What do you not understand about how people like/hate Specific Touhou Characters?

[Eulogous]

The abuse towards Shinmyoumaru.

Why does this exist? Also, why do people seem to hype the hell out of it?

[CountVonNumenor]

35 minutes ago, Eulogous said:

The abuse towards Shinmyoumaru.

Why does this exist? Also, why do people seem to hype the hell out of it?

It's r/touhou, that's why. At least that is where I have seen the bulk of it, and the place where people somehow reinforced it. 

[ACE_DEUCE]

12 hours ago, AlexandruUnu said:

Hisoutensoku is when things start to get messy. Here, Meiling's campaign where she defeated the evil Taisui Xinjung and his assasins was revealed to be all just some dumb dream. At least we got more characterisation for her, so that's also nice.

To be fair, all of the storylines in Hisoutensoku are fairly lighthearted. Handling Meiling's story in this way makes sense cause it'd be hard to come up with a reason for her to leave her post, and having her fight a bunch of people who she has no reason to refuse entry to normally would just be confusing.

13 hours ago, AlexandruUnu said:

But there is more: The Inaba manga had a scene where Meiling was shown as incompetent when she had to check the invitations of some mere bunnies and the Eitnei crew (might have percieved the manga in a wrong way, tho). They already passed the gate before she even managed to finish with the invitations. It's still unknown if the manga is canon or not.

I didn't really see that one as a moment of particular incompetence. Tewi had intentionally forged invitations for a huge number of rabbits, which would probably overwhelm most people. She most likely just didn't want to risk getting scolded by Sakuya/Remilia for turning away guests. (Although, it is just a gag manga with no direct writing involvement by ZUN so I don't think it makes for a very important character moment)

13 hours ago, AlexandruUnu said:

And finally, to end this, we have the shitshow that is CDS. Why is it so bad, you may ask? Well, for one she openly admitted in the first chapter that she sleeps on the job almost every day

Not only that, but it was also revealed that she often just straight up forgets to lock the gate and wouldn't notice somebody sneaking through, completely contradicting her PMiSS entry! If you told me that Mizuchi is possessing ZUN IRL and is writing these dumbfounding plot points in to feed on the resulting negative energy of Touhou fans or something, I honestly wouldn't be very skeptical.

[AlexandruUnu]

6 hours ago, Eulogous said:

The abuse towards Shinmyoumaru.

Why does this exist? Also, why do people seem to hype the hell out of it?

The Touhou fanbase goes in 3 different directions:

1. Using memes that lost their comedy value over a decade ago (like Sakuya's "pads")
2. using memes from one year ago (fumo memes)
3. Torturing characters in the games for the sake of it

I know that slapstick humor is a thing. I don't understand really it's appeal (I probably don't have any right to talk about other's humor, since I have the comedical preference of a brick), but Touhou fans make it look like it's some sort of international contest to see who can make [insert character here] suffer the most. It's kind of creepy.

4 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

To be fair, all of the storylines in Hisoutensoku are fairly lighthearted. Handling Meiling's story in this way makes sense cause it'd be hard to come up with a reason for her to leave her post, and having her fight a bunch of people who she has no reason to refuse entry to normally would just be confusing.

I didn't really think about it that way. This makes me wonder what would Meiling's campaign be like if the "haha gatekeeper sleeps" meme didn't exist. She may not even have a campaign of her own if it weren't for the jokes.

 

4 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

I didn't really see that one as a moment of particular incompetence. Tewi had intentionally forged invitations for a huge number of rabbits, which would probably overwhelm most people. She most likely just didn't want to risk getting scolded by Sakuya/Remilia for turning away guests. (Although, it is just a gag manga with no direct writing involvement by ZUN so I don't think it makes for a very important character moment)

The main reason why I included the Inaba manga in here is because whenever people try to say that Meiling isn't incompetent, someone will always pull out this scene to prove them otherwise (and also CDS, but we'll get on that one later). I know that the manga might not even be canon, but some people out there insist that it's 100% canon. It's frustrating to me.

 

4 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

Not only that, but it was also revealed that she often just straight up forgets to lock the gate and wouldn't notice somebody sneaking through, completely contradicting her PMiSS entry! If you told me that Mizuchi is possessing ZUN IRL and is writing these dumbfounding plot points in to feed on the resulting negative energy of Touhou fans or something, I honestly wouldn't be very skeptical.

How many times did ZUN manage to contradict himself? I know that it's hard to keep track of everything you wrote over the past 20 years, and that ZUN just isn't that good of a storyteller to begin with. What if he uses the fact that every manga is from a different character's perspective as an excuse to contradict himself. After all, every character has a different bias in their storytelling. 

