Am I losing touch with Touhou?

[CountVonNumenor]

As some of you may have noticed, I have barely been active at the Moriya Shrine forum for the past months. For anyone wondering, I am still doing fine, I have just been a little busy with college life and trying to get through all my courses. However, there is another question that rose - am I slowly losing interest in this series?

Background

I have discovered Touhou somewhere in October 2020. Ever since, I have become increasingly hooked up into this fictional world, along with all the creations fans have put up. I feel like the peak of my activity in the Touhou community started in early 2022, as I finally joined this forum and became very active in discussing a series that I really enjoyed. Things started to change, however, as 2023 started to march on... There are a few symptoms I have noticed:

1. I have become less active in discussions about Touhou 

As mentioned earlier, I have been less active than I would have liked for the past months. In the past, I used to roll a thread every few days, and maintain discussion about it in tens of essay-sized comments. Today though, I think this is probably my first thread in weeks, if not outright months. A lot of the energy I used to have is simply gone, and I really need something that would help me get back at it.  
 

2. I have started to find other series that caught my interest 

A warning sign for that started when I opened up the threads about other series people like, along with the discussions about other series and anime in general. First cracks started to appear in January-Febraury this year. That was when I first got my attention diverted to another series, that being Amagami. As time went on, things went a little wild, as what started as a curiosity about the world and characters of Kancolle and Azur Lane ended up with me playing the latter. (what can I say, I just believe Ise is pretty, and Hood has a very sweet and elegant demeanor). As time went on, I started to pay less attention to what was going on with Touhou, and focused more on what I thought I was enjoying at the time. I thought I was just picking a new series in order to keep myself fresh and avoid a Touhou burnout, but it seems like new the new things I discover keep me away from Touhou. 
 

3. I am not feeling as excited anymore about new Touhou things 

Back in my first months of being a Touhou fan, I remember that I used to be extremely excited for the announcement of Touhou 18. For comparison, nowadays I am barely aware of the fact Touhou 19 is gong to be released (actually, I have plenty of moments in which I am even forgetting there is going to be a 19th mainline game). Same is going for the official literature. I am not feeling any thrill anymore for the release of a new chapter from the ongoing manga series (not that I even kept so much in touch with them outside the CDS capter which gave us Mizuchi). Probably my greatest moment of excitement was when I bought the entire Forbidden Scrollery collection, but it's been already a year since I bought the first volume, and I still have two more to read. One more example would be that of listening to Akatsuki Records, In the past, I was keeping up with all of their new music videos, but for the past months, I have skipped three songs in a row. I have told myself I need to get back and listent to them, but I have yet to do so... I really need to see what their ost recent songs are like (last one I kept up with was the Sekibanki song). Actually, I think I have barely listened to any Touhou music recently, the only saving saving grace being that I kept on listening to Ghostly Field Club and Changeability of Strange Dream.
 

4. I still have not got to finish (or even just play) any related game, be it official or fan-made 

This is something that I have also said at the end of last year, when I was writing the question if I am a bad fan of the series. The only game I have tried is Touhou 7, and I could even finish that one. SKILL ISSUES GALORE. I have not managed to find yet any fan game that I really wanted to play, and I do not know if Touhou LostWord really counts as an actual game (and not just a gambling machine masked as a Touhou game)...
 

5. I have lost a big art of my diligence in collecting things that I like 

In the past, I was always very curious and excited for whatever new Touhou fanart was being posted online. I used to collect them on a daily basis (which I am doing since December 2020), then I used to stored them on my Pinterest gallery (shameless plugin moment). However, despite the fact I am still doing it, I am just feeling less excited. I have better tools for finding more images, but it takes me more days until I actually send them to my favorites gallery. Until then, they are just clogging the tabs of the browser. Basically, what used to be a fun activity has become a chore. And I cannot just stop doing it, mostly due to FOMO (a general problem for me with anything Touhou related, and probably compatible with all of the points above). 

So, what is going on with me? Are those signs I am on the verge of dropping my position as someone who likes the series? Have I lost my passion for Touhou? Am I less and less interested for what is going on in the community? And even worse - what still keeps me as a Touhou fan? So many questions...

 

[Juuni]

I’ve got burnout on monster hunter and still find myself coming back to it. You can enjoy a series even when you wanna be involved with other ones. I’d say it be fine to maybe just take a break and enjoy what other series you wanna enjoy, instead of worrying about not being a fan of another series. Overall, just play and get involved in what is enjoyable to you and don’t worry about it.

 

[Space Banana]

For these kinds of situations, I don't recommend overthinking because it could give the opposite effect of what you want.

I found out about Touhou in 2019, which is when I created an account in Moriya Shrine (despite only started talking here recently). I became very obsessed with the games and played them a lot, but then years later, in 2022, I started not caring as much about Touhou, so I just took a break until I truly felt like I wanted to play again, and so I returned to the games.

