“This is bad,” Demens said aloud as he shifted through what looked like various printed-out screenshots. He spoke aloud to himself because in the world of cartoons, everyone knows that this kind of behavior is perfectly acceptable, even though it would make you look like a loony in real life. And even if the social norms changed, it wouldn’t matter much anyways, because he really was a loony.
“What’s bad?” Inquired Shin, who hadn’t learned his lesson yet: the more he kept quiet, the less physical/mental trauma he endured.
As if to prove that point, Demens whacked him deftly over the head with the hilt of his extremely improbable scythe.
“I don’t want to talk to you, Meme-spawn! Send one of the real characters in here!” Demens was a big meanie, but he was still more popular than Shin; the polls proved it.
This was probably a good example of how girls will like any shirtless guy, no matter what he’s like. Not that this writer can talk.
Stomping out of whatever room-like space they were occupying, unappreciated as usual, Shin called over his shoulder, “Well at least since I won’t be in the book, I won’t be paired up with other guys in bad fanfiction!”
Demens and every other male in the series felt a horrified shudder go down their spine.
Poking his mismatching head into the room, pretty-boy Anpan said, “I just felt a shiver. Please tell me it’s only the draft in here.”
Demens waved his hand in a dismissive fashion, completely ignoring him, “No, not you either. Send in someone that I like.”
“You don’t like anyone.”
“That’s true,” the killer agreed, even though the entirety of the small fanbase thought he loved Søt. They were technically a canon pairing, but everyone knows murderers don’t fall in love. Not in realistic stories, anyways.
“So what’s so awful that an entire deviation has to be written about it?” Anpan asked, picking at a nail in a bored fashion.
Demens flapped the papers at him, “Look at this! People on this website think I’m cute!”
The genius took one look at him and snorted, “Cute? YOU? Good one.”
“I’m not kidding!”
“You would stomp on a puppy given the chance,” Anpan pointed out, “I find it hard to believe that the fairer sex would find that appealing.”
“Times change, it seems,” Demens muttered, “Anyways, it’s ruining my reputation.”
“As what? Jack the Ripper with a boo-boo on his chest and an emo haircut?”
Throwing down the papers, Demens stood up, “This is why I don’t like you! And for your information, my hair covers all of my face in the actual story!”
“That sounds emo, too.”
As the two argued, Søt and Pepper found themselves with problems of a different sort.
“I don’t understand why I’m a stuttering ditz in the 4komas,” Søt said in a dreamy, serene voice, not actually seeming concerned about the issue.
“And I’m not this bad when it comes to women,” Pepper attempted to redeem himself, even though his paisley face turned red. Not very smooth.
“Yes you are,” Mint interjected.
He scuffed the floor with his shoe, saying nothing else. Because in reality, for him to say more than a few words in a conversation was terribly out of character. Even one sentence was pushing it.
“What I really don’t see is why Demens is my Parasite instead of yours,” Søt murmured, puzzling over the original character tournament she had participated in a few months ago, “It doesn’t make much sense at all.”
“You can have him,” Pepper muttered, breaking his no-speech code. He hated Demens that much.
“Ha! You guys have it lucky!” Yaki burst in on the conversation completely uninvited, “At least people know who you are. Me and Soba are practically just eye candy for fans who like colorful pictures!”
“Soba and I,” Anpan corrected, though no one really listened to him.
“Tough sh*t, blueboy,” Demens said, his foul mouth being the one trait he seemed to take everywhere with him, “The later you’re introduced, the less popular you are.”
“Wrong!” Takuwan spoke up, “I think I could make a fair case for myself if I said that I’m less popular than Mint. And she was introduced after me and Anpan.”
“Anpan and I,” Anpan stressed in a suffering kind of voice. (Again, he was ignored.)
“Want to make a poll?” Mint asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm, “It could last for months and then end up with neither of us winning.”
“Hey, technically I won that,” Demens insisted.
“It was voted undecided by the majority of people!” Shin shouted, his ego still wounded.
“GTFO, ALTERNATIVE GENDER THING!” The serial-killer bellowed.
“For the love of rhetoric, don’t speak internet acronyms aloud!” Anpan cried, distraught by the lack of grammatical perfection thus far.
“DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, YOU FIRE-FETISHIST!” Demens replied, insisting that he was the loudest by the constant presence of CAPS lock. No one felt like contradicting him; being that the only method was the use of CAPS and bold font.
Eventually, the entire room erupted into arguments, and no one really seemed to be grasping what the central problem was. Finally, quiet Soba could take no more.
“Everyone…EVERYONE!” That got their attention.
“Aren’t we forgetting the reason why we’re all portrayed this way?” She asked. No one seemed to know. Not even smart-aleck Anpan.
“ItaLuv.”
This was met by murmurs of “That’s right!” and “It is her fault!” and other generic forms of agreement.
“Well the way I see it, there’s only one logical solution to this,” Anpan projected.
Everyone nodded, already knowing the answer. Demens finished Anpan’s sentence for him:

“Kill the writer.”



In a different universe, where people were in 3D and didn’t look quite as pretty as anime characters, a girl nicknamed ItaLuv was sitting at her computer when she felt a sense of impending doom.