>>17065
Mm; circular.

Then I'm well and truly out. All I can appeal to is the possibility of broader interests; but I don't think I can convince you of it in a satisfactory way. I can only say that something has got to give for it to work out, and that that thing may well be the monotropism.

>>17066
I still don't even really get what you're talking about.

Look, I just want to write Touhou fiction at the end of the day. I can't change much about what I'm interested and not interested in.

Anyone have some recommendations for stories involving Touhou fisticuffs? Just realized I haven't seen a no-holds-barred, over-the-top action sequence since the dramatic conclusion of Gensokyoland Saga.

We purposely don't federate.

As mentioned, federation is disabled on purpose. That file is pretty much there as a placeholder.

Thanks anyways for your post.

>>17012
Yeah, dunno. Until all the old stories are properly tagged, it's hard to say what exists beyond the most stand-out examples, of which few exist in your case. Might yield quicker results to just comb the story list yourself and see what turns up.

>>17013
Ah, I understand. Well, I’ll just keep my chin up. Hopefully something (whether it’s old or new) will turn up.

Sooo...anyone here checked out "A Fairy's Tale?"

It's a story that explores the life of the Scarlet Devil Mansion crew prior to moving to Gensokyo, most notably one of the Fairy Maid's, who seemingly goes through something of a character arc throughout the story. Princess Tepes takes some "creative liberties" when it comes to characterizing the SDM Crew, but they're honestly pretty good and actually refreshing in my opinion. That's code for "Tepes didn't make Meiling an absolute joke (which is always welcomed in my book), and made a Sakuya that's actually very likable. One of my favorite interpretations of the head maid honestly.". Also Flandre talks. Like a lot. This is an important fact, trust me.


So, I know this isn't the thread to do so, but I'd say check it out if you're the kind of person who was looking for a story that explores life in the SDM before, and up to when they move to Gensokyo.

Bonus Points if you wanted the protagonist to be a Fairy Maid. Lol

>>17001
>Your standard dramatic adventure story draws its tension and drama from fear of the protagonist failing.
This was a fairly important thing to make explicit, I think. Oftentimes it's assumed that this is the only way a reader may be kept interested, and that simply isn't true. In fact I tend to check out of stories which sustain themselves primarily around the teasing of "stakes"; that is, bad outcomes that must simply be avoided; conversely, I tend to welcome stories that feature complex and proactive "play", or that effectively establish a world of moving parts outside the myopia of the "central conflict", even if it might undermine the plausibility of the "stakes".

It's interesting that you mention the Lord of the Rings, because I seem to have enjoyed it for quite the contrary reasons when I first read it a few years ago. As menacing as the War of the Ring may have been, it ultimately struck me as a last gasp of sorts; immense in the present moment but itself dwarfed by greater strokes of history long past; and it was this tremendous tapestry of grandeur and decline everywhere in the background - some of it even, like Tom Bombadil, still infamously blithe - that gave the necessary dignity to this world that was to be placed under threat. And though, again contrarily, I'm typically unmoved by "character stories", I found Theoden in particular among the most compelling that I've ever read; serving almost as a microcosm of the books as a whole.

Maybe it's telling that the poem that sticks out most in my mind is rather the Rohirric, nearly identical in its opening line with its Old English inspiration:

>Where now the horse and the rider?
>Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago?

Both are elegies; foregone conclusions, in other words. Yet they compel m

>>17002

>It's interesting that you mention the Lord of the Rings, because I seem to have enjoyed it for quite the contrary reasons when I first read it a few years ago. As menacing as the War of the Ring may have been, it ultimately struck me as a last gasp of sorts; immense in the present moment but itself dwarfed by greater strokes of history long past; and it was this tremendous tapestry of grandeur and decline everywhere in the background - some of it even, like Tom Bombadil, still infamously blithe - that gave the necessary dignity to this world that was to be placed under threat.

This is actually another point I loved about Lord of the Rings. The fact that in-universe, this isn't even the greatest threat, it's just a shadow compared to past threats, makes the universe seem even bigger. The way the elves are portrayed as wonderful, fair, and yet simultaneously so far diminished from what they used to be... Middle Earth is full of these points of context, and I think it really adds to the world. For those less familiar:

-) Most of the elves have already gone West, and those that remain are only really hanging on because of the three rings. No matter how the third age ends, the time of the elves goes with it. When the books finish and the third age ends, the bearers of the three rings of the elves sail west. Which, not coincidentally, include the leaders of both Rivendell and Lothlorien.

