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You make some great points here. I will expand more on the "Sazae time space" a bit more. The PC98 games where even less linear than the Windows games. On the current series of games we get linear developments of the story in the form of story arcs: 06-09, 10-13, the lunarian storyline, the hifuu storyline, 17-19 and there are probably more story arcs i missed. ZUN just doesn't seem to want to give Touhou a sense of time and it's even likely this is beneficial to fan works as you can give Touhou the sense of time you want, with an ever expanding cast of characters. I do think that he needs to give more character development, like what happened with LoLK making Reisen's character very interesting. He could also make more "important events" that affect all of Gensokyo, like the Animal Wars of recent games or LoLK, driving things forward, for example Ran recently got some nice character development with her relationship to the Animal Realm. The amount of high quality slice of life media proves that you can develop interesting stories with character development and significant events while keeping the passage of time mostly frozen, but you have to take some risks. An example i can give are the first seasons of My Little Pony (4th gen), they follow a mostly slice of life story-line until the season ends and they do a big event that drives the story forward, refreshing the narrative, like how it happened with Discord's introduction or the Marriage arc with Chrysalis.

To give clarification to the title, ZUN seems to put the Touhou series in a kind of Sazae time space (characters generally do not age and the story generally stays the same), which has put Touhou in a kind of slice-of-life period if it were boiled down to a really generalized statement used in the Doujin scene. This kind of development makes Touhou not really feel like it has developed nor have any kind of sense of concern for any kind of incident, as most people in the Touhou fandom never really had much concern for the story as the characters never lose nor change, which leads to the more prevalent aspect of Touhou as a fandom, the Moe-blob, and the general sentiment towards the more mature aspects of the fandom (no, its not the constant posting of horny on big platforms, but Touhou as a real-world aspect). I'm going to state this here: I see Touhou in a more two-way street aspect. I don't like it when people see Touhou as only cute girls, nor do I like Gensokyo's Extreme Depression Edition. A general balance and progression is what most series, such as Adventure Time or Neon Genesis Evangelion, have made in terms of not being overly bearing towards the fanbase while also respecting that the fanbase can handle more mature themes rather than only relying on newcomers to make the fanbase as it is without any kind of change. This leads me to the mature works, as I don't often see many Touhou works that do take this concept and spin it into what other series have made, except for maybe certain Doujin artists such as Zounose, who, even though they depict Gensokyo as a place for Youkai, make Gensokyo feel like a real world with characters that self-reflect on their own place within an eccentric world of Gensokyo rather than something of a setting that other Doujins seem to rely on for Slice-Of-Life scenarios with no focus on characters. To give context to Zounose's works, they generally are for the more mature fanbase as they focus on more introspective topics rather than light-hearted stories as even though they do include violence, it isn't just violence for the sake of it, but a story to impact with it. as an example in on of his works, Reimu isn't seen as the Hakurei shrine maiden, but rather herself and her responsibility with the duty as a shrine maiden, which is kind of covered by the official doujins, but not to the extent in which she is introspective enough to give a real thought to Reimu as a human being (Same with Sanae if you know other works from Zounose). Though most people seem to hate the general sentiment of more mature works as it seems they mostly ignore and or comment about how violent it is without the general context in contrast to what most people see as a generally cute series as I found out that discussions about series like this are generally buried with very few dedicated users talking about mature works in a forum-like way while Slice-Of-Life/4-Koma has been the most prevalent type of Doujin genre for Touhou in both people liking and discussing about it. (Set aside the KKHTA which is often used for edgy memes and shock humor nowadays). That aside, I want to clear up some things that most fans seem to think is true with Touhou in its spell card rules and violence. ZUN himself seems kind accepting of violence and the general breaking of rules in Touhou, as he does seem to generally accept the fact that violence is indeed the normality if you have played Imperishable Night in YUYU/YOUM scenario and also the whole entire character of Rumia eating humans without any kind of repercussion unless the person can fight back (which breaks the rules). Who's Who H&Y Rumia. So to keep in mind the Spell card rules aren't some kind of law that every being in Gensokyo follows, they are generally a rule that one must follow and can be broken as "Impossible Spell Card" did to which I found interesting as a story as to characters breaking the rule just to catch one Youkai, but it was never really covered as it was a side game rather than a main game which disappointed me as it was an interesting for Seija Kijin to be an actual Youkai that follows their own way of thinking rather than peaceful existence to be only put off as a nothing burger in the end even though they were probably the most antagonistic character in the series for what they did and planned. as stated here, "She's just a simple rebellious attention-seeker. She's pretty unusual for a Touhou character, in that she's clearly malicious and evil." Who's Who Seija Kijin So here comes the question, do you guys think Touhou is being held back in terms of what is being done? In this sense, is the story itself affecting the way most people see Touhou as in fan works? Or is it something only Touhou has that all other franchises don't as most people covet the Characters more than the games and story themselves?

