Rolling 1d7 => 1
1: Eika Ebisu
2: Urumi Ushizaki
3: Yachie Kicchou
4: Mayumi Joutouguu
5: Keiki Haniyasushin
6: Saki Kurokoma
7: Yuuma Toutetsu

Kutaka excluded due to already being rolled

Eika is a pretty underutilised character in all respects, so it’s hard to get a handle of her immediately. In a lot of ways, she’s very simple as a character, even if her background is sort of a downer. The majority of her interests and concerns seem to be largely stacking rocks, something she does exquisitely when player characters aren’t knocking the stacks over, and making life fun for fellow spirits of stillborns inhabiting Sai no Kawara. In that respect, she comes off as someone who’s probably pretty bright, energetic, and relatively carefree in most cases. As long as you don’t purposefully aggravate her, she’s probably easy to get along with and maybe even fun to talk to, though her worldview is probably influenced by living in the world of the dead, so maybe she might be a little ‘off-tempo’ for most humans. Of course, as the spirit of a stillborn child, she’s probably got her childish aspects, too. She strikes me as someone who might want to impress others with even really mundane things, being really proud of herself in that way that children are when they do, well, much of anything. Perhaps, this means she also feels lonely, considering all she really has is the company of other stillborns. Maybe that makes her a bit clingy when someone who’s not one of those spirits pays her any attention.

Incidentally, I personally think the references to Miruko/Ebisu are more thematic/aesthetic than anything, so they don’t mean that much. To me, she isn’t literally Ebisu, one of the Shichifuku-jin, but just the spirit of a stillborn child; in general, I don’t think Touhou Project characters who are meant to evoke other figures by allusion or reference are those figures themselves or have anything to do with them, nor do I think assertions that they are ‘secretly’ some other thing should be taken at face value.

Considering Sai no Kawara is connected to Hell and the Sanzu River in an unclear way, and thus outside of Gensokyo proper, it’s safe to say the Eika doesn’t have a presence in Gensokyo under normal ci

I know the previous post practically debunked the whole point of Eika as actually Ebisu, but if we do think of her as the god Ebisu, there might be this little connection between her and Keiki. Ebisu was the first child of the creation gods Izanami and Izanagi, while Keiki's origin suggests that she emerged from the feces of Izanami, who died after giving birth to another to the fire kami. With this info, we can safely conclude that Keiki is the shit of Eika's mother, which is uh... bizarre, to say the least.

Strange Creators of the Outer World also suggests that Eika originally started as the boneless god Ebisu, which ZUN later settled on the idea of her as a jellyfish. I guess I could probably think of something with her unique biology but uh... I don't know how to make a boneless species work without defying the laws of nature.

There's this one crazy idea I saw once, if her ability to stack stones wasn't limited to any physical restraints, with what could be categorized as stones isn't limited to anything either, then we could technically classify the planets of the solar system as reaaaally big stones. Imagine if she could line up the planets and make this astronomical mess where not even the sages could do anything about it lmao. Just throwing this idea to anyone...

There's this one fanfic involving the TH17 crew, where Keiki and Co comes to peacefully "visit" the Sanzu River and disrupt the stone-stacking competition held there. Eika is pissed off with this and decided to do a full-on war with them. It's a really lovely story with good portrayals for the cast. I recommend you to read it if you want more TH17 content. https://archiveofourown.org/works/52502980

Gather one, gather all, and grasp fortune for yourself!

Be tempted into the grasp of fortune!

Cast in your faith and see fortune come to you!

Step- I would be fine enough with if it's not too central. Outright and actual is not my ball game.

The pics look amazing, by the way!

>>17268
Got you. No Mike showing her littermate the rapes. I mean, the ropes.

The prize has been delivered: >>/at/41374

Thus I declare the contest closed.

I wish there were more ongoing slice-of-life kind of stories. Just want something cozy.

>>17228
Minor correction for the OP:

The old story discussion thread is now autosaged and a new one has been created at >>17303.

