[Inaccurate] The problems of modern Touhou and how to solve them (+ some info about doujin scene)

[kif]

Somewhat off-topic post about TJD. I just want to share some thoughts about the album and situation around it.

Spoiler

The only thing I can only say the album was awesome. This album gives hope for changes to good side. Each track was great. Maybe he mostly made this album near HSiFS relea... Wait, there is an arrange of Smoking Dragon and it is great. (Couldn't ZUN put more effort in UDoALG OST then?). Some tracks have really nostalgic vibes for some reason. My most favorite tracks are 4, 5, 6 and 11.

About story I cannot say a lot. The story is okay.

It seems like CC don't sleep. Because when I wanted to relisten to the album (the next day after release) I went to YouTube, opened the track (on Monkybiten's channel), listened to it and moved to next one I noticed that tracks 1-10 were struck by ZUN/Ruw (it happened around 4:20 (for convenience, all time points given here are GMT+0), everything happened in around 3 minutes). But track 11 was still there (it was deleted between 5:20 and 5:50), so I don't think ZUN/Ruw accidentally missed one track when they were scrolling the channel (because there was even a playlist (there is no playlist now)). I think that CC just gave links to Ruw.
After that, they also banned ParseePaseo ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSu2hgMIHtlFhQttxwdovmQ/videos ), who uploaded official OSTs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epDLGPBOCmM (Linny. Took down between 15:30 and 18:30)
kurayamanawa hid it (Took down between 9:30 and 18:30)

+ Monkybiten's screenshot:


  Reveal hidden contents
View attachment 4534

If you want to listen to it go here: https://thwiki.cc/七夕坂梦幻能
(I wonder if CC are brave (and stupid) enouth to DMCA THBwiki and provoke a community war. Or can they fight only against weak ones?)

CC are really the ones who spoil all the fun. They are parasites: they don't create anything new, they just burn history, libraries and books (parallels are intended).

This situation only shows the problems of the community and its division. The small circle decide for the rest of the fandom if the whole fandom would have fan or not. I don't think it is good. 

When ZUN isn’t trapped by the confines of games, characters, or any of that jazz he really shines  no matter what. 
Even as the music in the games becomes more disputable, the CD’s have always stood their ground firmly and this has been shown time and time again, with basically every CD essentially reaffirming to everyone that ZUN has not lost this edge when it comes to making music.

Obviously the best case scenario is both games and other media have all the same level of extremely high quality music, though I do think some of your disappointment with UDoALG’s music is personal preference as many others love the themes, but at least we can say that ZUN still puts a lot of effort into the CD’s, though his tastes have changed with age and he probably puts less effort into the music overall, though he weirdly goes insanely hard on random things like fan album contributions or one off things like Independent Simulacrum so who knows.

tl;dr :ZUN is his own man and none of us have basically any say in what he does, if he wants to do something he does it because practically no one can tell him no, he’s the one making the music, we’re just listening to it and rearranging it-when touhou music doesn’t sound as good, you can probably bet ZUN just put less effort into it, because why the hell would he lose his ability to compose overtime? (Im not saying we shouldnt criticize touhou music when we dont like it, frankly just saying dont lose hope, zun will probably always put something out of nowhere and suprise us all again anyway) 

 

[vanyk]

Thank you for your reply.

When ZUN isn’t trapped by the confines of games, characters, or any of that jazz he really shines  no matter what.

Cannot agree, because in earlier games those things didn't limit him. The first thing he does for games is soundtrack and only after that the game itself and the whole story. I can give you examples of Touhou styled albums (for games), there the composers aren't limited by those things too and they mostly do great music.

Even as the music in the games becomes more disputable, the CD’s have always stood their ground firmly and this has been shown time and time again, with basically every CD essentially reaffirming to everyone that ZUN has not lost this edge when it comes to making music.

Mostly agree.

I do think some of your disappointment with UDoALG’s music is personal preference as many others love the themes

I like new soundtracks there, but I don't like that ZUN for most old characters just reused their old themes (with little changes) or stage themes, so we don't have Tsukasa's theme (in PoFV ZUN made a theme for Tei). (ZUN lost the original version of stage theme for Ran. So did he make a new one for her? No, he tried to make a copy from scratch). My problem with this soundtrack is that it is mostly unoriginal.

ZUN still puts a lot of effort into the CD’s, though his tastes have changed with age and he probably puts less effort into the music overall, though he weirdly goes insanely hard on random things like fan album contributions or one off things like Independent Simulacrum so who knows

Agree. I understand that his taste changes from game to game, from album to album, and I don't think it is a problem.

ZUN is his own man and none of us have basically any say in what he does, if he wants to do something he does it because practically no one can tell him no, he’s the one making the music, we’re just listening to it and rearranging it

Agree.

when touhou music doesn’t sound as good, you can probably bet ZUN just put less effort into it, because why the hell would he lose his ability to compose overtime? (Im not saying we shouldnt criticize touhou music when we dont like it, frankly just saying dont lose hope, zun will probably always put something out of nowhere and suprise us all again anyway)

Agree. One of the reason why this topic exists is that ZUN now puts less effort and he is easy going (I do recommend to read previous posts to understand why such attitude may have problems).
We should give fair criticism, so next works would be better. And yes, we shouldn't lose hope that ZUN can still do good games and albums.

 

[vanyk]

Recently I decided to read Touhou discussions on Twitter (worst mistake of my life) and I can only say that Twitter Touhou fans don't understand each other. I have found so many discussions about who are tRUE fans and who are not.
Someone made meme video about "I am a Touhou fan, look, I have a lot of Fumos" (I think the joke is obvious) . And discussions begin about that marketable plushies are bad and that the author of the video is not a tRUE fan.
A newcomer began his dive into Touhou from LostWord? What should tRUE fans do? Yes, make fan of the newcomer.
And after that Twits appear "why are there so many "secondaries" who doesn't want to understand the beauty of danmaku?" (I really recommend to read all replies from attached link (aggressive2hu found some reasons but not the roots of them)). Such tRUE fans are one of the reasons. How do you think which attitude would appeal more: "Ha-ha, a secondary plays a bad game" or "I see you are interested in Touhou. I you want to see the whole beauty you should play original games. I recommend to begin with PCB or IN or MoF on easy" (if OP doesn't have PC, recommend installing ExaGear or Winulator. Touhou games aren't very laggy even on potato phones).
(After all of these I even begin to think that /ja/ is much better and more pure place than Twitter (still /ja/ is not a good place))
(Yes, I understand that such argues are meaningless and unimportant if you compare to most things we have discussed here. But the problem is that a lot of fans from there don't understand that, what is important here is the roots of the problem (most of them we have discussed before))

One of the reasons why this happens is because nearly nobody helps the newcomers. You can say "a lot of years ago I came into Touhou myself without any help", but situation is very different from when it was (for example) 10 years ago. Newcomers don't know from where to begin and what is important in the series. A lot of people don't understand how PC or basic file system work. I have so many example of that: a lot of newcomers don't know why thcrap don't work with games from here (they tried to apply it to .torrent files or they had other difficulties) (thcrap translators help the newcomers with such problems), there are detailed videos how to install Touhou games from here and even after that a lot of people had problems (and the creators of the videos tries to help to solve them). What have you done to help them?

