EXTRA STAGE
Ok sorry this is actually just an afterword. My final thoughts on this blog, some things surrounding it and just whatever else I feel like mentioning. In case it's not obvious this is entirely Out of Character.
The Early Days:
When I first made this blog back in 2011 I really didn't understand what an Ask Blog was. Obviously I understood you were asked questions and answered them, but I didn't really put together that it was meant to be a role playing exercise. Back then I certainly held a decent amount of disdain towards role playing as a whole, I didn't understand the appeal and thought it was cringe. If I had realized I was participating in role playing through this blog, intentional or not, I may never have started, so... I think I'll thank myself for being clueless back then. A further note on that however is that I only noticed in hindsight there were a bunch of people who were interacting with my blog with the intention of role playing with me and I apologize for not realizing. The Ask Blog was just a way for me to draw things I thought were funny while participating in the Touhou fandom, that was how I saw it at least.
Before I started, I of course got interested in the idea by quietly following some of the more popular Touhou Ask Blogs at the time. I had just finished school and was enrolled in an animation course, I wanted to make sure I could use my graphic tablet properly when I started my course, as I'd only just got the tablet as sort of a graduation gift. So doing my own Ask Blog seemed like a good way to develop that skill... That was the justification I used at the time I'm sure... and it did work, I got a LOT better at using the tablet really quickly thanks to this blog... But surely I just thought it would be fun and it was something I could do?
Why Toyohime?:
Why Toyohime then? She's kind of a niche pick isn't she? She's not in the games, she's not as relevant as her sister in "Silent Sinner in Blue", and really, wouldn't it have been better to do a Watatsuki Sister blog? Well I can answer a few of those questions.
Why Toyohime is easy, there was a blog, TouhouAskBlogs, that kept track of a significant portion of the active logs back then, and much like you don't main the same character as your best friend in a fighting game, I didn't want to make a blog of the same character someone else was already doing. I would say my actual favourite character at that time was likely Cirno, she's still up there and she is my Hisoutensoku main still. But Cirno's always been one of the most popular characters, she already had several blogs dedicated to her along with spin off variations, I specifically remember Catcirno... I think that was what they went by. They had a running bit where they'd send other ask blogs "You have cat ears for a week" or something to that effect. I felt like I'd really made it as an Ask Blog when I got that in my ask box.
I digress.
All my favourite characters were taken so I started thinking outside the box which is how I landed on Toyohime. Her gags in "Inaba of the Moon, Inaba of the Earth" were my kind of jokes and made her extremely easy for me to flanderize because that was the easy out for jokes. Yorihime then just wasn't my type of character comparatively. Too serious and straight edge, plus, the fandom was pretty hard on her for beating everyone in a spell card battle in "SSIB". I've definitely warmed up to her since and I'd count her as something of a supporting character to this blog since she did end up showing up a bunch.
Yeah, that's it. I needed a unique character, so I picked one that wasn't one of my favourites but I sort of liked anyway, I hadn't even read Cage in Lunatic Runagate at the time, what a fraud! Since then she has become my favourite character, problematic traits and all. It wouldn't be that way if not for this blog but there's no other series where I'm quite as passionate about any character as much as I am about Toyohime and for that I am truly thankful.
Puns:
I don't remember every ask I ever posted and a lot of it is really hard to look back on. I do really genuinely care for everything I made back then even if I think it's painfully unfunny now but I wanted to specifically talk about the puns. Looking at the notes on the "Alternative Fossilized Wonders" series there's very few familiar faces which is pretty understandable given how long its been, along with the porn ban and other aggravating things pushing people away from Tumblr. So I'm not sure how many people remember how centered around puns this blog was. Initially I did try to create more comedic scenarios rather than relying on puns, but I'd lab out potential asks in my head that would never come or I'd try and force an idea I had onto an ask that very vaguely fit what I was after. At the time especially I did think puns were hilarious, and after I'd done one how could I resist not doing 100 more? (Don't check that number I'm exaggerating probably). It did lead to me flanderizing Toyohime further than I already had though. She was already just "Moon" and "Peach" or "Bunny" for everything but it did give the blog a strong identity, we had a skype group chat containing a bunch of ask blog owners (along with some others) and besides being Toyohime, I was also "The Ask Blog with all the puns" and a lot of asks ended up being based around puns as well. The posts didn't age super gracefully but man... I was so happy people were interacting with the blog.
The 2019 Comeback:
This section is mostly to shed some light on what happened during this time. For those not in the know, Ask Toyohime uploaded relatively consistently all the way through to 2013, slowing down in 2014 and basically stopping at the end of 2014. Times had changed, Ask Blogs weren't the in thing anymore, people were leaving Skype and I was pretending my course work actually made me busy enough to not do other things. It was a good 2 years of solid activity with a decent 5 years of posting.
Then 5 years later while on break at my job, I decided to look at Ask Toyohime and check my inbox. I still had a lot left. Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom had come out and given me more material and characters to work with and most importantly I knew I had at least a few people interested in seeing me return, not many, but a few. The original plan was to complete the short return and at the end I would use this blog to promote my comic which... Did not end up happening.