-) Gondor used to be a much larger nation, with the capital of Osgilath and two towers. One of those towers was captured by Mordor, and Osgilath is now a ruin and a battleground. Now it's a much smaller nation centered around Minas Tirith. On a similar note, Rohan actually used to be part of Gondor, but they gave the land away because they couldn't politically keep hold of it, and better to have it as an ally nation than conquered by barbarians.

-) The ents are also in decline. They were never many, they had not increased, and they straight up lost the ent-wives, so barring a major change, there's never going to be any more of them.

Let's talk a little about characterization. This is an important topic, simply because people are willing to forgive the plot meandering around if they like the characters involved. But if people dislike or worse, don't care about your characters, it doesn't matter how interesting the plot might be, few readers will stick around to see it through. In short, the vast majority and stories live and die by their characterization.

There's a lot that goes into making a character. I think you can roughly divide the details of character creation into five sections: Background, personality, goals, appearance, and abilities.

It's important to note that while these are all separate categories, they're also all interconnected. To take a simple (if cliche) example, a tragedy in someone's past (background) could very well have given them a scar (appearance), lingering trauma (personality), landed them in a wheelchair (abilities), and given them a strong desire for revenge (goals). This doesn't need to be the case for every detail, obviously. If you decide your character should have freckles, the freckles don't need an origin story! And a lot of times these connections never get explored on-screen. The main character will probably get all of his stuff pulled into the light, but there just isn't time to explore why your twelfth side character's childhood trauma made him hate clowns and always sleep with a nightlight.

(It's worth noting that Worm is a good example of this interplay. Part of the setting is that in order to get superpowers, you have to have some terrible tragedy, called a trigger event, in your backstory, and your powers depend in large part on the nature of your trigger event, addressing the cause in sort of a monkey's paw fashion. For instance, one kid's father was dying of cancer, and he desperately wanted a little more time with him, so he got the power to temporarily freeze objects in time. As such, by the nature of the setting, most of the characters have that connection between their powers, background, appearance (through their hero/villain costume) and often their personality as

To perhaps the point of blatancy, I authored Very Forbidden Scrollery. Unlike last time, however, I wasn’t really attempting anything “different,” style-wise, so that’s fine. There’s not much more to rant about. To start, I’d planned to finally write a lewd Reimu (who “transacts” with a village artisan, who turns out possibly to be her dad – Reimu’s mum was never forthcoming), but then I got into an accident, spent a few weeks in near-constant pain, and so that daydream slowly lost its lustre. Afterwards, the D bent in an unexpected direction, and here we are.
>Why an old man…?
The C-‘tism. Kosuzu’s grandpa is an existing “character” who “appeared” in the manga, so I went for him rather than an OC. More fun that way. To me, if not your moral compass.

Also, don’t be surprised if you ever read up on the person Kosuzu’s inspired by and spot a familiar name. Just a little in-joke by yours truly.

Oh! And in case you ever feel like re-reading this piece of filthy smut, I cross-posted it to AO3 with a few… additions… which wouldn’t have worked out as well on THP: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45836953/

>>16961
>Then you had to go and make a weird conscious decision to be more... I can't find the correct word. 'Sleazy' is the best I can come up with, even if it isn't the greatest encapsulation.
I’ll break character here and admit that, yes, it is indeed an affectation. In brief, I took a study of available, written 2hu erotica and discovered a dearth of “pornish,” doujinshi-like scenarios – that weren’t futa, anyway – despite the vast popularity of general “sleazy” smut. It is a hole I’ve since dedicated myself to filling like the lowest-hung innuendo. It may not be everybody’s cup of hot coffee, certainly not the favourite flavour as has been evidenced, but it’s a (self-imposed) obligation.

>>16985
>Also, don’t be surprised if you ever read up on the person Kosuzu’s inspired by and spot a familiar name. Just a little in-joke by yours truly.
But I didn't see any Benjamin Smith Lymans mentioned in the story?

In the eventuality any interested parties haven't yet noticed, the prize has been delivered: >>/at/41283.

Not a dear or familiar character to me by any means, but it's turned out decently well, I dare pat myself on the back.

You can't legislate good behaviour, but you can have reasonable rules-of-thumb. I had a few thoughts about things in our outer communities, so I decided to share some of those.