This is surely a nice topic to revive my forum activity. So far i agree with the points made here and kudos Vanyk, for having the data that shows the decrease of interest in Touhou and bringing this topic up. Something to have in mind is that circumstances are constantly changing, the world is not the same in 2008 than in 2024. The pandemic really hit Touhou hard, you can see that the decrease in popularity, at least with in-person events, got accelerated due to the restrictions and the economic stagnation we have been going through since 2020. Now, Touhou is far from being in a bad spot, it just needs to adapt to the new times we are living in and that has to do with passing the torch to the new generation (basically what Banana Man said). It's very unlikely that Touhou will ever die completely, it's too big to die. Games are in a general state of crisis in the 2020s. The new generation of consoles (outside the Switch) got few sales, PC games are more exigent and buggier than ever and mobile games spiraled down into becoming cash cows. Control over creativity has been removed from the hands of creators and placed on the hands of executives and business man who don't understand what the people want, or the executives try too hard to appeal with fan service (what happened to Star Wars). This is also why AI is getting so much funding, the capitalistic world is playing too hard into the "save costs at all costs" game. You can see the problem in action with the very recent Helldivers 2 controversy (TLDR, Sony is forcing people to create Playstation accounts to continue playing, against the devs' wishes and the players). Another problem that hits Touhou very hard is that the principal computing device got shifted away from the PC, now the dominant force is the Phone. And this combines with phone games turning into cash cows (Lost Word and the Gachapocalypse with things like Genshin Impact, for example). The dominance of the phone also brought in a change of how people approach computers and how Big Tech design the user experience. Back in Touhou's Golden Age, the focus of the internet was on forums, personal websites and it was overall a more intimate and slower feeling experience, the internet itself was Indie. Nowadays, thanks to the centralization that Big Tech accomplished and the discovering of the scrolling format, the focus was shifted to fast paced content and dopamine hits. It was a recipe for disaster, to say the least. The Touhou community got fragmented into tons of niches, but the platforms got united in a single place and the shift was changed into an addiction of consumerism from a more relaxed, "everyone is involved" enjoyment of the franchise. Everything is a lot more capitalistic nowadays. For example, a new person who is getting into Touhou is a lot more likely to stumble across Lost Word, the Reddit or the music in YouTube. These platforms encourage a passive involvement of the franchise, promoting the idea of consuming content instead of enjoying creations. Discovering things is hard and becoming an active part of the community is even harder. All of this relates deeply to the Dead Internet Theory. What this theory states is that Internet activity is more and more driven by Bot/AI activity and a focus on the TikTok-like algorithmic addiction based content made to be consumed. In reality, people activity is higher than ever, the problem is that it's passive or hidden from search engines in places like Discord. This is encouraged specially by Reddit and Twitter. Since Twitter got rebranded, bot activity soared very high. Reddit got the API changes controversy and other small changes to the platform made it much harder to navigate, content quality decreased drastically and a trend i have been noticing is that Reddit is more focused on this new brand of entertainment. And all of this leads us to... Mature content. Touhou has always been about mature content, writing this i even found some mature Winamp skins from January 2008... There have been animated videos about Yukari doing nefarious things (look up Border of Ecstasy if you are brave). I was chatting with CountVonNumenor before writing this and he provided me with these statistics that highlight what percentage of artwork in art websites is mature and safe for work: The problem is, mature content is now trying to be the main focus of the franchise. It's only thing that kept consistent activity since the Golden Age. Memories of Phantasm is drowning any interesting things it brings to the table in gigantic boobs. Same thing with Lost Word (im not even counting how disgusting Gacha games are due to producing gambling addictions and sexualizing woman), social media is also promoting Mature Touhou like crazy! The past months i browsed the Touhou Reddit (r/touhou), and it followed this recipe: 1) Enter Reddit, get recommended only the NSFW Touhou posts 2) A little more scrolling and i get the same posts again, but this time in the r/2hujerk reddit, with the title "Outjerked once again by the main sub" 3) Repeat Twitter is worse, you can follow someone because they draw cool fanart, but then they also like to retweet mature content or you get shoved the political agenda of choice. Reddit depends more on what is the subreddit's style, but Twitter has no salvation and that phenomenon is universal. And it doesn't end here, if you enter a website dedicated to fanart, like Pixiv, chances are you are going to get drowned in mature content. It's worse if