#post-merry renko

[monikatouhou]

[spear-gsun]

Drew a Renko to go along with the Merry from yesterday

[junhecas]

you can eat whatever you want for breakfast if you aren't the same kind of alive an animal is

[crookedcrow5]

WIP out of context:

Yukari, finding a corpse in a ditch: dibs

Yuuma: where is my girlfriend

[friendshapedplant]

@ the women blorbo post from a few hours ago I completely forgot about Touhou for a second. I'm sorry women /lh

[freshlybakedspiderbread]

ive always wanted to talk a bit about how i feel about the connection between Yukari and Merry because i love the endless parallels and thematic connections (like everyone else on the planet 😁), but wondering if it was ever 'worth' it since i may just be spouting a lot of what is already considered 'common knowledge' among hifuu aficionados. Not to mention i think my thoughts on it are somehow both really messy but also crystal clear. 😐 Well whatever! Its my own head anyway so i'll try not to worry and am gonna attempt to elaborate even if just a little on this post, which may not be entirely coherent due to sleepy, post-medicine fatigue.

i feel like over the years i may have started to become reflexively more 'against' yukari = merry fandom, although 'against' is probably too strong and its much more complicated than just "i dont subscribe to that theory" because thats not even entirely accurate!

it is of course a classic and really cool idea of the Merry one day becoming Yukari has been and continues to be thoroughly explored by many many fans for moving, tragic, bittersweet, or thought provoking work. I love Absolute One-Way Street, and also Dream and Reality among many other works like it 📖

but i also think its a little stiffling to think of that as the one and only story to tell about them? Now its possible that the sentiment im about to express isn't actually common and im actually just making up a person to respond to, but i think taking the teasing connections between Yukari and Merry and treating the idea of them being the same individual as the absolute obvious truth is a bit of a limiting perspective.

Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinions and headcanons! but i want to make a case that when it comes to touhou and especially hifuu in particular, there's also a richer (and possibly deliberate on the author? who knows!) point to treat it more abstractly.

Maybe they are the same person. Maybe one day Merry becomes Yukari, or Yukari becomes Merry. Maybe they're different people. Maybe they come from the same lineage. Or maybe one is a clone of the other grown in a lab or made with a magic spell.

None of that is as important to me as the the roles they serve in their stories. touhou has always had themes about the gap and the bridge between fantasy and reality by taking place in a world where fantasy seeks refuge from reality, and hifuu goes much further in that theme by taking place in a reality that has completely left behind fantasy. That parallel is really cool to me and its embodied perfectly by both stories having a purple-clad blonde girl with the means to poking their toes into the boundary between fantasy and reality.

In the fantastical world of touhou, one serves as gensokyo's powerful (if frustrating, shady, annoying, disagreeable) protector with allies that she watches over (and sometimes manipulates) with her great power, all to preserve their little wonderworld. And I think its sooo compelling how zun introduced hifuu in the music cds and designed a very similar-looking character, who lives in a stifled reality lacking in imagination, mostly spends her day chasing after even the smallest traces of dreams with a partner whose own small logical world expanded with infinite possiblities upon their meeting...

In the last few cds, Merry's powers may be growing stronger and i get why feeds the implication she's becoming something other than human. But my take on that has always been its more of a sign that she and Renko are already outliers in their world simply for daring to believe there is more to the world beyond facts and logic. I dont expect their story (assuming zun ever brings them back. we havent heard what theyre up to since 2016....) to ever end with both or either of them becoming a youkai or vanishing to gensokyo, because frankly that wouldn't serve any purpose for the themes hifuu has been about, which is embracing fantasy while living in a world that has abandoned it.

trying to remember what my point with this post is.... Oh right its that I think all these themes about the nature of gensokyo or the state of reality in hifuu are only made richer when you think about how they contrast with one another. And by extension, I think Yukari and Merry are both richer if you think of them as conceptual and thematic counterparts in two different stories on the opposite end of a similar spectrum, before thinking about what literal or objective connection they might have. Subjectivity definitely means more than objectivity in this case!

[every1sno1fangirl]

Happy Hifuumo Friday everyone! Sorry this post is a little late, today was pretty action-packed and regrettably, I am still using my phone. Needless to say, it's a huge pain in the ass.