Why nearly nobody tries to introduce Touhou shmups not as games for Japanese weirdos, but as good games which are possible to beat and they are fun (just try a little harder) (and yes, losing is fun), and if you understand how to play them you see a beautiful world of danmaku. There are so many scripts which are just waiting for you to try them.
(And yes, I will repeat this again and again: have you thought why there are so many Geometry Dash fans (this game is really hard)?)

You can just say "don't visit Twitter". And it is obvious for many people who don't live in Western countries because in most cases they have better alternatives (and Touhou communities are better there for example Chinese Touhou fandom. I have examples from Touhou fandom in my country, where after questions like "what anime is this?" what the fans reply? No, they don't say something like "ha-ha, stupid anime fans", they reply "it is a game series. If you are interested I recommend to begin with [a game the poster think is best for beginning, mostly 6, 7, 10, 15, 12.3 or manga]"). But what alternatives for Twitter and Reddit are there in the West and how many people do know about them? I don't think most of newcomers know about them. Also, a lot of Touhou fancontent creators mostly use Twitter, so it is difficult not to use it.

And for me it is quite sad that a lot of fans cannot make a step further in Touhou and avoid Twitter and Reddit. And I don't know how we can help them from here.
And it is sad that most newcomers won't see this list, which could help them:


Spoiler









I wonder do you have ideas how we can help the newcomers?

 

[Nixarian]

Hi,

I know this forum hasn't been active for almost a month, but I found it so interesting that I wanted to chime in.

First, I wanted to say that I'm a newcomer in the most literal sense. I've known about Touhou for a while, with Bad Apple being my first introduction, along with fumo memes and such. I downloaded Touhou 6 for the first time about a year ago, but I recently redownloaded it because I'm really interested in learning the lore and characters, especially to understand the famous doujins like Osana Reimu. I'm emphasizing that I'm a total newcomer, someone who had zero knowledge of this series for the longest time, and I want to share my perspective.

There are a lot of points brought up here that are very interesting and can explain the recent situation regarding Touhou. As someone with no knowledge of most of them—like ZUN's work, his recent games, the doujinshi scene, etc.—I want to focus more on the community as a whole and what I think of it.

One of the problems Vanyk mentions, which I found interesting, is the decentralization of the Touhou community. As someone still looking from the outside, I can say that even with my little knowledge of the whole history of this community, it's clear Touhou doesn't have a centralized way for fans to interact with each other. This makes it difficult for people like me who don't know where to start. One of the best ways is to ask the fans themselves, but with such dispersed fans, it's really difficult to know where to ask about Touhou. This might be explained by how Touhou has always been like this since the inception of the game and the online days, or how Touhou is such an old series and inevitably, old series with rare releases start dwindling in community size. But still, as someone from the outside, I can say that it's really difficult to know where to ask about Touhou and get useful responses.

This leads to my biggest difficulty with Touhou: where to ask about Touhou itself. My first instinct (and I think most people's) is either Google or YouTube. Google gives almost no useful results and always recommends Reddit (which I'll mention shortly) or YouTube. YouTube helped me get into it, particularly with the help of AspreyFM's video "What is Touhou? A Brief Explanation" and another YouTuber, GensouChronicle, who made a similar video. These videos are perfect for someone like me to get into Touhou, as they explain in great detail what games are available, which ones they recommend playing, and the history of the community and memes, which is always fun to watch. I don't know if there are others or if these are even considered good in the community, but they helped me get to know more about Touhou. If there are others, let me know, as it will help me get into the games more.

However, regarding these two, there aren't many people I know who talk about Touhou, and as Vanyk mentioned, they barely interact with each other or even with the fandom. This is fine if they do it just as a passion, but to get people more invested in Touhou, they should collaborate more. They can help each other grow, introduce other content creators, and spread and amplify the reach of Touhou. Regarding Reddit, it seems mostly to post art and talk about random stuff, which doesn't appeal much to newcomers like me who have no idea what they're talking about most of the time.

Another important point is where to find other places to get to know the fandom. As I said, for most of us, it's either Google or YouTube, and even with YouTube, things are not organized or big enough to reach a wider audience. Then there's this website, which I thankfully found. I found it by pure luck while looking for a place to play the games, as Touhou 6 to 9 aren't on Steam, and I wanted to start with the first. This website is a godsend, as it has everything I wanted, but it's not well-known, requiring persistence and luck to find. I know this website is connected to piracy, which complicates things, and some people don't like piracy and don't inform about places like this. However, as someone who wants to get into the game and the community, it's really useful. Vanyk mentioned other piracy circles, which if you know about, please share. It's a shame that it's even more divided in this semi-circle of Touhou, as too many small circles make getting into Touhou more difficult. There should be a way to redirect people here safely and prominently, so it's the first place people are recommended to talk about the fandom or just play the games.

In conclusion, I see the community as too shut down. I understand very well that when you are in a community, you want it to be active and prosperous, but you also fear attracting annoying people who might ruin the community and complicate things. This leads to gatekeeping newcomers out of fear, which I understand, but it also means newcomers with good intentions have no means to get into the community. Even with this website and those YouTube videos I mentioned, which are great and informative, I still feel it's very little and not connected. All these things have their own communities instead of one united. I know centralizing everything is no easy task and might not be possible, but there should be a way to connect content creators, forums/piracy websites, other communities like Reddit or Discord servers, to have more of a united connection. This would allow tiny communities within each other to interact correctly and nicely with each other, or else newcomers will never get a chance to get into Touhou properly.

I'm not here to give answers on how to resolve the community, as I'm just new, but I wanted to share my perspective as a newcomer. There are most likely people out there in the same boat as me but with no means or reason to ask or talk about it. I'm here because I had nothing new to do and saw the controversy with the DMCA affecting the official games, so I wanted to dive into the whole thing to see what's up. I hope you guys can see this, so at least you have a new perspective from someone outside the community and maybe find a way to resolve all of this. This was still a great thread, and I'm glad I came across it. Good work, guys and hope things get better. 

 

[vanyk]

Hello.

It is quite interesting to see here a newcomer, because I don't think this topic is for newcomers (I wonder how you found this thread).

I want to give you some recommendations for Touhou games. If you are really new to Danmaku games I can recommend to begin with Touhou 8 Imperishable Night because this game has the easiest Easy, Normal and Hard modes. It would be good to learn how to play the games at first and after that you can begin to learn lore and play games in release (chronological) order. There is also a good fangame which is a tutorial for shmup beginners:





It is important to note that not only music but attacks and spellcards' names say a lot about characters.

