Auya3
aka Xenia
I can understand why the Dream world might be the key, and I fully agree here. Actually, maybe the Dream world might need a further dissection in order to further converse about the Fantasy Tunnels. Obviously there’s the fact that sleep has 4 stages; N1, N2, N3, and REM. Taking a book out of Sumireko’s page, we can assume that REM sleep is the stage that allows her to travel to Gensokyo (or if it’s just all stages, maybe REM stage allows her to manifest herself to her fullest potential). The reason why Sumireko is important here is because she opens the doors to what the different stages of the dream world may be. N1 and N2 is simple, close your eyes in N1, and light sleep in N2. I think, however, that N3 is the most important. I think that in the phase of N3, the tunnels actually manifest fully and to its truest and fullest extent. Let’s start it off by reverse engineering our way here. When in the Dream world, we can assume because we’re moving our whole consciousness around in Touhou 15, we’re in REM sleep, aka Vivid Dreaming. The tunnel we see there is already predetermined to the Moon. However, how does it reach there? Maybe, and only in the dream world, the tunnels can be rearranged in any way. I’ll stop reverse engineering for a moment and go to N1. Think of it like this. N1 is simply closing your eyes, or getting ready to open the tunnel, and N2, when you sleep lightly, is when the tunnel starts to determine its destination. And that leads us to N3, the between stage of Conscious acknowledgment of the Dream world and the forming of the Fantasy Tunnels. This stage I believe is the strongest stage as it fully locks the tunnels to the destination and fully forms it, and after being stable for a while, it then moves to REM phase, where consciousnesses can freely move around. To put it in other words, anyone can create those tunnels in their own sleep, but can’t properly maintain it since obviously they’re human, so they’ll wake. However, this doesn’t apply to concepts or items since they don’t wake, merely sleep. Maybe the reason why items can travel between Fantasy Tunnels is because the barriers themselves form them, as they’re not alive, they’re constantly “asleep”, so constantly forming all sorts of tunnels, and when two different Gensokyos have their tunnels align, then whatever is also eternally asleep can travel through. For example, those magazines. (Who knew that small gag would be so useful in this theory!) anywho, that’s all I have to really say about the Fantasy Tunnels.
TLDR; Fantasy Tunnels are formed in the Dream world, each stage of sleep corresponding with the construction and manifestation of the tunnels. Maybe humans can’t travel through them, or regular yokai, but special youkai may be able to travel through them, and so can inanimate “sleeping” objects, because the barriers themselves are constantly “asleep”. This means that the barriers themselves form the Fantasy Tunnels, between the barrier and other barriers, and they constantly cycle though the same 4 stages until they align and, maybe, something or someone passes through.