But at least I have a lot of pictures to show off!

I've been sick for most of the week, which is a shame, but despite that, I've still managed to fit lots of activities in my days here in Seattle.

And having my friends there has really helped me deal with it much better. Also, they help me with my pictures. Two of them were involved in this one!

This store asked me to tag them, but they don't have a Tumblr. Sorry Purple Store!

I'm very thankful for the patience of others. I think it's very obvious I haven't interacted with others so personally in a very long time and it shows.

My worst fears haven't been realized at the very least.

Anyway, we've had a ton of fun going to different museums all over the city. We went to a glass art museum for example, and all of these pieces are insanely cool!

I also had some really good food that was outside of my painfully limited comfort zone. It still needs to be expanded even further, but I've done a good job narrowing down what I do and do not actually like on this trip at least.

I also loved the Seattle Art Museum. I could have sprnt all day looking at every nook and cranny inside of the place. The day we went was coincidentally a free one, too!

And I actually received some help from strangers too. The idea for that last pic came from an older woman who saw me taking a picture of that painting from much further away.

I thanked her for the amazing idea!

I think the highlight was absolutely the Hokusai exhibit though. I had a blast in there looking at so many of his prints and at the art that was inspired by him.

Merry and Renko got to see some of the Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji too!

Being sick sucks and I was overwhelmed earlier in the week, but I still managed to have a great time.

I have to go back home in a few days, I'll miss everyone very much...I'll just have to make the most of the time I have left.

I love you all, have a good day/night!

[sukimas]

anyway if you ever think "how could merry possibly want to hang out with renko usami for that long" recent posts provide a good comparison

[wretchedbirdthing]

I don’t want to hate on Lost Word for any reason, that’s not what this is about; I don’t actually care all that much about the game. I just want to put out my own thoughts on their “version” of Aka or what I'll refer to as Shikigami Aya (cause they're wholly two different entities).

(I’ll probably put this under a thingy if it gets too long) (it got too long)

Now, I want to preface this by stating that I am very biased. Very very very and obviously biased towards Aka over Shikigami Aya. So keep that in mind! This is also just my opinion. I believe that despite this, my points still stand.

I also don’t want to talk about the characters themselves, mostly because I’m not fully comfortable in evaluating that (I don’t know if Yukari would wait for someone’s permission before doing something though I’m leaning towards “no” but I’m not comfortable with making a definite answer).

I also haven’t read the event yet cause I’d like to finish all the CDs first just in case the characterization sucks and I don’t want a bad impression of Merry and Renko. So I’ll just be going over the themes from the youtube trailer and the screenshots so graciously posted by neoaya. (I’ll read the story later once I’m done with the CDs.)

Let’s start with the “permission slip” that Yukari obtained from the Tenma. The concept by itself as a plot device is underwhelming to say the least. Having permission given by another character removes Aya’s agency in the process thus making the stakes lower and the story as a whole all the less satisfying. It could’ve been Hatate or any other tengu because it wasn’t their decision, it was the Tenma’s. 

It shifts the characterization towards one of circumstance, rather than being directed by the characters themselves. This isn’t because of Aya’s failings or her character faults or anything she did, it’s because the Tenma said so. But what of Aya? What are her thoughts on it? I don’t know about anyone else, but the Tenma’s reasons and justifications are far less interesting to me than Aya’s reasons and justifications, maybe because we barely know anything about the Tenma. 

It’s not fair to say that it’s bad writing but it’s just unsatisfying and unfulfilling, and just kind of lame. 

Disregarding what I don’t know about shikigami, it’s safe to assume that “becoming a shikigami” is a much greater deal than what’s presented in her profile on the account of what a shikigami is (to put it extremely simply, a shikigami is a spirit shoved into a youkai to make said youkai into a living computer). Aya is stated to be curious about what it’d be like to be a shikigami and that she could always “expose the truth” “if things went awry.” I won’t harp on it too much, but it seems like shikigami aren’t things that shouldn’t be taken so lightly. 

Aya as a shikigami brings such burning questions to my mind. Why would she do such a thing? What made her trust the least trustworthy (probably) youkai in Gensokyo? Did she know what she was getting into before she was turned into a shikigami? Did she know that she’d essentially be a servant to Yukari? Someone who you’d definitely not want to be a servant of? Does she even know what a shikigami is? What could have transpired for a typical youkai to give up their entire life to serve as Yukari’s servant? What do her friends think? What about the other tengu? (I acknowledge that these last two questions could be answered by the event and probably are but the others still stand.)

