THP is an imageboard that's focused on all things Touhou. Its historical focus has been on fanfiction and interactive choose-your-own-adventure (CYOA) stories. That said, there are plenty of places to talk about your favorite game, character, song or anything else related to the series.
It's easy and fun to participate! All that's needed to post is to open a thread and fill out a message in the post box. An identity is optional and is mostly useful for authors who wish to identify their story posts for any readers. Steering the direction of a story by voting with your fellow readers is a rewarding experience as is popping by to chat about characters or stories in other threads. Or you can simply post images that you like and share them with the world.
While the number of boards can seem overwhelming at first, the front page has a list of recent activity which is usually a good place to start for newcomers. With a little patience you'll get into the groove of things in no time at all!
The catch-all board for discussion is /gensokyo/, where you'll find threads talking about the games, story recommendations and all other sorts of things. While this is an 18+ site and adult content and strong language is allowed anywhere although predominantly pornographic or explicit material should be posted in /at/. Other than that, most of the other boards (and their descriptions) are merely strong suggestions for where content ought to be.
You can also visit the Story List to get an overview of all the stories on the site or search for something that might interest you.
It's fairly easy to post on THP and starting up a story is as easy as choosing an image for your first post and filling out the message box. Still, there are a few things that might be useful to consider first before posting.
Those familiar with Touhou may recognize that the board names are locations in Gensokyo. So, it's usually expected that a story that is mainly about Remilia would be in /sdm/, one about Satori in /underground/ and so forth. That said, the boards are suggestions and your story might fit in best somewhere else. For example, /others/ deals with things like alternate universes, the outside world and the like whereas /th/ is the catch-all board particularly useful for an ensemble cast.
While THP is, by default, an anonymous space, there is good reason to adopt an identity if you're running a story. For one, it allows users to identify your posts. Likewise, if you use a tripcode and mark a post as an update, it will be displayed on the front page and you will be able to modify how your story appears in the story list. See the site features section below for more details.
While things on THP aren't very complicated, THP still has a distinct site culture that might be useful for any would-be writer to understand before starting out.
Getting a sense for how voting works, what kinds of reactions can be expected from readers and what kinds of choices are most interesting do definitely help in planning out a story. Many stories have stalled or been abandoned by writers who bit off more than they could chew so it's recommended that your first story is small in scope and easily manageable. Most of all, don't be afraid to talk to your readers directly and communicate any doubts or thoughts to them. You're in it together, after all.
If you're still confused or unsure about something, feel free to post in an advice thread (or make one) or talk to other writers in our Discord.
Atop every board page or thread there is a button in the upper right-hand corner that opens up the settings for THP. From this menu users can toggle several useful features and customize their THP experience. Things like local timestamps for posts, an automatic thread updater, repy backlinks can all be found there in the various categories.
Additionally, you can choose your own color scheme for the site from a list of presets or change up most important parts individually. Make THP look and function exactly the way you want it to.
While most of the time you don't need anything except a message to make a post (with an image, if you're making a new thread), there might be cause to use the other optional fields.
If you're a writer, you might want to adopt a unique identity. In that case you need to input something into the name field. Additionally, you can adopt a tripcode, which is a code that you input after the name, using a "#" or "!" to mark its beginning. A unique code is generated after your name that serves as identification and enables a few advanced features. For example inputting Hello!test will output Hello!.CzKQna1OU.
Having a tripcode will allow users to add their story to the story list, mark posts as updates and add tags and synopses via the user panel. Additionally, you'll be able to edit your story posts for a limited time after you mark it as an update.
There are times where you may want to post an explicit image outside of /at/. If you check the "NSFW" box while uploading an image, the image will be hidden until a user clicks on it.
In addition, you might notice the various buttons just above the message field. Those allow users to format their text or add a few fun touches to their post. These tags can also be entered manually, using square brackets. Here's a brief summary of what these options are:
[b]Bold[/b]
[i]Italic[/i]
[s]Strikethrough[/s]
[u]Underline[/u]
[spoiler]Spoiler text[/spoiler]
Separator - [div]
Additionally, you can flip a coin with [coinflip] and roll dice in the format of [xdy±z]. So, for example [3d10] will roll 3 ten-sided dice and [1d4+2] will roll just one four-sided die and add 2 to the result.
If you're a writer that's marking a post as an update you can also add a timer to your post formatted as, for example [timer=22/02/07 10:30+3] which translates to the 10:30 AM on the seventh of February 2022 with the time zone +3 (Either - or + works and if omitted defaults to UTC). Dashes instead of forward slashes also should work as should a full four digit year.
Besides every post is a small button shaped like this: ▼. Clicking it will open a context-specific menu allowing users to perform a few advanced actions.
On the first post of a thread, it allows for hiding of a thread as well as a toggle to expand every image posted all at once.
If an image has been attached to a post, you'll also be able to search for its source using the IQDB service.
It's through this context menu that users are also able to delete their posts or images or report a post for breaking the rules.
There's several features and quirks built in to the board software that you may not know about.
Threads have a limit of posts after which they are no longer "bumped" or show up in the recent activity list. This is typically 250 posts and writers are urged to make a new thread after reaching that limit, marking their new thread as an update.
Clicking on the "No." part of the post info after the date will open the thread highlighting the post - while the number after that will input it in quote for into the post box (ie: >>14123).
You can create links to other posts or threads in a similar fashion by inputting the post number in your post as above. >>1234 will point to the post of the same number on the current board while appending the board name like >>/gensokyo/1234 will yield more specific results.
If the backlinks option is enabled, all the posts that have quoted a specific post will show up as a series of >>1234 number links after the post information. Coupled with the hover preview or inline embedding options this can make it easier to appreciate who is replying to whom and get a feel for the flow of the discussion.
Finally, clicking on the filename of an image will expand it in place. This can be toggled in the options to switch it with clicking on the thumbnail itself as well as displaying the full-sized image upon hovering over the area.
If something is wrong with the site (eg: error upon trying to post), there's you'd like to suggest to make the site better, or simply want to talk to an admin for whatever reason feel free to come to the Discord channel.
If you see a post that breaks our rules feel free to click on the ▼ button next to a post and report it. A member of the moderation team will look into it.
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