Before Osana Reimu I would recommend to play EoSD (Touhou 6) and PCB (Touhou 7) (+ Extra + Phantasm) and maybe IN (Touhou 8) for more characters' details. There are some other doujins by the same creators but they require to know and understand much more characters and lore.

As someone still looking from the outside, I can say that even with my little knowledge of the whole history of this community, it's clear Touhou doesn't have a centralized way for fans to interact with each other. This makes it difficult for people like me who don't know where to start. One of the best ways is to ask the fans themselves, but with such dispersed fans, it's really difficult to know where to ask about Touhou.

Yes, this is a problem. Where to ask about Touhou? You can try to ask here, community here is friendly.

This might be explained by how Touhou has always been like this since the inception of the game and the online days, or how Touhou is such an old series and inevitably, old series with rare releases start dwindling in community size.

It wasn't always like that, from what I know in around 2007-2012 the community was much more united. About rare releases it is somewhat true (but it is not the main problem).

YouTube helped me get into it, particularly with the help of AspreyFM's video "What is Touhou? A Brief Explanation" and another YouTuber, GensouChronicle, who made a similar video. These videos are perfect for someone like me to get into Touhou, as they explain in great detail what games are available, which ones they recommend playing, and the history of the community and memes, which is always fun to watch. I don't know if there are others or if these are even considered good in the community, but they helped me get to know more about Touhou. If there are others, let me know, as it will help me get into the games more.

It is quite hard to find something good via YouTube, but I do really recommend to watch MegamanOmega (https://www.youtube.com/user/MegamanOmega184 ) because he makes videos with comments how to pass certain parts in games (which really helped me when I was playing SoEW (yes, the first games I played were Touhou 1-5)), he also makes videos about fangames. AspreyFM is good, GensouChronicle is OK, he makes good videos but sometimes he say some really strange things. There are much more Touhou-Youtubers but most of them don't make content for newcomers (Magiftw may be for newcomers but he mostly read facts from Touhou wiki). It is hard for me to offer something because I don't know if you are afraid of spoilers or not.

However, regarding these two, there aren't many people I know who talk about Touhou, and as Vanyk mentioned, they barely interact with each other or even with the fandom. This is fine if they do it just as a passion, but to get people more invested in Touhou, they should collaborate more. They can help each other grow, introduce other content creators, and spread and amplify the reach of Touhou.

Again, there are much more of them and some of them collaborate (people like MegaFrog, Megapig9001), but I understand your
point. And yes, it quite sad they don't popularize a lot of things. (Though, there are PigeonVoyageur
( https://www.youtube.com/c/PigeonxHunter/videos ) and yeashie ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSRDYLJi4KZgRalkDZFdZzA/videos )
who play a lot of different fangames))

Regarding Reddit, it seems mostly to post art and talk about random stuff, which doesn't appeal much to newcomers like me who have no idea what they're talking about most of the time.

About Reddit, it was not always like that, but from what I know this is a common problem on subreddits.

I know this website is connected to piracy, which complicates things, and some people don't like piracy and don't inform about places like this.

Yes, that is the reason why this site is not popular now.

Vanyk mentioned other piracy circles, which if you know about, please share.

About other circles: there is DoujinStyle (https://doujinstyle.com), there are several posters on nyaa (example: https://nyaa.si/view/1792784 ).

There should be a way to redirect people here safely and prominently, so it's the first place people are recommended to talk about the fandom or just play the games.

It would be a good idea. But if you are in English speaking fandom and say that piracy is good then Touhou Reddit and Touhou Wiki would not like you. But if you are not in English speaking part of fandom it is much easier. Youtube, though, would not care about that.

In conclusion, I see the community as too shut down. I understand very well that when you are in a community, you want it to be active and prosperous, but you also fear attracting annoying people who might ruin the community and complicate things. This leads to gatekeeping newcomers out of fear, which I understand, but it also means newcomers with good intentions have no means to get into the community. Even with this website and those YouTube videos I mentioned, which are great and informative, I still feel it's very little and not connected. All these things have their own communities instead of one united.

The main problem that the "face of the community" (Touhou Reddit and Touhou Wiki) chose a bad strategy for gatekeeping which lead to that the people who really want to get into Touhou and not just watch fanarts don't know how to do it.

I know centralizing everything is no easy task and might not be possible, but there should be a way to connect content creators, forums/piracy websites, other communities like Reddit or Discord servers, to have more of a united connection. This would allow tiny communities within each other to interact correctly and nicely with each other, or else newcomers will never get a chance to get into Touhou properly.

Yes, that is what I want too. Surprisingly Chinese Touhou fandom somewhat managed to do it ( https://thwiki.cc ), so this is mostly Western fandom problem.

I'm not here to give answers on how to resolve the community, as I'm just new, but I wanted to share my perspective as a newcomer. There are most likely people out there in the same boat as me but with no means or reason to ask or talk about it. I'm here because I had nothing new to do and saw the controversy with the DMCA affecting the official games, so I wanted to dive into the whole thing to see what's up. I hope you guys can see this, so at least you have a new perspective from someone outside the community and maybe find a way to resolve all of this. This was still a great thread, and I'm glad I came across it. Good work, guys and hope things get better. 

Thank you for your post. It was interesting to watch it from outside.

At the end I can offer some really good memes and fan animators if you are interested:


Spoiler

 

[Nixarian]

Hi, thank u so much for taking your time to reply to my messahe. I came across this thread as I went into the forum looking for stuff related to if downloading the games here was still safe, and what changed with the whole ordeal. I just looked at the title of this and thought it was interesting enough to peep it and was really interesting. Thank u a lot for that tutorial, it was honestly realy useful and helped me get to know some mechanics I wouldn't have otherwise know about. Also I'll start with touhou 8 if that's what u recomend, I was playing Touhou 6 before but got to stage 4 and got destroed many many times lol. Also thank u a lot for the recomendations of other channels and content regarding Touhou, I always knew Touhou was known for it's infnite amount of fan content going from music, fan games, and memes, so it's nice having some recomended that are not the typical stuff. And sure, if u want to recomend me other stuff feel free to send them my way, anything u find interesting really, though if music the better as Touhou fan made music is out of this world.