you go into a more niche website like the boorus. Even if you use the "hide 18+ content" you still get mature content, it's infuriating to me. It's very hard to be a Touhou fan when the first thing someone getting into the franchise sees is Lost Word's ooga woogas or the 100th time post of Sakuya's feet this week, let's not even get started on people drawing absolutely disgusting artwork worthy of prison time of my favorite character, Sumireko Usami. And due to the nature of social media, you can't escape it without detaching yourself from more public community endeavors. What's worse is that Count already tried to discuss this problem in r/touhou and he already described the horny tactics in Memories of Phantasm. Only to get some attention, but just to get the "nice wall of text you got there" response and a repost over to r/copypasta (a place where memorable texts are placed and then shared into infinity because someone finds them funny.) His OG post: https://www.reddit.com/r/touhou/comments/w25e90/why_is_touhou_so_popular_in_terms_of_mature/ The Copypasta repost: https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/w26pfx/why_is_touhou_so_popular_in_terms_of_mature/ Another thing i want to briefly mention is that ZUN has a part of the blame of the state of the community. Since Violet Detector, the game's quality decreased or has stayed stagnant, on par with the quality of games from the early 2000s. ZUN's extremely indie approach of doing 90% of the work is hitting a wall. You can feel he is getting more busy, with less and less results. It took 8 years for another Hifuu Club Album (and a disappointing one in my opinion), the gameplay of the bullet hells didn't reinvent itself enough (cards are cool but the mechanic has been abused to death in 18.5 and 19) and he is burning himself out. The programming of 16.5 and 19 is especially bad and his game engine is Windows only (even if the bullet hell games can work well on consoles). Another funny thing is that he just doesn't place Touhou 06-08 on Steam, encouraging the piracy of the franchise as those 3 are the biggest games by far and it ends up encouraging the piracy of games that ARE available at Steam (not judging those who pirate, i'm siding with the enterprise here). He also allowed things like Lost Word to happen. In my opinion, the best way to revive Touhou is that ZUN lets his ego rest for a bit and that he changes his role into more of a "General Touhou Supervisor" and that he fully embraces the fact that it's a franchise now. Make a new multi-platform bullet hell engine, Touhou 06-08 remakes, expand Shanghai Alice into a real game studio, add more finality to the Hifuu Club story-line, official anime, etc. I think it's the best way for ZUN to control the enterprise growth of Touhou, while keeping control of the essence. Now that i highlighted some of the problems i see in Touhou, what are the solutions i can think of? Well, i don't have one for the mature content, as the people seem to be brainwashed into liking that sort of stuff dominating the community... It's even stranger because even if Pokémon has more mature works than Touhou percentage wise, it's a lot less ingrained in the culture of the community and you can totally avoid it, something very hard on Touhou's case. I will just briefly mention the state of other older franchises, Godzilla and Sailor Moon to get an understanding by comparison. Godzilla has seen a renaissance of activity in the community since the 2014 American movie, with tons of high quality fan creations (fan 3D animations, creepypastas/analog horror, amazing drawings, healthy discussion in the community's places and the reddit is a pretty chill and welcoming place). Godzilla is in a righteous cycle of original creations giving the community inspiration for fan-works that drive the sales of original creations further. Thankfully monsters avoid most of the mature content, so it ends up being a healthy dose. Sailor Moon is not that popular nowadays, the anime remake and movies helped (Crystal) but the community is very welcoming and you get a fair share of fan creations (an old competitive game gaining attention, healthy discussion of the anime & manga in the Reddit, etc.). Mature content is also a lot less prevalent here. Well, the main problem i see with Touhou is that there is no "central" place for the community to enjoy things. The closest things, Reddit & Twitter, are infested with mature content and are hard to navigate for stuff that's worthy of your time without wasting a huge amount of your day in there or getting flooded by Tech Bro selling Chimatacoins or whatever. The forums approach works really well with Touhou, allowing the prolonged survival of important posts, giving everyone a fair chance of contributing. Now, because everyone wants power and the compartmentalization of the community has some benefits, i think it's impossible to create "The Place". But you know what we can do? A landing page that lists everything important in the community. Official links, fangames, music circles, etc. For example, finding the steam page of the Touhou games is pretty hard for people not versed in Japanese, but if there was a list easier to navigate than Touhou Wiki, it would be very easy. I am currently in the process of creating this list, once i have enough things gathered i will make a post in the forum promoting this idea. It will only be successful if the community cares, but i have high hopes for it, stay tuned.

