"The Scent of Jasmine Tea - Tales from the Orient” - the 2026 Story Event Official Support Thread

[calmlikeabomb]

Stop posting before you embarrass yourself any further.

That's not a very high bar, believe me.

Also, please see below. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

That is correct. And after listening to the excellent rendition of Blanket by Jeff Beck and Imogen Heap, I am completely cured.

I would like to apologize to everyone for my outburst. I am just a hollow man, a number like all of you.

You matter. Your writings matter. We are all ashes and worm food but what you do here matters.

I love you all and I shall masturbate to all of you tonight.

Lots of love and thank you all so much for being you. The world would be a worse place without you.

 

[spiderboi]

A South Asia event next year would be super fucking cool, actually. (I say that as someone who's a little bummed that I won't be entering this.)

I'd be into that as well! My Valentine's Day entry is my first foray into South Asia, and I've been doing some fun research that has given me ideas for subsequent stories that I would love to make work for a future event.

But I've got three outlines for this particular event, so I'm also hoping that we have a repeat of Tales From the Orient next year in case I can't get them all in this one lol

 

[ChloeTzang]

Just a small comment: I love the fact that we are doing "orient", but the exclusion of India bothers me. The Indian cultures have informed so much of Chinese, Japanese and Indo-Pacific cultures (Buddhism, Zen, Shaolin, Angkor Wat, Bahasa, The Journey to the West, the LITERAL names of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, the sailing culture in HK, the architecture across all of the Indonesian archipelago) over millennia, and discarding Indian cultures because they might feel "different" to the uninformed doesn't sit right with me.

I would love to do a love story of an Indian sailor and a Singaporean courtesan, or an Indian pirate who has captured a Korean princess, or even gay romance between a Chola prince and his Chinese apothecary, but the way the contest is framed right now is, quite frankly, shallow and limiting. Most of the defenders of Singapore during the siege during WW II were Indians. The British Indian Army was one of the largest contingents during Opium Wars.

I know you have no reason to pay heed to my words, but if you have a bit of openness in your heart, I would urge you to broaden your world view. Us "brown" people might feel dirty or smelly to you, but for millennia, we have mattered, and we continue to matter.

/End drunken rant

You know what, if you feel the urge to write something set in India and you want to do it for this event, go ahead. India was always a question in my mind - it's not the orient, it's between Europe and Asia but it can overlap quite easily as some of your story ideas cover...... In my mind, India and the Raj was alway seperate, but I'm willing to broaden the horizons of the event so go ahead.....Burma....India....Ceylon....Nepal.....Bhutan....Assam and the hill tribes....Tibet and mongolia even..... have at it!

And I have to say for myself, I love stories set in the days of the Raj - MM Kaye's "The Far Pavilions," "Heat aad Dust," "A Passage to India," "Bhowani Junction," (and anything set in India by John Masters), Paul Scott's "The Raj Quartet," altho my taste personally is more English writers writing nveks set in India rather than novels by Indian authors - altho I do have a few like VS Naipul, Rohinton Mistry and Vikram Seth and of course Salman Rushdie, altho he never grabbed me the way John Masters or MM Kaye does.

I won't include the MIddle East tho LOL. THAT is a stretch.....

 

[ChloeTzang]

You're being silly, or perhaps just dense. It's quite clear that a story involving Indian pirates is just fine, so long as it happens in Singaporean or Korean waters. Indian soldiers in Singapore are just fine. The Opium Wars are perfectly acceptable.

Run your own writer event, if you don't like this one.

I tend to veer towards being inclusive rather than strict with the guidelines, so if anyine has something that is close byt appears beyind the scope outline, just post it here and ask - the whole idea is to get people writing and contributing the sort of stories we don't often see on Literotica and in one event - so in general my approach is "go for it" - it's quite a broad theme and there's all sorts of things that COULD be included if you have a sudden flash of inspiration.

So what I would say is "dont be shy" - if yu have an idea that doesn't seem to fit, ask, and I will more than likely say yes, unless it's wildly off topic. THeres all sorts of things that COULD fit - the Dutch experience in the Dutch East Indies for example - they shipped a lot of slaves and prisoners from the East Indies to the Cape Colony in South Africa for example - and that could well fit. Likewise the chinese, japanese and other indentured workers who were shipped to the Pacific Islands, Hawaii and places like Australia to basically work as poorly paid slaves. The Japanese geisha who the Portugese bought and shipped back to Lisbon to work as prostitutes in the 15th and 15th centuries, those weird little portugese trading enclaves - a multi-ethnic and culture potpourri scattered across Asia - Macao, Timor, Malacca, Goa....all of which survived into the 20th century.....the British of course, who went everywhere and brought everyone with them whereever they went - Sikh guards to Shanghai and Hong Kong, people like Rupert Brooke (The White Rajah of Borneo - an amazing character), Icould go on and on but you get the idea.