Thanks again for replying to everything I had to say, it's always fun seeing what others have to say regarding stuff like this so thank u a lot. Sry if it's more of a short message but u responded everything I talked about and more lmao, so yeah, feel free to send me anything u want. See ya around man

 

[vanyk]

I already began to think they would never find my post.

aggresive2hu and Nmlgc have found this thread. So I will discuss this topic again and I will reveal what I am doing now.
First of all, that post will be fully reworked. Why? Firstly, there are many mistakes and I conveyed some information badly. Secondly, this post is mostly just the combination of facts, what happened, but it doesn't show why and how it happened in most cases.
Before making that post, I mostly researched Western Touhou fandom and mostly how it looked like in mid 2010s-now. But sometimes I dived into earlier periods and into Chinese and Japanese fandoms. Back then I began to notice something. But after some time while I was searching using Nitter I found posts from your circle. And I began to understand what I noticed. I made a small dive into this and that is how that post appeared (the part about franchise was heavily based on tweets from your circle, other parts are mostly my thoughts). After that I continued to read your posts, but after some time I stopped, because there was no new info for me in your tweets (hearing every time that water is wet and doom-posting became boring for me + I didn't have a lot of free time). When free time appeared I started to research Chinese and Japanese fandoms more. But later one research (I will reveal all my sources in the remade post) inspired me to dig into this topic again, and much more deeper than you did (some your replies showed me that you don't know about a lot of things). I have read a lot of discussions (by Japanese and Chinese fans) and researches (with data and statistics) about doujin and Touhou (Touhou has been researched since its Golden Age). And a lot of progress on these directions has been made by doujin circles themselves.
Now I know much more about this. I know much more questionable things related to ZUN and Touhou (for example many kinds of commercialization appeared before and during the first half of the Golden Age, but what is more interesting, why it happened) (+ since 2000s, ZUN and Touhou has been very different from the rest of doujin sphere). But I will not just criticize him (or hate him, because it will not change anything), but will also analyze why and how that happened, which will be much more useful.
I can thank you all because your tweets led to all of these, although now I do not agree with more your points than before and with the way how you convey information. You sometimes act like other Western Twitter guys. But okay, most Western Touhou activities don't happen on Twitter, and I am not fully from Western World...

So, my current plan about this topic is to gather more information, make a post about some changes in doujin scene, make another post (I will not spoiler it) and with fully prepared setup I will remake this post.

The replies by Nmlgc are interesting, so I will answer to them.

Spoiler

He seems to yearn for some golden age of Touhou in 2007-2012, but he couldn't be around to realize that the community was just as fragmented and gatekeeping back then as it is now. I wouldn't want to go back

Yes, now I know more about that now.
But the current strategy of gatekeeping on Western social medias is quite strange for me (especially if a newcomer want to play old games). Would not it be better to change it?

Touhou is simply too many things at the same time, not to mention all the things it's collectively misunderstood for being, due to language/culture barriers and terrible communication/management.
Worse, it's almost like everything in and around Touhou was and continues to be precision-engineered to polarize as strongly as possible.

Agree, but why not to make knowing about different parts of the fandom much easier?

Being open about piracy vs. hushing it up is the biggest wedge issue that probably single-handedly doubled the number of potential sub-communities. Then you've got every part of the core series being an acquired taste, the resulting primary/secondary divide.

About piracy agree. 
And this is the reason why I don't like these terms. If you aren't interested in lore, you are a secondary for lore fans. Don't have 1cc lunatic clears, you are a secondary for some lunatic players. That is why I don't really like not strictly defined terms (+ terms that define anything and terms that define nothing (but those are semantic problems))

Then again, this whole rhetoric about uniting and improving the community sure reminds me of myself in 2011 and 2012. It's the same mindset that ultimately gave birth to thpatch, as my attempt to unite at least hackers, translators, modders, and non-English-language communities.
So maybe OP is onto something as well. After 18 years of the fandom not overcoming Touhou's inherent polarization, the odds are strongly against him, but who knows. I'm rooting for him, it's about time Touhou sees someone young doing another revolution just as I once did.

Thank you for your support. My current main goal is gathering info and links from different parts of Western Touhou fandom (+ a lot of useful things from Japanese and Chinese fandoms) in one place. This topic was just a compilation of my (and some of yours) thoughts I had (or found) during the research.

The worst part, though, is how much he yaps about the good old doujin spirit as if Touhou's origin in a regionally isolated scene hasn't always been yet another major point of division. Define it how you want, but the gatekeeping is right there in the name!

I didn't really get what you meant. If I correctly understood the part you talk about it was based on tweets of your circle and the threads of Touhou haters one of you shared.
Now I know more about the changes in doujin scene in 2010s. And I didn't really get the point about "regionally isolated scene". Because Touhou is not the only thing not from Western World and not for Western World which became later popular there (and it works in the opposite direction).

Not only do you have to basically be Japanese to participate, but this archaic way of releasing fan works is *the whole reason* why copyright is a perennial issue in Touhou. We were never intended to consume it, so why should they bother just one bit about what we think?

Because Touhou has already stopped being the only Japanese thing. Chinese fandom is a big part too.

There's no way that Westerners with zero ties to Japan and no fluency in Japanese would even be talking about the doujin scene if Touhou didn't happen to originate in it. Us doing that only proves that Touhou has evolved way beyond; why *wouldn't* you commercialize at that point?

Agree with the first part.
About the last part, somewhat agree, but that isn't the reason of commercialization, because it began in 2007.

It seems like Vanyk wants Touhou to return to this fad-like doujin state when it was still growing and right before it exploded, and wants that state to last forever. But well, that's the opposite of lasting mass appeal and having Mystia's Izakaya sell close to 1 million copies.

No, that is not what I want. I want Touhou to develop not to stagnate. (and aggressive commercialization is not the only way for development)

So if non-Japanese people lament "the death of the doujin scene", all I hear is "I want more quirky obscure media to pirate and leech off creators while they're still small enough to not care". Especially if these points are argued on a piracy site. Not the best optics there.
I've never heard these words from people who actually contribute. Those either integrate into what's left of the scene, learning the language and all, or just go with the times and release their work in modern ways and without language or import barriers.

Back then most of my complains were about non-direct commercialization of not only Touhou, but the whole doujin scene (well, now I know that consultants who know about doujin exist). (the piracy is not the problem here, lol)
People who actually contribute mostly just analyze the changes without judging. But there are some researches by them which actually mention problems. (for example, there is a book (by a doujin circle) which goal is to teach doujin circles how to manage money and avoid problems many newcomers have (+ mentions a lot of other problems), or there is a recent research about the evolution of Touhou doujin scene where a quarter of the research is just about problems)
And Chinese fans don't need to fully integrate, they have a lot of their events.

Ultimately though, none of this matters. Capitalism has evolved Touhou into its current form, and if it works well for ZUN, you can't argue against it.

Somewhat agree.

"Persuading ZUN"… yeah, 2010 called and wants its memes back.

Back then I was just naive (and put that as more *preferable* but less realistic proposal)
Now, well, Yomiuriland x Touhou (I know the opinion of your circle about it) couldn't exist if Japanese fans didn't manage to change ZUN's opinion about one thing 6 years ago because they wanted to have a small (but similar from the side of guidelines and *unspoken rules*) thing. During those 6 years those things were just becoming bigger. (I will cover that later in more details).
Fans were doing that thing for 6 years, it was just a question of time when somebody more serious would try to do it (and as always ZUN would allow that).
+ I think you noticed that in most cases ZUN won't know about your existence until you (or somebody else) tells him about you. Many Japanese fans know about that and they know how to use this information.

