So... what happened to the Touhou fandom during May?! It was chaotic.

[Bhrjr]

I agree. It's very possible to have great content with a limited budget, but you need very talented, competent, and passionate people to do the job.
Yet, there's nothing wrong with the desire of growth. If you dream high and want to reach the starts, why shouldn't you give it a shot? Ambition can be a great thing if it's set apart from greed. In that scenario of "What I'd do if I was in charge of Touhou?", I'd make the series grow in the healthiest way I could find and I can't find anything wrong with that.

And regarding the quality of the games, I heard complaints about the main series games having a big drop on it's quality. Apparently that have been happening since quite some time, and while I can't attest these complaints myself, I know these came from people who actually enjoy the bullet-hell/Shmup genre, so I don't think they should be ignored. In fact, they arguably could be taken even more seriously than other people's feedback as they can put their bias aside and compare to other games fairly.

That's why I said Nintendo, not "open world triple a game with 300+ million dollar budget with 8k ray-tracing graphics and 10,000 hours of content", since Nintendo does try to make sure that their forefront (non-Pokemon) titles prioritize innovative gameplay, instead of being a walking-simulator graphic/storyfest. There's no better candidate if we want people to take Touhou's gameplay seriously.

I mean, I'm kinda tired that the story goes "Incident happens -> Teeny tiny bits of new information drops -> Incident is solved -> Nothing ever changes" and I can't take it much seriously on the way it's going right now (paired with ZUN being severely out of touch with the community).

Touhou matters a lot to me. I mean, would you be happy if a series you're passionate about is called trash by everyone? Touhou only happens to dodge that because of its games and written materials being hard to get into, so most people, including the ones complaining about mischaracterization, doesn't ACTUALLY know about the quality of canon materials.

I would hire people more competent than me to do the jobs I don't know about, and profit from it.

I would not, since from my experience, you need one strong vision, not bunch of mediocre heads. I mean, what Touhou mainstream expansion headed by Touhou-loving otaku heads nowadays wouldn't end up with an open world 3d "shmup" gacha, or some mediocre anime that seeks to either be a slice-of-life no one cares, a new showcase of characters emulating the same vapid plotlines and dialogues of the mainline games, a crammed showcase of all characters, or eosd-wunning?
Touhou fans DON'T care about quality. Do you really think they would try to reinvent the shmup genre as 3d and be appealing to everyone alongside an innovative gameplay, or flesh out the existing and underrepresented characters (like the Akis, Tsukumos, pc-98) and make the setting accessible to newcomers? The same people that just spam EOSD characters in fanarts and fangames, where there's only one serious or backstory-exploring doujinshis for every 50+ light-hearted slice-of-life fluff?

And regarding the quality of the games, I heard complaints about the main series games having a big drop on it's quality

Even those people in twitter that says how Zun fell off or something doesn't know what they're saying. I mean, if Zun does take their criticisms to heart, and "optimizes" the shmups and written materials as they were, would that chance the non-fan's views and make Touhou the bastion of compelling storytelling, characterizations, and gameplay that everyone can resepect? It'll only please that small minority.

And in my view, Touhou's quality as a whole is deeply misunderstood both from the inside and out, where people outside think Touhou is this quirky neat thing, when in reality most of its contents (fanmade or official) are pretty unremarkable, where the series primarily stood out by being the "very first waifu", a series that continually throws out bunch of female-character archetypes, unlike one-and-done danshimuke high school romance animes. When type-moon was yet to fully mature and the only things closest to that in the otaku spaces were Leaf dating sims. With how otaku culture in Japan was moving away from giant robots/mainstream anime/military/other mecha and solely towards waifuism (just check comiket), it allowed Touhou to encompass all of otaku culture and gain the level of prominance it does in internet today.
And then people in the inside talk about canon characterizations being better than canon, when they themselves aren't the ones that read through every line of the vapid written materials and the shmup dialogues. (Like seriously, it's just all Reimu/Marisa-fest)

...well, that's a lot. Hopefully whoever's reading this was entertained, since whenever I'd try to criticize the quality of Touhou in places like reddit and discord I'd just get laughed off.

 

[Crab]

Touhou fans DON'T care about quality.

I'm not really sure if I understood what you're saying overall, so I'll take a guess that you're talking about twitter idiots and redditards.
To be honest with you, these people's opinions shouldn't be really taken seriously unless you understand where they're coming from. Doesn't matter if they are praising or shit-talking because both sides have lunatics. Just see where it's coming from - and if you can't, ignore it.

Even those people in twitter that says how Zun fell off or something doesn't know what they're saying. I mean, if Zun does take their criticisms to heart, and "optimizes" the shmups and written materials as they were, would that chance the non-fan's views and make Touhou the bastion of compelling storytelling, characterizations, and gameplay that everyone can resepect? It'll only please that small minority.

If ZUN did a better job at making games, the majority of actual fans would be happy. I'm pretty sure the reddit fans and average twitter users aren't the majority of the fanbase, it just happens they are annoyingly loud and can be obnoxious due to the nature of their habitats.
So while I understand that "optimize" isn't a good word for this, I'm positive that if ZUN put the effort to make an enjoyable game with great OST, great characters, great lore and fun gameplay, people would have a blast with it. There are shmups that make even casual players have fun with it.

Touhou matters a lot to me. I mean, would you be happy if a series you're passionate about is called trash by everyone?

I don't really care to what people have to say about what I like. If they're right, they're right; if they are wrong, they are wrong. I gotta roll with it regardless.
For example, I like Megaman X5 a lot for loads of reasons. There are people who hate this game due to certain aspects that don't bother me as much, but it doesn't exclude the fact they're correct on criticizing these aspects. Even if they just said "shit game lmao", it's their opinion, and it's a fact that the game would be better if the issues they complain about were fixed.
But answering your question directly: I wouldn't get happy to see people trashing what I treasure, but I wouldn't allow myself to be sad about it.

Regarding other stuff you said, I disagree a lot on your premises but I finally reached the point where I got lazy from writing too much. I consider Touhou to be "whatever the fans want it to be" because there's always a good lot of people on every side of the series, from lore nerds to people who are singing "Cirno's Perfect Math Class" for the 10000th time, there's room for everyone here. In the end, Gensokyo accepts all. Damn you Yukari.