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Bero-bero baaaaaa~! Did I surprise ya?! Did I?
Hello everyone, and welcome to the first Spooky Month Writing Contest! I’m the Contest Mascot, Kogasa!
Welcome everyone. I’m the host for this contest, known on here as Gooboi. Halloween is a rich time for stories to be told; the most famous of all witching hours. And with Touhou’s repertoire of ghosts and goblins, there’s plenty of fun to be had with them.
Readers beware, you’re in for a scare! :P
THEME
So, I’m sure you’re all wondering, what’s the theme of this competition? You ready for a truly spectacular spooking? Nyeheheheh… this contest’s theme is the Mysterious Masquerade!
In less catchy terms, the theme is things not being quite as they appear. This can be taken any way you like. It could be anything from characters wearing poorly-matching halloween costumes, to an emotional barrier someone’s hiding behind. Of course, you can go with any number of horror-themed ideas. Maybe a particularly cruel youkai is hiding among innocent humans, or someone steps into a party not realizing that they’re one of the dishes… or perhaps, someone who was once human or youkai finds themselves on the other side, and has to maintain their previous status at grievous risk to themselves? There are many, many possibilities…
...Gee. A story about humans becoming youkai. I wonder what inspired THAT suggestion. >:P
CONTEST RULES AND PRIZES
The contest will run through October. Submissions will open with a new Shorts thread on the 28th of October, and continue until the very end of the month! After that, voting will proceed until the 7th of November!
1 Entry per author, 1 vote per voter.
Three Weeks Remain! Have you got your ideas ready? Still plenty of time to write!
Byakuren has a pretty interesting origin, if you think about it. ZUN took a figure from one of the Shigisan Engi Emaki scrolls, the monk Myouren's sister, in that story an elderly nun, and used her as the basis for a character. Incidentally, the Flying Storehouse in the UFO incident, which later becomes the Myouren Temple, is pretty clearly based off of the story from the first scroll, detailing Myouren being a bit saucy and making a rich farmer's granary fly away.
As to Byakuren herself, I like her on a certain level, but she is also fairly complicated as a character. She definitely does not fully speak the truth with people and is a touch conniving, but she's not exactly malicious about it. She is, as with most people, self-interested and concerned with what will benefit the temple and thereby her. She also definitely does lean on her disciples to handle things around the temple; find a temple head priest who doesn't. But, well, I think her flaws are what I find most charming. I don't care all that much about the fact that she's technically a magician, but it is an additionally interesting facet.
I've sort of written her once, and would maybe try again if the chance presented itself, but I would say that I had a difficult time of it owing to how complicated she is as a character. The other part about it is that her relationships with her disciples are pretty unclear. Yes, all of them more or less owe her one for saving them in some way, but that's about all we truly know. (Actually, in the case of Kyouko, it's not even that deep, so we know even less there.) We don't know how they would actually interact with her on a personal level. Do they all actually fawn on her and elevate her as some kind of hero figure? Do they simply tolerate her and view her mostly as their boss? What about Shou and her status as avatar of Bishamonten, making her a bit of a special case? Who really has authority over whom in that relationship? It's one of the weaknesses of the Myouren cast in general — their general lack of cohesion as a 'cast'.
For my part, I think that she and Shou
As I'm busy preparing to go out of the country for the next month, I don't have that much time to deal with this thread, so we're going on hold yet again. The thread's near auto-sage anyway, so this is as good a point as any to drop off for now. See you in November with a fresh thread.
In all honesty, maybe you'll just offload the thread to someone else (again) instead of shutting it down?
It doesn't seem like much work to take on, simply post a first post with roll and a second one with collection of canonical sources, that's all for mandatory threadkeeping.
I’m organizing another themed writing event. I had thought to give it a little more time before another one of these but with other things possibly going on later in the year, like nanowrimo, it’s probably best to push things forward. Below you’ll find more details but feel free to ask questions in this thread if anything remains unclear.
Participating
You’re encouraged to participate in this latest exhibition of themed short stories as a writer and/or a reader. The former are expected to submit a story at the end of the submission period that incorporates the themes of the contest in a manner they think is appropriate. Commenting on entries after they’ve been submitted and the submission period ends and giving feedback or offering comments is highly encouraged!
Traditionally, submitting works or commenting has been done anonymously in order to minimize bias but this is not an explicit rule—you are free to do as you please. The main goals of these events is to encourage the community to create and to have fun.
