#it's also called touhou project for a reason

[sphictails]

Queer touhou hc is good but where is the disordered touhou hc at

[maxknightley]

Which Touhou Girls Can You Plausibly Read As Butch? A Comprehensive Overview

Earlier on Tumblr I saw a post complaining that someone called Hecatia Lapislazuli from Touhou Project butch. This is Hecatia Lapislazuli:

Obviously, like most Touhou characters, she is in fact quite feminine - she just shops at Hell Hot Topic. But it got me thinking: In a series like Touhou, with a cast overwhelmingly defined by feminine (if rowdy) ladies, how many characters could you say are 'butch' without sounding like a complete doofus or significantly redesigning them to fit your headcanon?

CRITERIA

I'll be using four main criteria to judge characters' butchness. In real life, of course, butchness is a multivalent and extremely personal thing, but I'm talking about funny cartoon women from a video game here, so I'm willing to be a little reductive.

These criteria, in order of descending importance, are:

FASHION. In a series where goddamn near everyone is in either a dress or a skirt, the mere act of Wearing A Dress Shirt can be enough to make a powerful statement. Hats may also play a role here, given how many Touhou characters have gay little hats.

HAIRSTYLE. Short hair is not the be-all and end-all of butchness. I, myself, am Decidedly Butch even though I've been growing out my hair since college. But the length and styling of the hair are still a valuable indicator of how someone thinks of themself and wants to be seen.

'TUDE. Could this character be accurately described as "kind of a frat boy?" How do they speak to others? Do they just kind of seem like a character who ought to be butch, regardless of their looks? Do they even lift?

COMEDY FACTOR. Self-explanatory. This will probably only come into play if I run into a weird edge case.

I'll also emphasize that we're grading on a curve here - butchness is being assessed relative to the characters who do not appear on this list. Nobody in this series has a buzzcut, you know what I mean?

THE TIER LIST

AS CLOSE TO CANON AS WE'LL GET

Fujiwara no Mokou. The girl wears a dress shirt, fucking suspenders, and trousers. Not shorts, actual full-length pants. She's also in a perpetual love-hate mutual-murder situationship with Princess Kaguya, who is femme as all fuck. Obviously you don't have to be butch to date a femme - I'm just saying it feels Fitting given their whole deal.

Yuugi Hoshiguma. Most of the time, her fashion sense is actually quite feminine - but her look in the most recent chapter of Cheating Detective Satori, with the one exposed shoulder and the sarashi and all that, significantly alters the balance. Her hair actually reads as more masc to me when she keeps it long and unruly - when she puts it up in a ponytail, she ends up looking very kempt, even elegant. The deciding factor here is 'Tude: Her sheer levels of butch swag are off the fucking charts. (Still, I wouldn't blame someone for arguing she should be knocked down a tier - especially since I'd argue the Comedy Factor works in reverse here. She's way funnier if she doesn't think of herself as butch in the slightest.)

Minamitsu Murasa. In his original appearance I'd argue that Murasa is in "Reasonable" tier - maybe even as low as "Kind of a Stretch." But her big gay Jotaro jacket in Sunken Fossil World, combined with the emphasis on the weightiness and solidity of his trademark anchor, put her over the top. One of the only Touhou girls I consider worthy of being He/Himmed.

Shinmyoumaru Sukuna. The other He/Him-worthy Touhou girl. Very short, slightly messy hair; wears a kimono, not a dress; inheritor of Issun-Boshi's legacy; wears fucking dinnerware as a hat. Why do you want to be Big so badly, huh? So you can pick up women more easily? So you can carry your awful wife through the upside-down threshold of your upside-down bedroom?

Raiko Horikawa. For the longest time I thought her skirt was a pair of shorts because I straight up could not parse it as anything else. Even now I'm like "that can't possibly be a skirt, ZUN just drew it weird. She has to be wearing a full two-piece suit." Skirt aside, her jacket/dress shirt/necktie are still undeniable, as is her short hair. Also, she is a taiko drum given life, and I feel like taiko and timpanis are naturally butch. Maybe if she was a tambourine or a set of bongos I'd rank her lower?

Momoyo Himemushi. Rough-talking miner. Wears a dress shirt, leaves the top button(?) undone. Tromps around a big weird cave with no shoes or socks on. Wears bows and bangles basically everywhere but in her messy, tangled hair. Also, maybe I'm stereotyping here, but I just can't picture a centipede as being femme.

REASONABLE

Wriggle Nightbug. The dress shirt, cape, and puffy shorts all paint a vivid picture, but I just feel like I don't have a strong enough opinion on Wriggle as a character to put her in the top tier. In other words, she's got plenty of points for Fashion and quite a few for Hairstyle, but I just don't think the 'Tude is sufficient for me.

Reisen Udongein Inaba. The skirts are a strike against her, but her whole "dress shirt + necktie + sometimes suit jacket" thing makes a big difference, especially given that we're grading on a curve. Her rumpled ears and (particularly in Inaba of the Moon, Inaba of the Earth) pathetic demeanor go a long way towards giving her a vibe somewhere between "overworked salaryman" and "Detective Columbo."

Aya Shameimaru. All you need to know about Aya is that her "human reporter" disguise looks like This:

Mononobe no Futo. Butch, but in a really weird, circuitous way, imo. Like. She's sort of wearing a dress, but it's sort of a robe - the contrast of the hemline with her big flowy sleeves makes it hard to pin down - and her outfit quite notably has tassels rather than any kind of frills. I don't know what the hell is up with her hat but it's definitely not femme by any stretch of the imagination. Then thou hast the wayes in which she speaketh all "faux-olde-timey," even though nobody else in the setting does that... she transferred her soul into a plate, but she also throws plates around as weapons... It's like she's constantly putting on a performance that only she truly understands. It's like she reverse-engineered "masculine womanhood" by hanging out with a bunch of queens and doing kind of the same thing but kind of the inverse. The more I think about Futo the more I think she's entirely on her own wavelength, but I think "Reasonable" tier is a... uh, reasonable... approximation for the sake of this post.

Sagume Kishin. She dresses like if Bill Nye were a woman, and I think that cuts to the heart of it - she reminds me of a professor who you're not ever sure is gay, but you kind of pick up on a vibe, and near the end of the semester she offhandedly refers to "her partner" and you're like HOLY SHIT I KNEW IT. I went back and forth between putting her in "Reasonable" and "Kind of a Stretch"; ultimately, the Comedy Factor decided it because I couldn't stop thinking about a scenario where she says she's a woman, accidentally upends her whole understanding of gender in the process, and ends up taking testosterone while still ID'ing as a lesbian. I don't actually know if her powers would work that way and I don't care.

KIND OF A STRETCH

Eiki Shiki. I don't have a lot to go on, here, because she hasn't had many official appearances and seems to spend most of her time lecturing people or tormenting sinners. Her uniform(?)/apothecary outfit(??) is pretty snazzy; combined with the hat, it gives her a vaguely "military officer" look to me. We'll call her "butch pending further investigation," which I think she would agree is the correct course of action.

Sekibanki. She's here partially because of the cape, and partially because being sandwiched between Wakasagihime and Kagerou makes her look way more masc by contrast. I know what I said.

Ringo. It's pretty much just the hat and the pants, though - as a butch woman who Loves Eating - I am also inclined to project my own experiences onto her.