Besides all this, reading CDS just doesn't feel right at all for me. It feels like some weird conglomeration of random ideas that ZUN came up on the spot combined into what is meant to be the "darkest" manga in the series to date (even though that may be the case for every manga). I may be biased since my favorite mangas are the slice-of-life ones.

For the end note, I wonder what would Hong Meiling's fate be if the community didn't create those memes trashing on her...

Edited December 15, 2022 by AlexandruUnu

[SoundOfRayne]

On 12/15/2022 at 2:55 AM, Eulogous said:

The abuse towards Shinmyoumaru.

Why does this exist? Also, why do people seem to hype the hell out of it?

As an avid Shimmy-stan, this kind of shit has to be some of the most disgusting stuff to ever come out of the fandom.
I'd love to hear someone try and justify abusing a character whose most defining characteristics are "being overly trusting of others" and "being smaller than everyone else," and come out of it still thinking they're a well-adjusted human being. Reminds me of when I found out there was a community of people who enjoyed watching snuff videos of monkeys being abused. I sure hope the people who support this stuff don't have any pets...

On 12/15/2022 at 3:31 AM, CountVonNumenor said:

It's r/touhou, that's why. At least that is where I have seen the bulk of it, and the place where people somehow reinforced it. 

Look hard enough, and "Gensokyo accepts everything" takes on a much more insidious meaning.

 

As for the actual topic of the thread, I really wanna know why so many people love Tenshi so much. It's not like I have anything against her: She's got a cool hat. She's got a laser sword. That's pretty awesome. And she chows down on a peach that one time. In my mind, it's like "Yep. She fits the bill. She's definitely a Touhou character. Into the bin with the rest of 'em." But like, Tenshi's popular. Really popular, and I have no idea why. To be fair, though, I haven't played any of the fighting games where she actually appears, so maybe there's something there I missed out on.

And for a character I just flat-out hate, I can't stand Seija. Like, she's designed from the ground up to be intentionally unlikable, and uhh... mission accomplished, I guess. She's supposed to always act opposite to everyone's desires. No matter the context, she will always antagonize anyone she's next to. That could work well for her while she has her villain role, but a big part of Touhou is that nearly every character stops being a villain after their connected incident is resolved. But Seija doesn't do that; by design, she can't do that. Whereas other characters are shown to be thoughtless, short-sighted, or self-serving, Seija is an actual malicious force who even enjoys being hated for her actions. And then to keep her around, the fandom has to strip her down into a cheap tsundere so they can ship her with Shinmyoumaru guilt-free. In a fandom rife with toxic pairings, I still think this one is the worst.

[Nekofire]

On 12/14/2022 at 9:00 PM, AlexandruUnu said:

And to top it all of, after a poll that was made to decide if she should be called "Hong Meiling" or "Kurenai Misuzu" (her Japanese name), some random guy came in out of nowhere and said "Hey, why don't we just call her China?", and everyone agreed. 

The problem with Meiling's name is that it can be read in so many different way that ZUN himself and the whole fandom forgot how Hong Meiling's kanji are supposed to be read... It was during an interview that someone said Chuugokou (it means China in japanese) because he didn't knew how to read her name and wanted to ask a question about her to ZUN

On 12/14/2022 at 9:00 PM, AlexandruUnu said:

I think it's pretty clear that ZUN doesn't respect her at all, at least to me. So all of this makes me wonder: why does ZUN treat Hong Meiling like this? Did he intend from the very beginning for her to be a joke character? Does he have a grudge against Meiling? Who knows.

Hong Meiling is a joke character, look at her dialogue in EoSD

Here is my source about the subject : 

ZUN's comment from Dai Touhouten plaque

 " For my first Windows debut with a title named "Eastern," wouldn't it be interesting if I designed it around a Western-style mansion? That's the contrarianism EoSD was based on, and I made it more fun by making a Chinese gatekeeper guarding a Western-style mansion. She's the character born from such extreme contrarianism.

During that time, her name was so hard to pronounce so people gave her the lovely nickname "China" and people loved it. Nowadays, pretty much everyone knows how to pronounce her actual name, at least I hope so. She's a versatile character that can fill both a cool and a dumb role." 

 

On 12/15/2022 at 8:55 AM, Eulogous said:

The abuse towards Shinmyoumaru.

Why does this exist? Also, why do people seem to hype the hell out of it?

I guess that it's because she is (kinda) weak, naive and vulnerable

[AlexandruUnu]

33 minutes ago, Nekofire said:

Hong Meiling is a joke character, look at her dialogue in EoSD

Yeah, I think you are right. Honestly, reading through ZUN's description on how he created Meiling (mostly from SCoOW), It's safe to assume that he barely even thought about her. He just went "Well, since a dragon is fitting for stage 3, let me just put in some random chinese girl I made up and slap the kanji for "dragon" on her hat and call it a day".

