#touhou writing

[beveragenightmare]

Getting back into the drawing mood with some more nonsense

[noxshade]

A wonderful little piece that I commissioned from @setzeri, about my ongoing fanfic Gensokyo, Tokyo. Reimu, Marisa and Izumi are inspecting these odd red shogi tiles... where did Marisa get them? I wonder...

If you like urban fantasy and slice of life, with mysteries building in the background, you might want to give it a read!

[d6b-onion]

I am not normal about these two

they are so gay and wonderful and cool and komachi's scythe is so badass and god they should kiss and make out and-

THEY ARE SO COOL why are scythes this cool and homoerotic i love these two so much azeqlf,d;koxqzenioi,zfj;dowf,kezn

[ariane-ashen]

"C'mon! Get out of bed, Ms. Yakumo!" Yukari was flung from her cool abode into the warm Summer air. How long had it been? Did she even wake during last year's August? She could no longer recall. In times where the thousand painful thoughts and memories in her mind boom at once, all she can do is sleep.

A surprised Ran and Chen could be seen peeking from behind a door, but they didn't feel like they had stop the ice fairy. Yukari's smiling shikigami faded into the distance as an unusually powerful Cirno took the tired mistress by her arm. "What is...?" Yukari couldn't find the strength to offer much resistance, feeling particularly shocked by the energy of the joyful girl in front of her. Cirno simply giggled in excitement.

"Hoy! Didn't you know there's a festival today? The lady with all those doors even let me gain all those powers like before! She said it's been too long since you had some good food and fun! Maybe you'll even watch me beat Ms. Hakurei with all this power~" Yukari couldn't help but be swept up in the emotions of Cirno's sparkling voice, and smiled as she gripped her palm. "Matara...Fufu, what a piece of work you are."

[tsubameyado]

例大祭21のスケブ

遅ればせながら、例大祭21ありがとうございました！お天気もとても良くて、大盛況でしたね。 今回描かせていただいたスケブのご紹介です。

・お燐 お燐といえば猫のポーズ、という感じで描いてしまいましたがあまりにも定番すぎて以前描いた絵ともし被ってしまっていたらすみません！ 地霊殿が出たばかりの頃はお燐のもみあげを描かないことにこだわっていたのですが、もみあげ(横髪？)を描いた方が絵として上手くまとまることが多いので最近は描いていることが多い…… という裏話です。(もみあげを描かない方が、原作らしさは出ると思います。)

・射命丸(天狗装束) 天狗装束版の射命丸は普段の射命丸より、よりクールでしっとりした方向で描きたくなりますね。 金と黒のコントラストが楽しいです。

・豫母都日狭美 ほとんど初めて描いたので、まだこんな感じです！ 日狭美は見る人によって、性格もビジュアルも見え方がかなり変わるキャラだと思いますので、是非ディテールを自分なりに突き詰めて描きたいキャラです。

・蓮子 最後に、蓮子です。特に指定はなかったのですが、なんとなく七夕坂バージョンにしてみました(襟・袖のラインと開襟くらいしか特徴がないですが……) CDジャケットでは勢いで吹き飛んでいる帽子を、手でギュッと抑えているイメージです。

お陰様で無事に新作秘封CDは入手できたのですが、ゴールデンウイークの後片付けなどがまだ残っていて聴けていません……戦利品もまだ読めておらず…… 久しぶりの秘封CD、音楽とブックレットに意識を集中させて大事に静謐に聴きます☺

そんな感じの、例大祭21のスケブでした。 売り子をしながら描いているシーンも多いので、あまり数が多くなくてすみません！

[moonsidesong]

Some of my 2023 favorites !!!! <3 I drew a lot of my favorite sillies this year... next year I will draw even more sillies....

[spear-gsun]

A Mizuchi that i totally didnt just mean to use as an icon for an RP profile (that i might never use) but carried away with making

[sukimas]

this is incidentally what most Touhou but Fucked Up!! works get wrong. touhou IS fucked up, naturally, but not in the way you think. living in gensokyo isn't a constant battle, your neighbors aren't having to always ward their houses in fear of being violently dragged away in the night. the old gensokyo was like that, for certain, but it is not now. you might hear about one person disappearing a month. you're very, very rarely going to find a body.

you know that the youkai don't come to the human village. you have no idea why not- the shrine maiden isn't very good at getting rid of them (nor is her friend, nor is the other one on the mountain). you can't just ask them, that would be inconceivable. but there are whispers that the village's safety was created by the youkai even youkai know nothing about. what could she possibly want with it? what are her plans for the humans?

