Eulogous

With all the L's Marisa took in Cheating/Foul Detective Satori, it's nice to see a W for once. Honestly, I really only care about how newer characters/works stack up and rank compared to existing characters/works. Everything else I tend to ignore (especially in the music category), because I find that most people have the same opinions/consensus on everything and it's boring. It's funny to me that 80% of voters combined never voted before or have done so at least 1-3 times before, yet EoSD is voted best Touhou work, even though it's a largely inaccessible experience (legally lol). That's also to say nothing of the large chunk of those voters who admit to not have played the game (or most of the games really). I'm fully aware of why it ranks 1st all the time (people are voting in terms of cast, not game quality), but it's why I don't put a ton of stock into the results.

Got my voting done a bit ago. 1.) Saki (TH19 did a lot to make me like her more. Her genuine concern and care for Enoko is endearing to me.) 2.) Mike (I like what she's based on, and I just like cats.) 3.) Kyouko (Her power is cool and her friendship/band partnership with Mystia is nice.) 4.) Seija (Probably my favorite antagonist. Also the player character in my favorite Touhou work.) 5.) Parsee (I have weird tastes. She has one of my favorite visual designs.) 6.) Raiko (Her whole plan of leaving Gensokyo, replacing her body with a new one to keep her freedom, and fighting back was cool.) 7.) Kana (This is my PC-98 character vote. Interesting backstory for a poltergeist.) Not entirely ordered.

Apparently Rika is the one who made the enemies on Touhou 2's Stage 1, which includes the Bakebake (the tongue ghosts you see everywhere in the PC-98 games). I doubt they are artificial, so I imagine she probably uses some sort of invocation/magic along with traditional engineering. A human mechanic is especially interesting to me for the opportunities it'd bring to a fan work, given that we also have the Kappa. I always like to imagine she'd do business with them, or share schematics or something. For a type of fan work, the first thing that came to my mind is a Tactics game like Advance Wars (it's the tank imagery). She doesn't seem to be affiliated with anyone but is also kind of eccentric, so you could go either the protagonist or antagonist route with her character. Sure, there's a ton of gaps to fill in regards to how you'd write for her, but writing (especially in the constraints of making it canon-friendly) is a rewarding experience for the creative types.

It ranges heavily. Unity used to have the majority of uses, but Godot has been slowly gaining more traction. There's no mandate for an engine, as I've worked with Unity and Godot programmers. Two of the projects I helped with were made in GameMaker. It comes down to what you're most familiar and speedy with during the typical 3-Day time period. Huh, interesting. Most of the programmers I've worked with are in that same boat. Ideally, many prefer to work in pairs (unless their work ethic is absolutely godly), because splitting the workload eases the process, especially when there's not a lot of time to work with. Setting up a GitHub repository during the planning phase is often needed with that. Designer is an important role that often gets absolutely shafted in my opinion, and even if you get to do Design, you are never credited for something so invisible to Players. But like, you aren't really allowed to be solely a Designer unless you have another craft from what I've experienced, same usually applies to the Writer role for some reason (the Artist usually takes the Writer's role, and results vary drastically). The Designer role is often forced onto the Programmer whether they want it or not, because many times the thought process from the rest of the team is typically: "Programmer = Designer". There are some things that carry over, but I've worked with Programmers that don't want to do game design (it's extra work with time they don't have), and those who add everything in their head before asking themselves if it's even a good idea or not. It's the latter that eventually made me fed up with constantly finding a team to join, and why I prefer to organize and plan out things myself nowadays. I'm mainly a Composer, but I have done Design for teams accepting of input, because I'm still attaching my name to something... and, you know, I want that something to be... good? Or, at the very least, be happy on how it turned out. Thanks, I'm usually not very comfortable sharing my experiences in Jams, but I can tend to get over it if I'm feeling passionate enough about the topic. I know I'm probably not allowed to speak my mind where discourse about them are held, because I'd be browbeaten into accepting the status quo. Being critical often burns bridges existing and upcoming, and makes you the local outcast everyone ignores when all you want are for things to get better. Honestly, I think it'd be neat to work with you someday. Also, the current ongoing Jam just ended, so I might end up seeing the rest of you someday for the next. Who knows?