Aunn Komano. She reads as more "tomboyish" than outright "butch" to me, what with her whole puppy-dog vibe, but at the same time... she's very much wearing shorts and the kind of goofy-looking button-up shirt that is central to my own wardrobe and the wardrobe of other butches in my life. I'm willing to count her.

Takane Yamashiro. A living testament to the power of small character design choices. I would never in a million years call Nitori butch, even with her gay little hat and all the pouches on her outfit - she just looks like a girl scout. Takane, though? Takane, with her little hair swoopy, and the fucking suitcase slung over her back, and her camo-print dress? I mean - ultimately it is still a dress, which is why I can't justify scoring her higher, but she's definitely chewing tobacco and riding around on an ATV on weekends.

Chiyari Tenkaijin. If she's butch, it's not really because she's trying to be butch, it's just because being femme seems too expensive and time-consuming. She's got better things to do (drink blood all day). Still, I think an argument could be made.

DEFINITELY A STRETCH, BUT I RESPECT IT

Renko Usami. ZUN is kind of inconsistent with how he draws her hat - sometimes it's more of a porkpie/fedora type thing, other times it's round-topped and looks a bit like Koishi's hat. To me, this is a crucial distinction. In a more general sense, I feel like Renko's outfit gets a little less plausibly-masc with each passing album, which says a lot about our society. Or her society, anyway, since she lives in the future. Still, the capelets and bowties...

Rinnosuke Morichika. I think it would be really funny if the only significant male character in Touhou wasn't actually even a dude. I'm not aware of any real textual support for this interpretation, though.

Shou Toramaru. Pretty much only on here because of the hair and because I think there's a certain je ne sais quoi to her whole deal of "she's not a real tiger, she's the idea of a tiger that pre-Meiji Japanese people came up with from secondhand accounts."

Seija Kijin. Not even remotely butch by any stretch of the imagination... But if she did consider herself butch, isn't that exactly what she'd want you to think?

POTENTIALLY NOTEWORTHY EXCLUSIONS

Cirno. "Tomboyish" is not the same thing as "butch," to me, especially if you exclusively wear dresses. Also, I'm not sure Cirno even knows what a lesbian is.

Saki Kurokoma. Not actually butch, just a horse girl. (And a horsegirl.)

Mike Goutokuji. Can't tell if she's wearing a skirt or shorts. She's got short hair, sure, but the whole "matching bell collar and wristbands that also have bells attached" thing makes her look more like a Very Online Trans Woman who just figured herself out and hasn't started hormones or bought any new clothes yet.

[sonicdjam]

introducing..

東方無政府夢 ~ ANARCHY FANTASY

(stylized in all caps)

A derivative Touhou Project revision in the works

This project has lots of name candidates so im calling it "Anarchy" for short. I also call it "Y2K Touhou" sometimes lol

Anarchy is my most ambitious project of mine, about my vision of Touhou. or revision, or an alternate universe. or something

My vision of it is like, if Touhou was more modern. Like the shinto themes will still be intact, just alot of things will look and maybe even feel modern.

Itll be a revision of the story, its characters, basically almost everything.

Anarchy is inspired by alot of stuff, mostly Y2K themes and aesthetic(s). Some inspirations include Sonic.EXE and creepypastas (you heard that right.) and 2000s-early 2010s media, with a sprinkle of recent (mid 2010s-2020s) media.

This is also i guess my practice for writing and character designing? I forgot the word. I say it is my most ambitious project because one of the reasons is that im not a native english speaker, so this will be interesting too :P

x Anarchy will also include a new story, acting like, the "final boss" of my writing journey (that is this project). Youll see why when i reveal it. Theres some hints on my social media about said new story too (even this paragraph has a clue too!!!!!!!) and it will also include some new content too!!!!!!x

So yeah, alot of stuff for this project has been planned, and i only have a few amount of progress done. I aim to finish (or atleast have a good amount of progress) this project by atleast the end of 2024 or before I graduate school.

iii think thats all i have 2 say for now......K Bai

oh yeah one more thing. All touhou related art with my Anarchy redesigns from this point on will include the #anarchy fantasy tag for better organizing or sumn lol

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Gensou Narratograph

I’ve spoken in the past about the sprawling storytelling tradition of the Touhou Project. If you’re unfamiliar, the way I consider Touhou is not a series of videogames or even a franchise as you might conventionally interpret it, but rather a sort of communally shared storytelling space created by a large body of uncapitalised creative sources. Despite the fact that Touhou is the product of, initially, the work of one person (working in concert with an audience and then a community), it isn’t really reasonable to call it a franchise or even a universe. Those things imply a structure, a sort of coherence or an overarching ownership, and that’s something that Touhou absolutely does not have.

What Touhou has is a community and that community connect with other members of their community in almost any communication media you can find. It’s games, sure but it’s also doujinshi, fanfiction, fan art and in pretty much every single place people can create stuff, you’re going to see people creating something Touhou adjacent. In this way, Touhou stretches from a source point out and into pretty much every single other place people can be. I don’t have any proof but I’m confident that someone on the Antarctic Research Station of some country or another had a Marisa sticker inside their backpack or whatever.

Touhou is a lot of things, which is to say, I better watch my mouth. What I think I can say, pretty unreservedly, is that Touhou is distinct. Touhou material does not tend to look like or present itself as anything but Touhou. There are other materials full of girls who look like they’re twelve and wear numerous petticoats and ostentatious hats, but most of them succeed at looking like Touhou and not so much like their own thing distinct from Touhou.

What Touhou makes tends to be made for an audience of Touhou fans, which is why some of the games have a reputation of being brutally, comically hard. There’s a sort of deliberate alienation at work: Don’t you dare ask Touhou to change for you, you need to change for Touhou! Yeah the game is unfair and hard and you can’t get the good ending if you can’t skate through these bullets right, that’s how we like it! That’s how you know you’re a real fan!

(This is not really how they talk)

(most of the time)

(Since they left 4chan)

Anyway it’s this pre-existing weirdoscape that gave rise to what is, to my eye, simply the strangest goddamn Tabletop Roleplaying game I’ve ever seen.

Content Warning: I’m not really a Touhou fan and this game doesn’t change my opinion of it. If you’re heavily invested in this game being a good game and want to see me praise it, you won’t, so it’s probably best to just jog on.

Just a note: I’m reading an unofficial translation of Gensou Narratograph. I’m not fluent in Japanese, and any time I think a phrase is badly written or clunky or strange, I let it go. That’s not important to this and treating the game as if that’s vital is a great way to cut yourself out of a lot of really cool translated TTRPGs.

If you’ve been paying attention to me talking about Tabletop RPGs for any length of time, you might find that because I don’t get to play them very often I usually look at them in terms of their approach, their interface, and their offerings. Oo, what fancy words. What do they mean?

The approach of a game is how it induces you to play it. What’s the introduction to the book like, when does it start you playing it?

The interface of a game is how it plays. What does the game let you dick around with? What are the systems in the game space that you can play around with and that you can express using the game’s systems and how does the game’s systems make them work? Simplified, what does the game give you as a button and what happens when you push it? This includes things like if the book is well-written, how you handle it, and if it looks nice.

