Early happy seventeeth, THP! It feels weird to have been around for fourteen of those seventeen, having never been around any online community for any real length of time. I think that just goes to show the draw this place has. It's hard to ignore the dedication that goes into it behind the scenes, even if it's, well, not always visible. I just hope others will share in that excitement and love.

Looking forward to seeing entries. I'll try to chuck one in, myself.

>>17808
Having trouble coming up with something. Can I get some more examples for possible inspiration?

>>17811
I'm not sure that just rattling off more context-less and vague premises off the top of my head will be that useful. Perhaps it'd help more to say that there's a very variable scope with the themes; things can be Gensokyo-wide or deeply personal and private; celebrations can be a byword for party but they're not necessarily that and they can be something as small as a treat for doing a good job or some sort of pleasant ritual a character may engage with; commemorations themselves tend to be recollections of events both good or bad of some significance and that can be anything like the end of a war, graduation from school, a Buddhist service x days after a death, recognition for years of service at a job, or something relatively trite like being proud of quitting an addiction like smoking. You can focus on someone that's important in some way to a strata of society, a group of people, or just the one character. You might also not focus so much on the commemoration/celebration itself and have that be the catalyst for other events that you want to cover. Or go the other way around and have the upcoming events be what sets in motion whatever it is about the events or characters you want to portray.

There's other approaches, of course, and I encourage people to do whatever feels best for them. Hope it helped and best of luck!

>>17812
Still haven't hit on anything, but there are at least things to consider. Thanks.

We're a little over the halfway mark. Hope that the prospective writers have managed to get their ideas sorted and have started writing.

>>17826
Coming along with one, yeah. Needs more work before it's even close to done, though. I'm trying not to get down to the wire this time.

Around 10 days left. Hope you've managed to be industrious. There's still time to write things up and polish as needed.

>>17837
Finished and polished about as much I think it can be polished. Pretty pleased with how it turned out. Hope we get a good turnout.

I'm getting antsy six days out!

By the way, did anyone notice that the new 2hu book drops on THP's birthday?

Since this whole thing is partly about THP's birthday anyway, and I don't think cluttering /gensokyo/ with another thread serves much purpose, I'm just going to post this here.

Happy 17th Birthday, THP!

This may not be relatable for some, but as a childless uncle with a few nieces and nephews, being here for as long as I have gives me the same kind of feeling looking over them. If I were meeting THP as a person, I'd probably be saying "Good god, look at you now! I remember when you were knee-high to a grasshopper." There's just something weirdly magical being around to see something grow, you know?

My connection to THP is pretty intimately connected to my connection to Touhou at large. I never had any real strong tie to places commonly associated with the "fandom" because I honestly didn't relate to a lot of the sorts of people who comprise "fandoms" anyway. I won't claim to be a die-hard who started from the games and refused to budge until the official written works came out, but I also had no real affection for a lot of the inane things produced that had no real engagement with the ideas of Touhou. Most venues where Touhou fans hung out also tended to leave me cold in terms of either the character of the people or what they chose to talk about. Still, I had a bit of an itch after being exposed to the series. I already had a little bit of a flourishing liking for visual novels at the time, far ahead of the low-level mainstreaming of them you see now in English-speaking corners, and I had delusions of dabbling in my own creations, so I'd got a little taste for writing. For the most part, I abhorred fanfiction for a lot of the same sorts of baggage of "fandom" that came with it, so I didn't immediately take to the idea of writing it myself. However, in a wonderful coincidence, I happened across the contemporary incarnation of the Touhou Wiki and the archived Bad Ends.

>b-but those are from poosh
Yeah, yeah, I know. Doesn't change anything.

A number of them were pretty rough and shitpost-y, not really attempting to be anything more than a cheap joke based on fandom memes or whatever. Some of them, though, did attempt to be something approaching stories unto themselves, and I found myself moved by a few of them. I still remember the one where Reisen had been dead for years and the main character had been under hypnosis, believing to have lived a full life with her, for instance. I also remember a couple that made me really crack up, if only for how dumb they were; I actually woke up my roommate of the time from a dead sleep laughing at one. That was the seed planted. If I had one complaint about those pieces, it was that they were short and didn't feel like complete stories, which they were of course never meant to be. Still, I felt hungry for more and had a quick look around, only to figure out that there was little to be found of the same character in known fanfiction repositories. Dissatisfied, I felt like I had to do it myself, as ill-equipped as I was to write anything, even if I had technically made lots of attempts in my VN craze. It was around that time I had a little look around the links on the wiki to see if there was anything matching my new interests. Among a lot of misses, I noticed a link to an imageboard, something that already drew my eye. That was my first encounter with THP.

I won't go into a full recounting of my time here, especially since I'm not proud of how I started, plus it took me a while to really get dug into the community. In many ways, I've always been a latecomer to the site, always just having missed "the peak days". Even though I was here before things started getting really slow, I wasn't paying the closest attention to what was big on the site at the time, generally unfamiliar with what was going on outside of what people in the community shoved at me. I did come around, eventually, though. I tried my hand at being a writer, got involved with a few other writers, and learned a lot about the pains and joys that come with that existence. I also eventually connected with the site's admin after so many years of not really knowing him, and I found out he's a pretty cool and interesting guy. These sorts of experiences helped me really realise that the participatory aspect of things is what's always made THP great. This place has always been a blank canvas where anyone and everyone is afforded an opportunity, if not outright encouraged, to try their hand at making something. And even if they're not making something, there's still the fact that those who comprise the nebulous audience can weigh in without much in the way of sanctions applied to what they say. Of course, some people over the years have used that lack of sanction to act like psychopaths, but that's the double-edged sword that is an imageboard. For the most part, all of it has a kind of freedom I don't think many fully appreciate.

What does all this rambling amount to? I'm not sure. All I can say is that THP has been a pretty big part of my life in some fashion for the past decade-plus. I've literally come here almost every day to look in what's going on for at least half of the time I've been here. I've really come to think of it as a sort of home in a way. It's comfortable to me in a way that I don't think any other community online has ever been. In recent years, it's been one of the few things that's kept me hanging on, with life offline rarely offering me much in the way of breaks or opportunity. Just having the ability to connect with a few others and be exposed to writing as a process has helped me gradually develop past the weird VN-obsessed kid I was before, into someone who enjoys writing not as a means to an end but as a pursuit in and of itself. For as long as I've been around, people have been doomsaying about the site and saying that it's dead or dying, yet somehow THP still manages to persist. I admire that persistence, even if I do feel that there's always things that could be improved, and I never lose the feeling of wanting to be part of improving things. That doesn't often lead anywhere productive, but I don't think it necessarily has to do so.

Still, I do have some general hopes for the future of THP. I always hope that we can get more new blood going forward, because it's the only way we can continue on as a community. Even if I'm not wild about what's produced much of the time, having new writers trying their hands at the process of creation is something I like to see. By the same token, I hope we can grow more active as a culture, not leaving those who make the attempt mired in silence, doing our best to nurture their growth. Similarly, it'd be nice if we could develop a bit more mutual interest as a culture, not clinging to separate niches, being dependent on people coming from outside who are only interested in single stories to drive any feeling of engagement. Do I have any idea how to achieve these things? Nope. I do think they're doable in some sense, though. It's mostly a matter of all of us on an individual level being present and not just falling into silence out of fear of saying something "irrelevant" or looking stupid or whatever. Even this poorly-cooked screed is my part of showing some kind of engagement with THP as a site and as a community. Maybe it's not for everybody. Maybe it's not for anybody. What matters is that it's an attempt at something, which is more than many can claim to have done.

Anyway, gripes aside, I mean to say that I love THP for all its warts and hope it continues to be here for a long while. It's one of the better things I have in my life, for better or worse. Without it, I think my time spent would be a lot emptier, and my days a lot bleaker. Even if I struggle to be the sort of writer I want to be, I keep trying because I want to serve this community, to add something, even if few see the value in it. I appreciate all the work that goes into trying to keep the lights on, thankless as it feels sometimes. Thank you, Teruyo, for being our admin and a cool guy. Thank you, THP, for being a beacon of light in my otherwise dreary life. Thank you, anons I've met over the years, for being who you are and sharing what you've shared, even if the time we had together was often brief. I practically grew to adulthood with THP, and now THP itself is almost old enough to be considered an adult. Even if I wasn't necessarily a part of it, I feel a sort of pride having seen it happen. Let's keep growing together, THP.

>>17852
Sorry if this derails the thread but who's "Poosh"? Im a NewBrappa.

>>17853
Pooshlmer, another 2hu imageboard. It's been dead and gone for many years now.

The entries thread is now up:
>>/shorts/3243

I look forward to your submissions.

Calling it a close a little earlier because I don't think there will be any more entries and I may not have the time later.

Congratulations to all who participated and thank you for your efforts!

Please feel free to post comments, reviews, critiques, or whatever else. Or just tell us if you enjoyed the stories, anything and everything is fine. Authors feel free to share your own thoughts if you're so inclined.

I'll be trying to contribute my own thoughts hopefully some time before the end of the weekend.

- Invitations (Former) 

As one who avoids most social gatherings, it was nice to see all the perspectives represented in trying to uphold some vision of pride. Its difficult for me to ever indulge in the festivities of any get-together, but you seemed to encapsulate my feelings in both the organization process and participation of the events themselves.

Toyono just like me frfr.

- Work and Kappa Culture 

Momiji being a hardass is what I expected to come from all this hullabaloo; the act of uniting the kappa for one particular project is its own historic event. It was admittedly short but as fun as you were intending.

I’m glad following an SoP is now a fantastical idea, lesgooooooooooo.

Imma get to the others im busy oooooo

Pretty reasonable turnout this time. I wasn’t sure if we were going to get many entries this time, so it’s nice to have my expectations exceeded in that respect. Will we get a little more audience engagement this time, too? I’d like to hope!

Anyway, thank you to all those who submitted pieces for this exhibition. You may not think you’re doing much, but you’re helping THP be more of active, engaged community just by taking part. If nothing else, you’re taking advantage of an opportunity to go out on a limb and experiment a little, shoving something out there that doesn’t have to be a long-term project. Whatever that produces, it’s good for us as a community if we have people willing to do so and hopefully inspire others to get involved too. After all, THP is at its heart a do-it-yourself community, for better or worse. When we show up and do whatever we can, we’re actually engaging with the spirit of the community.

With all that said, I’ll offer my own opinions on the pieces. I wrote the first piece, so I’ll leave that one for last.

Work and Kappa Culture

I’m left a little confused as to what this piece was aiming for and decisions made in its writing. Overall, it comes across to me as an attempt at a comedic story, but I’m not sure what part was meant to be, well, funny. Was the whole ‘OSHA’ thing the punchline? If so, the writer shot their wad early on that and left the joke just sort of limply hanging out there for a long time. Was it the situational irony from the kappa showing little regard to safety? For the most part, I didn’t see much to laugh about there; the incident with a kappa concussing herself made for a bit of tonal whiplash, in particular, handled a tad too seriously for an otherwise lighthearted story. Was it Momiji’s prefect-ish disapproval at the kappa’s lack of rigour? That very attitude leads to a dispute that brings the whole piece to an abrupt halt, with Momiji left to merely be nagged by a distant preoccupation over whether or not the other shoe will, in fact, drop for the kappa collective. Frankly, there was little to be seen as comedy if that was ever the aim.

