Three Weeks Remain! Have you got your ideas ready? Still plenty of time to write!

Two Weeks To Go! We're at the halfway mark now! Have ya started writing yet?

No need to panic, you still have plenty of time. Like I said, I'm open to proofreading - feel free to send things my way if you want more thoughts.

One More Week until Submissions Open!

Remember, submissions open from the 28th of October to the end of the month! Even if you just think you're going to need a small extension, the sooner you let us know, the better! Letting us know you might be late early, and getting it in on time is a million times better than not letting us know until you're DEFINITELY gonna miss out otherwise.

I've had one person ask me for proofreading so far. So I'll once again remind people to let me know on Discord if you want a review.

Only ONE MORE DAY until submissions open! Is everyone ready?

Remember, submissions will be open until the end of the month. No need to panic if you're not quite done - there's still some time.

And like we've been saying, we're open to extending the submission period, but you HAVE to let us know as soon as you think you need it, alright? The sooner we know, the better!

Alright. I'd hoped to have this in on time, but unfortunately my contest entry is proving longer and harder to write than I'd initially hoped.

Requesting an extension to Nov 4th, so I have next weekend to finish up.

Alright, submissions are now open!

The submissions thread is right here: >>/shorts/3006

We're also granting the extension to the submission deadline. Submissions now close on the Fourth of November! Hopefully that should give you a little more time to finish things off.

Good luck! I'm eagerly waiting to see what you all can create!

While the entries thread is still open due to the earlier request, we've passed the original deadline... and nobody's actually posted their updates yet.

Hopefully, it's just people using the extra time to polish their work. Reminder that submissions close on the 4th of November! Make sure to get your entries in on time.

Alright, the submission period's only a little bit longer!

If you're still writing, make sure you get it in before the deadline:

[timer=24/11/04 23:59]

Alright, submissions are closed!

Time for the most important vote of the year! ...Why are you looking at my like that? ... Month? ...Week?

Ah-hem. The choices are as follows:

🍴A Life-Changing Breakfast🍴
🔥Blue Flame🔥
⏰What Colour is the Unpainted Maiden?⏰
🎭Hidden Thoughts🎭

You have one week, starting from now, to pick your favourite and vote!

Let's see who takes the halloween prize... good luck, everyone!

I enjoyed all entries but sadly I have to choose one. My vote is for:

[X] A Life-Changing Breakfast

Are contributors allowed to vote, as long as we don't vote for our own? If so, I'm also gonna have to give it to

[X] A Life-Changing Breakfast

>>17593
Voting for you own is fine, actually. Nobody's gonna stop you.

That said, I still haven't finished reading all of the entries so my vote would have to wait.

[X] Hidden Thoughts

Love me a good bit of instigating. Including(and especially) for a good cause.

[X] A Life-Changing Breakfast

>>17594
Huh. Well, I'd feel kinda scummy about it anyway, so I'll leave things as they are.

Alright, just finished all the entries and I gotta say that I enjoyed all of the entries there. I don't have time for now so this post might come off as a bit too short but I may come back later. Thank you for all the participants and Gooboi for organizing this contest. That said, lets get to the entries:

A Life-Changing Breakfast

I love mystery and I think this one does a pretty good job in placing its hints. I figured the mystery out the moment they talk about the dissapearance of <SPOILER> and I felt quite satisfied with the conclusion.

One weakness I could find is that the reveal/climax felt pretty stiff. I guess some better descriptions of their investigation activities could help with that. For example, you could explain the process of the tracking spell ritual in more detail, which would lead to giving more clues to what's happening. Also, I think Marisa's reaction is too forgiving, after going through all that. I suppose showing [The Perpetrator] the consequence of her actions would rather work better than Marisa instantly forgiving her. Pretty good overall.

Blue flame

The premise is interesting to me and I am quite amused with how it turned out. I think it's a bit too long for its own good though; the whole thing with that random guy could've been removed and was replaced with something more concrete, because the story does feel lacking direction at times (pun unintended). I think the story could've flowed better if you focused more on Shion and Mokou's dynamic. The prose is fine, but there's still some mistakes in its punctuations and such. I pretty much enjoyed this.

What Colour is the Unpainted Maiden?

I really love the prose here. Each sentences felt like its a poem on its own, and there are many references to japanese folklores and such. I feel like this one captures the most feeling of "horror" out all the pieces here. I can't point out any weakness nor provide a more in-depth analysis for now, as it would require me some time and work. But if I were to explain it, this reminded me of Teruyo's Midwinter from Luck and Fate Exhibition. Take my vote for now.

Hidden Thoughts

A really silly and whimsical piece. I love the general vibes it gives, and I admit that the last twist got me good. The atmosphere felt very alive, and the character interactions are very pleasant to read. Rinnosuke taking some Ws almost tempted me to vote this one. But I still prefer the previous one over it.

Now that I've given my general thoughts my vote, shall be casted upon...

