#eh touhou enough

[monikatouhou]

akaname maid

[pokemonxhyperfixation]

WRITING DOUBLE FEATURE!!!!!

First up, the last chapter of this Fic Series's prologue is now up! YIPPE!!!!!! It was already basically done, I was just letting it bake for a bit, but also...

I FINALLY GOT OFF MY ASS AND WROTE WHEN THE GOLEN RULE AND THE JUNGLE MEET CHAPTER 2!!!!

Sanae and Tsukasa's pokemon journey has finally continued, YIPPE!!!!!!!! I'd say hopefully the next chapter won't take as long to come out, but I'll be real, it probably will.

[shooks-stupid-stuff]

can't wait to finally beat this game since the switch port adds an easy mode and i suck ass at video games-

[chireikiden]

This might be strange to ask, or there might not actually be enough context in the original material but- When Reimu says the Miyadeguchis "served" the Hakurei Shrine, does she imply as priests themselves? Or in some other sense, like assistance to the actual priests of the Shrine? Does the original Japanese text hold any context for that, or is it vague?

Was gonna make a post about this in a bit, but eh, I'll do it now.

The line that the Miyadeguchi "used to serve Hakurei Shrine" (博麗神社に仕えていた) is probably open-ended and teasing on purpose. It does imply, to my ear, service under the people running the shrine rather than running it yourself, but I wouldn't/couldn't completely shut out the possibility of serving the shrine itself as an institution or entity.

And in any case, Hakurei Shrine and arguably Moriya Shrine being run by shrine maidens is an oddity in itself (ignoring that this is Touhou for a second). Not only is the position of shrine maiden usually a lower one, there aren't a lot of other positions for women at shrines; so whether the Miyadeguchi ran the shrine or only "served" it, the dream of Mizuchi being a former "Hakurei shrine maiden" is more alive than ever, though with this being pre-barrier, it'd likely mean something very different than in the present day. Shrine maidens were traditionally considered shaman priestesses, not unlike Reimu, but clearly she didn't work for the youkai or at least wasn't aware of it. (Assuming she had an actual shrine position and didn't just fetch water or something, anyway.)

It also wasn't normal even in the days when many shrine positions were hereditary for the family to be named the same as the shrine (that I'm aware - correct me if I'm wrong). So it would make a lot of sense for the present setup of Hakurei Shrine being run by someone named Hakurei to be the sages' making entirely, leaving open the option that it was run by the Miyadeguchi. It's stretching the word "serve" a little bit, but again, in my opinion it's within the bounds of the wording being vague on purpose.

Exciting times. While I expect/hope this to be clarified, there is still the possibility of the details ending up as another bit of free headcanon space left hanging.

[alangdorf]

Oookay, first up, a silly little experiment trying to draw in ZUN’s style (I think for the first time ever? I never did back in the olden deviantart days almost a decade ago now, wow) kicked off by me noticing that there aren’t any Touhou characters based off of kamaitachi (type of youkai, lit. “sickle weasel”, has sickles for claws and flies around in strong winds causing cuts in your skin which are actually just it cracking open from it being dry and cold), but the pokémon Sneasel is! So, Touhou Sneasel gijinka. I’m not 100% happy with the design, I think I could’ve been more creative with the head area for example, but I figure I’ll just fix it up if I ever draw her in my normal style. Didn’t put too much thought into my character; I’m sewing and I’m using Ephy as a pincushion (I did used to do this; his middle section is full of beans) and my title is just a pun on my name.

Speaking of names though, hoo boy I spent like two days crawling through Jisho for these (eternal disclaimer: I’m not a native or even particularly fluent speaker and don’t have a perfect grasp on what does/doesn’t sound natural in certain contexts; my name is deliberately silly though). Hitsuki’s last name was pretty easy, I just put together the kanji for “wind” (風) and “weasel” (鼬), using pronunciations that together sound like the word for winter, variable amount of extra u’s notwithstanding. For her first name I ended up using the first syllable of the kun’yomi for several kanji, which I think is a thing people do for girls’ names irl? So the first kanji is “conceal” (潜), part of the word “sneak in” that bulbapedia says is part of the etymology for Sneasel’s Japanese name, Nyula/Nyuura, and then it’s “claws” (爪) and “fangs” (牙), and then after I decided this I found out that Sneasel’s old pokédex entries talk about them hiding their claws lol. Also less of an influence, but Hitsuki sound like the word for “starting fires”, which is used metaphorically in at least one compound word to mean troublemaking, which seems appropriate. I couldn’t resist alliterating the title, though I super didn’t want to bother writing out titles in Japanese or figuring out abilities so I didn’t.