Hello! I think I've seen you around on the Touhou Dev Discord server. I've participated in these since the Touhou Station Jam back in 2021 (first participated by doing the music for this: https://hakanaiblue.itch.io/exiled-infector). I still enter Jams, but I kinda wish I could be excited for them like I used to. You look at some of the coolest concepts and get wowed by games made during the Jam... then you realize what potential they had will be thrown away like garbage afterwards. Search up any of the regulars who attend, and you'll find an ever-expanding graveyard of potentially amazing fangames. I don't care if that's "Just how it is", it's depressing as hell. Even more so when you notice barely anyone creates fangame content outside of Jams, and the ones who do are already established teams or solo devs. I feel guilty when I sift through comments praising stuff I've helped on, knowing people want more, but the rest of the team already bailed. It's like I've committed some crime or betrayal onto fans, like myself, who just want good western-made content to play. Your Jam group chat goes silent, you find yourself alone... ...Anyways, sorry for the mini rant. Jams are a good way to practice your craft, but be wary because most people are really only looking to boost their own following, not form a circle to make anything afterwards. If your endgame is to make a Touhou Fangame of your own or to help out on one, use Jams for networking. Look for people that actually care about making games not ego monuments. I've been doing this for like 2 years now. I really only still keep going because you do eventually find a friend or two along the way, and that's invaluable even if the rest feels like a cyclical unending hell.

I'd want to make a vertical shmup, like mainline Touhou games, but instead of a traditional arcade experience, I'd want to make it a series of score attack challenges, time trials, mini stages, pattern trials, and boss scenes all broken up in a way the scene shooters break up content. I'd contextualize them as things happening around Gensokyo and its connected regions, and you're working towards solving an incident by having multiple smaller problems. There'd be multiple characters to select for the scenes, but Global progress is shared, so you can complete it all with your preferred character and not have to repeat content. With incidents happening all over, I'd make it fairly non-linear, but have character locked to a certain region (set of content) until you finish most of it. Example is have say, Sanae/Aya locked to Youkai Mountain's region completing content until she's done, and then you'd be able to use her in other regions because she's solved what was happening there. You'd be able to swap do different regions anytime to progress on them, so there'd be freedom in how you eventually complete the game. I'd want to make it fairly beginner-friendly (because think how many times you've seen "I like Touhou, but I'm just not good at shmups"). I wanna aim for something that teaches and eases people into the genre and rewards them for their time spent with things like achievements, or extras like characters, or dialogue scenes (Touhou is known mostly for its characters first and foremost, and it's important to keep that in mind when making something). Also, no micro-dodging projectiles with semi-random speeds and trajectories for hours on end. That should be a lesson, but not the only lesson for the entire game. The Story is that someone is working behind the scenes to wear out Reimu with multiple smaller incidents (idea is to reintroduce characters who'd have a grudge against her conspiring together), so other characters from all over can work together or solo to solve it. I wanna avoid the weird situation in mainline where every character seems to complete the incident, but it's obviously intended for Reimu to be the one who does it. Having tons of smaller incidents everywhere lets other characters have a chance at being playable without having to center an entire plot onto them, and can give them interactions too.

I absolutely recommend trying out fangame development, however there may be hurdles. My experience with the Touhou fangame dev community has been somewhat atrocious at times. Though, I guess it'd also depend on what field you'd be working in. I'm mainly a composer, though I can provide game design consultation, story scenarios, and help other people figure out how to make the "game" portion of a fangame. However, I have no permanent circle/team, so Touhou Fangame Jams become my main method of networking. Jams can be fun, but it can be extremely frustrating to be on a team that regularly ignores any concerns you have, and said concerns are dismissed because, if you're not a programmer, you just don't know what scope or game design is apparently. I still volunteer anyway, as it's experience all the same, and being discarded afterwards has its upsides too. Huge downside is that the work period is always only like 3-4 Days of game development time, and that Jams are the only time most people seem interested in actually making fangame content (I want to help with projects outside of Jams, but they like never happen). Speaking of Jams, there's an upcoming one starting around September 1st. It's a chance to test out some concepts I had for a shmup fangame if things go well, or at least gauge interest in said concepts. If not, I'll probably be some other team's composer.