N.B. This shouldn't be taken as a do-or-die pronouncement by moderation. Just take it all into consideration and otherwise continue acting like a decent human being, okay?

https://www.tekitou.moe/posts/2023-03-31-ontopic.html

Did you know THP had a birthday yesterday? Happy fifteenth, THP. I'm sorry I couldn't do anything.

Anyway, I started this post a while back and meant it to be something of a long 'user's manual' sort of thing, but that got pretty tiresome. I ended up retooling it to be a lot more concise, mostly because I didn't feel it needed to instruct as much as bring attention to things. With any luck, I'll have brought some previously unnoticed things to someone's attention.

https://www.tekitou.moe/posts/2023-04-02-keepingup.html

Here's a quick little piece about a long-time daydream of mine. It's idealistic and perhaps unfeasible. Hell, maybe impossible. I'd still like to see it happen someday.

https://www.tekitou.moe/posts/2023-04-18-tuhupike.html

>>16937
Soft NACK on my part. Right now, it's basically Scarlet Tycoon and Girl of Death, with (I guess) the addition of Not-Life now. Maybe we could go on with that, but it kind of seems like the choices available put off some people last time. I haven't had time or energy to come up with additional suggestions, so I feel kind of bad about not having much to add to the process. If others want to go ahead as-is, then I guess I'd come along, however.

>>16938
Hmm. Well, I won't push for it, since I'm kind of slammed with work at the moment, but I'm not giving up on it either. We've got the contest going on right now, anyhow, so maybe I'll refloat it once we wrap that up.

This is kind of a repeat topic in some ways, but it came up again in the outer communities.

For whatever event we hold next, there is always the possibility that we could abandon the pretext of 'competition' and just have an exhibition, whether a general one or based on some sort of thematic element. Given the lack of stakes (e.g., meaningful prizes) for contests beyond 'bragging rights', there's little difference beyond a somewhat formalised voting process. Were we to transition to an exhibition, we would essentially just be doing away with voting as a procedural element.

Some out-of-band communication has involved some dissatisfaction with what could be perceived as a lack of serious scrutiny involved in judging contests, leading to contests being, at best, popularity contests. Leaving the veneer of 'competition' out of things would alleviate any perceived need to tailor an entry to any particular sensibilities to 'win'. By the same token, the objection has been raised that even the thinnest pretext of 'competition' might be necessary to motivate some entrants. There is also the fear that removing the voting process will lead to a dearth of feedback desired by those submitting entries.

There's probably much more to be said, but I'll leave that to the rest of you to discuss. Considering there's nothing yet in mind for another event, competition or otherwise, there's not much pressure to make a decision right this minute, but it would behoove those interested to make it at some point.

So, as a writer, I personally love write-ins, as they're a sign of viewer interactions. Granted, I haven't had anything I'd consider a particularly silly or unwarranted write-in, so I might be a bit biased. I have had a few that have been fairly off-the-rails, but they've still been legitimately good (or at least reasonable) ideas based off of the information available at the time.

As far as writer interaction with the readers go, that's tricky. See, the thing is, I actually love talking about my story. I could easily throw several paragraphs in almost per update about what might have happened, or could have happened, or my thoughts on something. But I don't. I'll throw stuff in as an end-of-part coda, perhaps, but I fear to say too much.

Two reasons for this. The first is that I don't want to bias the readers with my personal commentary. Author's notes are fun, but the story must stand on its own without them. If someone who doesn't read any of the notes about what I intended comes to a completely different interpretation of the characters than what I intended, then I've screwed up as a writer, and that's a real risk if I keep outright telling the viewers what I intended after each update.

The second comes down to vanity. There was a previous community I wrote in where I got in trouble for self-advertisement, and I had a bit of a rant about how my story wasn't getting the attention it deserved compared to other, worse stories. It's not something I'm proud of, and pretty much ended my involvement in that community, as well as the story I'd been writing at the time. (Which is honestly a shame, as I wouldn't mind finishing or maybe rebooting that some day.) Because of that, I try to take a hands-off approach to commenting. It's easier for me to avoid attention seeking if I minimize my interaction outside of the updates. Or, as is increasingly the case these days, apologizing for updates being late. Alas.

