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The Touhou fanbase goes in 3 different directions: Using memes that lost their comedy value over a decade ago (like Sakuya's "pads") using memes from one year ago (fumo memes) Torturing characters in the games for the sake of it I know that slapstick humor is a thing. I don't understand really it's appeal (I probably don't have any right to talk about other's humor, since I have the comedical preference of a brick), but Touhou fans make it look like it's some sort of international contest to see who can make [insert character here] suffer the most. It's kind of creepy. I didn't really think about it that way. This makes me wonder what would Meiling's campaign be like if the "haha gatekeeper sleeps" meme didn't exist. She may not even have a campaign of her own if it weren't for the jokes. The main reason why I included the Inaba manga in here is because whenever people try to say that Meiling isn't incompetent, someone will always pull out this scene to prove them otherwise (and also CDS, but we'll get on that one later). I know that the manga might not even be canon, but some people out there insist that it's 100% canon. It's frustrating to me. How many times did ZUN manage to contradict himself? I know that it's hard to keep track of everything you wrote over the past 20 years, and that ZUN just isn't that good of a storyteller to begin with. What if he uses the fact that every manga is from a different character's perspective as an excuse to contradict himself. After all, every character has a different bias in their storytelling. Besides all this, reading CDS just doesn't feel right at all for me. It feels like some weird conglomeration of random ideas that ZUN came up on the spot combined into what is meant to be the "darkest" manga in the series to date (even though that may be the case for every manga). I may be biased since my favorite mangas are the slice-of-life ones. For the end note, I wonder what would Hong Meiling's fate be if the community didn't create those memes trashing on her...

Character introduction: Maya Takahashi General information (curtesy to Amagami wiki): Maya Takahashi (高橋 麻耶 Takahashi Maya) is a secondary character of Amagami SS and Amagami SS+ plus. She is a homeroom teacher of class 2-A in Kibito High School, who later becomes the homeroom teacher of class 3-B. She is "a quite glamourous teacher in charge". Appearance: She has brown hair and brown eyes. Personality: Maya is a homeroom teacher in the protagonist's class. Because of yoga and jogging, she maintains her healthy beauty, which makes her popular along male students. Maya is a person of firm characters, but sometimes she makes mistakes. Maya is still single, and has no lover. She waits for wonderful love for 5 years. She is graduate of the same school she teaches at, and the first school's Miss Santa. Frankly, she feels inclined to be fighting drunk. Depending on game progress, protagonist can attack her, which will lead only to a bad ending. Age: 29 Some trivia from the same article: Maya likes yoga, jogging, interacting with students and drinking. Maya dislikes jokes of middle-aged man colleagues and gambling. Maya gets to school by car. Kibitou High's Miss Santa Contest used to be a normal Santa Contest until her prank appearance in the event about 10 years ago. Since her win, the participants ratio swung heavily toward girls and then it became what we see in the show. Bonus profile created on Danbooru: Class: 2-A Homeroom teacher 所属: 日本史担当 Birthday: October 24 Zodiac: Scorpio Age: 29 Blood Type: O Likes: Yoga, jogging, 生徒との交流, osake Dislikes: 同僚のオッサンギャグ, gambling CV: Hayamizu Risa (早水リサ) And now for the art gallery: Illustration by rabiyamarabi (source: https://twitter.com/rabiyamarabi/status/1584465072490876929) Illustration by mamiya myanmar (source: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/51010948) Illustration by mobu (source: https://twitter.com/qow213/status/1585287801758969856) Illustration by yoo tenchi (source: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/102182881) Illustration by mg renders (source: https://a.mg-renders.net/2014/09/amagami-ss-takahashi-maya-render-ecchi_28.html) Illustration by kishida-shiki (source: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/29107678) Illustration by toki (source: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/24078163) Illustration by keisuke (source: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/21381647) Image with uncredited author on Danbooru Illustration by shibasaki shouji (source: Pixiv - image no longer available) Illustration by kishida-shiki (source: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/16264570) Illustration by ryunnu (source: uncredited on Danbooru) Illustration by tamago (source: http://yotsumi423.blog55.fc2.com/) End thoughts: First time I am dealing with a teacher since Keine. This sure will be interesting... Alright, making the gallery research for this one sure has been one hell of a trip. There are just 5 pages of photos and a total of 99 images, yet this might be the character with the highest percentage of NSFW per number of images. I guess it really makes sense to find so much content of sorts, given we are 100% sure she is an adult (Maya is 29 in the series). For the first 2-3 pages of Danbooru results, I was weary there will be nothing I could post in here. Even the first images are stretching quite a lit the border of what I could get away with. Also a note, images in each of these introductions are presented in chronological order, from the latest to the oldest Danbooru uploads under the tag of the character. Anyway, next time we are dealing with Umehara Masayoshi, another one of the friends of Junichi.