Besides, he's 47, so his life priorities have long shifted. Certainly explains the real-life allegories in the lore that you hate so much – it's what you start worrying about when you have kids.
And 27 years is already on the upper end as far as software development careers go.

Where did I say I hate real-life allegories? I don't like some really illogical things in print works.
About 27 is questionable, it depends on sphere.

So the current trajectory of Touhou is either
1) ZUN retiring within the next 10-15 years with the fat stack of cash he's accumulated from selling out Touhou right now, or
2) ZUN enjoying being a living meme so much that he'll continue until he dies.

We will see, now it is hard to say how he will act.

And maybe, just maybe, annual Touhou releases are the whole reason why all of us are still here. (Because game quality never mattered and these releases are just about keeping fan interest up, thus pulling us back in rather than letting us move on.)

Doesn't that how many series work?
Anyway agree.

PS: I read that "review" by OppositeWinner. Had some fan reading it (especially the cringe and biased way of explanation), and some points made me laugh. I know about most of those things, and in some points he is wrong. But what made me glad is the fact that he try to ask questions (rarely, but still).

That is all for now. Some facts I mentioned here are intentionally phrased in a way it would be hard to find info about them if you don't know about them. I am curious how many of these facts the circle know about. Most these facts mean nearly nothing if they are viewed separately. Anyway, in the remade post I will put them together and cover them in more details (+ give sources to them).

 

[Witch Hunter Siegfried]

Back when I used Reddit I remember getting in trouble for saying I "downloaded" EOSD (From here though didn't say anything related to that, just said I downloaded it) on a post I made about the game having technical issues lmao, They really expected me to import a 20 year old game that's long out of print lol

View attachment 5294

 

[Witch Hunter Siegfried]

I've heard the Crowdfunding rules mainly exist due to the Japanese not liking crowdfunding hence it not being being allowed, as they view it almost as investment and making money before the work is made, combine that with the fact issues can arise from it, the one that comes to find is FNF which is in development hell, and I can honestly see why it's not allowed, though mostly neutral on that issue, though it might be nice to get more out there. For the mobile games should one want to make one you could just make it free with ads and pay to remove them, which is what a fair few games on mobile do anyway.

View attachment 5295

 

[vanyk]

Back when I used Reddit I remember getting in trouble for saying I "downloaded" EOSD (From here though didn't say anything related to that, just said I downloaded it) on a post I made about the game having technical issues lmao, They really expected me to import a 20 year old game that's long out of print lol

That mostly happens on Touhou Reddit and Touhou Wiki because of DMCA drama when ZUN's legal team began to DMCA pirated official Touhou content. When it was revealed that it was by ZUN's legal team, Touhou Reddit and Touhou Wiki began to support this decision. It is hard to say who is responsible for DMCA: ZUN or Ruw (but knowing how ZUN acts with legal stuff and how Copyright Crusaders work, I think it was Ruw).

Also Touhou Reddit is against pirating PC-98 Touhou games (that is funny, because even Japanese fans use emulators to play PC-98 games)

I've heard the Crowdfunding rules mainly exist due to the Japanese not liking crowdfunding hence it not being being allowed, as they view it almost as investment and making money before the work is made, combine that with the fact issues can arise from it, the one that comes to find is FNF which is in development hell, and I can honestly see why it's not allowed, though mostly neutral on that issue, though it might be nice to get more out there.

It is slowly changing now, because doujin creators realized that they need to somehow survive during COVID. So this unspoken rule is changing slowly (I wrote about unspoken rules here). Now crowdfunding is not that big no-no. It was big no-no before because for many Japanese people such fan activities were just a hobby. And when you bought doujin/fan-made works it was viewed not as payment but as donation and showing your support. The primary goal of these activities was mostly getting fun, money is the secondary goal. So trying to actually get money from such activities was viewed as something weird and was not really supported. It began to slowly change since mid 2010s and COVID had some impact too, so crowdfunding is not a big no-no now.

For the mobile games should one want to make one you could just make it free with ads and pay to remove them, which is what a fair few games on mobile do anyway.

Somewhat yes, that is what some fangames do. But if you want to actually earn money or you have a very big fangame that may be not enough.
Funny thing there was a Touhou mobile before Cannonball fangame by fans which had gacha elements.

 

[Witch Hunter Siegfried]

That PC 98 bit is especially silly, out of curiosity I checked Ebay to see if I could find the games to see how bad the prices were, they weren't even on there at all lol. But the changes to crowdfunding is a good idea, and it makes sense Zun is somewhat changing his mind on it, it's especially important for physical stuff like books and boardgames and the like 

View attachment 5300

 

[Nmlgc]

Might as well respond directly here, that indirect Twitter format is too constricting anyway.

First of all, as you're probably going to see from my arguments, you can't really lump me in with the rest of "the Touhou hater circle". I do share some of their opinions and support them because these viewpoints deserve more representation; the whole Touhou spectacle is in dire need of well-informed criticism and they typically have stronger arguments than regular fans. So I help them out every once in a while if they happen to misrepresent any of the few things I was involved with, or that I know more about than they do. Since they're closer to my own viewpoints, they're very appreciative of that, and they get to keep their argumentative high ground.
Still, I have more differences with them than they have between each other. I do call out particularly bad and petty arguments on their side, and straight up don't care about a lot of aspects they criticize (lore, real-world politics, character designs, commercial advertising stunts, alcoholism, …). For the most part though, I prefer to keep my mouth shut about things I'm not at least somewhat sure about or invested in. Doesn't mean I agree with it.

Also, I've completely stopped looking at the fanwork scene in 2011. And while I do occasionally observe from a distance what's happening in the core series, I haven't actively interacted with any of it since 2018 either.

But I will not just criticize him (or hate him, because it will not change anything), but will also analyze why and how that happened, which will be much more useful.

Kind of like you in a way. So you definitely know more about this than I do, not denying that. These days, I have better things to do than community research; ReC98 is the only reason I'm in this anymore, and once that business stops making money, I'm out.

But the current strategy of gatekeeping on Western social medias is quite strange for me (especially if a newcomer want to play old games). Would not it be better to change it?

Completely with you on this one. ReC98 has long solved this argument for me via good old capitalism: I offer my time and skills to do Touhou-related coding and research work in exchange for money, and I'm eternally grateful for everyone who engages in this transaction because they believe it's a worthwhile investment. It's always interesting to know how my customers engage with the franchise beyond this transaction so I can somewhat tailor my product to their interests and make it even more worthwhile for them personally, but why would I judge them for it? That would be utterly self-destructive.
And I don't even have to care about getting more people to play the games because my business is growing just fine. These days, the ReC98 blog drives way more engagement than the actual code because people just like reading about anything and everything hidden within these culturally significant games at the core of the spectacle. Sure, the backer list includes a fair share of gameplay people, but it's far from being the majority. If ReC98 was funded entirely by gameplay fans, it would be in a significantly different place today.