Another element I’m left scratching my head over is how the festivities involved in building a monument to OSHA are meant as celebrations to most of the kappa. Yes, Nitori asserts that prior kappa practises were attrocious and led to injury, yet any improvement on that front seems to be farcical at best. More pressing, though, is the very idea of kappa working together on anything in the first place. This is addressed in a very passing manner, if not generally handwaved away within the expositionary dialogue. However, that doesn’t change that it doesn’t ring very true, given what precious little is actually known about kappa in the official works. That they’ve been pulled together to supposedly celebrate the arrival of safety regulations largely applicable to workplaces where people work in concert feels, well, arbitrary considering that the kappa aren’t exactly known to do just that. Of course, there does seem to be some implication that the whole exercise is partly one of self-satisfaction on Nitori’s part, but that still doesn’t explain very much. Even if we accept some idea of Nitori being a ‘leader’ figure among the kappa — not a given — their collective attitude, much less their actual motivation, never seems to be very clearly portrayed anywhere.

Probably the biggest thing that leaves me squinting and tilting my head is the inclusion of Momiji at all. For the most part, she doesn’t display much character beyond bafflement or disappointment at how the kappa do things. We’re largely meant to accept from the offing that she and Nitori are acquaintances of some sort, but this doesn’t seem to amount to very much beyond some general comments in the dialogue between them. It doesn’t play into how the story plays out very much until the very end, where a minor clash between them brings the whole thing to a swift close with not much resolution. For the most part, beyond the bits of dialogue where Momiji expresses very categorically ‘straight man’ sorts of objections to whatever is at hand, little of her views and opinions factor into the narration in any meaningful way. This begs the question of why it had to be her point-of-view in particular. If she’s being treated in a somewhat detached, third-person-adjacent way anyway, why not simply have an omniscient third-person narrator recounting the gyrations of the kappa’s folly? Why are we supposed to care that it is Momiji there and not anyone else? Within the story, I see little to give a convincing answer.

There are certain nits I could pick regarding prose and the somewhat dry, explanatory sorts of dialogue that makes up a fair percentage of the story, but I feel the biggest blemishes are the above named. Which isn’t to say that I hated it. If I had to pass any kind of judgement, I’d have to say that I was neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed by the piece. I was merely ‘whelmed’. For the most part, compositionally, it’s competent on a basic level, which is a hard enough hurdle for many to clear. It’s simply that I’m generally left feeling a bit lost on what the larger point might have been; what, in the end, did the writer want to tell us through this little outing? If it was a general comment on kappa and their supposed work practises, it was a glancing one. If it was the writer having a whack at a brief comedic anecdote, the comedy was lost in the tangle. If it was meant as a satirical jab at safety regulators, well, I’m afraid whatever point was meant to made is lost on me. In any case, it was far from the worst attempt here.

All of Us are Merely Players

I’ll start off by saying that this piece wasn’t bad, as such. Looking past the less thrilling elements, which I’ll get to soon, there was a simple story that was… charming in its lightheartedness, I suppose? At its core, it’s a story about someone doing their job in spite of the ludicrous demands placed on them. There’s also a sub-plot about remembering important dates involving friends. All of this, of course, takes place against the backdrop of a party at the Hakurei Shrine. It’s serviceable, not very demanding, and probably relatable enough for many.

Now, as to the elephant in the room, I absolutely disliked the whole ‘litRPG’ thing going on. Of all the ways one could get into Ran’s shikigami-ness, that is arguably the least favourite way I’ve yet witnessed. Yes, this is all for the sake of The Funny™, but it really just goes wide of the mark for me. Ran needing to arbitrarily ‘charge up’ in order to… puzzle out a situation? Having to be nudged into doing her job via a ‘quest prompt’? Seeing everything in terms of ‘stats’ and ‘checks’? Basically living out her very life as if playing Fallout? I’m sorry, but I simply have no investment-by-default in these sorts of things. That means that the continual appearance of these elements in the story just becomes a sort of unnecessary noise that takes up space and makes it hard to appreciate the parts that aren’t intertwined with them. If I weren’t digging in and reading everything out of a spirit of fairness, I would be filtered immediately.

Perhaps equally a matter of tastes, I wasn’t wild about the less than subtle pairing of Ran and Yuuma. Yes, they’re positioned outwardly as ‘friends’ and it’s generally played for ‘comedy’, but it’s the sort of thing I find really obnoxious more than anything. I dislike ‘shipping’ in general, and even playing at it in a ‘joking not joking’ way through overtones and undertones does little for me. Also, just incidentally, Yuuma is a sheep, not a goat.

Also, I feel that the piece is a bit long for no good reason. A good chunk is the opening that is largely just establishing Ran and Chen, something that could be handled in far less space. After that, there are events that happen mostly to show Ran ‘handling problems’ at Reimu’s party. However, isn’t the main thrust of the whole thing the trouble with Yuuma? Why, then, are we taking up space with Ran running off Saki or being menaced by Yuuka? In all honesty, a little bit of exposition could have just thrown us into the main issue with little lost, and I believe the whole thing could have been handled in a single post instead of two. This is not, by the way, a problem unique to this piece; I had the same trouble with the prior submission and others in the exhibition.

As a parting shot, I’d say this piece is pretty ‘fanfiction’-y as a whole, by which I mean that someone who isn’t already fairly familiar with the Touhou Project probably won’t know the various names dropped in contexts that presuppose an understanding of what they’re meant to imply by their presence. Even given passing little explanations in places, I just think it’d be hard to say it works as a standalone piece of literature. Perhaps it’s an angle that writers of submissions like these may not care to consider, but I do judge them at least in part on that criterion, at least in part because I don’t believe it’s impossible to achieve and have read things that have succeeded. For the most part, I’m a lot more inclined to call pieces ‘good’ when they can stand on their own. As it stands, this one is, all else considered, a pretty solid ‘shrug’ for me.

Mystery Celebration

Not a whole lot I can say about this one. It’s clearly rushed and not particularly what I would call a ‘story’ as much as a ‘series of happenings that ends’. The ‘fanfiction’-y comment made about the above piece generally applies here as well; we’re clearly meant to have particular understandings of characters like Cirno, Yukari, and Wakasagihime from the get-go. I don’t feel like it’s worth gettting into nitpicking about dialogue punctuation and such because it’s more of a scribble than anything fully-fledged.

The Orchard

I notice a lot of simple titles for this exhibition. This one doesn’t really have an immediate ring to it, but its simplicity is almost a sort of smokescreen for the depth shown in this brief piece.

Firstly, I have to note that this piece immediately made me reconsider my own. Though I’d gone to some pains to try and incorporate the themes into my submission, this piece managed in a far more elegant and less painfully obvious way. There is mention of festivities and the like, but even in the core of the story there is largely an element of commemorating and celebrating something cherished. The emotional centre of the story is the main character’s attachment to the orchard and its significance to his own life. You can’t subtract it without basically taking away the whole story, and it’s a level of thematic integration that I wish I’d achieved.

Secondly, I love the sense of seasonality contained all throughout the story. Even if we weren’t told that the story takes place in spring, I feel that there is an inherent understanding that would come across in the portrayal of the scenery. From the mild cold to the budding blossoms, that sense of place and time is well established in a natural way that extends from beginning to end. It’s not even in a cliched way or a way that leans heavily on being able to understand the ‘Japanese-ness’ of the setting to really appreciate.

Thirdly, I love the muted sensuality to the whole of Tsunehei and Yuuka’s interactions. From the time Yuuka shows up, it’s obvious that the two of them have a rapport and that there is a more than surface-level regard between them. There’s no need for them to directly address it because it’s obvious in every silence and look between them, their words filling the empty spaces between those moments. Even a moment like Yuuka forcefully grabbing Tsunehei only serves to mark a certain sense of tension without overtly drawing too much attention to it. Considering all that, mention of things like hiked-up skirts and silken legs are some of the tamer moments of this story.

Lastly, I compliment the story on managing to convey a lot of this without being overly long, and for the piece managing to feel like it could stand on its own as a piece of literature. I seriously envy the writer for the sensibilities on display here.

On Alcohol & Oceans

This entry technically came in late, but it’s there. Unfortunately, it’s the one I like the least. There’s a whole load of nits I could pick about prose style and the like, but I feel like there’s not much point for a couple of reasons. For one, I get a sense of someone newer to writing from this piece, and some of those composition-level pains are remedied more by the well-worn prescription of reading motherfucking books all damn day. Secondly, there are what I perceive as choices made at a basic level in terms of storytelling that were less than optimal.

So, let me just lead off by saying that my biggest issue with this story is that it’s bloated. I mean, it’s far longer than it ever needed to be given what the writer was angling at. There’s just a lot of things ‘happening’ that don’t really add to the story being told, and their presence just adds to the sense of things dragging along. By the time we get to the conversation between Kokoro and Ichirin, I’m well and truly annoyed by the feeling that the main point of things has only just crawled into sight. All of the appearances of Alice, Mamizou, Reimu, and Futo did little more than serve as clumsy pointers to the next story beat. Even Kokoro’s appearance didn’t seem all that necessary in hindsight. To really get into what I mean, I’ll offer up a scenario that I think would have done this story better.

Let’s say that we’re still invested in the idea of Ichirin and Murasa being friends — a premise that has little basis and lends a heavy ‘fanfiction’ smell to the story, incidentally — and want the focal point of the story to be Ichirin’s pent-up feelings of frustration at being useless and her venting them by duking it out with her designated friend. Rather than waste time on Ichirin tussling with Futo, we can simply open on Ichirin and Murasa being there at the Hakurei Shrine in the midst of a flower-viewing party. Instead of faffing about with Ichirin ‘trying to cheer up’ Murasa, we can just have Ichirin be the moody one right from the start. They have a piddling little conversation during which Murasa brings up something Ichirin screwing something up or acting in some notably odd way, and that sparks a bit of a heated exchange. The two have a go at each other, attracting the attention of other party-goers and becoming a bit of a spectacle. In the end, they collapse after a lot of slugging it out, taking the fire out of things. They awkwardly talk to each other in the ensuing lull, and it comes out in there somewhere about all of the nonsense Ichirin was bottling up. They share a laugh, share a drink, and the whole thing is water under the bridge. No need to drag in a whole load of setup involving Mamizou talking about a party or Alice being a drunkard or Kokoro being a ball of masks. You’ve just got a narrative about two mates who just need to get some tension out of their system, maybe one a little more than the other. Bish bash bosh.

I say all that to underscore again that there was just a lot of unnecessary stuff going on. And, sure, the writer was probably quite attached to the various exchanges going on, but that’s at cross-purposes with writing an exhibition piece like this. When you’re doing something like this, one would want to have something of a narrowed focus, especially considering that there’s not realistically all much space to work in. To expand things out beyond a certain point makes for something that ought to just be posted to /shorts/ as a short story. That is to say that a piece like this written to show off can’t just be a grab-bag of ‘neat ideas’. However, that is what this entry ultimately seems to be. Of course, again, I perceive this as the product of a newer writer, so some of this is going to amount to the sorts of stumbling blocks that all of us meet in the process of learning. An attempt, as they say, was made.