Like other people said in this chat, Hong Meiling is a character that is always made fun of, but I think there is something else to this whole situation. Meiling is my favourite character for 3 years now, so sorry if this post sounds biased or even straight up angry. I had all those thoughts building up inside my mind, and this is the only chance I found to let them all out. Let's begin. Meiling always gets mocked for a multitude of reasons, like being weak, sleeping on the job, and being good for nothing, and this is only to name a few. Yes, I know that the whole "sleeping on the job" thing became kinda canon with PMISS, Soku and CDS, but at least the canon trait isn't as bad as the fanon makes it look like. I am thankful that the Meiling abuse meme didn't become canon, because dear God, some people in this community go to gruesome extents with this, ranging from "Meiling gets knifed by Sakuya for doing something wrong" to "Meiling gets all her body parts ripped off for just existing". Thinking about all of this, I have realised something: all those negative fanon traits were made up just because she is Chinese. The Japanese and the Chinese aren't too friendly towards eachother, to say the least, and since during the early 2000's the Fandom was almost entirely made out from the Japanese, they were very quick to treat her like some moronic Chinese stereotype. People gave the Chinese Girl the whole "useless" label because they see all Chinese products as "low quality". And to top it all of, after a poll that was made to decide if she should be called "Hong Meiling" or "Kurenai Misuzu" (her Japanese name), some random guy came in out of nowhere and said "Hey, why don't we just call her China?", and everyone agreed. And so, during the late 2000's and early 2010's, there isn't a single Touhou fan who didn't call her "China". Nowadays, most people call her by her real name, and seem to respect her more than during the so-called "golden era" of the fandom, but people still recognise her only for her sleeping habits. Just try to find a Meiling-related post on the subreddit (or most other communities) that doesn't reference that either in the post itself or in the comments. While yes, the fandom is behind most of Meiling disrespect, but there is one more individual I do have to talk about. That person is none other than Mr. Touhou himself, ZUN. Think about it. In most entries of the series after EoSD, ZUN treated Hong Meiling like a joke: In the interview in BAiJR between Aya and Meiling, the first reference to her sleeping on the job was made. Other than that, we found out that she is the gardener of the mansion, which is nice. One year later, PMiSS made the sleeping gag canon. We did get some neat characterisation about her. Hisoutensoku is when things start to get messy. Here, Meiling's campaign where she defeated the evil Taisui Xinjung and his assasins was revealed to be all just some dumb dream. At least we got more characterisation for her, so that's also nice. But there is more: The Inaba manga had a scene where Meiling was shown as incompetent when she had to check the invitations of some mere bunnies and the Eitnei crew (might have percieved the manga in a wrong way, tho). They already passed the gate before she even managed to finish with the invitations. It's still unknown if the manga is canon or not. In WaHH, Remilia and Sakuya started to violently tease her (to be fair, it was because Remilia and Sakuya drank something that made them behave like Oni, but still) And finally, to end this, we have the shitshow that is CDS. Why is it so bad, you may ask? Well, for one she openly admitted in the first chapter that she sleeps on the job almost every day, then she had an arguement with Sakuya when the maid got suspected for "poisoning" Patchoulli, then it was revealed that Patchy was actually possesed by an evil vengeful spirit that wanted to create havoc in Gensokyo, said spirit later possesing Meiling, as well as putting her into a coma, and for the grand finale, she gets almost strangled to death by Flandre herself because of that vengeful spirit that was inside Meiling at the time. I heard that other characters got this kind of treatment as well, like Reisen and Kanako. I think it's pretty clear that ZUN doesn't respect her at all, at least to me. So all of this makes me wonder: why does ZUN treat Hong Meiling like this? Did he intend from the very beginning for her to be a joke character? Does he have a grudge against Meiling? Who knows. One thing I do know is that her future is looking grim, and I actually dread the next time she appears in a another entry in the series, because she will most likely be treated like a joke yet again. I mean, writing an essay for 2 hours straight isn't going to change the situation at all, so what can I do to actually change this? Well, nothing. I think it might be too late for anything to be done, unfortunately. Hong Meiling had so much potential, yet all of that got thrown out of the window thanks to some memes that ZUN made canon for some unknown reason. Well, that was a weird way to spend my evening, but at least I finally managed to say what I had on my mind.

It's r/touhou, that's why. At least that is where I have seen the bulk of it, and the place where people somehow reinforced it.