[Scarlet] Touhou Writing Competition II- Start!

Back when I was in the prime of my youth, I liked to explore the world. There was this one time that I’ll never forget, it was exciting, dangerous, daring and most importantly, I escaped with a load of treasure. I’m going to tell you about another time, a few weeks before that.

Early morning, just as the sun rose, I jumped up. Full moon was night before, and now I was free for another month to, you know, live a normal life. I picked up my hairbrush, cleaned my teeth, and then stayed still as my luscious auburn hair swayed in the wind… Sorry, I get lost in thought when thinking about hedgehogs. I decided that day was the day I’d go climb a mountain. However, I’m good with directions, so on the way back to my house I ended up at the entrance to a cave.

I peered inside. Darkness. This was startling news! I grabbed my tin can telephone and rang up my friend. “Seki, Seki! I’ve foun-“

She screamed back to me “My name isn’t Seki! How many times do I have to tell you that I go by the name ‘Edevane’ now?”

I was shocked, this was the first time I’d heard of this name, “Um, right, Evedane, I’ve found a mountain, and I need you here now. The crow is in the nest.” Thankfully, tin can telephones are useful for locating who rang, especially since you can slurp the string up like spaghetti. Seki quickly arrived, head first, and took a blank look at the entrance, “This cave is not a natural formation.”

We hopped inside. Seki removed her head, good thing there’s a torch in that thing, we could see then that the walls were coated with rocks. Some small bats hung from the walls, and more bats hung onto the bats. The tunnel was long but direct, there appeared to be no side passages. I asked Seki a personal question. "Why did you change your name?" She replied with a long-winded explanation - "Yes". Of course, no tunnel would be complete without side passages and we eventually found one, but ignored it. Continuing to the end, I could see it opened up into a small room, some sunlight leaking through cracks in the ceiling, and a pedestal in the center with a small lump of gold on it. I got very excited at this point, we could be rich! “Sek- Vedelane, do you see that? I think we could sell it and live the good life.” Ever the one to keep a level head, she replied with some sound advice, “There could be a pressure plate, make sure to replace it with something heavy.” I grabbed Seki’s body, and quickly swapped it with the pedestal, leaving the worthless gold on the floor. “There, this pedestal should get us a hefty sum!”

But of course, being the DUMB person she is when she loses her head, she stepped off the pressure plate. Instantly a large terrifying water creature fell from the floor, and swallowed Seki’s body whole! It had the body of a mermaid, the head of a mermaid, and the teeth of a giant mermaid. It stared at me, and I stared at it, and then it spoke, “Wassup girl?”

I was mortified. This was the most horrifying thing I had ever seen in my life. I threw Seki’s head at the creature, grabbed the pedestal, put it in my pocket, and ran out. Thanks to my perfect navigational skills, while trying to reach the pawn shop, I ended up back at home. Since it was mid-afternoon, I made a nice cup of hot chocolate, and decided to go to sleep.

-

“Mooom, that story didn’t make any sense!” spoke the young boy, sitting around a fire with his mother.
“Of course it didn’t, I’m in no mood for telling real stories, now shut up and go to sleep so I can get some rest!”
The tired woman climbed into her hammock and closed her eyes. The boy stood up and put the fire that lay atop a pedestal out, before following suit and going to his hammock.

Oh boy, a short entry packed to the brim with nonsense. Where to begin. There’s an absolute ton of grammar mistakes, to the point where I feel like forgiving it because English is definitely not this person’s first language. The story is nonsensical and clichéd. So Cirno randomly decides to freeze frogs for shits’ n giggles, and Suwako is mortified. As she should be. But then, as soon as Cirno makes a game out of dancing on the corpses of her frog brethren, she decides to be best friends Cirno? Also Sanae had no reason to be in the story. Also Cirno is a fairy and Suwako is a god, neither are actually youkai. I would suggest in the future to touch up on your grammar. Also, make sure that a characters reasons for doing something make sense, and aren’t just a brute force means of achieving an end. Finally, don’t include a character unless they contribute a little something to the story. Sanae’s appearance could have been made relevant if she mentioned that Suwako doesn’t make friends easily or something.

There are a good number of grammatical errors here, but not enough to detract hugely. You’ll still lose half a point for that. It’s neat to see the LoLK characters getting written for, especially Sagume given her occasionally unfortunate power. I like the actual story, it jumps on the “Seija and Sagume” fanon train but rather than them just being together it explains why they aren’t. I think it’s viable that Sagume could fuck up and cause Seija to lose her wing, causing her to hate everything and be stuff in Gensokyo. Unfortunately, I have issue with a lot of the execution and writing style. I can’t really understand the motivation behind a lot of actions, and I have no clue why Seija reacted so violently to Sagume touching her wing. Hell, they’re comrades, why is she so sour? Also, the opposite of “I just don’t want your wing to fall out” would just be Sagume wanting her wing to fall out; it wouldn’t cause it to happen. On the subject of style, you repeat a lot of words, and even though it’s from the point of view of Sagume I don’t feel any personality coming from her inner monologue.