I left on an OOC post saying I'd accept 5 new asks which I would do before closing the blog permanently and write a final retrospective on the blog afterwards. I got 1 ask, it was the "NXT Takeover NY" one, and I had no idea how to answer it. Puns weren't coming, I didn't know anything about wrestling outside the really big names and I didn't think Toyohime would either. I had left some other questions aside thinking this might happen but my inability to resolve that ask along with me further delaying my comic lead to my motivation completely drying up and just... Leaving it... Because I didn't think anyone would care. Why would they? I clearly didn't care enough.
...and then Touhou 20 came out.
Touhou 20: Fossilized Wonders:
Before I begin this section. Thank you for all the support on the posts this week. All of them have tracked better than my previous active periods and Stage 1 is the most amount of notes a post on this blog has ever gotten. I'd been sitting at just over 100 followers since 2014, I got a few more in 2019 but I jumped from 107 to 118 this week and I know that's not really a lot but I don't think I've had a new follower on my actual main active blog in over a decade. So thank you but I do feel guilty that this is going to be the last post here... At least for a few years.
Let's be real, this entire comeback was because Toyohime is an actual boss in Touhou 20. Like wow, huh? really? I still don't believe it. That was the dream for years and there she is! In a game!
I hummed and hawed over doing a single post with just a drawing of Toyohime and posting it to this blog. The NXT ask was still scaring me, I'm busy working on my comic whenever I'm not doing my actual job and all the friends I'd made during the Ask Blog era had grown distant and moved to new hobbies and friend groups. I was so excited about Toyohime in Touhou 20 and I had no one to share it with! I eventually decided I'd delete the OOC post that was plaguing me as the final embarrassing post here and instead just do a Toyohime drawing on my main blog because I couldn't not. That's my girl after all!
But I decided to look at the notes on that OOC post for whatever caught my intrigue in that moment. There was a single reply. From a few years after I had originally made that OOC post, and it's this.
I'm not sure why it struck me the way it did, I had of course read it when the reply was originally sent and it did briefly ignite a spark that was quickly stifled by remaining asks in my ask box. But this time just gave me the motivation I needed. I wanted to draw Toyohime already, Touhou 20 just like Touhou 15 gave me new material and framing devices to work with, and most importantly I had several years extra writing and drawing experience from my comic to put to use.
Stage 5 came first, just reading the dialogue on Touhouwiki made me laugh because Toyohime sounded so full of cope.
Toyohime: "Do you still not get it?
You can't beat me."
Reimu: "And again, you're a sore loser."
My understanding of her character as well as the other characters had changed a lot. She certainly isn't the character I portrayed in this blog but she is exactly how I imagined she should be. And so, the first piece I drafted up was just a dialogue rip from the wiki to share my interpretation of their interaction.
The plan was to continue like that, just re-framing dialogue from Touhou 20. But Yuiman and Mt. Asama Joue(the pyramid) were such good computer analogs that I felt I could justify their existence within the alternate reality of this ask blog where I've retconned that this is how Toyohime was always posting to Tumblr. It gave me something fun to work with and also lead to me being able to really write something of an ending to this blog which I had never considered before.
I was also originally just going to ignore the NXT question since it had been giving me so much grief for years now. But that ask was the only ask I got when I reopened the ask box 6 years ago. They're the only person who cared enough to try and ask something. I wanted to repay that even if I don't think I could really give them what they wanted from that question. Sorry, I'm not watching an entirely wrestling show to give a half assed answer on which fight I liked the most. I'm very happy with what I ended up with instead. If there are any active Yorihime ask blogs or rp blogs around, oopsie, I may have passed the problem to you but I did ground my writing in what I believe is representative of her. She trains the moon rabbits and most of her gags in "IotEIotM" revolve around her trying to train Reisen so I think at the very least... She probably would enjoy wrestling more than Toyohime. Flimsy maybe, but I was satisfied.
And this is where I'll leave you. "Fossilized Wonders" was all about change. The lunarians are unchanging but Gensokyo can change. I've certainly changed. I think this batch of posts I did really shows that. My drawings are much better, I think my writing is also much better, the things I choose to write about are different and the people liking and reblogging my posts are different. However this blog will stop changing, locked forever in this moment. I think Toyohime might approve of that. I'll be looking back at this for the rest of my life, this blog changed my life and that's not an exaggeration. I entered the biggest crossroad of my life at the start of this blog and I'll finally be leaving it after settling down and becoming comfortable with who I am, what I do and where I'm going.
If you somehow read all of that. Thank you. If you only read some of it. Thank you. The Ask Blog Era is over for me, but I hope ask blogs keep popping up and making friends with each other the same way I did. This is goodbye from me. Thank you an amoonsing 14 years.
I'm still working on my comic and if you liked the most recent Ask Toyohime stuff I think you'll probably enjoy it. You can read it here, here and here.
And you can find me and ask me questions on my main blog here.