Oh hey that was me lol The shop angle is pretty spot on with one of the concepts I had. Mike, being a merchant inherently suggests responsibilities and goals that aren't explicitly shown. Knowing how to take inventory, setting prices, having a personality to make a sale, etc. Her stock must have come from somewhere, so that opens doors. What she's based on is a symbol of fortune, so it's not really a stretch to assume humans wouldn't outright fear her. For some reason, the people I meet need like a huge dedicated chapter in a print work for a character, or be playable in a game to even be worth considering in anything. The main idea is to pioneer something with a character, to attempt to get others to understand what you see in them. It's a popularity feedback loop. Ex. Aya appears in something = more exposure = more chances to leave an impression = more people willing to use her in things, repeat. As someone who composes music and helps on fan projects, it feels really stagnant when I always get requested to make stuff for the same pool of characters over and over. It's absolutely character fatigue for me in that area. I often make suggestions to try something new, and I get lectured on why using any minor relatively unpopular character is not worth the effort... until another person/circle elsewhere does something with said character that becomes popular, and suddenly we loved them the entire time, and appreciate the effort and dedication to said character. Same, though I lean more towards Shinki. Makai is established in Windows and visited in UFO, and outside that the many games it appeared in suggests a huge magical dimension with scenery and locales with no equivalent in Gensokyo. Yumemi is a teacher from the outside world, so there could be interactions with Sumireko or Sanae. A random thought I had once was her being a substitute teacher in a village school. I'd really only like Mima to come back to see how her apprentice has come along in her absence. Marisa need something new besides jobbing for Reimu. I can't really say that Mima isn't important, since she appears in 4 of 5 PC-98 games, 2 of which are playable. Her fans can definitely be annoying, but the people who constantly dunk on her fans can be worse. It paints the picture that all PC-98 fans only want Mima and are insane.

Outside of maybe some minor glitches (apparently Yachie can despawn lasers with her charge), it's unlikely that any of the major complaints I've seen around will be addressed.

Recently played through Mystic Square and felt like doing a cover of one of my favorite tracks.

Suika's portrait art doesn't read as her, she's way too blonde. I avoided adding my art complaints onto the list, since I was afraid criticizing ZUN art might get me burned at the stake for how iconic it generally is (also the list started getting long-winded). Sanae looks off, Saki and Orin's posing both look awkward, and Tsukasa's art seems worse (it's the ears) and it hasn't even been that long since she was introduced. Man, the PC-98 ending CGs are leaps and bounds better than Window's CGs. I don't understand why the line art in Window's CGs is purposely made worse, and nowadays instead of color, it's just layered over some random wallpaper-looking background. The lack of Keiki really bothers me. She answered the call of the Human Spirits in the Animal Realm, gave them physical Haniwa bodies that prevented the Animal Spirits from harming them, and generally had those Human's interests in mind. So, if the Animal Spirits and their leaders are becoming a threat to Gensokyo, wouldn't it make sense for her to want to protect the Humans on the surface, from foes she's already fought? Heck, she could even send Mayumi on her behalf, since at least she'd be immune to any attacks by Spirits and can't be fatigued. I think a chunk of the character roster only exists as it does to shoehorn specific animal reps for an overarching theme. Though, why 2 foxes? I've asked myself the same question for a while. I feel like there are people nowadays that just accept mediocrity from series they are attached to, even if it's glory days have long since passed (I have a few friends who still buy Pokemon games on launch despite the quality dropping off a cliff and them knowing it). It doesn't help that I think the fandom over here can be toxically positive about anything Touhou-related, to the point where we just don't talk about quality... or they just politely shun you by ignoring your existence. My alternate take would be that they got a free game with their $15 CD. I'd say that's likely. I hate the "nothing" reviews on Steam, and it's the same for fangames too. I read negative reviews, because often times that person is passionate about the things they like, want it to improve, and can elaborate. Someone I know bought Genso Wanderer because of the wave of positive reviews, claiming it was like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. It wasn't, they were turned off by the overbearing enemies resetting any progress by destroying their items, and felt that they were lied to. They hated the experience.

