Here are the links to my other accounts. This thing above is my “political blog”, where I post everything I already posted on my main account, plus “political stuff” I chose to avoid posting on my main blog.
And these are my other accounts:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LProcion
DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/coyam99
AO3 (Archive of Our Own): https://archiveofourown.org/users/mashounen2003
If you like something on either of my blogs, please reblog it in addition to clicking the Like button. Many other people here have already explained it before and much better than me, but in a nutshell: quite the contrary to how it works on Twitter, liking a Tumblr post without reblogging it is useless, it doesn't spread the post or even make it appear on your blog (the post you liked does appear, but only in a “Likes” section nobody visits). Besides, most of the content in my blogs is reblogged from other people, so reblogging content from my blogs will greatly help those other users as well. Feel free to add whatever you want to the post when reblogging it, too.
Also, all my Sonic fanfiction and Sonic-related opinions, along with my commentaries about my own work and related stuff, will be under the tags #sonic%20fanfiction%20by%20mashounen and #sonic%20opinions%20by%20mashounen.
non fandom related question but sort of relevant to a lot of audience here (I think?) so i haven't been here when the ace discourse has been happening. And like clockwork every year there is bisexuality discourse "are bisexuals straight passing" you know and now transmasc / non binary hate discourse.
And I sort of don't understand how come a random identity suddenly becomes the center of "if we throw them under the bus maybe it will be fine" discourse?
--
Respectability politics, or the politics of respectability, is a political strategy wherein members of a marginalized community will consciously abandon or punish controversial aspects of their cultural-political identity as a method of assimilating, achieving social mobility,[1] and gaining the respect of the majority culture.[2]
It was coined to discuss African American culture, but it's a pattern seen across minority groups of every sort in every culture.
To add insult to injury, there's now a cult-like group of transfem Tumblr users here doing the same: trying to throw literally every other queer person under the bus (after shoving them all together in one same bag labeled "TME").
But in this case, getting respect from the majority seems to be the very last thing they want. Moreover, when anyone else –even other transfem folks– point out that their BS is counterproductive, those nutjobs accuse all other queer people of doing "respectability politics".
Somebody got around to transcribing it, so I got around to translating it!
I feel like it's still kind of rough, but some of ZUN's rambling is eccentric enough that I think I can't really improve it simply by staring at it right now, without editorializing too much and forcing it to make sense with wild guesses about what he's actually trying to say.
Gravity Circuit is a flashy action packed 2D platformer in the spirit of console classics. Follow Kai, a lone operative war hero who harness
The game is free to download until June 14th!
I played it when it came out. Felt like a huge love letter to mmz/mmx! You can tell the people who worked on this were fans of the series
With the character of Toyosatomimi no Miko being inspired by multiple semi-legendary tales about Prince Shoutoku, and considering some other things going on in Touhou canon, I'm surprised that nobody has yet come up with a story about Miko having some really intense inner conflicts between different facets of herself and/or between Miko and all those versions and interpretations of the historical figure that was Shoutoku.
Miko in the Touhou universe is meant to be an alternate version of Shoutoku that secretly practised Taoism, rejecting both Buddhism and Shintou in the 6th century AD, a time when Japanese society was divided along the lines of those two religions as part of a civil war and Shoutoku himself became famous as a military leader of said civil war who brought Buddhism to Japan.
I found that Miko fully embracing Taoism and practising Taoist arts to attain immortality could be related to a desire to be her own person and grow, not only above herself, but also above all the myths surrounding Shoutoku and all the interpretations others made about his life story and his feats. In turn, this resonates with Miko's characterisation as a canon transgender female character in Touhou, including her decision to use her reincarnation as a shikaisen to undergo a complete magic-powered gender reassignment therapy.
Moreover, I have a headcanon that one of the reasons why Miko is rejecting Buddhism so ardently is because it's a reminder of what she used to be perceived as in her previous life, the identity imposed on her that she's trying to escape from. Now, it doesn't need to be this way, and besides, neither Byakuren Hijiri nor any of her followers at Myouren Temple has any idea that this is going on in Miko's mind. This makes her situation all the more tragic.
-------------------------
However, Shoutoku's ties to Buddhism are still a fundamental –even inescapable– part of Miko's very self, due to the whole thing about belief being what fuels the existence of Gensoukyou and its inhabitants (or at least, those inhabitants of Gensoukyou who aren't people from the Human Village).
She's not just vaguely based on the historical figure of Shoutoku and the various tales surrounding him, but she's heavily inspired by one specific version: Guze Kannon, the interpretation of Shoutoku as a messianic reincarnation of the bodhisattva of compassion Avalokiteśvara (Guān Yīn in Chinese, Kannon in Japanese), according to the devotional cult that developed around the Crown Prince for a while since a century after his death (as pointed out by @sorcerorsutrascroll here: https://sorcerorsutrascroll.tumblr.com/post/618837241216843776).
Now, it should be possible for Miko to conciliate Taoism, whose teachings she openly follows at present and secretly followed in her past life, with Buddhism, whose principles she only publicly adhered to as Shoutoku in the past but still partly define her very existence in her present life as part of Gensoukyou; after all, Shingon and other Japanese Esoteric schools of Buddhism were greatly influenced by Taoism, as pointed out by @just9art in this post [https://just9art.tumblr.com/post/793045036761858048] (by the way, Esoteric Buddhism in general and Shingon in particular also seem to be the branch of Buddhism with the most influence in general Touhou world-building, in comparison to more "conventional" Mahāyāna schools such as Zen), and Shoutoku himself used the Seven-Star Sword, a relic associated with Taoism (and the ceremonial sword where Miko placed her soul for her reincarnation process). Doing this conciliation between both religions might even help Miko personally in both her pursuit of immortality and the reaffirmation of her identity; after all, as pointed out in the post from earlier by @sorcerorsutrascroll, the Sūtra of Instructions of the Taintless Flame (on which Shoutoku is even said to have written commentary) teaches there isn't any inherent or fundamental difference or separation between man and woman (understanding this can be used as a path towards rejecting the gender binary as a supposedly undeniable and inescapable biological truth, understanding gender as a spectrum, and all this stuff that queer studies scholars independently figured out again since the 1970s).
However, if Miko's motivation to choose Taoism includes seeking to –as described earlier– be her own person, grow beyond her old Shoutoku persona and surpass all the ideas and interpretations people assigned to and projected on her as Shoutoku, then she'd never do any of these things to follow Taoism and Buddhism at the same time, or even entertain the idea of admitting Buddhism is right about something. As I mentioned earlier, this makes Miko's attitude even more tragic because (as seen in this post [https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/697974519511515136] by @sweetescapeartist –and my Spanish translation of it– about Krillin overcoming his PTSD by attaining enlightenment in the Dragon Ball Super anime) Buddhism can also be a path to grow beyond your own limitations and healing from past traumas, something that would align a lot with Miko's personal goals.
-------------------------
On top of all this, aside from the Taoist and Buddhist facets of Miko, there's also a Shintou facet at play. Well... The issue here isn't really Shintou as a whole, but a very specific (and relatively recent) part of it: the Heavenly Kami, and more precisely, the Japanese Imperial Cult, which focused a lot on the Heavenly Kami as a source of authority. This is because, in the Touhou universe, Miko still has a connection to the Lunarians.
Shoutoku played a vital role in the arrival of Buddhism in Japan, and Miko currently follows Taoism; however, Shoutoku was still a key member of the Japanese imperial family, and Miko insists on using the title of Crown Prince. The imperial family always claimed to be direct descendants of the Heavenly Kami; even with all the changes in their relationship with religions other than Shintou (for example: in the 6th and 7th century, they were accepting and even promoting Buddhism; more than a millenium later, in the late 19th century, Emperor Meiji ordered a strict separation between Shintou and Buddhism, invented an alleged reconstruction of the "original" Shintou that was supposedly "free of all foreign influence", and declared this "State Shintou" as the Japanese nation's new official religion), these claims of divine ancestry remained a constant throughout the imperial family's entire history, and it's logical to assume this belief also applied to Shoutoku back when he lived.