You're talking to the one person who managed to monetize in-depth and highly technical game research toward an audience who doesn't play the games; of course I would agree that gatekeeping is silly. I'd even go further and say that we don't even have to care about what gatekeepers think. Because:

1. They're driving themselves out of the market with that stance.
   
2. I've been consistently selling out all my capacity anyway, whatever they're saying sure isn't hurting my bottom line, nor anyone else's.
   

Agree, but why not to make knowing about different parts of the fandom much easier?

Again, I agree as well, because everybody benefits from that. I was simply theorizing why it hasn't happened so far, based on my own impressions.

If you aren't interested in lore, you are a secondary for lore fans. Don't have 1cc lunatic clears, you are a secondary for some lunatic players.

People are seriously using these terms in this way now? Got any quotes?
But yes, the whole notion has always been there, it's invoked every time someone says "well actually, Touhou is [insert personal conviction about ZUN's main motivation]". I've long moved on to instead just saying the tongue-in-cheek "Touhou is anime" unironically; it captures the overall spectacle better than any individual element by instead referring to the biggest culture it unquestionably overlaps with. All my Touhou-related GitHub repos have the anime tag for precisely this reason.

That is why I don't really like not strictly defined terms (+ terms that define anything and terms that define nothing (but those are semantic problems))

You know which other term is so overloaded as to be basically meaningless these days? "Doujin". Whenever I use the word, I'm referring to

• the exclusively Japanese scene of
  
• producing creative works that
  
• historically grew around
  
• physical, in-person conventions,
  
• hosted at fixed times during the year (thus implying production deadlines),
  
• where these goods are sold, from creators to fans (← real, human interaction!)
  
• thus invariably spawing a piracy scene if some of the resulting goods suddenly end up enjoying a surprising global popularity,
  
• as well as the physical stores that sell these goods after the fact.
  
• Which also happened to be the only sanctioned way of selling Touhou fanworks in the Golden Age (that thankfully neither of the two of us wants to return to).
  

Hence, the regionally isolated, low-key, person-to-person nature is the entire point. You might copy that concept, relocate it to China, and change the operating language of your piracy scene, fair enough. (Though I'd just refer to the resulting scene as tóngrén then, just like we have a dedicated word for Korean manga.) But as soon as you add global digital distribution, or have any aspirations to grow, develop, and professionalize beyond the above constraints, you've moved past "the doujin spirit", as simple as that. The English Wikipedia page does not mention those things either. So we all might as well stop using the term entirely at that point, and instead specify more clearly which aspect of doujin-ness we're talking about in any specific instance.
As far as I'm concerned, the only distinction that actually matters is whether you act as a hobbyist or a business. Every other term (including indie) is at best tribalism or PR/sympathy-fishing, and at worst upholding the silly, silly East vs. West dichotomy we're (hopefully) trying to move past here.

About the last part, somewhat agree, but that isn't the reason of commercialization, because it began in 2007.

Looking forward to your citation for precisely that date.

No, that is not what I want. I want Touhou to develop not to stagnate. (and aggressive commercialization is not the only way for development)

How should it develop then? Are we talking core series or fanworks here? The core series is beyond our control and can only barely be influenced by ZUN's close friends, so that train of thought is not even worth following as far as I'm concerned. "Becoming friends with ZUN and drinking a few beers together" is how the 2010 meme about persuasion continues.

Yomiuriland x Touhou (I know the opinion of your circle about it) couldn't exist if Japanese fans didn't manage to change ZUN's opinion about one thing 6 years ago

I'm attributing this and other advertising stunts more to ZUN's gradually changing life situation, but who knows. Maybe there is definite proof from a ZUN interview. But until then, it's a pointless discussion about correlation and causation.

Where did I say I hate real-life allegories? I don't like some really illogical things in print works.

aggressive2hu does, this was directed at her.

We will see, now it is hard to say how he will act.

Indeed, and it's tiresome to engage in this perpetual guessing game.

Doesn't that how many series work?

This was also directed at aggressive2hu and "the circle"'s wishes for more quality in the core series.

 

[vanyk]

Thank you for your reply.
I am sorry for lumping you in the rest of "the Touhou hater circle". I respect everything you made for Western Touhou fandom. I wish good luck with your ReC98 project.
I agree with some of their points, too. But only some of their points are strong, but some of their points (as you showed later) are quite strange. I don't really like the way how they convey information (but this may be only my problem). Many regular fans don't notice problems or they think that they are insignificant, that is why their points are weak. The points of "the Touhou hater circle" are stronger because they know that there are problems, but the problem is what to do next with this information. That is another reason why I don't fully agree with them, because I prefer to find a way how to use information. If you can improve their culture of discussion then I am with you.
For me Touhou is not only about official works but main part of Touhou are also derivative works. Each new official work just fuels Touhou fan scene give more material for it, brings interest back. One of the reasons why lore and story is very far from perfect and really vague is to give more material for different interpretations which leads to more ideas for fanworks. Touhou could not exist as we know if there were not a lot of fanworks. I know that for Western fans guidelines may be not that good (I read spaztron64's post), but for Japanese fans they are still good.
I research Touhou and doujin because I want to understand the background behind all of these to see what lessons we can learn from all of these. + I get fun from this, really. That is what I do in my free time (if I have some). I still like Touhou, I wouldn't do it if I didn't like it.

ReC98 is the only reason I'm in this anymore, and once that business stops making money, I'm out.

I understand 

You're talking to the one person who managed to monetize in-depth and highly technical game research toward an audience who doesn't play the games; of course I would agree that gatekeeping is silly. I'd

I see. For me Touhou is still more about hobby and I don't think about getting money for my activities. We see this problem from different points.

People are seriously using these terms in this way now?

About lunatic players for example this... wait they deleted it.
About lore fans there is a lore den in local community in my country which acts like this.
If we will take what Westerners call anime then yes, "Touhou is anime".

You know which other term is so overloaded as to be basically meaningless these days? "Doujin".

About doujin somewhat agree. Because even for the ones who participate in this activities it is hard to give strict definition for it (but I have seen doujin books, which tried to give a definition)
About points in definition you gave:
1. No (especially nowadays), because there were doujin(-like) events in Korea, China and Taiwan even in 2000s.
2-6. Agree.
7. Somewhat agree, but doesn't it happen with any other subculture (even with Western game and movie industries)? And yes, piracy greatly helped Touhou to get popularity outside Japan. And why are you so obsessed with piracy? Only because we are on a piracy site?
8. Physical stores are a way for circles to actually earn money if they want. They existed at least since 1990s.
9. It is a strange point because there have been paid Touhou items on digital stores at least since the beginning of 2010 (there may be earlier items, I didn't do a deep dive).