My high school years were awful. 0/10. My happiest moments were walking with my dog. I eventually left and went to college however, and had a completely inverted experience. Everyone knew who I was, even if they had never seen me, I was one of the lead figures of my fraternity, and had more friends than I could count. I even was nominated for student body president, even if I only found out after the election. Life gets better. Keep your chin up, and focus on being your best You. Bad times pass, but good times keep you going long after they're gone.

We need more evil/hostile characters. Not enough characters in the universe are evil, and those that lean more towards the evil side usually have a more reasonable cause for what they are doing (Junko wants revenge, etc) or are just assholes. Seiga is an evil character but that is thrown casually, not much is done about that. Seija is rebellious and evil-ish but after th14 she becomes neutral. Characters like Rumia are the extreme opposite: It doesn't fit a Touhou character to do things like what Rumia does. It's also not as common for death to happen in Touhou, and we wouldn't really want to see most characters die. We already have enough characters that become friendly after being defeated, we could instead see more characters that stay neutral or hostile even after their first appearance. The manga books follow a more slice of life approach. I read and finished Forbidden Scrollery and it mostly feels like a slice of life to me. It has action, plot, enemies, but they are mostly divided between chapters, it's sort of a routine. Zanmu is a character that can be seen as an active enemy, and the idea that she took control over hell against Hecatia would be an interesting story, then we could have a plot for Touhou 20 where you can have a dual character style similar to Touhou 8, where it's a playable character and Hecatia together taking control of hell back from Zanmu, after she attempted to [insert taking control over something else]. The only problem is that Hecatia is too OP to need a partner to take care of this business, but it could work. The final boss could be a dual boss of Zanmu + Hisami to compensate the power difference. And maybe for different playable characters, your partner is not Hecatia but Shikieiki or someone else that has a relation to hell.