there's a reporter girl handing out newspapers. the newspapers are written in an odd script. you can understand it, but it's unfamiliar nonetheless. the newsgirl's got a normal haircut and wears usual, if fashionable, clothing, but she's got bright red eyes. it could just be the magic in the air- there's that kid from the motoori family with the bright orange ones, for example- but it makes you worry. the articles all have a suspiciously pro-youkai bent, except for the ones about tanuki.

you and your neighbors go down to the pub. you've heard it's a good one, but you can't remember going there, even though your wife tells you you went by a week ago. there's a loudmouthed little girl with a big hat back in the kitchen drinking. that can't be healthy for her, can it? if she's human. if not, does the bartender know?

your neighbors start chatting. one of them talks about leaving gensokyo, waves a newspaper about the outside world around. you nod hesitantly. you've considered doing that yourself, but your wife doesn't want to go; the books she's been borrowing have been talking about great fire and poisonous dust in a land whose name you can't pronounce. it sounds western. she says that it might be nearby, past the barrier. you can't really know, since weather is the only thing that crosses it naturally. you've dismissed her concerns, but she keeps talking about earthquakes and tidal waves. you'd like to at least take a peek, though, yourself.

your other neighbor loudly shoots down the idea. he's been to the barrier himself, he says. or so he thinks. he walked past the hakurei shrine one day, during a festival, and beyond the pond in the back with that big old turtle. there was a path leading into the woods, and he started walking down it. he walked for a long time, but he noticed eventually that the scenery wasn't changing, that the trees all looked the same. he turned around and he was back at the pond again.

a third neighbor pipes up, quietly. he says that he's actually met an outsider before. not the teenager who flies, but a normal one. he's a metalworker, you see, so he's often on the lookout for new sources of scrap. he takes his guard dog with him along the river sometimes, past the miasma-filled forest and to the hill that's covered with spider lilies in the spring. he finds metal there, and glass. there's a third material that a lot of the things he finds are made of, moldable like metal, but when he tries to put it in a crucible it burns away, so he's stopped collecting it. he always feels like he's being watched, but he never sees any youkai.

the outsider he met had told him he didn't have any "reception", so the map he had didn't work. the outsider had shown your neighbor a small rectangle of glass and metal, illuminated in the center, with a blank grid shown on it. there were some words at the top and bottom of the grid, but they didn't seem to be helping him. the outsider had asked your neighbor for a map, but your neighbor had said- truthfully- that no one knows their way around gensokyo, and had offered to guide him back to the village. the outsider had hemmed and hawed for a bit, and asked what the village was like; when he heard, he refused, and said he'd find his own way back. your neighbor had entreated him and warned him about youkai in the area, but he'd laughed it off, and the neighbor had gone on, collecting metal, after they went their separate ways.

when the neighbor was on his way back to the village, he saw some torn-up grass and the small rectangle lying on the ground, but no blood or any other signs of a struggle. his dog had growled at the rectangle, but he had picked it up and brought it home. he pulls it out of his haori. the glass is cracked, and it won't light up, he says. you stare at it for a bit, then ask how the outsider got there, anyway. the first neighbor chimes in again, telling you that the area over there is full of outside objects- the barrier must be thin there. that's where he plans to make his way out.

the second neighbor snorts incredulously. the bartender pours you another drink. she has an adorable smile, but she seems so nervous, and you feel a little bad for her. it would be lovely if girls like her didn't have to live in fear of what lives outside the village walls.

you wake up the next day with no memory of the night before. you wrap an ofuda your wife got from the moriya shrine to your fishing rod and head out to work. that night, your wife tells you that one of your neighbors didn't come back from work. you hope someone finds him soon.

THAT is how Touhou is Touhou but Fucked Up.

[ajamnova]

“Chillin’ in the Trees”

[Originally posted 2/5/2024]

Today I have an illustration of Son Biten! Fun fact, last January I wrote on tumblr how ZUN should add a character based on Sun Wukong to Touhou. And what do you know, it actually happened!! Thanks Apollo 🤣

[crookedcrow5]

Familiarity was a terrible curse to have. It often prevented even the simplest of accomplishments.

From the metal traps sparking a deep rooted fear to an old face preventing a full investigation, Ran Yakumo was not unfamiliar to the taste of old memories. It was something her master had worked hard on to keep leashed, and something she prided herself in.

She was not just some stray fox anymore. She was the shikigami of one of the most influential yokai in Gensokyo. Even if she had her glitches, even if Yukari didn't trust her with everything, she was undoubtedly a fox that didn't need to hide her tails.

No matter what small-fry said, that fact simply displayed how above it all she was. So, pardon her pride, but Ran wasn't looking for Tsukasa when she arrived at Moriya Shrine. She had assumed the kuda-gitsune would have been run off.

She was surprised to find the her there, then, side-by-side with the shrine maiden.

Not revealing herself right away, she gathered as much information she could about the situation. And what she learned was...

Familiar.

The shrine maiden, Sanae, didn't seem too bothered by the fox's attempts to be slick and get something out of her. In fact, she almost seemed happy to let the kuda-gitsune stay.

And Tsukasa... just... kept trying. Kept pushing for attention, kept trying to get on the upper-hand when she was clearly failing.

Ran's eyes narrowed at the energetic tail behind the kuda-gitsune, noting its new shine.

Fighting off a heavy sigh, she rubbed her eyes.

A fox tamed so easily with the promise of care. How quaint.

Watching the two banter for a moment longer, she tried to process her own reaction. After all, it wasn't like her to fail completely at such a task. Hell, gathering the information necessary would be easier with Tsukasa there.

However.

Seeing her with Sanae...

... Why did the shikigami envy her?

She was stronger than Tsukasa, smarter too. She was in a better, long-standing position and wasn't treading a line of uncertainty. She was a fox that could show her tails proudly.

Yet... She felt a strange emptyness.

Ran was... nostalgic.

But for what? For the friend she fought? For the distant master? She hadn't needed attention, she didn't need attention. She was fine to be left on her own.

She was Ran Yakumo.

And somehow, she never felt emptier.

[saccharinescorpion]

i found these tweets the other day and they made me really (frantically nodding my head) so i wanted to share them (with a few little tweaks to the translation to make it more readable lol)

if you would allow me to indulge in the self-humbling act of rambling about being touched by a Pokemon game... lol...

i think reading these made me realize exactly why i liked all the Arven stuff in Scarlet and Violet so much. every once in a while i've seen people say that the last scene of the Area Zero plot was way too abrupt and cheerful after the final confrontation with the professor, but i never really agreed with that. i guess that i didn't think that the hopeful tone of the ending overshadowed the sadder parts- they just kind of coexisted

and i believe the epilogue really proved that-- as the Twitter user said, "there's no way anything can be done in a short amount of time," causing him to still have issues like jealousy and possessiveness in spite of his "happy ending." it's true that the epilogue plays it mostly for comedy, but i don't think that changes the fact that Arven's anxiety over the protagonist having a new friend was extremely realistic, and made a ton of sense considering his backstory- again, "sincerity about the seriousness of the problem"

there's still a lot of sorrow there, but it doesn't mean Arven can never find happiness. i think that's a pretty sweet message, and an especially important one to impart to children (who are, yes, still the target audience of Pokemon lol)

[wretchedbirdthing]

“Well done, Aka.” Yukari smiled warmly, her tone soft and comforting.

“My most loyal of shikigami. It would only make sense for your reward to be proportional to the quality of the work you’ve done for me.”

Creating a gap in front of the two, she reached inside with one hand and smiled at the tengu. Without breaking eye contact with her, Yukari wriggled her arm. Aka’s ears perked up as she heard the tell-tale shaking of a particular jar. Instantly, she began to drool, her eyes widening into dazzling red saucers. Such a reaction made Yukari smile even brighter.

Aka’s breathing hastened as Yukari pulled her hand out, holding a lavishly decorated purple tin labeled “The Good Birdseed” in large, cursive letters.

[d6b-onion]

headcanons

i don't really have headcanons in general (hah, baited), because i think that runs against one of the biggest reasons why i enjoy Touhou. I enjoy Touhou in part because it's a giant sandbox of cool characters (with cool designs), dynamics and ideas; "dynamics" includes yuri, naturally. It's a big fantasy world, but constraining the stories it tells too hard is stifling to me.

So for that reason, there is no "true version" of the world of touhou beyond/adjacent to canon inside my mind. What does exist, however, is a big assortment of ideas and themes for characters and relationships that I find cool or interesting or sweet and that I like to explore. I may find some much more interesting or fun than others, but there is no ""true"" one to me.

They may disagree with canon, or with one another. Generally I'm more comfortable staying close to canon because I enjoy the stories ZUN tells. And sometimes other people imagine something different that I find interesting, and so I go along.

For example take ReiMari. I don't have an opinion on whether the ship is ""real"" or not. Canon says they have a very strong platonic bond, and that they're probably not romance-repulsed, and that's about it. IMO you can reasonably imagine Reimu to be aroace. And that's the wonderful thing! You can take this so many different ways, and there are so many interesting stories to tell even when the paths diverge!