I like Lily White, she's cute and doesn't come off as a one-note prank monster like some of the other fairies do. I also like the headcanon of her not getting along with Letty, as Winter represents death, and Spring represents life. Her relation to spring might have her getting along with someone like Yuuka, too.

I'm very mixed on TH19, leaning more towards negative on it. I like some of the new ideas in the gameplay, but the game design is not that great. Some things I like: The extendable graze barrier mechanic from 18.5 is back. I like how it's used to slow down bullets and freeze spirits. The charge attack being mapped to a different key is an improvement, as now I don't have to mash to fire normally. A system like that worked better in PoDD, but was kind of ass to deal with in PoFV. It's probably just a "me" thing idk. There's a good selection of playable characters, and we have some interesting interactions. I personally like that there are no 1cc requirements to get a clear for a character to unlock the others. The new sprite art is very appealing to me (seriously, ZUN please bring that artist back for the next game). Minor nitpicks: We have a lot of new remixes of older songs, but most of them don't play for their respective characters in Story Mode. We just get generic filler tracks until near the end, with like the exception of Mamizou, who gets unique music during her early stages. Bombs are kind of lame looking. They're all standardized in the shape of the graze box thing. Bombs drain your meter, which I have never liked since PoFV. I prefer PoDD's approach in that Bombs were divorced from your meter entirely. There's like a "buffer" hit before actually losing a Heart. I don't have too much of an issue with this, but you can refresh it by using your own Boss Attack. I started to exploit it whenever I could in Story Mode lol. It's just too abusable with certain characters I guess. Enemy formations are the same from the first stage you play, to the last. Also it was neat in PoFV when the random Lily White mini-boss would appear, shook things up a little as well as giving a reward on defeat, and that game changed the aesthetics on some of the fairies for certain bosses. There doesn't seem to be any Extra mode content like in PoFV. I liked the "Sudden Death" challenge mode with Komachi, and it's sad there's no equivalent here. The difference in sprite quality can be weird. I'll be playing as Aunn or Ran, who have nice player sprites with good detail, fighting against Sanae who's using her player sprite from Touhou 12... It's just so bizarre seeing them next to each other. No Score or Replays. I don't care much for Score in this sub-genre, but no Replays is insane. I guess since the AI cheats, the Replay puppeteering would desync in a Story Mode run or something. I can only imagine trying to get a good Replay in an online match. The Ability Card system feels tacked on here. The customization options they bring are so negligible, they might as well not exist. No Dialogue Skipping. My bigger issues with the game: The CPU being immortal in Story Mode until a set amount of Boss Attacks are survived/cleared made fights boring as all hell. There's no point in it being a splitsceen vs. shmup when your attacks don't even function in the way they were meant to. That design approach being on every boss makes it all feel same-y. Having the large cast of characters is a detriment in its own way, especially on how unlocking characters is handled. In PoFV, you at least had a starting roster beyond just Reimu. I understand the design philosophy for it, as forcing someone to get to grips with one character and seeing how everyone else is different onwards is smart and provides a sense of contrast. However, it starts to compound with the last point, because you have to do the same song and dance with every character that becomes available to unlock every playable one after. The absolute imbalance with the character roster make certain routes even more tedious than others. A lot of characters just feel weak, and enemies take too long to kill. This leads to situations where actually killing the Boss Attack pattern becomes nearly impossible, as a character with no damage can't kill the endless wave of random fairies body-blocking the boss and you end up timing the pattern out. The state of Online is dire. $14.99 on Steam for this? If it were priced at $10.99 like Violet Detector or Impossible Spell Card, it'd be a better buy imo. I try to judge the Touhou games as games first, even if I like the characters, music, and what they bring to the lore. TH19 is not a very good game. Singleplayer content is too same-y and gets repetitive fast, while Multiplayer doesn't work that well and you need to have a friend who's into a niche sub-genre of STGs, who has a good connection or workaround for it. My guess is the absolute state of online play, and that all the imbalances from the demo weren't addressed at all. Agreed. Enoko is my second favorite design, only because the bear traps look too strange, especially them being red.