The offerings of a game is the promise of the fantasy you get to indulge if you play it! Whether it’s becoming an adventurer engaged in tactical combat or a spacefaring captain doing deals for rare goods, the offering of a game is how all the other stuff makes space for you to enjoy this thing.

I think, fundamentally, that the more I read and reread this book, every single part of Gensou Narratograph is extremely, extremely bad. Or rather, completely unsuited to my experiences of what I want in a tabletop RPG. It’s one thing to call the approach bad, but is it bad if the approach is explicitly trying to get a mere normie like me to go away? Is that not the point?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Also behind myself. Because in terms of approach, this game starts not with an introduction to the universe, nor an invitation to fantasy or even character creation, but instead with a page describing the ‘correct’ way to read this book. The first thing the book says to do, the way you should start with this game, is not to look at mechanics or character options or anything like that, but to instead read a recap of a play session of the game, with Zun. Zun is the creator of Touhou. Zun is, in a way, just some guy.

This recap is a hundred and ten pages long.

It is a hundred and ten pages long.

This game does not start you with character creation, but instead an actual play script with someone famous, and you should want to read it because that person is cool and famous and important. I read some of it. I tried. I also didn’t have any meaningful context for the actual play because to me, understanding how the game works is important to knowing what’s going on when they make gameplay decisions. But okay, after that, we get to the introduction, which begins with a pitch for its fantasy about being resolution experts who use spellcards to unleash a beautiful hell of bullets. Great! This is the stuff I expect I’m supposed to be seeing in a game like this, so far so good. Then we get a description of what a tabletop roleplaying game is, a description of the gamemaster and players, and then a description of what you’ll be playing.

Let’s put a pin in that point though.

Then we get a list of requirements – rulebook, players, place to play, d6s, writing tools, types of sheet, tokens, and a nice reminder to take breaks. Then there’s a list of nice-but-not-necessary things to include like snacks, music, time and place for post-game talk, some resistance to bullets, and people to play with, which gets mentioned twice as both necessary and not necessary. I personally would file players under ‘essential’ rather than ‘nice to have.’ Then we get some glossary and it’s blessedly short – this whole introduction is only five pages long! – before the book introduces characters.

Now, in my preference of an approach, I think that you should give people the pitch of the offering – here’s the fantasy! – then the basics – here’s what a d6 is! – and then the fundamental mechanics of the game, like the d20 resolution system, where big numbers are better – and then move on to character creation. Which means that while I feel like I’m missing something, once you get past that 110 page introduction, then this approach is more or less doing what I expect to do in a book with what I consider a good approach.

But we’re going to put a pin here to jump ahead a chapter to talk about the rules, the things that make up the interface.

The rules system is built around checks; you roll n dice to aim for a target number of y, formatted as ‘nd:y’, and that works fine as a formatting choice. This is not an additive kind of dice roll, though, but a dice pool. So if you roll 2d6 aiming for a target of 4, and you get a 3 and a 3, you didn’t succeed at the check. It’s a simple binary system too – either you rolled the target or higher, and you succeed, or you rolled below it, and you failed. You have triumphs and fumbles, representing very good success and very big failures, and, shout out to thy dungeongal, it has even got a failure table for fumbles. It’s not a Rolemaster fumble table, but it’s pretty good for a small affair in a simpler game.

There’s something like an initiative system for most of the story – a ‘yet to act’ and ‘acted’ system, which means that once you do something significant, you have to wait until everyone else has a turn. I don’t mind this, this is a system that formalises something I know a lot of people already do in their game situations. Some players don’t like this? I know a few who would rather be quiet and let the story happen without being regularly called upon to check if they’re okay.

From there, there’s mechanics about a multi-phase story, following a pattern; you have an investigation phase with quests you should fulfill, and the quests serve as flags for getting to the next part of the story, in the next phase. Clues are distributed randomly by dice on a pre-established map, and then there’s a time limit to work out how long you have left to fulfill the investigation phase of the story. There’s random daily events that represent the ongoing life in Gensokyo, a recovery stage of the day, and players even move around the map of the world based on rolling dice according to their motivation stat.

You know, like a roll-and-move board game.

Players are atomised in this part of the game. They don’t move as one but instead everyone is moving and investigating in their own time. If you wind up in the same square as a player you can build a bond with them and do your thing with them, which is useful for assisting later on. Failing to uncover a clue in a location leads to more clues being propogated, meaning that over time the play space fills with clues and failures still bring opportunities.

The combat system – called Danmaku Combat – is heads-up, one PC vs one NPC. Characters have unique boards for combat, known as their Danmaku Fields. From here the rules get complicated, and I use that word in place of the word complex. You roll to determine attacks. Your die rolls represent how many bullets you place around your enemy, but also where. You don’t get to control that. You can use spellcards, and then you can roll to dodge, and finally the game calculates hits. Then there’s a set of qualifiers to check how the resolution of that round works, bullets are tidied up, and the combatants reset to a new initiative.

After that, there’s a denoument which also suggests that you should share the story of your game on social media.

I will say about this system I appreciate some simplicity. If you’re in the same square as a bullet, you get hit. That’s just how bullets work. There’s even a mechanic for grazing! I like some of the board-gamey mechanics and I think the idea of flying characters bringing their own ‘board’ to represent how they influence the space around them in battle is pretty novel!

I do not like any of the other mechanics.

No not even that one.

I’m trying to be kind. I’m trying to be kind, I’m trying so hard. I’m trying to approach this as if it’s just extremely alien, as if it’s categorically different to what I want in games and therefore every single thing I dislike is fine because cheese and apples, oranges and pears, some people just like different things, it’s fine, it’s fine, and hey, maybe even I’m being a bit of a western chauvinist expecting this game book to be built the way I think a game book should be.

Except hang on, no I’m not, I’m talking about this strictly as a matter of preference. And we’re not even at the thing I find the most repellent about this game.

See, when I described above ‘characters,’ you might notice I didn’t use the term ‘creation.’ I called the section ‘characters,’ because you don’t get to create characters. Characters are pre-generated. This game comes with thirty writeups of established, pre-defined, pre-characterised Touhou girls, and you get to get to pick one of twenty-one character traits about them that can, based on the dice, be entirely equally distributed across all thirty of these characters.

This is fantastically strange to me.

This is actively player hostile to me.

And it’s not like this breaks with the trend of how people care about Touhou: I don’t know anyone with a Touhou OC, but I know a lot of people who refer to old friends, friends they had in younger days, as ‘a Marisa’ or ‘a Reimu.’ I know more Touhou fictives than I know people who create new things in the Touhou space. If you’re a Touhou fan, you’re probably a fan of these characters, and I guess if that’s all you’re a fan of, you wouldn’t be bothered by the lack of a creative toolkit for existing within this world.

This is a vision of tabletop RPGs that does not exist to me outside of the most fishknived deliberate designs like Everyone Is John. This game’s vision of its setting and its characters are not that this is a place you want to play in but that this is a pre-existing cast of characters you want to embody and play. You don’t make a Touhou OC (A TouhouC) in this game and get to play them meeting important NPCs, you pick up a pre-established Touhou, with her established interests and behaviours, and try to play her as close to your vision of her as you can. And I say her, because they are all women, and…

Lords.

I know there’s a queer angle on all this but I am too aware of the audience that likes Touhou for the Wrong Reasons, because, again, I know where a lot of the English-speaking fandom came from.