That was pretty cute. Not much happened, though. You pass the grammar check, good job. I think your dialogue is decently natural, that’s good. I don’t think having half of your story borrowed from actual game plot is very creative. It feels like a copout to me. The action scene should have been a tad longer, it seems like Flandre’s idea of “most fun” is a 15 second fight. You probably should have done something to clarify the flashback, I was a tad confused when I first read it through. I find myself running out of things to fault in this piece, but I still don’t feel all that satisfied having read it. It’s resolution was pretty cute, but I guess I was a little bored by the whole story.

Mmm, I was pretty bored while reading this. You literally took what happened in the game and added a tad bit of dialogue. Not very creative. Also the passage of time, assuming this is based on the game, is rather inaccurate. I don’t see why you described those UFOs in the opening bit, seems like a hook statement that goes nowhere. On the plus side, it’s not poorly written, and your grammar holds up for the most part. You added a bit of a unique ending where Nue learns her lesson and feels guilty or something, but her revelation that what she’s doing is bad was kind of nonsensical and sudden.

Hey, I gotta admit, that one was actually pretty poetic. The imagery and flow of the words is good and descriptive, and I’m not feeling bored reading it. Your word choice is varied without sounding like too much. Unfortunately, it has a big downfall in that I have no clue what’s going on or why. I can understand that they’re playing, and you did a nice job describing that, but I don’t know why they’re playing, why it will never be played again, or what the hell I’m supposed to be thinking. So, well written but it lacks real content and purpose.

Well that was pretty dark. Your grammar was good, so no issue there. I think the plot was very unique and interesting, and the connections between major events was well done. I like how Eientei was never actually around for the story, but it’s presence is creepy and foreboding. The reoccurrence of the word “sweet” was clever, if intentional. I think your dialogue could have been a little more natural, as well as the (albet brief) action scenes. All in all, a solid story that maybe rushes some parts too much.

Yeesh, you need to look up the definition of “Show, don’t tell”. Everything that Sakuya says or thinks, it’s stated so matter of factly and dully. “I like it” “She escaped, I really wanted her blood”. I don’t think you used a single shred of imagery or word variation here. So many sentences start with “I”. You use the word “slash” way too much. I think the premise has merit, Sakuya being fully corrupted by the demon knives and going batshit insane. I just would have like it seem more like a human was doing this, instead of a computer outputting emotions :V. Also, Sakuya realizing that she was insane was way too sudden, there was absolutely no buildup or inner tension. Just “Remi’s here! I must be crazy!”. Try working on your imagery and “show, don’t tell”, as well as building up to situations so decisions seem reasonable.

Damn, that was well written and interesting. I honestly don’t have much to say. The story was interesting, the dialogue was natural, and the exposition was descriptive and flowed well. One thing I’d like to commend especially is the quality of the action scenes. They were very well done. If I had to complain about one thing, it’s that the scene shifts don’t connect as well as they could. I understand the first bit with Reisen was to set the scene, but then it just cuts to the command room and forgets them entirely. The cut between the command room and the fight is kind of vague as well. Also, was the lunar army getting wrecked or was it wrecking? At first it was a lunarian massacre, then it was a gensokyian massacre. And simply adding Yorihime to the fight wouldn’t change it that fast.

Well, I laughed. That’s something. I have no clue what’s going on, but I laughed.

This felt like a troll entry. Very short and it doesn’t make any sense. Cirno was destroying nature in front of Suwako and she didn’t even gave a crap about it, instead what did she do? Join the fun, duh. (I gave the entry an extra 0.5 just because Cirno is there)

It was a ok story, it kinda bored me at times. The first-person perspective wasn’t done that well and it has an “interesting “ choice of words, but I can see that the writer put some effort in it.

Not bad. Why Flan won’t care about the gifts though (especially the jar with blood, that’s pretty much her food). Anyway, it was done quite nicely.

Kinda uninteresting, but it was still a ok entry, nothing else to comment about.

This one was pretty neat, but it was short, it would be nicer if it were a lil’ bit longer and explain some more stuff, like why was this the final song? Are they quitting their careers or something?

This one was pretty great and well done (I thought it would be “A Nightmare on Elm Street” ripoff, because of the title, luckily, I was wrong), didn’t expected the bad ending (main character dying? What is this blasphemy?). So now that Reimu’s dead, I’m pretty sure Gensokyo will soon be taken over by youkais.But, anyway, Kudos to the writer.

T’was a good one.I have nothing else to comment (expect for Yukari just being there for no reason at all).

Another nice one. Although, they are some parts that are kinda uninteresting (and quite long), but besides that, it was neat, and I can see
that the writer put a lot of effort in it.

The story made no sense, it’s very confusing, but it was quite amusing at times.