The submission period
Writers have a full month to think about and write their own stories and a thread for exhibition entries will be created n 2024-09-01 and then there will be about a 2 day period when stories should be posted. That window isn’t strict—and you can be “late”—but it’ll be harder for other people to share their thoughts and comments if they don’t see your entry before they post.
Themes
The themes of the exhibition should be present in some capacity in the entries. Though, that said, they’re mainly there to try to spark ideas and provide some guidance for writers. How broadly or specifically these themes are incorporated is ultimately up to each author.
While I admit to wording it as opportunity and obligation partly for the alliteration, I think that these have a broad range of interpretations and aren’t overly limiting. For obligation, for instance, you could also interpret it as a not
Pretty quiet around here. Guess I'll take that as nobody else having much to say. In which case, here's the face reveal: I wrote The Problem with Civilisation.
In all honesty, it was a struggle to bring this piece to any kind of conclusion. I didn't start with much momentum, and life made it hard to ramp up to any degree. Various obligations that I couldn't put off left me with little focus or free time a lot of days, so there were many days where I simply made no progress at all. That I made it with a couple of days to spare so I could do a perfunctory self-edit and proofread was a feat in and of itself.
It all just underscores that I'm not a writer who can work quickly at all, nor can I very readily reconcile the basic conceptual matter of a story with actual written words. The concept of this piece took me close to a week to even nail down, for instance. I had initially felt like doing something involving tengu, based on one of the suggestions in the OP, but I couldn't come up with anything at all. I suppose the choice of Nemuno was largely due to the Character Discussion Thread. I still had a bit of the discussion about her kicking around in the back of my head by the time the contest started, so I guess she was just sort of an 'easy' choice at the time. She's also deceptively simple as a character. Deceptively.
I say that because I did struggle to feel as if I had a good sense of how to portray the mountain hag beyond the most superficial elements. The particular tone of her dialogue was simple enough, but figuring out what she would actually say, for instance, had me pulling out my hair at points. There were instances where I had to cut back on dialogue for her and try to use Byakuren to push things along instead. Then, when Kenji was actually awake and in the scene, I had to struggle to figure out how she would deal with him. Yes, yes, mommy hag and all, but I wasn't interested in taking the absolute easiest route possible. In that sense, my own struggle to reckon with Nemuno as a character is represented in some of the struggle she has wit
Same poster from >>17559
Otherworldly Flavor
A cute short that felt absolutely like a Touhou work, this one I enjoyed. The characters were used effectively, and I felt like I was reading Youmu and Yuyuko and people with similar names. The theme was simple but strong; Youmu was obligated to fulfill her master's order, and she took the opportunity to go out and party while still getting the job done.
My favorite short in this exhibition. The author had an idea, and they executed it well.
Eientei M.D.
I see the idea; you know how to leave clues, and throughout the story, I felt like I could figure out the mystery. To me, that's where half the fun is, feel close to solving the puzzle and I think you did fine from that angle.
I would like to see you hone your skill in making a mystery. The grammar could use work, but that'll naturally improve the more you write and read. You love House M.D? Watch the episodes and study them; Engage with the media you love and dissect it. You watched your favorite episode? Study and see why it stood out from the rest. Least favorite? Study and ask yourself why it leaves a weaker impact on you.
Be wary of giving a pre-existing character a child. It's a powerful hook and doubly so for someone like Mokou No Fujiwara. It creates intrigue and a lot of questions which is what you want for mystery fic.
Who's the father? Magic exists, so was it with a woman instead? What is the parents' relationship with each other? What is their relation to their daughter and etc.
But the fic wasn't about the daughter, so those questions are left unanswered because it wouldn't affect the actual story. It's a powerful trope so give it serious thought if you really want to make a child oc, or stick to the pre-existing character because in this situation, you could have Mokou and it would not have changed the story.
I hope I can see your writing again in the next exhibition; I'm making an assumption here, but I did feel like you enjoyed writing
Records of a Burdens
I like the story and it did tug at my heart, some things didn't stick the landing for me.
Despite the story's conflict happening because of Akyuu's sense of impending death from her curse, it's odd that it wasn't shown. The closest we get is her hand straining, but that's due to overworking. She tells us how her body reminds her that she should be dead by now, so show us what she's feeling. Keine says she looks haggard, but we never get a physical description of her body outside her writing hand. You can describe how messy her hair is or maybe she couldn't bring herself to put the brush on the paper.
To summarize: Show me what the characters are telling. A short paragraph about Akyuu's body feeling off would go a long way.