Now my take is Euro and Sino-centric because that's my experience, but there are many other experiences - Indian not the least, and all the other European French, Italian, German, you name it_ and Asian (Hyunna had a GREAT idea for something set in Korea - a really unique perspective I have never thought of and history I have never heard of but I loved at first outline), so.....

Go for it!!!!!!!

 

[calmlikeabomb]

You know what, if you feel the urge to write something set in India and you want to do it for this event, go ahead. India was always a question in my mind - it's not the orient, it's between Europe and Asia but it can overlap quite easily as some of your story ideas cover...... In my mind, India and the Raj was alway seperate, but I'm willing to broaden the horizons of the event so go ahead.....Burma....India....Ceylon....Nepal.....Bhutan....Assam and the hill tribes....Tibet and mongolia even..... have at it!

And I have to say for myself, I love stories set in the days of the Raj - MM Kaye's "The Far Pavilions," "Heat aad Dust," "A Passage to India," "Bhowani Junction," (and anything set in India by John Masters), Paul Scott's "The Raj Quartet," altho my taste personally is more English writers writing nveks set in India rather than novels by Indian authors - altho I do have a few like VS Naipul, Rohinton Mistry and Vikram Seth and of course Salman Rushdie, altho he never grabbed me the way John Masters or MM Kaye does.

I won't include the MIddle East tho LOL. THAT is a stretch.....

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

 

[Voboy]

Alrighty. I've got another plot bunny.

I'm shooting for "lean" on this one, quick and powerful. Something under 20k words. I'm not sure yet whether I'll be able to make that happen, but I won't know until I start writing.

December 1937: A British sailor rescues a group of Chinese prostitutes from the Japanese conquest of Shanghai.

 

[Voboy]

Mine is clipping along at a madcap pace. Should come in around 25k words. I like it a lot.

 

[Voboy]

Finished, and I'm quite fond of it. I'll read it over once for continuity, but I don't think it needs any work at all. I was shooting for a propulsive piece of about 20k, but it ended up at 26,666. Ah well.

 

[metalimbic]

Hi, Chloe,

Thanks so much for the kind insight and fascinating story event idea! As you say, there is so much scope and so many interesting stories here. I would be happy to write something set in Korea. That's the history and culture I know best. For me, it would be a tease and denial story with strong threads of forbidden romance. This is a huge challenge, but exciting too. I'll need to do a lot of thinking.

I'm considering a story in the 1880s during the imminent collapse of the Joseon dynasty. The "hermit kingdom" is finally opening to the West. Japan and China vie for increasing control. Maybe the narrator is a young European diplomat in over his head and beguiled by the exotic beauty and unfamiliar ways of Korea. With so much palace intrigue, there are lots of interesting possibilities. Or maybe I'll go a little bit earlier and the narrator is an aspiring yangban. I've always been fascinated by the gwageo exams needed to become a civil servant. It would be a shame if our rural scholar was teased and denied by a beautiful city girl into failing the exam. Either way, I have to figure out how to plausibly create a woman who is in a position to tease. Historically, obviously, women had virtually no agency in Korea during this time. The other problem is that while the hanbok is beautiful, it doesn't exactly led itself to nip slips or other teasing gestures.

Another possibility might be the March 1st movement in 1919. Young college students organizing secret meetings, risking arrest, and fleeing from Japanese agents.

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome. A solid idea is not yet coming into place.

 

[Voboy]

Hi, Chloe,

Thanks so much for the kind insight and fascinating story event idea! As you say, there is so much scope and so many interesting stories here. I would be happy to write something set in Korea. That's the history and culture I know best. For me, it would be a tease and denial story with strong threads of forbidden romance. This is a huge challenge, but exciting too. I'll need to do a lot of thinking.

I'm considering a story in the 1880s during the imminent collapse of the Joseon dynasty. The "hermit kingdom" is finally opening to the West. Japan and China vie for increasing control. Maybe the narrator is a young European diplomat in over his head and beguiled by the exotic beauty and unfamiliar ways of Korea. With so much palace intrigue, there are lots of interesting possibilities. Or maybe I'll go a little bit earlier and the narrator is an aspiring yangban. I've always been fascinated by the gwageo exams needed to become a civil servant. It would be a shame if our rural scholar was teased and denied by a beautiful city girl into failing the exam. Either way, I have to figure out how to plausibly create a woman who is in a position to tease. Historically, obviously, women had virtually no agency in Korea during this time. The other problem is that while the hanbok is beautiful, it doesn't exactly led itself to nip slips or other teasing gestures.

Another possibility might be the March 1st movement in 1919. Young college students organizing secret meetings, risking arrest, and fleeing from Japanese agents.

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome. A solid idea is not yet coming into place.

I'd do the gwageo exam, definitely. I think there are lots of possibilities there. Especially if it's set against a time of upheaval and turmoil; that's part of why I enjoy writing historical pieces overall. We're living through a fraught time, and it's a stressful pain in the ass; it's nice to be able to write about people who got through even worse!