About person-to-person nature agree. About "doujin spirit" (which is much more vague than doujin), from your side a big part of doujin scene (I am not talking about Touhou) don't have "doujin spirit" because a lot of doujin circles sell their items on physical or digital stores.
We might stop use the term doujin and say that doujin and indie are the same thing, but there are still a lot of differences. Cultural differences are obvious, what is not obvious: doujin circles and indie studios are different entities from economical side and legal side (still there is no strict legal definition for doujin) (from legal side parody doujin works don't violate copyrights while parody indie works do (actually it is more complicated), that is why Japanese people say that Nintendo is kind to doujin (again actually it is more complicated), to indie... I think you know yourself). It would be great to reduce differences between doujin and indie, but it is hard to do it.

the only distinction that actually matters is whether you act as a hobbyist or a business.

Somewhat agree, but the border between them is vague.

Looking forward to your citation for precisely that date.

For now I will just say that a *thing* that is unacceptable for most of doujin scene (remember drama around Comiket at the beginning of September this year) and the *thing* Cannonball is criticized for (I am not about gacha here) actually happened in 2007 on Reitaisai (and happened many times later). Before that there were some contracts which led to this *thing*. And ZUN allowed that to happen.
Anyway, I will cover this in more details later.

How should it develop then? Are we talking core series or fanworks here?

About core series, it is hard to change it directly (even though you even said one of ways how to do it because even people not from Japan (not only Toby Fox) do it to influence ZUN's opinion. Why not to use this information?). + many (not all) recent commercial things are organised and made by semi-officials and some doujin event organisers, they got licenses which allow them to do it and ZUN just allows this to happen.
About fanworks it is complicated. From one side I like old formula "any Touhou work can be sold", but at the same time I don't really like aggressive commercialization like gacha fangames.

Maybe there is definite proof from a ZUN interview.

No he didn't say anything about it on interviews (but there were some ZUN's tweets about this topic), but we can see actual consequences of this. He was against the *thing* during an incident which happened in 2018 (a hint: THBWiki has info about the beginning of this incident), but ZUN allowed that *thing* to happen with limitations. But after 3 years (2021) fans organised another similar *thing* without those limitations and ZUN had no problems with that (+ he had no problems when semi-officials did something similar in 2020).
+ It is interesting who actually organised that collab (they are somewhat related to the story I mentioned above).

aggressive2hu does, this was directed at her.

This was also directed at aggressive2hu and "the circle"'s wishes for more quality in the core series.

I see.

This discussion was really interesting, thank you for your replies.

 

[Bhrjr]

Regarding the decline of Touhou, why not just focus on making Touhou more popular (in the west especially)? Then there'll be more western creative making Touhou fan contents, more Touhou conventions in the US so people don't have to fly 2000 miles just to attend Touhoufest, and more Touhou fanclubs in university just like how it is in Japan. The risk of bringing in so-called "bad apples" would be far trivial to worry for.

• Making things like fan archives or the "English THB wiki" won't attract more fans. (It won't appeal to people outside of the fandom, and probably not to the casuals)
  
• Even being a Touhou-tuber has its limits. (Most Touhou youtubers barely get 1000 views on their video, again due to Touhou's niche presence on the west)
  
• And let's not get started on being a "translation circle". (For example, IceFairy: Sure, they do have 6k followers on Twitter, but outside of Xitter no one knows/cares about them) I used to do scanlations too, until I realized you can only get so much attention with it.
  

For my solution? Learn how to draw/write stories/compose music/design game and make a Touhou fanwork that becomes as prominent as Mystia's Izakaya/Luna Nights. Which is what I'm doing right now; learning how to draw. (Hoping to one day make a highly commercialized (lol) fanime with a plot compelling enough to draw in the mainstream crowd. I'll probably talk more about it in your next post) And it certainly doesn't take a whole team to pull off, as KKHTA/Osana Reimu showed.

Heck, if you want to go big, it shouldn't even be that hard to ask Zun for permission in crowdfunding. He's recently approved Dankagu and Hifuu Club anime for crowdfunding, and it only seems to be a matter of responsibility/competency when he refuses permission (in one of the streams he said to be worried about somone "geting more money than they're able to actually handle".

I see. For me Touhou is still more about hobby and I don't think about getting money for my activities. We see this problem from different points.

Well, for me I would want to make money from being a Touhou fan, that way I would spend less time working at a job that, isn't related to Touhou. I see it in a way that if you're truly serious about wanting to change Touhou, you would want to make it your career as well.

About fanworks it is complicated. From one side I like old formula "any Touhou work can be sold", but at the same time I don't really like aggressive commercialization like gacha fangames.

How come? Because they're gacha games? Or would be upset if Touhou became popular like Pokemon and its merch are found all across the globe?

Because Touhou has already stopped being the only Japanese thing. Chinese fandom is a big part too.

This reminds me the time when I looked at Korean Touhou forums. They've basically just become defeatists and sees China as the "big brother" that'll do all the heavy lifting.

 

[vanyk]

Hello. Thank you for your reply.

why not just focus on making Touhou more popular (in the west especially)?

That may be a good idea (but I have heard that so many times, so the question is how to do it).

Making things like fan archives or the "English THB wiki" won't attract more fans. (It won't appeal to people outside of the fandom, and probably not to the casuals)

Those archives are useful for fans who want to get more content (TLMC is so useful) and it would be much better if different parts of fandom would know more about each other. They don't attract many fans themselves, but they help the ones who want to get into Touhou. (from what I read on Chinese pages THBWiki helped some people to get into Touhou and get a lot of info about it).

Even being a Touhou-tuber has its limits. (Most Touhou youtubers barely get 1000 views on their video, again due to Touhou's niche presence on the west)

Agree (and it is sad to see new "Touhou Introduction" videos at least once a few months). Youtube may help a few videos to get >100000 views, but yes, most of them don't get a lot of views.

And let's not get started on being a "translation circle". (For example, IceFairy: Sure, they do have 6k followers on Twitter, but outside of Xitter no one knows/cares about them) I used to do scanlations too, until I realized you can only get so much attention with it.

Agree (not a fan of Western Touhou Twitter). But it would be great to see more translations for fangames (it is great to see that some people translate ASL now) and books.

For my solution? Learn how to draw/write stories/compose music/design game and make a Touhou fanwork that becomes as prominent as Mystia's Izakaya/Luna Nights.

It is a good idea (I have an idea about one fangame). Such media can bring a lot of attention, but the question is what newcomers will do next? It is obvious that there are people who play those games and like them but at the same time not wanting to make a further step into Touhou. But what about people who want to do the next step? Everything you said before may be somewhat useful for them. But there are things that may push them off (things like original Touhou games being shmups, strange gatekeeping strategies on Western sites, etc.). It may be a good idea to make those things more appealing.
I wish you luck with your projects.
(I think Mystia's Izakaya's strategy about anime is a good one)

it shouldn't even be that hard to ask Zun for permission in crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a complicated thing, because still it is not very welcome, so asking for allowance may be not easy.