In the Touhou universe, the Lunarians see themselves as the Heavenly Kami, and the Lunar Capital's feelings of superiority and obsession with purity are mirroring –in a very direct and unsubtle way– the mix of bigotry, xenophobia, extreme nationalism and religious fanaticism that defined the Japanese Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (and has never truly gone away after that) and was the ideological basis for policies such as the creation of State Shintou and the Buddhism-Shintou separation ordered by Emperor Meiji.
Let's go back to Miko. After she had grown to sincerely respect Byakuren and had been willing to team up with her in Touhou 15.5, Miko stopped appearing in new games and only kept showing up in official print works. In said print works, she started being portrayed around 2016 as someone who not only strangely believes in a firm separation between Japanese and other East Asian religions that used to be very intermingled and syncretised for over a dozen centuries, but also has got what I could only describe as a "human-supremacist streak" (Aya might have exaggerated this in the article about her in Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia, but quite a few things Miko said afterwards kind of proved in retrospect that Aya was correct by accident about this one thing).
In a similar way to how Reimu Hakurei behaved a bit more like the Lunarians for a long while in the 2010s in a desperate attempt to fulfill the duties of a traditional shrine maiden [https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/809576855521853440], it's possible that the Meiji-era fanaticism embodied by the Lunar Capital started to affect Miko's personality as well, via the belief that the Lunarians are Shoutoku's divine ancestors and Miko –both as a reincarnation of Shoutoku and as the Crown Prince she still claims to be– should follow their example.
It'd be fantastic to see a story where Miko's own character arc comes to a close in the context of Gensoukyou's conflict with the Lunarians. This could have the many facets of her personality fighting against each other, and I can think of two different ways this could go: one of them is those facets taking their own separate forms in the physical plane, with Miko having to put all of them under control and reunite with them; the other possibility is that the clash between Miko's self and all these components of her identity stays in her mind and she starts physically and mentally deteriorating as a side-effect. Miko would eventually end this inner conflict and overcome this crisis with advice from all of her friends, which provides her with perspective and helps her fully discover herself and figure out what she really is:
Soga no Tojiko and Mononobe no Futo.
Both of them embarked on the same journey to attain immortality. Futo's point of view in particular would be interesting to explore: aside from her having originally been a follower of Shintou, there's the fact that she's so loyal to Miko but also used to be the first one to propose attacking the Myouren Temple, and this kind of animosity towards Buddhism is what Miko would need to abandon.
Byakuren, along with the Myouren Temple crew.
Given what I've described about the possible connection between Miko's rejection of Buddhism and her issues with her past life as someone different, I imagine this conversation would be the most emotional since it'd require unpacking all that baggage she's been bottling; it'd also be rather ironic if Miko, someone worshipped at one point as a living deity of mercy, was the one on the receiving end of said mercy.
Reimu and/or someone from the Moriya Shrine, most likely Kanako.
This would be important because it'd show what Shintou has always been at a fundamental level, what it literally was before becoming an organised/institutional national religion for Japan: a form of Animism, a belief system that focuses on respecting, appreciating and connecting with the essence of nature, the universe we live in and all its interconnected elements (the definition of the Kami –in singular– in its most basic interpretation, and also the basis for the Earthly Kami –in plural– such as Suwa Myoujin, whose lore is the inspiration for Kanako and Suwako), regardless of any big complicated family tree of heavenly beings with their own wills or personal goals. The conversation with Kanako would be relevant, not only due to the question of the interaction between religions (Kanako's father/grandfather Oukuninushi was syncretised with the Buddhist deity Daikokuten; a bit more about that here [https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/809375294976851968] and here [https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/808569429877227520]), but also because she initially became a kami after being born as a human (something not too different from Miko and her fellow Taoists becoming shikaisen) and now seeks to become a kami of innovation, which could also inspire Miko; Suwako, as a native god, would also help pointing out what I've just described about the Animist roots of Shintou. As for Reimu, I've already talked about her in that post I linked earlier about her portrayal in the 2010s: after the events of Touhou 19 & 20 and Whispered Oracle of Hakurei Shrine, she'd be in a good position to explain what Gensoukyou is about (acceptance, evolution, infinite possibilities) and that the Lunarians are dangerous due to how easy it is to start believing in their ideas and methods when things stop going well; we could even have Reimu thank Miko for indirectly helping her figure things out, as a callback to the ending of Symposium of Post-Mysticism when Miko found out about Reimu's true desire of being able to keep her friends and not having to fight youkai in order to keep Gensoukyou safe and in balance.
Maybe, Seiga Kaku.
She taught Miko about Taoism in the first place, even though Seiga has always had her own plans and machinations going.
Maybe, someone from the Outside World.
Ideally, this would be Sumireko Usami: not only is she the one human from the Outside World who still spends most of her time there, but I imagine she has quite a few strong opinions about current-day society in general and Japanese society in particular.
Maybe, Saki Kurokoma.
In this context, it'd be a fantastic time for a Miko & Saki reunion.
At the end, there could be an epic final battle where Miko, helped by all the people who already gave her emotional support, fights either against an actual Lunarian or against a dark/corrupted version of Miko/Shoutoku who's loyal to the Lunar Capital (or even created by its leaders). Given that Byakuren would be the most likely to be involved in direct combat alongside Miko, and also that a Miko + Byakuren team-up would probably be the most thematically fitting for this story, we could use this combined arrangement of "Emotional Skyscraper ~ Cosmic Mind" and "Shoutoku Legend ~ True Administrator" by "Kyo-Sensei" as the final boss theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlmG7ypo_eA
Based on a little theory connecting the god Moreya with the Mononobe clan, there's potential for a conflict between Suwako and Team Taoism (or at least there used to be potential for that, back when the Taoists had just been introduced in Ten Desires and before the resolution of the incident at the end of Hopeless Masquerade).
First of all, the origin myth of Suwa Myoujin, the tale of Takeminakata defeating Moreya and taking over the Suwa region, and historians' attempts to explain the real-life origin of the myth itself:
If you allow me the small digression, it's theorised that the whole saga of Greek myths set during the Trojan War (mostly written down roughly at the 8th century BC) were inspired by a real-life war between Greek city-states in the Mycenaean era (around 1100 BC), which had probably been motivated by competition over trade routes but then was mythologised into these fantastic and dramatic tales about gods taking sides and messing with mortals.
In much the same way, a widely accepted explanation for the Suwa Myoujin origin myth is that a tribe or nation invaded the Suwa region and surpassed & absorbed another tribe or nation already living there. Depending on how old was the conflict that inspired the myth later on, there are two variants of this theory:
One says that Moreya represented the native Joumon hunter-gatherers and Takeminakata represented the agrarian Yayoi arriving there.
The other says that Takeminakata represented the Yamato (the basis for the modern Japanese nation, ruled by the first few emperors of the dynasty that still reigns in Japan today) and Moreya represented a local clan of the Suwa region refusing to join the nascent Yamato state and submit themselves to its ruling dynasty.
Recently, another variant of this theory was proposed. This one suggested the conflict symbolised by the Suwa Myoujin origin myth was much more recent: the Soga vs Mononobe civil war. According to this interpretation, Takeminakata in the myth would have represented the Soga clan bringing Buddhism from outside of Japan with support from the imperial family (including the official Japanese military at the time, whose leadership included Prince Shoutoku), and Moreya in the myth would have represented the Mononobe clan fighting for the preservation (and supremacy) of the native Shintou beliefs & practices.
