"Tell me, did you get this letter from AnimeManga too?"
"Yes, I did. It says 'Invitation to the Annual Christmas Meeting' on it. I didn't even know there was such a thing."
"Are you going there?"
"I think so, maybe there will be a free buffet."
"You are really impossible."
"I know."

A few days later the time had finally come. We stood in line in front of a huge congress hall, which had apparently been rented especially for the occasion, and waited to be let in. We, that was Lodchen, her sister Izzy and I, TheBetrayed.
There was general excitement. There were some rumors in the run-up to the event, with some claiming that Mb would bring some spectacular news. Nobody knew anything exactly, but the words "Facebook", "Google" and "take over" were also used a few times.
When we finally passed the beefy bouncer and made our way inside the building, a brightly colored guy jumped in our way, holding a few flyers under my nose.
"Buy the newSkylanders: Spyro's Adventurenow, a game for - umpf!" I pushed him aside.
"God, the guy is annoying. These idiots all the time," complained Lodchen next to me.
We entered the great hall, which was festively decorated for the occasion. Garlands, huge snowflakes, Christmas tree balls, and several lavishly hung Christmas trees that were scattered all over the room. Right next to the entrance was a guy in tank tops, high water pants and patent leather shoes, who was reading the news about anime and manga with huge horn-rimmed glasses on his nose. We ignored him.
Izzy, who had been running after us since before and now also felt ignored, just moaned something about "I'll go then, you don't want me here anyway" and disappeared in the direction of the bar.
There were already many guests present, the hall was well filled. After looking around helplessly for a while, we went to one of the bar tables that had been set up near the buffet.
"Pretty full here," I said to Lodchen and let my gaze wander through the crowd. I didn't know that AnimeManga has so many users. "
Lodchen tugged at my sleeve and pointed to a table on which lay a huge pile of paper labels, all of which were labeled with the names of AnimeManga users.
"Look. What's that supposed to be?"
Before I could say anything more than "I don't know", a young woman leaned over from the next table.
"These are the users who are registered on AnimeManga, but no one has ever heard of. They don't write, they don't draw and they never show up in the forum," she said with a grin.
I looked at her in surprise.
"Aha," I said with a smile. "Thanks."
"Don't worry," replied the young woman, also with a smile. "By the way, I'm Miel. And you?"She held out her hand to us. As we shook them one by one, I said, "I'm TheBetrayed, and this is Lodchen."
"Pleasant," replied Miel and pointed to her counterpart. "This is failure."
The named raised a hand in greeting.
I nodded to her and then turned back to Miel.
"Tell me, what are all these girls doing over there?"
I pointed to a group of young girls between twelve and sixteen who were giggling silly. Some looked like they came right here after the last Naruto convention: they were dressed like Naruto characters.
"Oh that," waved Miel off, "that's just the users from the fan fiction section."
"Why am I not surprised?" Lodchen mumbled resignedly.
"Don't forget the 'Why doesn't anyone read my fanfics' users," Failure said. "They are also part of it."
In fact, some of the girls definitely looked like they had just cried recently.
"And the forum players are over there," said Miel, pointing to another group who were standing around a table full of games.
A young girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen, slowly climbed onto the stage that had been set up against the back wall of the room. She tapped the microphone a couple of times and then spoke in a tearful voice:
"My life sucks, my boyfriend has left me, what should I do now, I want to kill myself, nobody likes me."
"Girl, you're only thirteen and it was probably your first boyfriend, so don't act like that," Failure yelled towards the stage. "Besides, what do we care?"
The girl winced and stumbled off the stage, where she was immediately greeted and pityed by a horde of teenagers.
Behind Failure, another group began to whisper and glare at her and Miel.
"Our hate users," Miel said disinterestedly when she noticed Lodchen's questioning expression while Failure giggled.
"I think it's funny," she said.
The lights went out and the conversation fell silent. Mb himself got on stage and took the microphone. He cleared his throat.
"Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to this year's AnimeManga Christmas meeting."
Silence.
"I have some important announcements to make, so I would ask you to wait until the end with your questions.", Mb continued, taking one look at the crowd.
"Let's start with the design. We had planned-"
"Will there be a new design?" Asked a particularly intrusive user in a loud voice. Mb ignored him.
"We had planned to keep our page design as it is. That has worked so far."
"Will there be a new design?" Asked another user and was immediately shouted down by the crowd.
"The guy earlier asked that question. Weren't you paying attention?"
"The main thing is to say something, right?""For something like that there was a search function ..."
Mb waited for the crowd to calm down before continuing.
"Let's come next to the number of visitors. As it stands, we unfortunately only have a very limited number of regular users who are online every day. We don't have much growth and some of the users have been inactive for years."
"That comes from the fact that nothing has changed here for years and only children are around in the forum," shouted some of the older users.
Mb gave them an angry look. "We do our best to continuously improve AnimeManga."
"Doesn't seem to be of much use," Lodchen muttered to me.

