#gensokyo

[curlytsunamiart]

[bluebell-42]

I know that I've talked about how much I like adding darker/horror elements to Gensokyo as a setting, but can we just, romanticize Gensokyo for a second? Like, think about it, Gensokyo is this beautiful place where the forgotten are saved and have a chance at being remembered again. Where the relics and creatures of long forgotten cultures and folk-lore are saved to never be forgotten and buried by the sands of time. Do you ever think ruins from old civilizations end up in Gensokyo somehow? Do you think old abandoned buildings taken over by nature from across the world dot Gensokyo's landscape? Do you think long forgotten and dead languages can be heard in the wind like hushed, fleeting whispers?

God Gensokyo is so beautiful.

[crazycake20]

Some yuri redraw

And this is the original pic from 2023💀

[abstractionjuiced]

god, one trope I'm slowly recognising I absolutely fucking adore is when fantasy settings like. explore the ramifications of powerful mortals verging on divinity.

the Hazy undefined spaces where "really skilled mortal archmage" starts pushing up against "actual god"; watching old monsters of absurd talent bound within the rules of their hard magic smash against young gods who exist outside the rules binding others.

New gods and old awakening, and fighting, and what that means from a mortal perspective when limited, constrained sorcerors have to deal with the ramifications of like. Eldritch, reality bending forces - young or old or an offshoot of something ancient stirring.

What do you do if a god- some incomprehensibly powerful being unbound from reason and trammel - awakens? How do you fight it, if you can? If it's an idiot god or child, is it scared of you for being so much more intelligent?

Kenjaku pushing the limits of jujutsu sorcery only to be faced with Takaba, who can simply command reality to make him laugh. This ancient sorceror straining to learn more coming face to face with perhaps the most incomprehensible creature in the franchise, an incarnate joke telling itself upon the fabric of creation. Straining to survive, fighting for his life against this idiot god who barely understands how ridiculous he is.

Gojo up against an ancient, indestructible evil, with sorcerous powers refined above even what he called the peak where you outright overwrite reality, and unending absurd reserves of power dwarfing his own by orders of magnitude. It inhabits his student - his foster son, practically - and almost attains his full potential immediately, pours such gasoline onto the fire that his weakest summons become kaiju and the things he could never face bend the knee.

Darquesse - young arrogant godling exploding into a deity - struggling to keep up with Mevolent, a mere elemental sorceror who simply pushed and pushed and pushed mortal magics as hard as he could. And never managed a qualitative step up into something greater; is only on a quantitative level better than other Sorcerors, but still matching Darquesse beat for beat despite her unrestricted access to all magic. The divine power in the blood of Abrogate Raze making Skulduggery magically ambidextrous but not really a god, until you consider Lord Vile growing into such an absurdly potent necromancer he can beat even Mevolent.

Even the Excrucians and Imperators of Nobilis, which should have no fucking right to discuss their limitations from an actually interested POV, have to deal with catching flak from Transcendents like Epitiokh when she comes knocking. Imperators and Nobles fear botanists despite their lack of divine power - because of their skill in knowing the very language of creation.

Stories where legendary forces actually show why they're so terrifying in glorious, grounded detail have always intrigued me. Especially when those reasons are more multifaceted than "this guy is stronger!"- who outsmarts who? Why do these limits apply, or how have they been negotiated until they should really, but don't anymore?

Or even juicier - why does this deity lose to the mortals, and what does it cost them to make that happen? Why does someone mortal, someone constrained by the limits that shackle everyone else even still, become as a divinity? What are the limits on the ACTUAL gods?

[quariumarts]

Past and Present Commission for NeoAya on twitter.

[mrchester27]

☾ Komeiji Koishi's Heart-Throbbing Adventure ☽

Author: Sentaku-bune

Gifs and screenshots from parts 1 to 12 that I liked (in no particular order)

~ Crap, I'm gonna be a pancake! ~

[brothdian]

Land of Faith RP Map

Made solely for a invite only touhou crossover rp lol

[apricot-sunshiine]

Okay, but can we talk about Moon Child in Gensokyo, though?

Like, okay, for context, Moon Child is a mascot of a game that barely even came out on a console that has largely been lost to the sands of time. Until sometime in 2026, no one really thought about the Commodore Amiga anymore, much less Moon Child.

That game only really released in the Netherlands in limited numbers and only for a brief time before the publisher shuttered. It wasn't a cult classic, it wasn't a hidden gem. It just was.

By that logic, something known but forgotten like that should turn up in Gensokyo, right? It's a place where lost and forgotten things appear. Moon Child for the Commodore Amiga is the exact sort of thing that might show up in Muenzuka one day.

And yet, recently, Moon Child has rocketed back into the public zeitgeist for...what amounts to pure luck and chance. The algorithm blessed it, for lack of a better term. Its music took off, and now people are talking about Moon Child again.

From forgotten to beloved, overnight.

How does that manifest in something that already went to Gensokyo, the land where forgotten things live? Does it leave? Does it stay?

I can't help but want to think about it more.