As for me, I found some fairly uncommon kanji I could stick together to sound like “Rendoufu”, which is close enough, and they mean “tangle/fasten with thread” (縺), “stab/prick” (撞), and “fabric” (布). And then Kit (the word kitto means “for sure” but also just the English word kit). So I named myself Sewing Kit in the funniest possible way I could find (which is why my names aren’t in Western name order; idk where the initial should technically go but eh), and then threw “picture/drawing” (絵) on the end for good measure. Ok that’s everything I think

[abluehappyface]

Typing a touhou related thing here but I'm not tagging it because idk how to feel about it. This is like a weird au involving HecaJun but Wrong™ I guess. If you personally like it and tag it that's on you, but I don't know if this counts as "good to post" with touhou tags so eh.

Haunted

Breathe

Just breathe

But quietly of course

You don't want her to hear you.

...

Hecatia didn't know what had gotten into Junko, but she's angry, angrier than usual, which is really saying something. She's so angry that she's been quite literally been blinded by her fury, unable to see past the purple fox tailed light waves flowing from her eyes. Along with that, for some reason Hecatia couldn't shoot bullets. She was being chased by Junko in a hyper-aggitated state, and she had NO way to defend herself!

Her heart felt like it was going to explode from how bad her chest hurt. How long had she been running? For some reason she couldn't float either, just making it easier for Junko to try and catch her. She was breathing so heavily, yet there was never enough air. Between the running away and the sheer panic she felt, her whole body felt pained, suffocated, and weak. All of it felt sickening.

She didn't even know WHY Junko was chasing her, but that just made it scarier. Here she was, chasing you while fully furious, and she didn't know why or how to fix it. Talking to her wouldn't work, she already tried that. Did this involve Chang'e or something!? No, that didn't make sense, she would be chasing Chang'e if that were the case.

She didn't know where she was either. This place felt familiar, but she just couldn't figure out how. All she knew is that she needed to keep running so that Junko couldn't get her. The overbearing heat in this place would've caused her to stop a long time ago had she not been running on pure panic. All that mattered now was getting to that something she knew was there.

She was tripping over herself now, her body not being able to keep up anymore, it must've been hours at this point. No matter how many times she fell she HAD to get up again. She could feel Junko getting closer and closer, just mere seconds from getting too close. She knew she couldn't keep this up for much longer, but her brain just refused to let up. Everything was getting hazy now.

Dizziness was setting in and she wasn't running in a straight line anymore. The vision around the edges of her eyes were going dark. The pain was beginning to hurt too much. She couldn't take it. She fell down onto the surprisingly hot ground beneath her.

She knew Junko was slowly creeping towards her. She began with a slightly muffled laugh, her deep voice echoing all around this familiar yet dangerous place. She wanted to scream, to tell her not to hurt her, but all that came out were sharp, gasping breaths as she broke down into a frenzy of panicked tears. What was Junko going to do to her!? Junko began by grabbing her by the shoulders, lifting her off the ground, and started shaking Hecatia back and forth, laughing as she cried and squirmed as hard as she could.

...

"LADY HECATIA WAKE UP!"