If I was going to be so gauche as to talk about Gensou Narratograph as if it were a mere game that I was going to have an opinion on I’d say it looks like it sucks. But that’s just my opinion based on merely reading the entire book and not being already a fan of Touhou, a shorthanding of a number of critical considerations of the qualities and choices made in this game, summed up in a short form to express my ideas clearly. It’s not that it’s a bad game, it doesn’t make people ill or commit tax fraud or anything. Chances are good, if you’re a fan of Touhou, you’re probably going to love the idea of a game that hands you a character sheet at the start and says congratulations, you’re Suwaku Moriya now! Look at your funny froggy hat! You have a skill called Creating Kun (Earth)!

It is, in the truest sense, the most Touhou TTRPG that could exist, in that it seems completely impenetrable to me, offering no reason to engage with it outside of pre-existing love and veneration for the property, and happy to be that way.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[freshlybakedspiderbread]

seiga kaku?

im gonna actively try to keep myself concise and to single points because its been so easy for me in the past to get lost in wicked hermit thoughts and veer off who knows where... Part of it surely has to do with how a long time ago i used to have an rp blog on tumblr where i spent everyday thinking about seiga to some extent!

General opinion/How much I care about them: there was a long period of time where i would say without a doubt she was my single favourite character in touhou. I couldn't properly point to any one reason, or any tidy chain of events that might have led to it, other than learning about her, reading and seeing various very formative doujin works featuring her and the th13 crew, and maybe some old-fashioned projecting led me to latching onto every aspect of her... These days, there's a lot of touhous I obsess and go wild over and to even greater extents than her, but seiga objectively has the longest history of making me go a little nuts, whereas even aya took a little more time to nettle into my brain.

I like Seiga a lot and ive thought about her a lot, is what im getting at!

A ship I love: seiyoshi (seiga/yoshika) is funny in that it has a lot of little 'requirements' to me. Like if intepreted as just purely the evil hermit controlling a tool that she herself murdered to obtain, i think thats boring. But likewise, if its intepreted as just the hermit tragically trying to preserve her departed beloved, well that might be better but still lacking to me.

i couldnt possibly get across my ideal backstory for them right now, but the ultimate gist of it is that Seiga definitely did care for the living Yoshika who then died unexpectedly, before Seiga could decide herself whether she would commit to teaching her the ways of the hermit or simply get bored and move on. Her main motivation in performing the most ludicrously evil magic and create a jiangshi was because she refused to let even the natural order of life and death take anything away from her.

....Thaaaat all aside, i think their interactions in present day are just really funny 😄 Seiga 'spoiling' her dear Yoshika who laughs off being a meat shield because its not like she can die again!

A non-romantic relationship that I love: I think Seiga and Futo have the most oddball dynamic among the taoists and also Futo is probably the only one Seiga wouldn't have intense romanctic tension with. Futo who is a weirdo herself, acknowledges Seiga as their wise teacher of the arts (calling her seiga-donno) and yet also does not think of her as above any of them in their little personal hierarchy because Futo knows Seiga has no interest in being a proper retainer to Miko, so all of Futo's formalities almost come off as either sarcastic or as a really esoteric form of endearment. Meanwhile, Seiga probably thought a long time ago Futo would grow weary of things like loyalty and matters of noble blood or talking like an ancient old person, but none of that happened and Futo remains the same as ever, which has been altogether surprising, charming, and exasperating for Seiga (and everone else but they're all mostly charmed 😊)

The NOTP: i guess you'd have to work especially hard to get me to gel with pairing her up with any of myouren temple's folks. I get the temptation since every other taoist has one or two easily paired up counterpart there, but its not enough to just cross a checklist and leave it at that!

(that said, if you were gonna pair up buddhists and taosists thematically, i get why one might put seiga with shou since they were technically most vital in backstory with miko/byakuren respectively, and also because they both have a servant, one jiang-shi and a mouse. but i always thought seiga made a better parallel witn nue personally)

My biggest headcanon about them: most of this post is already headcanon, but as for another 'big' one...

I believe over the last thousand and whatever years, Seiga made semi-regular (as in maybe once every few years or a century?) visits to the tomb where Miko and gang slept, indulging and refreshing her memories of them, chatting up Tojiko who is now a ghost. And then sometime in 2011 right as her hermit senses told her it was finally time to meet them all again, she went to to tomb to greet them all only to find out literally the entire place was gone 😨

so all within like a week or something, Seiga had to go on a mad investigative quest where she discovered they had all been whisked to Gensokyo at some point, had to learn what the heck Gensoyko even is, how to get herself there, and then arrived just in time to get blasted by the incident resolvers. Really busy time in her life!

An idea for a fanfiction I would like to write/read about them: ha... one day, my multi-part seiga backstory fic incorporating every stray headcanon i've ever had. and then i quit writing forever maybe n_n

That aside, a funny scenario would be Okina appearing trying to stir drama because Seiga is basically the reason why Miko divorced Okina. And Seiga has no idea who she is or about any of that because Miko never mentioned it 😌

Something that makes me think of them: pretzels.

also its someone elses fault but luo tianyi is just the seiga vocaloid to me 😑

[satoshi-mochida]

Touhou Spell Carnival teaser trailer, first details and screenshots

Gematsu Source

Publisher Compile Heart and developer Sting have released the first information, teaser trailer, and screenshots for single-player bullet hell tactical RPG Touhou Spell Carnival.

Get the details below, via the official website.

■ About

The curtain rises on a spell card competition in Gensokyo! A “bullet hell” battle spanning 30 days is about to begin!

What is Touhou Project?

Touhou Project is a bullet hell shoot ’em up game series created by the ZUN-led development circle Team Shanghai Alice. Set in Gensokyo, a land isolated from the outside world, the story follows protagonists like Reimu Hakurei, shrine maiden of Hakurei Shrine, as they settle disturbances called “anomalies” caused by various factors.

■ Story

Gensokyo—a remote land isolated from the outside world, where both humans and youkai exist. One day, the Hakurei Shrine shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei notices “mysterious pillars” that have risen up over various parts of Gensokyo. The pillars were the signal that Futousai, a festival organized by Yukari Yakumo in which participants battle for spell cards, had begun. To uncover the true reason behind the Futousai started by Yukari Yakumo, Reimu Hakurei joins in on the spell card competition.

■ Characters

Reimu Hakurei (voiced by Mai Nakahara)

Ability: Can Fly in the Sky to an Extent

A shrine maiden of Hakurei Shrine in Gensokyo. She spends most of her time at Hakurei Shrine, which sees little visitors, where she cleans, slacks off, and drinks tea while taking it easy. Her specialties include youkai extermination and resolving the anomalies that occur in Gensokyo.

Marisa Kirisame (voiced by Yumi Uchiyama)

Ability: Can Use Magic to an Extent

An ordinary magician who is both curious and a troublemaker. She runs the Kirisame Magic Shop in the Forest of Magic. Although a contrarian, she can also be straightforward, competitive, and hardworking.

Touhou Spell Carnival is due out for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Switch in spring 2024 in Japan.

Watch the teaser trailer below. View the screenshots at the gallery.