At random, I had a re-read of Summerfield's Tengu Hold 'em (>>/youkai/31720) and feel it's held up very well over the three years since its posting. I'd forgotten the dialogue being hilarious enough to make me actually laugh out loud, the ridiculous card game the cast of random youkai are playing, and the absolutely perfect ending. There's such a great showing of verisimilitude in the story that's hard to sum up in an easy way. It feels so true even if it's just a singular interpretation of the Mountain and its varied social relations. That it's not mentioned much, if at all, is a shame. Summerfield, thank you for the laughs; I sincerely hope for more at a later date.

>>17274
I'll also just add that people get hung up on tiny little details about characters and whether or not things match them when, honestly, I think they should be more worried about whether or not the characters "feel" like who they're supposed to be, which is a whole separate thing from "muh lore". So even if things get contradicted or whatever by some new chapter of a manga or a new game or whatever the fuck, as long as it's not a lazy archetype with a nuhu's name pasted on, it really doesn't matter. I mean, there's people who don't even care that much about that, so it's not like "not being true to the REAL 2HUS" is going to lose you readers. TL;DR: stop worrying and learn to love the nuhus. Also, most characters don't get that much follow-up by ZUN, so half of anything is going to be made the fuck up anyway.

>>17019

I read it 10 years ago and loved it so much. I reread it a few days ago and it definitely holds up well. Some minor issues with pacing (sometimes spending an entire post dedicated to sorting books in a library) but all the details I remembered about it were just as perfect as they were when I first read it.

Princess Tepes does a great job building their own unique rendition of the SDM. The fresh take on all the SDM residents and their backstories, along with the seven named fairy maids, make for a lovable cast of characters that I miss now that I'm done reading the story. And you can't write a better Flandre than Princess Tepes' Flandre.

Everything from Kay's appearance onwards is perfect - it's incredible that the author was able to write a perfect ending considering the format of stories on this website, with the readers derailing any plans the author might have.

10/10, would read again in another 10 years.

I better see a Mike story from one of you knuckleheads for the coming exhibition.

>>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, we didn't really have an annual free-for-all contest/exhibition last year as in years previous. Any interest in doing that this year?

It's basically established that villagers are important to Gensokyo and youkai aren't allowed to harm them, but what about other villagers? Is it a matter of cosmic significance if a villager murders another, or is it just a statistic? Is there a significant effort to make sure it doesn't happen? To punish offenders? It seems like it would be in the youkai's best interest to keep humans from killing each other, whether on the level of individual murders or something like a civil war, so maybe it's another one of the many things they meddle in?

>>17149
>Is there a significant effort to make sure it doesn't happen? To punish offenders?

I mean, that's basically what we do out here in the Outside World all on our own. I don't think the presence of youkai would suddenly convince humanity that murder is hunky-dory all of a sudden. I mean, if you went out into the woods and found a leprechaun, would your first thought be to start going around killing everyone?

>>17150
>I don't think the presence of youkai would suddenly convince humanity that murder is hunky-dory all of a sudden.
Uh, not sure how you read that out of what I said, but that's not what I said.

I'm saying: do youkai have an interest in keeping villagers from harming/killing each other considering they're so important to Gensokyo? And to be clear, I'm not looking for an "answer" because there really isn't one. It's just wondering out loud.

Ever closer to the end.

bongbong?

I don't feel so good...

>>17096
I shitposted and voted, so I think I won
>>17097
>No you won't.
>spoiler
But I did

>>17131
You forgot Summerfield. Even if his thing didn't span the month, he still finished, and that's worth something.


In all honesty, I didn't care that much for a lot of what was happening. It would have been nice if we had more Pantomime of Youth, but I understand life is a fuck. At least Summerfield's thing was interesting, and I still like Moral's stuff for what it is. I'd be fine with Bee's thing too, but there's not enough to really pass judgement, even though I don't care very much about the porn parts.

>>17133
You can forget me; it's okay. You're definitely not gonna forget the next 5 months of winter, and that's comfort enough for me. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA LETTYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY