buskerdog

20 hours ago, CountVonNumenor said:

"Ah shit, here we go again" ~ Carl "CJ" Johnson, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)

sounds like another incident

Although I don't have much time for pleasure reading now, I was definitely an avid reader earlier in my life, able to get engrossed in a variety of fantasy (and other genre) novels, ranging from easy to very difficult in how hard they are to read (the hardest in my experience being the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I tackled at the age of something like 11 or 12 and was ultimately defeated by. And I was so close to the end too! But I had become completely mentally drained by it and was no longer absorbing anything on the pages. I did manage The Hobbit, though!).

A potential helper in why I read so much may be that many of the books I read were part of a series, and sometimes a pretty long series at that. So after I finished one book, there would always be the next to move on to, and when the whole series was done, I would look for the next series to get engrossed in. The popularity of Harry Potter (context: I'm British) may also have been a contributor in this regard - I haven't seen all the films, but I've read every book. As I got older, more mature fantasy novels also opened up to me as a thing that was appealing, so my options were expanded - as were what I got out of reading them.

As an aside, my favourite author is Phillip Pullman, notable for the trilogy His Dark Materials. I think he writes great stuff, although if you're going into his books, it should also be noted that he is very anti-religion, and his views extend to his writing. This isn't a sentiment I agree with; as a matter of fact, I consider myself pro-religion despite not being religious myself - yet it's in that context that I can find his work very interesting (it also helps that I just find his style of writing enjoyable - and it's not like everything he writes has to be read into at a deeper level). In his fantasy novels this is usually expressed - I won't say subtly - but unintrusively in a way that doesn't take away from the excitement of a fantasy adventure, however I have also read a short book by him that is more adult and expresses his views much more strongly - and it's the most thought-provoking thing I've ever read.

My favourite book by him, and my favourite novel in general, is La Belle Sauvage, which is the first book in a trilogy of sequels to His Dark Materials, although La Belle Sauvage specifically is a prequel. This novel works well as a standalone episode that doesn't need the following book to continue its flow, and in a nice change of pace, it doesn't even have any important themes of religion in it. Interestingly I started reading the second book in this trilogy but stopped - it feels very different in its pacing and structure, and I just can't get into it at all. So, you could say it's on the opposite end of the spectrum. I don't know if he's written the third book in this trilogy yet, if he has then maybe I ought to get back to finishing.

I would say my enjoyment of reading did and still does extend outside of books, too - when I play a videogame, I'm the sort of person who likes to read all the flavour text, no matter how pointless an endeavour it is. I will also never, ever skip through dialogue unless it's something I've read already.

Any time I get for pleasure reading nowadays, other than occasionally going towards Touhou manga and Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, seriously those can be engrossing, usually goes towards books on Japanese legends, folk tales, mythology, etc. You can see the youkai have clearly rubbed off on me, lol. So these tend to be more like collections of short stories, although I have also recently began reading a translation of The Kojiki, Japan's oldest surviving narrative that chronicles such legends as the Japanese creation myth and the origin of the emperor's connection to Amaterasu, amongst other myths important to Shintoism, although I haven't had enough time to properly get into it yet (I literally only read the translator's preface so I've not even properly started yet, haha).

Oh, did I also mention that I studied The Odyssey for one of my GCSEs? Mythology is cool.

So, to answer your original question - doing lots of reading does, undoubtedly, improve your writing (just look at all I've written above here, lol). However I don't know if that's really the case for explaining why we don't have many essay-style videos on Touhou Project. After all, there's something - several things, actually - stopping me from producing video essays.

The fact of the matter is, getting into the video-essay making scene is just very hard. Writing about the topic is one thing, but there are several other barriers to entry - for one, you have to be very knowledgeable on what you're talking about. Then you also need to have a good environment and equipment for recording yourself speak, and then you have to actually be good at speaking when you do it, and then you need to make an actual video for people to watch, and then you need to edit your recordings into the video, and so on...

I agree, it is unfortunate we don't have more essay-like videos analysing Touhou, and perhaps also surprising given the talent we come to expect from this fandom. But it's a hard thing to make, and although Touhou does have a large fanbase it is also quite niche, so we should be glad we at least have some people who create content like this such Surnist, even if uploads are infrequent.

11 hours ago, Ken Hisuag said:

On the wiki (specifically translation pages), there's occasionally an alternative title listed under the translated one. Initially I surmised them to be alternate translations, but there are too many examples where the meaning doesn't compare properly:

  Reveal hidden contents

Of course, now that I'm giving it more thought, I realize I have no proof these are in any way official, nor any other knowledge of where they came from or what their purpose is.

As far as the wiki pages go, the alternative titles don't seem to be present on the Japanese side, so I don't know where they come from. Without a physical copy of an album, I don't have a way to tell if they come from an official source or not.

OK so returning to this thread after my somewhat memey response I feel like I actually ought to say something more intellectual since it's a really interesting topic. However, I'm having trouble formulating my response, so I think I'll have to come back to it later. But I have loads of different things I'd like to cover that I'm not sure how to link together concisely into one post - tried writing it earlier and it turned into a post about religion instead.

20 hours ago, Ken Hisuag said:

Alternatively, I'm surprisingly fond of Wanderings by NKZ, whose contributions to this soundtrack are possibly the most overlooked part of the entire series.

NKZ's compositions and remixes are a large contributor to why I love IaMP's soundtrack so much. Idk why he only did music for this one game; however I think he stayed on the Tasofro team as a sound effect engineer for future games?

20 hours ago, Ken Hisuag said:

BTW, does anyone have thoughts on the alternative title trend that became inconsistently prevalent in the music collections starting with this one?

Do you mind clarifying what you mean by this?

Yoooo no way it's Kommisar! We've talked about you here before lol.

psst @Ken Hisuag

I approve of da book. However, I also find I have many other things I want to do with my time. But when I do finally set aside the time for it, I can become very invested in da book, and I have in the past had many a good experience with da book.

Since I have recently become a university student, I don't have so much time on my hands now, but I'll still make an effort to be active on here, and hopefully after a while things will get more settled and I'll have a bit more time to spend here. Anyways, I certainly have the familiarity with the game music. I might rank the CD music too sometime, but since I can't remember and compare all the tracks mentally it would be much more time consuming, so I'll leave it for now. As for things like Print Work OSTs, sure there are some nice tracks but it seems a little pointless to rank them unless you do them all together.

Also disclaimer this list doesn't have PC-98; I do listen to the PC-98 music and there are plenty of quality tracks but my opinions on them aren't as strong so I just can't easily pick out favourites from each entry like I can with the windows games. This list also exludes 100th Black Market, Impossible Spellcard and Violet Detector. Alright now with that out of the way let's get started.

I have long thought about what it would take to create a map of gensokyo accurate to all cannon information we have... well I've learned that someone has in fact done just that! It's not perfect by the author's own admission, and perhaps should be treated as a kind of "first draft", but still, have a look at it and tell me what you think!

On 9/17/2022 at 8:26 PM, CountVonNumenor said:

Redditors fear the truth. That's why they feed each other regurgitated opinions in their echo chamber subreddits all day long

AHAHAHA omg I can't stop laughing at "echo chamber subreddits"

oh also good job on this compilation CVN.

Sorry, I've been meaning to comment on this thread for a while, but you know, very busy life at the moment. Anyway, as both a Touhou fan and a fangame creator myself, it probably goes without saying that I feel attacked by the statement "Touhou games aren't phenomenal and the world and its characters aren't particularly interesting compared to everything else" I'm pro-fanworks. If I were to create my own IP and mark my words, this will happen one day I would want people to be able to express creative freedom with it, but at the same time, I have to admit that going to the lengths ZUN does of not only allowing, but possibly encouraging commercialisation is a scary thing to think about; most copyright holders, even indie devs, would not be happy with others profiting off their IP and I can understand why. It's hard for me to put into words why, but Ken makes a good point about the purpose of copyright being to protect the creator's ability to profit off their work. I suppose the fear is that commercial fanworks will cannibalise the sales of your own works, even if it somehow hasn't turned out that way for ZUN. I don't know if I could confidently say "you can sell your fanwork whatever it is, and at any price" like ZUN does, I honestly feel like I'd err more on the side of prohibiting for-profit fanworks.