i want to stab people (that i specifically hate) with candy canes

had a dream where there was a documentary about lost lego pieces called "missing pieces please recall"

in california, we have things called elpacs and caasps, which both run the tests. the whole test system worked like sh_t and the questions are either stupid or confusing. however, this year they were surprisingly easy and short. finished both in a day

vocaloid psychological horror let's goooooooooooooo

do you guys use this website with the dark mode? cuz I do

made this

https://youtu.be/xX8MOYW7Txw?feature=shared

could cirno train to become a shrine maiden?

actually not too bad, but also not too good. i'm really looking forwards into college cuz i'll finally study what i like

Seeing the argument of people wanting Touhou to be lighthearted or dark reminds of how people complain how Persona isn't as dark as SMT, but I digress, while I do enjoy Touhou for the slice of life elements I just feel like there could be much more done with the story or at least with the setting, not saying it needs to be as depressingly dark as say most Touhou darkfics but I just want to be some sort of balance of lightheartedness and tragedy (like with Little Reimu for example), I don't know I'm just not a fan of Touhou being edgy or shocking I just prefer something that's more atmospheric or dark in a tasteful way, I agree with the examples you've given considering this series does a dark backstory to it but it's not it's main focus. EXACTLY! I feel like there is a serious lack of evil characters in this franchise, but at the same time I don't want a villain that's the equivalent to a cartoon villain, no I want a villain with a reasonable point of view that challenges them both on an individual and ideal point of view, not saying they need to be some sort of evil genius but just someone with different point of view. I know it's asking for too much but it's all I can ask for, I just wish there was much more done with the characters and lore but fortunately that's where fanfics/doujins come into play.

you lost The Game

https://www.reddit.com/r/yumenikki/s/CnZvybOM3l

i need the full version of gman toilet thing it's for research purposes

did i scare ya?

from satan's twitter account (666 faith!!)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dCNK4AVdwxE

lots of people here rn woohoo

There's a game out in the world called Shadowrun. Its a fantasy-cyberpunk tabletop role-playing game. In my own opinion, its kind of dumb and crap. I mean, the map of America has only one faction based on a fantasy race besides humans. But I was invited to a Shadowrun game. And seeing as I have no ideas, I decided to play as a Touhou character and see if anyone catches the references. But, I have a little problem. One I would like the advice of the loremasters of the Shrine with. My Idea Flandre de Bourgogne or as she prefers 'DJ Flan' is a young aspiring urban artist. She makes a decent living on personalized artwork, playing music at various clubs and has a good following for her graffiti artwork. She has a cozy basement apartment she keeps stuffed with her artwork and exploding toys. That said, she is a solitary figure with an odd sense of mannerisms. Being an elf, she is long-lived, and often grows bored. Trying to coerce strangers into children's card games to show her skill. "If you win, we get to be friends. If I win, I get to shoot you. With THIS gun!" is a favorite introduction of hers. She isn't completely isolated. She has an older sister who is head of the police force. Her sister Emilia is also a vampire, a family tradition provided when a family member proves themselves. Not that DJ Flan cares about that. She has a couple other friends, such as her family bodyguard who tutored her as a child, the neighboring rich family's delinquent daughter as well as a minor street gang called the Misty Fairies. She's not into Shadowrunning (imagine cyberpunk crime but with magic) for the money, but to have fun, and to find her missing best friend. My Problem So as you can see, its a pretty naked allusion to Flan. With enough blatant theft that a normie with any contact with Touhou will pick up hints. Which is good, because I normally don't associate Shadowrun with fun, while I usually associate Touhou with fun after I stop dying. The problem is Shadowrun is a game. And like most games, it has pesky things like 'rules'. Which mean I won't be able to play a goddess of destruction who is a master of danmaku, can split into four, and fights so well with a spear it only shows up on the box art and as a card. Instead, I need to choose a class or 'archetype' which will let me play out my fantasy of making obscure references to a Japanese video game older than the game master. Which is fine. Except I can't decide which set of skills to give my Not Flan. I won't bore you all with a breakdown of all the classes archetypes, but will give bullet-points on my ideas. Which basically amount to 'smacky Flan, shooty Flan, explody Flan'. I want to hear from you all, which 'feels' the most Flan, so I can stop being indecisive and get this ready by next month. Adepts: Adepts are wizards if they went to the gym instead. They use magic to buff their feeble noodle arms, making them masters of melee combat. Its also the most broken class in 6e. Which means Laevateinn is on the table, but danmaku is mostly out of reach. Which doesn't feel quite right. Combat Mage: Mages come in two flavors. Mind control/spirit summoning demigods and deadweight. That said, standard combat magic is sometimes useful, and it means danmaku is an option. Not to mention the rarity of standard mage players in the setting might make her stand out more. Thinking of focusing on explosives if I go this route, and may be able to arrange Four of a Kind with some work. Street Samurai: More or less the Terminator. They focus on melee or gun combat. If I go this route, I'll probably give her a pair of SMGs for the Danmaku spray, maybe with some explosives for that creative burst. So yeah, that's it. I'm indecisive about a roleplaying game I don't care for and want to post low-tier Flan memes. Help me become Flan, but in the future.