One of the main arguments for this (perhaps the only significant one, to be fair) is that the leader of the Mononobe clan at the end of the conflict was called "Mononobe no Moriya". His name doesn't share kanji with the god Moreya's name, but does share a kanji with the Moriya clan, the priestly lineage claiming to be Moreya's direct descendants (whose current living representative was one of the inspirations for the character Sanae Kochiya):
Mononobe no Moriya: 物部 守屋
Moriya clan: 守矢 氏
Moreya god: 洩矢 神
(To clarify, Suwako's surname is written with both of the same kanji as the Moreya god; "moreya" is just an archaic way to spell "moriya")
Even if their kanji didn't match at all, the Mononobe clan's leader has already been occasionally conflated with the god Moreya in a few ancient and medieval stories.
What does this have to do with Futo?
While it'd been speculated that Futo's basis was Mononobe no Moriya, or at least the Mononobe clan as a whole, I think it's more likely she was based on Mononobe no Futsuhime, the younger sister of Moriya (the kanji of Futo and Futsuhime are almost the same; "Futo" is just "Futsuhime" minus the "hime"). Futsuhime betrayed her clan and married Umako, the leader of the Soga clan; after the civil war, one of Umako's and Futsuhime's daughters was one "Soga no Tojiko no Iratsume" (I saw "iratsume" being translated as merely "Lady"), who then went on to marry Shoutoku years later.
So… Going back to the Touhou Project:
I guess adapting this rather fringe theory into the Touhou universe would still be fair game. What would that look like? (I apologise in advance if it sounds too much like bad fanfiction)
Suwako had offspring, and one of her descendants was Mononobe no Moriya, or at least she believes this is the case (I saw someone else half-joking that Mononobe no Moriya could be just an incarnation of Suwako herself). It'd be quite fitting: the Mononobe clan fought on the "Shintou side" of the conflict; with Suwako being a Shintou god herself (and an ancient one at that), whatever the Mononobe clan and their leader were doing would be aligned with her own personal interests. In that context, one of her descendants (Futsuhime) betraying her family and helping their enemies -thus leading to the eventual demise of Mononobe no Moriya- would deeply hurt Suwako.
Fast-forward to one-and-a-half millennia later in Gensoukyou, at some point either on the 13-to-13.5 timeskip or in the middle of the inter-religious conflict within the events of 13.5...
Suwako learns of this bunch of reincarnated Taoists suddenly joining Gensoukyou (she probably grumbles for a few minutes about Kanako's ambition and reckless actions causing incidents again). Both she and Kanako can be pragmatic enough to reach some kind of agreement and let them live their lives like they're already doing with that "Buddhist youkai gang" on that flying-ship-turned-temple or whatever… Then she learns their names: hearing "Soga" for the first time after so long certainly brings back bad memories, as well as "Toyosatomimi", but when Suwako hears "Mononobe no Futo", she sees red.
Many centuries ago, the past selves of all three of them were aligned with the side opposite to the one favoured by the native god, but that's not a big deal. If this were about continuing that old war or about religion, then Suwako would have already gone "scorched earth" on Byakuren and her followers (she'd even have to break up with Kanako, if those rumours about her being descended from the Buddhist god of fortune Daikoku-ten were anything to go by), and the Taoists would be left alone. But this is not about religions, or about competing for power or faith, or about something as trivial as the sides of an old war.
This is personal for Suwako. This is about family. There's a blood debt here, and the native god will make sure "the Traitor of the Mononobe Clan" pays it. And if the Crown Prince and the daughter born from that betrayal insist on staying at her side... Well, they can leave this world with her; it'll be a fitting end for the three of them.
Of course, this would be solved when we reach the end of Hopeless Masquerade, and Suwako would have learnt to let go of her grudge after she and Futo kicked each other's arses in typical Gensoukyou fashion. But I'll let y'all figure out how that could happen, because my brain has run out of creative juices by this point.
I shared this idea on other spaces, and it was compared with plots written by Zounose.
Maybe that's why Zounose's work is catching my attention so much lately.
(Psst, hey, uhh... What if... What if someone who can speak Japanese... I dunno... goes to Zounose and tells them about this? And then they feel inspired to make a new manga out of this? That'd be crazy, right? Heh heh...)
This got a comment when I shared it somewhere else, and I felt inspired to expand on some things.
Here's the comment in question:
Futo and Miko being contemporaries of Kanako when she conquered Suwako's shrine is so cursed, but it is true if we accurately follow Japanese history as the basis for Touhou.
Futo being Suwako's descendant is a very interesting idea. Byakuren is from Nagano. Maybe she is a descendant as well, who knows?
If I had to give my personal opinion about the Suwako and Futo connection, I believe Futo decided to join Miko's side secretly, so there was no treason, as nobody except Miko's inner circle knew it, and Futo died as a good Shintou supporter to the public. Not even Suwako knew about it.
And I feel like Suwako had a ton of descendants, so she would eventually prioritise her other descendants after Futo, as Shintou remained alive and strong even after the introduction of Buddhism. I even feel like Suwako also took part in the Buddhism-Shintou syncretism for her own advantage.
Very good post, OP 👍.
The author of this comment gets my thanks. It gave me much to think about.
"I believe Futo decided to join Miko's side secretly, so there was no treason, as nobody except Miko's inner circle knew it, and Futo died as a good Shintou supporter to the public. Not even Suwako knew about it."
That'd be the case for Futo joining Miko's secret Taoist third side in the Touhou universe. In the real-life conflict that inspired these Touhou characters' backstories, it was relatively simple and straightforward: there was just the pro-Buddhism side (Soga clan, Prince Shoutoku, imperial family) and the pro-Shintou side (Mononobe clan, Fujiwara Nakatomi clan), and Futsuhime betraying her brother & the Mononobe clan and marrying with the Soga clan's leader was very much public.
In Touhou, this whole event is reframed as Miko (Shoutoku) and Futo (Futsuhime) studying Taoism together in secret while pretending to be on opposite sides of the Shintou vs Buddhism conflict and not being truly loyal to either of them, and Futo leaving her clan and marrying into the Soga was just another layer in this whole deception (probably to save Futo from being massacred along with the rest of the Mononobe clan when they were eventually defeated).
"I even feel like Suwako also took part in the Buddhism-Shintou syncretism for her own advantage."
[Shin-Butsu Shuugou is the formal name of this process of syncretism between Buddhism and Shintou, for clarification]
Both Suwako and Kanako tend to be characterised as pragmatic goddesses (at least when they're being rational and thinking with a cool head, which sure wasn't the case when they caused incidents in Gensoukyou), so yes, they'd both be willing to reach agreements that allow other religions such as Buddhism to enter their land, be practised by their followers alongside the Suwa gods' cult, or even syncretise with Shintou, as long as Kanako and Suwako get to continue ruling over the Suwa region and existing as themselves in some form without the risk of fading into oblivion or assimilation. And there have been several kami from Shintou that kinda became one with buddhas, bodhisattvas and devas from Buddhism, in such a way that the kami and the buddha/bodhisattva/deva continued existing as two equally worshipped facets of one deity. Kanako and Suwako would be well aware of this and recognise Shin-Butsu Shuugou as a valid option for them to choose, since one successful case of it was Oukuninushi, Takeminakata's father and Kanako's father/grandfather (depending on whether you view Kanako as Takeminakata himself or as a daughter/heiress of his): the Shin-Butsu Shuugou led to Oukuninushi, already revered as the great builder of the land of Japan (and sort of a leader of the earthly kami), being merged with the Buddhist deity Daikoku-ten, one of the Seven Gods of Fortune (perhaps the most representative/well-known out of the seven).