You can take a break and focus on something else, and come back later and realise that now you are much more interested in the series after the break, or you could give the official games another chance, since you said you only played th7.

 

[Flame Sniper]

Don't worry Count! It's natural to get saturated, especially in your case, as you literally wrote essays on a semi-daily basis about Touhou. Just give it time and you will gain the enthusiasm back.
You don't have to stay involved in the community to say that you "like Touhou", do what you enjoy.

As Space Banana says, try enjoying another part of Touhou. Some ideas: Search for more remixes of the music, play the fighting games, play other main games (16, 10 and 5 are on the easier side, and it inspires me to play them, they are just soo pretty).

 

[Gri]

I have started to find other series that caught my interest 

That's very normal. Touhou only has so much official content (fan content mostly re-use official content, often in predictable ways so it's not as interesting) , and after almost 3 years you probably seen it all. 
 

I am not feeling as excited anymore about new Touhou things 

Probably because every game/manga are just "incident of the week". Barely anything matter in the plot, so it's hard getting excited about "yet another incident". This is meant to be enjoyed casually, so you probably won't feel very "hyped". Take time to enjoy other series, and come back when you want a more relaxing and simple story.
 

I still have not got to finish (or even just play) any related game, be it official or fan-made 

You know how many never even gave the games a chance? Don't force yourself if you don't like the gameplay, or stick to playing on Easy with Continues if you think you got skill issues, then move on from there to Easy 1CC, then Normal (since some game lock you out of the ending if you play on easy). Forget about Hard and Lunatic unless you really enjoy the game. Almost every game can be beaten very, well, easily on easy (10-11-12 are using the "bad" continue system, so use a patch if you don't want to repeat stages a lot). My personal recommendation is 7, since the "Cherry Border" give you a temporary shield you can use to practice dodging without worrying about getting hit.
 

So, what is going on with me? Are those signs I am on the verge of dropping my position as someone who likes the series? Have I lost my passion for Touhou? Am I less and less interested for what is going on in the community? And even worse - what still keeps me as a Touhou fan? So many questions...

 Well, being a "Touhou fan" isn't some kind of holy duty that you "have" to do. Touhou is just a multi-media series that you can enjoy or not. You don't have to like everything about it, and you don't have to always be talking about Touhou 24/7 (doing so makes for a pretty one-note and boring life). Just go with how you fell. You like it and are curious to discover more? Continue on ahead. Feeling like you've seen enough and want to move to the next thing? Go ahead, there's no Touhou police that's going to prevent you from doing so. There's no prestige to gain in enjoying something, only personal fun.

 

[DexterWeinslept]

Well I've been waiting a bit out from playing touhou bcs of exams...but I've never thought that I could really lose touch with it.

It's not a real worry of mine, but I think I only got a little "out of line". Since I started playing touhou bcs I wanted to accute my vision I didn't expect this can happen anymore xd

But, after all this happened. I think that I can fix this "problem" playing a bitter much, I don't mean "in a regular basis" but...two times a week? that could work...at least for me.

 

[Eulogous]

I've felt this way a few times before, and even a bit of it currently. The passion you have begins to evaporate and burnout sets in. Taking a break helps, but something feels like it's been lost along the way during it, and what should be a break to get some time to relax corrupts itself into a sort of FOMO.

Though, like Space Banana says, don't overthink it. Trust me, you end up trapped in your own head spiraling downwards with worries.

I am not feeling as excited anymore about new Touhou things

Same. TH19 doesn't really excite me, and CDS has been agony to both wait for and read (only really care about LE atm when it comes to official content coming out).

2. I have started to find other series that caught my interest 

A warning sign for that started when I opened up the threads about other series people like, along with the discussions about other series and anime in general. First cracks started to appear in January-Febraury this year. That was when I first got my attention diverted to another series, that being Amagami. As time went on, things went a little wild, as what started as a curiosity about the world and characters of Kancolle and Azur Lane ended up with me playing the latter. (what can I say, I just believe Ise is pretty, and Hood has a very sweet and elegant demeanor). As time went on, I started to pay less attention to what was going on with Touhou, and focused more on what I thought I was enjoying at the time. I thought I was just picking a new series in order to keep myself fresh and avoid a Touhou burnout, but it seems like new the new things I discover keep me away from Touhou. 

Perfectly normal. There's nothing wrong about being a fan of other things and getting invested when stuff starts getting interesting with it.

Azur Lane, huh? I started that way back when the Neptunia crossover event was going on. I had a cycle of putting it down for a while, picking it back up, and so on. Now there's a ton of new content that seems intimidating to start going through with my (probably) out-of-date ships.