For a game, you simply release on a platform that also has an official Touhou game being sold there. Easiest example is Steam, as there are tons of fangames that have a price tag attached to them. Another one is DLSite, where I buy Touhou games from (I know it's only TH13 onwards, but I've had an account there for a while, and I don't like booting up Steam all the time), and just like Steam, there's a ton of fangames available for sale. Console fangame availability would've been something I thought would breach the guidelines without explicit permission, but then Antinomy of Common Flowers (TH15.5) happened. That fighting game is an official Touhou game, and is available on PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo Switch, which would expand the platforms to sell fangames on by proxy. Written fanworks can be also found on DLSite, and official manga is sold via Amazon JP and other avenues. Often times, you'll see things like Fanbox/Patreon for things like fanart or manga, but that is monetizing the access to the content and not selling that content, or is a way to support the creator and not outright buying it. Not really, those are just examples more attuned to the intended audience of Touhou. Remember, the preceding line was: Also: The qualifier statement has the phrase "but not limited to" in it. A lot of Western creators just do things for fun. Also, it can be intimidating to think of monetizing your fan content over here, because of companies like Nintendo that go out of their way to quash fan content they deem harmful to their brand and public image. Overthinking it further can lead to some not making even free fanworks over here because of that overhanging fear.

Never said I disliked her personality, I even said that enjoyed her Wild and Horned Hermit portrayal. Her motivations are fine, and her lore can be interesting, I just don't like the random jumps to the extremes of that personality (like you say later). I mention the whole spiel about being cool and badass, because when something like the Tokiko assault happens I ask myself "What does this really add to the story?". Reimu is one of the worst characters, to me, because I don't know if the Reimu I'm getting is the one I like, on top of losing out on another character's perspective. Talking about characters you don't like is difficult in this fandom. People often make you out to be the Peanut Gallery, put words in your mouth, or they assume your reasonings. Like, if I were to say: "I don't like Sumireko", people go "Oh, you don't like her because you think she's a cringe teenager, right? How dare you!" then jump down your throat with that assumption in tow, and the paragraphs ensue. My reasoning could be that she needed more time to develop properly, but they have long since deemed you an uninformed hater. I would love it if there was a manga that centered around Reimu in that way, instead of her having to wander onto someone else's stage. No big overarching incident, just a story focused on what she wants to do. Yeah, the one-note good guy shtick is very boring.