[I remember one manga by Zounose, "Gods, Gods, Gods", using this as a basis for Tewi being friends with Kanako, since Daikoku-ten (frequently considered one and the same as Oukuninushi, even in official Touhou print works like Silent Sinner in Blue) saved and helped Tewi in the Tale of the White Hare of Inaba.]
But regarding Suwako in particular, I have this headcanon (which is partially shared by a few others, from what I've seen) that she still has a vengeful and remorseful hidden side. It very rarely comes out, and when it does, it's usually just in the form of a voice whispering Suwako how disgraceful it was when she "forfeited" the land of Suwa to Kanako, even though Suwako's reason reminds her that reaching this power-sharing agreement with Kanako was the best strategy (and her heart reminds her that both she and Kanako genuinely care for each other and enjoy their life together). In this scenario I came up with, when Suwako receives the news that Futo is still alive and is now a resident of Gensoukyou, that dark side of hers comes back in full force, and it ignores any and all reason there could possibly be to leave Futo and her friends alone: whatever religion Futo is following at the moment or was following in her past life (whether she was Taoist all along and thus wasn't technically on either side of that civil war, or she was Buddhist and Suwako doesn't have a problem with Buddhism itself, or even if Futo goes back to Shintou and swears loyalty to Suwako right then and there) is irrelevant, Suwako wants revenge either way.
As part of a self-imposed challenge, I translated this entire post into Japanese: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1svMl_mS8MpIluz8kYfv9qVR4kpz-Ze-p/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=113641877907564153859&rtpof=true&sd=true
For anyone interested, I recommend dowloading it directly and reading it through Microsoft Office Word, given that furigana plays a vital role here but only Office (and maybe LibreOffice) supports it whereas Google Docs doesn't: https://drive.usercontent.google.com/download?id=1svMl_mS8MpIluz8kYfv9qVR4kpz-Ze-p&export=download&authuser=0&confirm=t&uuid=32f35897-4ec9-462d-86e1-2c09ce86de17&at=AAINaIKwT0jhHCM6q-rhOu7FNRAT:1780338021007
I was looking for chiptune songs, and this seems to be the only place where I can find them now.
"Razor 1911 Chipdisk1" on @pouetdotnet: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=5684g [Info and credits for each song: https://www.pouet.net/prod_nfo.php?which=5684]
happy holidays, @thislittlelog! i’m your secret santa and have put together 8500 words of pc-98 reimaris for you. i hope you enjoy~
because it’s on the long side, i’ve cross posted to AO3 to make it easier to read. if you have an AO3 account, i can also update it so it shows up as a gift to if you want. [AO3 link]
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Starlight and Snow Drifts
“Yo, I’m here!” you call, waving your hand to try and catch your friend’s attention. Said friend was currently absorbed in training, a rare sight to see; her eyes were closed in concentration and she was hovering about a foot off the ground, stationary. When you yelled, however, her eyes snapped open and she fell out of the air quite abruptly, like a marionette with its strings cut.
“Oh, it’s you,” she says as she walks over, stretching with her arms up, then shaking her head to get her bangs out of her eyes. She looks rather tired, you notice, but she’s obviously trying not to show it. Well, you’re kind of tired, too; you’ve been up since sunrise with your own training after being unceremoniously pulled out of bed by Mima (no, literally – you were caught up in the blankets and wound up falling on the floor when she tugged on them, all while greeting you with a loud and intentionally, almost mockingly zealous “good morning”).
Now, the sunlight reflects brightly off the snow, the warmth causing icicles to melt on the roof of the shrine, and you’re all set to spend the day with a certain young miko.
I love it. Reimu made all these fortune telling slips because she didn't want the youkai of Gensokyo to change, let alone vanish from existence. And she has extended this kindness as far out as forgettable beings like Daiyosei and Koakuma, to beings as horrible as Yachie, Jo'on, or Seija, to even beings actively harming Gensokyo with their very existence like Mizuchi and Chimata.
And Zanmu has so much respect for Reimu that she calls her the Ruler of Gensokyo. While the fanon idea of Gensokyo destroying itself upon Reimu's death is inaccurate, it can truly be said that Gensokyo would fall into chaos and despair without Reimu being the person she is.
Not an all-destroying malice, but an all-accepting kindness. That is what Reimu is. Gensokyo accepts everything because Reimu accepts everything.
"[...] it can truly be said that Gensoukyou would fall into chaos and despair without Reimu being the person she is.
Not an all-destroying malice, but an all-accepting kindness. That is what Reimu is. Gensoukyou accepts everything because Reimu accepts everything."
This is kind of the big difference between Gensoukyou and the Lunar Capital, isn't it? The Lunarians reject anything they consider "impure" and –as evidenced very recently during the events of Touhou 20– they're obsessed with keeping their existence unchanging in their attempt to remain immortal, to such a degree that they risk destroying both Gensoukyou and themselves.
[What I'm about to say got some corrections from a previous version I made, but it still includes some speculation and fan-theorising because I'm not super familiar with the finer details of the events of the various print works, so take it with a grain of salt]
In turn, all this reminds me of how the early 2010s were probably an era where Reimu had it rough, and @que-de-metal already pointed out how this was where the events of the Touhou series and Reimu's actual portrayal didn't fit with her description as someone carefree [https://que-de-metal.tumblr.com//725438351395700736].
Other factions like the Moriya Shrine and the other two religions showed up and threw the status quo out the window, Kasen started pestering Reimu Wild and Horned Hermit started, Akyuu organised the Symposium of Post-Mysticism that ended with Reimu pretty much exploding after feeling betrayed by everyone, some misguided weak youkai tried to start a violent revolution, that unfortunate incident in Forbidden Scrollery #25 happened, the Lunarians dropped an Occult Orb of their own on Gensoukyou and everything went to shit twice in a row because of that... Those were some difficult 6 or 7 years, and it didn't really stop there: the Animal Realm tricked her and her friends into helping them and then started getting more and more involved until they tried an all-out invasion, and the actions of the Touhou 18 group led to more problems later on (not only did Chimata indirectly cause the incident in Touhou 19, but that was also the exact reason why some youkai were in danger and Reimu had to write all those fortune slips in WOoHS in the first place).
Right before this long string of particularly complicated incidents, the Ephemeral Moon Vignette saga happened: Reimu had to start training her ability to summon gods, there was an attempt to invade the Lunar Capital, the Watatsuki sisters swept the floor with the protagonists, and Reimu had to stay on the Moon for a while to end the conflict between Gensoukyou and the Lunar Capital. After that, once in a while, there were a few passing comments on how Reimu had started acting a bit strange after that trip to the Moon. At the same time, the incidents during the 2010s seemed to be proof that all the youkai were indeed just as problematic as it was assumed, that it wasn't possible to negotiate with them and the Hakurei shrine maiden shouldn't merely solve the incidents they cause & reconciliate with them afterwards and instead should literally exterminate them, and that all the newcomers were only making Gensoukyou worse and threatening its balance; this tested Reimu's deep desire for an inclusive Gensoukyou where humans and youkai could coexist, the reason why she came up with the Spell Card Rules to begin with, as she tried harder to convince both everyone else and herself that she had nothing to do with youkai and her duty was to get rid of them whenever they step out of line (even though Miko saw through that mask she tried to put up in the symposium).
