What do you guys think about fan OCs? (Specifically, the Touhou OCs.)

[Sir I]

I bring this up because I'm interested how the people in the fanbase feel about them.

[Eulogous]

I honestly really don't like OCs, because we have so many canon characters with barely anything, and it'd be better off to find an interesting way to include them into a fanwork instead of creating an entirely new character. If there had to be an OC, then have them at least blend in to the setting, like making them a human from the village or a rep for a species that's already established (a fairy/kappa/tengu/etc.)

I've come from fandoms where OCs are often times just self-inserts and eclipse the rest of a narrative, so I'm particularly biased against this sort of thing.

[SoundOfRayne]

Like a lot of other stuff that comes from the fandom, it depends.
The way I see it, OCs can be lumped into two camps: characters made to expand the universe, or characters made to fill in the universe. I don't think either is objectively better or worse than the other, but considering Touhou has such a huge roster of characters already, I'd say the latter is definitely fighting an uphill battle. Even though I'm pretty sure the point of this thread was to be mostly negative to the intrusive, uninspired OCs disrupting Touhou's canon, I do think there are some examples of incredibly effective OCs from both camps.

Among the many, many, many praises I can give to Osana Reimu and Reireimu, I have to give special props to the fact that Joyfull created a brand new character from scratch, and it fit in so nicely into the Touhou universe that no one really questions it at all. Reimu's mother and previous Hakurei shrine maiden, known in the fandom as Sendai Hakurei, is an OC. Yeah, she's completely original to this work and is never referenced in canon, but anyone who's seen these two works would likely agree that they ought be canon; they were just that effective at doing what they do. Sendai is just as beloved a character as anyone else in the cast despite not being "real." I had some internal debate over whether big-Rumia counted as an OC as well since, barring her name and design, she shares pretty much nothing in common with the canon Rumia. And just like Sendai, anyone aware of this incarnation of Rumia doesn't want to live in a world where this story never happened. Despite the stigma placed on Original the Character, if the story they're a part of of is interesting enough, people aren't going to care about technicalities.

Fan-games offer up a chance to see new interpretations of Touhou, both in mechanics and storytelling. This includes making completely new characters with abilities and motifs that we haven't seen yet in official games. But these are really hit-or-miss, and I wanna bring up some of the misses first. The fantastic Danmaku Festival duology remake EoSD and PCB and replaces the first stage bosses Rumia and Letty with new characters, Nix and Hyp. Nix replaces Rumia's ability to manipulate darkness with the ability to... summon... darkness... Hmm. Oh! But she also has some star projectiles. Yeah, that totally warrants her inclusion! Hyp is technically better, but only because no one gives a shit about Letty anyways. He's designed with a sleep motif, and attacks with feathers from his owl wings and big ol' fluffy sheep bullets. But honestly, the only thing about him that's genuinely memorable is the fact that he's a male yokai. He sleep. I sleep.

But then we have Elegant Impermanence of Sakura and Blue Devil in the Belvedere. EIoS has a pretty weak roster of characters if you ask me. Emitsu's design is too simple, Inori is just blue Reimu, and Shizuka, while looking pretty, is visually cluttered and doesn't leave a lasting impression. As I heard from one of my friends, she looks like a gacha-game pull. But one character does hit that sweet spot: the stage 4 boss, Hisoka Uroki. She's based off of a Shinkirō, a mythical clam whose breath creates illusions, and most people would agree that her boss theme is the best in the game. It's not the highest bar to clear, but she is sincerely memorable in a game where most other characters lack a real impact.
While I went into BDitB totally expecting to clown on "Blue Remilia" Sonia von Auersperg- and believe me, she deserves it- but I was surprised how much of an impression BDitB left on me thanks to its story being tied to one of Touhou's oddest loose threads: In a world so tightly centered around Eastern mythology and folklore, what the hell is a Western-style mansion doing here? Not many people consider it since EoSD's cast is the most recognizable of Touhou's characters, but they're seriously out of place compared to the rest of Gensokyo. As BDitB puts it, the Scarlet Devil Manor was originally from a westernized parallel to Gensokyo, Abendrot, and moved to Gensokyo to escape from a power struggle between the Scarlet family and the von Auersperg family. That sounds... kinda interesting actually. The SDM is kind of an enigma in Touhou's lore, and giving the characters a whole new layer of history with friendships, alliances, and enemies is pretty neat, actually. It's a shame we don't get a whole lot from it, since the nature of shoot-em-ups doesn't lend well to creating a deep, fleshed out narrative. But it does leave some questions in people's minds, and that intrigue is worth a lot.

And we can cap it off with a cheap shot at some low-hanging fruit. Touhou Lost Word's main character is an embarrassment, and everyone already knows exactly why that is. It commits every sin that's been used against OCs, and serves as a perfect example of why people dismiss them. The MC is written entirely for the purpose of giving the player a lens through which to view the world of Touhou. She has no defined personality so that any player can just pretend that she's a reflection of them. Frankly, it's a stretch to even call her a "character." She has amnesia, so she can't be proactive or have a meaningful contribution to the story. Everything just sorta happens around her, but she gets all the credit from the characters in-game since she, being a stand-in for the player, is the one controlling them. And just to really twist the knife, all of the characters in the game's stories have to be neutered. Not only does everyone have to play nice with the new girl, but they also have to play nice with each other, because you can't have the characters vehemently hating each other and being able to fight alongside each other in gameplay. It's totally cool to have Udonge, Junko, and the Watatsuki sisters fighting for the same team because the MC has the power of Christmas to bring people together or some nonsense like that... This deserves every bit of criticism it's received from the fandom.

I hope this has at least given the discussion of OCs a bit of depth. I find the hatred for OCs to be a bit 1-dimensional. Even though OCs have a lot of problems and I wholeheartedly believe they should be criticized for them, OCs are also responsible for some of the best pieces of the fandom. Writing an OC is the same as writing any other character; it takes time and work and consideration, and it shows when an author doesn't put that in. But hey, ZUN doesn't bat a thousand either. Touhou's canon cast has its share of unlikable or unmemorable characters too.