Otherworldly Flavors
This is my favorite and it's hard to suggest any improvement. If I could make one suggestion, I would like it if the story had a more prominent conflict. Youmu goes to get snacks for Yuyuko, but there aren't many obstacles that stand in her way. There was the tengu, but the fight was stopped before it started. When Youmu was flying back, I thought that was when the conflict would start and she now had to resist eating all the snacks while drunk, but that didn't happen either.
You could have it that when she was paying for her snack, Youmu realized the money Yuyuko gave her was missing, or she was more tempted to eat all the snacks before reaching home. Anything that would make the reader wonder if she'll succeed in her quest or fail trying.
The Problem with Civilization
I've seen you talk about your struggle in writing, and I want to say I am happy to see your writing in this exhibition. I also appreciate you taking the time to critique my work and show where I can improve. However, there's room for improvement as a writer and a critic.
For writing: Byuakren and her group's whole purpose in the story was to bind Nemuno and Kenji to
That's probably why I didn't see it.
In the character.txt of my PCB copy it's translated as: "Like Chen, her shape is unchanged and she has a well-sociable personality."
It's a difference of how 性格は丸い is translated.
"Well-sociable personality" isn't wrong, either; it's just how they ignored the overall structure of the sentence.
>姿かたち:普段と代わりが無い
>が、
>性格:丸い。
が "but" draws a contrast between these two topic/comments. Translating it as "and" is just a weirdly lazy move.
>>17531
>>17532
re: 'crime', that wasn't the focus of my mutterings. The point was whether or not youkai have any vested interest in keeping villagers from harming each other, considering they are of outmoded importance to Gensokyo's order. To be clear, I don't think there's any factual answer to that question, though my feeling is that, yes, they have some interest. To what extent? Well, that's a whole other question.
>>17504
Nothing so trivial. It's their personalities. Their characterizations. What sequence of events bring out the feelings and thoughts about those things and them isn't really something I can suggest—that's up to you because it depends on the things you want to do with those characters.
Maybe I'm doing a poor job of explaining this but it seems obvious to me: I would like to learn more about who they actually are because one of the things that seemed clear to me from reading the story was that they were all hiding their actual thoughts and feelings because (plot) reasons. I want to see a little behind the curtain and it doesn't matter if it's their opinions on whatever trite things you listed so long as it's something that's important to them or their character. Again, not something I can suggest since only you would know what those things are. All I can offer is the most general setups for that like Aun sleuthing around, uncovering something that can't be avoided, overhearing something, being nosy, talking over drinks/tea, etc. since I can't know what you know and feel about the characters and what would come out.
If you can't do that, that's fine. I don't mind little vignettes as suggested by another poster and a clash with Aya in terms of reporting or managing the "truth" that's printed in any article could be interesting. My main interest in the story comes from the characters and their depictions and I can't tell you what they should be.
>>17506
In all honesty, I'm not sure if I can do what you're asking. Probably the deepest problem with the main story is that I figured out after a point that I don't feel secure in knowing much about the principle characters much less what to do with them. The plot, such as it was, was based on a couple of arbitrary answers to questions posed to me, and I'm lukewarm at best on those points now; the main thing stopping me from redoing everything is not knowing what I'd do instead. On top of that, I had (and still have) numerous wide gaps in my understanding of the characters that can't be bridged just by reading some profiles and manga. For instance, I couldn't tell you who Sanae is outside of her shrine maiden role; I don't know what she's actually interested in, what she normally does in her free time, how she feels about this thing or the other, etc. The foundations for all of those characters is shaky at best, and I don't know what concrete steps I can take to fix that.
So, I don't know what else to say. I can maybe string together something from suggestions about specific scenarios, and that's about the best I can do right now. Sitting still for a long time only continues to hurt me, so I'd like to somehow keep moving forward and eventually find some way of fixing the foundational issues, and I think the only way that's likely to happen is a process of doing and discovery. However, motivating that process isn't something I can do myself. What I'm doing right now is all I know to do at this point.
I'm sorry to unload all of this behind-the-curtain talk, but what you're asking touches right on a lot of the deep frustrations I've had with this story and writing in general.
>>17507
As I said before, it's fine if you can't. While I'm interested in what I'm interested, the simpler idea about the aftermath at the Hakurei shrine is also ok. I'm partial to a series of short notes/articles by Aya following attempts to interview the involved parties as a style and/or framing device. Though, perhaps, that might end up being more about Aya and her pushiness rather than the interview subjects (Reimu, Aunn, Marisa?, others?) themselves. Dunno what the other anon might think.