Young Writers Society

Twas the month inb4 skeletors
& all through the internet
all the pranksters were chillin',
just cooling their jets.

When all of a sudden,
what came with a scare,
SB Crew called for
the prank war of the year!

So gather your allies
and write down your foes.
Schadenfreude means you're happy
at the cost of some woes. >:]

IT WAS SAID of that year's Schadenfreude Festival that it all. began. with one. simple. water balloon.

"You see, @soundofmind," said Lumi instructively, "I will drop this water balloon on @AstralHunter's pelt from our location, eighteen floors up in the tower where my office is located, and he will have no choice but to join in the Festival!"

"Not another festival!"

Lumi was quite startled, and suddenly jumped back and threw the water balloon at the speaker behind him, who happened, as he beheld seconds later, to be a drenched and cranky @LadyLizzLovelace, with collateral damage in the ways of @Kyllorac, @Gringoamericano, @Castor, and @Kays.

"This was my favorite freakin' driving shirt you goon!"

Lumi began to cackle, as the balloon had gotten trapped in Lizz's hair, which was just classic body humor. "Oy, Lizz, y'think if I'd filled that balloon with a pie it would've given you clown makeup?"

In an instant, she had flipped Lumi's desk against the wall, cracking it between the U and M in LUMI, resulting in LU/MI.

"...that was mahogany. "

Lizz chortled. "Oh, Lums, I'm just getting started. Before you know it, all the mahogany you've ever loved will come crashing down around you." She snapped. "Let's go spread some Schadenfreude, gang." The rest of them snapped as well on their way out, like in the production "Westside Story."

soundofmind raised a finger of caution. "Not for nothing, Lumi, but we still have a bunch of water balloons..."

"So..." Kyll began once the gang had snapped their way down most of the hallway outside Lumi's office. "Lizzy, lovely, would you say you're feeling a bit deflated by your latest balloon encounter?"

@LadyLizzLovelace came to an abrupt stop, @Kays barely avoiding a catastropic collision. Lizz facepalmed and took a deep breath before looking Kyll dead in the eye. "I should've seen that coming."

"Yup," sang Kyll with a Cheshire grin before skipping off to do Kyllish things, schadenfreude successfully dispensed.

Lady Lizz was just getting a tad tired with Lumi's pranks and silly posts. No matter how much good they did for the kingdom, she didn't particularly like being the butt of some of his jokes. And she told him this as she typed an angry text while waiting for everyone to check and make sure the car didn't have any traps.

"@Kays, is it clean?"
"As a whistle, if somehow a whistle could be clean. Where does that come from? I should research that eventually."
"Do it on your own time. Let's move out."

@Kyllorac called Shotgun, the wild rabbit that inhabited the parking lot, while @Gringoamericano called 'shotgun' as in the front seat. Everyone else managed to wedge themselves into the back of the '65. The destination was revenge with a pit stop at @Snoink's cafe because no good mission could run without food. A right was taken and then a left and another left and then some wheels spun, before going down the same road for 50 miles. Several profanities were exchanged by the people in the car plus several wails from the rabbit.

"Lizz if you're taking us to the place with all the porcelain pigs on the shelf, please let me out now."
"Kyll, I wanted to kick you out half an hour ago for complaining about my driving. I'm not driving, it's the auto pilot system the resources crew installed. Blame someone else."

This bickering continued with words not appropriate for a tagbook post and some puns that would knock the audience off their feet. At last it stopped when the sort of heroes, arrived at the Porcelain Pig, a name that was creepy, cute, and recognizable as the work of Snoink immediately. It was a place outside of the crews and regular member groups, where everyone could come to meet and hopefully no stabbings would go down. There was of course still a noticeable separation of people.

The admins usually sat at their own little table along with their YWS spirit animals. Today the animals were being stand ins, a monkey for Nate, a kitten for @Rydia, another kitten for @Meshugenah and a dog drinking a cup of coffee for Big Brother. Then there were the Star Wars nerds, @ChieRynn and @AkeliaTaske at the end respectively and the RP Geeks where @FalconryGirl9086 was queen. The mention of Queen brings us into the music buffs. @Wolfical and @Iridescence were already ordering when the group got there and Gring quickly ran over to them.

