say that, bruh. I'm sitting right here and I got my daughter in the backseat

> Bust out your dusty, cringy, outdated Christmas decor from your storeroom.
Also, if Christmas falls on a Saturday in this thread, then this takes place either in 2021 (but with no COVID for obvious reasons) or 2027. If the former, I hope we didn't make any Present-Day Past anachronisms with pop culture stuff.
Edited by TroperNo9001 on Jan 4th 2025 at 4:14:43 AM
Still waiting for someone to break him free...