I don't think it was entirely coincidental that, at first glance, the apparent definitive solution to these problems was to make Gensoukyou more like the Lunar Capital, with the Hakurei shrine maiden behaving more like the Lunarians, using their methods and adhering to their ideology. Also, the main Lunarian who defeated Reimu & co., Watatsuki no Yorihime, was pretty much everything Reimu was supposed to be and wasn't: she could summon all of the actual big-name heavenly kami during a Spell Card duel shortly after learning the rules (I've seen her being described as a "super shrine maiden", and it fits), whereas Reimu only was able to punch back in some capacity when she summoned a kami "born from impurity" for just one moment (I had initially thought Oumagatsumi wasn't a thing in real-life Japanese mythology and Reimu straight-up invented an ad-hoc "kami of impurity" from whole cloth on the spot; even though it wasn't the case, this should be mentioned more and Reimu should get some actual credit for pulling that off with such an obscure deity, regardless of Yorihime winning that battle at the end); Yorihime is also strongly disciplined and focused on her training despite how OP she already is, while Reimu has been described as "carefree" on everything she does since the very beginning of the Touhou series (or at least since the beginning of the Windows era), is even accused of being lazy frequently, and seems to rely entirely on the fact that her mystical abilities are innate.
Luckily, the events of the two most recent Touhou games showed that wasn't the answer, and ultimately proved Reimu right:
Zanmu in Touhou 19 thwarts the Animal Realm's plans to invade Gensoukyou as part of her own bigger plan to keep Gensoukyou under her own rigid control, sincerely thinking this is the best option for everyone. But upon meeting Reimu, Zanmu understands that a more flexible Gensoukyou is better, and it works because of Reimu's way of doing things. Even the Spell Card system specifically gets validated as a method to both solve incidents and bring people together: the final battle of Touhou 19 has Zanmu defeating Reimu in the spell card duel itself and then leaving Gensoukyou in Reimu's hands anyway in the game's story, as if Reimu was the actual winner; it could be argued that both Zanmu and Reimu won, each in their own way. As already mentioned by @anueutsuho and others (in a more concise and articulate way than I possibly could, honestly), Zanmu greatly admires Reimu for this and appreciates her for being herself.
In Touhou 20, the Lunarians' obsession with purity leads them to take desperate measures, unsealing a "goddess of permanence and the unchanging" to get Gensoukyou stuck in a timeloop, hoping that this stops the flow of impurities coming to the Moon and endangering the Lunarians' immortality. At least two characters in the endings (namely, Yuyuko Saigyouji and Rin Kaenbyou, both closely linked to the afterlife in different ways) explain that keeping things unchanging to get rid of impurity, just like in the Lunar Capital, results in everyone being basically dead. Gensoukyou is what it is and stays alive because it accepts change, evolution, other possibilities, new things and people... and this is only possible thanks to Reimu, her own personality and ideas, and the particular method she invented all those years ago during the "Vampire Incident" to solve differences and disagreements while keeping Gensoukyou an inclusive and accepting place.
(Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia, while it didn't focus on Reimu and the Hakurei shrine maiden's role in Gensoukyou, did try to make a point about how trying to be like the Lunarians was a bad idea, which was even exposed in the text itself when Aya interviewed Hecatia at the very end; sadly, the message ZUN tried to convey got lost in the middle of all of ZUN's own clunky & aged-like-milk real-life political satire and all the times throughout the book where Aya tried to be Tucker Carlson until Hecatia verbally knocked some sense into her)
Something especially telling is how much Reimu changed in the last 10 or 12 years between that fateful trip to the Moon and today: after being all like "There's only one way to solve incidents: exterminate youkai on sight!" at the symposium, she actively did something to help youkai in WOoHS. For years she tried to be an ultra-disciplined hardass and not listen to her own feelings, follow in the Lunarians' steps (namely, Yorihime's steps) so she could summon gods and be a "proper shrine maiden", only for the correct answer to be... that she never needed any of that: she had already cracked the code (although she doesn't know that because... Well, there are no computers in Gensoukyou, LOL) in the year 2000 or whenever the Vampire Incident took place, she already solved incidents her own way with the help of the Spell Card Rules she created, her so-called "lazy" approach is actually what allows her to do her job better rather than being detrimental (and even then, she still gives her all when it's needed and she really cares about it, as even Kasen admitted at one point), and even with all the additional issues & complexities and the inner turmoil Reimu was going through in the 2010s (something caused by the Lunarians putting all those ideas on her head), almost all the incidents during that period were solved in the same way as the previous ones and Gensoukyou managed to stay the same instead of either falling into chaos or emulating the Lunar Capital; meanwhile, the Lunarians' own methods are reaching a limit, their experiment to be eternal and unchanging starting to fail in more and more obvious ways, and their society is very much doomed to collapse sooner or later.
I'd love to see a new story set in the aftermath of Touhou 20, where Reimu and Yorihime meet again or even have a rematch of their battle in Silent Sinner in Blue (and that could even end the same way as the final Zanmu vs Reimu duel in Touhou 19: Yorihime wins on paper, but that doesn't prove her right). That would allow the series' broader narrative to underscore these differences between them and between Gensoukyou and the Lunar Capital; namely, how the methods of Reimu and Gensoukyou succeeded where those of Yorihime and the Lunarians failed.
Being open to change, possibilities and evolution, along with the all-accepting kindness @anueutsuho talked about, is the way of Gensoukyou; deep down, it's also what Reimu Hakurei is and believes in, and she's both happier and more useful for Gensoukyou when she's true to herself and follows those ideals when solving incidents. Trying to reject that, as Reimu tried for a while, is not the way of Gensoukyou; it's the way of the Lunar Capital: a sterile, cold and void way that doesn't really lead anywhere, only to slow and empty suffering, and ultimately to death and oblivion.
Since I mentioned the events of Symposium of Post-Mysticism up there, do you know what would be fantastic to have in the Touhou series now?
Another symposium, but better. And by "better", I mean with Reimu present and participating from beginning to end.
Marisa bursts into Suzunaan (as you do) and proposes this to Akyuu. On the one hand, more than a decade has passed since the original symposium and much has changed in Gensoukyou in the interim, so there's quite a lot of material for everyone to talk about; on the other hand, it'd be an opportunity for both Akyuu and Marisa herself to thank Reimu for her efforts and formally repay her for holding the first symposium behind her back. When Akyuu –who doesn't think highly of Reimu and her methods– asks where Marisa got the idea that both of them are indebted to Reimu in any way, Marisa reminds her that she and Reimu recently resolved an incident where Gensoukyou was nearly destroyed by the actions of the Lunarians, and that this led to the release of Ariya Iwanaga, who would now be able to answer Akyuu's prayers and grant her longevity; this and the successful resolution of many other incidents wouldn't have happened if Reimu hadn't been her "lazy" and "sympathetic to youkai" self.
There could still be drama and heated moments in this story, mainly from Reimu being taken by surprise by this and having trouble believing this is even happening, as well as various characters probably taking this chance to either air their grievances with each other or confess feelings they were bottling on a certain matter (for example, they could unpack both what happened in Reimu's trip to the Moon and everything related to the Animal Realm, including how they tricked Reimu, Marisa and Youmu into helping them in the first place, which I'm sure left a few emotional scars; also, if Aya really does admire Reimu as much as a portion of the fandom seems to believe, this would be the chance for her to openly admit it and for Reimu to point out Aya's actual actions suggested the complete opposite).
I've remastered this entire post, correcting a few details and adding a thoughts on a related topic as an introduction. Here's the link: https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/817008941597933568
[A polite warning: three months ago, I had originally posted here the theory on the second half of this post, then I had more thoughts on th
Lots of sudden thoughts (and a remastered fan-theory) about the evolution of the Touhou series's tone & Reimu's portrayal and their perception by the fandom
[A polite warning: three months ago, I had originally posted here the theory on the second half of this post, then I had more thoughts on the matter and that inspired me to add a sort of introduction and improve a few details in order to share it here as well; as such, it’s very likely that I’ve ended up repeating myself here & there and this needs some heavy reworking, but I’m still confident in this being mostly coherent, so... Here it goes.]