[X] What Colour is the Unpainted Maiden?

[ X ] What Colour is the Unpainted Maiden?

Honestly, very hard to pick. Enjoyed all of them except my own upon reread lol. I'll cast my vote for:

[X] Hidden Thoughts

Failed to write any kind of meaningful and useful criticism, just, voting, I guess.

[X] What Colour is the Unpainted Maiden?

[X] Hidden Thoughts

Blue flame was close behind for me.

[X] Hidden Thoughts
Nails the theme. Has a perfectly-executed twist ending that works even better on the second read. Features my waifu. I can't find a single thing to complain about.

A Life-Changing Breakfast starts off alright, but falls apart after the big reveal. I have to second >>17598, Marisa is way too quick to just forgive all the murder and cannibalism.

Blue Flame was a pretty fun one. Definitely my pick for second place. My two big complaints about it are that it really could have used some more proofreading, especially in the first few scenes, and that Tewi's epilogue could use some trimming (it spends too much time on straight up recapping events that just happened).

What Colour is the Unpainted Maiden was just a bit too... much.

We've only got a bit less than a day left in the voting process!

The scores are at:

[4] Hidden Thoughts
[3] A Life-Changing Breakfast
[3] What Colour is the Unpainted Maiden?

This is still anyone's game. At this split of a vote, even Blue Flame could have a comeback victory!

A bit over 22 Hours remain in the vote! If you haven't voted yet, now's the time!

[X] Blue Flame

Honestly, Shion impersonating Mokou was entertaining, and I enjoyed the Tewi shenanigans.

[X] Blue Flame

Shion you are such a dumbass I love you

[X] What Colour is the Unpainted Maiden?
In the end, even though I know that part of the terms were that it didn't have to be horror, I find myself leaning toward the one that felt more horror-esque to me.

[X] Hidden Thoughts

I hope I made it in time.

Well, the vote period has ended... we were just about to call a tiebreaker, but then the perfect final vote landed! What a surprise!

The final scores are:
[2] Blue Flame
[3] A Life-Changing Breakfast
[4] What Colour is the Unpainted Maiden
[5] Hidden Thoughts

The winner is Entry #4, HIDDEN THOUGHTS! Congratulations to the Author for that entry!

As previously discussed, your prize is a short starring a character of your choice. Feel free to pitch and character and any premise you want, as long as it fits the theme of the contest. (And it's a touhou character, of course.)

Now, we were just short of having the 5 entries needed to give smaller prizes to second and third place. But for such a close race, I'm willing to give a communal prize to all three of the runners-up. Each of the other three entrants may name one character - I will create a short featuring all three as a consolation prize.

Thank you again, voters, writers, and casual readers. It's been a lot of fun hosting this little competition!

Discussion's now fully open! To all the entrants, feel free to come forward and claim your stories, and your relevant requests for the prizes. Everyone else should feel welcome to leave longer reviews and feedback, as well!

I'm going to try and make this an annual event for the site. Already have several themes in mind, in fact. So with that in mind, I hope to see you all again next year.

As I'm sure a few people have already guessed, I'm the author of Hidden Thoughts. Thanks to everyone who voted for it, and I'm glad the piece got generally good reception.

I probably won't do another contest for a while though, my piece ended up becoming a lot longer and a lot more work than I'd originally intended. (Remember that two week break I'd declared? Yeah, that pretty much got spent writing this.)

Anyway, as far as the prize goes... this probably won't surprise you, but I'm going to request a certain pink haired maiden receive a brief spotlight as an R/R IC. I'll message you on discord as far as the details go.

First of all, I have to apologize - I apparently couldn't read, and it's only now that I realized that there was supposed to be anonymity for the submissions. Won't happen again.

And so with no surprise to all, I'm the writer for A Life-Changing Breakfast. It was definitely fun writing it, but as many of the voters astutely pointed out I could have ended the story with a stronger conclusion. Part of that was bad time management before the deadline, and part of it was just that I was unsure on what old Marisa's character should be finalized as. Maybe sometime in the future I can give it a bit more thought and polish up the ending.

For my character, I'd like to go with Yuuma Toutetsu. Due to continuity reasons it's difficult for me to really ever use her in my story, and it always brings me joy to see her just doing things.

Congrats to Lost Soul for the first place win, thank you Gooboi for hosting; and finally, thank you to everyone who voted for my story.

Hello! It's me, the writer of What Colour is the Unpainted Maiden?, who was hoping to have decided what pseudonym he was going to use by the time he started this write up.

As you can see, I didn't.

Thank you so much for the positive response to my story! I'm really blown away by how much people seem to have liked it and how close I got to winning. One criticism that I see I received was that it was "too much," and while I don't know what specifically was too much, if it's the flowery prose, I'm inclined to agree. I went hard on that to both get back in the habit of using poetic language and to heighten the feeling of unreality, but I think it got a bit overbearing at times.