All these questions and more don’t matter because it wasn’t her decision. She had no control over how she ended up. All the tension and conflict that could arise vanishes. 

And that’s just such a shame.

Before I move on, I just wanted to focus on the “permission slip” given to Yukari by the Tenma. I’m giving it the silly name of a “permission slip” because that’s what it is; a document signed by the Tenma that explicitly states that Yukari has permission to turn Aya into a shikigami. I gave it that name because it’s also infantilizing to the characters involved. Having Yukari not only ask someone for permission but getting a signed note stating that she has permission, as if she’s a child asking their parents if they could go on a field trip, feels so childish, as if she doesn’t have any agency herself. Having Yukari act so cocky towards Aya about having permission and having Aya’s first thought be if Yukari forged the signature and not something that reinforces her position as an independent person reinforces this almost childish nature of the characters.

It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

(I said I didn’t want to harp on this but I did anyway, sorry! I will admit that I don’t know much about the tengu and their system of governance but I do know that Aya isn’t too fond of it. I also could be wrong about all of this if it’s discussed in the event.)

Moving onto the next point, that being Aya’s relation with Zenki, the oni that “possesses” her. It seems that Aya isn’t normally “possessed” by Zenki and Zenki only really makes their appearance when Aya uses her “phantasm-level power.”

My feelings and arguments are less concrete and more subjective than the previous point.

I don’t know, as a narrative device, it just seems kind of lame. She’s just normal Aya when she’s not using her powers? Sure she has to listen to Yukari’s rules and everything to keep the powers but still. Aya herself says that she’d “become pathetically weak” if she breaks Yukari’s rules, but her profile states that she’d just go back to having her normal power. I’d probably trust her profile over Aya herself because that's probably what Yukari told her. 

It seems almost “too easy” for Aya to just remain Aya. 

It has potential at least. There’s the irony being so power hungry that you’d do all these (potentially) terrible things to keep it yet you could go back to being normal at any time if only you abandoned that power.

Though it seems like Aya has had some alterations to her personality. She states that she “feels a bit like Ran” occasionally. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and not harp on this point too much.

I feel like Shikigami Aya has missed potential at a narrative level due to how her transformation into a shikigami is set up. It makes her backstory and character underwhelming due to her lack of agency and control.

But at the end of the day, it’s a fun, goofy character written for a fun, goofy game for fun, so it doesn’t really matter all that much (I say as I finish writing all of this).

[ofthenoseclan]

tohovote complete heres what i chose this year

as usual the unspoken house rule for tohovote is: my shortlist of permanent favourites, secondary picks to shine a spotlight on (choose new ones every year), additions from the newest title that need a fighting chance against more established fan faves

cast

toyosatomimi no miko

usami renko

merry hearn

onozuka komachi

kicchou yachie

yasaka kanako

nippaku zanmu

songs

witch of love potion

lunar rainbow

demystify feast

peaceful romancer

mizuumi wa kiyome no gekkou wo utsushite

loose rain

otogi no kuni no onigashima ~ missing power

53 minutes no aoiumi

oni wa yuukyuu no yama ni

itsudatsusha-tachi no mugekou ~ kingdam of nothingness.

works

hourai ningyou ~ dolls in pseudo paradise

touhou gumonkuju ~ symposium of post-mysticism.

danmaku amanojaku ~ impossible spell card.

touhou shinreibyou ~ ten desires.

oozora majutsu ~ magical astronomy

[monikatouhou]

[amemenojaku]

recent post made me curious, what do you consider the most precious doujin thing(s) you own?