This ended up being a bit on the long side, but it can't be helped. Here's a word about my piece, as promised.

Invitations

And now we get to my piece. If I’m honest, I’m more partial to last round’s entry, The Problem with Civilisation (>>2961) for reasons that are hard to really explain. That said, compared to that piece, I went a little further out on a limb with this one and did manage something that was more of an exhibition piece than an underdone short story. Still, compared to something like The Orchard, it’s a bit embarrassingly simple-minded as far as how the themes were tackled.

If there’s anything I want to harp on with this piece, it’s that I played around with the narrative structure a lot more than I’ve done with anything in the past. The piece itself can be divided generally into three parts, with the first two parts themselves broken into interleaved parts. Part of that division was for pragmatic reasons, allowing me to more sensibly jump past a lot of exposition and setup, leaving many things more implied than said in most cases. The other purpose was to create a sense of contrast between the parts, showing the differences and similarities between the different scenes that Tsukasa appeared in. In creating that contrast, I also tried to make the beginnings and endings of those parts ‘rhyme’ in a certain way, abstractly playing off of each other by mirroring certain things, whether that was an emotion, a wording, or something else. The last part is meant to ‘wrap around’ the first two, creating a context in which they can be understood afterwards. I can’t say it’s necessarily clever narrative work, but I do feel a bit proud for having done it, at least.

As far as the content of the story itself, I’m sure some felt an immense ‘so what’ about the part with Toyono; it is, after all, largely just an OC interacting with other OCs, with just the barest relevance to Megumu given only in passing. To readers who felt that way, I’m not sure what to say. At least some of why I went that route has a lot to do with my own way of approaching Touhou stories in general: not granting immense significance to the named characters by default and only following them when a situation actually feels relevant to them. This does create some limitations if I don’t start inventing characters and sometimes entire social systems against which to prop them up. In this case, going with the ‘celebration’ aspect of the themes, I considered Japanese school graduations and the outmoded weight they carry on Japanese people. Whilst there’s none of the drastic sort of deciding one’s life path ascribed to the great-tengu one depicted here, it can be considered a turning point where one’s relative freedom has ended. It’s an affair that does involve an often excessive outpouring of tears and emotionalism and is treated with exceptional gravitas in spite of the fact that most of the outgoing students will largely retain little of the social fabric that bound them together in their years together. In presenting something of a gross parody of this sort of thing, I also slipped in a lot of my underlying assumptions about tengu and their society, seen from the viewpoint of its upper stratum. Perhaps more of it will only end up being particular to an elite school full of great-tengu, but I like to think that some of the intended flavour has seeped in here and there.

In passing, I’d also just like to note that I tried to deliberately distance the actual narrative perspective from the characters themselves in writing this story. In the past, I’ve been known more for integrating the subjective thoughts and emotions of the subject characters into the prose itself, making any narration linked to their point of view, even if I’m writing from a third-person perspective. In some ways, it was challenging to create that sort of divide, since being able to actually peek into the literal thoughts of the characters makes conveying that to the audience fairly simple. Being unable to directly convey those sorts of things, I had to try to evoke them in other ways, hoping that perhaps they were parseable to the reader. Whether or not I succeeded, I don’t know. I’d like to hope I did.

I’d also like to think I’ve made something that can reasonably stand alone as a piece of literature, but I have some slight doubts as to that. Even if I did manage that, is it really that interesting? I’m not sure, myself. In the end, I think it is certainly an experiment of varying kinds. If someone enjoyed reading it, great. If not, well, I can’t do more than shrug. For the most part, it’s the product of not having much idea what I really wanted to do. Had I unlimited time to come up with something different — not to say ‘better’ — I might have found a way to write about something other than tengu for once. As it stands, I guess it just serves to prove show myself how limited I can be as a writer, which is pretty frustrating. Even as I sit here judging others’ work, I myself also need to grow more. But, well, that’s sort of just how it is.

Anyway, thanks again to everybody who’s shown up. I hope it’s been a fruitful experience for everyone involved. I’ll unmask myself — perhaps to no one’s surprise — in a few days.

I have a bad habit of going on and on, so I’ve tried to keep things short and to the point this time around.

Invitations

I found this an interesting read. There’s not much other stuff that involves Megumu, so extra props for that. It also feels appropriate that she should contrive to celebrate her own victories in her own way, with only her and Tsukasa knowing the truth.

There’s plenty of enjoyable small moments in the prose like descriptions and exchanges that add a lot to the character of the piece. The small bits of world building are also amusing enough and add some additional context in terms of the mindset of tengu. That said, it does meander a little here and there and cover things that don’t particularly add to the substance of the story. I don’t mean to sound too harsh here, since I enjoyed it, but having long scenes with other characters and their own concerns/attitudes is better suited to a longer work, one where these things have some sort of greater relevance or payoff. Like, Toyono is interesting and I would like to see more about tengu society in a longer work but what seems relevant for this story to me—general attitudes/values of the privileged and how they disdain other ways of thinking—could have been done in a more succinct manner. Likewise, with Sanae, as much as I love the idea of sniffing a fresh fox, most of what seems relevant is expressed through the scene with Kanako. (I particularly enjoyed the description of the Goddess and how she processed her irritation in real time.)

I’ll reemphasize that these are complaints mostly due to the format—that these are to be short, self-contained, stories—and that it shouldn’t seem that I’m overstating the defects. I’m picking at nits, as it were, and would wish to see a fuller story with these characters interacting down the line. I liked very much the take on Megumu and enjoyed seeing the perfumed fox interact with her and the others as well. I wonder who else Megumu might have invited?

Work and Kappa Culture

This is a cute conceit. Though perhaps a little too US-centric to make much sense if you think about it. Still, the idea of Kappa coming to worship the personification of health & safety as a goddess is fun.

I got a good sense of character from the kappa and their doings but not so much from the perspective character of Momiji in spite of it being written in first person. Other than being a little harsh on those slacking off, there’s not much about her that is very developed or particularly adds to the piece; even something like the earplugs seems like an afterthought of an idea for someone who has sharp senses.

There’s an overall competent execution of the main idea of the story. That said, there’s quite a few sentences that are a little awkward or don’t flow quite right. I don’t want to assume too much about the author as it may be a matter of experience and familiarity just as easily as it could be a matter of not proofreading as thoroughly as needed. Still, it’s something to watch out for in the future as some things sound as somewhat unnatural in English.

All of Us are Merely Players

The whole Ran-as-a-videogame-character shtick didn’t do it for me. It took my out of the storytelling and I don’t think it did a good job of convincing me that Ran would go out her way to manage things at the shrine nor that Yukari would task her with that. … Or that everyone else would play along. While I’m at it, the whole romantic angle fell flat. The chemistry between Ran and Yuuma was lacking, it didn’t have enough of a focus prior. It’s neat that you ran with something from UDoaLG you need to build up your own take more for the reader to buy it. Since it’s the conclusion of the “quest” I think it requires more prominence or at least special attention as you develop the idea, possibly at the expense of other ancillary things in the text like Yuuka, Reimu, the other matriarchs and the like.

This isn’t all to say that the story is un-fun or that the prose is bad or anything. The playfulness here and there is appreciated and I’m sure that plenty of people would think differently to me and enjoy the story a lot. But I just couldn’t get past its presentation and the long time it took to get to its (weak) conclusion.

Mystery Celebration: Everyone has Gathered – But for What!?

This does come off as rushed as the author suggests. There’s also not much story there, with characters appearing/gathering at chez Yakumo for a thing that doesn’t actually get depicted. Which, strictly speaking, is okay since the event can just be a background excuse to show other stuff in the text. In this case it’s thin gruel in terms of personality or story. An assortment of characters do things but … so what? I’m not sure what I’m supposed to get from it overall.

There are also al lot of technical issues such as poor grammar and strange word choices. Still, there’s a clear effort in terms of trying to describe or paint a picture of what’s going on and it’s not unintelligible. It’s something that needs more time, proofreading, and perhaps experience.

The Orchard

This was my contribution to the exhibition. I’ve been in somewhat poor health as of late and otherwise going through a tough time due a bunch of life things which has had me in a creative slump for quite some time now. I think about ideas and images that I’d like to do or write but actually having the wherewithal, and also energy, to do something is very difficult. I bring this up just to say that I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to contribute anything this time around because, as much as I thought about writing every day I couldn’t get anything done or even start.

Because it’s THP’s birthday I tried very hard to make the effort, culminating with me writing this story in a single sitting the day before submissions were open. If I had been able to, I would have taken a slower pace and I would have liked to have had time to reflect and edit more if necessary. Some of the prose comes off to me as undercooked and some of the motifs are a little too loose or don’t tie in neatly without distracting from the story. Some things might have been a little too on the nose and thus ineffective.

Still, I tried to go for both a more abstract and literal sort take on the themes. It is a commemoration of life, of the seasons, of change; it is a commemoration of constancy, of things that will always be true, things that will exist in one form or another. It culminates in a somewhat ceremonious celebration between two characters with mutual appreciation and understanding. I focused on the perspective of Tsunehei exclusively, hoping to depict the interests and depths of Yuuka by contrast of words and action. True youkai moe as far as I’m concerned.

You’ll forgive me if I blather a bit too much about myself and how I borrowed some Buddhist imagery and thought; a more mature man like Tsunehei might have a degree of wistfulness to him that might not have been then when he was a child working the fields. Birdsong, too, is something that can feel constant but is really subject to a lot of change if you don’t pay close attention.

On Alcohol & Oceans

This was an enjoyable read throughout with plenty of small details that add to the atmosphere. That said, it is overly long. Might seem like a contradiction but looking at from the summation of “it’s a story of a friend who tries to help another friedn who is down in the dumps and is also helped in the process” there a lot that is extranoues or actively takes away from making that idea get executed as best as it can be.

Futo and Alice are completely useless in providing anything but filler. I say that as someone who loves Alice as a character, generally, and enjoyed her drunken depiction. (Side note: Futo being rendered in faux early modern English is a pet peeve of mine—she speaks mostly standard Japanese with one or two archaic utterances ever now and again.) But, well, what did that add to getting Ichirin and Minamitsu to open up and resolve their issues? It feels like a lot of what is depicted is fanservice for people who enjoy touhou and want to see more touhous doing things and stuff which, y’know, obviously reasonable to expect in fanfiction to an extent but nonetheless can be indulgent and take away from the strength of the piece and its own merits.

I would have liked to have seen instead of so much about the party itself and other things that were ultimately extraneous more hints or setting up of Ichirin’s inner turmoil. It feels like an unrelated (and infodump-y) outburst when she starts going on about her feelings of frustration and inadequacy due to the events of the detective monke manga. Assuming reader familiarity with all that is a wobbly crutch which undermines the emotional resonance of what is an important climax for the understanding of the character. I mean, sure, reference all that but, to be clear, the story itself needs to also set up some of that up or hint at it; can be subtle references, can be imagery or other things that evoke the character’s inner turmoil or thought processes.

As it is Kokoro just sort of shows up out of the blue and things just go on from there with no real connection to things previous related and the story then gallops to its conclusion. Learning how to process and deal with emotions is interesting in abstract when it comes to “Buddhists” that should be free of desire as well as with someone like Kokoro but there’s little room for that exchange to breathe and come to its own when you think about the great consequences that come from that interaction.

Still, enjoyed the prose overall and even if I didn’t fully come aboard some of the characterizations it still felt valid on that front too.

I’ve tried to be as constructive as possible without being too long-winded. Feel free to ask me for more feedback or for me to clarify anything if you want about any of these stories and I’ll get back to you. Or about my own story, that’s fine too. THP needs more lively discussion regardless!

Thanks for participating, everyone. I enjoyed the experience of waiting to see what everyone came up with.

>>17862
Invitations writer here.

>re: Invitations
Besides fox-sniffing, what in particular do you feel was particularly extraneous? I generally tried to cut down on filler, but I also did want to include certain things to contribute to a sense of atmosphere. I suspect much of it had to do with the Toyono bits, which is understandable, considering I was making things up whole-cloth and trying to establish and expound upon them all in one go.

Also, how do you suppose things could have been more succinct? I'll admit that Toyono only really exists because I wanted to give a great-tengu perspective, though there was also the graduation angle that I've gone over in my post above.

>re: The Orchard
I'm surprised to hear you say that you felt some of the prose was 'undercooked'. Which parts in particular? What motifs didn't work?

Overall, I felt like it was pretty well-done — easily the best of the lot. That it was done in a single day is nothing short of incredible in many ways, considering it took me about a full month just to write my piece, which pales in comparison.

Invitations

No offense, but this entry together with the review of its author made me realize that being wordy and formal isn't necessarily good and maybe there would be non-zero value in my own reply. This story has frankly thrice the amount of words it needs to convey everything it has. That is, if I even correctly understood what it tries to, since it's so dense and impenetrable as to be nearly unreadable. Even the skeleton of the story is meandering and turbid — three festivals, two of them failed, okay, but it's hard to, er, get induced to any ideas or thoughts as a reader (it doesn't help that what ideas Megumu directly states at the end are questionable at best for me personally, but to each their own).
Now, to the one issue with the setting which immediately made me lose any suspension of disbelief almost at the start - the tengu school festival. Let's do some back-of-the-envelope math. From the graduating class, five students remained, and the text describes them as the minority from the entire class, so there was apparently 15-20 graduates in this year at least. Let's be charitable and say that it was one of the larger ones over the years, but on average this school alone would be teaching 10 people/year, no less. Tengu apparently live for several centuries at least, so even if all tengu children go into that one school, and assuming tengu birthrates aren't order of magnitude above or below replacement rate for them, which seems reasonable, that would means there's about few thousand tengus around. But wait, that's an elite school, which by definition means only the children of minority go here (which is directly stated in the text, together with the fact that wolves are not allowed), which pushes population figure for the tengu into tens of thousands! A bit large town for one mere mountain standing over one remote mountain valley, don't you think?
Even without those calculations, when I saw this school and this festival in the text, I subconsiously realized that it's all badly broken. >>17860 frankly, if you say to enjoy inventing fictional social systems, I don't get how did you let such a glaring hole pass. All fictional universes set their own limitations on the kinds of stories one can tell using them, and Touhou is no exception. You can set such a school festival in Animal Realm, or perhaps in Lunar Capital, but Gensokyo is definitely too small for this, however large one interprets it to be.

Work and Kappa Culture

I'll withhold my thoughts on this one for the sake of civil and constructive discussion, but just a gentle reminder to Americans that your country is not the whole universe, and Gensokyo is located in Japan, not United States of America.

All of Us are Merely Players

I enjoyed Ran wrangling party-goers a bit, but that's about all good I can say. I guess it's technically possible to portray shikigami as the litRPG "system", but it's strange and frankly cringe. There's quite an amount of threats, in all senses of the word, that ring hollow — the supposed incident threatening to destroy Gensokyo itself, complete with the Touhou's B-word, from merely some danmaku matches caught on a camera... in a sleep... or hallucination?.. as well as this weird fear of others. C'mon, you old fox, if Yuuma respects your danmaku rules, what exactly she can do to you that you sweat? Tear your hat? And lastly, I hate shipping, so those unsubtle slips about "friendship" completely ruined the piece for me.

Mystery Celebration

Look, I commend your honesty in admitting that's an incomplete work and you couldn't make it in time, but it doesn't make it less of an incomplete work. It's a fragment that leads nowhere, I can't say anything more about it really.

The Orchard

The only piece of the exhibition I honestly liked. Beautiful, very youkai-like, very Yuuka story. I enjoy short stories with the air of mysticism and sensuality like this one, even if they run directly counter to my usual mode of thinking.
Though, it's a brazen nitpick, but I can't help myself — did he really refuse the grain fields out of lack of care for money? Maybe this seems possible for a lonely old man in a developed country living off his savings and social safety net, but not for peasant who has to work every day for his food and for whom the threat of starvation is not far removed, but ever-looming. On the other hand, fruits can be quite profitable, more than grain, if one has a market where to sell them (before refrigerators that would mean a town or a city in the vicinity — that would be the Human Village), so if Tsunehei can be sure that he could always sell and buy all that he needs, grain that can be preserved for winter first of all (not a given in pre-modern world as well as Gensokyo with its incidents), such a living is possible I guess?

On Alcohol & Oceans

I'm mixed on this one. It has an idea, it has a direction, it's decently written for my plebeian tastes — even if it could use better style, the text is at least clear. But, first, I agree with the above in that it's bloated with the scenes. You could cut out Futo, Alice, Mamizou and Reimu and nothing would change in the story, they are simply unnecessary for the main idea and short stories aren't a forgiving format for superfluous scenes. (Also why did you do poor Alice so dirty, what she has done to you?). Second, the characters. Unfortunately the story involves some of the characters I care the least about in the entire Touhou franchise, so I don't know their canon selves and can't judge them fairly, but I didn't feel Ichirin as a character, as a person. She's almost a blank slate, and that makes it hard to empathize with her with her outburst in the end part. Interesting interpretation of Kokoro, though, even if I don't know whether that does contradict canon or not.
Also — >>17859
>Let’s say that we’re still invested in the idea of Ichirin and Murasa being friends — a premise that has little basis and lends a heavy ‘fanfiction’ smell to the story, incidentally
What's wrong? Why does one can't make them friends? What words in the canon make it impossible?

>>17864
>I'll withhold my thoughts on this one for the sake of civil and constructive discussion, but just a gentle reminder to Americans that your country is not the whole universe, and Gensokyo is located in Japan, not United States of America.
An awfully nice and tactful way to express this point of criticism. I agree wholeheartedly. Even if the OSHA thing was a joke... It is common courtesy to not force your inside jokes on others.

>>17863
I said in my critique that a lot of it is due to format. It's an issue of proportion relative to the important bits in the story; would be fine in a longer story overall where more things were developing in their own way.

So, maybe more specifically, anything that isn't immediately related to Tsukasa delivering invitations is viable to be trimmed or reshaped. You can get a couple of thoughts or paragraphs of background in as things are happening, conveying it through things like asides, thoughts, body language, or how the interaction plays out. Like the bit with Kanako slightly reworked with maybe Sanae saying something about seeing tengu holding a festival would have covered most of that part of the story. Toyono and her thing being pared down to being intruded upon and trying to fit in with her caste in a more direct manner also could have done the trick. Possibly Tsukasa directly involved at all times to move things along with, like, acerbic comments if you needed an out from over-describing or having characters get too caught up with themselves.

These threads as exist have a bunch of setup and detail but no real payoff from the perspective that it actually is mostly about Megumu defining things on her own terms. In a longer story these could be explored with ie. Moriya diplomacy leading to events or Toyono learning a harsh lesson about the shittiness of crow tengu but in a shorter story they are just details that complicate things a little needlessly.

I do appreciate some of the things pointed out in >>17860 too like the narrative perspective and its more indirect approach to things. It feels appropriate for something involving Megumu, something a little detached, not-quite-impartial, and more concerned with the overall scope of things.

>Which parts in particular?
A few things but particularly felt like some of the physical description of Yuuka, especially clothes but also her expressions/features, were kind of stock and glossed over. Felt overall threadbare and what was emphasized here and there didn't feel too connected with the action or the relationship that's being shown. There some stuff about the use of colors that doesn't quite land either.

>What motifs didn't work?
It's not that they're useless. Like I said, loose or don't tie in neatly. Like the aforementioned the color thing (the sky in the beginning and the end w/ fields, flowers, Yuuka), the birdsong/noise, the cycle of life/integration of some buddhist thought, the different sorts of flowers that appear at different times of years and under different circumstances of life ... a lot of it is haphazard and required polish or more deliberate thinking things through. I'm not sure how ideas/themes like death and its acceptance came through as a result. To use a food analogy (because the internet loves those): those bits were like sprinkles or chili flakes or whatever else atop the food—can nice enough, and even complementary, sure—but a lot of them should have been inside the dough and thus determining more strongly the flavor profile of the meal.

>That it was done in a single day is nothing short of incredible in many ways
I did spend time thinking about it every day, chewing over many ideas and how I'd want to present things. Obsessing over it, even. There was stuff that just came about when I started writing, sure, but it helped to have an idea of the progression I wanted and the images I wanted to transmit.

>>17864
I'll push back a little on the notion of things like amount of graduates being important. The scale of Gensokyo is very variable and doesn't make sense if examined rationally; the village is shown to have specialty shops like second hand bookstore/print shop, at least one salt merchant (and horses being a thing), and the like that all would require a large population to be sustainable and definitely not a small, sleepy, backward village as a remote rural place like Gensokyo would imply. Same with old hell being a city of its indeterminate size and indeterminate population. We know nearly nothing about tengu society or their numbers or the physical space that their settlement takes up. So I think it's fine to just hand-wave these inconsistencies away in canon because they're not really important to the main themes of the setting, anyhow. So it also goes for fanfiction that's only trying to quality and not quantify nor determine further rules to the setting.

As for your nitpick with regards to me, I think that contemplating the state of things is part of the point. Why would someone give up food and wealth? Why would they do it from one year to another? Why would they bring it up to a visitor? Why would they be certain that the visitor understood their motivations for keeping the orchard? What is it that the characters feel and desire?

>>17866
>These threads as exist have a bunch of setup and detail but no real payoff from the perspective that it actually is mostly about Megumu defining things on her own terms.
I guess. The thing is that I started with only general idea of playing with narrative structure and the themes along which to (attempt to) align everything. In all honesty, trying to mould together the different pieces of the structure as I went along was all I could do. Even much of Megumu's actual expressed viewpoint was something that came about more in the prose writing process than through any hard consideration put into the story-crafting process. However much I mention stuff like, say, an outsider's view of a narrow facet of Japanese culture bleeding into things, much of that only enters the picture in the very midst of things; anything I can say about it is more like a post-facto analysis than a true representation of how things came about.

I don't say this to refute anything you've said, but I suppose I do want to defend some of the choices made and mildly push back on the notion that some things could simply be done away with. Certainly, in the post-match analysis, they're not optimal. However, my way of writing — if not my way of processing things — doesn't make considerations of the sort put forth feel exceptionally actionable. At best, I feel I can merely look at the shape of things after they've coalesced and see the flaws in their formation, with little power to influence how that formation occurs.

So, I mean, I do wholeheartedly acknowledge that what came out wasn't so much fit to an exhibition piece, as such, as a longer short-story/novella(?). It's simply that I don't see an approach in the realm of what I can process. It only occurs to me right this moment that my question wasn't especially the one I wanted to ask; now that I've made that attempt at clarification, I'm not sure what the question should have actually been.

Starting by taking the stake out of my own eye to take the speck out of yours, My story's quite meandering and so undercooked it'll give you all kinds of worms - but not hookworm, baby, because there is no hook!
But anyway, Thank you to those who took the time to read my scribble, and double thank you for those who gave feedback. I think I'll be shelving this particular story, as my vision was far too ambitious. When I title it everyone has gathered, I meant that literally, and I was going to give each their time in the spotlight, with fresh, unexpected and unusual character pairings, and a few original characters based off of Japanese folklore that didn't have official depiction to fill in the gaps and... Scope creep doesn't begin to describe it, more like scope sprint. Reflecting on myself, I like to set grandiose foundations fit for epics (In my writing that I have done previously) and then when I begin to build up my story I can't manage the scope, my inspiration burns out, perfectionism nags at me and I'm left to think about how awesome it would be if that happened and where can i fit this quote i made up and yada yada yada. I'm left with this foundation, taking up space in my mind such that I'm half-sunk in my own head for weeks rehashing the same ideas I can't let out for lack of time and frustration that they'll be spent wastefully. At least I still have the ideas that passed me, to perhaps put to work in more humble stories that i can reasonably work on. build my skills as a writer - I've gotta read some more too. Again, thank you all for contributing!

Now I move on to my thoughts on the other stories.

Invitations

I very much like the prose and choice of words in the first chapter, especially this passage:
>>If the latter didn’t notice, that was her own fault for not exercising the sorts of faculties attributed to shamanesses like her.
Someone so modern and quirky as Sanae being attributed the title shamaness really underlines the contrast of her character, given its primal, savage and wizened connotations. I also like to see Sanae, even if she is a minor character here. This is a very good introduction, IMO.
The elegance of the prose is lost in the first Toyono chapter though. They read like stage directions - which could be intentional? The erudite language used doesn't pay off for me, and I'm left rereading passages not to take in how beautifully crafted and poetic it is, but out of a snagging confusion that takes away from the experience. I'm not sure if I'm just simple. However you display a very good vocabulary that you've shown you can use well, because the other chapters thankfully do not share this flaw.
As for the content itself - I was initially put off by the school setting as I'm tired of seeing it. But then I was brought back by the spin on this tired old setting, that being that it was a graduation - an end to that era of our lives people seem to too often nostalgically reminisce upon. I'll admit I don't know much about anything, especially not Japanese school culture, but the scenes built in the latter part of the chapter are very good. I'll leave one of my favourites:
>> Their interest in the seeming decline in fortunes of the family had the conversation circling back on itself endlessly, first to pity the poor crows, then to condemn their hubris in turn, only to swerve right around to reaffirming once more that it was their inherent simplicity that left crows unable to abandon misplaced pride, being the unfortunate beasts they were, though they were at least more akin to their betters than those ghastly wolfs.
Its a bit of a run on sentence, but I think that was necessary. To me it paints a vivid scene and sound that’s just so real.
I think the chapter with Kanako is very good, for lack of better words.
The chapter with Toyono and her mother honestly gave me chills. She is clearly an antagonist, but is still sympathetic; trying to set up her daughter for life. But Toyono is clearly disillusioned, even disgusted with the life that she's being set up for. The way her Mother launches immediately into "You need to do this to set yourself up for life what are you being lazy for this is just what you have to do" and her reaction to the letter is - chef's kiss! This teenage rebellion stuff often gets my eyes rolling but I think you handled this very well. The metaphor of the mother being spurred by the band to grab the letter is interesting. She is spurred by outside forces, not exercising her own volition.
>> getting mildly tipsy to make time pass with less friction." I just like this sentence.
This is a nitpick but I think it might be good to specify what kind of wine? from the description of the cup I'm sure its grape wine, but sake is often referred to as rice wine and given the whole context I initially wasn't sure if it was either.
The ending was at first, a let-down, but I've warmed up to it. No better way to get back at society at large than to make them play the game of social tightrope under a bullshit pretense which only you know the truth of. The most interesting part of the story to me was definitely the latter part of Toyone's story - I think she'd make a great character if you decide to keep going with this work. Against the insular racially caste society In the preserve of Gensokyo, you have the virtuous revolutionary leader, the noble child taken by her words, and then you finish that off with the self-serving sycophant of dubious trust, whose ability is to first bring great success, only to reduce that success to greater ruin? I'd read that.

Work and Kappa Culture

I feel like the OSHA joke is spent too early, and the reader isn't left time to piece it together themselves. I personally find it funny in a colonial sort of way, like some American outsider comes in and teaches this tribe of genius inventor women basic safety from a manual simple enough for 80 iq labourers and balding middle management cogs to understand, but having them still do dummy shit like not wear hard hats for fashion concerns. The comedy stems from the blatant disregard for safety in spite of the advice of the manual, and the absurdity of these violations. Momiji pointing out the violations herself kind of takes the fun away from finding them yourself, though.

I need to go to bed. I’ll read and post about the others later. Looking forward to it!

>>17868
>Momiji pointing out the violations herself kind of takes the fun away from finding them yourself, though.
Ever heard of manzai?

>>17868
I can perhaps guess, but which story did you actually write? You don't mention really mention it in your post. Unless that was intentional, in which case... shrug?

>Someone so modern and quirky as Sanae being attributed the title shamaness really underlines the contrast of her character, given its primal, savage and wizened connotations.
I mean, the word 'shamaness' carries none of those connotations to me. I simply use it in the (very technically incorrect but nevertheless common) sense of 'someone who engages in animist practises', a fair description of a miko of Sanae's sort, even if she is more usually just an attendant of the Moriya Shrine. For the most part, I'm just varying the exact title used rather than insistently relying on the somewhat unwieldy and uncomprehensive 'shrine maiden' or just outright untranslated 'miko'.

>stage directions
>erudite language
I'm... not sure I really see it, if I'm honest? In particular, I don't feel I've gone for any expressions that are especially exotic or difficult; even as minorly educated as I am, I keenly feel a paucity in my vocabulary in comparison to most writers of a certain calibre. If anything, I tried to be as plain as I could, save perhaps the use of extended clauses that add the barest complication to some sentences, though those are hardly anything compared to things I've read in published literature. Perhaps you could supply an example or two that you feel best illustrates your point?

>teenage rebellion
In all honesty, I cringed at myself as I was writing that part. It felt very trite to me, not to mention just a clumsy way of getting to the somewhat ancillary point about Toyono being obliged to engage in the social ritual of her 'class', both literal and sociological. Were I cleverer, I'd have probably not involved a wholly other character and just concluded everything with Toyono alone.

>what kind of wine?
I would have specifically just said 'sake' if it were sake; I don't like referring to it as 'rice wine' because the process of making it is nothing like wine. In any case, there's a bit of a small easter egg for those with even the most minor familiarity with the Shinshuu region of Japan, where Gensokyo is maybe-kinda-sorta located: at least part of the region notably produces grapes and there's been a degree of wine production in the region since the Meiji period. So, the presence of wine was a slight nod to that.

>get back at society
I push back at that notion a little bit because, the way I see it, Megumu is still very much a part of tengu society and doesn't see herself as apart from it. She's simply a part of it on terms that she determines for herself. Being on cultural committees is as much about giving tengu society a reason to celebrate, however farcical, as it is an act of self-satisfaction. Of course, tengu society as I've chosen to represent it rarely deals in genuine sentiments, a facet Megumu recognises and chooses to play on by pushing for dubious festivities that coincide with her own private celebration. You have to remember that Megumu sees the profits made through the events of Unconnected Marketeers, at least on some level, as a boon for all tengu, not just a personal victory.

>>17868 Back again. I’m the Mystery Celebrations author, sorry if that wasn’t clear.

>>17869
Thats what Touhou M1 Grand Prix is!? Its based off an actual comedy competition? I thought it was a parody of sports presenters going off on tangents at racing grand prix. Thanks for enlightening me. Anyway, Its interesting that you mention the comedy style, because after doing some surface level research I think theres a few differences between the traditional execution of the style and the style of the story. For one, its not just two characters exchanging, presenting to an audience, but two main characters going about a scene with set extras. I hope I make sense? What I’m really curious about is what elements of manzai do you see in the story/have put in the story (If you’re the author)? Thank you!

>>17869
>> In particular, I don't feel I've gone for any expressions that are especially exotic or difficult; even as minorly educated as I am, I keenly feel a paucity in my vocabulary in comparison to most writers of a certain calibre.
My Touhomie, what the fuck is a paucity?.. Most of your posts have me running to a thesaurus. When I said your language is erudite, I didn’t mean that was a bad thing – rather that there was great potential there, but it was overshadowed by the obtuseness brought about by other elements.

But to answer your question, I’ll take some passages from your work and edit them, if you don’t mind, to illustrate my points.

First, I think if you were to be less comma-happy the flow of reading would be smoothed, and the pacing and reader retention greatly improved:

>>Still, those conversations revealed this aunt-figure of Toyono’s to be a vibrant woman, possessed of an intellect few could reproach and ambition that many did reproach.

<<Still those conversations revealed this aunt-figure of Toyono’s to be a vibrant woman possessed of an intellect few could reproach and ambition that many did reproach.

I’ve made some small edits to the language in the below passages. My aim was to convey the same information with less words and better flow. By using family instead of families, you get consonance as well as alliteration. Making the words more similar to one another also drives in the stilted, hustle-focused mindset of your tengu by making them sound so similar, implying that there is little difference between the impersonal teachers who lecture large classes and your own flesh and blood. I don’t think it compromises reader understanding, or could lead one to think that the great-tengu are all one big interrelated incest lump, I hope. Here:

>> As might be expected of an elite school, the campus boasted a large hall dedicated to social events like the reception, to be filled to the brim with the graduating students, their families, faculty, and any other visiting guests permitted entry.
<< As might be expected of an elite school the campus boasted a large hall dedicated to social events like the reception, to be filled to the brim with the graduating students, their family, faculty, and other permitted guests.

When I said about stage directions, this is what I meant. I can visualise the scene, but I think you could convey it with less words.

>> Really, it took little observation to establish that she wasn’t a tengu at all, thus no one that could be taken for a student, a relative thereof, or anyone with any conceivable role in the gathering. She was, then, out of place at the graduation and she showed an aggressive lack of care for that fact with how she boldly stood in the room. Yet, no one but Toyono appeared to have noticed the girl in the first instance.

Your prose is very good, but the commas are like potholes, and it could do with some refinement and trimming by an editor who is better than me. Thank you for taking the time to read my comment and reply!

And finally, here’s my thoughts on:

All of Us are Merely Players

This interpretation of Ran’s shikigamihood is honestly one of the most horrifying, or potentially horrifying, I’ve ever seen. Imagine spending every waking moment with flashing notifications, receiving phonecalls direct to your brain, and having your whole perception being annotated by another being in quirky videogame speak. I get nervous having an e-mail tab open, so that would be hellish. Luckily for Ran it seems she’s largely in control of this thing, so thats nice. It is strange though, that an ancient being such as Ran would settle on Fallout New Vegas as her basis for her shikigami hud… But its a lighthearted, funny little story, so I think is not so bad. LitRPG has very negative assosciations with wish-fulfilment pulp, and with being tacked on to stories that would be better off without it, but I think here its quirky and unrealistic but fine. The one part that nagged me was the “successes” and “failures”, especially when Ran builds them up so she can have a Jimmy Neutron brain-blast.
I’ll repeat what other have said – that the prose is fine, the story entertaining, but the payoff should have been developed more in favour of the inclusion of more characters. Out of these scenes where character groups show up and Ran acts as gatekeeper, the only one that was relevant to the payoff was when Ran and Yuuma knocked out Seija and dragged her off into the woods to be buried mafia style, which was admittedly pretty funny. I think you should have had more cooperative scenes like this, or elaborated more on individual cooperative scenes like this, to make the ending better.

>>17871
Yeah, gonna be blunt: I disagree on commas entirely. I'm using them functionally correctly, and the idea that they 'look bad' in their natural usage just strikes me as something of an odd personal bias.

As to everything else, I'm just going to recommend, well, getting a lot more exposure to literature as a whole and seeing that things like my vocabulary, sentence structures, and so on aren't that strange. In particular, most of the vocabulary I use is stuff I learned in... middle school? Maybe a bit of high school? There's hardly anything involved that I picked up after that. I wasn't even a particularly voracious reader back in those days, so it's not like I'm exceptional in that respect, either. If English is your second language, I can maybe understand, but there's really nothing that far from the average here.

>>17872
I do need to read more, I've been spending my free time browsing epic meme websites for far too long. Could you please recommend some works?

I can personally recommend you read Cormac MccArthy's works. I've read through two of three of his famous novels, Blood Meridian and The Road, and also read the first of his series All the Pretty Horses. If you're familiar with him, He's probably where my aversion to commas comes from, because he really does not like any punctuation at all I also started reading his books before he got popular on TikTok btw.

Alright, it’s been about a week now and I’ve finally caught up to reading all of the posts. Shame on me for taking so long. I think this event had a good turnout of thought put into it from each of the participants, workload not withstanding. As this is an exhibition I will forcibly refrain from saying that any one story was my favorite as I found some good and fun in all of them. Does that mean I won’t try to critique? Hardly.

I’ve done my best to not read everyone else’s critiques on works not my own, so apologies if I give any redundant points.

From the top:

Invitations

A very competent story describing the political trappings and their after effects of and on Megumu. Largely told through multiple perspectives, it does well setting up scenes quickly for exchanges that feel naturally inclined to the scenario. From the informal yet stalwart Kanako to the somewhat listless young Kaname I was engrossed in where it was leading me. The real stars of the show were Tsukasa and Megumu with their whole conversation. Whilst I found myself only mildly enraptured by the pomp and circumstance of a tengu graduation, I was heavily invested in every word and movement between these two by the end. They were given characterizations that I can envy as they went over what the point of it all was and how there was a sweet irony to it. It’s very fun to imagine Megumu’s pointed vernacular staggered by tipsy intonations.

What I will critique is the weaker parts of the story with the tengu graduation. While by the end I completely understood the point of its inclusion, and the fact that it was a necessity to the final remark, it was still the weakest section that left me wanting to get back to the other two scenes that we bounced between. It was certainly a melodrama setting but the characters involved didn’t really feel to carry it beyond the point that was trying to be made. They were vehicles to the plot rather than the plot itself, as it were.

Is it a bad inclusion or makes the story bad? No, of course not. It accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: shows an example of high class tengu society and its facade on whole. Did I enjoy reading this section, though? That’s harder for me to say yes to, as it lacked some sort of driving hook beyond ‘the perspective character wanted her aunt to visit her.’ I don’t believe I could propose any changes that would make things more interesting, but for the sake of suggesting itself, why not have the girl be a bit more outwardly rebellious, rather than budding? Make her another cog wishing to be the wrench in the gears with her aunt who still fails to visit her. Just a thought, take it with a grain of salt.

Work and Kappa Culture

This was my piece. To address of bit of the first criticism, this story came as almost an anecdotal thing from me. I was standing at work in a manager meeting and thought to myself, ‘Hey, isn’t it weird and counterproductive that all the safety features of a machining facility are only installed to avoid OSHA write-ups without the intent of making the environment itself safe?’ Yeah, that’s seriously how this story came to be. It’s primarily supposed to be a piece critiquing exactly that gap in logic that I’ve seen in real world work culture.

That said, there are some major missteps that I should have accounted for while writing that others have pointed out by now. I spent the OSHA joke too early, it really could have been saved for a little later. Momiji is voiceless in this; I’ve gotten too into the headspaces of the overly mouthy OC in Ecology and the extremely observational spectator Ran. I shouldn’t have had Nitori state that the safety rules actually worked as intended; it should have been that the kappa only stopped reporting and recording minor injuries as they were not ‘reportables.’ Also I write sentences like English isn’t my first and only language (I am in physical pain over this one).

As for the elephant: why OSHA? Because why not? Listen, I could have used JISHA after someone pointed it out, but I firmly believe that changes none of the actual context of the story itself. Just don’t think about why an OSHA book can be read by Japanese kappa...

All of Us are Merely Players

Oh my poor Ran, what did Yukari install in you? There are a number of things that I both liked and didn’t like from this story. First, I think Ran having a Bethesda UI system is so stupid it’s hilarious. I would probably be in the minority, but I think if you somehow leaned on that even harder it would wrap all the way to an inspired parody. How would such a thing look? Probably illegible, so you never got that idea from me.

Her being able to game the system is interesting, but there’s no in-plot reason why she’s able to use her ‘skill’ to suddenly come to an answer. This makes it feel like it’s tacked on as an after thought when it could have been natural enough to say that it was Yukari feeding Ran answers. Unless that is what was happening, as the system started to get sassy at the end, in which case I didn’t hear enough of Yukari’s voice in the earlier portions to personally piece that together.

The overall plot was good and fun. With a bit of finesse it could be easy to follow the cause and effects of Ran’s decisions and maybe do so without even needing to explicitly state wiki knowledge, but as it stands there are some moments that have what feel like phoned in explanations for why something worked out in Ran’s favor.

As for the ending, I do feel like having the romantic angle was close to left field. It was obviously being hinted at, but it felt unnatural to jump to romance as what was going on. Do I dislike shipping? Not really, but the hints felt more like best buds that fell out of touch with each other.

Also, get rid of the failed insight check messages. That’s poor game design.

Mystery Celebration

I’ll keep this brief as this was a very rough draft. Who is this country bumpkin Wakasagihime? Who is this country bumpkin Yuuka?! Why does Yukari sound like a sassy teen–?! Don’t answer that. Different character voices from their typical depictions in fanworks is fine, but this feels too heavy handed on the dialects that I couldn’t stop looking at it.

Take a good look at your method of inserting dialogue and where its paragraph breaks are. Especially check that you’re properly using dialogue tags that indicate that someone says something. The dialogue itself is good at conveying the character, despite my previous gripe, but it could be in a smoother flow with some massaging.

The Orchard

A very carefully crafted moody piece. There’s not much activity to this like with Invitations but it makes up for it by painting a scene in expert strokes. There’s characterization given by both internal thoughts and setting descriptions. It’s word choice is selected to the environment and the characters. The two are as much a part of the scene as they are the scene themselves. The descriptions of Yuuka’s dual nature of beauty and threat are daring in how direct they are compared to everything else, striking a clear marker that attention should be given to them.

This piece is expertly crafted. Not purely flawless, mind, as I did find some sentences that were odd men out from the rest (I know I got nicked for the same thing, shut up). In a proper critical thought I would like to point out that there truly is so very little activity. While I do say that the scene painted makes up for it I still get the urge to see that painting do a little more than feel pretty. The closest we come is when Yuuka inspects Tsunehei’s face and when Yuuka blooms the tree to view it for the rest of the story. This could easily be a fault of mine for reading through without taking it in at the pace of a Yuuka, but I’ll not wholesale reject my own opinion, either.

On Alcohol & Oceans

A simple but effective type of story. Everything is spelled out for the reader, both good and bad. Fun and quick cameos of characters in understandable circumstances, both good and bad. Drawing heavy attention to character quirks, both good and bad. There’s a lot here that can be taken as a good or a bad thing depending on the reader. While usually this is a nonfactor to a writer, especially for fanfiction, I do feel that there’s some level of decisiveness that doesn’t need to be brought to the forefront of a reader’s mind. A simple example: Ichirin’s insistence on short-handing names. It didn’t necessarily need to be brought to the reader’s attention, and on its own it feels almost stochastic to the story at large, as it doesn’t forward the idea that Ichirin is deflecting something.

There’s a sort of annoyingly malleable clay that a story like this should have. Leave some things up to reader interpretation, if needed. It told the story that it wanted to but without much of a romantic view on story telling. I know that sounds weird compared to the piece that I wrote, but consider that I was writing a piece criticizing work safety culture whereas this was trying to tackle internal emotional turmoil. Take it with a grain of salt, but that is my personal thoughts on this piece.

Guess I'll just go ahead and confirm what some already know.

>>17874
>as it lacked some sort of driving hook beyond ‘the perspective character wanted her aunt to visit her.’
Not to be too prickly about this, but I do want to point out that the point wasn't simply to paint a farcical picture of great-tengu as a class. The greater point was mirroring some of the earlier part, showing a more restrictive group of tengu locked into their own nearly obligatory celebrations, this time pulled to a lower, more intimate level; Kaname is pushed on all sides, just like everyone else, to take part in everything by virtue of being a part of the greater whole. Also, Megumu not being there was really more of a functional plot element than a thematic one.

I'll refer you to >>17860 for further explanation of the work.

As to your piece, I feel the question of 'why OSHA' is really more about the need to have any such thing as a 'punchline' to start with. Its presence or absence really doesn't add to or take away from the more directly salient point about kappa not being very safe in their labour practises. There's any number of ways you could invoke the same point for the sake of comedy and come out with something that feels more 'of the setting'.

Guess who its >>17871

The Orchard
Hats off to you for this one. Thoroughly enjoyed it, and I promise I'm not just being a suck-up to the site owner. Yuuka's one of my favourite characters too!

Most of what I thought has already been put into much better words by others. I will say that for being a Touhou fanwork, the piece is very grounded and modest, with none of the bombasticity you'd see in most Touhou fanworks and main works. This quality is whats foundational to the success of the other elements of the story, IMO.

I can't really pull out any criticisms for the piece but I would like to ask some questions about it. If other writers would like to answer as well I'd be very happy!

If you couldn't have chosen Yuuka, which other character would you have chosen for her role?

How do you keep your ideas for writing?

You said you held off on writing this piece until the last day, but during the month chewed over it. What was your thought process - did you keep a running track of the events just in your head or did you write out a skeleton during the month and then fill it out all in one day?

What paragraphs / quotes came to you as ideas, and which came about when writing?