Teaser Trailer

[sleepyhead-poll]

LIST OF REJECTED CHARACTER (SO FAR)

Under the cut is a list of characters who, so far, have been rejected. I am also listing the reason on why they are being rejected:

The following list of 5 characters have been rejected for falling more under the category of characters who have been comatose / hibernated / been in a deep slumber:

Aurora from Disney's Sleeping Beauty [NOTE: While Aurora from Disney's Sleeping Beauty herself is not accepted, other variations from the Sleeping Beauty story HAVE been accepted such as Shrek's Sleeping Beauty and Silver from Twisted Wonderland. The reason why this specific version of Sleeping Beauty isn't accepted is because her sleeping was not a part of her characterization- she basically just fell into a magical coma- but the accepted versions DO have sleeping as part of their characterization.]

Cthulhu from The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft

Flayn from Fire Emblem: Three Houses

He Xuan from Tian Guan Ci Fu / Heaven Official's Blessing

Robin from Fire Emblem: Awakening

The following list of 2 characters have been rejected for falling under the category of "one-off joke", i.e., their sleepy trait was a joke in part chapter or episode and not a consistent part of their character: (If I am incorrect and there are multiple instances throughout the work they appear in that alludes to them being a sleepyhead, feel free to send it to me and I will un-reject them)

Crowley from Good Omens, specifically the book by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

Pavel Iwaszkiewicz from Community

The following list of 2 characters have been rejected for being from real life:

Every cat [NOTE: Dude I literally said not to submit yourself or pets from real life. I know not every cat is a pet, but come on.]

The country of Montenegro [NOTE: Okay this was a funny submission but sorry. Not counting real people... or countries.]

The following list of 3 characters have powers that have to do with sleep, but don't seem to be a sleepyhead themselves:

Enmu from Demon Slayer

Faruzan from Genshin Impact

Sumireko Usami from Touhou Project

And finally, the following list of 4 characters are the rest of the rejected characters. I will list the reason why under their name:

Blathers from Animal Crossing. I haven't played Animal Crossing, but from what I can tell this character isn't actually sleepy, they're just nocturnal so have an opposite sleep schedule as the player.

Greece / Heracles Karpusi from Hetalia Invoking my "right to reject any submission". You could not pay me to accept a Hetalia / country personification into this poll.

Jack Townsend from Tales from the Gas Station Seems like an interesting book! But he seems to be an insomniac, which is the opposite of a sleepy character.

Sleepy Dwarf Character from Once Upon a Time (in Space) by the Mechanisms The submitter said they didn't remember their name which is why I said "sleepy dwarf character" instead of Sleepy or whatever their name is because I'm not sure if that is their name. I would appreciate it if you know the name of a character you are submitting. If they don't have a name, chances are that they are such a minor character that I don't think they should count. Not always, but usually. Supported by the fact that when I tried to Google the character I could barely find any information on them except that they sang on verse in one song in this entire album.

[que-de-metal]

Sending you the ball back (seishin)

When I started shipping it if I did:

Day one — well day one of me playing DDC. Since I had a few years (late middle school + high school) where I wasn't following Touhou canon anymore and it came out during those times, I found out about them when I caught up to all the canon I missed circa 2015. But I had managed to not get a single thing about them spoiled somehow so the experience was the same.

My thoughts:

I love them so so much but you all know that. But specifically out of all the Touhou ships I feel like this is the one that's the most "contained?" Like they actually have a complete story arc that starts with DDC, then ISC, and "ends" with their conversation in Grimoire of Usami. If I wanted to explain most TH ships to someone who isn't in the fandom, I would have to pull out a diagram and hundreds of small details and worldbuilding bits to get it to make sense, but for these two there's a cohesive "trilogy" that contains a whole love story with onscreen character arcs and a satisfying "epilogue". Because of that I feel like this is a very special ship, it really stands out from the other pairings in that regard…

Things done in fanworks that annoy me:

I think people think I'm joking when I say I'm an unironic Seija apologist, but I genuinely dislike the framing of Shinmyoumaru as a helpless victim. I do think there's no real victim, that they mutually used each other awkwardly, but if it HAS to be a contest of who has it worse… What Seija did to Shin was: invent a bunch of overinflated bullshit to push Shin over the edge of joining a cause that she already half-agreed with without the lies. What Shin did to Seija was: weaponize her weakness to throw her under the bus as the main perpetrator AND not back down from that narrative EVEN AFTER a DEAD OR ALIVE MANHUNT was called on Seija. I feel like out of these two betrayals there is one that is way harder to forgive and it's not Seija's! They're both brilliant manipulators in totally different ways and it's one of the reasons they fit so well in the first place aaaaahhhhhhhhhh. I prefer fanworks that are more morally gray but if I'm to be compeltely honest I also want to see a more villainous Shin to compensate for all the fanworks that smooth her edges so much!

Things I look for in fanworks:

One of the big charm points of this ship for me is the Bonnie & Clyde dynamic, the partner in criming, so I can't get enough of fanworks of them working well together and being in sync. I like fanart where they look kind of cool, serious and competent, I find it very romantic in a way.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:

Because of DDC being such a self-contained complete story like I said earlier there's not a lot of material of them interacting with the rest of the world… I love love love Sei/Shin/Reimu and Sei/Shin/Marisa because it has interesting power dynamics but it needs to be a throuple because as soon as you take Seija or Shinmyoumaru out I'm not interested.

Thought I like the idea of Shin going for other women during their time apart. Because I have a loving jealousy tropes too much problem. And I'm interested in Seija having to face insecurities. In that regard I'm into the Shin/Tenshi dynamic in AoCF. Because I think a Tenshi VS Seija rivalry could get very ugly (positive). But once again this is still with a SeiShin lens…

My prefered future/ending for them:

I want them to have big dramatic adventures. I do think they can change some of the unfair things in Gensokyo if they get over themselves first. It's also the kind of ship where I appreciate a tragic ending and a tragic death but I haven't found the fanwork that would hit this the right way for me yet :3

What is their favorite activity together:

Planning adventures. I picture Shin as the kind of person who can spend hours talking about projects, travels, shady businesses, things she wants to try someday. And she enjoys doing SOME of these things but coming up with the ideas counts as part of the fun. And paradoxically to the fact that her whole thing is playing with negatives, I feel like Seija would be a good Yes Man for those situations because the way she always twists and criticizes everything could be pretty stimulating to bounce ideas off. I'm getting frustrated because there's no english equivalent to "faire des plans sur la comète" and "refaire le monde" but I can totally see them spending a night on a high peak in Gensokyo, pointing to locations they want to travel the next day and bantering all night while mapping out the whole itinerary, then waking up in the morning and going the opposite direction of where they had planned.

A fic I’d like to write about them/A sentence from one already in my WIPs: 

(not a prose line cause this fic is in its rough 1st draft state a but a scene placeholder that I like) "Seija goes to sleep holding one of Shin's robes next to her head to make sure she dreams of her."

ship and characters asks 💌

[nightskylersstuff]

whats a too who ?

I'm glad you asked

*pulls out a comically long paper with touhou project plot written in it*

So

It's a Japanese video game series made by one person who likes beer known as ZUN who makes games in that one gameplay style for people(and their PC if you play on high difficulty) to suffer. It called bullet hell shoot 'em up or "what the fuck did just kill me". Also almost all of the characters are girls for some reason but no one cares

Thank you for your attention

[lobautumny]

OP of this post disabled reblogs but I can't just not share this post:

And to add something of my own onto it, in addition to creating because you can and because it feels good, the point is also to throw your own personality, experiences, and being into the world. Everyone inherently has something unique to bring to the table by virtue of being a unique person.