"Well I guess we won't be reclaiming him for awhile."
Lizz looked over at the other crew members huddled together in factions and took her usual booth seat.
"Now you three stay here while I go and find us some food."

The kitchen was empty and no one seemed to be around, so she picked up the usual orders of everyone and left a hefty tip tucked under the cash register.
"Three slices of flavor changing pie, an ice cream sundae and a cup of whipped cream for the rabbit."

@TheSilverFox came up from the table he was at with @TheMaieuticMesmerist and @AstralHunter. He leaned down in the booth and set down a whoopie cushion.
"I'm sorry to have to do this but orders from Lumi were to spread havoc and pranks."
--
He never saw the dish of whipped cream coming.
--
The group now ate in peace, after Shotgun had his dish refilled of course, and they plotted ways to tag more people and cause more trouble throughout the YWS kingdom.

As Lumi and @soundofmind, along with the newly-allied @Wolfical and @DemonGoddess, bombed the citizens below with water balloons (from an air balloon Lumi had stolen from @ChildofNowhere) he wondered if their Schadenfreude tally had gone too high on a single prank.

"I've been thinking, gang..."

"That's a dangerous sport," they retorted in unison.

Lumi twitched and spattered a water balloon in @Wolfical's face. "Save your reviews for RevMo (1500 reviews or bust, YWS!)" He shook his head. "I've been thinking, gang, that we need to up our game. Involve some new faces. Spread the festival into a...festival, y'know?"

"Well," said DemonGoddess, "we do already have a balloon!"

"Lots of balloons!" countered soundofmind.

Lumi nodded. "Then let's find us Cap'n @Rydia and make the Schadenfreude Festival a real festival!" He held up his hands. "But not too quickly. I do quite enjoy the Fahrvergnügen of the slow air balloon."

The others agreed in unison as they bobbed above the trees. DemonGoddess dropped a rather flabby balloon down through the hatch in the basket, followed by a shriek below. They all blinked at her curiously. "It was @SarukaTheHuman! And a balloon filled with tapioca pudding." She grinned evilly. "It's a well-documented fact that no one but Lumi likes tapioca pudding."

He slouched back into his corner, sighing. "I'm getting too old."

"So, what convinced you to post for one of these again?" @TheMaieuticMesmerist asked, suppressing a shiver from eating another of those modern Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans.

@BrumalHunter sighed. "There are multiple reasons. Four, to be exact. The most obvious one is that I was tagged twice. Though it didn't stop me from not posting before, I decided to acknowledge the tags for- would you stop that?" Hunter glared at the gagging Mesmerist. "Why are you eating those anyway?"

Once the senile wizard had recovered sufficiently to answer, he replied, "Everybody's eating them nowadays. It's almost like a popularity statement. Besides, this is my prank for the Schadenfreude Festival."

"I doubt punishing yourself by eating unspeakably horrid candies counts as a prank."

"I'm eating it so that people will trust me when I do this." He extended his arm to the right, offering a green jellybean to the passing @CowLogic. "Jellybean?"

"What flavour is that?" she asked suspiciously.

"Lime."

She narrowed her eyes but popped it into her mouth anyway. "Huh, lawn clippings. I actually like this one better. Thanks!"

"You should know better than to give a grass-flavoured jellybean to a herbivore," @TheSilverFox chuckled.

TMM scowled. "It works with most people, okay?" He looked back to Hunter. "Didn't you have three other reasons to elaborate on?"

"Hey, I was waiting for you to finish! Humph. I'm also writing this because I need to get back into the habit of storybooking regularly."

"Like you wanted to get back into the habit of reviewing?" Fox remarked. "I'm still waiting for you to finish chapter one."

"The difference being that I'm actually a member of the Storybook Crew and there's an activity check next month. Even though I'm a frozen mould now, I still wish to remain green."

"Aww, but blue would fit your username better."