Clownpiece was shaking Hecatia back and forth by the shoulders trying to get her to snap out of... whatever THIS was. At this point Hecatia was an unhealthy shade of pale, trembling REALLY hard, murmuring about something, breathing too hard, and she was really REALLY scared. It was as if Lady Hecatia was supposed to be waking up from a nightmare, but just couldn't wake up. All Clownpiece could do was keep trying to wake her, even if it felt pointless. Shaking her didn't seem to work either. Junko was in the other room dialing the number for Eientei. She was startled awake when she heard Hecatia crying, seemingly panicked. No matter how many times she tried to wake her up, she just couldn't, and now it's gotten worse. She wasn't so pale before, nor was she trembling like that, it looked like she could barely breathe! She began explaining the situation to Eirin on the other line. After that, all she could do was wait for the emergency services to show up. Was this a curse!? Something WORSE!? Junko was worried, but also angry, but not in her usual way. No, Junko was angry because of what was happening to Hecatia. It had nothing to do with Chang'e this time, and if it did she'd KILL her.

[william-o]

I'm still going to skip on rereading SSiB for the eleventh time, but I have found a nice recap vid about it.

I guess I'll point out a few things that stood out to me.

A story that starts out with Yukari doing some mysterious plotting is always a good way to start a story like this. She's on the offensive, and in a weird way Reimu kinda knew. Reimu mentions she feels like their actions on the moon was in the wrong (I'm paraphrasing). She's normally reacting whatever incident is happening, but now she's causing others to react to what her and the rest of her group are doing. As such, she was going to lose her fight with Yorihime no matter what, as that's always how these incidents always turn out. Those that cause incidents will be defeated.

I'd also like to mention the scarlet devil cast. I enjoy all their interactions with each other. They're so carefree when they don't have to put up a front for people outside the mansion's residents.

Also I don't know if I'm the only one that feels like this, but I don't think Marisa was given nearly enough to do. She's just kinda there because she has to be, given she's the titular second playable character. I don't think she adds much to the story. She was the one that explained the spell card rules to Yorihime though, that counts for something.

As for the Watatsuki sisters themselves... I'm kinda eh about them. I don't actively dislike them. It's their culture that's problematic, at least to us earth folk, not their character. Okay well they don't really have much going for them character wise either. Like I said, eh...

ALSO, I want to seem more alternate costumes for touhou characters in these print works. I haven't actually read the more recent stuff but I feel we don't get enough of these! Reimu has a cool hat in this story, when was the last time she worn a hat??

Yeah, SSiB is a good read for a touhou fan. You get lots more of the characters you love.

[genso-menagerie]

7, 12 and 24 for the Munday meme!

7. NOTP for your muse?

You know, at least for Touhou, I don't really have a NOTP! There are some I prefer significantly more than other more popular ones (eg more people I meet ship Reimu/Yukari more than Reimu/Marisa) but nothing I outright hate as a ship.

12. Have you any old muses that you’d love to bring back?

Eh...Kinda, a little bit. Years ago I wrote Utsuho. If you think the liberties I take with my muses here are wild enough, the way I wrote her was significantly different from any version of her I've ever seen to this day. It may not have even been good, honestly. But it was fun.

24. What about your muse are you most proud of?

Well, I guess that'd be Mamizou's village? Despite never really getting to play with it much. It's the most fanon shit I've added to a canon muse without changing the character herself too drastically. Plus the villagers are really fun.

[rakumel]

So I finally got around to finishing Pocky and Rocky Reshrined last night. (Finishing the Story Mode, at least.) What I had to do was unlock Easy Mode for Babies, which doesn't really change the difficulty but gives you infinite lives, so what you wind up doing - if you're me and your reflexes have slowed considerably - is essentially brute-forcing through the game.

So how does the new game compare with the old one I loved so much as a kid?

Well...hm. Overall I still like the new one, and don't regret paying for it. The graphics got a nice glow up, so it looks great. The controls felt a little sluggish - firing projectiles was ok, but moving and sliding around not so much. Or again, could just be me. They remixed the music, and it sounds fine. Doesn't really stand out though. Which is a little bit of a shame, as the music that played during the original Battle With Black Mantle is still one of my favorite background tunes, and I was pleased to hear it again in this version, but...eh, I dunno. The new version kind of lost the punch the original had, somehow.

The story in the original Pocky and Rocky was pretty straightforward. Black Mantle and and company were messing with Rocky's friends, Pocky and Rocky go straighten things out. In Reshrined, they put a few twists in.

