1v1 Dani vs Alicia Writing Rivalry to the DEATH

The purpose of this review is to give subjective in-detailed and in-depth feedback the two entries provided in this competition. The theme of the competition is a short story (oneshot) “tragedy” based upon a third party request, with the prompt of: “Am I crying or laughing?” Thus these entries will be analysed based upon how well the request was fulfilled.

The selected genre was tragedy; this can be defined in two ways: Firstly, the real-world catastrophe that brings misery or loss of life and secondly a work of art as a branch of drama. It will be assumed that the second was the intended definition due to the prompt of “Am I crying or laughing” signifying a connection to the human area of knowledge of emotion. This form of literature primarily aims to inspire a particular emotion within its audience’s minds (see: The “Age of Sensibility” and the “Gothic Era”).

The selected format of the entries was “a short story (oneshot)”, a short story encompasses a body of work so diverse as to defy easy characterisation. However, traditionally a short story features a small cast of characters and focuses on a single incident with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. This is further supported in the mention of “oneshot” meaning, ‘occurring once’.



Dani’s entry (person two) revolves around a single incident where a Tengu is fatally injured in a danmaku battle. Dani utilises narrative perspective, contrast, imagery and prior background information in order to achieve the goal of evoking emotions stimulated from the genre of tragedy within her reader.

Firstly Dani’s entry is written in a third person subjective narrative point of view. By utilising a stylistic choice centring on the thoughts and feelings of a small number of characters, it allows the writer more direct influence over the feelings of the readers, as opposed to an omniscient or objective perspective where information is relayed via a narrator. By having only a small cast with pre-established personalities, the passage also more effectively focuses upon the emotion evoked and not on characterisation. For example in the line: “Almost! Just a little more and she would—“By utilising a pause, the author is able to build tension within the reader, as opposed to a more diminished effect if the line was written from the perspective of an omniscient narrator that would promote objective reliability. This would also be detrimental to the writer’s attempt at suspense based on the fear of the unknown, which is impossible if the passage was written from the perspective of a narrator that knows everything (omniscient).

Moreover the emotion of ‘tension’ was effectively achieved by the author by utilising contrasting pacing of each line as well as contrasting visual elements. For example, the fast paced diction and the repetition in the line “Faster, she had to go faster!” contrasts with the line: “Each microsecond… ever so slowly.” Not only does the definition of the diction used contrast, the italics used in the second line visually increases the disfluency of the reading, effectively slowing the line down at a psychological level. This contrast also occurs between the paragraphs 2 and 3, where the consequences of the conflict are revealed to the audience. Here, the pacing of the story is slow paced, most notably the line “Even though every day is just the same?” the monotony of the ending contrasts with the tension of the previous paragraph. This contrast accentuates the tragedy of the conflict’s outcome, and when considering the premise of the passage being set in ‘happy-go-lucky’ Gensokyo, this passage effectively evokes the impression of tragedy in the reader’s minds.

Dani’s use of imagery is one of the most prominent literary features contributing to the emotion evoked by the passage. Dani utilises imagery from all five senses: Visual imagery, auditory imagery, tactile imagery and olfactory imagery. A combination of all five allows the audience to more directly experience events occurring in the passage. The use of imagery of the same form can also be seen to be combined, for example: The use of sibilance as well as onomatopoeia in the line “a sick, slick sound”, allows to audience to experience the sound of Momiji’s blood on both the literal front via the diction of ‘sound’ as well as via the onomatopoeia in the word ‘slick’. This is also accentuated by the use of sibilance, drawing the reader’s attention to that specific line. The same line’s use of the diction of ‘sick’ is also important as ‘sick’ has connotations related to disgust, which as a basic evolutionary reaction invokes a reaction within the reader.

Lastly, Dani’s intelligent choice to use the world of Touhou as the background has many benefits. As previously mentioned, it eliminates the need for character and setting development, allowing more time to be focused upon the tragedy. Moreover the background knowledge of the ‘spell card rules’ also enriches the complexity of the passage by contrasting the usual ‘anything goes’ manner in which Gensokyo operates, and instead inserted the element of logic and realism (e.g. Getting hit in the head by a rock thrown by an Oni is definitely going to get you killed- Permanently), the contrasts introduces the element of shock- Directly influencing the emotions of the reader.

Thus in conclusion, Dani’s passage utilises the literary features of narrative choice, contrast, imagery, and pre-existing settings and characters in order to create a work that fits in well with the tragedy genre- being able to effectively manipulate her reader’s emotionas as well as qualifying as a short ‘oneshot’ story.