I think a lot of people get way too caught up in the mentality that "oh, I need to make something that's good and unique or else what I'm making is worthless and I might as well not bother," but like, if what you're making comes from a genuine place inside you and not some blind profit motivation, I guarantee it'll be worthwhile, and if you put it out there and actively show it to people, it's going to have some kind of impact on someone. Even if what you make just gives someone the very start of an idea that gets them thinking about stuff that winds up inspiring their own art or fueling their own introspection, that's a tangible impact.

There is a video game that I genuinely rank among my favorites, called Epic Dumpster Bear 2: He Who Bears Wins. It is extremely unpolished, it's made primarily of premade store-bought assets, and the animations suck, and it fucking rules. The developer had a vision and just went for it without getting hung up on needing the game to be ~high quality~, whatever that even means.

Or for a more mainstream example, look at Touhou. Zun is not what most people would call a master artist, and he primarily draws while drunk iirc, but that doesn't stop Touhou from being a fucking massive cultural force.

You don't need to make flawless masterpieces to make art people whole-heartedly love.

Also, very importantly, the notion of objective art standards and "better" art being more worthy of existence/acknowledgement is a tool of reactionary conservatives to reinforce the status quo and prevent social change. It's all bullshit, and making weird, stupid little art projects of questionable quality and supporting other artists who are doing the same actively fights fascism.

And like, that's not to say that making art is your moral obligation or anything, but rather that if you feel any drive to create, there's a myriad of reasons you should throw out any notion of "it has to be good" and just. make shit.

[captainofthetidesbreath]

Can i ask whats wrong with Fandom (the wiki) & critrole’s wiki in particular? Aside from the website having 50 million ads

Fandom generally is interested in leveraging visiting readers and the wikis that editors create to cater to advertisers (hence, the myriad ads) and to inform brands on habits and patterns within fanbases. Here is how they describe themselves to advertisers in their MediaKit: "Fandom is a powerful ecosystem of sites, tools and experiences that can help brands reach fans as they’re exploring their personal passions across thousands of movie franchises, tv series and games. We help brands figure out how to navigate fans' inner circle with our trusted content, experiences and environment, all created by fans, for fans."

They also strive to try to understand fans as a consumer demographic in and of themselves, and have developed something called "FanDNA". Also from their MediaKit: "FanDNA is Fandom’s proprietary entertainment research service that analyzes the behavior of Fandom’s 315 million monthly users to help entertainment brands understand the complex forces that drive fan behavior."

Fandom recently bought several websites to try to increase their revenue, commerce efforts, and data gathering efforts for FanDNA. The ads alone are really enough, given that they've become increasingly aggressive. I don't know if you've looked at a page without an ad blocker lately, but yeah.

The billion ads is because Fandom is specifically trying to use people visiting and editing the wiki as a means to sell fan labor and fans. There's a small thread here about the Blaseball wiki's struggles and one about what happened to the Touhou Project wiki.

As for the CritRole wiki specifically, I don't really have space here to outline a lot of historical issues. It currently as two admins. The one who has been in her position longer, and is currently bureaucrat, has been resistant to many projects to try to improve the wiki (from as large as doing away with the fan-created and confusing Chapter structure to as small as reducing the amount of small text used for accessibility reasons). There was resistance to efforts to introduce a style guide to help structure articles and help new editors understand current practices. The creator of the wiki and this admin have been apathetic about plagiarism and have even said that copying-pasting from the transcripts (which also creates disorganized articles that are difficult to understand) is not plagiarism, which did not inspire confidence.

The breaking point issue that caused the Miraheze wiki to be created was the creator of the wiki (who stepped down from the bureaucrat role) and this admin have been slow to delete Campaign 1 era art that does not have artist permission and outright refuses to remove Kit Buss' non-official, fanart from the wiki despite having no permission to host that art. (The creator of the wiki claims legacy and influence on the fandom trumps needing permission for her non-official fanart work.) Generally, the current bureaucrat gives the sense of being more concerned about curating an art gallery and finding new fanart to add to the wiki than curating an encyclopedia.

The other admin, promoted to the role after the Miraheze split by the prior mentioned admin after she became bureaucrat, has a habit of wildly misrepresenting sources, historically and currently, which doesn't inspire confidence.

There's a lot of other issues that people have historically had, especially about biases in how certain characters and relationships are treated, but the above are the issues that read least like fandom in-fighting. These other issues are SUPER important, but I've found it hard to convince people that they're serious because they're sensitive issues and often easily dismissed as simple in-fighting.

[snowboyclarkov]

Rago 101 - The God of Destruction

Rago, known as the Child of the Black Sun and the 10th legendary blader, is regarded as the most powerful blader in the Beyblade verse by most of anyone who isn't a Ryuga fanboy/fangirl, and almost certainly a Brooklyn fanboy/fangirl. I've seen Brooklyn and Rago fans fighting in the comments. This is a series in which power scaling is quite difficult, especially for Burst which if using the same criteria as for Bakuten Shoot or Metal Fight could be anywhere from Wall level to Galaxy level, but can be done. Someone power-scaled and said that the Beyblade Burst verse in particular was Universe level via scaling to Dante and Gwyn, their personal realms/spaces where their Spirit (their bey partner/friend/creation) resides and various moves by the 'master' of their respective beyblades. To put that idea into perspective, it means that if Arthur Peregrine and Origami Tobiichi were to battle, Arthur would curb-stomp Origami into the dirt.

Regardless, there's a reason Rago was chosen by Nemesis itself as the only person worthy of wielding it in battle. It ended up taking the combined power of all the world's bladers, likely over 6,000,000,000 people, to even match Rago and his partner/Spirit/deity Diablo Nemesis. More accurately, since by that point Rago had died and had his spirit absorbed into the God of Destruction, the power of all bladers was up against Nemesis. It's still the same bey though, so whether it was Rago or Nemesis blading with Diablo doesn't really matter. The fact that he didn't even use Armageddon in the final clash with Gingka's Super Cosmic Nova to me suggests that Nemesis wasn't quite at full tilt. No surprise, that deity was rather cocky believing that 'worms' as it called humans could never beat it, even when all together at once.

I have seen claims that Rago has the power of all the world's bladers in his bey, but that isn't the case. Rago himself said that Nemesis has the powers of every blader it has fought and of every blader it's opponents have ever fought as well. But then Pluto blatantly said that it does have exactly that, so perhaps it is a trickle-down effect. (e.g. Power absorption/translation: Rago/Nemesis <- Opponent <- Everyone who Opponent battled <- Every adversary of everyone who battled Opponent <- So on and so forth). To avoid a no-limits fallacy, it is likely needed to apply a simple limit that Nemesis can't gain the powers of someone who is more powerful than it at the time of attempt. It's still one of the most overpowered hax ever.