There was a hint of that in the trailer, when the first boss of the original got defeated, then suddenly got blasted with Touhou lightning and got its bullet hell on for Round 2. But it wasn't really clear if they were simply retelling the old story in a new way, or if the new game was meant to be a sequel to the old. I think it's the latter - kind of. The old game canonically happened, but because of (spoiler reasons), it also didn't.

Hard to clarify without spoiling it, but...the first twists were interesting. But then it got a little too convoluted, and even ridiculous at points. The new characters were neat, but I also feel like we didn't really get to know them very well. Not that I was looking for super deep lore or anything, but...I dunno. There's one character in particular that you only play as in one level, then they show up again at the very end of the game, and that's it. We never see them again, and it feels a little like wasted potential.

Sure, I've unlocked Free Mode now, which means I can play through the game again as this character if I want to. But I don't know if that'll unlock any more of their story. Might be worth a try just to see.

So, maybe the reboot didn't knock my socks off and stay with me like the original did. But you know what? It's still pretty good, even if I can't react as quickly as I did when I was a kid, and I'm honest to God happy that enough people loved the original game for this remake to happen in the first place. If you'd asked me a few years ago what old games would get remade in the 2020's, Pocky and Rocky would never even have crossed my mind. It wasn't nearly as big as, say, Mario or Sonic or Megaman or Metroid or Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda or... hell, a LOT of series. So yeah, it was a nice surprise.

I still haven't put together the piece on Pocky and Rocky 2, hoping to get to it sometime during the holidays when I have some time.

[sharkinfishnetz]

@oughtnots and i worked on a game together this month for the touhou pridejam and YOU should play it. it's about renko and maribel going on a date to a museum ship, and things go about as well as you would expect.

EDIT (7/15/22): post-jam update is done, if you’ve downloaded and haven’t played yet (or if you feel like replaying) make sure to download the 1.1 version for bugfixes/more art/navigation polish

play it here!

[ass-blasting-bitchaloid]

here just take it

[midnakoopa]

Doodled a Futo.

So, I never really thought about Futo too much until recently. Then a lot happened to make her quickly become one of my favorite characters. Found @toowhom through recommendations, finally read up on her dialogue and scenarios in the fighting games, started playing Genso Wanderer. And it turns out she’s fucking perfect okay bye.

[gamebunny-advance]

NSR Doodle Dump

Notes under the cut

1) Another style test.

2) “Huddle”: Inspired by that glitch I found a while back.

“You never said we would actually die bro!”

3) “Voice Range”: Just some headcanons about 1010′s vocal range.

4) Mascot!White: Settled on a seal for White’s mascot since they can be gray or white.

5) Revisiting Touhou!DJSS. His ability is making anything revolve around him.

6) “Draw Music Elitists as Scientists”. Eh, a professor and war vet is close enough, right?

[crystalelemental]

Voting is complete.  Now to wait a week for results that will be utterly predictable, in which no major shifts in popularity occur at all, and not a single one of the new characters, who all seem really cool, will break top 20 because god forbid the fandom collectively stops sucking EoSD’s dick for one year.

Anyway, my picks for everything’s under the cut.

Characters:

Okina.  I really love Okina.  I don’t get how she’s so (relatively) unpopular.  Like I really don’t.  She’s so much fun!  Like, every time she’s in the spotlight, you’re constantly caught between what she’s telling you and what you think her hidden motivations are.  And oftentimes, I think both are true.  I also just like how she operates.  She’s drawn to ambition and willpower.  It’s why she likes Marisa so much and is determined to get Marisa to work for her, and why she’s so insistent that Aya take pride in beating her, even when she was holding back.  It’s why she helps Sumireko in Violet Detector despite having nothing to gain from it.  She love ambitious, strong-willed people, and seems to motivate those qualities in others.  She wants to see people overcome hardship on their own merits, which, after the reveal in Visionary Fairies that she is disabled and sometimes needs a wheelchair to get around, adds a great new layer of context to this aspect of her character.  Okina is a fantastic character, and my only wish for future works is to see her play a bigger role.