Reimu. I have chosen this hill to die on. I find it very hard to enjoy her character or root for her in any way, but she's the protagonist so she has to appear in just about everything, and that makes it worse. Having an unlikable protagonist and not be strictly morally "good", like other protags in media, doesn't automatically make you "cool" or "better" than those protags. Assaulting and robbing Tokiko in CoLA for no reason, and then pawning off her books doesn't add some deeper angle that subverts our expectations out of a main character, it makes her an asshole. Telling Kogasa (a Tsukumogami that doesn't even eat humans) in UFO "Youkai exist to be exterminated" is all kinds of messed up. There's also that time she killed the Fortune Teller while saying: Maybe I'm weird in not seeing cruel demeanors as "badass". Yeah yeah, I get it, "Fortune Teller had to die, because leaving him alive would inspire other humans to become Youkai." But I don't go, "Yeah, you're right", I go "So when Marisa gets further along in becoming a Magician, are you going to outright slaughter her too, your closest friend? It would only be fair, since full Magician = Youkai in this setting, right?". Now, I would have no problems with this if there were any consequences for her, but... nope. Reimu can't lose due to her divine super luck. She also doesn't even have to try. The Fairies of Light try to prank her into falling into a river? The fish form a bridge the entire way across it, and she is unaware of it. The duel with Marisa in CoLA? She stands still and Marisa misses every shot and immediately loses. Sure, Reimu lost to Yorihime, but that fight wasn't fair in the slightest, and most people don't even like the character who won. Also not helping is that she doesn't even know the name of the Hakurei God of which she is a shrine maiden for (and doesn't seem to care either). The silver lining to this would be that most characters in-universe don't like her, but even that gets undercut a bit. Remember Cheating/Foul Detective Satori? How about we forget the character the manga is named after and focus on how Mizuchi is affecting Reimu personally. What about the time she interrupted and ended the talks between Byakuren, Miko, and Kanako in Symposium of Post-Mysticism? I guess I'll try to say something that I actually like now. So... I like her portrayal in WaHH and her back and forth with Kasen. They take her traits of "grumpy" and "lazy", and portray it in a sort of running-gag way, and her shortcuts to success often backfire. It's honestly refreshing to see. There was also the time Clownpiece lived under the shrine, and Reimu just let her because she was effectively a free heater in the middle of Winter. Reimu even showed off her heated shrine to Marisa, which was funny. Maybe it's the moments where she can just be a person and indulge in the setting, instead of having to be the badass shrine maiden who's super pissed all of the time, that I like. Ran does have a minor role in Silent Sinner in Blue, where her personality is being very analytical. She starts providing all of the info she's collected to Yukari, and is stopped midway because she's going into too much detail. It's very boring, so the fandom coming up with a replacement personality was inevitable. My problem with Ran is that, for someone who is supposed to take care of most things while her master is asleep the entire day, Yukari sure is awake during most plots and handles many things herself, thus making Ran's entire role redundant and pretty pointless for the most part. The only things Ran has going for her in canon is her design, and violently rotating into enemies in Imperishable Night. Also, Chen exists for her I guess.

The Touhou print works can be frustrating, especially when it feels like ZUN just gets bored of the character he initially centers the story around, and writes in other characters to eclipse them. She's also tied to Suika, which I don't dislike, but I'd rather see characters stand on their own without being stapled to someone else...

This. Stuff like this is what I've wanted more of in this fandom for the longest time, and it's those rare moments where someone sees the potential in a "nothing" character and runs with it that makes things feel worth sticking around for. It shows that you can expand on a minor character with enough effort, and other people appreciate said effort.

The Original Blade Maid. This is going to be a weird take, but I really don't consider her to be "Proto Sakuya". Ruukoto and Mugetsu share the maid aesthetic, making Yumeko the 3rd maid by this point. I also know this will probably be glossed over because it's from Seihou, but ZUN had involvement in the game (Also the team was still a part of "Amusement Makers") and it came out before EoSD by around a year. I believe the real Proto Sakuya is... Muse from Kioh Gyoku: Her attacks include marking a spot and having a barrage of knives fall on it. The Master-Servant dynamic is a double-edged sword. The autonomy of the servant is always going to be hampered, especially if the master just handles pretty much everything themselves, and the fact they are always going to be beholden to them (Satano & Mai/Ran). Though, it can start to go the other way, where the servant ends up being the more interesting character and does a lot, but at the end of the day still isn't allowed to do much on their own without being ordered around (Sakuya). That said, I view Yumeko as to likely fulfill a similar role to Youmu functionality-wise, to be sent from their respective worlds to run errands. Makai is a reoccurring location with many ways it's been entered, so it's not a stretch (the whole premise of MS were the Makai Demons flooding into Gensokyo to tour it). It is? The circles I'm around seem to consider it the only PC-98 game worth playing and the best one overall. I prefer Lotus Land Story over MS as a shmup, but I do like the setting and environments of MS more. Rapier Swordbeams. A thrust could leave behind a trail and it could burst into small bullets (pretty much like Meira's dashing slashes in SoEW). You could take a page out of SoEW Mima's book and have her try to align with the player before committing to a fast drop-dash, colliding with the bottom of the screen could have a wave of bullets erupt from the spot to sell the impact of the thrust.