Some sudden thoughts on Reimu’s portrayal and the Touhou series’s tone, their evolutions, and the fans’ reactions to them.
I saw this post on r/GensokyoLife [https://www.reddit.com/r/GensokyoLife/comments/1smicxp] [re-posted on my Tumblr blog here: https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/817004029471342592] about a scene in chapter 1 of Silent Sinner in Blue where Reimu took care of an injured rabbit girl she found, with the title “A friendly reminder that Reimu Hakurei is kind to both humans and youkai”.
Originally posted on the "GensokyoLife" subreddit by "Some_Fig_6566" in the 15th of April 2026 [https://www.reddit.com/r/GensokyoLife/commen
I’m very glad that this side of Reimu is starting to get some form of recognition and appreciation, after seeing so many memes and other fan-made content that seem to overlook that and instead focus excessively on the implied darker aspects of Gensoukyou and flanderise Reimu into being either miserable 24/7 or intolerant.
It’s true that Reimu’s morality –as well as the moralities of all other Touhou characters (except maybe Aunn Komano)– is something much more nuanced and less black-and-white than one might expect upon discovering the series, and it’s true that fandoms usually aren’t emotionally ready for that kind of story and react to it by shoehorning oversimplified interpretations, where the protagonist is unambiguously “good” while the story’s antagonists are just plain “evil”, all the rough edges are sanded down and there are no complexities whatsoever. However, I've been seeing several people claiming to be the only Touhou fans who “take it seriously” and “respect the author’s intent”, who react to these fan-readings by over-correcting them, and end up pushing their own “grimdark” interpretations that are also inaccurate and oversimplified but in the opposite direction and feel a lot more like a superhero comic written by Mark Millar: Gensoukyou is a full-on dystopia, everyone hates each other and is morally grey (which then always turns out to be a rather dark shade of grey), and either Reimu is just the same kind of selfish jerk as everyone else but with powers she can abuse, or she has an utterly miserable life where everything goes wrong, every aspect of her life is decided on by others and she carries the burden of protecting Gensoukyou purely out of obligation.
(I could talk about how this phenomenon surrounding Touhou in general and Reimu in particular, with her portrayal being taken to either one extreme or the other by different sub-groups of fans, reminds me of Goku in the Dragon Ball series: he’s been characterised by Western media and fans at different points as either a stereotypical North-American comic-book superhero and “the Superman of Japan” or an insensitive brute who only cares about fighting & training and absolutely ignores & neglects his family, even though the source material doesn’t have anything like this. But that’s a topic for another time.)
Moments like the aforementioned chapter 1 of Silent Sinner in Blue, in-universe lore sources such as Hieda no Akyuu’s relatively optimistic afterword for Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, the peaceful resolutions of every incident with both protagonists and antagonists gathering and having a party without really holding grudges, the fact that the big thing making Touhou special and unlike any other shoot-em-ups is that it features non-lethal battles in the form of Spell Card duels... All of this together paints a picture that decidedly looks far from being something “dark and gritty”. Fan-interpretations that lean a lot more into the latter or serve as the basis for “Touhou but f***ed up” stories hardly feel like they’re truly exploring the characters’ feelings and motivations in depth, or uncovering a hidden horrible truth, or deciphering what ZUN was actually trying to tell us all along; on the contrary, they feel a lot more like they’re reading too much into things and taking one portion of the picture to run with that while ignoring the rest.
I’ve been trying to figure out what exactly was the source of those grimdark trends in the fandom. But then I understood that, while Touhou has always had the “optimistic” elements at its core, there was a long period of time until recently when, while the series was still far from truly becoming dark and gritty, new stories and contributions to the lore did get more serious and less light-hearted.
For many years since the late 2000s, Reimu’s portrayal no longer matched her description as “carefree” and similar things from out-of-universe sources such as character profiles; instead, she started consistently acting more jaded, angry and grumpy, more openly showing her dislike of her role as the Hakurei shrine maiden, being more prone to lethal violence and no longer believing that much in the Spell Card Rules she herself came up with as a method to solve incidents. Simultaneously, the themes addressed in official entries (both videogames and print works) of the Touhou series during this period tended towards, for lack of a better term, a more “pessimistic” direction: they insisted on emphasising the aspect of conflict, the troubles caused by various newcomers to Gensoukyou, the Hakurei shrine maiden’s duty to “preserve Gensoukyou’s balance” above anything else and its inevitable negative impact on Reimu’s personal life, and the apparent inherent incompatibility between the values Gensoukyou was built upon, the attempts to achieve peaceful coexistence or even establishing meaningful emotional relationships between humans and youkai in Gensoukyou that aren’t based on fear or hatred, and the nature of all youkai as beings who absolutely require not just the humans’ belief but specifically the humans’ fear to the unknown in order to survive.
Depending on how strict we are with the definition, the end of this “dark age of Touhou” (narratively speaking, not in terms of quality) could be in one of two possible moments: it could be in 2015, with Touhou 15 featuring an encounter with non-exiled Lunarians in the Lunar Capital (the first one if we only consider the videogames and ignore the print works) and the reveal that they caused the previous year’s Urban Legend Incident in Touhou 14.5, or it could be in the period between 2023 and 2025, with Touhou 19, Whispered Oracle of Hakurei Shrine and Touhou 20.
I learned about Touhou in early 2024, right when this era of the series’s canon was definitely ending; I started off by going to the very beginning of the Windows era and playing through Touhou 6 and 7, but I was also exposed to all the content made by fans on the Internet at the time. As a result, a lot of Touhou content I initially consumed wasn’t exactly dark or entirely depressing but did include lots of memes and parodies inspired by the state of the series’s canon in the last 15 years or so, with either Reimu’s life being comparable to your average Wile E Coyote cartoon where nothing goes right for her ever, or her being funny because of how unreasonably aggressive she is, or her laziness being amped up to eleven; I was already experiencing some dissonance from this, as those two first games of the Windows era that I did play had given me a rather different first impression, although I still lacked comprehensive knowledge about the series and couldn’t exactly articulate my thoughts on the matter. I looked up what happened in the next games and the print works, which allowed me to start noticing this “serious phase” the series had seemingly entered; a while later, I paid attention to the stories of the more recent entries –namely Touhou 19 & 20 and WOoHS (shout-out to @suntzuanime for translating WOoHS into English, their work has been invaluable)–, and then I noticed those optimistic elements at the core of Touhou that had always been a part of the setting and now are starting to get more focus again [1], as well as Reimu’s unorthodox approach to incident-solving being recognised as the reason why Gensoukyou is still the way it is and didn’t collapse or turn into a more hostile or oppressive place.
[1 – I’ll admit, though, that the very first time I read Reimu’s own fortune-telling slip about herself at the very end of WOoHS, I almost cried thinking she wrote that in an attempt to cope.]
For all these changes across the history of Touhou in both Reimu’s portrayal and the general tone of the series, the out-of-universe explanation is fairly simple: as time went on, ZUN was interested in telling different stories and addressing different topics through each videogame and each print work, and so he did. So, I tried to come up with an in-universe explanation, then I noticed something that might be just a coincidence but was too good to pass up, and I came up with a theory in February 2026: https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/809576855521853440
Since I mentioned the events of Symposium of Post-Mysticism up there, do you know what would be fantastic to have in the Touhou series now?
Much more recently, that Reddit post I linked at the beginning inspired me to polish this theory a bit and share it again in a remastered form, since the events of Silent Sinner in Blue are actually the point in the Touhou timeline where this started: before that, we had the series still being light-hearted and Reimu coming up with the Spell Card Rules, being rather chill in general, and casually helping a youkai recover without worrying too much about its implications; after that, it was the closest thing to a “dark and serious era” of Touhou, and probably the worst decade (a decade and a half, in my opinion) of Reimu’s life.