Keiki.  Surprisingly, I adore Keiki too, despite not having played WBaWC.  Keiki just...hits right, you know?  You have this world where everything’s fucked, and humans are used more as resources than as people by the powerful beast youkai in charge.  Keiki’s spawned into existence by their desperation, but all she can think to do is fulfill her role and turn everything static.  I honestly enjoy how she’s super well-intentioned, but her actions are questionable over whether they’re effective or the right thing to do.  Plus she was adorable in the Komachi manga.

Kanako.  Look, we all know I’m a Mountain of Faith person at heart, and especially love the Moriya Shrine, so I’m not gonna waste too much time here.  Kanako’s awesome, she’s the lowest ranked of the three, this had to happen.

Mamizou.  How a character who’s so routinely important to the stories and plays her role this well is so low ranked is beyond me.  Mamizou is such an interesting character.  She’s like this sweet old grandmotherly figure up until she reveals her master plan and desire for power.  She’s like an active version of Yukari and Okina, out in the open and pulling off her grand schemes, and it’s a ton of fun to watch.

Doremy.  My blood pact to vote for her aside, Doremy does sustain as one of my favorites.  She’s just...I don’t know how else to describe it but “unique.”  She’s different from a lot of the cast, in that she’s overall just really nice.  Like she genuinely seems to care about people, and her dream people especially.  She’s got her job to do and will carry it out, but mostly stays out of the way otherwise.  She’s a bit mischievous, but this is Touhou.

Junko.  I like Junko.  Vengeance mom who won over a part of Hell by swearing to bring chaos to the Lunarians.  I don’t have a ton to say, because unfortunately she doesn’t get much play.  I wish she did.  Maybe in the next Fairy-focused manga.  Everyone goes for a sleepover at Clownpiece’s mom’s place, and has to travel into hell and Junko’s just around.  That’s all I really need.

Sumireko.  While Sumireko’s fallen a bit as a favorite, and is almost certainly going to continue falling, I do like the kid.  She’s a bit of an obnoxious dingus at times, but I find her antics funny.  The way she sometimes just goes off on a ranting tangent that’s spot-on is just...it’s very in line for a super smart teen who’s just disillusioned with everything.  I dunno, I just enjoy her a lot.

Music:

Concealed Four Seasons.  Turns out, Okina’s not just a great character, but has a kickass theme song.  I love this battle theme, I think it’s my favorite.  It’s got such a good energy to it.

Desire Drive.  Best stage theme in the series.  It’s so catchy.

Lullaby of Deserted Hell.  I love this one entirely because it’s this soft, gentle music that plays as you’re traveling through hell.  And I mean that in the literal sense of it was once physically hell, and also this stage is a fucking disaster and I love it.  It’s like why the sixth stratum theme from Etrian Odyssey 2 is good.  Nightmare land with the most calming theme imaginable.

Heartfelt Fancy.  Listen, SA did good music.  I actually like the stage theme more than Satori’s boss theme.

Lost Emotion.  Kokoro’s theme is great, and one of exactly two themes I remember from the fighting games (the other is the Yorigami sisters’).  Fight game music tends to not be very good, in my opinion, but Lost Emotion hits all the right notes with me.

Shining Needle Castle.  Fun fact!  I don’t like DDC.  At all.  I think the cast is pretty boring, especially in the second half.  I don’t like the collection system.  The only cool thing visually, for me, was fighting music-themed enemies in a thunderstorm, which is cool as shit.  But goddamn this song is good.  It’s one of the few highlights of the game for me.

Dream Palace of the Great Mausoleum.  I really like just how grand it sounds.  Like it sounds awe-inspiring, and fits the area you’re in well.  I like the track on its own, but I really like when a track syncs up with the atmosphere of a place.

Fires of Hokkai.  Speaking of, good god this song.  This is probably the single best establishment of atmosphere in the series.  After everything else in the game, and all the craziness of the last stage, you hit the final destination and it starts out with a quiet heartbeat sound.  Then it just builds and builds into this powerful, driving theme that loops perfectly back to near silence as you encounter Byakuren herself.  Stage 6 is so fucking good, shame I suck at this game too much to ever get there.