It's a difficult dilemma to unravel, but all that being said it's only commercialised fanworks I feel iffy about, I'm completely OK with not-for-profit fan creations of any kind and I would like to make an effort to encourage them.

I like the stance SEGA has on fangames, they don't allow them to be sold but other than that they're super chill about it. People here seem to be ripping into Sonic a bit here but honestly I feel like SEGA deserve more credit for that (in general, not just this discussion here). After all, it's how we got Sonic Mania.

18 hours ago, CountVonNumenor said:

It might not be much, but I brought my contribution to this year's Cirno Day 

She's really cute!

You know what day it is my fellow bakas.

Huh I never heard of this buskerdog guy but he seems pretty cool. I wonder if he has a mediocre twitter where not much happens but he always posts when he's made something new? If he does I would totally follow it to stay up to date on any cool stuff he makes. https://twitter.com/buskerdog_

7 hours ago, Gou the frog said:

 buskerdog's Content (moriyashrine.org) 

I didn't even know that was a page on the profile. This frog has too much power.

Guys I'm still alive I swear it's just I still haven't been able to play the new Touhou game, that's why I haven't been active much. I'm sorry for not looking at your recent music posts Ken

Also wait a minute, ARE THOSE CITACIONS!!??

I've made a new fangame for Touhou Station Game Jam 2022! The theme this game is based on in "tsunagu" - "connect".

Connected Spirits is high-score chasing beat-em-up game where you control Youmu's human and ghost half simultaneously. By considering the position of both characters, you can chain your combos for longer and collect additional stamina so that you can keep slashing. Vengeful spirits will attempt to attack the Saigyou Ayakashi, defend it for as long as possible and defeat as many as you can! The game gets progressively harder the longer you last, and maintaining a high combo isn't just to be flashy, it becomes very important in the later stages of the game!

The music was made by my friend Cassare. I did the programming, design and pixel art, and Needlemouse contributed an image to the title screen.

The game was hastily translated into Japanese with the help of some online dictionaries and DeepL

The game can be found on my itch.io here: https://buskerdog.itch.io/connected-spirits

And it can be found on the game jam website, along with all the other submissions, here: https://touhou-gamejam.web.app/en/work/kEkFZpJsZoBBxdZT/

You can also check screenshots of the game following the above links!

Actually I think Scarlet Police on Ghetto Patrol did become a bit of a meme in something like the past year. ACE_DEUCE mentions the release date of that song but I think the time it actually became popular is much more recent than that, at least judging by the appearance of comments on the official video that weren't there before - I'd say that recently English comments on that video became far more plentiful, I remember a few years back it was was hard to find a comment on there that wasn't Japanese.

Also since I'm able to say it, obligatory "I listened to that song before it became cool".

@Gou the frog you may find this page helpful: https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/eosday

@sodaodaoda consider putting the #eosday hashtag on your video, you'll be in the list! ^

Sharing a banger for EoSDay ; )

Today is "EoSDay", the 20th anniversary of Touhou 6! To commemorate the occasion I released a short fangame that re-imagines the early stages of the game.

It's a metroidvania-like twin-stick shooter where you explore the Scarlet Devil Mansion and fight in bullet hellish combat, and it even features a boss fight! The music was arranged by Forger343.

You can find the game (and additional screenshots) here: https://buskerdog.itch.io/touhou-scarlet-labyrinth.

The planned idea was a game where you could explore the entire mansion and fight all of its iconic residents in homage to Touhou 6, but I never would have had enough time to finish all of that by the anniversary date, so instead I focused on just the first part of the game. I also had to cut down on certain other quality enhancements. Nevertheless I received some very positive feedback, and I may update the game in the future to encompass the complete idea I had originally envisioned! However I may also decide not to, it depends... Still, I hope you all enjoy the experience I prepared!

Happy EoSDay!