First of all, what inspired me to come up with this theory to begin with was this very succinct synthesis of what happened in WOoHS, made by @anueutsuho shortly after it was published.
-------------------------
[09-04-2025]
A post by @anueutsuho [https://anueutsuho.tumblr.com/post/780404738245181440]:
I love it. Reimu made all these fortune telling slips because she didn't want the youkai of Gensokyo to change, let alone vanish from existe
I love it. Reimu made all these fortune-telling slips because she didn’t want the youkai of Gensoukyou to change, let alone vanish from existence. And she has extended this kindness as far out as forgettable beings like Daiyousei and Koakuma, to beings as horrible as Yachie Kicchou, Jo’on Yorigami, or Seija Kijin, to even beings actively harming Gensoukyou with their very existence like Mizuchi Miyadeguchi and Chimata Tenkyuu.
And Zanmu Nippaku has so much respect for Reimu that she calls her “the Ruler of Gensoukyou”. While the fanon idea of Gensoukyou destroying itself upon Reimu’s death is inaccurate, it can truly be said that Gensoukyou would fall into chaos and despair without Reimu being the person she is.
Not an all-destroying malice, but an all-accepting kindness. That is what Reimu is. Gensoukyou accepts everything because Reimu accepts everything.
I made that last part of the text in bold for emphasis.
(“Reimu Hakurei, Ruler of Gensoukyou.” LMAO, take that, Yukari Yakumo.)
-------------------------
This is kind of the big difference between Gensoukyou and the Lunar Capital, isn’t it? The Lunarians reject anything they consider “impure” and –as evidenced very recently during the events of Touhou 20– they’re obsessed with keeping their existence unchanging in their attempt to remain immortal, to such a degree that they risk destroying both Gensoukyou and themselves.
This in turn reminded me of how the late 2000s and early-to-mid 2010s were probably an era where Reimu had it rough. As @que-de-metal already pointed out here [https://que-de-metal.tumblr.com/post/725438351395700736], this was where the events of the Touhou series and Reimu’s actual portrayal in the series’s text itself didn’t fit with her descriptions as “carefree” and “easy-going”.
Touhou Ship Week 2023 (Oops! All AkyuuRei) - Day 6 : Commitment / Conflict
The scene where Reimu barges in the Symposium has an unbelievable
Other factions like the Moriya Shrine and the other two religions showed up and threw the status quo out the window, Kasen Ibaraki started pestering Reimu– I mean, Wild and Horned Hermit started, Akyuu organised the Symposium of Post-Mysticism that ended with Reimu pretty much exploding after feeling betrayed by everyone, some misguided weak youkai tried to start a violent revolution, that unfortunate incident in Forbidden Scrollery #25 happened, the Lunarians dropped an Occult Orb of their own on Gensoukyou and everything went to hell twice in a row because of that... Those were some difficult 6 or 7 years. And even though things kinda calmed down in this regard after Touhou 15, it didn’t really stop there: the Animal Realm tricked Reimu and her friends into helping them and then started getting more and more involved until they tried an all-out invasion, and the actions of Gensoukyou’s resident dysfunctional polycule– the Touhou 18 gang led to more problems later on, since not only did Chimata indirectly cause the incident in Touhou 19, but her actions were also the exact reason why some youkai were in danger of disappearing and Reimu had to write all those fortune-telling slips in WOoHS in the first place.
Right before this long string of particularly complicated incidents, the Ephemeral Moon Vignette saga (Silent Sinner in Blue and Cage-in Lunatic Runagate) happened: Reimu had to start training her ability to summon gods, there was an attempt to invade the Lunar Capital, the Watatsuki sisters swept the floor with the protagonists, and Reimu had to stay on the Moon for a while to avoid a potential conflict between Gensoukyou and the Lunar Capital. [2] Right after these events, the incidents during the next 15 years or so seemed to be proof that all the youkai were indeed just as problematic as it was assumed, that it wasn’t possible to negotiate with them and the Hakurei shrine maiden shouldn’t merely solve the incidents they cause & reconciliate with them afterwards and instead should literally exterminate them, and that all the newcomers were only making Gensoukyou worse and threatening its balance. This tested Reimu’s deep desire for an inclusive Gensoukyou where humans and youkai could coexist –the reason why she came up with the Spell Card Rules to begin with–, as she tried harder to convince both everyone else and herself that she had nothing to do with youkai and her duty was to get rid of them whenever they step out of line (even though Toyosatomimi no Miko saw through that mask she tried to put up near the end of SoPM); she also started saying things like “Danmaku shouldn’t be restricted by rules”, which would make a lot of people think “There’s no way this violent shrine maiden came up with the Spell Card Rules’ idea to begin with”.
[2 – I remember reading that, in the few years immediately after Reimu came back from the Moon, there were a few passing comments once in a while on how she had started acting a bit strange. However, I can’t corroborate what was the source of that.]
I don’t think it was entirely coincidental that, at first glance, the apparent definitive solution to all these new problems was to make Gensoukyou more like the Lunar Capital, with the Hakurei shrine maiden behaving more like the Lunarians, using their methods and adhering to their ideology. To top it off, the main Lunarian who defeated Reimu & co., Watatsuki no Yorihime, was pretty much everything Reimu was supposed to be and wasn’t: she was a “super shrine maiden” who could summon all of the actual big-name Heavenly Kami during a Spell Card duel shortly after learning the rules, whereas Reimu only was able to punch back in some capacity when she summoned one kami “born from impurity” for just a brief moment near the end [3]; Yorihime is also strongly disciplined and focused on her training, not caring about how OP she already is, while Reimu is frequently accused of being lazy, admittedly doesn’t really train her mystical abilities [4] and seems to rely entirely on the fact that those powers are innate.
[3 – I had initially thought Oumagatsumi wasn’t a thing in real-life Japanese mythology (especially because “a kami born from impurity” sounds like an oxymoron) and Reimu straight-up invented an ad-hoc “kami of impurity” from whole cloth on the spot so she could counter the Lunarians with the only thing she knew they’d hate. Even though that wasn’t the case, this should be mentioned more and Reimu should get some actual credit for pulling that off with such an obscure mythological figure, regardless of Yorihime winning that battle at the end.]
[4 – Reimu doesn’t train her abilities at present, but if we try to fit PC-98 canon into the current Windows canon (using the rule of “everything from PC-98 is valid unless contradicted by something from Windows”), she had to do at least some training at some point before Touhou 6 in order to fully unlock the power of the Yin-Yang Orbs.]
Luckily, the events of the two most recent Touhou games showed that following the Lunar Capital’s example wasn’t the answer, and ultimately proved Reimu right.
In Touhou 19, Zanmu thwarts the Animal Realm’s plans to invade Gensoukyou as part of her own bigger plan to keep Gensoukyou under her own rigid control, sincerely thinking this is the best option for everyone. But upon meeting Reimu, Zanmu understands that a more flexible Gensoukyou is better, and it works because of Reimu’s way of doing things. Even the Spell Card system specifically gets validated as a method to both solve incidents and bring people together: the final battle of Touhou 19 has Zanmu defeating Reimu in the Spell Card duel itself... and then leaving Gensoukyou in Reimu’s hands anyway in the game’s story, as if Reimu was the actual winner; it could be argued that it was a battle with no losers, and both Zanmu and Reimu won, each in their own way. There’s also some symbolism going on with their respective theme songs’ titles: Zanmu’s “Kingdom of Nothingness” conveys her nihilistic view of the world, and Reimu directly counters this with “The World is Made in an Adorable Way”. As already mentioned by @anueutsuho and others (in a more concise and articulate way than I possibly could, honestly), Zanmu greatly admires Reimu for all this, and appreciates her for being herself, not giving up while others in Touhou 19 did, and giving the same treatment to both humans and youkai; this is then reinforced by WOoHS, featuring a plot that works as a direct sequel to Touhou 19, while being published just a month before the release of the trial demo of Touhou 20.
