~ JUDGEMENT! ~
Alright, after two extensions it's time to finally wrap this one up. But before that, there is something even older that needs wrapping up, and that is:
The Christmas WWC. Yep, that one never got judged.... till now!
Feliz Navidad entries
VIVI:
I had to read this one because it was in Spanish, and none of the other judges understand it 
D'aww, this was absolutely adorable! Your command of the language is admirable, and it probably had the most warm, traditional take on Christmas I've seen in a long time. It's packed with detail, well-paced, and while the ending was predictable (due to you being such a yaoi fangirl :3c), that didn't make the fic worse for it at all. Very good job!
Sanyorihime:
Sanyorihime, you have a slight problem with being all over the place in regards to your characters, a tendency that I first noted in your Valentine's Day entry. However, this one is more coherent than that one. While Sanae and Marisa are still kind of competing for being the main protagonist, Sanae sort of fades into the background for most of the story while Marisa and Alice take the spotlight, and while she is then is brought back in at the end, she's not taking the spotlight back from Marisa, so it's less confusing. I laughed out loud at some portions of this. Nice stuff.
Iced:
Wow, I was kinda surprised at seeing Komachi talk about the Christmas truce of 1914. I didn't expect a reference to that in Touhou fiction. A pleasant surprise!
I really liked all the awareness of Christmas being a Christian holiday and not a Shinto or Buddhist holiday, much less Gensokyo-an. I also ended up liking how you had Tokiko reading stories from our world, giving readers something to relate to. You have a way of including characters that seem kind of interesting to put there, making the reader wonder how you're gonna work with them, and then making them all plot-relevant. Well done.
My choice:
Between Sanyorihime and Iced, Iced wins, de gozaru. But between Iced and VIVI... VIVI's had better detail all around, and while not as packed with references, was still very solid, and in comparison to Iced... it's weird to say it, but the newcomer wins this one, hands-down. Hail VIVI!
Congratulations VIVI~Now on to the current challenge, the Noir entries.
Noir entries
MaxKnight:
The Aki Sisters were a real surprise; I didn't expect to see them as protagonists for a piece like this. I thought the story was lacking in details, and there wasn't much mystery to be involved in (maybe due to the rush of being the first entry), but it wasn't bad, regardless; a solid entry.
capt. h:
I get a kick out of the idea of Kaguya turning her squabble with Mokou into a noir theme. She would get bored like that; this week, a Untouchables-style game, and the next, Jidai Geki. That gimmick aside, though, the story lacked sustenance; it was pretty barebones, suffered from a strong lack of detail, and had no coherent plot. It might have been better as part of a larger story, but WWC entries are not excerpts, they're supposed to be stories in their own right. Next time, write towards writing a full story, or at least a sizeable portion, and not just a few lines of a fic.
Rou-nyan:
Oh man this is one of the ones I most want to see continued. Rou, you already know that your narration is excellent; it ends without finishing, but it's a sizeable portion, so it's perfectly acceptable. There's enough detail to flesh out the world around us, and not too much for it to weigh down the plot.
In any case, this is very much solid, but I swear I've seen this before. It's got a few unique twists to it, but otherwise, it's kind of going over old territory-- not that including Mokou and Kaguya gives you much room to be original, imo. Was hoping for something a bit more original. Even so, the excellence of the narration is enough for me to want to see this continue.
Sect:
Oh god yes, this is what I was hoping for. Some rabbits in it (everyone kept picking an Eientei setting whyyyyyy) but they're negligible in the plot, at best. I really loved how you kept Nue and Kogasa ambiguous as the main characters; the blue and green UFOs didn't escape my attention, but apart from 'Alien', that was all the hints you dropped in favour of Nue. Kogasa gaining her awful form of heterochromia made me wince.
Holy crap, talk about sensual. I kept catching my breath in my throat every time Nue came up behind Kogasa and touched her or something. Narration was absolutely delicious.
The only bad thing I can say about this is that you didn't include that idea of Koishi as a seductive and crazy rival assassin/spy. ;w; In lieu of that, feel free to describe Nue's legs some more, in ample detail.
Iced:
It was good, I liked it. Nice selection of characters, good narration. I thought the plot was fine, although the detour to Canada lowered the momentum somewhat. I liked how your Aya was fairly tight-lipped, didn't really come out to the readers or to anyone else-- on a narrative level, she was just as wary as she was as a character. However, I think the story would have been better if you'd left it up in the air whether or not Aya died. I know you dislike sad endings, and I certainly didn't mind knowing that she had lived, but the ambiguity would have hit harder.
Kips:
You said that you weren't really familiar with noir; it showed. The alternate endings were a fun gimmick, but I would have liked to see more substance to the plot more than anything else. Still, this was your first fic, wasn't it? I didn't dislike this, because our protagonist's sudden death was a surprise, but not a bad one. I'd like to see how much better you write when you don't have a writing prompt that you're unfamiliar with, so I'd like to see more from you from here on out.
Ryuu:
You are the best. But you really should have tried to find time to write, since you had three weeks and you were so enthusiastic about writing for this :<
My choice:
My pick is Sect, easily. Rou had a good story, but it wasn't very original. Iced had a good fic overall, with a different cast of characters, but the Canada detour took out a lot of momentum. Sect, on the other hand, had a great plot and atmosphere, tight dialogue, a beginning, middle, and end, and it played a lot with keeping things in the dark, which is a very important aspect of noir. So I pick Sect's piece \o\
I agree with this verdict. All entries were fun to read, and the usual
suspects favourites delivered solid Noir-writing, but Sect stood out on this one. The cabbie instead of the usual detective as a main character came as a surprise, a good one though. Your style and word-choices delivered the atmosphere very well.
The only thing I absolutely didn't manage to grasp was where the eye-injury came from, since Kogasa was outside the car and nothing really pointed to how she got injured there.
Nontheless, amongst all the nice entries yours took the prize this time:
Congratulations Sect, well done~And a special thanks at this point to Esi, who thought up the Noir-theme together with Ruro, an idea that brought us all those nice entries that were a lot of fun to read~
With that done... time for the next challenge, which will be....
~ Shakespearean Touhou! ~
Let me see. Alas, poor Reimu! I knew her,
Utsuho. A fellow of infinite power, of most excellent tea. She
hath beaten me in danmaku a thousand times. And now how abhorred
in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those
braids that I have scorch'd with bullets I know not how oft. Where be your orbs
now? your spellcards? your donation box? your flashes of armpits that
were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your
own frowning? Quite chap- fall'n? Now get you to my lady's
chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this
favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. Prithee, Utsuho,
tell me one thing.
To write, or not to write - that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of writer's block
Or to take up quills against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To post- to win-
No more; and by post to say we end
The feeling of obligation, and the mental torment
That mind is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To post- to win.
By now you should have guessed it. This weeks challenge is to take a work of the great William Shakespeare, and turn it into a Touhou-story.
Whether you use a modern writing style, or try to adapt a Shakespearean style, is up to you.
Now then, go ahead and suprise us, for we expect nice results for us to judge.
But most of all, have fun writing :3
Deadline is the 27th of March
