Touhou Project

[CRBWildcat]

Would you consider a person officially obsessed with Touhou if he had a dream that he was at a party in a large basement, and Alice Margatroid was one of those present for no reason whatsoever?

[Crescent Pulsar S]

Maybe. I can't say any fictional character I've ever dreamed was of particular interest to me in reality, though. I'm just too apathetic for that kind of thing. A few of the fictional characters I've dreamed over the past several years were of ones I hadn't known of at the time but later saw the dream sequence play out in reality. (This happened with Tales of the Abyss, Record of Agarest War, and -- most recently -- Sword Girls Online).

Say, has your playing style changed at all over time? I've noticed that the more I play the more aggressive and daring I become.

[CRBWildcat]

That's happened to me a few times too, although I don't recall the circumstances all that well. I might've gotten a glimpse of the SDM's library in one of them, but no one that I would later know from the games was present. At least, I don't think so.

I don't think my style's really changed, at least as far as unfamiliar patterns are concerned. I still have a tendency to fly headlong into obvious bullets, I tend to hover towards the bottom third of the screen when I'm not collecting items, and I still go on bombing runs whenever I panic. On the other hand, when I'm down to my last life, I focus a lot more on the game, where the bullets are going, things like that; my latest UFO win (Easy, Reimu-A) had me down to no extra lives or bombs left (huh, deja vu).

[Crescent Pulsar S]

I've finished UFO like that, too. XD

Oh, yeah. Speaking of bombs, I make use of them more often these days. It used to be that I found it really difficult to get myself to use them at all, to the point where I might only use two or three per playthrough. Now I use at least twice that (if necessary; I can do an easy run in Ten Desires without using any).

[CRBWildcat]

Which tells me that you have more confidence in your abilities than I do in my own.

I'm starting to get to the point where I can get past Stages 4 and 5 in UFO on Easy without much trouble (still can't say the same for the Stage 3 boss). One I have Easy more or less mastered, I can work on Normal and try to unlock the Extra Stage.

[CRBWildcat]

Found this remastering of one of Yuuka's themes. Kinda makes me want to give Lotus Land Story another go.

[Crescent Pulsar S]

I haven't played that one, yet. I played the first two, but when I played the sixth one I became spoiled. <_<;

Though, for some reason, Yuuka is among my top-favorite characters. And I don't know why. XD;;

[CRBWildcat]

Neither do I; most fans' interpretations of her scare me.

I've tried the first game a few times. I think what ZUN meant to name it was "Highly Irresponsive to Players", though; I know the controls, but I keep dying regardless.

[Crescent Pulsar S]

I don't know why the fandom portrays her as such a sadist, though. I've read the scripts for the three games she appears in and I don't really get that impression.

Wasn't it supposed to be "prayers" instead of "players?"

[CRBWildcat]

Part of it's due to her profile in the Perfect Memento in Strict Sense book, I think. The rest of it's due to her macabre sense of humor.

Not in the context I was referring to it in.

[Crescent Pulsar S]

I don't see it in that profile, either. It sounds like it at first, but by the end of the profile you can tell that the extreme-sounding stuff in the beginning is actually rather conditional. I don't know about that macabre humor, either. I think she only spoke of death lightly once, and probably not so coincidentally to a person who judges the dead. After all, her lies and humor mainly seem to be aimed toward teasing and/or riling someone up.

Your pretext can't fool me! *_*

[CRBWildcat]

It wasn't just to Shiki; she spoke as much to Shinki and Reimu as well. Saying that "genocide was just a game", or turning the player character into "a mist of atoms", stuff like that.

[Crescent Pulsar S]

...Those aren't macabre, though. Macabre refers mainly to the processes and results of death -- the adjectives of it, basically. (Also, it seems I mixed up what happened between Shikieiki and Shinki. Nothing even remotely macabre is said to Shikieiki.)

Saying "genocide is just another game" is itself not macabre, because it's only referring to an action that leads to death, not exactly how they were killed and/or any other details that could paint a distinct enough image whose main purpose is to unnerve and/or evoke disgust, as opposed to aiming at someone's morals and/or principles to evoke sadness, sympathy, anger and the like. It might be horrific from a moral standpoint, but that's not macabre. It's the difference between seeing someone who has just died to someone who has been dead for a few days or killed in a brutal/messy fashion: for the first body you may think, "how horrible," because it's a shame that they had died, while the latter would first produce something like, "oh, man, gross; that's the last thing I wanted see," or, "what/who in god's name did this?"

The joke with Reimu I don't think I need to get into, but the comment to Shinki is rather contextual and meant to insult her and provoke a fight. Yuuka is certainly uncaring about death, but until there's something like the tearing out of a still-beating heart or of her gorging herself on someone's flesh (youkai are known for eating people), well... yeah. That's not to say that there's nothing macabre in the series, either as a fact of occurrence or out of expectation due to one's knowledge of various things, but it still comes down to context.

Anyway, I don't recall the arguing of definitions regarding words from the English language as being part of Touhou, so here's a question to get things back on track: what are your theories on who/what Sakuya and Meiling are? I was wondering since -- among the recurring and popularized characters -- there are still some unknown things about them that can't be ignored yet ZUN has never seen fit to reveal/clear up after a decade.

[CRBWildcat]

Close enough.

Anyway, I don't recall the arguing of definitions regarding words from the English language as being part of Touhou, so here's a question to get things back on track: what are your theories on who/what Sakuya and Meiling are? I was wondering since -- among the recurring and popularized characters -- there are still some unknown things about them that can't be ignored yet ZUN has never seen fit to reveal/clear up after a decade.

Don't know, and have no opinion. ZUN's gone on record as saying that he'll clear up the fog around Sakuya at some point down the line, and I'm willing to take his word for it for now; as for Meiling, I don't care one way or the other. (Speculation is not one of my finer points. )

[Crescent Pulsar S]

You're no fun. :O

For Meiling, I was thinking that she could be Toyotama-hime, or at least inspired by her.

As for Sakuya, having those kind of time-space powers seems a bit extraordinary for a human to have naturally. By her apparent age you'd think that she was relatively new to being Remilia's maid, but it doesn't seem like that to me. So, maybe the mysterious connection that she has with Eirin means she's a Lunarian.

I wish ZUN would get around to establishing something as canon for the fan-fiction writer in me. XD