Beast Metropolis.  This is purely off sound, since I haven’t played the game.  But you may notice that, thematically, it fits in with a lot of my favorite tracks.  Softer vibe, stage theme setting the mood of an area that you’d expect to be crazy but turns out to be eerily...not that.

Faith is for the Transient People.  This was a toss-up, with a lot of options I was considering, but Sanae’s theme won out.  I do like it a lot, and I didn’t vote for Sanae in characters despite her being one of my long-standing favorites, so she got this one.

Works:

Hidden Star in Four Seasons.  Okay listen.  I get that this game is not popular among fans.  I do not get why.  Are you seriously going to look me in the eye and tell me this game wasn’t a relief to play?  After the last four games had bullshit collection systems for resources, having a game that just played lives based off score again isn’t a good thing?  Yes, it was easier.  Good.  Did you miss how bullshit LoLK was?  Sometimes you gotta backpedal, right into the range of things I can actually play.  I know some people don’t like the cast at all, some nonsense about “Why are they so familiar with characters if I’ve never seen them” or something.  But the cast is spectacular.  Eternity Larva’s a fun new fairy to add to the group, and her short-lived stint in VFiS was great, proving that she’s the only fairy who has her own reserve of braincells.  Aunn is precious and wonderful.  Okina.  OKINA.  This was easily my favorite cast since Subterranean Animism, and that was a strong cast.  I just do not get the dislike of this game at all.

Mountain of Faith.  Hey, look at that, I like the games that are simple and fun for me to play.  What a surprise.  MoF was the first game I beat, because Suwako was the first character I encountered and I had to one day git gud enough to beat her.  So I did.  After like three weeks.  That was an adventure.  Anyway, I think MoF holds as one of the best in the series.  Aside from simple gameplay that’s actually fun instead of painful, it had a great cast of characters, and honestly the best environments.  Like, this game just looks good.  Maybe that’s personal bias because autumn theme and autumn is the best season, but I loved the backgrounds in this game.

Forbidden Scrollery.  Hey, it’s the thing that got me into the written works!  Yeah, I really like Forbidden Scrollery.  It’s a fun exploration of things from within the human village, from the perspective of a human who lives there.  Plus we got some of the more interesting lore bits for the series from this work, which is valuable.  And of course...human disguise Mamizou.  10/10.

Visionary Fairies in Shrine.  While there are many fairy-focused manga, this one’s my personal favorite.  Because it’s got Clownpiece.  No really, that’s it.  I like the general fairy shenanigans that the trio gets in to, but I really enjoyed how this one almost focused on Clownpiece’s integration into Gensokyo.  I think it’s a lot more compelling to have that sort of arc for the character, and it really endeared Clownpiece to me as a whole.  My only complaint with it is that Eternity Larva didn’t stick around too.  I know she had less to contribute and that Clownpiece is the central focus of this one, but it would’ve been nice to have Larva stick around and get a bit of development herself.  Maybe next manga, eh?

Subterranean Animism.   I debated this and Cage in Lunatic Runagate.  I actually regret my choice.  Subterranean Animism won out based on my enjoyment of the music and characters in the game, and (if you can believe it) my enjoyment of the gameplay.  Yeah, it turns out when the game rewards just surviving, even if resources are more scarce, I do like 10x better than when resources are only obtained through flying headlong into a storm of bullshit like the next four games demanded.  FUCKING IMAGINE THAT.  Anyway, CiLR was a serious contender that, again, I kinda regret not picking.  Bougetsushou in general was a strong compilation, but CiLR is the one that made it really stand out.  SSiB was a fun silly story, and Inaba was hilarious, but CiLR was by far the most serious and poignant of the works.  It focused really strongly on the characters, something Touhou...hadn’t really done at the time, and still doesn’t always do, and expanded them beautifully.  We get a lot more insight into Kaguya and what her life is like, we get the backstory for the new Reisen, we get background on the Watatsuki sisters, we get the Mokou chapter, arguably the best character development in the entire series.  So it really comes down to a game that I like because I can play it, or a written work that also did a lot for the characters in it.  Both excellent but I locked myself into one or the other.