The discussion continued for a while. Mb, who was more and more harassed by the users present, finally left the stage in a hurry.
"What about our gifts?" The particularly intrusive user shouted after him. "The letter said something about presents."
"There are no presents", Mb called over his shoulder, then he had disappeared through the door outside.
Miel and Failure looked at each other grinning.
"The microphone is free. Do you think what I'm thinking?" Asked Miel.
Failure nodded.
As if on a command, the two ran off and pushed their way through the crowd until they finally reached the stage. Miel grabbed the microphone.
"Spam-Time", she shouted with a big grin.
I turned to Lodchen.
"What do you think if we stay a little apart and watch this group of chaos?" I asked with a grin.
"Good idea", Lodchen replied and we went to a small sitting area near the entrance.
"Hey ... isn't that Izzy?" I asked puzzled and looked at the figure hanging apathetically in one of the armchairs. "What is she doing here?"
"It disappeared earlier and has probably been drinking cups since then," answered Lodchen, bored and plopped down on the armchair next to me. "Not used to alcohol and then pour so much of it into yourself at once. You can imagine the state in which it is now."
Only now did I notice a small number of empty alcohol bottles lying at Izzy's feet.
"Nice stupid ..." I muttered, and turned my gaze to the rest of the community.
As expected, total chaos had broken out. Chairs flew here and there, some of the fanfiction girls had teamed up with the forum flamers and were trying to storm the stage, where Miel and Failure were happily singing one story after another. The misers cleared the buffet, while the chatters stayed a little apart and obviously forged bad plans.
A girl in a ninja headband came up to us.
"Hey, do you want to take part in my hands-on fanfiction? Pleaseeeeee!" She put on such a pleading dachshund look that every real dachshund would have envied her for it.
"No, get out of it!"I refused.
"But…"
"Whiz off!"
The girl trolled bent over, but immediately another was with us.
"Do you want to read my fanfiction? She is Sasuke x Itachi. Pleaseeee!"
She waved a dingy sheet of paper in front of my nose, which was covered with childish scrawls. I could see the words "Lacken", "Stöse" and "Libespiel".
"Get out of here, damn it," I yelled at her. "Not enough that you simply completely alienate two characters, you torture the spelling so extremely with your scribble that this crap isn't even worth an MSTing."
The girl looked at me confused. "What is an MSTing?"
I gave her a withering look and she disappeared, howling like a castle dog. Then I turned to Lodchen, who was having a similar discussion with an alleged fanart artist. She had scribbled something unrecognizable on a scrap of checked paper and was now begging Lodchen for recognition. However, she persistently ignored the draftsman until she finally gave in and trudged away.

What can I say, it was an all-round successful celebration. After that, the hall resembled a battlefield. After all, Mb had reappeared after a few hours and had announced that there would be presents after all. In the subsequent brawl for the best presents, however, it somehow disappeared.
Miel and Failure both wore new shirts that said "HALT STOP! Now I'm talking!" I had got hold of a new fountain pen and a notebook, while Lodchen was looking forward to a new graphics pad. While we were on our way back early in the morning, we went over the events of the previous evening again. It had been an evening we probably wouldn't forget anytime soon. And who knows, maybe there would be another meeting next year ...