Oh, I definitely agree there, and I'm mostly speaking generally when it comes to minor characters. I even tried pitching a fangame about Mike, that got shot down because she isn't a character anyone I talked with was "attached to". I just feel like a lot of people get dismissive on anyone that isn't a main antagonist or driving force in their story, and I think PC-98 characters get it the absolute worst. I've pretty much given up on waiting for official content doing anything interesting with TH16-18's cast. The last interesting thing done was having Sannyo's gambling business shown, and having a branch of it set up in Geidontei to prevent humans from wandering around the mountain to her den and likely causing trouble in Lotus Eaters. I have to turn to fan content and hope they even know who any of the newer characters even are. I'll admit a lot of my grievances come from interacting with the fangame creation side of things.

To me, Kurumi represents a character that has a lot going for them in terms of possible stories to tell with, over being some significant player in Gensokyo politics. She's one of two gatekeepers (a first in this series), in which her "gate" is the Lake of Blood that gets drained. Kurumi and Elly inherently have a connection to Yuuka, who escaped PC-98 hell to become a minor character in Windows. I'd also say having another vampire outside of the two everyone knows about is a bonus. I don't really care for the notion that a character needs to be intimately involved with the narrative of a Touhou game or print work to be interesting. This just leads to most fans making content centered around the same characters over and over, ignoring everything else on the table because any relatively unpopular minor character gets the reception of "Literally who?". It just takes some creativity and knowledge on what the character's traits are (you can get an idea on a PC-98 character's personality by reading how they talk and interact), and from there you start crafting a story. It doesn't have to be grand, it only has to matter to the character involved. You can have a story where Kurumi, Elly, and Yuuka catch up on each other's lives and hang out, maybe a story where she interacts with the other vampires. Heck, you could even think so far outside the box and pair Kurumi with Rumia. They are both Youkai associated with darkness, vampires don't like sunlight, Rumia can cast a darkness bubble, and they both seem to be mischievous. It can make for a unique plot, where they are covering for each other's weakness during the day and bonding over antics.

From my experience, it seems to depend on whether or not the fan content is being sold for money. If not, the guidelines are at best a suggestion really. Touhou Fangame Jams I take part in are shared and played through Itch.io, and I'm pretty sure the official games can't be found there. Overall, most people do follow the guidelines. Even if you are technically breaking them, if you manage to fly under the radar you'll be fine. I purchase the newer games on DLSite, and seeing all the content that obviously violates a... certain stated guideline that are allowed to be sold there tells me there is no real strict enforcement of it either. Now if you start turning heads, you are painting a huge target on your back (also crowdfunding a Touhou fan project is likely going to get you struck down).

This makes me think of all the fan shmups with nonsensical names in the style of official ones lol. Some of the teams I've been on during fan projects go flipping through a thesaurus for inspiration. Not a bad thing, but kind of funny in a way. This has always been the oddest rule to me. I'm not entirely sure what to interpret from it. Is it a thing to prevent spoilers? Some of the games need to have a specific ending to explain some things in another game. Are we not allowed to talk about Sanae's UFO ending, where it's revealed that the Moriya Shrine gods helped build Myouren Temple that appears in Ten Desires? Does this also mean someone can't write an AU fanwork derived from a Bad Ending? I think probably only the Western fanbase would have this issue. I am absolutely certain that this rule in particular is followed the most. 100%.

If the alternative to pirating is jumping through countless hoops for something not in my language, something I need to figure out how to patch, and isn't even marketed or meant for me to play, and I have to pay large amounts of money to obtain legally, then I'd say no. The thing I hate the most when it comes to Touhou specifically is that the communities for the common points of entry are so insistent on making the process of getting into official content the most inconvenient and unpleasant experience it could possibly be. The constant whining about piracy is such a First World problem, made by people who can't understand any circumstance or perspective beyond their own.