[evilisk]

Votes for Other Categories in 16th TH Popularity Poll

Next poll, they really need to let you vote for more characters and tracks

Music:

Concealed Four Seasons

Cinderella Cage ~ Kagome Kagome

Entrust this World to Idols ~ Idolatrize World

Emotional Skyscraper ~ Cosmic Mind

Shotoku Legend ~ True Administrator

Pristine Beat ~ Primordial Beat

Capital City of Flowers in the Sky

Mysterious Mountain ~ Youkai Mountain

Green Eyed Jealousy

Locked Girl ~ Girl’s Secret Room

Previously Voted Tracks:

Battlefield of the Flower Threshold

The Sea Where the Home Planet is Reflected

Faith is for the Transient People

Secret God Matara ~ Hidden Star in All Seasons

COMMENTS: I’ve always tried to stick to “1 Track Per Game”, as futile as that is with only 10 musical slots.

The tracks I’ve pretty much always voted are Cinderella Cage, True Administrator (HM ver.), Capital City of Flowers, Green Eyed Jealousy, Cosmic Mind, Locked Girl and (usually) Faith is for the Transient People

I switched out Sanae’s theme for Youkai Mountain and Secret God Matara for Concealed Four Seasons (which I’ve grown to prefer as Okina’s theme). Idolatrize World was an immediate favorite and it pushed out Home Planet (which I don’t remember voting). I also put in Pristine Beat bc of Tsukumo Solidarity. Kasen’s theme got pushed out bc I was just really into ULiL last poll.

I really don’t like voting the music category just because 10 votes is not enough. There are so, so, so many other tracks I’ve never gotten a chance to vote before (shout outs to Bell of Avici, Eternal Short Lived Reign, Maple Dream, Satori Maiden, Reincarnation, Lovely Mound of Cherry Blossoms, Futatsuiwa from Sado, Captain Murasa, Candid Friend, Strawberry Crisis, Grimoire of Alice-

= = =

Works:

Touhou Suzunaan ~ Forbidden Scrollery

Touhou Ibarakasen ~ Wild and Horned Hermit

Touhou Shinpiroku ~ Urban Legend in Limbo

Touhou Shinreibyou ~ Ten Desires

Touhou Kikeijuu ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature

Previously Voted Works:

Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night

COMMENTS: I’ve actually only voted “Works” once (in the 14th Poll).

Forbidden Scrollery is still my favorite piece of Touhou media. Urban Legend in Limbo is my favorite Touhou game period, just because I love fighters and ULiL’s amazingly balanced, multi-character plot.

I didn’t vote Wild and Horned Hermit last time, but it took the series ending for me to realize how much I love that series (and how much I’m gonna miss Kasen T_T). Ten Desires is a game I enjoy for every aspect other than the gameplay, ironically enough. While I don’t enjoy Trance, I enjoy every other aspect of the game, like the graphic design (which is just SO pleasing), the cast of characters (Mamizou and Seiga are amongst ZUN’s best creations) and the music (it’s not the series’ best, but it’s still really easy listening)

As for Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, eh why not. I’m still absolutely in LOVE with WBaWC’s cast and story. The fact that I enjoy the game is also a pleasant surprise (UFO’s, er, UFO system, is one of my least favorite sub-mechanics)

Last thing: they should bring back the shipping vote next Poll

[twinfoxtails]

(I love that about Touhou though tbh! ZUN has crazy ideas and sticks them in when he feels like it, and the fandom adjusts what we see as canon accordingly. ZUN's made this awesomely crafted universe with just enough canon to get by, but leaves enough up in the air that we can fill in all the details with our headcanons. In other words, FREE BOXERS FOR EVERYONE!)

((ZUN is like the opposite of TYPE MOON-...

TYPE MOON has all this lore and history behind it, and so many written stuff, while ZUN is like “EH do what you want-”))