"Like how whipped cream fits your face better than a rabbit's digestive tract?"

"(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻"

@Snoink's spirit animal, appearing out of nowhere, tackled Fox to the ground. "Table-flipping is forbidden in my cafe!"

"┬─┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)"

"Better. As apology, you can sweep the place. Starting now." The spirit animal disappeared back to nowhere, leaving behind a grumbling Fox.

"Where are the brooms?"

"Maybe you should ask the BroomalHunter," TMM joked.

"..."

The senile wizard's eyes widened. He got up and slowly backed away. "Err, Hunter, @Charizard821's broom shouldn't be pulled from his avatar like th-"



After showing the maimed mesmerist exactly what Hunter had thought of his joke, he was also stuck on clean-up duty. Fortunately, most of the patrons had cleared out following the aftermath.

"You know, @Tortwag wanted to call you "Bruum" because it sounded mystical."

"I do know, yes. Once I explained why I'd prefer he didn't, he thanked me for throwing his mystical schtick out of the window. If you don't stop bugging me about it, I'll pretend you're a stick and throw you out of the window in a similar manner."

"Wouldn't that leave you to sweep the place on your own?"

"Touché."

Fox looked around at the mess Hunter had caused. "...We should probably get to work."

Working in silence proved to be immensely boring, so Fox quickly restarted the conversation. "If the name bothers you so much, why did you choose it at all?"

"Brumal, like Astral, is six letters long and allows people to deduce my identity without trouble. B is also one letter after A, so it's fitting that it's my next username. Besides, Hiemal would have caused weird alliteration, and Frore would simply have sounded wrong."

"But why did you change your username at all?"

"The simple reason is that the next season of a series I'm following comes out soon."

"Oh, so it's because Winter Has Come." Fox smirked.

"Aren't you a little young to watch that?"

The vulpine broke eye contact. "...No..."

"Uh-huh, sure. But no, I meant RWBY. Volume 5 starts on October 14th."

"Aww, I can't use any cold-associated jokes for that."

"You could have said it was a cool anime or that it's ice to watch."

Fox facepalmed. "You're as bad as Snowdrake."

"There are only so many chilly puns one can make. You should just Let It Go."

"Don't you have anything better to do?"

"Sorry, I simply couldn't hold it back anymore."

"So this is your contribution to the festival - making people endure bad jokes?"

"Pretty much. The quality never bothered me any-"

"If you make one more Frozen reference, I swear, I'm going to-"

"Turn away and slam the door?"

"(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻"

...

....

.....

"That would have been a good place to end the post, but I haven't said Fahrvergnügen yet."

"Why is that necessary?"

"Credits, duh. My reasons for writing this post are one, I was tagged; two, I need to post more frequently; three, I had to explain the reason behind my name change; and four, I have to earn more credits to keep the starchy wolves away from the door. The irony of my word choice isn't lost on me."

"Three credits won't make much of a difference."

"It doesn't matter. I'm almost done with my test series, but the bloody potato will catch up with me by the time I'm done; I can't afford to wait any longer. His gloating is becoming insufferable. If he keeps this up, I'll show him what it really means to be a mouldy potato."

"Don't you think he's immunised himself against all known fungi?"

"Most likely, which is why I have a certain slime mould in mind: Phytophthora infestans."

"Aren't those technically classified as fungi anyway?"

"They're more closely related to animals. They're only similar to fungi in their reproductive cycle."

"But that doesn't change the fact that-"

"This post has gone on long enough." Hunter yawned. "We can stop now."

"But you can't just end a post in the middle of a conversation!"

"I could make you flip another table and end it there."

"And how would you make me do that?" Fox asked defiantly.

"What do you call driving a Volkswagen?"

"It's not a joke if that's what the ad is all about."

"Just indulge me."

Fox sighed heavily. "Fahrvergnügen, obviously."

"And what do you call being in a Volkswagen driven by you?"

The vulpine narrowed his eyes. "If this is a joke about my driving skills..."

"Fahrbefürchtung!"

"(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻"