>>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 o

>>17846
Insect girls are the best. I'm a huge fan of all sorts of insects, and, of course, giving insect traits to a cute girl or a beautiful lady is bound to make her even more charming. Compound eyes, long chitinous legs, mandibles, it all looks great on a woman. I'd really like to be more fond of Wriggle, but, unfortunately, she just doesn't look insectlike enough! Scrawny, cartoonish little antennae and a somewhat wing-like cape just aren't going to cut it for an insect lover like me. I still have a certain attachment to purely because she is a firefly woman who can command fellow bugs, but her character has so much unrealised potential in that sense.
The way she looks is also something I'm conflicted about. She's an ouji, her outfit is pretty clearly meant to be evocative of "boystyle" lolita. An ouji-themed, "princely" Touhou girl is a good idea, and Wriggle doesn't look bad for such a character, but a lot of things about her are just off. The trousers are too voluminous for a coherent silhouette (considering the cape) and too bright to fit the rest of the outfit well, the shoes don't really go with what she's wearing, the hair colour just kind of comes out of nowhere and the antennae look miserable. But really, it's not a design problem, as there's a lot of fanart that can make her look cute without changing anything, and even the details that look off wouldn't have been much of a problem. Her in-game portrait is just really bad, which unflatteringly highlights the slight awkwardness that's already there. It's probably one of the worst of ZUN's character drawings, and that has nothing to do with being from one of the earlier games either - think of th6 Reimu, who's actually really cute throughout the game - ZUN could draw well enough then, he just really screwed up with Wriggle. Which is also unrealised potential. Even if nothing at all changed about her look and she was just redrawn to be posed less awkwardly and given normally proportioned arms, she would have instantly become much prettier, even without a chitin

Ultimately, Wriggle feels like a 'fodder' character to me. That is, she's basically there to fill a slot more than anything; ZUN's sole thought, according to the SCoOW profile, was that a firefly would fit a nighttime stage. It just doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of 'there' there when it comes to her. At best, she's like... kinda comic relief? I guess the BAiJR thing is supposed to be vaguely comical, though it's pretty whatever in the end, largely just underscoring how inconsequential Wriggle is.

That's probably why the fandom often chucks her into a grouping with 'similar' small-fries, even if it's not really a likely one at all. Really, probably one of the more unfortunate things about Wriggle is that there's few connection points with anyone else. She's more or less stated to be someone generally found unpleasant by most, considering she's often found with large numbers of bugs, so there's little reason to believe even a lot of youkai would tolerate her presence. So, that kind of leaves... a bug girl who lives in the forest and has a complex about bugs' place in the world? Doesn't seem like that much to work with.

As far as portrayals, I haven't seen any real notable ones on THP. Given how little context she has to fit in, I feel like Wriggle is only at best likely to be a bit character, anyway.

>>17848
I feel like the whole thing with bug youkai amounts to a sort of passing comment on how bugs in general used to be a lot bigger a few geological ages ago. Then again, there is the whole thing about insecticide brought up in the BAiJR interview, and I guess you could make the case that humans don't have as much need to inherently fear pestilential (pestiferous?) insects because of things like that. What's left is a much more minor aversion than anything.

>drastic action
I almost feel li

This poor girl does not deserve to be called a cockroach!

Considering the entire theme of my story, it only felt fair for the contest reward to feature one last Satori fakeout.

But in all seriousness, thanks for being our artist, Kosu. The art you've provided for R/R and USiL both has been fantastic, and as I had no particular ideas on a Mystia story myself, I decided to outsource the problem. And, as per usual, Gooboi's done a terrific job with it - the misadventures of little tiger Mystia were a joy to both read and edit.

And with that... thanks to everyone who was part of the contest, thanks to Gooboi for hosting it, and I'll see you guys when I've got something else written. Until then.

>>17840
I, personally, loved it. Mystia is the sort of person to use the jeweled pagoda as a fuel source for her stove.

My one question is how Kyouko got sent to her.

I'm not crying, someone's chopping onions!

This was completely unexpected and it absolutely made my day, my whole week, everything.
I have to thank both of you, I can't find words to thank you enough, this meant a lot to me!

It's always a pleasure to draw stuff for the worlds you have gifted us, and I'm always happy to help you in any way I can.

Shit Fart Online sucked and VR is a forced meme.

Gensokyo is still not real and VR is shit.

Just realized I forgot to say what it even is, Gensokyo D20 is a Touhou D&D 3.5 conversion.

As I'm busy preparing to go out of the country for the next month, I don't have that much time to deal with this thread, so we're going on hold yet again. The thread's near auto-sage anyway, so this is as good a point as any to drop off for now. See you in November with a fresh thread.

In all honesty, maybe you'll just offload the thread to someone else (again) instead of shutting it down?
It doesn't seem like much work to take on, simply post a first post with roll and a second one with collection of canonical sources, that's all for mandatory threadkeeping.

I'll be taking over the character discussion threads for the foreseeable future. This thread is almost auto-saged so new thread:
>>17620

Pretty quiet around here. Guess I'll take that as nobody else having much to say. In which case, here's the face reveal: I wrote The Problem with Civilisation.

In all honesty, it was a struggle to bring this piece to any kind of conclusion. I didn't start with much momentum, and life made it hard to ramp up to any degree. Various obligations that I couldn't put off left me with little focus or free time a lot of days, so there were many days where I simply made no progress at all. That I made it with a couple of days to spare so I could do a perfunctory self-edit and proofread was a feat in and of itself.

It all just underscores that I'm not a writer who can work quickly at all, nor can I very readily reconcile the basic conceptual matter of a story with actual written words. The concept of this piece took me close to a week to even nail down, for instance. I had initially felt like doing something involving tengu, based on one of the suggestions in the OP, but I couldn't come up with anything at all. I suppose the choice of Nemuno was largely due to the Character Discussion Thread. I still had a bit of the discussion about her kicking around in the back of my head by the time the contest started, so I guess she was just sort of an 'easy' choice at the time. She's also deceptively simple as a character. Deceptively.

I say that because I did struggle to feel as if I had a good sense of how to portray the mountain hag beyond the most superficial elements. The particular tone of her dialogue was simple enough, but figuring out what she would actually say, for instance, had me pulling out my hair at points. There were instances where I had to cut back on dialogue for her and try to use Byakuren to push things along instead. Then, when Kenji was actually awake and in the scene, I had to struggle to figure out how she would deal with him. Yes, yes, mommy hag and all, but I wasn't interested in taking the absolute easiest route possible. In that sense, my own struggle to reckon with Nemuno as a character is represented in some of the struggle she has wit

Same poster from >>17559

Otherworldly Flavor

A cute short that felt absolutely like a Touhou work, this one I enjoyed. The characters were used effectively, and I felt like I was reading Youmu and Yuyuko and people with similar names. The theme was simple but strong; Youmu was obligated to fulfill her master's order, and she took the opportunity to go out and party while still getting the job done.

My favorite short in this exhibition. The author had an idea, and they executed it well.

Eientei M.D.

I see the idea; you know how to leave clues, and throughout the story, I felt like I could figure out the mystery. To me, that's where half the fun is, feel close to solving the puzzle and I think you did fine from that angle.

I would like to see you hone your skill in making a mystery. The grammar could use work, but that'll naturally improve the more you write and read. You love House M.D? Watch the episodes and study them; Engage with the media you love and dissect it. You watched your favorite episode? Study and see why it stood out from the rest. Least favorite? Study and ask yourself why it leaves a weaker impact on you.

Be wary of giving a pre-existing character a child. It's a powerful hook and doubly so for someone like Mokou No Fujiwara. It creates intrigue and a lot of questions which is what you want for mystery fic.

Who's the father? Magic exists, so was it with a woman instead? What is the parents' relationship with each other? What is their relation to their daughter and etc.

But the fic wasn't about the daughter, so those questions are left unanswered because it wouldn't affect the actual story. It's a powerful trope so give it serious thought if you really want to make a child oc, or stick to the pre-existing character because in this situation, you could have Mokou and it would not have changed the story.

I hope I can see your writing again in the next exhibition; I'm making an assumption here, but I did feel like you enjoyed writing

Records of a Burdens

I like the story and it did tug at my heart, some things didn't stick the landing for me.

Despite the story's conflict happening because of Akyuu's sense of impending death from her curse, it's odd that it wasn't shown. The closest we get is her hand straining, but that's due to overworking. She tells us how her body reminds her that she should be dead by now, so show us what she's feeling. Keine says she looks haggard, but we never get a physical description of her body outside her writing hand. You can describe how messy her hair is or maybe she couldn't bring herself to put the brush on the paper.

To summarize: Show me what the characters are telling. A short paragraph about Akyuu's body feeling off would go a long way.

Otherworldly Flavors
This is my favorite and it's hard to suggest any improvement. If I could make one suggestion, I would like it if the story had a more prominent conflict. Youmu goes to get snacks for Yuyuko, but there aren't many obstacles that stand in her way. There was the tengu, but the fight was stopped before it started. When Youmu was flying back, I thought that was when the conflict would start and she now had to resist eating all the snacks while drunk, but that didn't happen either.

You could have it that when she was paying for her snack, Youmu realized the money Yuyuko gave her was missing, or she was more tempted to eat all the snacks before reaching home. Anything that would make the reader wonder if she'll succeed in her quest or fail trying.

The Problem with Civilization
I've seen you talk about your struggle in writing, and I want to say I am happy to see your writing in this exhibition. I also appreciate you taking the time to critique my work and show where I can improve. However, there's room for improvement as a writer and a critic.

For writing: Byuakren and her group's whole purpose in the story was to bind Nemuno and Kenji to

That's probably why I didn't see it.
In the character.txt of my PCB copy it's translated as: "Like Chen, her shape is unchanged and she has a well-sociable personality."
It's a difference of how 性格は丸い is translated.

"Well-sociable personality" isn't wrong, either; it's just how they ignored the overall structure of the sentence.
>姿かたち：普段と代わりが無い
>が、
>性格：丸い。
が "but" draws a contrast between these two topic/comments. Translating it as "and" is just a weirdly lazy move.

>>17531
>>17532
re: 'crime', that wasn't the focus of my mutterings. The point was whether or not youkai have any vested interest in keeping villagers from harming each other, considering they are of outmoded importance to Gensokyo's order. To be clear, I don't think there's any factual answer to that question, though my feeling is that, yes, they have some interest. To what extent? Well, that's a whole other question.

>>17504
Nothing so trivial. It's their personalities. Their characterizations. What sequence of events bring out the feelings and thoughts about those things and them isn't really something I can suggest—that's up to you because it depends on the things you want to do with those characters.

Maybe I'm doing a poor job of explaining this but it seems obvious to me: I would like to learn more about who they actually are because one of the things that seemed clear to me from reading the story was that they were all hiding their actual thoughts and feelings because (plot) reasons. I want to see a little behind the curtain and it doesn't matter if it's their opinions on whatever trite things you listed so long as it's something that's important to them or their character. Again, not something I can suggest since only you would know what those things are. All I can offer is the most general setups for that like Aun sleuthing around, uncovering something that can't be avoided, overhearing something, being nosy, talking over drinks/tea, etc. since I can't know what you know and feel about the characters and what would come out.

If you can't do that, that's fine. I don't mind little vignettes as suggested by another poster and a clash with Aya in terms of reporting or managing the "truth" that's printed in any article could be interesting. My main interest in the story comes from the characters and their depictions and I can't tell you what they should be.

>>17506
In all honesty, I'm not sure if I can do what you're asking. Probably the deepest problem with the main story is that I figured out after a point that I don't feel secure in knowing much about the principle characters much less what to do with them. The plot, such as it was, was based on a couple of arbitrary answers to questions posed to me, and I'm lukewarm at best on those points now; the main thing stopping me from redoing everything is not knowing what I'd do instead. On top of that, I had (and still have) numerous wide gaps in my understanding of the characters that can't be bridged just by reading some profiles and manga. For instance, I couldn't tell you who Sanae is outside of her shrine maiden role; I don't know what she's actually interested in, what she normally does in her free time, how she feels about this thing or the other, etc. The foundations for all of those characters is shaky at best, and I don't know what concrete steps I can take to fix that.

So, I don't know what else to say. I can maybe string together something from suggestions about specific scenarios, and that's about the best I can do right now. Sitting still for a long time only continues to hurt me, so I'd like to somehow keep moving forward and eventually find some way of fixing the foundational issues, and I think the only way that's likely to happen is a process of doing and discovery. However, motivating that process isn't something I can do myself. What I'm doing right now is all I know to do at this point.

I'm sorry to unload all of this behind-the-curtain talk, but what you're asking touches right on a lot of the deep frustrations I've had with this story and writing in general.

>>17507
As I said before, it's fine if you can't. While I'm interested in what I'm interested, the simpler idea about the aftermath at the Hakurei shrine is also ok. I'm partial to a series of short notes/articles by Aya following attempts to interview the involved parties as a style and/or framing device. Though, perhaps, that might end up being more about Aya and her pushiness rather than the interview subjects (Reimu, Aunn, Marisa?, others?) themselves. Dunno what the other anon might think.