Speaking of apologies, I'm one of the anons who floated the idea of participating and never did anything. So... sorry about that, I've just been busy lately. Even finding time t

>>16931
>If someone who doesn't read any of the notes about what I intended comes to a completely different interpretation of the characters than what I intended, then I've screwed up as a writer
I mean, that's going to happen no matter how much footwork you put into stage managing reader perception of things. You can outright directly tell people that things are one way or another, yet they'll still come to head-scratching conclusions based on inherent biases or whatever. I've had it happen time and again in my own writing to the point that I long gave up trying to correct people. Dunno, though. Maybe it depends how much investment people have in your story. Nobody around here really has the same experience writing, for better or worse.

As to actual book club matter, well, no real need for apologies. There was hardly a call for strong commitment. The pacing that so annoyed certain people was chosen with the assumption that people would probably fall in and out. If things go on and you happen to only find time to get involved every once in a while, that's fine enough.

Very belated in getting my thoughts in.

>>16920
>Did the story make you feel anything?
Hesitation, mostly, or a sense of "waiting for the other shoe to drop". I get the feeling in the end that it was mainly supposed to be a fun adventure focusing on personalities rubbing off on each other and which wouldn't get super into it, but it really was hard to tell because I still felt like that could have changed at any moment.

>What did you think of the writing style?
I think the author is a fair hand at scene-setting and has a good sense for personality as external affect, but could probably stand to get a little deeper into a character's psyche, past, and whatnot in order to get them to really stand out from the page as fully-developed people. Of course, I haven't seen them write any characters in extremis, so maybe they were simply keeping it up their sleeve, but the keystones-and-chicken-twine analogy from earlier still strikes me as salient.

>Was there any passages that stood out to you?
Hobo silence

>Would you recommend this story?
I don't think I could, in good conscience; but then again I pretty much have to have liked something nearly unreservedly in order to be able to recommend it to anyone else without a whole bunch of caveating. Besides, it just didn't get far enough.

>>16927
Ran, you don't need to argue this hard. We believe you deserve Youkai rights, too.

Some personal contribution to fire starting, now.

Yukari Yakumo intentionally lost the initial Lunar-Youkai war. I personally believe this a bit further than simple headcanon, since it is easy to argue political gain for Yukari. The original lunarian war started around the time that Youkai were at their absolute highest point in strength. Shuten Doji and his commanders were still active, Yuyuko Saigyouji had recently become the spectre incarnate of death, and Yukari herself was looking for an excuse to get on everyone's radar. Invading the Lunarians is, of course, a very bad idea. The only member of an army where it's strongest members consist of the aforementioned would be Yukari herself, who has manipulation of fundamental concepts of reality as an ability. The heavenly gods of the established Lunarian dominion (and Chang'e, for whatever it's worth) are the same creation and conceptual gods of yore, and even non-god level commanders of this society are given absurdly potent weaponry. Yukari is the only member on the same playing field, and yet she doesn't seem to actively threaten the Lunarians at any given time. This is further confusing because she would be the only one capable of instigating an invasion in the first place with the means to create a portal from the Earth to the moon (that the Lunarians set up a nasty trap for her afterward). The Lunarians still don't kill her when she makes a second offense in the events of Silent Sinner in Blue, which means she never established the extent of her powers to them. It can be concluded that Yukari did not fully fight with all her power in the war, and thus the Youkai army lost handily, starting a sharp decline in all Youkai activity thereafter.

The morale hit to the Youkai society of the time after the war would have been large enough to outright spiritually harm them, and cause the start of the dwindling fear within humans toward Youkai. This goes so far as humans fighting and breaking the oni cabal (story of Shuten Doji&#

>>16929
I feel like that was actually confirmed at some point, but I don't recall where. Granted, I don't believe Yukari fighting "with all her power" would have been enough to change the outcome (and I find issue with the description of her powers as affecting "fundamental concepts of reality" - such a phrase is completely oxymoronic); but that's beside the point as there was likely never any intention of success. Achoo outright summarises the result as the blunting of youkai ambition and circumscription of their activities; and mentions that this is well-known even amongst humanity. And, more generally, when it comes to geopolitically non-dominant illiberal regimes, foreign policy is often just an extension of domestic policy, so it makes absolute sense to me.

>>16925
>>16926
>>16927
>Ran wn beep boop at you
put me out of my misery now

>>16673
Looking forward to the eventual /at/ spinoff, Lust Market.

>>16700
Is that anything like Lust Bees, the porn companion to Lost Bees?

>>16701
When the Last Bee is gone, and the Lost Market fades...