It’s time for another site writing event. This time around, it’ll roughly coincide with the site’s anniversary in April.

Participating
Anyone can participate as a writer and/or a reader, and all skill levels and types of interests are encouraged. Prospective writers are to submit a piece by the end of the submission period and everyone, both writers and readers alike, are encouraged to comment about the stories and discuss them. Feedback and critique is always appreciated! As with most site events, the idea is to have the community participate and make things lively.

The tradition is to have people submit entries anonymously, so as to not taint perceptions and color feedback, but this is just a suggestion. The main goal of these events remains to encourage the community to create and for everyone involved to have fun.

Submission period
Submissions will start in a month from now. So, on 2025-04-03. A thread will be created for entries and there will be a 2-day window for any stories to be counted as part of the event. Yes, you can post something later than that, but the idea is to have everyone on equal footing when it comes to getting comments and feedback.

Themes
These events are normally centered around some theme. Entries ought to contain elements of them but what qualifies is up to the discretion of the writer. These themes are meant to spark inspiration or help writers along and how broadly or specifically they are implemented are up to the writer.

The themes of this exhibition coincide with THP’s anniversary and are celebration and commemoration. What these mean in terms of a story or the characters involved is up to the writer but the general idea is to have some sort of event or process in which characters, or maybe Gensokyo as a whole, participate. Yes, it can be something straightforward like a birthday or a party, but also a festival of some sort, a ceremony, or anything with some sort of meaning for the participants. Or, just as easily, the story could be about the lack of observing the date or occurrence. It can be as formal or as small-scale and personal to a character as needed. It’s whatever makes the most sense to the writer of the particular story.

Examples
I’m including a few non-exhaustive and generic examples that anyone looking to enter can feel free to use or adapt if they so wish:

• With Spring beginning, characters plan a blossom-viewing party. In order to make it the best one yet, a character goes through inordinate amounts of trouble to secure the best drink and prepare the best food.
• It’s been x years since the ropeway to the Moriya shrine opened. Ridership has slumped and, ever the shrewd showwomman, Kanako devises a series of happenings just before the anniversary to rekindle interest and acquire more faith.
• The kappa are about to launch a technological gizmo to the masses. Nitori has staked her reputation on the launch event being a huge success, but there are still pesky issues to iron out.
• Setsubon is nearing and, due to poor communication and Reimu’s lack of acumen, it looks like it might be more subdued affair. That is unacceptable to the oni (including those who pretend they’re not oni) and they conspire to rile up humans so that things can precede as is proper.
• A certain tengu reporter scores the scope of the year. The published article catches the eye of even the great tengu. Naturally, a celebration is in order. Buying rounds in a bar that’s, after-hours, a youkai haunt makes the other regulars suspicious and ends revealing a closely-held secret.
• Victory in another round of internecine fairy warfare makes the winning party more ambitious. Enough for them to abandon caution as they celebrate.

Length and format
All the entries are meant to be standalone and self-contained stories. They should be as long as they need to be to tell the story and not be needlessly long. That’s up for the author to decide and entrants are free to make multiple posts, splitting up the entries across multiple posts if needed.

The spirit of things
I’ll just copy paste the paragraphs from the last exhibition:

In case it isn’t clear, the idea here is for people to participate and have fun, generating interesting and different stories. There aren’t very specific rules as to what does and doesn’t count in terms of entries. There are no real stakes as there will be no voting at the end to find a “winner” nor will there be a discrete prize. In other words, writing and sharing your thoughts on stories should be the goal unto itself.

Of course, should anyone in the community wish to write, draw, or otherwise create something as a reward to the participants, they are welcome to do so.

I’ll be personally reading all entries and posting my own thoughts as incentive to writers.

If there are any questions or clarifications needed, feel free to post in the thread and I’ll try to answer them as clearly as possible.