On Alcohol & Oceans

I think that less fluff with other characters and actual hints and setup toward the Ichirin twist at the end would have done wonders for this story. As other readers have said, It came a bit out of left field with the only hint being Ichirin's projection.

Starting with Ichirin finding Murasa in the shed would have been a much better start, and keeping the interactions with the partygoers more terse and observational would have freed up space for the main plot to develop more. I did enjoy it, and the decision to base a story around the buddhists is commendable because they're too often overlooked, especially Ichirin - Despite a lack of material you've set up a decent and relatable character motivation for her.

>>17876
>If you couldn't have chosen Yuuka, which other character would you have chosen for her role?
If not for Yuuka, there wouldn't have been a story. Superficially, someone like the Akis who are seasonal and one is related to the harvest might have some relationship to an orchard but they don't possess Yuuka's more long-term view and detachment when it comes to things and people. The flowers (which she seeks in all seasons) plus the danger that surrounds her despite her affable apprentice also are elements that helped tell the story that needed to be told.

>How do you keep your ideas for writing?
In my head, a lot of times. I also keep a bunch of notes in a physical notebook and others, mostly character observations, in a text file; specific things for specific stories may get their own section/file in addition. Most importantly, and this is something I've said in other spaces like matrix/discord/etc, whenever I read if there's a sentence, paragraph, or something that catches my eye I copy it down in a text file. That way I can refer back when writing something and remind myself of the feeling I got, of the style, a turn of phrase, or whatever else that I wish to assimilate into my own writing. For example, there is a lot in this piece that is ultimately my feelings and my own takes on images and language that I encountered in several short stories by Izumi Kyoka. (I fail to do these inspirations full justice thanks to my limited skills and interpretations but it is important to try, regardless.)

>did you keep a running track of the events just in your head or did you write out a skeleton during the month and then fill it out all in one day?
It was mostly feelings, as in mood, and a couple of thoughts and not really events. I knew there was a lot of wistfulness involved throughout and that it was something where a character had a fundamental loneliness and disappointment inside that hid a lot, including a fervent hope. It became clear to me that physical/social isolation would be something to get at when writing, as well as the routine that borders on mania because it is a coping mechanism for someone who has very few paths forward in life. Someone taking care of nature can be tender and nature can reciprocate, but it can also be indifferent and cruel. I also thought about things like the colors and how they would seem to the characters, how they would feel with the sounds and with the smells (of the damp earth). All these things and others were in my head and I had a clear idea of what I should be feeling when writing and reading it back.

I do sometimes do a rough outline but this time around, there was nothing but my thoughts to begin with.

>What paragraphs / quotes came to you as ideas, and which came about when writing?
The opening sentence was something of the genesis for the story. Specifically, the idea of fertile, productive ground that's nonetheless cold, perhaps unseasonably wet. There's both familiarity and a slight sense of unease there, I think, if you're so closely dedicated yourself to an orchard. Likewise, some of the way that Tsunehei relates to his trees was something I had thought out to an extent (inspired, in part by the childhood recollections of a character in An Evening with Claire by Gaito Gazdanov) but the specific actions and way it's portrayed came around when actually writing. Same with all the flower stuff towards the end: it was always going to be there but the torrent of flowers of different sorts, colors, and whatever else and how they tied into mortality was developed as I wrote; the seeds were planted but how it came together made sense only when the other elements were in place, especially after writing about how Yuuka interacts with Tsunehei and how he perceives her presence.

I don't know if that's helpful and I'm a bit reluctant to keep talking about myself because I'm not sure if it's that interesting. But I hope that I answered your questions at least a little. I appreciate the interest and am happy that you enjoyed the story.

>>17877
>but they don't possess Yuuka's more long-term view and detachment when it comes to things and people
I'm curious about this. It's true that Yuuka mostly keeps to herself and is only interested in flowers most of the time, but I feel like I don't often see a point like this brought up with her. How did you hit on that facet of her?

Also, just incidentally, would you ever do anything with the Akis? They're often ignored and you bring up a sort of interesting point in relation to them.

>It became clear to me that physical/social isolation would be something to get at when writing
You handled it pretty well. I've tried my hand at addressing it but feel like it's hard to do something that doesn't feel either overwrought or lacking in substance.

>>17879
>How did you hit on that facet of her?
Might come off as glib, but when I think about characters I like to look at their canon appearances. In this specific case, went over PoFV scenarios/dialogue again.

>would you ever do anything with the Akis?
Yeah, have some ideas/feelings regarding them. Not sure what sort of form it'd take—could easily be an episodic novella or a short CYOA. It would depend also on my own situation and whether there'd be enough people actively engaged on THP.

>You handled it pretty well
Thanks. Didn't go too hard on being obvious and in general tried a more subdued and less-is-more kind of approach. Thought I was pushing it a little for such a short story with the family mentions etc.

>>17881
>canon appearances
I mean, sure, I guess. Profiles can sometimes provide stuff, but I find game dialogue is kind of whatever, so I don't have a lot of luck with that.

>whether there'd be enough people actively engaged on THP
...yeah.

>pushing it a little for such a short story with the family mentions etc.
Really? None of it seemed all that obstrusive to me. I wouldn't have faulted you for meandering a bit more, honestly.

My comments part one.

Invitations

Okay. So, the first time I read this I had a hard time following along. Having gone back and forth a few times with the benefit of the discussion above I think I get it a lot better, but it's still just kind of difficult to actually read for me. I'll get into why that is in a bit, but I'm going to talk about the higher-level stuff first and leave the personal issues for the end.

>the themes
Oof, this is dark. You've definitely succeeded here. There are celebrations going on, but none of the characters are having a good time except, like, the fruit vendor. The joyful celebrations are meaningless; the meaningful celebrations are joyless... It's pretty unsettling, considering one of 2hu's base themes is spectacle-as-acknowledgement-as-conciliation. It's a cursed anti-celebration wrought by an arch-goblin through and through. Divine punishment abounds.

>the worldbuilding
Real sugiru. Maji de real sugiru. It hurts. 100% success. They say that tengu are bad Buddhists but Buddhists nonetheless, which prevents them from either ascending into Heaven or falling into Hell, but I guess that last part doesn't apply to daitengu. Bureaucracy is one thing but at least it's not a bodily performance; at least paperwork can't form Mean Girls cliques against you. I do agree that you've crammed in a lot of exposition relative to the active content, and while I think it's good material I also feel that it could have been economised on within this piece or else brought to life more fully.

>the characters
You've used Tsukasa pretty ruthlessly here. You've used her! She's selectively noticeable, so you've employed her to insinuate herself into scenes and enact the plot without making things spiral outward. And yet she doesn't even get to whisper any corrupting little nothings. That's mean. I like it. Let's be meaner to tube foxes. You've also got some scary older women, ranging from "cynical wine aunt" to "retired sergeant major", which... I have to admit still strike me as a bit of a discordant pairing with Tsukasa, but I think I'm beginning to understand. All in all, though, I find myself missing your usual close perspectives... I felt a little frozen out. Maybe that contributed to the unsettling impression I got. Tail-sniffing or no.

>the narrative structure
I have to admit, I've always coped really badly with "things are contextualised at the end"–type structures, and the same was true here. Still, on re-reading I see the way you've crafted it and I think I see some of the parallels you've gone for, like the slow walking while spacing out in sections A1 and B1 or the way sections A2 and B2 open up right in the wake of the big commotion. I hope you had fun trying it out, and I hope it can become something usable to you in future writing as well.

>the prose
So here's mainly where my problem was. I'll go over one passage in detail to illustrate the kind of issue I faced:
>... in the company of several classmates. Plans had initially been made for a whole group of them, numbering fourteen or fifteen, to all make their appearance together, splashy entrances a staple of post-graduation reception tradition. This intended display of the cheerful bonds of youth in their last flowering moment had been complicated by several of the group finding boyfriends, and thus dates to the reception, a couple of them failing to tell the others until nearly the last minute. That meant common friends came up absent, cutting the group down to five hold-outs after some elected to simply go as separate groups of their own. The remainder consisted of a well-known honour student, her closest friend from class, and three others who weren’t that close with the former two nor to each other, Toyono among them. To all who saw them ...
We've got an expository aside, but the sentences aren't really paced out in a way that signposts it as such. Like, we just drop right into it with four somewhat burdened sentences in a row, all of them ending with tenseless or verbless clauses: "splashy entrances a staple"; "a couple of them failing to tell"; "cutting the group down"; "Toyono among them". Three of these I feel are very similar; clauses tacked on just to get one more thing into the sentence. A lot of the phrasing is just kind of unwieldy in various ways... redundant or abstract or circumlocutory. I don't know if I'm alone in this, but there are a lot of passages like this throughout the piece, and to me they make it pretty hard to follow along. Um, here's how I might restructure this passage:
>... in the company of several classmates. There had been a plan, early on, for them to enter together in a group some fourteen or fifteen strong – an impressive display of girlhood bonds, which was to furnish their entrance with the spectacle traditionally expected of these receptions. This final moment of flowering youth was later undercut by the manifestation of several last-minute boyfriends, siphoning away key friends-in-common and ultimately splintering the group apart. In the end, five hold-outs remained; these consisted of an honour student and her best friend, augmented by three nominal acquaintances left stranded without better prospects. Toyono was among the latter. She walked placidly at one flank ...
I frontloaded "there had been", to make it clear that we're potholing into an aside about the past before starting onto content words like "plan". I've tried to vary up the syntax and condense the wording, and also thrown in full constructions like "which was to furnish" and "these consisted of" to give the reader a break from the tenseless constructions. Finally I've left off with a short sentence to signal that the aside is over and to direct attention back to the present. I don't think all of these moves are necessary, but they're the kinds of things I tend to be sensitive to when reading.

... I hit a patch of low blood sugar halfway through writing this up and ended up catastrophising about brain damage for a while before I remembered I hadn't eaten in 24 hours, so, uh, I'll get to the other pieces later.

>>17886
>The joyful celebrations are meaningless; the meaningful celebrations are joyless
I suppose so, though I intended for Megumu's celebration to be a quietly satisfied sort of affair, an intimate little shared joke at everyone else's expense. Really, I felt my focus was more on the 'meaningless/meaningful' aspect. Perhaps I wasn't very artful at conveying this part, but the whole thing that Megumu mentions about committees and contextualising ideas of 'culture' is my own little jab at the way such notions are almost farcical when you really examine them.

>while I think it's good material I also feel that it could have been economised on within this piece or else brought to life more fully
Do you have any further thoughts as to what could be done concretely to either end? I have the vaguest inclination to try my hand at a novella-like extension of the piece, but it would also be nice to keep a few things in mind for shorter pieces, as I honestly feel ill-equipped to dealing with stories in more compact forms.

>Tsukasa
I felt like it was fairly natural for Tsukasa to be used. Her two official appearances make it pretty plain that she is someone who is used, made to, as stated in the piece, dance atop someone else's hand, no matter how she contrives to turn such things in no one's favour.

>scary older women [...] which [...] strike me as a bit of a discordant pairing with Tsukasa
I hadn't expected something like this. What in particular makes you say that? The way I saw it was that Kanako and Megumu were the sort of figures Tsukasa can't really mess with; perhaps the elder Toyono would also strike a tiny amount of fear into the fox, being an imperious, nasty-minded great-tengu herself. What do you suppose makes for a concordant pairing?