There is also the fact that literally every single other character in that game has some cool sounding title like "Ice Fairy of the Lake" for Cirno, and "The Girl of Knowledge and Shade" for Patchy, then there is Meiling with motherfucking "Chinese Girl". The weirdest part is that in Touhou 7.5 she got the title of "Colourful Rainbow Gatekeeper" which sounds so much cooler... and then it got reverted to "Chinese Girl" in 12.3 for some unknown reason.

And thanks to the fandom we know and have extremely mixed opinions about, she gets turned more and more into a Chinese stereotype (ZUN also making her fanon canon does not help at all)

This whole thing is a lost cause. 

Edited December 19, 2022 by AlexandruUnu

[Nekofire]

13 hours ago, AlexandruUnu said:

There is also the fact that literally every single other character in that game has some cool sounding title like "Ice Fairy of the Lake" for Cirno, and "The Girl of Knowledge and Shade" for Patchy, then there is Meiling with motherfucking "Chinese Girl". The weirdest part is that in Touhou 7.5 she got the title of "Colourful Rainbow Gatekeeper" which sounds so much cooler... and then it got reverted to "Chinese Girl" in 12.3 for some unknown reason.

I guess that ZUN made a reference to the her "China" nickname… it’s really upsetting because I like Meiling as well and she deserves more than just being a joke character, and it’s kinda like… racist ? I’m not saying that it is purely racism but what I’m trying to say is that : because you cannot pronounce a name from your country/culture doesn’t mean that you have to disrespect the person and their name…

[AlexandruUnu]

1 hour ago, Nekofire said:

I guess that ZUN made a reference to the her "China" nickname… it’s really upsetting because I like Meiling as well and she deserves more than just being a joke character, and it’s kinda like… racist ? I’m not saying that it is purely racism but what I’m trying to say is that : because you cannot pronounce a name from your country/culture doesn’t mean that you have to disrespect the person and their name…

The thing that frustrates me most about this whole situation is that the main reason why Meiling gets treated like this both in canon and fanon is because of her being Chinese. I know that China is a really bad place nowadays, but still. She got treated like utter shit all the way since the early 2000's, thanks to how much the Japanese were prejudiced against the Chinese at the time.

Also, think about it. During EoSD's development, ZUN could have made Meiling an actual dragon-humanoid (like he did with Yachie), making the "Hong Meiling is actually a dragon" fan theory true (Well, since dragons are considered the highest class of creatures in Gensokyo, that would make Meiling ridiculously OP), but of course, that didn't happen, and now we have to accept the current reality.

[superyanisback]

On 8/2/2022 at 11:55 AM, Paracausality said:

I don't get the hate specifically about the Moon sisters, I mean everything about the way they are is explained perfectly in the context, and while I don't really care about them either I think all the ranting about them is obnoxious. Their attitude? They're literally brainwashed by Lunar Capital propaganda, and in fact if their story is anything to go by they're actually less snobby and obnoxious compared to the Lunarian elites(there's also the fact that "impurity" has an actual physical effect in Touhou, and it's lethal to the Moon people. Like, avoiding someone or something infected with Ebola or smth isn't really a bad thing now is it?). Their power? You can't be the defender of a powerful and legendary kingdom without being OP to some degree. Them being unable to be featured in a game due to being powerful? BS, Hecatia is literally a boss in LoLK, the reason they can't be portrayed is because Touhou is a low-res bullet hell game, and the Moon sisters(Yorihime in particular) are like RPG characters that would require entire pages worth to explaining all their abilities and what they do. Imagine trying to render all of that crap in a game format like Touhou of all things...it might literally crash it. I simply can't find fault in them to hold against them, and they are exactly the way ZUN wants them to be. If anything the subject of hate should be the unknown Lunar elites instead. They also aren't infallible either, Yorihime fell to a trap, and got knocked out ffs. If an enemy of the Moon like Junko happened to be in the vicinity when that happened, then it would've been lights out for good.

 

I get this so much! 
Like even if they act dick-ish why do they get hate for it? Like dickish villains are a dime a dozen and you don't see people running around chanting 'Moonbitch Moonbitch'.

Is it just because they are one of the view actually antagonistic characters in Touhou? But even so they were soft on our Protagonists in SSiB -- They let Marisa explain the spellcard rules to them, then they agrees to fight using them.

So yeah, I don't get where the hate comes from, I just don't get it.  

[CountVonNumenor]

5 hours ago, superyanisback said:

So yeah, I don't get where the hate comes from, I just don't get it.  

I will still probably keep my opinion that the fandom dislike for the Watatsuki sisters comes as a result of their bad reception in SSiB + they way they were depicted in KKHTA (along with the Lunarians in generals; it's not like people unironically made more or less jokes about calling them "the Greater Lunarian Reich")