It seems slightly better than staar. The subjects we got depended on grade level and a lot of questions had double answers in which both were correct but one was 'slightly' better. The one thing I couldn't stand is being in the same classroom from 8-3 without being able to talk or do anything. There's genuine merit behind them, its basically a mass assessment to see what needs to be worked on in the future. It's just a matter of how the school wants to go about it. Telpas was a waste of time for all of us taking it. Basically if you were identified as an ell or bilingual student you're forced to take it from k-12th grade regardless of how proficient you get in English. Its just generic essays, speaking, and listening tests that don't do much for you. Again its there for a good reason but it overstays its welcome.

remember kids, there is and will always be a narrator in every single situation ever. WOW YOU GOT THE TETRIS! WOW YOU'RE THE BEST! WOOOOOOOOOOO! WOOOOOOOOOOOO! TETRIIIIIIIIS! - vinny

it’s mostly a thing to see what you have learnt in your entire school year

love it when

I BEAT BLAST PROCESSING GUYS YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH

today, i just learnt that i am the only artist in my entire recorded family history (but who knows, maybe back in old family history) no one in my family expected such talent both on and off the screen

no thoughts, head empty i didn’t read it correctly, i was tired at the time f_ckkkkk used ms paint once, it’s okay

it's been a while since i used ms paint hehe >.< here's a banner for mathilda's world! (you can use it in your websites, just credit me)

you're supposed to say "i find this very concerning" but i'll let it pass!

Polls closed! An even spread between Flan, Mystia and Ran. Though let's be honest. We all know who it would really be. Tired from work, so let's have a simple stupid question. Hottest MILF? = Byakuren = Eirin = Junko = Mima = Ran = Seiga = Suwako = Urumi

oh my freaking gosh I FINALLY GOT VETERAN

Ah right, sorry. On my end it did always show up which is why I assumed that Nitorium fixed it at some point. Turns our it was just because of my own permissions. Anyways, the About Me section should now be publicly available.

According to all known laws of aviation, : there is no way a bee should be able to fly. : Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. : The bee, of course, flies anyway : because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.

just discovered gd cologne's website

blue reimu

sometimes i just wished i was one of those emo girls from the net fr

waffles

I generally don't think of my school that well, mostly because of my classmates and because of some other factors. There's also this one story I remember from primary school but I think it sounds like something out of r/stories or whatever.

we slaves

Saw fighting games were mentioned and decided to share some Eyes of Heaven soundtracks I think slap (One or so for each part). Kind of sad the game is pretty much dead at this point but hope a remaster like ASBR comes for this one. One of my favorite things about EOH and ASB is the direct song and stylistic references that are based of the name or stand of a character. Quick example of what I mean: Fugo's theme mimics Jimi Hendrix's style (mainly Purple Haze} Might do a ASBR one later.