In Touhou 20, the Lunarians’ obsession with purity leads them to take desperate measures, unsealing a “goddess of permanence and the immutable” to get Gensoukyou stuck in a time-loop, hoping that this stops the flow of impurities coming to the Moon and endangering the Lunarians’ immortality. At least two characters in the endings (namely Yuyuko Saigyouji and Rin Kaenbyou, both closely linked to the afterlife in different ways) explain that keeping things unchanging to get rid of impurity, just like in the Lunar Capital, results in everyone being basically dead. Gensoukyou is what it is and stays alive because it accepts change, evolution, other possibilities, new things and people... and this is only possible thanks to Reimu, her own personality and ideas, and the particular method she invented all those years ago –around the time of the Vampire Incident– to solve disagreements while keeping Gensoukyou an inclusive and accepting place.
Touhou 20 is also a sort of “spiritual remake” of Touhou 15: they’re very different games, of course, but both games’ events include the Lunarians facing threats (Junko’s assault in Touhou 15, Yuiman Asama’s data overload in Touhou 20) that they’re unable to deal with because they’re a stagnated society, thus needing the help of “impure” incident-solvers from Gensoukyou. As a result, both games’ plots do a very effective job at removing the “Lunar Veil” (wink wink) of perfection, efficiency & strength and revealing how fragile & unstable the Lunar Capital actually is and how far its society is from being a role model. Both games also coincide in the timeline with the two possible moments when we could say the “dark and serious era” of Touhou ended.
(While it didn’t focus on Reimu and the Hakurei shrine maiden’s role in Gensoukyou, Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia –published the year after the release of Touhou 15– did try to make a point about how trying to be like the Lunarians was a bad idea, which was even exposed in the text itself when Aya Shameimaru interviewed Hecatia Lapislazuli at the very end. Sadly, the message ZUN tried to convey got lost in the middle of all of his own clunky & aged-like-milk real-life political satire and all the times throughout the book where Aya tried to “reach her final form as Tengucker Carlson” until Hecatia verbally knocked some sense into her in that same final interview.)
Something especially telling is how much Reimu changed in the years between that fateful trip to the Moon and today: after being all like “There’s only one way to solve incidents: exterminate youkai on sight!” in SoPM, she actively did something to help youkai in WOoHS. For years she tried (and failed a lot of the time anyway) to be an ultra-disciplined hardass and not listen to her own feelings, follow in the Lunarians’ steps (namely, Yorihime’s steps) so she could summon gods and be a “proper shrine maiden”, only for the correct answer to be... that she never needed any of that: she had already cracked the code (although she doesn’t know that because... Well... There are no computers in Gensoukyou, duh... Unless you count Ran Yakumo) in the year 2000 or whenever the Vampire Incident took place, she was already solving incidents her own way with the help of the Spell Card Rules she created, her so-called “lazy” approach is actually what allows her to better do her job rather than being detrimental [5], and even with all the additional issues & complexities in Gensoukyou and the inner turmoil Reimu was going through in the 2010s, she only really cracked in Forbidden Scrollery #25, all the other incidents during that period were solved in the same way as the previous ones and Gensoukyou managed to stay the same and avoid both falling into chaos and emulating the Lunar Capital. Meanwhile, the Lunarians’ own methods are reaching a limit, their experiment to be eternal and unchanging starting to fail in more and more obvious ways –as evidenced in Touhou 15 and 20–, and their society is very much doomed to collapse sooner or later.
[5 – Even if we take the laziness accusations at face value, Reimu still gives her all when it’s needed and she really cares about it, which even Kasen admitted at one point. The first example of this that comes to mind for me is Touhou 14.5: at the end of the Urban Legend Incident, Reimu saved not only Gensoukyou from a very concrete threat to its whole existence, but also Sumireko Usami from committing suicide via the Occult Orbs, even though Sumireko was the one who directly caused the incident (although only at first glance, since the Lunarians are the ones who caused it indirectly by starting the chain of events when they sent that Occult Orb from the Moon, but that wouldn't be revealed until the next game).]
I'd love to see a new story set in the aftermath of Touhou 20, where Reimu and Yorihime meet again or even have a rematch of their battle in Silent Sinner in Blue; that could even end in a similar way as the final Zanmu vs Reimu duel in Touhou 19, with Yorihime winning on paper but with this victory not proving her or the Lunarians right. That would allow the series’s broader narrative to underscore these differences between Reimu & Yorihime and between Gensoukyou & the Lunar Capital; namely, how the methods of Reimu and Gensoukyou succeeded where those of Yorihime and the Lunarians failed.
Being open to change, possibilities and evolution, along with the aforementioned “all-accepting kindness”, is the way of Gensoukyou; deep down, it’s also what Reimu Hakurei is and believes in, and she’s both happier and more useful for Gensoukyou when she’s true to herself and follows those ideals when solving incidents. Trying to reject that, as Reimu tried for a while, is not the way of Gensoukyou; it’s the way of the Lunar Capital: a sterile, cold and void way that doesn’t really lead anywhere, only to slow and empty suffering, and ultimately, to death and oblivion.
Since I mentioned the events of SoPM up here, do you know what would be interesting to have in the Touhou series now?
Another symposium but better, and by “better”, I mean with Reimu present and participating from beginning to end:
Marisa Kirisame bursts into Suzunaan (as you do) and proposes Akyuu to make a new symposium but inviting Reimu to participate in it: on the one hand, more than a decade has passed since the original Symposium of Post-Mysticism and much has changed in Gensoukyou in the interim, so there’s quite a lot of material for everyone to talk about; on the other hand, it’d be an opportunity for both Akyuu and Marisa herself to thank Reimu for her efforts and formally repay her after holding the original event behind her back. Akyuu –who doesn’t think highly of Reimu and her methods– asks where Marisa got the idea that both of them, rather than Marisa alone, are indebted to Reimu in any way; Marisa reminds Akyuu that she and Reimu recently solved an incident where Gensoukyou was nearly destroyed by the Lunarians’ desperate actions, and that these events led to the release of Ariya Iwanaga, who would now be able to answer Akyuu’s prayers and grant her longevity; this and the successful resolution of many other incidents wouldn’t have happened if Reimu hadn’t been her “lazy” and “sympathetic to youkai” self.
There could still be drama and heated moments in this story, mainly from Reimu being taken by surprise by this and having trouble believing this is even happening, as well as various characters probably taking this chance to either air their grievances with each other or confess feelings they were bottling on a certain matter. For example: they could finally address what happened in Reimu’s trip to the Moon, since that wasn’t really talked about in SoPM; likewise, they could unpack everything related to the Animal Realm, including how they tricked Reimu, Marisa and Youmu Konpaku into helping them in the first place, which I’m sure left a few emotional scars; also, if Aya really does secretly admire Reimu as much as a portion of the fandom seems to believe, this would be the chance both for her to openly admit it and also for Reimu to point out Aya’s actual actions suggested the complete opposite.
A friendly reminder that Reimu Hakurei is kind to both humans and youkai, from chapter 1 of Silent Sinner in Blue
Originally posted on the "GensokyoLife" subreddit by "Some_Fig_6566" in the 15th of April 2026 [https://www.reddit.com/r/GensokyoLife/comments/1smicxp], then cross-posted to the "touhou" subreddit in the 14th of May 2026 [https://www.reddit.com/r/touhou/comments/1tcxcjj].
This will be relevant for something I'm planning to post in a few minutes...