Though, conversely, I also got praised for my poetic writing, which I'm also immensely pleased by! I think having good prose is really important, so I try to focus on that, but I've never been very confident in it, so for someone to single it out as a high point of my writing is immensely encouraging. I'll continue to do my best on that count! Hopefully I can find a Goldilocks Zone of purpleness.

Hm, what else? I suppose I can talk about the development process! Right from the start, I wanted to use the masquerade prompt in the form of gods being fluid and sometimes indistinct, shifting aspects and becoming identical with each other and so on. The first draft was actually about Utsuho, being new to divinity and not knowing how to properly handle that nature, accidentally being taken over by the aspect of the Ryuukyuuan sun goddess Kinmamon; Eika in the aspect of Yoshitsune-as-Okikurumi would adventure through Old Hell, also changed in aspect to seem more Ryuukyuuan as a result of Kinmamon's influence, battling oni-turned-majimun, and end up working with Mononobe no Moriya (and then Suwako, and then Kanako) and the Youkai Sages (a single individual taking on the aspect of whichever Sage is suited to a given situation, and its unclear which of them she normally is until she uses the aspect of Maribel Hearn at the end) to fix things.

The second draft was more or less an attempt at a more condensed version of that, because the length was spiraling out of control.

The third draft, started because I still could not keep the length down, switched perspectives to focus more on Utsuho-Kinmamon (who would sink Chireiden underwater to isolate herself, causing her to also drift into the aspect of Azumi no Isora) being haunted by the Yatagarasu, constantly bothering her in a kind of pseudo-homage to Poe's The Raven, while also being visited by Eika, Suwako, and Yukari, who would still be very fluid about their identities in this draft.

At the fourth draft, with less than a week to the extended deadline, when I just couldn't get the idea working, I scrapped the Kinmamon idea and stapled the premise together with another concept that I'd been dwelling on for a while, the idea of a cast-off husk of an Outsider Sanae, completely human because the godly part of her moved to Gensokyo. This was basically the same as the final draft, but with more blood and guts - Sanae died repeatedly chasing the butterfly, and at the end of each encounter with a god. Also there was almost a sort of crane-wife bit with the butterfly turning into an Outsider Reimu, but I decided that was pure cruft and never wrote even a rough draft of that ending.

At the final draft, I felt that the death part wasn't working, and stripped out all but the ones at Mononobe and Minakata's hands, which I felt were sufficiently strange to still work. And that's what I posted! I really cannot thank you enough for the positive response.

I would've liked to have done another editing pass for some cleanup, but I was simply out of time, and based on the response, it sounds like it might not've been as helpful as I thought. Never trust an author about their own work!

Anyway, you'll probably see me around again sometime soon. I promised myself I'd try my hand at running a quest once I finally got that Outsider Sanae idea off the ground, and since I seem to have not only got it off the ground but successfully landed it afterwards, I'm out of excuses to procrastinate! I have a few ideas, but I'm planning to start with the smallest, so be on the lookout for a silly thing about Shion and Reimu from somebody who had damn well better have settled on a pseudonym by then. (You will also probably continue seeing me voting and discussing things here and there in the meantime).

See you then!

And for my character, hmm, tentatively I'm gonna say Ibaraki-Douji's Arm. But she might be hard to work into... pretty much anything, so if she turns out to be a problem with the last choice (... watch that have been made while I was typing, lol), and it's allowed, I might change my choice. Thank you for the runner-up prize! I'm immensely grateful.

Congratulations, Lost Soul, on a well-earned victory, and thanks bunches to Gooboi for hosting! It was an honour to take part.

Hello, I wrote Blue Flame.

I got inspired to write it by seeing all of the jokes about Shion being blue Mokou. It was pretty fun to write, Shion was fun to write as a Doofenschmirtz level unlucky/kind of dumb character. The scene which I actually envisioned first was the clash between Mokou's amulets and Shion's eviction notice thingies, and the idea of Shion clashing against Mokou's red flames with her blue flames inspired the title.(Even with Mokou also being able to create blue flames lol.) The fight scene in general was good fun to write, especially with how cool Mokou's fighting style is, and forcing myself to think of how Shion could manage in a fight without Jo'on(or going full misfortune super-saiyan.)

I will admit that it probably could have done with some refinement, especially the middle part- the journey to, and entry to the village. I had wanted to play on the humour of someone not knowing Shion was a fake, but still sensing something off, but I think I probably should have either skipped it or at least left it squarely on Shion's POV.

As for my character, let's go with Murasa. She's pretty cool, and she was especially so in Sunken Fossil World. I probably won't be able to put much of her in my own story though, so it'll be good to see her.

Of course, my congratulations to Lost Soul on the win, and thanks to Gooboi for hosting, to everyone who gave feedback, and especially to the two who voted for my story.

>>17612

I really liked your story! Everything reminded me of Urth of the New Sun.

>>17611

Yeah, the ending could have used improvement, but Alice really felt like the tactically-thinking youkai she is.