>the narrative structure
I'm glad you noticed the 'A1/B1, A2/B2' interleaving. I would like to point out that I tried to make certain more subtle parallels between the different parts as well. For instance, the A1 part ends with Tsukasa and Sanae engaging in empty chatter, then the B1 part opens on the obligatory bloviation of school headmaster at a graduation. The same transition also is supposed to have a slight notion almost like in a film when the camera pans to some distant point right before the next scene opens on a shot elsewhere. There's also a couple of transitions based on tension, like between B1 and A2, where the buzzing but stuffy atmosphere of the school hall contrasts the oppressive atmosphere of the Moriya Shrine's great hall, which also buzzes but more with the reverberation of a goddess's temper. Going from A2 to B2 is fairly similar in that regard. Lastly, the transition between B2 and C puts the mention of Megumu and her probable place at a similar school function in the past against the present, the 'brightness' and glamour of the graduation party versus the darkness of an intimate dinner in a condo. I suppose some of these attempts at 'rhyming' are a tad undercooked or not all that effective, but they were what I could think of.

>the prose
Fair enough. Tenseless/verbless clauses don't bother me that much in literature I've read, so I didn't particularly see them as an obstacle. They also reflect my writing-as-thinking process: tacking on ideas one after the other after one has congealed enough to stand on its own verbally. The sort of rewriting you've done would be difficult for me to achieve because it's difficult for me to conceive of the end result consequent to the intermediate product. Ultimately, writing is a struggle to decide which thoughts are integral and which are ancillary, and I certainly struggle with those decisions on all levels.

>>17887
>I intended for Megumu's celebration to be a quietly satisfied sort of affair
It's something I left out of the post so as not to overburden it with details but the main reason I felt it was darker than that was because, like... there's no food! I mean, there's "food" the four-letter word, but it's not really described at all! They're delicacies and they shouldn't get cold, but what are they? What are they? I'm just way too morsel-brained to cope with that. Way too vittle-minded. Too viand-eyed. Comesti-pilled. Gluttono—

>what could be done concretely to either end
Just, you know, going for less telling/summarising and more implying/showing. Like the various descriptions of how Megumu or the Himekaidou are viewed in upper tengu society—we, as 2hu fans, already know that they exist and have an idea of what they look like and so on, and so it's a relatively simple move to slide them into these positions of "controversial reformist" or "bourgeois arrivistes" by just saying so in the narration. But it'd be stronger in my view to either write as though we already knew they were viewed this way, and only need to have it brought back to life by action or dialogue (the economical end), or else to start from the assumption that we didn't know they existed at all (the effortful end).

>What do you suppose makes for a concordant pairing?
I'm not sure Tsukasa is a very koncordant character in general. It's a bit of a konundrum to me. The classical konception of a fox is a monster that seduces; but Gensokyo just doesn't really kontain many personalities with whom that will get you very far. As a konfidante she doesn't come across as very konpassionate; as a konsigliere, meanwhile, I feel like she doesn't have the right kind of konfidence. I suppose it's just in her konstitution to be dependent on a host, and that's something I don't know very well how to konsider.

My comments part two.

Work and Kappa Culture

Sure, the prose is okay and the story's easy to read. The imagery is overall very cute, with all the kappa running around all busy with this and that. But, uh, I don't get it. It's about workplace safety and there's no real slapstick? You can't do that. Workplace safety comedy to me is like... The Sick Note, or Forklift Driver Klaus, or Operation Y. You know, "Would you kindly desist in pouring molten tin over my head?". It's not manzai, either, because manzai involves a fast-paced and chaotic exchange between a character colouring way outside the lines (which is funny), and another character having to follow them there, outside the lines (which is funny), in an effort to reel them back in. Here, the "joke" is that the kappa are colouring less outside the lines than usual (not very funny), and yet Momiji is still staying firmly within the lines (not very funny) and insisting that they do as well (not very funny). Sure, they're misunderstanding things or cutting corners, but there's very little that's entertaining about it as a result.

Let me just point to one passage in particular, because I think it's kind of emblematic of the overall problem:
>“Nitori, shouldn’t I have some of that ‘PPE’ stuff?” I request, pointing at the hazards looming over our heads this very second.
>She disregards the more overarching concern and instead consoles, “Oh, yes we have some beeswax earplugs around the corner here. I’m sorry, I didn’t think about your sensitive ears when you came in.”
This kills the joke! You've explained it before it's even had a chance to land! Of course she's ignoring the more overarching concern! That's the part you have to leave for the reader to infer on their own! You have to deliver your line and drop the mic and let the reader pick up the pieces! This doesn't just apply to comedy, either, although comedy is especially sensitive to it—it's a general style issue that you've got, where every time a character says or does something, you inject an explanation of what it is they're doing or what their intentions are alongside the actual dialogue or action. Like they "elaborate" or they "conclude" or they "do this to try and do that". This saps all the momentum from the story and makes it read like it's twice as long as it ought to be.

In general, like, I think maybe you're used to reading and writing from an SI/OC mindset, where the implicit aim of the point-of-view character is to catch every stray and falling piece because... you know, because that's what that mindset is; it involves someone who's uniquely in the driver's seat, and who's being graded on their performance by the reader. I guess there's a market for that kind of thing, but... personally I think it's just not very fun to read.

All of Us are Merely Players

I think you've achieved everything you've set out to achieve. The prose and the dialogue are fine and in particular I think you've got a pretty good sense of "stagecraft"; you know, moving and positioning and keeping track of several characters at once and bouncing them against each other to keep things moving. I'm personally not really a fan of, like, the gamification conceit (to be fair, this is superior to actual LitRPG or Gamer fics or what-have-you) or the fanon-heavy characterisations or the general fanfiction-y tone, but other people have already spoken on that point. What I'd personally suggest is, like... Try moving off of the "stage" or the "set", and try to capture more of the sense of a real place. Similarly, you know, try moving away from "characters" and towards having them be real people. Approach them like something that you have to build up in detail and that the reader has to follow along with you in order to actually get, instead of something that's assumed to be prior knowledge to everyone and that can just be mentioned without context. Because, right now, you've got these "roles" that are mainly distinguished by, like, names and surface-level mannerisms and reactions, but if you really track what's going on they're kind of just gliding around as self-contained units across a smooth stage with different props and backdrops and talking to each other about stuff. And if you stick to that then there's just going to be a limit to how substantial a story can feel.

Doesn't have to be full literary realism or anything. But, like... if you've seen Goodfellas, for example, it wouldn't work as a stage play. That's what I mean.

Mystery Celebration

You're the Cormac McCarthy enjoyer, right? Yeah, I can see that. So, I'm gonna veer pretty hard off-topic here and just talk about prose styling in general, since, like... I mean, you've disavowed the rest of the piece pretty firmly and I also can't think of much else to talk about. And also I really like talking about prose styling. Anyways, let's take a look at this opening paragraph:
>She stepped out of the gap and onto a stone trail leading to a huge manor - it stood not exactly in a clearing, more of a thinning of the august hardwoods that seemed to stretch on for miles as she glanced around. From the angle which she observed, she couldn’t gauge how tall nor how wide an area the building spanned for the thick lattice of summer leaf whose shadow cast by the midday sun painted spots and stripes of light over the stark white walls, the nearly black wooden framework, the slanted shingle roofs in violet, the pond to her left and the small garden and detached building to her right.
You're trying to capture some of that rolling literary tone that you've seen and enjoyed reading in books, sure. That's a fun thing to do. Specifically, what you're trying to do is work in rhetorical devices or figures of speech, and I mean those in the classical sense. And, the thing is, they are specific techniques and there are names for all of them, and while there aren't "rules" for how to use them there are effective ways of using them and there are discordant ways of using them.

So, for example, this construction here
>not exactly in a clearing, more of a thinning
is a form of correctio. You begin with one thought, but deny it in order to amend it with a different one. This is a pretty attention-grabbing device, because it makes the reader do a mental backspace, and a fine detail about the density of the trees isn't really the kind of place to spend it. It also clashes with the techniques that you use later, which rely on building up forward momentum instead of stopping it.
>she couldn't gauge how tall nor how wide an area the building spanned
This is occupatio, where you're denying an idea in order to evoke it all the more. This is an okay use of it—by not putting a cap on the building's size, you're getting across the idea that it's pretty big.
>for the thick lattice of summer leaf whose shadow cast by the midday sun painted spots and stripes of light over the stark white walls
Hypotaxis. A cascade of subordinate clauses, each modifying some smaller part of the previous clause. This can be used effectively to draw a reader into a picture that you're trying to paint, without making it feel like they're running face-first into a block of Description™. Not something you'd necessarily want to start straight off with, but whatever for now.
>the stark white walls, the nearly black wooden framework, the slanted shingle roofs in violet
Enumeratio. Listing things, basically. Not bad so far.
>the pond to her left and the small garden and detached building to her right
This isn't a deliberate rhetorical device, but I'm going to point it out as one. It's an anticlimax. You're dropping down from describing things to just dryly laying things out. "Detached building to the right" is something that, like, an HVAC guy or a cop says to another HVAC guy or cop because they're just trying to get a job done. Better to build up to some sort of crescendo, and then give more exposition about the grounds elsewhere.

The names of these techniques aren't really important, and neither does it have to be a conscious decision to use them every time; it's just the way they feed into each other that's what you want to develop a sense for. You want them to guide the reader's attention and not compete for it. So, putting it all together, keeping the ones that work and tossing out the ones that don't, I might restructure the passage to go something like this:
>The manor lay closely concealed in a respite from the robust hardwoods which seemed everywhere else to encompass the land in inexhaustible echelon. From the angle at which she stood gazing at the sukima's abode she could not make out its full outlines, infringed as they were by the thick summer leaf, whose translucent lattice scattered the midday Sun into motes and streaks across the limewashed walls, the pilasters in blackened stone, the sloping eaves and their tiles in grey slate, which gave up a certain purpureal hue where they were speckled with the light.
Obviously I wouldn't open right up with it, and I'd need a pretty good reason to cast this much focus on a house house, but this is the sort of thing I like to play around with :DD

>>17891
Mystery Celebrations author here. A huge thank you for taking the time to analyze the prose of my writing, and for rewriting the paragraph to illustrate your points. I'll definitely reserve some time to learn more about storytelling and rhetorical techniques. I think it'll be valuable knowledge for both reading and writing.
I wanted to focus on the house at the very beginning because I like to have a very good stage for whatever scene is in play. The house was going to be the main setting of my work, after all. I wanted to set the stage and the tone and hook at once. Hook? Yeah, the hook was intended to be the setting of Yukari's house itself, since its still a mystery in canon. But as others have said, thats a trapping of fanfiction - presupposing that your readers are familiar with the material.

>>17892
>But as others have said, thats a trapping of fanfiction - presupposing that your readers are familiar with the material.
My own issue with that mindset/approach is less about familiarity with material being adapted as much as a presupposition of investment by default in particular understandings/interpretations thereof. For instance, I'm not invested in, say, Alice and Marisa being friends unless a very good reason is established within the narrative; i.e., the onus is on the writer to show how that's true and why we should care, not simply tell us that's the case or take it all as a given.