Well, for me I would want to make money from being a Touhou fan, that way I would spend less time working at a job that, isn't related to Touhou. I see it in a way that if you're truly serious about wanting to change Touhou, you would want to make it your career as well.

Still Touhou for me is a hobby, irl stuff is more important. I understand that I cannot spend all my time on Touhou, so it may be not very effective. (but the problem is: why people who may have much more time than me don't do it)
(something related to the stuff I do now: one of the major Touhou researchers circles (which has a lot of good material) is somewhat known in Japanese Touhou fandom (+ there are some people not from Touhou community who know about them) is nearly unknown outside of Japan: there is a few people from China and Korea who know about them and nearly noone in the West, which is sad).

Because they're gacha games? Or would be upset if Touhou became popular like Pokemon and its merch are found all across the globe?

Yes, I don't like gachas, game services, loot boxes and other such things; modern games shouldn't have them. And you don't need a company to do merch, fans can do it themselves (and sell it).

This reminds me the time when I looked at Korean Touhou forums. They've basically just become defeatists and sees China as the "big brother" that'll do all the heavy lifting.

Understandable. But from what I see their situation is somewhat better than in the rest of Western fandom. But yes, Chisese fandom is a big one.

 

[Andrew Whiteingale 1998]

Combining outcomes of problems 1 & 2 -> harder for newcomers to get in -> less fans -> entire fanbase begins to degrade (fanworks and events)

its just about mobile games. its now the biggest gaming market

no one cares pc stuff is far less popular from now on. tbh, its true consoles and arcade have this feeling that can never be replaced by pc. though pc is good for some things it (internet) is overly open and abusive, for example I need to stop wasting time looking at girls with boobs in sexy outfits for so many hours.

 

[vanyk]

its just about mobile games. its now the biggest gaming market

no one cares pc stuff is far less popular from now on. tbh, its true consoles and arcade have this feeling that can never be replaced by pc.

Yes and no. Because it is much more complicated.
The statement about nobody caring about PC stuff is quite weird. Who and where? For example, how many good and complicated strategies for consoles and mobile phones can you call? And why ExaGear, Winlator, Mobox, Termux-box and other x86/x86-64 Windows emulators exist then? In some cases people care about consoles only because of "timed exclusives", but consoles nearly never gave any instruments for modding. Why you need to buy multiple consoles when you can buy one PC and be sure you can play all games you want. + many people I know irl prefer to use PC for games. But I'm getting off topic.

Nearly all doujin (and Touhou) games are made for PC. The market of doujin games is not reducing and there many good releases. But the number of new Touhou doujin games releases is not as big as it used to be. The reduction of Touhou Doujin is much more complicated process. There are a lot of ways to get Touhou content using mobile phone (this is one of the reasons why the number of younger fans increased) and there are a lot of mobile Touhou fangames (and not only gacha ones). So the problem here is not in PC stuff.

 

[urpani]

Thanks for such big contribution to Touhou!
Yeah, the thing is entry threshold i higher and "motivation" (very rough word, but i guess you get the sense) of getting into series as one complete thing(discovering treasures of game itself, it's entire world of music and tons of doujinshi and (not so tons) official literature). Backbone not so big now and newcomers stagnation is a large problem and touhou can't get someone intrested beacuse touhou does not reflect that shine to newcomers that would make them go to  discover it as phenomenon instead of seeing it as funny plush toys/sum drawn anime girls gacha. Big big thanks for all your posts that relate to this actual biggest problem of such awesome franchise, really encouraging to attend to touhou again and do something as part of it. :MeilingThumbsUp:

 

[vanyk]

Thanks for such big contribution to Touhou!
Yeah, the thing is entry threshold i higher and "motivation" (very rough word, but i guess you get the sense) of getting into series as one complete thing(discovering treasures of game itself, it's entire world of music and tons of doujinshi and (not so tons) official literature). Backbone not so big now and newcomers stagnation is a large problem and touhou can't get someone intrested beacuse touhou does not reflect that shine to newcomers that would make them go to  discover it as phenomenon instead of seeing it as funny plush toys/sum drawn anime girls gacha. Big big thanks for all your posts that relate to this actual biggest problem of such awesome franchise, really encouraging to attend to touhou again and do something as part of it. :MeilingThumbsUp:

Hello. Thank you for your post. I am sorry for late reply.
Sadly, I cannot say that my contribution is very big. My posts are not very popular, because I post them on Touhou forums (and they are not very popular nowadays). In addition the latest topic I covered is niche (but it is important if you want to understand the roots and how it works from inside).

Touhou has a lot of different interesting things and sadly a lot of them aren't well known. For example critical doujinshi, how much have you heard about them? But there are at least 4 Japanese critical Touhou events (+ 1 Korean and several Chinese), one of them is Touhou critical-only doujinshi sales event + some Touhou reading clubs have critical doujinshi and critical presentations. On the West such things are not very popular.
The problem is that for newcomers it is difficult to get into Touhou nowadays, and, as you said, aren't very motivated to get into it. There are a lot of interesting things for different people, but it is hard to make these things more noticable. (From this side I really like Japanese and Chinese Touhou communities. Japanese fans make books about such things while Chinese fans have sites about that (and there are some links to these sites from THBWiki or Touhou.Pub)). Many Touhou fans know (hear) that there are a lot of things, but rarely interact with them.

About the first post in this topic I made, I cannot say it is that good (I have made some post above there I explained why). I can recommend you to read this article I published, which is about Touhou Doujin in Japan and how it changed. It is based on data and it is better.
I don't have a lot of free time this month, but my current plans is moving to the topic of commercialization. + There will be some post before that are somewhat related to that topic.

 

[urpani]

Sadly, I cannot say that my contribution is very big. My posts are not very popular, because I post them on Touhou forums (and they are not very popular nowadays).

I guess it's more about awareness since your works fully covering mentioned topics in them.

Many Touhou fans know (hear) that there are a lot of things, but rarely interact with them.

I don't have a lot of free time this month, but my current plans is moving to the topic of commercialization. + There will be some post before that are somewhat related to that topic.

Touhou has no starter point to get dragged in (You can obviously start from touhou 2/6, but it doesn't really matter if you start getting intrested in touhou from written work or any kind of music since it leads to one thing - getting into series), and it really never needed it because it's like putting together a puzzle to get one image in result. It was always this way and even now, but touhou got distorted and ZUN really needs to do retrospection on his series to realise the things that made touhou as touhou and reappraise what he really wants for touhou. In realistic scenario he is only one able to carry this out, he needs to work only with people who actually care about touhou itself as series(opinion of a dilettante(who asked>?)).  If there's manual work that can be putted on someone else i would be glad to help with this.