"When it absorbed your legendary beys, that was not the end. It gained the power of every bey you've ever fought as well, from the first time you battled to the last." - Rago | "Nemesis possesses the power of every bey in the world, you understand? Every bey, and surpasses all in attack, defence and stamina. It is the strongest bey in history." - Pluto

To point out something, there are three Nemesis'. The bey, the god and the star, but they are all one existence too. It seems to be equivalent to the Holy Trinity, with the star Nemesis as the Father, the god Nemesis as the Son and the beyblade Nemesis as the Holy Spirit.

The Black Sun is meant to be the hypothetical star Nemesis. There was a theory in astrophysics that the Sun had a dwarf star twin that would periodically pass by the Oort Cloud or the Kuiper Belt (one of the two) in its incredibly long orbit, and send bodies hurtling into the solar system. The star known as Nemesis was a potential candidate for various mass extinctions that Earth has suffered.

This post is a simple list of a few things that Rago can do. I'd say become more powerful in every category via centrifugal force but to me that's a moot point. Frankly, Beyblade is absurd. It's on the same level as the Touhou Project verse, which is absurd in and of itself. That goes for the Metal Saga, and it may also go for Bakuten Shoot and even Burst. The latter of which would push the boundaries of absurdity.

The Many Things Rago (and Nemesis) Are Capable Of:

Corrupt people to become mind slaves to the will of Nemesis. (Pluto did this to Dynamis via the Black Sun's energy, which Nemesis is basically made of. This one seems to be restricted to whoever has the pendant Dynamis wears, so it's not really effective on anyone else.)

Absorb people and/or their souls into itself.* (Nemesis did this to Hades, then to Rago and Pluto - in Rago's case, Nemesis took on his voice and personality though it briefly used Pluto's voice.)

Cause natural disasters such as severe thunderstorms, wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, firestorms and volcanic eruptions at unnaturally high levels on a global scale. (Rago did this before Ryuga turned up, and Nemesis did it as a side-effect while battling Gingka.)

Cause global electrical black-outs. (Rago did this as a side-effect before Ryuga arrived to challenge him to battle.)

Correctly foresee future events.* (Nemesis predicted its own revival thousands of years before it happened.)

Absorb a person's power and gain their abilities, plus gain the abilities of everyone said person has ever fought with. (Nemesis absorbed power from various sources over thousands of years in preparation for its revival, and when it absorbs the powers of its opponent, it also gains the abilities of everyone that opponent has ever battled.)

Summon the Black Sun from its 26,000,000 year orbit cycle to the Earth. (Nemesis did this shortly after breaking out of Zeus' Barrier.)

Open up gateways to different universes. (Rago seemingly did this against Ryuga.)

Create barriers to protect itself or trap others. (Rago pulled this against the legendary bladers, to prevent them from being able to seal Nemesis.)

Seemingly be made of the universe itself, like some kind of abstract eldritch horror.* (Nemesis is basically a hulking divine mass of fluctuating intergalactic space given shape.)

Destroy spirits and/or souls. (Diablo Nemesis does this to all of the Spirits of the legendary bladers' beys when battling Gingka.)

Replicate the spirits of those whose powers they have taken in. (Rago and Nemesis both do this repeatedly against their opponents, it's their go to battle method.)

Erase all of existence itself on a universal scale at minimum. (Rago stated that once he and Nemesis were done, literally nothing would be left, and that they would create a new existence out of that nothingness, like the birth of a new reality.)

Resurrect itself after being killed. (The Spirit of the bey Diablo Nemesis can return after being destroyed, though a bey usually stops spinning once the Spirit is killed with exceptions, as long as the bey itself can still spin. Basically every bey with a Spirit can do this.)

Be resistant if not immune to power absorption. (Ryuga tried and failed to absorb the power of Diablo Nemesis into L-Drago.)

This isn't even getting into the powers Rago has due to absorbing the abilities of countless people. Basically, just research every single decent blader in the Metal Saga verse and count what they can do. Rago can do all of that too. This includes:

Universe creation [Faust/Damian/Dynamis]

Revealing the past via a separate realm [Dynamis]

Control over gravity [Julian]

Creating an electromagnetic field [Zeo (Byxis)]

Creating auroras [Dynamis]

Opening the gates to Hell [Damian]

Teleporting to different places [Ryuga]

Warping the fabric of reality in a universe** [Kyoya/Damian]

Transporting people between universes [Dynamis]

Creating an empty space of non-existence [Chris]

Astral projection at sizes dwarfing a galaxy [Faust]

Complete control over wind [Kyoya]

Full control over time and space, including creating seemingly hyper-massive black holes within which space-time becomes broken and ceases to exist*** [Faust]

*The asterisk means only Nemesis can do these. Rago can't.

**Kyoya did this when Hades (basically Hell) was turned into the Wild. Damian then reversed it by turning the Wild back into Hades.

***Faust's power is based on the Theory of Relativity, most likely General Relativity but maybe also Special Relativity. It's almost certain that the inside of Tempo's black holes are based on the Singularity, a potentially 0-D point of possibly infinite density where the laws of reality break down. The fact that Pegasus and Striker were still spinning but had stopped in place, and that Gingka and Masamune were frozen solid, alongside the scientific basis of Tempo suggests that time itself doesn't exist inside Tempo's black holes, and space with it. It is just a void of nothingness. Similar to non-existence then, but not quite that. Probably Rago's pipe dream.

[sinkableruby]

7, 12, 21, 22

gaming time

7. A series you’ve lost interest in?

oh actually uhhh. minecraft i cant play it anymore its either i try to focus on the building and i run out of materials and i have to go into caves which are prettier now but they're still caves and each trip is a trek or it feels like a trek in my mind and its like actual chores but like not in a fun animal crossing way in a shitty real life way and you have to KEEP GOING BACK and no matter where i put my house i am never satisfied with it and even if i go creative mode and do nice builds that gets old pretty quickly and man i just cant deal with it anymore.

also terraria is better lol

12. Do you prefer ‘blank slate’ main characters you make yourself or otherwise project onto, or characters with a set personality and backstory?

stealing dis's answer it probably depends on what works for the game yeah. i love roleplaying a whole lot but i also love seeing other ppls characters. that being said, i wish there were more games that were open in some way to a roleplaying kind of thing. so if you want a straight answer, i'd go with that

21. A boss you think is really cool

oh theres plenty of these yeah i always love like hidden bosses that are really hard like sans, malenia, etc. the challenge is fun and its always cool to be overwhelmed with the difficulty like oh shit playtimes over monster hunter is cool bosses: the game, basically (sometimes annoying bosses but shhh we dont talk about those). odogaron and nergigante from world are my absolute favorites. the sheer Energy odogaron has when attacking you is insane. it's so fast and always just throwing things out, it feels like a dance when you're fighting. very cool and nergigante... nergigante has lots of presentation, but also its spikes are so fun to break, its rewarding. fighting that arch tempered solo was so cool. and of course you have the divebomb:

i love this so much, the person in this video is wearing upgraded armor and fighting a lower level nerg because that move WILL kill you instantly, like always. and the hitbox is HUGE it's ridiculously big. i mean you can see how big it is in that video (that person isn't dodging it right most of the time). but the spectacle of it is so cool too. it roars and spreads its wings like that and you KNOW something big's coming. and you feel that note of panic every time, even when youre used to the fight. its so fun. maybe this appreciation of the unforgiving is why i like malenia (and that bullshit move she does) and sans too lol also shoutout to ftl's final boss (i am so bad at that game) and etg's dragun. also also, shoutout to touhou (all of it). also shoutout to elden ring's elden guy (that is definitely not what its called) big elebit. elden... whatever. it looks so cool :) and the fight is really fun to try no-hitting more emotional wise shoutout to omori's final boss. no spoilers but that one is so powerful and very well executed. omori has great bosses like that that impact you. another one i really like, maybe even more, is the one where this music plays:

it just screams hurt and betrayal (and the fight does too!) and you can just Feel it. and the aftermath of that fight is heartbreaking