Sukunagatari (スクナガタリ), a retelling of DDC & ISC in 5 volumes with a LOT of folklore elements and the artist's interpretation of what ZUN used as inspiration for shinmyoumaru & seija. cool fight scenes, REALLY good emotional moments, interesting thoughts on derivative stories and oral transmission of folktales, there's even an original song written by the artist and the circle Ringing Volcano turned it into a remix of reverse ideology some time later available right here. honestly this is one of the best doujins I've ever read and I absolutely recommend it! or if you can't read it there's also the song which is great!! I have a lot of feelings about these books

Hohuri by Diao Ye Zong, it's still my favorite album from them and it's what really got me into dolls in pseudo paradise :) solid tracklist from beginning to end. not much to add since I've already talked about it a lot over the past few years

Yumekanae, the full-color counterpart to the messed up cat renko book. If You Know You Know, etc. I enjoyed the cat story for its oppressive atmosphere & its excellent twist, but this one with its soft sunset colors & merry's monologue & that gorgeous page where she/yukari swallows The Thing has haunted me since it came out in (checks) 2014! which is funnily enough the same year Hohuri came out... like a good wine year....... anyway this really made me love the idea of merry not being a "person", but a concept or some kind of phenomenon. and the accompanying song is excellent and always makes me wanna cry. "now together we'll become a world".. auugghhh

さよなら花余命 by ykzt, a lovely story about kosuzu realizing her feelings for akyuu. it's tender, the art is beautiful (this artist has drawn some of my favorite akyuusuzu pictures), I love the soft smiles and blushing faces and how kosuzu's thoughts are written. the quiet, bittersweet atmosphere of the whole story is the cherry on the cake for me

Vector Spectacle, which I think most seija/shinmyoumaru fans (or people who read lots of touhou doujinshi in general) already know and like :) it's a great mix of fun scenes, romance, well-written introspection and cool backstory ideas. I'm a bit sad it was never finished ofc, but what's already out there is really good and the art is amazing. I have very fond memories of reading and collecting doujin stuff in 2014-2018 and this series is one of the reasons why!!!

there's a lot of other doujin books or CDs with sentimental value to me because I got them as gifts from friends, joined as an artist, or which I got in person from my favorite creators... but there's so many I'm scared I'd forget to list some of them.. so maybe for another day, when I'll write a doujin rec list!

[mochi070823]

If it's not too sensitive, what happened to your old Touhou pictures? I loved your piece of Merry and Renko.

thank you!!! 🥺🩷 just posted that one for you! i honestly forgot to post it, as for my other touhou pieces I might be forgetting some too. I have one of remilia and flandre eating ice cream that I might post as well but its super old so I get shy about it jjj

[cookiethebirdthing]

I posted a Hifuu Day fic!! I hope you all enjoy :3 literally me frfr

[illusorybread]

My Secret Santa gift for @pknerd-catfox on the Grassroots Youkai Network discord! One more time, Happy Holidays!

2020-11-22 edit: Here’s the gift I got that time :D

[freshlybakedspiderbread]

i usually keep to myself about hobby stuff but i feel like talking about curent-ish writing-related things with me. I had hoped that finishing those prompt-based stories earlier in the month would give me new momentum towards doing more, and it only sorta did for like, a few days :P But anyway, wip thoughts:

1 . for a long time since a little bit after th17 released, ive wanted to do a single story with the point being to just quickly play with and dig into the dynamics of the wbawc realm crew. Though that 'point' probably made more sense when th17 was still the newest game.. and also a lot of little things in th19 i feel like makes the ideas i've had look distinctly 'outdated' if that makes any sense?! ...well i try not to let that stuff give me trouble, but since that 'point' has become kinda moot in my own perspective, i think i'll probably end up just posting smaller standalone bits featuring the relevant characters? That's not really how i've ever published fics before aside from a few occasions, but it might be nice to start.

2 . since like, way early in the year, i had so many of these stray drafts regarding a story starring akyuu that's set in the human village. constant second guessing and flipflopping means i've thrown away a disgusting amount of typed words but. it's all progress! at least that's what im telling myself 🙃 One day... ideally before zun kills akyuu for real (or make her immortal, who knows)

3 to a 100 or so . so many other notepad summaries on my desktop that i think are fully formed ideas but i'm sure the second i ever start on any of them, i'm gonna rework all of them from the ground up :P include Another story about the eientei crew centering on reisen's apprenticeship under eirin, A longer story about the megumu's polycule having an adventure of sorts on youkai mountain, and a goofy idea i've had since like 2020 and abandoned half a dozen times which is about merry and renko meeting ran and then merry getting jealous?? It sounds even goofier when i say it aloud but maybe one day 😅