The age old question: how do I get my friends to be interested in Touhou? I've been without irl Touhou friends for too long now and I've decided it's finally time I at least tried to manually convince people. I'm sure I've read about other people introducing their friends to Touhou. How do you guys do it???

32 minutes ago, CountVonNumenor said:

I am not very sure what I could say about the Sakuya part though, if she is or is not a "Mary Sue". 

She's not a Mary Sue she's DIO

Here's something I have often wondered:

If the spell card rules forbid danmaku being any more harmful than lightly tearing clothes, how come Sakuya gets away with all that knife throwing?

Once again my thanks to the host, and thanks to everyone else for participating! This tourney really went on for a long time, and it's nice to see so many new faces around,

On 7/30/2022 at 5:26 PM, Ken Hisuag said:

Tournament Rating:
Average of all submissions is 7.2

That's really high given the sample size!

My absolute favourites were Diverse System's U.N. Owen was Her; and Shanghai Scarlet Teahouse, but if the overall tournament average is anything to go by, there was heaps of amazing stuff here. As with all remix tournaments, I also find there are some tracks that grow on me since my original rating, and in this case those tracks include M.E.P.H.I.S.T.O and the already very highly-rated The Beautiful World.

A recap of what I submitted! - for those who don't who possess Ken's world-class skills of deduction Not that he needed to use them this time

Seriously Ken, I'm now way too self-conscious of everything I write in these tourneys

Last time I said I would host the tourney after, so I'm ready to take up the role of the next host. I'm very busy at the moment and anticipate that I will continue to be for several months, so maybe expect the next one later rather than sooner; that being said it seems this tourney alone has lasted us a good while. Whenever the time for that next tourney comes, not needing to make comments myself as the host should suit my business.

I've had an eventful week, which may have included me getting rushed to hospital. Good thing I'm still alive to finish this. Better stop postponing just in case I die again.

Rough Sea

I often find it hard to find things to say about EDM, I feel there isn't much to comment on. I had to go and listen to the original again to be able to fully appreciate it, but I liked the opening of this song, and I appreciated the Theme of Eastern Story being weaved into there. The climax was alright but maybe it got a bit much right at the peak. I don't know what much more I can say other than you don't often get remixes of Illusionary Joururi. 5/10? I didn't feel there was anything particularly special to take away from this one.

The beautiful world

I really liked the mellowness of the opening, the piano reminded me a bit of the soundtrack from Breath of the Wild. It created this atmosphere that brought out the mysteriousness of Merry the Magician. I was expecting it to continue like that, but nope suddenly rock lol. It would appear this song is about Yukaribel. It still commits to being atmospheric, it's just a different kind of atmosphere now. I can really feel there's a journey being expressed through this music. I like how you can tell the music is based on Necrofantasia without it really being shoved up front. Although I think I would honestly have preferred if the whole thing was a continuation of the opening, it's a very cool song that uses the themes in it excellently. 9/10.

U.N. Owen was Her?

Atmospheric, I love the secluded village vibes given off by the instrumentation. There's also this kind of bubbly percussive noise used starting at 1.33, not the first time I've heard it but I don't know what the instrument that makes it is called, is anyone able to tell me? Because I'd really like to know, it's a sound I quite like. Anyway, this mixed around UN Owen in a lot of creative ways which I really liked. We've all listened U.N. Owen Was Her to death so naturally, it takes something for a remix of it to leave an impression on me, but this might be my new favourite rendition of it. Listening to this transported me into a dreamy, rural location - well, of the mind at least. 10/10.

12 hours ago, Ken Hisuag said:

For someone like me, base price of Hollow Knight is lower than deserved (a "steal," as they say). But for you, difficult to be sure of; I can say that Celeste was my favorite game before Hollow Knight, so if you enjoyed that game then that may be indicative. Have you played a metroidvania before, and if so did you enjoy it or not?

I love Metroidvanias. I have several friends who already love Hollow Knight. I know I would love Hollow Knight. But, I just have too many other things keeping me occupied at the moment. Celeste was also on my watchlist of switch games to get, but I never got around to buying it. Sigh... one day I will find time to play all these cool games...