They can be hopelessly pining for one another. They can be a married couple. They can be madly in love with each other. They can be star-crossed, with their love never meant to be. They can have a purely platonic relationship; I imagine many aro folks would enjoy it not just being a stepping stone towards romance. They can be complete freaks. Personally, I find them interesting as a way to explore the blurry line between deep friendship and romance.

Whether something is ""real"" doesn't matter, what story do you want to tell?

[cookiethebirdthing]

The Youkai at the End of the Bridge

Parsee Mizuhashi felt the pain before she even realizes she is jealous. It was a pit opening in her stomach. A gaping maw that was filled with naught but bitter scornful jealousy. It was indistinguishable from hunger. Perhaps this made sense; it too demands sustenance—to be fed.

But she was used to it, too. It hardly lessened the pain, but it did tell her it would pass. That shortly it will be as if it never happened. But it is happening. It did happen. She couldn't deny it, but she will soon forget.

She averted her gaze. Why did she do this? She knew. She knew what would happen. There was a reason she didn't visit Yuugi at work. Or at home. Or anywhere really. Why should it matter if she talks to someone else? It might be nothing. She doesn't know for sure. She can't. Not that it mattered; she didn't own Yuugi. They weren't even dating. Not that it would change that.

And so what if they were? If a (hypothetical) girlfriend wanted to see other people, that wasn't a problem. She wasn't possessive. She wasn't monogamous. She knew this. She wasn't even interested in Yuugi that way. She knew it wouldn't end well. She knew she didn't actually love her, no matter how much she knows she does. It isn’t real.

Parsee needs to talk to her, needs to hear her voice, needs to know she isn't being cast aside. She knew she wasn't. She knows she is. She knows what she did is wrong. She knows what she said is wrong. No matter how many times Yuugi lies to her through her teeth, pretending everything is alright in the world, she knows that’s all it is: lies. She knows that Yuugi has to lie to her. Her friend isn't stupid. No one could miss how unstable she is, how quick to anger she is, how quick to be consumed by jealousy she is, how quick to break she is.

Yuugi knows this; she's been the cause of it more times than Parsee could count. She knows exactly how Parsee would react. So, she lies. And even if she doesn’t know all that, who could just tell someone to their face how dreadful—how absolutely despicable—they are?

She ran. She ran all the way back to her pathetic little bridge. She ran straight into the hiding place she dug in the earth beneath it. The door slammed shut behind her, but all she could hear was her own heartbeat thudding in her ears. She wants to scream, to break something, to hurt someone, to hurt herself, to do anything that matters. No matter how much she wishes to get closer to the one who causes her pain, she knew it wouldn't help. She can't burden her closest friend with that: with herself.

And so she hid and waited for it all to pass; to be back to normal or as close as she ever could be. She didn't do any of the self-destructive things she desperately needs to do. She knew it would pass. But soon enough it will be back. It always came back. At just the slightest touch she cracks. She always does.

Maybe if she told Yuugi, it would be better. That's what that satori always said, right? Communication was important. No other being could read minds. Hated as she was, that satori could find it in her to help Parsee.

And yet the ones who have it all only seemed to hurt her. Yuugi, who was the closest thing this cursed prison had to a ruler, is out there smiling and chatting, oblivious to the pain she’s causing. She's out there making new friends. Friends that are better than Parsee. Friends that she doesn't need to avoid because they’re too much. Friends that she isn't eager to take any chance to be free from. Friends she doesn’t regret showing kindness to once upon a time. She knows better than anyone, even a mindreader, how to hurt Parsee. She knows what she is doing.

Tears rolled down Parsee’s cheeks. It was all too much. She knows that Yuugi will never need her in the same way she needed Yuugi. And so she wept, deeper underground than even the most hated of youkai: where she hid her heart such that no one will ever find it.

[aemulatorizrafel]

Touhou Ship Week Day 1: Confession (Legacy)

Getting your feelings across must be really hard when you have cursed speech 💔

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Renko: That's right! The one you know as "Yukari Yakumo" was originally my wife Merry Usami!

Youkai Sumireko: Ohhh!

Toyosatomimi no Miko: Aha.

Sumireko: This explains everything, right?

Miko: Not everything. However, I do feel as though I understand Yukari in ways I never have before, yes.

Sumireko: Just from knowing one extra fact!

Miko: Just so!

Sumireko: Yukari's a psych major! Miko, simultaneously: Yukari is an Usami!

Sumireko: Eh? Miko, simultaneously: Hm? Renko, also simultaneously: What.