4. I still have not got to finish (or even just play) any related game, be it official or fan-made 

This is something that I have also said at the end of last year, when I was writing the question if I am a bad fan of the series. The only game I have tried is Touhou 7, and I could even finish that one. SKILL ISSUES GALORE. I have not managed to find yet any fan game that I really wanted to play, and I do not know if Touhou LostWord really counts as an actual game (and not just a gambling machine masked as a Touhou game)...

At least you gave the games a try, even if it ended up not being a thing you're into. I'm a casual fan when it comes to shmup games, so I never really go higher than Normal unless the game feels like it's too easy. I approach the mainline Touhou games with a mindset of "enjoyment-first", and "skill-and-challenging-myself" if it clears the first part. I honestly recommend 14.3, 18.5, or really any of the scene-shooter side shmups if you wanna give the mainline gameplay style another go at some point.

 

[Maden]

Yeah, personally I'd also pretty much say what the others here posted already. It's normal that you aren't as enthusiastic about it as when you first started out.
Speaking from experience, I'm still around somehow even after spending more than 10 years with Touhou to some extend, albeit just more casually and less enthusiastic these days compared to back then. :SatoriStare:
Just keep liking the things you like at your own pace whenever you feel like it really, Touhou or not. If it weren't for the website or generally reading posts from other members I could go a long time being unaware of new releases, be it official or fan made, while still occasionally listening to doujin music, looking at art, playing some of the older (fan)games or even just mod some other game I'm playing with Touhou related content when I feel like it. And that "occasionally" mentioned previously can range anywhere between daily and several months apart.
Would I say I'm out of touch with Touhou or the general Touhou community? Sometimes/Perhaps/in some aspects. I'll still like Touhou on my own terms and at my own pace.

 

[Ka Takane]

I feel ya, especially in the games part. I think my bullet hell skills (if there were even any lol, though I had normal 1cc'd SoEW and LLS out of all games, so maybe I do have a little bit of skill I guess) have been rusting, when I played the Touhou 19 trial. I just kept recklessly running into bullets for some reason. I even tried to get an Easy 1cc on all characters in Mystic Square thinking it would just be easy as SoEW, as I wanted to unlock all the Extra stages of each character to watch ZUN's Mima Extra demo play myself (and there's no available hdi which already has all Extras unlocked), but I couldn't even get past Stage 4's boss...

I also have been lazy in following Esvee_Viridae's PC-98 fanfiction which I was diligently keeping track when it was still about HRtP and SoEW (as well as some Mima extras)... I don't know why I couldn't get myself to keep myself up-to-date on their PoDD novelization. I always thought "eh, I will just read it later, maybe if they've completed the story."

Another thing I am being lazy at keeping track is Foul Detective Satori, though I definitely know why I've been lazing around: it's just become too boring for me. Though I've been recently hearing of good things about the manga, so maybe I might take a peek on it in the future.

Anyway...

Are you still a Touhou fan? Hell yeah! It's not like you've suddenly hated or disliked the series. I myself have been lazy on playing Pokemon, and I don't talk much about it or consume new content of that franchise these days, but I never considered myself no longer being a Pokemon fan, because I still love Johto.

Are you on the verge of burning out? Maybe. If you find asking yourself that question it might be better to take a break. Though I would suggest trying to "diversify" the Touhou content you enjoy. It could be searching for NES arranges of your favorite songs, or randomly searching a crack ship in Dynasty Reader. I myself have been searching for SC-88 and SD-90 MIDI arranges on YouTube, and I've recently started some sort of a self-imposed challenge of posting found fanart of Seija daily on a Touhou forum I manage in raddle.me. Whoops, shameless plug lol. (But if you're curious, it's a very lax [rules-wise] alternative to r/touhou I created 8 months ago hosted on a old.reddit-like link aggregator, which I just recently made very active after the Reddit API drama prompted the Touhou subreddit to go private for 48 hours, you can find my pet forum at https://raddle.me/f/touhou)

So yeah. Don't go hard on yourself. As Maden has said, enjoy Touhou at your own pace. Yukkuri shitte ne! :)

 

[TheM3ds]

You know, I've been feeling out of touch with Touhou lately as well, in terms of canon I think I just stopped paying attention it and just stared to enjoy the series for it's characters, I'm not much of a lore expert but even I must admit that I'm barely invested in it nowadays since I care more about imagining my version of gensokyo, again I'm just in it for the characters and art, I honesty wish I could create some stories of my own one day, I'm just a secondary fan since I mainly engage in fan works and would like to make my own but even then I haven't figured it out myself.

Now I hate talking about this but with the amount of lewd art I've seen makes me feel like I've sort of become this degenerate just by looking at it and I hate it, I feel like I've lost touch with not only myself but with reality as well. I feel like I've corrupted my enjoyment of the series to the point where I'm paranoid to the point where I would be shamed by others for my enjoyment of the series, I.E. if someone called me a degenerate if I enjoyed this thing that is looked down upon or to a lesser degree receive disapproval or shame from members of the touhou community either because I said or made something controversial, at this point I can't tell if I'm just afraid of my downfall or I'm just overthinking shit. I know this isn't healthy to think about and at this point I've just been wondering if I should just take a brake from this community or just Touhou entirely.

It just hurts known what joy I had is slowly dwindling into misery and I have been trying improve my life but as always there's gotta be something to fuck my shit up. Ah, but do I know, at this point I'm still struggling with a bunch of things I don't want to be dealing with.

Edit: If the moderation team is reading this then I apologize for copying this post and sending it to other post, I made an error and decided to edit the original instead, if I violated the rules then I will accept punishment.

 

[CountVonNumenor]

Oh god, its becoming ever so clear that I a either completely losing touch with this series, or at the very least suffer from a bit of a burnout. And what better sign of goin through a burnout than the fact that I am barely active on this forum anymore. I think I have mentioned that already as one of the points in the opening post, but now I really do feel like a mere shadow of what I used to be (known for) on this forum, and no longer live up to my reputation...

I really need to get some time to reply on everything you guys have written here.

 

[nitorii]

looking again at this since you've revived the post
I've been both out of touch and burned out from the series and almost everything involving it since... september? I think? can't tell.
I can't deny it was a big part of my life for over 2 years if I recall correctly, but it just doesn't hit the same nowadays. I have other interests, most of which just spark more joy than Touhou can right now. All I consume touhou related is music, art, and rarely memes, if it's decent enough.
I still open this forum almost in the daily since I just like to lurk around and look at what people are talking about, but I don't feel like I want to interact, or even if I can add onto the conversation in any way. only post I comment on is "Share Music you Like", otherwise, I'm a complete ghost.
This decision to sorta vanish might be biased by some discussions I've had here which looking back weren't really necessary and just made things look awkward, but oh well, can't change the past, I suppose.

 

[NetsumuNico7]

It happens to me too, on almost every franchise really. I'm not touching a Megaman or Lemmings game for almost a year, and i recently playing Kirby 64, one of my favorites from that franchise, because beyond than that it was dead as well.
It also happened to Touhou, i lost the like to attempt to complete EoSD (the far i was about to complete it 1CC is right at the start of Stage 6, Stage 4 was my Lives eater) Just thanks to a streamer i just go back to interest on it, but just for the fangames, i'm thinking to go back once. And due... some problems in Discord i just decided to abandon the Touhou games and just focus on Bomberman.

I can understand how it fells, because oh boy being on various games to play is hard, like... I start to play this game and i'm just playing this for a long time, until i found a better game or just get bored of it. It happened me a lot during my childhood, you give me Sonic and i'm fully Sonic, DON'T GIVE ME ANOTHER THING. And it still happens to me, but now i can control it better. It's fine on those things happening, just wish i have time to do everything.

 

[CountVonNumenor]

As time goes on, I am honestly feeling like I am getting closer to ending my deals with Touhou and moving further as I am losing more and more interest for it and what is going on. One of the few things that still keeps me on is the time and intensity of emotions spent for 3 years already. And yet, I am still saving images, and talking about it with people (despite being much more interested in other series right now)...

 

[Hikiko Hime]

(despite being much more interested in other series right now)...

That. Right there. Just as you said you were passionate before, who is to say you won't feel similarly about these series that have 'taken you away from Touhou'? Who is to say you won't one day burn out from them and return to Touhou after a hiatus and 'remember' what first got you into it?

I feel like I just said this stuff in another post lol... but anyway there is no true 'right' or 'wrong' way to enjoy Touhou. You're either a fan or you aren't, and both are fine though that decision is ultimately up to you and no one else (Regarding your own personal 'fan level' if you will)

I go in and out of the series. In fact, every time I 'come back', I feel like I've been left behind by 1000 years lol.

To me, the fact that you are giving it so much thought proves you are indeed a fan. If you suddenly take some time 'off' that doesn't discredit what you've contributed to the fandom (even a post on a forum is contributing to me).

I'm still new here but already finding someone who writes "Essay long posts" and is known about it seems really cool already. The other posts here are also making me think not just about Touhou but life as a whole.

Personally, not every Touhou fan needs to be some super hardcore walking wiki. (Though I respect that!) Like the series as much or as little as you want. Even if you enjoy the occasional pic or two and 'that's it', you're still enjoying the series. If anything doesn't that make you a bigger fan? Merely thinking about Touhou makes you question your love for the series. It's clear you still love the series, but perhaps feel you're not expressing it in the way you'd like or something may be 'missing' from it for you specifically.

Anyway I feel like I'm repeating myself so, regardless of what you decide to do, I wish you happiness. If I see you again cool, cuz you seem cool to me. If not, then I wish you happiness and will be grateful that I know you exist. Either way good luck!