22: A boss that was disappointing

oh starbound is perfect for this one. the game is so nice with its cosmetic and customization, and me and my friends were really enjoying it, but the enemies and encounters and bosses in this game were just. not. good. because you could overlevel (idr if level was actually a part of that game, but there was like higher level equipment and stuff) but the bosses werent like matched to your level or anything they just stayed the same level. so you could easily overlevel without knowing it (you might even think ur preparing a reasonable amount, certainly felt that way to us) and when the whole world is filled with nothing but shit thats easy to kill and a boss that's pathetic its like. ah. time to customize a bit more and then the fun is done. kinda kills the hype yk. if it had better fights that game would genuinely be awesome

[hakureimaiden]

KNOWING YOUR PARTNER WELL CAN POTENTIALLY MAKE WRITING TOGETHER A LOT EASIER.

tagged by: @londonfallen & @momigeddon ty!!

tagging: steal it from me! kjflsjkfnd

Name: irma!

Pronouns: she/her!

Preference of communication: i may be slow to respond depending on my energy levels but IMs and D.iscord are the best ways to reach me! I also just like talking using tags on posts tbh skjfnlkd

Name of muse(s): Reimu Hakurei from Touhou Project! got a lot of other ones too but they are on their own blogs haha

Experience/how long (months/years?): oh jeeze i wanna say something like... 14-15 years? i've been rping for a very long time, since like middle school over text on old flip phones of all things lmao

Platforms you’ve used: until late middle school i actually didn't have much of an online presence, so most of my rp was through text messages! i then moved onto t.umblr! since then i've also used t.witter and d.iscord to rp with some small dips into m.spa or whatever the heck that h.amstake one was called way back when fkjslnjnfd

Pet peeves / dealbreakers: i tend to have a lot of patience over most things tbh, and it takes a lot to truly get under my skin. i think the biggest is just pressuring me for replies, or people being unwilling to understand my spikes in energy levels/focus!

Fluff, angst, or smut: i'm willing to write all 3 depending on the situation, but by and large fluff and angst are what i tend to lean towards the most! i love me my good tea party threads, but i do also like delving into more dramatics with angsty threads!

Plots or memes: both, but memes are easier! i like plotting for bigger things or for relationships, though more for hashing out the broad stokes of something before filling it out with memes and the like!

long or short replies: mid way! i tend to be quiet wordy, so my responses don't usually stay short for long! at the same time, while i do love me some long threads, they will take me a while to chip away at! short stuff is nice for just quick banter and fun short interactions tho!

Best time to write: whenever the house is quiet and i have the focus for it tbh fjknasjkfdn

Are you like your muse(s): in a way! i think the reason reimu has stuck with me as a muse for so long is that i do relate to her 'go with the flow, just here to vibe' attitude, also i very much feel her desire to just wanna be lazy and do nothing but relax all day fjlansjkdf like big mood tbh

[takonei]

Greetings, everyone.

I myself am not sure how to even start this, this is something I should have addressed a long time ago, but never found the will to actually write this down, for many, many reasons.

Many of you started following me for Danganronpa content, and more specifically, Beta AU. I wrote the fic almost in its entirety.

“Almost” being the keyword.

The last update was done at, I would say, half of chapter 6, right before what I would call the second part of the last trial, now released 10 months ago. To the rare people who still have hope that an update will come, I cannot express how much regret I feel saying this but… This is not going to happen.

It truly pains me to see that the project I’ve spent so much time and effort into becoming part of my list of the many discontinued projects I did, especially with how big and how close it was to the end.

But this project just stopped being fun to write about. I’ve lost all pleasure writing the fic, and considering I have stopped consuming DR content long ago, it was only a matter of time before Beta AU would face the same fate. No matter how many times I try to sit down to write, nothing really satisfies me anymore.

And I want to move on. I want to be free of it all and go back to the art blog it once was, to feel good about the things I post, instead of the crushing guilt of “This post should have been the next update of Beta AU”.

But please do not make me say what I didn’t say. I don’t have the words to describe how fun this journey was while it lasted.

To be honest, I never expected it to go that far, but it did. During the years 2020 to the beginning of 2022, I loved writing it, I loved sharing the fic, the art, interacting with you all, discussing headcanons, AUs and many concepts, even reading fanfics of this fanfic!

I want to thank you all for making this journey so amazing, I will forever be thankful for having such a great audience.

I am not leaving Tumblr. I still want to do a lot of things here, and while it is time for Beta AU and Everlasting Dissonance to rest, it will still live through the original story I have teased ever since Artfight. And while it will probably never be a fully written story, I am still excited to share the characters and their stories with you all.

I will also be doing more Touhou fan-art, as it is a franchise that has lived in my heart for years now, and that I still cherish to this day.

If you were following me solely for DR content, I cannot tell you what to do, that is true, but I do invite you to stay for a little while.

Thank you all for everything you’ve done for me.

‘Till next time!

[divine-regret-index-j]

you walk out and declare to the world you'd like to have a salad.

Ravenswatch: you go out to a nice restaurant and are given a steak covered in ground herbs and sprigs of parsley. it is still a pretty solid steak.

Project Moon: you are dragged to an opera house and have pork-stuffed cabbage rolls each the shape and size of an adult human arm splattered onto a plate. it's a safe and melodramatic but reasonably well-acted show, while the food goes mostly uneaten, just photographed for social media.

Touhou Project: you are pulled into a potluck where everybody brought in a different dish called "salad" somewhere or another. there are a few arguments with people over those who brought potato salad, tuna salad, cookie salad, and jello salad, but there's plenty of novel vegetable dishes to go around, and in the end you enjoy the organizer's fervent lecture over gmo food supply monopolies. when you leave, everybody who didn't attend thinks you went to a dishware convention held at a movie theatre.

Blasphemous: you end up taking a long stroll through a beautiful vegetable garden while its owners talk about the monocultures of the western lawncare industry causing immense damage to the local ecosystems. afterwards, you are given a comically large package of dried fruit snacks.

Namesake: you are trapped at a salad bar with a long-lost friend for a week. despite this, you come around to having a pretty good time by the start of day three.

God of War: you are dragged to a wrestling match and given a bucket of popcorn with a fistful of hand-shredded iceberg lettuce soaked with butter.

SMT: you are dragged over to a fashion runway where the models are all wearing dresses styled like leaves. some of the dresses actually look pretty nice, but a few members of the audience point out most of them are leftover designs a few decades old, the newer dresses aren't really wearable in public, and miss when the old designers also made food.

Spindlehorse: you are dragged onto the front steps of an instagram influencer's house and have a stalk of celery, several ice cream cones, and a few shish-kabobs stabbed into your kidneys. for the crime of audibly protesting, you are inundated with hatemail for several months.